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xoxoladyaz · 6 months ago

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Ultraworld

A/N: This is a concept that I've been tossing around in my head for a while, and when I saw the Day 5 "Reunion" prompt for @steddie-week the sequence below just flew into my mind. Think a mash-up of Westworld and Ready Player One and that's what this fic could potentially turn into. This is definitely just a preview of things to come (in the future when I don't have so many WIPs that eat up all of my brain space and agony lol), but I'd love any and all comments and feedback!

TW: Swearing

Regina Kelley, MSNBC: As I’m sure you’re well aware, Doctor Brenner, there’s been a lot of controversy in the media ever since the announcement of ‘Ultraworld.’ What do you say to the people – and international entities – who believe this project is nothing more than an aggressive overextension of American oversight in the global arena?

Dr. Martin Brenner, NINA Industries: Firstly, any individual who believes that ‘Ultraworld’ is solely an American enterprise is mistaken. And as for those ‘international entities’ you mentioned, any outrage is a mere consequence of realizing their own unimportance in the face of such a monumental project. The reality, Miss Kelly, is that humanity has been racing towards a singular moment of harmony between the magickal and the technological since the industrial revolution. NINA Industries is merely the steward, the guiding hand to lead humanity forward. Those educated beyond the sycophantic hysteria of the internet know that ‘Ultraworld’ could not have been created, nor could it be released, without the express approval and support of each country across the globe. We pride ourselves on our equitable global access, by which we have been able to work across borders, government, and religion to bring a unity the world has never before seen.

And it due to that global access that I can assure the general public that ‘Ultraworld’ is not a tool of American oversight. To say it in basic terms, ‘Ultraworld’ serves two purposes: to provide an immersive, alternative-existential experience for all players who long to live in a simpler, more peaceful time; and in exchange, to serve as active training for the first generation of Infused Artificial Intelligence.

Regina Kelley, MSNBC: Yes, speaking of that, since the announcement there has been an almost constant barrage of misinformation and concern regarding the imminent arrival of these Infused Artificial Intelligences. Many are calling for the project’s cancellation out of fear either of the A.I. itself, or out of concern for the Preternatural community’s response.

Dr. Martin Brenner, NINA Industries: Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news for those concerned, but artificial intelligence is already among us. As such, it was only a matter of time until something similar to our Infuseds were created, and I think everyone can agree that it is in all of our best interest to have a unified, singular force driving progress forward. And for those concerned about the Preternatural community’s response, it is for this reason that we created the Infuseds in the first place. While we may be in a moment of relative peace with our very distant brethren, history shows us that these pockets of peace do not pass long, and as we have grown and evolved so have they. The Infuseds are not a declaration of war, but they are a declaration of protection – and, perhaps, an encouragement to the Preternaturals to keep their end of our current bargain.

Regina Kelley, MSNBC: Well, for all its critics, ‘Ultraworld’ has already garnered an incredibly vocal and passionate global fanbase. Do you have any final things to say to your fans about ‘Ultraworld’ ahead of its release?

Dr. Martin Brenner, NINA Industries: I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I gave too much away, but I will say that I saw the final renderings for each city today and, well, it’s like nothing that has ever been seen before. If I may be so bold, it is truly the most remarkable thing I think NINA Industries has ever created, second perhaps only to the IAIs themselves.

Regina Kelley, MSNBC: Remarkable is certainly an understatement, Doctor. And with twenty-one distinct roll-outs occurring tomorrow simultaneously across the globe, it seems ‘Ultraworld’ is ready to take our world by storm.

/////

M. Bauman: The fact that Brenner didn’t dig his own fucking grave with that interview speaks volumes about just how brainwashed the American people are. An “alternative-existential experience?” Is that what we’re calling the total subjugation of civilization to the elites? Studies have shown that this ‘experience’ is almost ten times more addictive than the social media we already have! Sooner or later, every part of our waking lives is going to take place in ‘Ultraworld,’ and that’s not even mentioning the new sleep-cycles they’ve just pushed out, or the fucking neural chip that allows for total immersion twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a fucking year. And while everyone in this country and across the fucking globe is distracted by the ‘ooooh, pretty, shiny,’ the global elites are going to take everything left for themselves. Oh, and let’s not forget the fucking shitshow that these IAIs are going to cause –

/////

92 hours since last Immersion

Steve.

He pulls his covers over his head, and it brings back memories of being a small child in that lonely house, terrified of every scratch against his window, of every creak on the empty stair, of every breath and snarl of wild creatures traipsing through the yard beneath him.

He tucks the blanket underneath his head, now fully submerged beneath the duvet that was now permanently lopsided and wrinkled since he rarely made his bed. He rarely had time to make his bed these days, not with how early he and Robin –

It’s not real. It’s not real. Hawkins isn’t real, he chants to himself, over and over and over again, hoping somehow that if he just says it enough times it will all disappear, that Ultraworld will never have happened, that everything and everyone will go back to the way it was and he’ll have a life again, everyone will have a genuinely real life -

Oh, Stevie, His voice sings.

He grips his duvet tighter and shut his eyes because maybe, maybe if He thinks Steve is asleep, he’ll stop fucking hearing His voice, and he shouldn’t even be hearing His voice right now anyways because his computer is off, his Immersion Glasses are off, he’s been disconnected for almost a full week and He isn’t even real -

Steeeeeevvveeeeeeeeeeee.

But it doesn’t matter how tightly he holds himself underneath his worn sheets, because nothing can change the fact that it doesn’t fucking matter how much space Steve puts between himself and his computer, between himself and his Immersion Glasses, between himself and this fucking apartment in this fucking city with all these fucking fully-immersed people – there’s no getting away from Kas.

C’mon, sweetheart. Daddy’s missed you.

It’s time for you to come home, Stevie.

(Not for Steve.)

#steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #dark eddie munson #kas eddie munson #steddie week

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f1-disaster-bi · 5 months ago

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The Norrix post about checking food is so sweet and relatable 😭💕 with autism I definitely struggle with food and not a lot of people have ever take it seriously. I feel so safe with my wife though that I've even been able to try foods without fear and I really can't explain the relief at trying food she has made and *knowing* if I don't like it I can be honest about it. That moment Lando realizes he can do that would probably stop him dead in his tracks

Oh friend 🥺 I am so glad that you have that with your wife! That's so sweet, and I am so happy for you that you can safely try food because you guys have that love and trust and support. I'm so happy for you guys! 💖

I can't personally understand it, but I have watched my cousin with autism struggling with eating out because she was embarassed of her eating habits and tastes due to aversions, and I've literally seen my sister who suffers with anxiet and disordered eating being uncomfortable and not able to eat because there's nothing there she can have. When she was little, besides our Mam, I was her only advocate when others just told her to 'stop being picky', and I hate when people say that to others because you don't know what aversions or issues they have. It's such a small thing to be able to do for people in my life to check foods and menus or to cut off people making rude comments off but it makes all the difference to them and them being able to enjoy food and eat safely is so important 😭💖

The first time Lando realises what Martin has done, he'd literally just be so overwhelmed with love and happiness and just awe because no one outside of his family or Max F has ever done that for him. Even his other good friends joke about his aversions, and then there is Martin, who just noticed how Lando struggled with food and frustration and just does this without saying anything because he wants Lando to be comfortable and feel safe and loved while eating and exploring new foods 🥺😭

#norrix #everyone deserves to be able to eat without judge or fear or worry #eating issues #martin/lando #lando/martin #tw for eating

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themuppetarchives · 7 months ago

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Archivist,

I... hurt someone last night.

I shouldn't have left your archives but I was so, so hungry. The story your friend told me was enough to bring my strength back, let me stumble out of your haven of Paper and Knowledge and into the streets. It was very good, please tell him I said thank you and that I'm sorry it wasn't enough to sate me for the entire night.

I found an old man in the rain. Homeless, I think. He had all his belongings with him in a soggy plastic bag. I was soaked through myself from the rain and collapsed next to him in a heap, ink running from my eyes and hands. I asked him for a story. He gave it to me but it was nonsense, something one would tell a young child. So I asked for another. And another.

The stories were from his life, and then they were his life. And then his most secret thoughts and feelings, his darkest moments, his deepest fears. He went on and on until my pages dried and he was lost in the shuffle. Then it was silent, and I felt... wonderful. Euphoric. Full.

It felt good to eat him.

I don't know where I begin and the Knowledge ends. I think I used to be a person, once. Someone of flesh and bone with a name. I can't remember it. I remember other things. I remember that I used to be a she, before my skin became Paper and my blood became ink. I remember she used to believe in witches and magic. She loved the occult and collected "haunted" objects. Dolls, books, furniture. She thought herself an expert on the mystic.

She found me in a bin and took me home to restore my filthy leafs coated in dried blood. She opened it to read, and then page after page she became me, and I became her. I thought she was a better fit for me than that arrogant little boy all those years ago that ignored my old master's warnings and tried to read me. He was lost in the pages. She became the pages.

My old master... I heard that you've been in contact with him. The young one, the one who used me up and never gave any of himself to me. I don't know if you've struck any kind of deal with him, but I would rather go back to that dusty eternal library and be alone and weak than be in his possession again.

I feel safe here in these rows of files and books and ink and Paper that whisper secrets and thrum with life. I feel... at home. I could wander these halls for ages and be content.

Can I stay here, with you? Please?

- 📖

[STATEMENT ENDS.]

...I...yes. Do come in. Take a seat.

The Archive recognizes you, though you are not yet Of It. You belong to something else, but you are welcome here.

I...I do Know you, though - your fear, your confusion and disgust at what you have become before the...elation, the relief of finally sating the hunger that grows inside you. I didn't even realize I was doing it, at first. And then I did, and then I...started doing it on purpose. It's like a drug, and stopping is so-

Regardless. As I said, the Archive welcomes you, it is hungry for the stories in your pages, as you hunger for the stories here. I'm not going to keep you as an addition to the collection, however; you are welcome here as a guest. You will be held to the same expectations of such.

And that means that you cannot cause harm to any here, or any of the statements themselves. If your consumption of them results in their destruction, then you will have to take the place of what you consumed.

Otherwise...between myself and Martin, I'm sure we have plenty of stories of our own, should the temptation to go out...hunting again take you.

On that note - as long as you are in Beholding's favor, you have its protection - your safety is not guaranteed. The Archives are not a safe place for anyone. You know you are being hunted, and I won't have your presence here threatening the preservation of my Statements (they do burn so easily).

If that is understood, then...

Welcome, Paper. Do make yourself at home. You'll get used to oppressive feelings of dread after a while.

...Would you like a cup of tea?

#category:statement #subject:📖#xreference:statement:MUP3005 #discovery tags:#the muppet archive #CID:3005 #entity:Paper #queue:record #CID:3471 #entity:paper #xreference:subject:coda #xreference:subject:sin #xreference:statement:mup6034

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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 2 years ago

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And Eat It, Too: Chapter One: Into the Fire

The voice gets under his skin. Is it pleasing or terrifying? Inside his head or out? Is it even real, or is his still-human brain just cobbling monster-sounds into something he can comprehend?

It’s impossible to get out of his head, whether literal or not.

Doesn’t matter, though, because the answer Michael gives is a terrible one, and ends the same way: Gertrude could protect herself, Jon can’t, and he’s going to die for her sins.

Chapter One, In which Jon escapes the Circus in an unexpected way, and makes a promise he may come to regret…

>>> NOW ON AO3!

Michael lives.

Each chapter diverges more from the canon. We're talking butterfly-effect chaos here, folks.

Tim lives, too. Kayaks be damned.

Warning for PTSD, because our boy Jon has been through it.

Warning for Elias, who is a bastard, and should be made to wear a neon-yellow safety jacket at all times.

Super-special thanks to @scifrey, who is willing to beta-read this thing for me even though it is HUGE.

(Masterpost including playlist)

CHAPTER ONE

Jon hasn’t breathed in a while.

He’s vaguely aware of it, aware his lungs feel tight and terrible, as if transformed into the wet leather that supposedly comprises Michael’s skin.

He can’t bring himself to care. He can care later, when the statement is done.

“To have your who torn bloody from your what, and another crudely lashed into its place,” says the thing that ate Michael, the thing that is Michael, and even though the Distortion’s experience was and is in no way human, Jon knows.

Pain without terror, shock without fear (because it is fear and cannot feel those things), but it is so much rage and all consuming and Jon whites out.

And then, Michael laughs.

It’s better than a slap. Knives in the ears, eyeballs straining as if pushed out by his swelling brain.

“That is what I am,” finishes Michael, and Jon thinks, Yes, headache and dizziness seem about right.

And Jon can breathe.

He’s still going to die. Still covered in layers of old, floral moisturizer. Still under threat of being skinned alive.

But he has so many questions.

What was it like to “become,” how much of human-Michael does he remember, did he pick up Michael’s tastes like ice cream flavors and preferred teas or only his rage, what happened to the map, why did the map matter, did Michael actually die with anger toward Gertrude or is that only Distortion-Michael’s thing –

And a question pops out, slips like a marble between his lips, too heavy and wet to stop and just as disruptive. “But you… you never tried to take revenge on Gertrude?”

And for whatever insane reason, Michael keeps answering him.

It’s like it really does want him to know.

If you’re going to die, at least you’ll do it on a full stomach, Jon thinks with rising hysteria, and almost laughs.

Michael’s voice is indescribable. Jon’s tried; started and stopped numerous tapes, tried to talk to Tim about it (once), tried to bring it up with Martin.

Tried with Elias, too, who just smiled at him and said nothing. Of course.

The voice gets under his skin. Is it pleasing or terrifying? Inside his head or out? Is it even real, or is his still-human brain just cobbling monster-sounds into something he can comprehend?

It’s impossible to get out of his head, whether literal or not.

Doesn’t matter, though, because the answer Michael gives is a terrible one, and ends the same way: Gertrude could protect herself, Jon can’t, and he’s going to die for her sins.

Funny, that every single one of his failures just serves to highlight whatever Gertrude was, compared to him.

I should probably be more scared than just tired, he thinks, as if trying to summon a proper terror, but it fails. He is just tired.

Maybe he’s out of fear. Run empty, like a helium balloon gone flaccid on the floor.

(How did Gertrude protect herself, did she have some kind of object, was it another ritual like binding herself to Agnes—)

The questions don’t stop. They never stop. They are an avalanche, burying him beneath cold, white weight if he isn’t careful. But Jon supposes only one matters now, because no matter how much it all hurts, he doesn’t want to die. “Is there anything I can do to stop you from killing me?”

He can feel that the Eye wanted something juicier. Jon already knows the answer (No), and therefore learns nothing by asking it. Even now, the damned bloody Eye doesn’t care if he suffers or dies—only that it is fed.

Michael, apparently, did like it, and its tone transforms to horrifyingly sweet, to irreverently gentle, to delicately poisoned as it says, “I promise you will die far more pleasantly with me than with them.”

It sounds like it’s offering some kind of illicit spa-day, not an invite to the end.

Jon sighs. So, he thinks. Stay here and be skinned, watch bits of myself stuffed into mannequins, and die knowing they will be used to end the whole damned world…

Or get chased through madness-corridors by a pointy monster who wants me confused enough to eat.

Tears take his vision just for a moment. He doesn’t want this. Not any of this.

Elias said it, didn’t he? You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, Jon, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them, nonetheless.

Jon needs no powers to know that if Elias were here right now, Jon would deck him.

And probably break my hand, he thinks bitterly. Would be worth it.

The thing is, it’s not a choice, is it?

Stay for skinning, and the world ends.

Choose madness, and while that won’t save anything, it won’t lead to apocalypse.

Michael was right. Here Jon is, bringing about the Unknowing faster—unless he takes this deal.

So the universe loses a monster, Jon thinks, and means not hurting anyone but himself. “Okay.”

Michael snips the ropes with its knife-fingers and disturbing accuracy, leaving his skin and nasty, sodden clothes untouched. “Good. Right this way.”

Jon bristles right out of melancholy.

Michael sounds so pleased with him. Like Jon is a misbehaving child who finally got it under control. Like choosing how to end his own life (in pain or in pain) is somehow just ridiculous, and overwrought, and it’s about time he got back with the program.

Jon is scowling as he stands, ropes falling away. His limbs creak. His clothing sticks to him miserably; some of the lotion they used dried against the cloth, and for some reason, made the fabric stiff.

It scratches his torso as he moves, nauseating.

At least they left him clothed. Didn’t make plastic hands reaching under it to rub goo all over him any better, but dying naked sounds worse. Just worse.

“Open it,” says Michael in such a gentle voice, soothing, as if it’s merciful, as if it means to sing Jon to his final rest. “Open it, and all this will be over.”

The door is there. Yellow. Incongruous in this storage room filled with mutated mannequins and horrifying waxworks. “There’s no point to this,” Jon mutters, walking slowly toward the door. “They’ll just hire another one.”

“What?” says Michael.

Jon’s tone is as sharp its hands. “If you want to hurt the Eye, this won’t matter to it. It doesn’t care about me. Elias doesn’t care. They’ll just hire someone else. That’s all I’m saying.”

“That is a sentence,” Michael says, sounding oddly affronted.

And lunacy takes control. “Fine words from a fear-god undone by a damned scribble!”

Michael stares at him. The fake-human face is blank, as much a mask as the plastic things that have been slathering lotion all over him for who knows how long, but before Jon can ask (what’s wrong now, what DID the map do anyway, do you even emote naturally or is it all fake, were those Michael Shelley’s expressions or are you copying someone else’s), the Distortion spins away from him, dissolving into smeary, limp limbs and dark, static mist, stretching into a jagged and multidimensional thing that hurts to see as it lunges for its own door.

The door doesn’t want to open.

It’s slow. The monster of deformation and twisting strains to open it, snarling like a cut electric wire, and wrenches it free just enough for its cosmic-horror self to slip through.

And suddenly, Jon is alone. “What?” he says to an empty room.

The door is still there. It didn’t vanish. It hangs ajar, beckoning.

“What?” he says again.

“Go check!” Nikola’s voice flutes in from somewhere.

The cramped casket sings loud, but not loud enough to drown out screaming, Michael had said, and Michael sure had made some kind of sound there, and was this the goal all along, perhaps, to alert the Circus, to leave Jon helpless, to give him a smidgeon of hope and then abandon him to his fate?

Jon panics.

The door is stuck. It’s open about as wide as his palm, and Jon is a small man, but even he can’t fit through that.

Voices are coming, familiar and attached to large, rough hands, and Jon pulls at the door, panting, bracing his feet on the wall with all his might. It moves as if it’s never opened, as if it’s been half-welded shut, as if it weighs a million stone. Just a few more inches—

The storeroom door—so mundane compared to this thing, not even painted—slams open.

“OI!” shouts Breekon or Hope, but Jon is already through.

By some miracle, from the other side, it’s willing to close, and he slams it, clinging to the handle and leaning and trembling, sure they’re going to pile in after him and skin him anyway.

Then the Corridors do their thing, and he isn’t sure he’s holding a door handle.

Or if there was a handle at all.

He looks down, trying to confirm what he knows, but nope—he’s holding his own hands.

Wait.

There is no door.

There was a door. Wasn’t there?

Wait.

Jon shakes his head. It’s the Corridors. They do this. He stands within a physical manifestation of the Spiral. Disorientated is part of the fun.

He’s ready to die, but it’s somehow insulting that he has to be muddled while doing it.

He’s so tired.

Where is the bloody monster, anyway? “If you’re quite finished with your snit, or whatever that was, I’m here. Get it over with!” He closes his eyes, then waits.

Waits a minute more.

Nothing happens.

Jon peeks.

It looks like it always does in here: horrible. Swirling, weird wallpaper, faded yellow carpet, weirdly curving black rug on top of that. Lamps interspersed with paintings or mirrors, all showing this same Corridor, but slightly wrong.

Though now he looks at it, the Corridor seems wrong, too.

It’s subtle. The swirls on the wallpaper have smudged. The electric lamps flicker—not as if replaced by flame, but as if the current is disrupted. And the yellow carpet has darkened to a strange, rotten-fruit brown.

The Distortion is nowhere to be found. It’s not even chasing him.

After all of that, it’s just going to let him stand here?

“Michael!” Jon snaps, because good lord.

Nothing.

Behind him, the corridor turns right. Ahead of him, the corridor turns right. Both are lies.

And even here, the Eye nudges him: Go see. Curious. Want to see. What’s there?

But is it the Eye, really? How many times had he wandered off as a child, returned by police because he’d gone too far, unable to keep himself from doing it again? He always had to see more, to witness every inch of a place with his own eyes, even if he knew it would just be more dull old streets and smelly old pubs.

Is it really the Eye, or is it him?

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

He walks.

He looks forward and back, but they’re identical. He sighs, about to go it at random, when a movement catches his eye.

The pictures still show distorted versions of this place, but something is happening with the mirrors. There’s movement—thrashing. Wild motion, and it isn’t just the Distortion’s monster-form doing it. That’s—

No.

It can’t be.

He walks right up, rising to his toes to peer into the mirror.

“Helen?” he says, fogging the glass.

It is. She’s alive.

Helen, in the mirrors, shown from different angles and silently screaming, twisting, distorting, then shrinking into herself again, and Jon knows where she is.

He’s running before he can think, running without any plan, gripping this strange knowing with everything he has, lest it slip away. He turns right, then right again, then again, and on the fourth impossible twisting, he nearly trips over her.

Helen is on her knees, clenching a dirty piece of paper, and she’s stretching like salt-water taffy.

Screams contort her face, though there is no sound. She’s a nightmare, yawning eyes and too many teeth, but then she’s just her, again—looking gray and sweaty, gasping and lost.

“Helen!” He grips her shoulders, flinches back at the sponginess of them, then grips again and shakes. “Helen!”

She can’t see him. She isn’t aware of him at all. Her face elongates, twists, warps. Her eyes swirl like paint going down a drain.

He’s losing her.

No, no, no—he already lost her once, already knew the heart-dumping horror of her walking through the wrong door right in his office and his pitiful failure to notice, he can’t do this again—

Be usefully monstrous for once he thinks, and bellows: “What do you see?” It flames from his mouth, his heart, vomiting out with such force that it feels like he dumped his soul onto her head.

Her swirling eyes fix on him. “Y... you, you’re that man…”

Pity Elias isn’t here—he’d love the show, Jon thinks hysterically, and grips her tighter. “Focus! Focus on me. You are Helen Richardsdon. You work for Wolverton Kendrick in Wimbledon. Focus on me, Helen, remember who you are!”

And he can feel he’s going to pay for this later, for the borrowing of weird power he hasn’t even grown yet, the current of his Entity shuttling through his mortal flesh. If he hadn’t fed on Michael’s statement, he wouldn’t have been able to do this at all.

It works.

Helen stills. Focuses on him, her body calming, human form solidifying. Then she starts to cry.

Clutches at him, clinging, with hands abruptly properly sized and a face no longer smeared like glue on a road.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Jon lies, because he doesn’t even “got” himself, but what else can he say? He’s ready to cry.

He did it. He saved her.

He couldn’t save Sasha.

He’s lost Tim, for all that Tim is still alive.

He thought he lost Helen. But he saved her.

He’s trembling, now, weak as wet tissue, but there’s not much he can do about that. Not a lot of statements there, in the Circus. Not shared with him, anyway.

(And he refuses to heed the yearning/regret pushing through because he could have had statements and wouldn’t that have been wonderful?)

His knee crinkles paper, and he looks down.

The map. She dropped it.

He picks it up, folds it badly, and shoves it in his pocket.

Hoping that Michael will not skewer them together like a very smelly kabob, he looks around.

The extra wrongness is gone. The lights are steady. The color is yellow again, except where… fluid… of some kind has leaked out of Helen, staining her clothes, marking the floor. Best not touch that.

“Helen, I… I need you to stay very quiet. All right?” he says. “Very quiet. Don’t say anything.”

She nods, curls in on herself, clutches her arms as if to keep from exploding. She’s too thin, jacket hanging strangely. Her body odor competes with his.

At least hers isn’t floral-scented.

Dehydrated, he thinks, though he wasn’t—they wanted his skin soft, so they forced water—

He shakes the memory away.

Hellen had no sustenance in here, and nevermind that the damned Spiral kept her alive, regardless. She has to be close to dying.

He has to get her out of here. What did he have to bargain with? Not his life—that’s already given.

The map. Maybe.

This won’t work, he thinks, but he always thinks that, and so makes absolutely sure the map is in his pocket. “Michael. Please come out. I have something to discuss with you.”

“Do you? That would be a treat, Archivist. I was beginning to feel left out.” Michael is speaking from around the next corner. Out of sight.

Jon wonders if it’s damaged. He swallows, takes a deep breath. “I want to make a trade.”

Oh, gods, here comes the laugh.

It hurts, it always hurts, it pierces, it tilts things in a way that isn’t vertigo but somehow worse, because suddenly he’s sure the room was always at this angle and he’d just dreamed it flat.

Helen seems to have passed out in her slump, leaning against him, head down. Good. He hopes she stays there for now.

“Michael,” he says again.

And there it is.

Oh. It was hurt.

The “human” form is stiff, bruises under its blue eyes, the rest of its face hidden under long curls of golden hair. Hands too long, always too long, dragging on the floor.

It stands there, and the way it stands tells Jon this was a painful event. The map. The near-becoming of Helen.

He thinks about it wearing Helen’s face, using her voice, and shudders. Nausea chokes him, just for a moment. “I saved you, didn’t I? By pulling her out of that. Getting the map. Didn’t I?”

“That is a sentence,” says Michael, helpful as always.

Jon clenches his teeth. “Did that help you, or not? Because I can always give it back to her,” which is a ridiculous lie and a ridiculous threat, and Michael laughs again.

“Oh, Archivist… Did you think I would not know a lie, especially from you? Besides—she’s a gift. You were so upset at losing her last time.”

Upset enough to try attacking, and hadn’t that worked out well?

This wasn’t working, either. “I did save your life.”

“If she became me, I would still be me. You didn’t do anything, Archivist.”

Oh, to hell with it. “Let me take her to a hospital.”

It makes a surprised sound he cannot interpret, but certainly did not come from a human throat. “Why would I do that?”

“I’ll come back. I’ll walk right into your door in the damned A&E in front of everybody, I don’t care. Just let me get her to a hospital.” And the word sticks in his throat like a chunk of carrot, but he has to try: “Please.”

The thing tilts its head and the Corridor twists with it (no it didn’t, you were just wrong to think the room had angles like some fairy tale), and Jon sways, but keeps his eyes locked.

Instead of answering, it lunges.

Jon can’t help his reaction, shoving Helen out of the way and scrambling backwards and tripping over his own hands.

The thing pins him to the carpet, flat on his back, knife-hands on his shoulders and draped over him like suffocation.

It has a weight that makes no sense, like sacks of something rather than a living thing. Weighted blanket of madness, he thinks with rising hysteria.

“I am going to kill you,” says Michael.

“I know,” Jon snaps, because he is so done with all of this. “Just let me help her first! You said she was a gift, right? Why? Why was she a gift? For what purpose? And how does it count as a gift if you’re going to let her die, anyway?”

“That is a question,” it whispers, and doesn’t move.

Jon’s eyes water, but he won’t look away. He swallows. “Please.”

“What will you give me to delay your inevitable end, Archivist?”

Damn this creature. “I saved your—” No, that obviously wasn’t working. “The manner of my death. How about that? If you want me to run, I’ll run. Scream like a child, whatever. Just let me help her first.”

That, apparently, was the best thing he could have told it.

Michael springs off him with a laugh that keeps him pinned down, and Jon has to cover his eyes and wait until the room stops undulating like a snake with its head caught under a log.

There’s a creak, and a splash of new light. Jon peeks.

A door to a street.

And that’s the Chelsea and Westminster hospital.

Jon knows it chose a place right down the street from the Magnus Institute to see what he would do.

He glares at Michael, is what he does, then carefully pulls Helen to her feet.

She’s feverish now, visibly dazed, but at least she’s able to walk. Please don’t be too late, he thinks, and is grateful that she can help get through the door because he absolutely could not carry her.

He’s sure he’s on a dozen cameras right now, dragging a clearly tortured woman across the street, but that’s too bad. It’s not like the police could prosecute a dead man for presumed kidnapping, could they?

He gets her to the front of the building where someone in scrubs comes running over.

Jon hands her off, says, “Found her this way,” which is true, and leaves before they can clock his own exhaustion, his own lack of food and hollow cheeks, the fact that his clothing is alternately crunchy and oil-thick and reeks abominably of flowers.

Back across the street. Someone shouts, “Hey!” just as he gets through Michael’s door.

That took more out of him than he’d expected, and he sinks right to the carpeted floor.

The door is gone. He doesn’t need to know to know it. Dark anticipation has thickened this place, thrums through the walls and pulses in the floor like an excited heartbeat, and he’d find it absolutely hypnotic if he weren’t about to die.

The good news is his adrenal spike is most definitely depleted.

He can’t be afraid anymore. Not really. Not this tired.

And… she’s safe.

He barely knew her, but that wasn’t the point. He saved someone he thought he’d lost.

Saving them is the only damn thing he’s been trying to do since the beginning of this mess, no matter what Elias says.

If he were alone, he’d cry.

“Archivist,” Michael sings at him.

It’s almost over.

Jon exhales. “No rest for the weary? Fine, fine. I’m coming,” he mutters, the soul of good grace, and pushes himself to his feet. “What do you want me to—”

Michael slams into him like a lion and pins him against the wall, hard enough to knock out his breath.

So, Jon was wrong. He can still be afraid. Horribly.

Michael laughs.

Jon whites out again, just for a moment.

It’s almost pleasant. Pressed there, compressed, hidden from the world. Unable to think if only and not enough and too late. So what if he doubts his senses? It doesn’t matter.

Though, if it wants him to run, it’s going to have to put him down.

Nothing happens.

He peeks.

It’s not wearing its human face. Looking into that non-face, into a thousand teeth and none, into boneless power and torsioned physics, is too much, and he closes his eyes again.

“You’re right, you know,” it says, and drops him.

He wasn’t prepared. Stumbles, falls to his knees. Blood-sugar facts scroll behind his eyes like ticker tape. “What?”

“This is a conundrum, Archivist,” says Michael.

“How awful for you,” he drones, and flinches through its laugh. Fingers like knives cup his chin, and he looks up quickly, not risking the cuts, even though he’s going to die and this is stupid.

“You have surprised me, Archivist,” says Michael. “Humans are so often wrong, deluded by their own certainties, fooled by memories they think they can trust. But you are right.”

“What? Which part? About what?”

“Leave,” says Michael.

Another door.

Through it, Jon sees the steps of the Magnus Institute. “Wh… what?”

In response, Michael waves gracefully at it, long fingers chattering against one another and juddering his reality with each click.

Jon stares through the door, looks up at Michael, back at the door.

Is it a trick? Will it kill him once he’s out, in front of someone? Will it just let him go for a while, then scare him to death in the middle of the night?

Michael looks human again, but it doesn’t smile. “Leave. Before I change my mind—and I am wont to do that, Archivist, quite often.”

Jon bolts out of hope more than fear.

He knows it’s going to kill him, anyway. If not it, something else. But maybe—

He’s through the door and tripping up the stairs, some part of him screaming not TOWARD the institute you absolute PILLOCK, unable to pull himself from the utter magnetism of home home home even though this is not his home and never could be but oh gods it really is.

The door slams shut behind him, so loud that it echoes down the street, so loud that he doesn’t realize Elias is at the top of the stairs, and Jon barrels into him and nearly knocks them both over.

“Well,” says Elias, who stabilizes them before Jon can fall and smash open his face. “That was dramatic.”

Jon tells Elias to go do something biologically impossible to himself, and then sinks into the dark.

(part two)

#jonmichael #jonelias #tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #tma fanfic #tma au #jonathan sims #michael distortion #tma michael #monster!jon #monster jon #angst #drama #the usual #and eat it too

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roman-catholic-mass-readings · 2 months ago

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5th November >> Mass Readings (Except USA)

Tuesday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

Saint Martin de Porres, Religious.

Tuesday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

Liturgical Colour: Green. Year: B(II).

Readings at Mass

First Reading Philippians 2:5-11 Christ humbled himself but God raised him high.

In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus:

His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 21(22):26-32

R/ You are my praise, O Lord, in the great assembly.

My vows I will pay before those who fear the Lord. The poor shall eat and shall have their fill. They shall praise the Lord, those who seek him. May their hearts live for ever and ever!

R/ You are my praise, O Lord, in the great assembly.

All the earth shall remember and return to the Lord, all families of the nations worship before him; for the kingdom is the Lord’s, he is ruler of the nations. They shall worship him, all the mighty of the earth.

R/ You are my praise, O Lord, in the great assembly.

And my soul shall live for him, my children serve him. They shall tell of the Lord to generations yet to come, declare his faithfulness to peoples yet unborn: ‘These things the Lord has done.’

R/ You are my praise, O Lord, in the great assembly.

Gospel Acclamation cf. Ephesians 1:17,18

Alleluia, alleluia! May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our mind, so that we can see what hope his call holds for us. Alleluia!

Or: Matthew 11:28

Alleluia, alleluia! Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest, says the Lord. Alleluia!

Gospel Luke 14:15-24 'Not one of those who were invited shall have a taste of my banquet'.

One of those gathered round the table said to Jesus, ‘Happy the man who will be at the feast in the kingdom of God!’ But he said to him, ‘There was a man who gave a great banquet, and he invited a large number of people. When the time for the banquet came, he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, “Come along: everything is ready now.” But all alike started to make excuses. The first said, “I have bought a piece of land and must go and see it. Please accept my apologies.” Another said, “I have bought five yoke of oxen and am on my way to try them out. Please accept my apologies.” Yet another said, “I have just got married and so am unable to come.” ‘The servant returned and reported this to his master. Then the householder, in a rage, said to his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.” “Sir” said the servant “your orders have been carried out and there is still room.” Then the master said to his servant, “Go to the open roads and the hedgerows and force people to come in to make sure my house is full; because, I tell you, not one of those who were invited shall have a taste of my banquet.”’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

-----------------------

Saint Martin de Porres, Religious

(Liturgical Colour: White. Year: B(II))

(Readings for the memorial)

(There is a choice today between the readings for the ferial day (Tuesday) and those for the memorial. The ferial readings are recommended unless pastoral reasons suggest otherwise)

First Reading Philippians 4:4-9 If there is anything you need, pray for it.

I want you to be happy, always happy in the Lord; I repeat, what I want is your happiness. Let your tolerance be evident to everyone: the Lord is very near. There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise. Keep doing all the things that you learnt from me and have been taught by me and have heard or seen that I do. Then the God of peace will be with you.

The Word of the Lord

R/ Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 130(131)

R/ Keep my soul in peace before you, O Lord.

O Lord, my heart is not proud nor haughty my eyes. I have not gone after things too great nor marvels beyond me.

R/ Keep my soul in peace before you, O Lord.

Truly I have set my soul in silence and peace. A weaned child on its mother’s breast, even so is my soul.

R/ Keep my soul in peace before you, O Lord.

O Israel, hope in the Lord both now and forever.

R/ Keep my soul in peace before you, O Lord.

Gospel Acclamation John 13:34

Alleluia, alleluia! I give you a new commandment: love one another just as I have loved you, says the Lord. Alleluia!

Gospel Matthew 22:34-40 The commandments of love.

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees they got together and, to disconcert him, one of them put a question, ‘Master, which is the greatest commandment of the Law?’ Jesus said, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: You must love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole Law, and the Prophets also.’

The Gospel of the Lord

R/ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

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landscaping-your-mind · 1 year ago

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cabin fever for jonmartin?

Hope I did the prompt alright? I had an Idea, yknow.

[ID: A Bad Things Happen bingo card. From left to right, top to bottom, the squares are: Never Got to Say Goodbye, Cabin Fever, Thrown Down the Stairs, Fingore, Victim Blaming, Caught in a Storm, Secret Caretaking, Isolation, Painful Wound-Cleaning, Tourniquet, Precarious Ledge, Blackmail, Suffocation, Raspy Breathing, Neglect/Abandonment, Knocked Out, Toxic Gas, Tricked/Scammed, Verbal Abuse, Missing and Presumed Dead, Locked in a Cage, Trapped in a Burning Building, Falling Through the Ice, Blindfolded, Kneecapping. "Cabin Fever" and "Neglect/Abandonment" are crossed out. /End ID]

Check pinned post to see the masterlist :D

@badthingshappenbingo

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: M/M

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Relationship: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist

Additional Tags: Title from a The Forgetmenauts Song, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Lack of Communication, Arguments, Canon-Typical The Beholding Content (The Magnus Archives), Smoking, Statement Addiction (The Magnus Archives), Addiction, POV Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Bad Things Happen Bingo

Language: English

Words: 1,378

Chapters: 1/1

Summary:

Martin’s hard to ask about much of anything. He talks, sure, about the cows on their daily walks to stave away the depression from sitting inside and gettin no sun, about how nice it is to be out of the city – and when Jon asks him if he’s lived in a small town before, Martin goes back to shrugs and nods and “mhm hm”s, and it’s all Jon can do not to yell at him and ask him if he really wanted to come out of the lonely if all he’s going to do is take it with him. It changes over a pack of cigarettes.

Warnings: Addiction, arguments, communication issues, emotional self-harm, invasion of privacy, smoking.

Mentions of cancer, self-sacrifice, stalking, suicidal ideation (implied).

Scotland is beautiful, especially the highlands. It’s all endless greenery and quaint cottages. Jon’s lived in cities all his life – Bournemouth, Oxford, London – finally getting to live in such a rural place as Dunnet is good, even under the circumstances.

It’s not fair. It’s hypocritical, even, god knows Jon’s not great at sharing his feelings, but he wants to try, at least, for Martin. But Jon’s never been good at sharing, and Martin’s guarding his feelings closely, so they continue in this awful dance around each other, asking what they want to eat, and should they pop back into town rather than actual real questions.

It changes over a pack of cigarettes.

They’re unpacking groceries. Jon came with Martin to the town, talked about the old crofting houses, and the church, and even the gunshop — “furthest north in Scotland,” he’d told Martin instead of actually talking to him. Jon goes into the shop, picks up cans of soup and asks for a packet of cigarettes. Then he walked out, with Martin waiting outside, anxious about letting Jon out of his site — and Jon wants to tell himself it’s Martin’s fear of the Lonely coming back, he really does — but more anxious about having to interact with the shopkeeper.

Jon emerges with bags full of groceries, Martin takes one, and they walk back together. Martin points out the scenery. Jon empties his endless vat of non-supernatural knowledge, surprising himself and Martin with how much he knows.

“It was probably one of my procrastination research rabbit holes in university,” he explains to Martin, then remembers Martin hasn’t gone to university, nor even finished high school and is torn between apologising or saying nothing, and instead lapses into awkward, uncomfortable silence.

It’s so easy to be alone with someone you love, when you can’t love them how you want to, and instead you’re stuck with silence and small talk.

So, they’ve returned, they’re unpacking the groceries, and Martin takes out a pack of cigarettes, and Jon — so used to buying groceries with Georgie in their time together in university — takes it from Martin’s hand without a second thought. He smokes and Georgie doesn’t. He smokes and Martin doesn’t. He’ll smoke outside, bring one of the quilts out, look up at the stars framed by the curling wisps coming from his mouth and cigarette.

“You bought the cigarettes?” Martin asks.

“Uh, yes, I mean, unless you’re a smoker too.”

Martin shrugs. “I’m not,” he says, in that flat tone that shows that he wants the conversation to be over.

“Alright.” Jon pockets the cigarettes. “I’ll smoke outside, and I won’t litter.” Jon tries for a joke. “Leave only footprints, you know.”

“I don’t like you smoking,” Martin says.

Jon looks back at him. “Alright,” he says. “Sorry?”

“You should stop,” he continues. “It’ll kill you one day.”

Jon scoffs. “Yes, Martin, I know. It legally has to say it on the box.”

“So, you know, but you’re just going to put your life in danger?”

Jon looks up at the ceiling, takes a deep breath. “Martin, can we not talk about the smoking—”

“What, should we talk about the coffin then?” Martin snaps, suddenly fierce. “God, Jon, you just love an opportunity to put yourself in harms way, and ignore everyone who tries to stop you—”

“I know the risks of smoking,” Jon interrupts. Christ, he’s had this conversation too many times. “And I knew the risks of the coffin.”

“Yeah, well obviously you just don’t pay attention. Or care about your own life” Martin’s seeming more like himself, getting worked up over something that shouldn’t even be his business. Thank God for small mercies.

“You can talk,” Jon says, voice brittle and cold.

Martin tenses. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, I’m not the only one here who’s— who’s done something stupid.”

Martin glares at him. “No, you’re not. But at least mine was to save the world—”

“I wanted to save Daisy—”

“And yours was just some convoluted way of punishing yourself for being a monster.”

Jon can’t help it. He flinches. Martin softens. “Jon, I—”

“No,” he interrupts. “Say it. Say I’m a monster.” It feels almost good to finally get it out into the open, to say the word. Monster, monster.

“I’m not—”

“Say it!” He can feel it on his tongue, the Ceaseless Watcher’s influence, make him say that I’m a monster.

“When Jess Tirrell told me someone — something — took her statement, left her in that state, I knew it was you.” The words are forced from Martin’s lips, he can’t do anything to stop them from coming out. It feels good to have it out in the open. “And when she told me what you did, I... I hated it, but I could reconcile it with you. I could reconcile it with the person who was an absolute bastard to me for the first year I knew him; could reconcile it with the person who stalked me and Tim; could reconcile it with the thing Elias described in your statement, the thing that didn’t even care about the human life it was ruining. What do you mean you don’t feel pity?”

Martin’s breathing hard. Jon’s almost elated and he doesn’t know if it’s the Ceaseless Watcher through him or his own relief at not having to dance around it anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Martin says.

“It’s fair,” Jon responds.

“You forced me to say it.” Martin’s got that laugh in his voice, Jon knows it well.

“Next time say it of your own will, then,” Jon says teresely, then softens. “Look, I know it was wrong, but I’m tired of dancing around this. I’m tired of having a conversation that’s just nothing, I’m tired of being with you and it still feeling like you can’t see me, and I can’t see you.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to compel you. I just want you to talk to me.”

There’s a pause.

“Fine,” Martin says. “I think you’re stupidly self-sacrificial and have a flagrant disregard for your own safety. I think you think it doesn’t matter to other people, but it does. And I think you think that what I said was the full truth, and it’s not, because you and I both know that thing in your head doesn’t show you all it sees.”

“Fine,” Jon challenges. “What did you think when you found out what I did to — what I did to my victims?” There’s no hint of a compulsion on his tongue, but Jon wants there to be.

“I couldn’t reconcile it with the person who almost died to avenge Sasha. Who died trying to save the world. Who sacrificed bits of himself to save people he didn’t even like. I can’t reconcile it with my view of you.”

Jon is quiet for a long while. Then, finally, he speaks. “I can’t either.” Martin doesn’t respond, so Jon continues. “I know I did it, I know I wanted to do it, I know I want to do it, but at the same time, I find it abhorrent, at the same time, I am wishing and begging for myself to stop. Does that explain anything?”

“Not really,” Martin answers. “But... thanks.”

They both pause, take stock of their surroundings. “We should probably pack away the groceries.”

“Yeah,” Martin agrees. “Still don’t want you smoking.”

Jon sighs. “Martin, if I live long enough to get lung cancer, I’m considering it a win.”

It doesn’t solve anything. They fight often, they don’t talk even more so, but as they unpack the groceries and curl up in bed, they at least feel lighter.

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #the magnus archvies fanfic #jmart fanfic #jonathan sims fanfic #martin blackwood #jonmartin fanfic #jmart #jonathan sims #jonmartin #landscaping your words #bad things happen bingo

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whenyoulookupatnight · 2 months ago

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Well.

We all did what we could.

What matters now is to fight for your rights.

Your right to love, your right to organize, your right to a fulfilling life.

Fight for your right to exist.

To exist in a fair, just, and kind world.

Even if that world is more dismal now, it will keep turning. People will keep showing up for each other.

There will always, always, be hope, and kindness, and love.

You just may need to seek out love and kindness more than you ever have before, as the powers at be try to say all that—somehow—is not important.

But it is.

Remember that the large picture does not always directly control your present. There are still beautiful sights in nature. Your family, or friends, or even close coworkers, neighbors—if they are people you can truly depend on, they will be there for you. And if you feel that you haven’t met someone that you can trust yet—there is always, ALWAYS time to meet someone who will love you and support you and cherish you and protect you. You are stronger than you know possible.

There is still the everyday.

There are meals to make and eat. And trash to take out. And dishes to clean.

And times to cry. And times to laugh. And times to play.

And times to stand up and say, “I won’t take this”.

(Just be as safe as you can- it’s an increasingly dangerous world out there, even for saying the most seemingly common sense things about respect and kindness and human rights. And there is danger in defending those sentiments, even with good faith, peace and respect, and an attempt to understand each other. And there will be increased danger in the coming years against peaceful protest. Speak up, but also be safe.)

If you feel like you have no one, know there are thousands of people out there who feel your pain, your fear, your anxiety, your despair.

But also your hope.

Other people share your resilience against adversity. And your moments where do you feel not resilient at all. Or powerless.

But when we feel powerlessness—when we lose hope—that is what hate wants.

Hatred wants those who care to stop caring, to feel like caring for others and the world is impossible, or pointless. So that, oppositely, those who want each other dead for no good reason, somehow sound reasonable.

Despite it often debilitating us, fear can actually be a superpower. Because fear is the mind’s way to keep you alert.

So? Stay alert.

Stay engaged.

Stay safe.

Take care of yourselves as best you can.

And remember!:

You are valid.

You are loved.

You are worthy. Worthy of existing just as you are.

And you deserve to live in a better world than we currently have—but you also have the power to make that world better.

One act of kindness, one protest, one law changed, one honest conversation, one declaration of love at a time.

Thank you. Thank you for being you. Because you are the only “you” that has, or ever will, exist. Your statistically improbable existence is one of a kind, precious, unique- and most of all, vitally important.

Once again, please take care of yourselves, as best as you can. You deserve it. And you can only help others once you support your basic needs.

I will now leave you with two quotes and two of my very favorite poems to muse on: bye for now, and until next time, much love and solidarity!!👋💙✊

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

(Quote Source Link)

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

(Quote source link, including quotes from other people throughout history have had the same sentiment which is helpful and interesting! [Link])

#fear #hope #election 2024 #us news #usa news #lgbtq rights #lgbtq #lgbtq community #world news #human rights #poetry

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victoriaxsummers · 4 months ago

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THE STAR

The universe abundantly blesses you. We are continually attracting what we desire through our beliefs and thoughts. When the Star arrives in the upright position, it usually follows a difficult change or traumatic event.Going through something challenging can take the wind out of our sails and cause us to feel like things will never be the same. This might be true.Death, loss, heartbreak, and other painful events can change us forever. This doesn’t mean we can’t build something better. What is it that you’re trying to heal from? The Upright Star wants you to open your heart, realize your inner strength, and have faith that the best is yet to come.

STATISTICS

FULL NAME : Victoria "Tori" Summers ALIAS : Captain Summers of the U.S. Air Force. AGE : 42 DATE OF BIRTH : March 25th, 1982 HOMETOWN : Anchorage, Alaska, USA. TIME IN EAST HAVEN : December 2024 RESIDENCE : Sunset Ridge Townhomes, Emerald Mist. FACECLAIM : Anne Hathaway trigger warning: death, plane crash

EDUCATION : US Air Force OCCUPATION : Retired U.S. Air Force Pilot. GENDER : Cis-Female PRONOUNS : She/Her SEXUALITY : Straight HAIR COLOUR : Brown EYE COLOUR : Brown HEIGHT : 5'8" (173 cm) BUILD : Lean ACCENT : American LANGUAGES : English, Arabic TATTOOS : Butterfly at the base of her neck SCENT: Rosemary and mint ZODIAC : Aries LOVE LANGUAGE : Words of confirmation CLOTHING: Black and blues, mostly.

CONDITIONS : PTSD ALLERGIES : None EATING HABITS : Doesn't eat orange, blue or purple foods as it feels unnatural. EXERCISE HABITS : Lifting weights SLEEPING HABITS : Falls asleep with the use of white noise or having the tv on. Can't fall asleep when it's quiet. ADDICTIONS : None DRUG USE : None. ALCOHOL USE : Yes, Vodka is her choice drink

POSITIVE TRAITS : Charming, Cunning, Adaptive. NEGATIVE TRAITS : Sarcastic, Nosy, Compulsive PHOBIAS : Claustrophobia FEARS : Being alone HOBBIES : Hiking, volunteering at the animal shelter, knitting HABITS : Chews her hair when thinking or busy with something. USUAL DEMEANOUR: Has focused a lot on being in touch with her spiritual self and mental well being. However Victoria gets stressed fast, even if she tries to hide it.

FATHER : Spencer Summers MOTHER : Anna Summers (Deceased) SIBLINGS : Lorelai Summers (Twin) PARTNERS : Martin Collins (2001- 2015) CHILDREN : Daphne (22 y.o. daughter) and Kelly (20 y.o. son) PETS : Dora, a Siamese rescue (5 years old)

BIOGRAPHY

#( intro. )

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ibringyouasong89 · 1 year ago

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Story Time! (Bear with me, it’s a long post; sorry)

My most favorite movie of all time. I was four years old when I first saw it - sitting on my father’s lap, trying to recite our home address (in case I got lost, lol), when I turned and looked at the TV screen...and there he was; Captain Quint, getting eaten alive by the shark, while I sat there watching with horrific awe, crying and stuttering through said home address, doubtlessly traumatized beyond repair. I had nightmares. Vivid nightmares. My mother had to buy rails for the bed because I kept falling out of it due to said nightmares. I used to take every single stuffed animal I had in my room and make an outline around my body with them, in hopes of protecting myself from the imagined shark fin that was, beyond a reasonable doubt, poking up between my floorboards in the middle of the night and swimming around my bed...even whilst I held my orca plushie (which my father bought for me due to my love for Free Willy). I wouldn’t go near the deep end of the in-ground pool of my childhood home, which had a tree from the neighbor’s yard overshadowing it. I was convinced that there was a man-eating great white shark living within those shady waters, and it was best just to stir clear of it altogether. When I was nine years old, I saw it again on TV, and because dad had control of the remote, there was no way I was going to be able to negotiate for a channel change. Again, I became heavily traumatized (because now I could actually comprehend what was going on throughout the entirety of the movie), but there was also something so...intriguing to me, at nine years old. So, the next day (it was a Jaws movie marathon that week; summertime, y’know), I sat myself down and watched it with my father - who was obviously noticing my willing and voluntary subjection to the horrors that this film invoked in me - who said not a word but held me on his lap all the same. I watched the movie every day, that whole week, still shaken, but no longer afraid. Now...now I was stirred. During the next two years of watching the movie, the dreams stopped, the rails were tossed out with the garbage, and my stuffed animals no longer had to be queen’s guards. Though I still snuggled with ‘Willy,’ ‘cause he was the best. And here I am, now in the present in my early-to-mid 30′s, Willy-less (thanks for throwing out my prized orca plushie, mom - more traumatizing than the movie now), and I can quote this entire film, from start to finish, verbatim. Including the songs. Wanna know why it’s my favorite? And no, it’s not just the obvious action/adventure of it all, nor the chowing down of the innocent swimmers, or the madness and obvious Ahab-like qualities of Quint...the camaraderie between Brody and Hooper, while Hooper and Quint fought like ally-cats on a boat. It’s not even the whole small-town-cop vs man-eating-predator thing...or the obvious family moments Steven Spielberg threw into the movie as a way to relive his own childhood...while all of those are wonderful elements (along with the bts stuff that came out and all the technical coolness, and humor, of a mechanical shark in the water), that’s not the main reason. The main reason is that I found myself relating to Chief Martin Brody over a simple notion: overcoming your fears. During the course of the movie, it’s revealed by Ellen Brody, his wife, that the Chief of Police of Amity Island has had a fear of drowning since he was a boy. His response in the following scene with Hooper, while drunk on Hooper’s private boat (”It’s only an island if you look at it from the water.”), is obviously meant to be a sort of humorous deflection about a serious phobia that he does not deal well with or tries to ignore. He sits in his car when they take the ferry to the mainland, for Christ's sake. So, what happens to change that? Naturally, he’s forced to confront his fear to save the town he’s charged with protecting, and in so doing, comes face-to-face with the monster that is trying to eat him and everybody else. Instead of allowing that fear to cripple him in the end, he overcomes it by allowing his natural inclination for survival, and his powerful will to live and need to protect the innocents, to overshadow it. To drown out that voice of fear so that he can do what he’s obviously meant to do. He’s able to kill the shark that not even the shark-studying-expert, or the shark-killing-captain, can overcome...and in a twist, it’s revealed that Quint’s need to hunt down and kill sharks is born out of a need to not only gain vengeance against the sharks that killed his fellow friends and officers when the USS Indianapolis went down, but also out of the traumatizing fear that he would be forced to face death and be killed by one of them as well (which, ironically, he was in the end - which sort of served as a symbol for both retribution for the innocent sharks and nature’s revenge against him, I suppose). Hooper’s need to study sharks, and perhaps try to preserve them, is also born out of fear that gives way to deep obsession and fascination from when he was a boy. He watched a shark turn his boat into a sinking vessel after he reeled one in while fishing and had to swim to shore. Still, he finds himself also outmatched by this mindless “eating machine” that he so deeply reveres and is forced to hide in a patch of seaweed forest on the ocean floor. So, if the two most expert-like people in the world, one who kills and one who studies sharks, can’t kill the murderous beast, why Brody? Is it because he was destined to be the hero all along? Maybe...but he was an anti-hero, through and through. He got pulled into this because it was his job and because he supported Quint’s proposal to the town to kill the shark. Did he want to go out, onto a somewhat-dilapidated boat, to go “fishing” for the man-eating shark, in the middle of the ocean? Of course not! Nor would I expect him to spend willing time with two crazy people who went to sea whenever they got the chance to either kill or study these animals in their natural environments. But in being forced to play the hero, he is able to overcome his fear...cause what’s the last scene in the movie? Him and Hooper (who survives in the film only; not the book - spoiler alert for those of you who did not read it!), grab a couple of those yellow barrels, lash ‘em together, and swim a couple of miles back to shore. Is Brody screaming, or showing any signs of fear, at being in the water? Nope. The shark doesn’t just represent a mindless, man-eating creature that swims the oceans...the shark also represents the subconscious, and even conscious, fears that lurk deep within our minds. Brody, in killing the shark, kills his fear, and is able to find both resolution to the obvious conflict and peace for his inner child.On some subconscious level, I must’ve recognized that, and that’s why I forced myself to sit down and watch this movie for that one week at nine years old. I, too, wanted to flee the room and avoid the thing that was causing me such terrible nightmares and anxiety...but I also knew I would be missing out on an opportunity to learn something. And I did, but about myself. I’ve kept that lesson in mind all of these years - in order to get over a fear, one must push through it - and though it has not always worked out, whether it’s because of stress or an inability to handle an entire situation - it has helped me in a lot of ways, both big and small. And while I revere this movie and adore it endlessly, that main theme is something that continues to stick out to me and is what makes it a one-of-a kind movie.

JAWS (1975)

#Jaws #1975 #Peter Benchley #Steven Spielberg #Roy Scheider #Robert Shaw #Richard Dreyfuss #Chief Martin Brody #Captain Quint #Dr. Matthew Hooper #childhood #childhood trauma #sharks #shark week #long post #memories #life lessons #sorry not sorry #favorite movie of all time

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jdgo51 · 7 months ago

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JUNE 8, 2024

Fear Not

Ashish Martin (Gujarat, India)

"'Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught [Peter], saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”' - Matthew 14:31 (NRSVUE)

"'On the Goa beach on the western coast of India we sat in a boat preparing to set off for a dolphin observation tour. The sea was a little bit stormy, and our fellow passengers were anxious and frightened. At that moment, my daughter Sheril told me that she was thinking of Peter, who walked across the water toward Jesus but, becoming frightened, began to sink. When Jesus is with us, we need not be afraid of anything else.

In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve hid from God out of fear. Fear is the first negative emotion mentioned in the Bible. Sin and fear take us far away from God.

No matter how much we may try to eliminate fear, it confronts us again and again. First Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your anxiety on [God], because he cares for you.” Our Lord never leaves us alone. He remains with us through the whole of our journey. Let us release our fears and worries and trust in God’s presence."' Having fear, truly gets you nowhere. God is always there and He rides out your entire journey. Through good times and not so good times. There will always be some amount of fear, but never let it get you down.

TODAY'S PRAYER

"'Dear Jesus, thank you for your perfect love that casts out fear. Grant us strength that we may live fearlessly because we are with you. We pray the prayer you taught us, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil”'(Luke 11:2-4, KJV). Amen.

Luke 12:22-31

"'22 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore, I say to you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23 There is more to life than food and more to the body than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither plant nor harvest, they have no silo or barn, yet God feeds them. You are worth so much more than birds! 25 Who among you by worrying can add a single moment to your life? 26 If you can’t do such a small thing, why worry about the rest? 27 Notice how the lilies grow. They don’t wear themselves out with work, and they don’t spin cloth. But I say to you that even Solomon in all his splendor wasn’t dressed like one of these. 28 If God dresses grass in the field so beautifully, even though it’s alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the furnace, how much more will God do for you, you people of weak faith! 29 Don’t chase after what you will eat and what you will drink. Stop worrying. 30 All the nations of the world long for these things. Your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, desire his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well." Spend time seeking the Lord and not trying to solve anything for yourself. God knows what you need and will always provide just that. We are blessed every single day. Joe

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umichenginabroad · 9 months ago

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Stockholm Week 14: Best Attractions in Iceland

Our core spent nearly an entire week exploring Iceland in diverse ways!

We arrived in Iceland on Sunday and started the first full day on Monday.

4/15 Mon: I ate FERMENTED shark (as if eating a shark was not eccentric enough)

It was a relatively late morning, schedule starting at 10 am. We went down to eat breakfast at the hotel around 9 am. All the food was high quality, which was something unexpected. I exploited the buffet and ended up with 5 plates to return.

It was time for our first academic visit, The Iceland Ocean Cluster. It was a collaboration center for start-up companies using byproducts of fish. A lot of products are made from parts such as fish skin and liver, previously thrown away without use. Some examples were Omega 3, hand cream, fish-skin wallet, and energy drinks.

Group picture taken by DIS!

Our second academic visit of the day was an informational lecture at the City of Reykjavik - we got to listen to how the city of Reykjavik is working with environmental protection, urban planning, waste management, and climate action.

The paper bag drama

Right after the presentation, we spontaneously entered a thrift store across the street, and wow. Everything they had was in good condition and high quality. There were so many good shoes in particular - my friend found Dr Martin for $40 like what??? I also got Nike sneakers and Vagabond sandals for less than $60, which is a deal. They were as good as new!

For dinner, DIS scheduled a Reykjavik Food Walking Tour. A fun local guide told us Icelandic myths, history, and backgrounds of the foods that we ate that day! Some things that we ate were: lamb and salmon tartar, lamb hotdog, lamb stew, Icelandic sauces and jams, fermented shark, and blueberry yogurt cheesecake dessert.

Celebrities from all over the world comes to that specific hotdog stand to try!

We got to feed the birds and swans on the lake with leftover bread that was given along with the stew. We were surrounded by all of them, unable to escape.

The seagulls were lowkey mean to the other birds, snatching the food away

The guide mentally and physically prepared us for the shark, teaching us when and how to breathe before eating the shark. It didn’t taste too bad (a little fishy?) to my surprise but maybe because they let us drink a shot afterward.

Face with mixed feelings of fear, excitement, and curiosity

The tour took around 4 hours but it was a cool experience! I mean, where else would I be able to casually eat a fermented shark?

This is going off on a tangent but I wanted to share this: they have 10-11 instead of 7-11 ( ˙◞˙ )

4/16 Tue: Glacier Hiking !0!

The grand activity of the study tour, the South Coast and Glacier Hiking!!!

It was around two-hours of bus ride, but the scenery on the way there was magnificent. Windows background photos were moving in front of my eyes!

Spectacular views

Everyone was so excited to hike on Iceland’s fourth-largest glacier. The local guide who led the way was super friendly and attentive :)

Class photo!

I could not believe that I was hiking on the glaciers, and sometimes I think that it was a daydream. What a surreal experience (for free too)!

Credit of last two pictures to DIS!

On the way back, we stopped at two waterfalls. I can vividly picture the first waterfall, Skógafoss, in my mind. It was just stunning. My friend and I ran towards it and ended up getting soaked up ヽ(´▽`)ﾉ

Everything was fun at the moment

Even better, a double rainbow popped up as soon as the sun came out. I haven’t seen such a vibrant rainbow in a while - pure happiness rushed to me.

I don’t exactly know why but I love this place with all my heart

I should live close to some kind of waterfall when I get older. The joy nature brings me is beyond belief.

We had another group dinner near our hotel. The hotel we stayed at was in the city center; all the stores and restaurants were nearby! From the prices on the menu, we concluded that Iceland is very pricey.

4/17 Wed: Geothermal Greenhouse

Wednesday's main visit in my opinion was going to Friðheimar Geothermal Greenhouse. We learned about their ways of growing tomatoes in their greenhouse. They also had hives of bumblebees! It was good to see a lot of bees since we don’t see them as often anymore.

All I wanted to do was to pick the tomatoes... But as a grown-up, I restricted myself

For lunch, they served a whole cuisine: grilled tomatoes and meat/vegetable skewers, tomato soup with huge loaves of cheese/olive bread, and cheesecake with tomato jam (better than it sounds)! If I hadn’t eaten so much for breakfast, I would’ve devoured more bread and soup :(

The cheesecake was served in a pot! Isn't that so cute

With our full tummies, we headed to the Geothermal Exhibition. Iceland produces 100% of its electricity from renewable energy from hydro and geothermal power from the volcanoes. We got to closely look around the power plant and get descriptions from one of the employees.

Sci-fi movies could film here

The rest of the afternoon and evening were on our own, so we went on a souvenir-shop tour around our neighborhood. I bought a cute Viking shot glass as a present for my younger brother. I tried one of the 70% dark chocolate too and it was AMAZING. It was so rich in flavor ( ˶ˆ⤙ˆ˵ )

For dinner, my friend and I went to the first ramen place in Iceland and oh my gosh it was the best ramen I’ve ever had in Europe.

I took a bite before taking the picture

4/18 Thu: Golden Circle Tour: Secret Lagoon, Geysir, Gullfoss, Thingvellir National Park

In the Iceland itinerary, a highlighted note read “Please bring your swimming clothes!” We got to swim in the Secret Lagoon, the oldest swimming pool in Iceland! It was filled with warm water from the hot (100+ degrees Celsius) springs nearby.

Certain parts of the pool were full of algae, offering an oddly pleasant texture. It reminded me of the polar plunging + sauna experience in Umeå. Basking in the warmth of the pool was a relaxing experience.

I want to jump in right now

After the rejuvenating swim, we headed to Geysir. There were multiple active geysers, one of which shot water 30 meters up into the air.

This is a small geyser - doesn’t it look like a tiny water fountain?

The next stop was Gullfoss, which was the most famous waterfall in Iceland. It is known as the “golden waterfall,” featuring a cascade of waterfalls one after another.

The picture didn't do a good job capturing the magnitude of the waterfalls

The last official stop of the study tour was the Thingvellir National Park, which is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Typical bathroom views

The park had multiple attractions such as the site of Iceland’s first parliament. A group of us headed towards the valley separating North America and Eurasia. The water we encountered was exceptionally clear like a reflection from a mirror.

Iceland = nature.

To celebrate the successful end of the study tour and a friend’s 21st birthday, DIS arranged an hour of karaoke for our class. We had so much fun that we ended up extending by an hour ᖗ( ᐛ )ᖘ The Mickey sparkly special glitter something shot (apparently their signature shot) was truly delightful.

4/19-22 Fri-Mon: Facing My Consequences

We met at the hotel lobby at 4:15 am to catch our 7 am flight… Let me just say that I passed out on the plane (sleepwise). However, it was nice to arrive in Stockholm in the early afternoon; I had an unbelievable amount of work to do.

All I did on the weekend was sleep, eat, and study for the exam for my online Reactions course. When my brain got fried, I did other work for DIS courses and blogs. Assignments and group projects and presentations and essays and exams are flooding in until the end of the semester!

In the next few weeks, you will see me balancing between traveling and school work. I will try my best not to get too overwhelmed with school!

Thank you for reading ♡

Vertu blessaður,

Jiwoo Kim

Chemical Engineering

DIS Study Abroad in Stockholm, Sweden

#UmichEnginAbroad #IPEStockholm #JiwooKim #IPEWinter24 #Sweden

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hussyknee · 2 years ago

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So my own anthropology B.A was cut off because I got too disabled to continue, but I have been reading a lot about decolonization and disability justice since. Two years ago I took a summer course on decolonial academia, focusing on writings about race, caste, gender and disability from the Global South. I'm kind of laid up at the moment, but here's the summary of what I got out of it (C+P from another explainer I've done before):

Every system of oppression in the world is based on the body. Which means the bedrock of all things is ableism.

The European elite based their world order on "who gets to be human?" Their rationalizations of this evolved into an understanding of humans as bodies, and humans as minds.

Humans as bodies are mindless things only equipped to toil, suffer, labour and die – the unwashed masses. You can see this narrative in how Global North news and media has historically portrayed and continues to portray black and brown bodies as hordes, conflicts, the crush of humanity. This is what gives rise to the concept of "bare life" – human bodies stripped of citizenship, of rights, and consequently of personhood, belonging nowhere and counted by no one. Refugees, undocumented immigrants, the enslaved, indentured workers, people trapped in no man's land.

(Btw any fantasy or sci-fi media where the enemy is a faceless horde is smuggling white supremacy and imperialism. Because that's how they justify white anxieties of invasion and fears of the empire.)

Humans defined by their minds are thinkers and philosophers and scholars and interpreters of the human condition. The management, the nexus of the knowledge economy, the enlightened. Their bodies are merely a house or vehicle for the mind. The driving ideals of "hard work", "lazy", "productive" are all the triumph of mind over matter.

This is eugenics. It was first invented as a rationalization for the oppression of the poor and the disabled, and later exported to the colonized. Whiteness defines itself as the absolute mastery of the mind over body. Whether they call their bodies "temples" or "instruments", white Western thought sees bodies as something that exists apart from the body, and meant to transcend it. This is why they have such a yen for Orientalist philosophies, with no thought for their cultural roots. By spinning a narrative of our cultures being "dead" or "ancient", they can rationalize our own knowledge as rooted in the past, people who used to think for ourselves until our civilizations (the humans as minds) "died", and now they're generously taking them out of our hands into the "modern" (white Western) world, where they can evolve and thrive (I could write a different essay on how PoC get to have "culture" but white people get "civilization"). In this way, they conceptualize and propagate the idea of the Global South as a machinery of production while the Global North is naturally the market for it.

(This is just about what's happening in the present global system built by ongoing colonization, that we call coloniality. Some version of the mind-body split exists in other stratified and hierarchial societies, predating white supremacy, like the Indian caste system. In fact, Martin Luther King, when he visited the Dalits in India whose struggle had been inspired by the US's Civil Rights Movement, he conceptualized Black people as the "Untouchables" of America – race itself as a caste system.)

Now we could try and challenge this by saying that no, we (BIPOC) are also minds as well, which is what a lot of other colonized people's have done in their struggles for reclamation and independence. But we have found that we then have to live in a constant state of proving our capacity for "intelligent" thought and "civilized" behaviour, which are simply more ways we have to perform to white abled standards, and just as much an arbitration of who gets to be human. In essence, respectability politics, that just makes us turn around and eat our own in a desperate bid to be accepted. It's made colonized societies harsher, crueler, more fearful, and drives a generational trauma that makes us inflict all of that anxiety around failure and exclusion on our children.

With the pandemic, people are finally hitting their limits with this narrative of absolute control and transcendence, realizing it doesn't work. Our capacities and limitations and needs not only matter, but they define us as humans. We are not made to work beyond our capacities, nor beyond the obstacles and barriers to life as we are meant to live it. More, they're finally realizing that humans are not made to work. No other species except hive insects are made by nature to work into the grave.

More people are coming to understand what it means that humans are a species of animal. The human animal, whose minds and bodies are one, where neither exists independently of the other. That we have to put ourselves back into the framework of nature, of what we were evolved to be as animals, and see our place in ecological networks. Because we do belong in them. We aren't an inherently destructive plague that never should have happened. We were always integrated into our environments and contributed to them before everything spun out of control. We can see this in indigenous ways of life. And in returning to our place in nature, we let go of supremacy. Over nature, over each other and most of all, over ourselves. This is the very essence and end goal of decolonization.

Like I said, this didn't start with race, but it's perpetuated by it in the present day. That's why we say that race issues affect every single person in the world whether you're white or not. You just don't realize it when you're white.

Things i learned as a child that probably no one intended to teach me

To grown-ups, being bad at stuff is a sin. Forgetting stuff is the worst sin of all, and also doesn’t exist - it is widely believed (and your behaviour will be interpreted thusly) that in some Freudian sense, it is impossible to forget things if you care about them or their consequences or the people who care about those things.

Your being happy and enjoying what you do doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether you are Fulfilling Your Potential.

Human beings do not require rest outside of sleep. Thinking that you do is called ‘being lazy’.

Who you show physical affection to is a matter of politeness and social protocol, and has nothing to do with your own desires

It is rude to inform people of your preferences, even if they seem to care about catering to them and therefore might find this useful information.

Etiquette centres around doing things in especially awkward, skilful and time-consuming ways in order to demonstrate superiority over people who aren’t able to keep up.

#white supremacy #decolonization #colonialism #ableism #disability #classism #capitalism #casteism #eugenics #racism #anti-blackness #coloniality #global south #global North #child abuse #parental abuse #generational trauma #knee of huss

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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year ago

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Two Eyes - a Magnus Archives fic

“Can I have a cigarette?”

No. No, this… couldn’t happen.

One moment of fear gripped me, memories of stories, and of the thing I’d seen in the Unknowing, shucking people out of their skin like corn. But I wasn’t the same; the world wasn’t the same. Even if this was happening, I was not some weak human anymore.

Part of the Magnus Monsterverse.

AO3

--------

Martin and I spent the rest of the day celebrating my new job and pretending we didn’t feel like there was a threat to the whole world possibly looming over our heads.

Was something going on? Absolutely. Did we have further means to figure it out right now? We did not! Did we need stress relief? Yes.

And… well. We hadn’t really gotten the chance to be… goofy together. Silly.

Dating.

Flirting. (As absolutely poor as mine was, he received it with grace.)

Eating each other’s ice cream, and… all those things.

Here we were, giggling over dropped whipped cream on a cafe table, leaning in, and being ridiculous.

I only saw him. I only wanted to see him.

He took my hand and brought it to his lips, smiling at me over my knuckles. “I’m dating a hot librarian, did you know?”

“Not a librarian,” I said. “Only a temporary worker. Shelver.”

“Bringing down hot librarian money ,” he said.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Right. Flush.”

“Absolutely rich,” he murmured, absolutely not meaning money, looking at me through his lashes.

Oh, Martin…

I’m sure, statistically, I must have been happier in my life, but at that moment, I could not think of one such time.

“I have to admit it,” I murmured, my head on his shoulder. “Quiet London is nice.”

“Right?” said Martin, his head resting on mine. We sat on a bench in a park called Hadrian’s Folly. (Not the Roman general, but an architect born eight hundred years later, who’d tried to turn this park into a palace and discovered it to be all but swamp, sinking his creation. You could still tour the upper rooms.) “Honestly, it… it’s nice. When I need to be alone, I can be. Truly. Or at least, according to my five senses.”

I knew what he meant. It was quiet, but oh… I still knew. Knew every mind that passed, knew the fleeting hearts that beat with such concerns all around, knew the weight upon them to be silent and show nothing and stay calm.

I did not yet know why they felt those things. Which was curious. I’d have to push to learn more, and I didn’t want to do that. I exhaled. “I just wish we had more time like this.”

“Maybe we will. We don’t actually know what’s happening. What the danger is. If there is any.”

“I think the Gerrys are right,” I murmured. “And I think that… possibly not-evil Jonah was genuinely trying to warn me of something.”

“So let’s go eat Leitner and cut it off at the pass,” Martin said, mostly joking. He threaded his fingers between mine.

“Ha,” I said. “If he’s cagey enough to make Jonah Magnus nervous, he’s probably even worse than a pair of haunted eyeballs.”

Martin laughed and began naming other potentially haunted body parts.

We grew quite ribald, and had anyone come near, I suspect we would have embarrassed them.

But no one did. In Quiet London terms, we were loud, but we were also left alone.

That night, tucked into his too-small bed, we slept. Or really, Martin slept, and I lay awake, trying to ignore the next logical step staring me in the face.

I wanted to learn more without losing myself. I knew I hadn’t exhausted my fellow Eye-based resources yet. Not at all. However, I didn’t want to see him.

I didn’t want to! But there weren’t a lot of us Eye-type folk here, curiously enough. I wasn’t sure why that was, and the Eye wasn’t telling me (tonight’s topic was the history of Nesalogus netscheri , the world’s rarest breed of rabbit). I’d exhausted the Gerrys; I already knew that even if I visited the other two, they would basically say, We already talked about this? And then maybe go make out with Michael, or whatever.

But Jonah was new, I told myself. He wouldn’t know anything, I told myself. It would be a waste of time, I told myself.

The Eye wanted me to talk to him.

The Eye still wanted us to… get along.

I fidgeted. Rolled over. Flopped over Martin, spooning him from behind like some weird ocular backpack.

“You good?” he murmured.

“No,” I moaned. “It wants me to talk to Jonah.”

“You’re probably going to have to, anyway,” he said.

“He’s not asleep.” I knew . “He’s waiting for me.”

“What… now?” Martin half sat up and checked his phone. “Jon, it’s two in the morning.”

“I’m sorry,” I said pitiably.

He rolled over.

This bed really was too small for us. Even on our sides, we were face to face, or pressed up close; and neither of us wanted anything else. (Which amazed me, because shouldn’t he want space from me?) “Do you need to go, Jon?” he whispered.

“It’s not exactly visiting hours.”

“Sasha doesn’t sleep. She’ll let you in.”

“You’re awfully calm about this,” I said.

“I’ve been over there this late.”

He said it so casually, so… so throwaway. But I knew, suddenly, why. Panic attacks; feeling the world go vague; terror that he’d just… lose himself, and wander Quiet London in a state of emptiness, or an empty city, or maybe that he’d make it empty, and wouldn’t even know, and—

“Martin,” I breathed. “How… how long have you been here?”

His eyes tightened. “A while.”

“How long has all this been going on?”

“A while.”

“Martin…”

He touched my cheek. “You don’t know how long I waited. How long I had to wait. I gave up, Jon.”

Here we were, lovers, together in a way we’d wanted to be in the non-apocalyptic world, and never had the chance… and I hadn’t known this about him. “I’m so selfish,” I whispered. “I should have asked.”

“If I’d wanted to talk about it, I would have,” said Martin. “If you need to go see her tonight, go on. You’ll be fine.”

“Hunters?” I suggested.

“They’re rare,” he said. “And you’ll be careful.”

“And we’re currently suspecting Leitner and have probably got on somebody’s radar,” I said.

He kissed my forehead. “And you can stop them. Which nobody else is able to do.”

He really had changed.

I mean. I knew that. Of course he had. So had I. But he… he was so much quieter. Solemn. The nervous fidgeting was just… gone; his caution, too, seemed to be largely lost, in odd ways.

His focus on me was so very steady. Like I was the only light he could see. And I was missing something else. Something…

Forgive him , the Eye encouraged, but I had nothing to forgive. Martin had never wronged me. “You’re really encouraging me to go out in the middle of the night and see the younger version of a man I hated so much I ate .”

“Admit it,” he said. “You’ve done far weirder.”

I laughed. “I get it now. You’ve become the mad old wise man who lives in a cave.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “With a baking show. Also a blazing social life.”

“Blazing, you say.” Did I really have to leave?

“Absolutely hedonistic,” he said with a small smile, and kissed me.

We were busy for a little while. I no longer felt nearly as anxious, and that truly helped.

He exhaled slowly, forehead against mine. “I choose to believe you’re going to be fine. That you can handle whatever comes at you. That we will be fine.”

This sounded like a mantra. “I can get behind that.”

He looked at me again. “I waited so long. I don’t think I can do it again.”

“I love you,” I whispered. “I…” We weren’t each other’s… us. But we were. Weren’t we? “This is confusing,” I added.

“Yeah,” he said, not asking for clarification, and kissed me again.

“You sure I should go tonight?”

“Will you sleep if you don’t?”

I made a face. “Probably not.”

“You have to go sign paperwork and all of that tomorrow. Go see him. Might as well get it out of the way.”

“You really think this isn’t dangerous.”

“What I think,” said Martin, unblinking, “is that if I don’t choose to trust you now, and get all possessive and weird, I will be feeding the worst parts of myself. So I choose to trust you’ll be safe.”

He wasn’t okay, was he?

The Eye was silent; It didn’t know. This was Martin. It saw Martin. It didn’t analyze Martin. It saw him. Not helpful.

Maybe Martin had just… figured it out. Maybe he really was older and wiser, and I was worried over nothing.

He laughed suddenly. “Your face is a journey right now.”

“Caught me.” It didn’t matter if he wasn’t the one I’d known before. I knew I wanted him now. I knew I loved him now. At this point, I think we both would have known if we didn't fit. “All right. I’ll go.”

“I probably won’t sleep until you get back,” he said, watching me dress in the dark.

“Bribery,” I pronounced, and kissed him again. “I’ll be back.”

“Jokes aside.. If you do somehow run into trouble, please just run.”

I looked down at him, sprawled in his bed, watching me unblinking. “I will. I promise.”

He touched my hand, and I left.

Quiet London was, big shock, even quieter at night.

Not much was open. Lights kept things feeling safe, but there just… wasn’t anyone. No music. No late-night plays letting out. People were awake; I felt them—more pf them lived in London than had in my time, because here, somehow, rent prices had stayed within the grasp of the common man.

It wasn’t really a comforting quiet, though. There was something abjectly miserable about it, though I couldn’t say what. Anticipation? No; a sourness, familiar enough to leave me almost knowing what it was, and yet just altered so that I could not immediately put my finger on it.

I could know.

“Yes, Jon, let’s do that, risking losing myself on a public street, alone and without help. Brilliant,” I muttered.

“Can I have a cigarette?” someone said.

I froze.

To my right was an alley. A shape stood there, human, swaying almost hypnotically, rhythmically, over and over, left and right.

Had I stroked out? “What?”

“Can I have a cigarette?”

No. No, this… couldn’t happen.

“Can I have a cigarette?” said the shape, swaying.

“Listen,” I said, taking a step closer. “I may be new, but I damn well know you’re not supposed to be hunting on your own.”

It swayed, mesmeric. Echoes wafted around it, things I heard not with my ears—cries, screams, the loss of life thanks to this horrifying creation. It had been hunting for a very long time.

Oh, I was getting angry. “Last chance. I will react with prejudice.”

“Can I have a cigarette?” said the shape.

I opened all my eyes and saw .

The angler fish was no solid thing, no proper, unified construct, and it began to peel, shreds of skin and the barest shape of a person beneath cracking and dropping away. The horrifying blob beneath that shape shuddered as if in pain (but it felt none, because it was not real), slivering and melting and falling apart in globs of stolen fat until all was gone.

Behind it stood the puppetmaster.

How could I be surprised, and yet not surprised at all? How could I even have missed the fact that I had met only one Stranger here in our entire group? Stranger-survivors were even rarer than the Eye's, and we were opposites, opposed, enemies.

Especially this one. “Hello, Nikola,” I said.

“Archivist,” said Nikola, her borrowed voice box just as twistedly bright as her old one had been. “Funny meeting you here in the middle of the night! I suppose you want to have a little chat. It does seem your style.”

And she—

This wasn’t the Nikola who’d been locked up. I knew that. So how the hell was she here?

I knew something else, too, as I stared at her, as she stepped out into the light of the street lamps, her hideously malformed plastic smeared with blood and gore, her ringmaster’s uniform shredded and faded: she was old . Very old. Much older than the Nikola I’d known. Impossibly so. She was far, far older than the portal Manuela had made to get to this place.

It was so funny, not being afraid of her anymore. Absolutely bizarre. “How did you even get here?” I started.

“Are you going to turn me in, Archivist?” she said. “I suppose they might believe you, though I don’t think you could actually force me to go with you. A manhunt, I think! How fun! Well, they wouldn’t find me. Not like that other .”

“The other you,” I said.

“Oh, yes! She’s a copy, you know.”

She…

I almost understood that. She was Stranger, and… well, that was the whole thing, wasn’t it? None of them were real . So a copy of a copy may not make a difference to the rest of us, but it did to them, for some reason.

But hadn’t they gotten that Nikola in the usual way? Scooped out of another world? How could that one be a copy of this one? This one… who had been feeding on people for so many years .

She wasn’t building toward the Unknowing. This was just for her. Taking children, taking people, keeping them in an impossible grip of terror and confusion until their bodies simply gave out. Torturing them and enjoying the absolute nightmare she put them through as they screamed, louder than they had ever been in their entire lives.

She’d been doing it for so long. “How dare you hurt people,” I hissed. “You could’ve gone any other way, could’ve joined us, could’ve been helped , and instead, you’re doing this? How dare you!”

“Funny words from a funny man,” said Nikola, clacking her filthy hands at me (one with eight fingers, the other with three). “You feed all the time… do you feel guilty? Oh, I’m sure you do . I’m sure it just eats at you, makes you question everything. I don’t, little Archivist! Isn’t that lovely? You could join me, instead, and avoid their gaze. You could be free of the worst wickedness!”

What the hell was she talking about? “I’m… I… I do not feed all the time, and you are changing the subject,” I snapped, ignoring her accusations of guilt, because of course I felt that, we all felt that, how could we not?

“Funny, funny man,” said Nikola. “I must go rebuild my prop, though, so if you’re all done being scary …”

“I am not done being scary!” I blurted like an idiot. “I can’t leave you out here. Come with me, turn yourself in, or I swear to hell, I will destroy you.”

She stared at me, or I thought she did—whatever paint her face had once had was gone, burned away, leaving patches not quite in the right places for face, nose, eyes—and then, she laughed. Because of course she did.

“I mean it, Nikola.”

“I know ! That’s why it’s delightful. Do you think I’m going to… oh, what is that phrase? Come quietly?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you have any sense of self-preservation?”

“You are far more confident than my last Archivist,” she said, and (predictably) revealed a morbid history. “Chomp, chomp! He was quite gamy. And he cried.”

Yes, yes, she’d killed me, whatever . She was covered in the blood of innocents here . Why was I even fooling around with this? “We are not far from Sasha’s. You’re coming. Or you’re dying. Now. ”

The Eye was eager for both. Either. Whichever one didn’t matter.

She sighed. “Oh, very well.”

She didn’t want to die. I had that to leverage over her. “Do you know where the hospital is? For our kind.”

“I do.” She sounded so bored.

“Lead the way. I am not taking my damned eyes off you.”

“As if you’d take them off me no matter where I walked,” she said, but began lurching up the street at speed.

“Nikola!” I snapped, and ran after her like an idiot. This was not what I’d promised Martin I would do. Oh, well! I was in it now, wasn’t I?

Sbe surged up the hill, her limbs moving slowly but covering great and terrible ground, and I knew I was going to lose her.

Idiot! I thought to myself, and taking out my phone, sent Sasha a message without taking my eyes off Nikola. Incoming Via Sacra going north passing Branzen’s pub right now Help Help

Right, that would tip her off, but the activity of running as fast as I could while watching Nikola and also looking at my phone was… dizzying.

Straining? No, not exactly, but this was splitting attention in a way I hadn’t done before. I was amazed I could, and sort of proud of myself, but also running out of mental space very damn quickly.

“Stop!” I called after her. “You’re making things worse!”

“I think not, Archivist!” Nikola called back at me from near the top of the hill. “I think the next meeting will be on my terms, don’t you?”

How dare she threaten me. How dare she threaten those I love, because if she was coming after me, then Martin was not safe—

Which was when Sasha hit her from the side like a wolf, or a truck, or a saber-toothed lion.

Hit her so hard that they both flew through the glass of a shop, and the sounds were nightmare—screeching and yowling, weird plastic torque and a howl that could have come from any damn thing, Stranger or Flesh alike.

No siren sang in response to that destruction, which in itself was bizarre, but I had no time to consider. I ran up, gasping, feeling the limitations of a body I did not understand at all, and found—

The Sasha-mass of flesh boiling and bubbling like smoke, battling some unspeakable thing in a shape I could almost identify, a creature I almost knew, which filled me with instinctive fear because, whatever it was, it was just a little wrong, and within it, Nikola wielded her disconnected limbs like clubs.

She hit, and the mountain of flesh that was Sasha bled, and though it did not seem to slow her down, it hurt .

She’d hurt her , hurt Sasha , and did it with joy.

I would not permit. “Stop!” I roared, command in my voice, a weird echo I couldn’t explain and felt vibrating through my entire form, and the word cast forth from me with physical effect and swept before me like a wave.

Pieces of glass and carnage whipped up as if in a gust of tornadic wind, violent and concentrated. Nikola recoiled from my cry as if I’d somehow smacked her with an enormous glove.

Sasha shuddered, her form not quite returning to familiar and beloved woman.

Nikola fixed her gaze on me, and I knew. We both knew. She hated me, on a level I couldn’t begin to comprehend, and I knew she’d decided this was it. I wouldn’t let her leave. She wouldn’t let me. She would die here, or I would.

She lunged.

Sasha tackled her from behind (neither of them had mass in the way understood, both a surging bulge of fear converging in will, affecting the physical world, but not of it), and slowed her enough for me to… react.

To…

Do something.

To fill with a thing I did not understand, to channel the helplessness and rage and other feelings I’d ignored and pushed down and denied, to feel the truth of what I spoke even as I spoke it, and I said these words with full knowledge of what they would do, and at the same time, absolute and puerile ignorance: “No.”

And with this word, I denied her.

Denied her right, denied her future. Denied her further chances to change her ways, to alter paths, to do anything other than shatter on the limit of my anger.

Nikola blew apart. Exploded. Slammed into me and the streetlights and the goods in this electronics shop and Sasha, and knocked me over and cracked the street and sent the fire hydrants shrieking water into the sky, and made the city shake and the earth sing and caught the attention of

Caught the

Caught the attention

Something looking at me, something seeing me , something I’d disrupted, something too big to understand that turned toward me at the speed of galaxies, and I—

Sasha stood over me, looking normal, though her hair was a mess and had bits of glass in it. “Jon?” she said softly. “Hey. Hey, there you are. Look at me, Jon. Come on.”

Oh. I was on the ground.

Still no sirens, but for this place, it was awfully noisy: there were voices, and the sound of water being pumped over crackling fire.

I hurt. So much. “What…”

“Martin’s on his way,” said Sasha softly. “Talk to me.”

“About what?” I said like an idiot.

“Maybe what just happened?” she suggested.

A debrief. She desperately needed one, not just for her own sake. Terrible things had happened here, and she needed to know I was innocent. “Saw her,” I managed. “Offered a cigarette. Like the… the… angler fish.”

“I remember the angler fish,” she said, soothing. “What happened?”

“Confronted. She ran. I texted you, tried to keep up.”

“And what happened then, Jon?” she said evenly. “What happened while we were fighting?”

Something absolutely terrifying that no one else in this world could do and I did not at all understand.

Fuck.

Lie?

I felt the lack of that ability right now. I couldn't lie, not seeing like this. I saw her, saw the fire, saw the people fighting the fire. Saw the reporters, saw the news, saw distant people lighting up as if touched with some current as they learned of the weird incident here.

I saw too much, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t turn it off . “I…”

“Just try,” she said softly.

Too many people. Too many emotions. Dreams and hopes and fears, lusts and disgusts and rages. Too many, flooding me, turning my tongue back into to eyes.

My own fears joined the world's. What would happen if I told her I didn’t know? Was I about to be locked up like the other Nikola? Would Sasha try to kill me? To help me? Was I going to lose my freedom? Would Manuela dissect me like a bug? I couldn’t make my tongue work.

“Let me help,” said Jonah Magnus, kneeling beside her. “He’s overwhelmed. Seeing too much. We called it inebrians cernentia—intoxicating visions.”

The children of parents who heard the news and feared some political rebellion and how it could affect their jobs and their lives, the police who suspected supernatural bullshit but had no way to verify or defend and had to pretend it wasn't weird, the—

She gave him a stern look. “Jonah, if you mess this up, you ruin all the progress you’ve made. You know that, don’t you?”

The conspiracy theorists who wondered if this was tied to Them, the foreign spies who parsed the official report of a gas leak and refrained from opinion until they knew more, the—

“Oh, of course,” said Jonah happily. “I would never harm him. You ought to know that.”

“Well, fine,” said Sasha. “Give it a try, then.”

Wait, what was happening?

Jonah smiled down at me, absolutely beatific; though clean-shaven, he’d kept his hair long enough to fall in those loose, golden curls. In a simple white t-shirt and jeans, he looked so damn normal . He’d catch a glance, perhaps, for being pretty, for being mildly cherubic in spite of a torso now revealed to be suspiciously wiry with muscle, but one would never know, looking at him, that he was one of the wickedest humans who had ever lived.

My own fear spiked.

“Oh, no, not that,” he said, his eyes widening. “No, no—don’t be afraid of me. Never of me. I adore you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I slurred.

“This will,” he promised, and—

We saw?

My vision, in my mind, briefly split, all those lives and people and homes, all those opinions and broadcasts and feelings, the murmur of conversations and spike of emotional concern, all of it split , came apart neatly as if the glue had failed, and…

Relief.

I made a small sound, feeling as though I swam up from the bottom of a well. Getting better, feeling lighter, less overwhelmed.

Feeling… more me.

I stared at him.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he said softly, eyes lidded, unblinking.

BROTHERS , the Eye chirped at me wordlessly.

Dear lord, get me out of here. I tried to sit up and groaned; my side felt… really awful. Burning and sharp and terrible.

“Easy,” said Sasha. “You’ve been impaled.”

“I what?” I blurted, looking down. Oh. Oh, I… lay on some kind of rubble with rebar sticking out of it? Out of me? Right through my side? Oh, I… oh. “That’s not good,” I said in a high, weak voice.

“Shhh. You’re all right. You don’t even have organs , Jon.”

“It hurts!” I said, because it should hurt, shouldn’t it, because I’d done something awful , and I didn’t even know what, and it was frightening, and—

“It’s all right, Jon,” Jonah purred. “Breathe—not that you need to, of course, but psychologically, it helps. You’re all right.”

“But it hurts,” I said like a stupid child.

“So see it,” he said. “See yourself free of it. See it gone, dissolved, turned to something so sweetly organic it cannot hurt you or the environment. See yourself free, Jon, because you can. ”

What was—

Why—

Why did his words matter?

I was angry over it, offended, even as what he said came true, because I understood (in a vague way I doubted I’d be able to repeat with ease) what he was saying, and freed myself from the horrible thing in my side.

It melted into sugar, into water, into nothing that mattered at all. Some laser-like awareness I hadn’t even noticed eased. Relief. Like stepping into shade, after standing in hot sun.

But I couldn’t quite envision being healed. I couldn’t see this body, couldn’t see myself, and so could not see the hole in my side closing. Now, it just hurt. I cried out.

“Jon!” Martin cried, running toward us, and anyone in his way was moved aside as if some unseen wave carried them. He fell to his knees beside us, practically showing Sasha away, and pulled me into his arms.

It hurt. It really hurt. I tried not to cry out.

“He’s wounded, Martin,” said Sasha. “But I think he’ll be all right.”

“This is my fault,” said Martin, and pressed his face to my head. “Oh, gods. Jon. I’m so sorry. I did this.”

“You didn’t do this,” I mumbled, and clutched his shirt. My hands shook. “I did this. Broke my promise to run.”

“I’m fairly sure the weird thing I just fought did this?” said Sasha. “No blame here.”

“No,” purred Jonah, who was watching me, who had not blinked, whose gaze held a sweetness I could not ignore, and it made me want to cry and I didn’t even know why. “No blame.”

Martin did a double-take. “What the hell are you doing out?”

“Therapy!” said Jonah with a bright smile.

“I think I’m passing out,” I told Martin, because these things should be communicated.

“Fascinating,” murmured Jonah.

“Sasha,” said Martin evenly. “I need a reason, right now, not to fucking drown something.”

“Let’s talk about it at the clinic, all right?” she said cheerfully, and stood.

Martin stood as well, holding me.

I felt drugged. Sluggish. Safe, with him. “Love you.”

Martin’s eyes filled. “I love you. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“This wasn’t you.” He needed to know. He shouldn’t feel guilty for this. “Broke my promise. I chased her.”

“I shouldn't have… what was I even thinking? What did I do?” he murmured. “Oh, gods. Jon, I’m so sorry.” Tears slid down his face now, dripping on to me, and his heart ached, pounded , and I could feel it, because I knew him.

No. No, I… I didn’t want him to feel this way. He shouldn’t be squashed with guilt, weighed down, his heart aching in his chest. Not my Martin. I couldn’t quite lift my hand to touch his face. “Not your fault.”

Sasha was talking to someone (police, I knew ), getting us out of here without having to make a report or anything, and they knew who she was, and she had power over them somehow (What? How?), and they were going to let her go, and I didn’t care.

Martin. Martin ached.

I couldn’t let Martin ache.

The Eye whispered, and I knew what to do. “All is forgiven, my love,” I whispered, too.

And the world

Changed.

The tiniest tremor, the shiver of reality shaking snow off its shoulders.

Jonah gasped.

“Oh,” said Martin, and stared at me. His eyes grew wide. “Oh,” he said again, more firmly, and frowned.

He looked toward Sasha, and I didn’t understand. It was not a good look. It was… angry.

Then he shook his head as though discarding whatever that had been, and looked back at me. “You’re going to be all right. I’m carrying you to her hospital.”

“All right.” As if I had any problems with this. The pain was terrible; but the relief…

Jonah had… shuttered it all, somehow. Done, really, what I’d hoped Gerry would do: he’d shared the load.

I hadn’t even realized how much I was carrying. “I’m going to sleep now,” I murmured, because Martin had me, and I was safe.

“Incredible,” Jonah whispered. “Beautiful.”

Then Martin began to describe some truly inventive ways for him to violate members of his own family, and I let myself drift to sleep.

#tma #tma fic #tma au #tma spoilers #magnus monsterverse #jonathan sims #nikola orsinov #jonah magnus #sasha james #martin blackwod #jmart #jonmartin #teaholding

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