#maybe it's because i still have fresh grief in my life idk but it really fucks me up so bad

[justonemorewallflower]

Some BSG finale thoughts from me regarding Lee and Kara (spoilers ahead after cut!)

I didn't mind the ending for the most part, but I am and will always be upset about Lee's ending. Like, at the end once they're on that new planet he ends up having no one left he cares about, which is so sad. Like he wants to explore the planet and all but I know that's something he'd probably like/want to experience with someone else or at least have someone to tell his experiences to. But no, Kara is dead, his father left with Laura, and Dee is also dead.

I wonder what his father did after Laura died because then he'd be alone too. He probably built that cabin she always talked about but he'd be lonely too, I'm sure.

Just like idk, your son has no one left, go back to him. Y'all both lost the loves of your life, bond over it, keep each other company while you grieve. Build a cabin together to commemorate both of them. That's just something I wish they would have done.

But yeah, it just makes me so sad to know that Lee has no one left he really cares about to be with on this new planet. No one to experience this new life with.

And that's part of why I'm so upset about Kara. I would be less upset about her ending if his father had stayed or even if Dee was still alive, but since neither was true, she was the last person he had left that he cared about and she had to leave him too. She was the last to leave him, which hurts so much, especially since I thought it was pretty obvious neither of them wanted that. While yes, she completed her journey by leading the humans to the planet, I don't think she wanted to leave. I think she wanted to stay to experience a fresh start too, I don't think she wanted to leave Lee behind, especially when they had also finally gotten to a point where they could have gotten together with no one standing in their way.

It also gets me when I watch the scene where she's saying goodbye to him, because despite her saying how she's completeled her journey and it feels good, she looks emotional, like she's going to cry, like she doesn't want to be telling him that she's leaving him too.

And while Lee accepts her disappearance and assures she won't be forgotten, memories of her will probably always stick with him and remind him of how he wishes she was still there. I can imagine he maybe makes a grave for her or some sort of memorial, and that he probably often speaks to the sky as if hoping to speak to her, that she can somehow hear him, sharing all his adventures he has to do alone.

He would definitely miss her and I'm sure if he could've had a choice he would have had her stay, for more than one reason. I can just imagine them flying raptors (or vipers, I'm not sure how many of those ships they kept on the planet) side by side as they explore the planet's surface, crossing oceans and forests as they chase each other and mess around, laughing over the radio.

But yeah, that is my BSG rant for the day. And don't get me wrong, I'm not unbearably upset about Kara's ending, just only because of how it affected Lee's. I do wish that she could have stayed and that they could have finally been happy together, or that at least his dad came back to comfort him for a while before he was just left alone with his grief. Like not only was he left alone, but he gets stuck alone with his grief and has to try and cope and comfort himself because he has no one to comfort him, no one to turn to that he knows well anymore.

It just makes me depressed everytime I think about his ending and how it could have been better for him by multiple different ways.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

how do you stop missing someone, especially when they arent really gone gone you just aren't in each others lives anymore and neither of you can go back to how it was in the before times recent community grief got me thinking and im sorry if youre not the person to ask but idk maybe you have thoughts?

So, I have this friend who just went through a pretty nasty divorce. And even before the separation and the filing, the man she married and the man she was currently married to were not the same person. This man had changed in only a few years, and not for the better. He had spent time in some pretty gross places and picked up some pretty gross ideologies, and he treated her pretty terribly. She filed for divorce, and then one day asked me, "If he is so terrible to me, why do I keep feeling like leaving him is like someone died?"

And my response to her was honestly more or less a paraphrase of something I had read in a book after my dad died that was about grief and got into grief that isn't necessarily caused by a death, but instead a separation of people for any number of reasons. Could be immigration takes you so far away from each other that you don't have the ability or money to visit, it can be a divorce, it can be cutting off toxic parents that you still love, it could be the loss of a friendship... Any number of things.

So what I told her was when you lose someone, you don't necessarily have to lose them to death to feel like you have lost connection to a life.

My friend wasn't mourning the loss of a man who treated her like shit. She was grieving the loss of the man she had originally married, the man she fell in love with, the man she dated. And she was grieving the loss of the future she had pictured having with him.

That's grieving a life lost.

I have lost a few people in this way. Sometimes to a conflict, sometimes to simply losing touch over time. The funny part is that I still sometimes have dreams where I'm just hanging out with them. Or in the case of an old boyfriend, I sometimes have dreams even now about apologizing for some of the things I did and hearing him apologize for some of the things he did. That conversation is never going to happen, not through any fault of either of our own, it just isn't. But the mind still wants things to wrap up, it wants to be able to categorize events and people and places in our lives and file them neatly away.

Life is too messy for that.

What has worked best for me, and it may not work for you but for me... I allow the grief and the mourning. I make space for it. I acknowledge that it's real and it's not lesser than other forms of grief just because it isn't necessarily as permanent. Pain is pain, and this isn't Sadness Olympics.

So for me, being able to think about it and work it out and go over what happened and what I'm sad about helps me because I'm not repressing and pushing it down, which only makes me dwell on it. Instead, I might notice something and think, Dustin would really like this song. And then feel a moment of melancholy for the conversations we never got to have. And then I move on.

If the loss is fresh, acknowledge that it's fresh, and that it's going to take a while to feel any better than you do right now about it.

It will stop being a fresh loss. But it may still come to mind from time to time, and that's okay, that's normal. Grief and loss are not linear. They are circles, they are rivers, they wind around and double back on themselves. They come in waves, they come in hailstorms, they come in the tide making its inexorable way up or down, they come sometimes in droughts.

Sometimes it can help if you have someone to talk to about it, or just write down what you're feeling even if you never show those writings to anyone else. Make space for the feelings, make space for the thoughts. Play music that resonates with how you feel, read books that fit the mood, maybe draw pictures. Just let your brain do what it will with the emotions.

It helps me. I don't know if it would help you.

But those are my thoughts.

[lucysweatslove]

10.29.2023 // I still don’t have a word for it.

Reality: I still don’t feel like my body is mine, and I don’t have a word for it. It isn’t quite depersonalization, as I don’t feel outside of my body. And it’s not gender specific so it’s not gender dysphoria either. It’s not body dysmorphia, because I know exactly what my body looks like, and that’s part of the problem- I understand how I look, it just doesn’t “feel” like me. But the second part of the problem is that I don’t think there is any way I can create congruency.

I get this feeling every so often. Usually it’s pretty fleeting, maybe a few hours of intense and distressing disconnect, then I sleep, and I just kind of move on. This time it’s just a little different- I don’t feel significantly distressed like usual, but I can’t move on from it. Every time I see my face or body, I KNOW it’s me and can feel physical sensations and emotions from my body. But

Maybe this is just the reality of getting older since I’m almost 30, though I also think a lot of it has to do with recovering on my own through this time as well. Like, maybe I disconnected from my own body a little to make recovery easier/less emotionally taxing because I didn’t have help navigating the emotional toll of a body that went from sick but socially acceptable to healthy but socially unacceptable. When I eventually got to a position where I could appreciate health in an “unacceptable” body, my health deteriorated and my body became even more “unacceptable.”

And now I’m in an aging body that is both socially unacceptable in appearance AND physically falling apart, I’m once again not sure how to accept it. I think part of this too is grief. Just thinking about the last 4 years of my life, when my health started falling apart to now- I’ve done a lot but haven’t really accomplished anything.

Nobody tells you how fast 4 years go by when you’re mid-20s. You wake up one day thinking you have time to figure your life out. You do some hard work to be okay with the fact that your life isn’t working out the way you planned, that it’s okay to be set back a little, and you’re dedicated to doing what is needed to get where you want to be… but then you blink, you’re almost 30. You may have successfully done a lot, which deserves celebration, but you aren’t caught up because time moved the same for you as it did the fresh faced 20 year old.

I AM proud of myself for navigating life the last several years. Recovery was hard on its own, but I also got a master’s degree, got married, adopted a pug, supported my husband through TWO hip replacement surgeries, applied to medical school, got into medical school, and have already navigated a couple blocks. It just took me a lot longer to navigate all of these things than I thought it would.

I think I’ve always felt like I’ve been playing catch up in some way. Sometimes I wonder if this is a common autistic or “twice exceptional” experience or if it’s just… something a good proportion of the world experiences… or maybe it’s just something those who have experienced severe mental illness experience idk.

I don’t really know what is going to help me feel reconnected. My instinct of course is what I always do- major diet and restrict, try to drop as much weight as rapidly as possible. Sometimes I think, if I were back to X size, I’d like the way clothes fit again, but I know that another huge part is that I do NOT feel like me at all in the kinds of clothing I’m expected to dress in- though I also know that the clothes I like are more “socially acceptable” on smaller bodies. Seriously, I see the clothes my peers wear and look amazing and professional in, but I know if I were to try the same outfit it just wouldn’t look right on my body. Every time I try to wear clothes that feel like me, I feel like I look wrong in them, even if the clothes fit.

Normal people can probably just go on a diet for a little bit, lose some weight, bounce back into their bodies (thought efficacy of keeping that weight off may be variable). I, however, have to worry about going back to my own personal hell every time I so much as consider how many grams are in my breakfast banana.

So anyway, no actual resolution. I’m stuck in this meat sack wired to interact with the world via electrolytes (sodium, calcium, potassium, chloride) and neurotransmitters. Attempting to change it could be Very Bad for me. Attempting to be “health minded” could also just be thinly veiled attempts to change the meat sack, which again, could be Very Bad. Soooo idk.

I guess next week’s therapy session will be interesting and worth the $25 copay.

[pearlydewydrops]

finally finished obit and i’m stunned!! this book + i remain in darkness (which i have not finished…) paired together is painful. i feel very tired out and like i need a shower to cleanse myself now (that may also be because ive been reading this book for like 4 hours couped up in my bed). victoria chang says something about ‘sadness is plural, but grief is singular’ and that is so very true because her depiction of grief in this book is so unique and these individual moments that grief hits expressed through the figurative deaths of various objects, metaphorical beings, concepts and people all culminate into a beautiful and fragmented journey of her grief over her mother’s death. the final obituary is the only literal death described in the book, apart from her mother’s, which was the Parkland high school shooting that happened on february 14th 2018 (as i searched it up), although, the event that occurred on that date isn’t specifically stated in the book for good reason. May they rest in peace and i thought that was a beautiful way to end the book. it all felt so natural - the repetitive format and how all these obituaries feel like an incredibly heavy-handed diary (like a designated grief journal?). the book ends with a final poem that doesn’t end in a metaphorical sense, it’s an endless poem of hope hope hope (‘see how the mouth stays open?’ she writes as the final line) dedicated to her children. i didn’t notice the connection between the poems and the obituaries in the book but i noticed that a lot (maybe all?) of the poems were of victoria chang talking about her children

also weirdly this part of the book rlly reminded me of the image of sitting at the top of the bunk bed of my grandparents (not new but new for me since it was my first time visiting it last year in december) apartment in singapore. i imagine these two scenes to be wildly different cause the writer isn’t even sitting on a bunk bed 😭 but idk the image of sitting at the top of the bunk bed looking down at the many many streetlights through the small open window that only i could see from (yes this did make me feel special compared to my sister, actually i don’t even remember if she had a window on the bottom bunk maybe she did but i don’t think so) at 4am because their (new but not new) apartment was sooooo hot and cramped im not even joking when i say that opening the window was the only thing saving me from passing out (i kinda rlly miss their old apartment but its ok :(( ) and the veryvery white light illuminating through the gap at the bottom of the door from the bathroom whenever my grandpa would take bathroom breaks while watching the football game (i think he goes for arsenal?) is all still so fresh in my mind yet already nostalgic-feeling. it might just be nostalgic because i was feeling sad at the moment and was romanticising looking out an apartment window while im the only one awake woooweee…. but i miss itttt (even tho i was sorta kinda shitting on my grandparent’s new apartment a second ago i still loved it so much i wanna go back for a visit eugh) none of this added to what i was talking about with the book i’m really just saying anything because i am no good at analysing and evaluating books and beautiful writing BUT i will say

i love any piece of art that depicts grief in a lyrical, quiet yet passionate way. i’m scared for the day i have to experience my own intense grief but something about the way its written when its written WELL is fascinating and strangely comforting in a way no other concept of a feeling is (moreso comforting when the person has a good support system). idk why but it is

…my parents are back home now from work and i have to take a shower and study so i’ll just leave these scrappy notes here i guess… ??

(also this whole book reminds me that i don’t think i’ve ever read an obituary in my life. i admittedly didn’t even know what it was until i searched it up 😭😭 maybe i’m too young 😭)

[gazingatmydoom]

i think i actually went through the five stages of grief just now finishing one shot. or. one sec

ok not all five but i definitely hit at least three, maybe four of them. counting. like. oneshot is a fucking amazing game but i'm also gonna talk about DEPRESSION AS WELL WHAMO

long vent post below the cut idm if u read it but it's super long lol so yeah

cos like. that was the most. mm. it was the most difficulty i've had making a descsion that i was involved in emotionally. ig the ending of oneshot was like pretty much 100% "how much do u care about this vs this" thing so like entirely emotionally charged but idk it had me yk. and i was sitting on the toilet taking a whizz as one does after condemning ur best friend catperson ever forever to an eternal life in a world they don't belong to. and i was thinking right, that's probably the saddest i've felt playing a game since i finished titanfall 2 in early 2020. estimating. might've been 2019 idk. and now i don't remember if i played any other particularly sad games between tf|2 and oneshot but i doubt i didn't and if i'm running on things i'm assuming about the depression i'm assuming i had (which i am) then memory loss was a big part of it. cos i god damned do not remember fuck shit ass from the past few years. and i was thinking hey MAYBE the reason i haven't been that sad about any game (in memory) is because i was simply too depressed to give a rats ass.

i mean there's one game ig which is hollow knight and i felt sad when i got the sealed siblings ending but. if i'm being honest alot of the strong emotions i had with that game felt very forced. that's one thing i can remember quite well actually and no i don't know why, but when i felt sad when i watched the siblings curl up and go back down to the bottom of the abyss, it felt like i was trying to push my heart down it didn't feel like it was sinking on it's own.

ok the more i'm talking about it the more i'm thinking i'm bullshitting but idk. idk! the idea that i had depression and quite possibly might still have it is takign over my mind everytime i react with alot of emotion to something. which is happening at an increased rate in the past few months, and has barely happened at all in the past three years.

it makes me think ig. like i got mad at niko and the author and the entity for making *me* make this decision, when in my opinion, it really should've been niko's to make. and i somehow thought niko was going to make it! i was so sure they would i was like ye ok niko ima break this to u and then i need u to sit and think about it and i need u to know i will support u no matter WHAT u choose it's ok and i love u. and then they're like "what should i do bestie?" AS IF THAT'S MY DECISION TO MAKE????? it caught me off guard yk and i didn't cry or scream or freak out but i'd be lying if i said it made me think and feel in ways that feel new or fresh, but not brand new just like ahh i forgot what this was like new. if i ever felt them at all.

i swear sometimes it does feel like the second i gained any ability to think somewhat for myself (which sounds stupid but trust me this was mid teens for me) i started spiralling. so idk yk. i lost where i was going with this uuuuhhhhhhhh. but who cares. this is a vent post(?) so it doesn't matter if i finish it. that word keeps coming up tho i don't wanna say it again. the depress. the deps. depths. dark souls. i keep thinking of it. it keeps coming back to me and bouncing around my head like "hey maybe *this* is why what ur feeling or thinking or doing rn feels super weird and alien to u" cos that feeling keeps coming back yk. i can feel it coming back less and less in past days tho and that's not to say i'm getting used to experiencing new things but it might be to say i'm sinking back down. not sure tho!

just added a read more link idk if it worked i've never used one before but it just struck me how long this post is now lmao and i don't wanna bother the two people who might see this.

but ye shit has been wild and by that i mean crazy and by that i mean i've begun feeling emotions again and it's been fucking me up to varying degrees! side not like dungeon meshi has made me cry everytime a new episode comes out i fucking like. like yes it's good but it's also me being passionate about something. the last thing i was passionate about i would say was hollow knight i used to cry all the time watching silksong trailers and listening to the bonebottom ost sample but i tell u when that was. that stopped happening around mid 2020. yo am i dating my depression rn. early to mid 2020 that must've been it that must've been the start. which makes sense cos i think that was also when i left college and therefore stopped going outside at all ever. i got a job about a year after but it was shit and i hated it and i cried at work so i quit. found a new one a month or so later and i'm still there today. they're good there and i like it. it's still the only reason i go out which i don't think is healthy but. it's something. i was invited out for activites earlier today and i said yes. that's another first in a long time that was the first yes i've given in fucking ages. i don't think i have anything to wear oh christ. i need to buy some clothes. god. ok getting into personal life more than personal feelings and that's not what i want to include on this blog. we talk about FEELINGS here not EVENTS.

but ye uh. ig to conclude depression (if i ever had it (i'm only saying that cos i was never officially diagnosed i'm like 99% sure it was there)) i forgot where this sentence was going. ig to conclude, depression. yeah. stay hydrated kids

[doctapuella]

FUN FACT it's actually possible to create content about a person who has passed without peppering said content with tons of "r.i.p." and ending dates and consistent reminders that the person is no longer with us

[in-tua-deep]

idk if you still do au ideas but what if delores was a real person in the apocalypse? how it woul dbe done i have no idea but i love all your aus and thought it would be cool

okay okay I don't tend to go for real!Dolores aus admittedly because I find her much more compelling as what she is: a reflection of five himself and a symptom of his crushing loneliness

but i started thinking about it and you know what?? i think five deserves a little socialization, as a treat

so say like, 0.5% of the population is resistant to abilities. Allison would really struggle to rumor them, Five wouldn't be able to jump with them, and, most importantly, whatever the fuck Vanya's ability does has like, reduced damage or something

and the og apocalypse isn't the moon apocalypse, so let's say that it was pure waves of Vanya's powers that fucked over the earth

so 0.5% of the population survives the apocalypse. though, let's be honestly, the real number is a lot smaller than that. People who might have survived Vanya's initial power wave (miraculously) did not survive buildings crushing them or survive the car/plane/bus/train/other transportation crashes or survive being left alone when they are too young to reliably look after themselves, or the variety of other problems that come with 99.5% of the population dying at once

So, Five arrives in the apocalypse and is met with ruin and fire and a whole lot of dead people. He finds his siblings, but it doesn't matter. They're dead. He doesn't even recognize them at first, these strange grown-ups who he identifies not by their faces but by the umbrellas on their wrists that match his own

As he realizes the full impact of his situation, he hears a voice that says, very succinctly, "holy shit!"

It's a girl a few years older than Five himself, maybe 15 or 16, and she is very excited to see another survivor.

And here's where I u-turn this au around bc i'm not all that interested in real!Dolores, but I would be down to talk about Five meeting survivors in the apocalypse, because if Dolores is real I don't buy no one else survived.

So Dolores shows up and see a Literal Child crying over the corpses of his family and assumes that Five is a fellow survivor, and she immediately grabs him up. Five is incoherent with grief at this point anyway, so he doesn't even protest when she basically hauls him away from the bodies. She's babbling at him, but he doesn't really hear anything she's saying

And then she takes him to her dad

(Why not, let's have the 1% potentially be a heritable thing)

and her dad, let's call him just some dad name. like Rick. it has been a fucking WEEK for him, okay. he had his daughter with him, his ex-wife is on the other coast for her work, and by some miracle he survived the apocalypse and so did his child, and he's been wracking his brains trying to figure out what the fuck to do next

and then his daughter shows up with a traumatized thirteen-year-old in tow

now rick is a good dude. he's a dad. they get out of five that his name is five ("what the fuck" dolores mouths to him over five's shoulder and rick can't help but agree) and the bodies he found were his siblings ("Dad and Ben and Vanya weren't there though," this child cries desperately and rick feels his own heart clench in response, "They might still be alive!")

"We can look for them." Rick assures his new adopted child, because he is an adult in a fresh apocalypse and this kid has presumably lost everything he's ever known (more than rick even knows at the time)

and they do. They each get wagons and they go out and find supplies and look for other survivors. Five is... surprisingly helpful and also surprisingly docile as he is able to rely on Someone Else to give orders while he attempts to (dissociate) process what the fuck has happened

and here's the thing: Five prides himself on being independent, sort of. He's independent for a child soldier, but he's used to taking orders from a male authority figure and Rick happens to be just that

The first time that Five does something dangerous and Rick yells is a revelation

(Rick isn't sure if he hopes that Five's dad is alive or not, because if they find that man alive then Rick might just kill the jackass himself. Also like, Five is bizarrely knowledgeable out survival skills, like way too knowledgeable about it, which is helpful for them but also very concerning)

they find a newspaper and Five finds the article that mentions his father's recent death ("Huh. Heart attack." Five says, and there is no emotion in his voice)

(Years later, years later, Five and Rick talk. "I don't think I wanted to find him, either." Five admits, softly because Dolores is asleep, "I think I was more scared of finding him alive than I was of finding his body. He would've been so mad at me, I think.")

this newspaper is how Rick and Dolores find out about Five being Number Five, Umbrella Academy Missing Person

"Dude, what the fuck." Dolores says, wide eyes, "You're like, thirty?"

"I'm thirteen." Five says, and then checks the date on the newspaper again, "Also I think I would technically be 29 if I lived through all of it, 'cause it's April and my birthday is in October."

"You... time travelled?" Rick asks, which is honestly the more relevant question, "Can you go back?"

And Five just,,, crumples on himself. Because he tried, he tried really hard. It didn't work. "I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna go back, I'm going to save them."

That, Rick thinks, is a lot of weight to put on one person's shoulders, but especially the shoulders of a child.

"Alright." Rick says, because what else can he say after finding out his new child has superpowers and is from like, 2004? "What do you need?"

("Oh my god I have so many memes to teach you." Dolores says later, reverently. Five blinks in confusion and Rick mentally prepares himself for the recitation of so many vines)

And it's easier, somehow. Five sometimes feels like it's a betrayal, but he settles into apocalypse life with an ease that surprises him.

He lets Rick fuss over him and help tie his scarf securely around his head every morning before he sets off on supply runs with Dolores. And they're kids! Five has never had a friend before, and Dolores is funny and smart and she's struggling just as much as he is.

"I don't know if my mom's alive." She says to him, in solidarity when he checks the face of every corpse to see if they're Vanya.

Five is practical in the way only a child soldier can be. He's economical with the room in their wagons, carefully examining what might and what might not be useful.

Dolores, on the other hand, constantly takes up space with what Five sees as useless shit.

"Excuse you," Dolores says, shoving a game of monopoly, the entire discworld series, and a pack of glitter gel pens into her wagon, "These are absolutely vital apocalypse supplies."

She challenges him, plays with him in a way no one ever has. "I bet you I can find more batteries today than you can," She grins at him, "Winner gets to pick dinner first?"

"You're on." Five says, directly before Dolores pulls two packs of 24 AA batteries from behind her back, like a cheat.

Dolores makes him take a ten minute break when they find a playground that has been mostly not-destroyed. They rummage around kids backpacks and mother's handbags for some good loot, too numb to corpses to even be bothered all that badly about the corpses they belong to.

"I'm getting on the swings." Dolores says when Five starts making noises about moving on, "I haven't been on a swingset in ages."

"What's the point?" Five grumps.

"Don't be sour because you can't swing as high as I can!" Dolores laughs, getting higher and higher as the swings creak ominously.

Five grumpily gets into the other swing and grudgingly kicks himself back and forth until Dolores takes pity on him and teaches him how to properly move his legs and body to get higher and higher.

Dolores jumps from the swing seat and lands with a flourish and smile. Five jumps out of his seat and then jumps, warping right in front of Dolores and making her yell and hit at him in outrage. Five smiles the widest he has all week.

This is how Five grows up in the apocalypse, with Dolores teasing him into taking breaks and leaning over his shoulder to look at his math and scandalizing him by stating that she'd only just started on matrices in her own high school math class.

Every night they huddle around Rick while he picks up whatever book Dolores picked out that day because it is a travesty that Five has never read hunger games or whatever, and then they read together because it would be a genuine blood bath if they all took turns. The first time Five accidentally mentioned a spoiler and Dolores genuinely considered murder was the birthday of this tradition

Some days the air is too smoky or there are dust storms or it's just plain too dangerous to go out, and they all stay in. Dolores regales Five with stories about public school, and Five tells them about his siblings.

Then they all cry

"I shouldn't be crying." Five sobs.

"Shut the fuck up," Dolores sobs back, "You literally watched me lose my shit over remembering my shitty eighth grade dance and listened to me sob-sing toxic for like four hours."

"In fairness I also wished you would shut up then."

"Let me hug you or I will start singing songs that I only remember the chorus for again you absolute fucker."

"I could always sing some -"

"No, Rick/Dad."

And Five grows up. Rick shows him how to shave very carefully in front of cracked mirrors. Dolores teases him every time his voice cracks. Rick tells Five in no uncertain terms that he loves and cares for him, and that Reginald was a little bitch. There are a lot of heartfelt conversations around that, honestly. Rick telling Five that he and the siblings deserved better, that they were children and deserved to have a childhood.

And that he has faith in Five. Rick and Dolores both do, they bring him back paper and pens and pencils and chalk and anything Five can use to write equations. They poke around any libraries for books on theoretical mathematics and quantum physics. Rick and Dolores go out scouting for food while Five stays home and can work longer.

They also make him take breaks, make sure that he's looking after himself.

They're a little better off than OG!Five when it comes to food, because some animals survive. Enough that Rick figures out how to hunt. Five is the first one to each bugs, and even though Dolores makes faces they all start eating bugs as well.

"Pretty sure there's loads of cultures that eat bugs." Rick says grudgingly, wondering if he should try stirfry the cockroaches and if that would improve the taste. "There's even, uh, cricket flour or whatever, right?"

"Plus you eat like, five spiders a year when you're asleep." Dolores says cheerfully, just to watch her dad's face scrunch up in displeasure.

"That doesn't sound true, but I don't know enough about spiders to dispute it." Five mutters, and Dolores gives him such a proud look that it makes him roll his eyes.

They're in their thirties when Rick dies. He's out foraging and hunting, and the rubble he's standing on gives way and he ends up with a gash in his leg. He manages to stop the bleeding, but the world is filthy and they don't have any antibiotics.

He gets an infection.

"It's okay." He tells both of his kids, "It's okay. I'm just so glad that you guys have each other, y'hear? I'm so glad."

"It's not okay." Five says, voice thick and choked, "It's not."

"Yeah, well, you're going to figure out how to go back, right? Go back in time and save everyone. Then I'll have never died, right?" Rick smiles, "And even if you don't, I'll be waiting for you on the other side and we'll see each other again anyway."

"I'm going to fix it."

"I know. I have faith in you, Five." Ricks says honestly, and that's more than Reginald ever said.

They sit quietly together while Dolores is out scavenging. They've been taking turns sitting with Rick.

"I won't remember you, in the past, will I?" Rick says rhetorically, but Five answers anyway.

"I don't think so."

Rick hums, "Well, doesn't matter. If you need help in the past, you come to me, y'hear?"

"You won't remember me."

"Doesn't matter. You come find me, and you tell me your crazy story until I believe you, and then I'll help you." Rick says firmly, "You're family. You're my son. Timelines? Don't matter. If you need help, with anything, even if it's just with - with filling out a bowling team or something -"

"I have never been bowling in my life and you know it." Five interrupts, but it makes him laugh just a little bit which was clearly Rick's intention.

"Well who knows what you'll get up to in the past! You'll be able to go bowling, you know. Get to wear those uncomfortable shoes. Hey, you go far enough back maybe you can go to Dolores's tenth birthday party and put me out of my misery."

"Was she bad at bowling?"

"Oh, she was wiping the floor with me. No contest."

"Honestly, that sounds absolutely accurate."

"Shut up, bowling just wasn't my sport. Regardless, the point was that I'm giving you a free pass to come and get me. Because I know you, I know how you think." Rick brings up his hand to tap his finger against Five's forehead, "You get it into your head that you need to go it alone, take it all on your shoulders. I'm telling you that if you do that I'll somehow manifest my memories and come smack you over the head for being stupid, you hear?"

"I'm not dragging you into anything." Five says firmly, "I'll have my siblings."

"Who were also children." Rick points out. "And dragging? Dragging is such a strong word for a volunteer."

"A volunteer who won't remember volunteering." Five shoots back.

Rick just shrugs, and then winces when the movement jolts his bad leg. "Five, I'm going to be honest with you here. And sappy. Can you handle a bit of sappiness for a minute?"

"No."

"Well too bad. Can't leave a dying man, you'd feel too bad. So you're stuck with me. But you listen good, okay? Because you aren't dragging me into anything. Whatever life you have, I want to have a part of that. Because you're my son. Wherever you are, whatever you do, I want to help because you're family. What you'd be doing by leaving me out of it is depriving me of someone I love, depriving me of knowing one of the best kids I've ever known."

"Shut up." Five says, choked.

"Nope, it's sappy time." Rick states, "Maybe asking you to come find me is selfish, but I don't care. No matter what version of me exists, I want to be in your life."

"My life is a walking joke, why would you want any part of that?"

"It has been my privilege to watch you grow up. To help you. To be here for you. Of course I'd want to be there to watch you grow up the rest of the way."

"But -"

"Shut up, just let me tell you that I am so proud of you. You never give up, and your heart is so big. You love so much and so loudly, and it's been the highest honor of my life to be included in your family."

Five pauses for a moment to collect himself before simply saying - "You're the best dad I've ever had."

Rick snorts, "Considering my competition, I'd sure hope so. That bar was so low old Reggie was practically limbo dancing with the devil. Now get over here and give an old man a hug."

They don't bury Rick, when he dies. They don't have time and the ground is too hard and they don't have the heart to move him. Instead the pack everything up and seal him in the shelter they'd lived in.

Dolores pulls out a bottle of ancient nail polish and painstakingly writes Rick's name on the wall with his birth year and an approximate current year. They aren't 100% sure though, since time blends together out in the apocalypse, but it's something.

They continue by themselves. They get older.

Dolores jokingly calls him her husband because the way his face scrunches up makes her cackle. They see other people very occasionally, usually passing through. Usually groups. Dolores and Five get to flex their hosting skills, though more than one group declines their cockroach stirfry.

("It's a family recipe." Five says with amusement in his eyes that usually manages to drown out old grief.)

"Jeeze, that kid couldn't have been older'n twenty-three." Dolores complains, "Makes me feels positively ancient."

"They wouldn't have known any world 'cept for the apocalypse." Five muses, pouring some boiled water into wine glasses because they might be living in the apocalypse but they can be fancy.

"Do you ever think about that?" Dolores asks, turning to him with no judgement, just curiosity. "When you go back, you'll be like, erasing them from existence."

Five shrugs, "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe this place will just split off into an alternate timeline."

"Maybe none of this is real." Dolores says, amusement coloring her voice. "Maybe you aren't talking to a real person at all. Maybe this is just a symbol of your insanity and cracked mind."

"Dolores, I literally have a scar where you stabbed me. Did I somehow manage to stab myself in the back?"

"Scraped you, I scraped you. By accident."

"So you maintain." Five says haughtily, swirling his water in his wine glass like a pretentious prick.

"I could totally be fake. You don't know my life."

"I know way too much about you, Dolores. Like, way way too much." Five scoffs, because Dolores and him have literally no secrets from one another at this point. Five even knows the truth behind what happened at Janet Scranton's thirteenth birthday party. Like, he said, way too much.

"Maybe you made it up. Maybe that's why you know so much."

"Dolores, I'm going to be honest with you right now." Five presses the tips of his fingers to his chin, "If you were a figment of my imagination, you would be so much better at math."

"Hey!" Dolores squawks indignantly, "I didn't even get to finish high school you pretentious prick!"

"Neither did I!"

"You didn't even go to high school, you brat."

"I'm fifty-two I think I've outgrown 'brat.'"

"Tell that to your attitude." Dolores says haughtily, "You're still younger than me."

"Won't be when I go back in time." Five says cheerfully, completely ignoring Dolores's venomous look.

"That's cheating."

"Sucks to suck." Five says loftily, taking another sip of his water.

Sometimes they talk about The Plan, with capital letters. What Five is going to do when he goes back in time, depending on when he pops out. Is he going to adopt his siblings? What about Reginald?

"You don't think I could kill Reginald?" Five says, holding a hand to his chest in mock offense.

"I think you should let me do it. I'll even give you control of tonight's music if you do."

"What are you doing to do? Bite his ankles? What if you're like, seven or something?"

"All the better to get away with it since I'll be too young to convict or whatever."

"Pretty sure that's not how the law works."

"How would you know? Just for that I'm playing Istanbul on repeat again."

"I don't know why you think that's a threat. That song slaps."

It takes a few more years before Five is close enough that the Commission comes to interfere. Because that's what I think happened - Five was getting too close and they stepped in because they might as well distract the man as much as they can with missions, right?

So the Handler shows up. And she offers Five a job, telling him that they have the ability to travel through time. And Five - hesitates.

"Give me some time?" Five asks, and the Handler graciously gives him 24 hours.

And he and Dolores talk it over, because now that his goal is more in sight than it has ever been and Five is scared.

"What are you waiting for? You have the chance to see your siblings again." Dolores says patiently.

"Yeah," Five says, and what he doesn't say is clear. But I won't see you.

"Five." Dolores says, and she cradles his face between her palms like he is something precious, "I have had so much time with you already. More than I would have ever. We have been so lucky, to have this time. How can I demand more than what we have already been given?"

"When have you ever not demanded the world, Dolores?" Five asks, his own hand coming up to cover Dolores's own.

"We've had decades together, Five. We're getting old. I was always going to lose you, one way or another. Nothing lasts forever."

"I don't want to lose you."

"I know. But if I had to choose a way, if I could decide where our story ends, this would be it. Letting you go, because this way you get to live. You get to see your family again. You get to save the world. I could ask for nothing more than for you to get your happy ending."

Five removes Dolores's hand from his cheek so that he can cradle it between them, "I'm happy here with you. I've never been happier. Isn't that silly? That I was happier in the apocalypse?"

"I bet killing Reggie would make you happy." Dolores laughs rustily.

"One day you're going to see the mysterious disappearance of a famous billionaire in the paper and feel a twinge of satisfaction and now have a clue why." Five laughs as well, shaking his head.

Dolores pats Five's hands, "Five, look at me. We've had our time. And you're going to give me even more of it. More time with my father. More time with my mother. I'll never know it, but you'll have saved me."

"What if this is - what if this is an alternate reality? What if I leave you here alone?"

"Then you'll be saving a 15-year-old girl from the same fate as me. Because as much as I love you, as much as I have loved this time we have had together, this is still an apocalypse. This should never have happened, and if you have a chance to go back and prevent it, then I want you to take that chance with both hands."

"Even if it means leaving you alone?"

Dolores smiles at him, "I'm not going to be alone. Far too many creepy crawlies in the apocalypse for that."

"Shut up, I'm being serious."

"Hmm." Dolores hums consideringly, "Maybe I'll head North, to that new settlement that last group said they'd heard word of. Sure they'd find some use for an old woman who's survived this long in the wilderness."

"You can have my half of the record collection." Five says, pulling her against him into a hug that she easily returns.

"As if I wouldn't have stolen them as soon as you left." She scoffs, but it's a little wet, and Five pretends his own eyes aren't leaking tears.

When The Handler comes back, Dolores gives him another hug. She also slips something into his pocket - some photos. They'd taken it a year into the apocalypse, when Dolores had found an ancient looking polaroid camera and towed it home despite Five's protests about practicality. The photos are worn and faded at the edges, but the smiles on Five's little apocalypse family's faces are undeniable.

"You'll have to see if they magically fade when you change the timeline." Dolores whispers to him with a grin, "Like in the movies."

"Okay." Five whispers back.

"You have the list of movies to watch, right?" Dolores says. Five rolls his eyes and nods because he wrote the list last night into his Vanya-book while Dolores hovered over his shoulder and critiqued his handwriting.

"And you promise to try a proper non-expired twinkie at some point?"

"That I do not promise. I think even looking at one would make me lose my lunch. I have twinkie-trauma."

"Shut up and get going." Dolores says, because the Handler is starting to tap her foot impatiently.

And off Five goes to become an assassin. Though - he's much more gentle this time. He's careful, he doesn't kill children and he usually takes jobs that don't require killing at all. He distracts and manipulates events as much as he can without killing.

He's actually much more well socialized, thanks to Rick and Dolores. Less feral child and more determined man on a mission.

Which is why he's so frustrated when he finally, finally manages to get the equations to work and falls through and falls - directly back into his stupid thirteen-year-old body.

"Shit." Five says, loudly, and revels in the surprised look on his siblings faces.

He strides into the kitchen, and they all follow him like ducklings. They look exactly the way they did when they died.

"Wow this is actually way harder than I thought it would be." Five muses, looking at their dead faces. But as Dolores would say, life is hard but you have to keep on trucking sometimes. "Whatever, what's the date?"

"Five, where have you been?" Diego demands, looking irritated. It makes Five snort in amusement.

"The future. The past. If you want like, an exact list of dates you'll have to hold your horses. I spent like, two weeks in Peru once. No souvenirs though, unfortunately."

They look taken aback, like they didn't expect Five to have quite this much sass. Oops. That is definitely Dolores's influence. Or maybe he was always a little asshole. In fairness, what teenagers aren't tiny assholes? He has an excuse.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Diego's eyebrows are furrowed in anger. It kind of takes Five aback for a second, because he remembers a Diego who stutters when he argued.

"When did you learn the fuck-word?" Five asks, raising an eyebrow before her can help it, "Grace ought to wash your mouth out with soap."

Diego immediately goes red, "Shut up!"

"Wow you're so easy to rile up. Aren't you like, twenty-something? Actually, I could figure out for myself how old you are if you gave me the date."

"I'm twenty-nine." Diego growls, like that was the point.

"Haunting!" Five says cheerfully, because that means there is way less time than he would like, narrowing his time down to a six month window.

It's extremely funny how his cheer makes all of them make faces.

It's Klaus who leans forward, "Why do you need to know?"

Klaus's face is open and curious and - (looks exactly like he did when Five found him all those years ago) - and Five can't help but answer him. "The world end on April 1st, 2019. No it isn't an April Fools joke, yes I have heard that joke like a million different times. I just want to know how close I landed so I can, you know, start working on how to fix that."

"Woah woah woah, roll it back." Allison says, holding a hand up, "What?"

"The apocalypse occurs on April 1st, 2019." Five says, slowly. "I have traveled from afar to prevent this from happening, because like, everyone dies."

"Everyone?" Vanya says weakly from the side.

She's clearly expecting to be ignored, so Five turns his head to address her directly by wiggling his hand back and forth a little. "Sort of. Like, not too many people survive at all. A handful of the human population, you know."

"But you survived?" Diego recovers admirably, if bitingly.

"Well, no." Five says rolling his eyes, "Wouldn't you just know it, Klaus here has managed to figure out a new ability!"

Everyone turns to look at Klaus, who immediately holds up his hands like he's being arrested or something, "I did not!"

"Wonderful! Now that we've established that I'm alive -"

"Why should we trust a word you say?" Luther says for the first time, looking pensive.

Five blinks, genuinely taken aback. "Because... I'm your brother? Because I can clearly and obviously time travel? Like, yeah, it would have been more convenient if I'd arrived in like, my old-body for proof-purposes, but like. I mean. Thirteen is still a pretty convincing age to be to prove time travel considering if I hadn't, I would be like, almost thirty."

"Roll it back again." Allison says firmly, "What do you mean by 'old body'?"

"Great question!" Five says pointing at Allison and smiling. Everyone looks at him weird again, and Five takes a moment to wonder if they've ever experienced positive reinforcement. Knowing Reginald, probably not. "Wait! Is Reggie alive? Wait, no, answer that in a second. Uh. When I time traveled I fucked up my body I guess, I was like, old. White hair and wrinkles-type old from spending decades in the apocalypse. But I fucked up the calculations and got booted back to my thirteen-year-old body, I guess. How, I have no idea."

"What?" Vanya says, still equally weakly.

"You have no idea how fucked up time travel is." Five whispers conspiratorially to Vanya, loud enough for the whole table to hear, "There are so many ways to die. Or permanently tear a hold in space time. But like, with life as we know if ending soon-ish, I figured I couldn't possibly fuck it up worse than it already was, y'know? Speaking of, anyone have the date again?"

"Wait, what was that about dad?" Luther asks, very focused.

"Oh, you still call him dad? Big oof." Five says automatically, because apparently his verbal filter is shot to hell after living with Dolores. It does make Klaus bark out a too-loud laugh.

"What does that mean?" Luther asks aggressively.

"It means Reginald sucks and doesn't deserve the title of 'dad,' what did you think I meant?" Five asks, and now both Diego and Vanya and both cracking smiles, though Vanya is covering hers with a hand.

"Have some respect for the dead." Luther growls, standing up and looking very large and threatening.

Five sways back, craning his head up, "Woah there big buy, sit down before I injure my poor growing spine looking up at you. Jeeze, did Reggie force feed you steroids or something? I wouldn't put it past him but like, I just want to know he at least went over the side effects of the drug with you. Also like, thanks for narrowing it down. Also terrifying! Seriously though, exact date please because if I have less than 24 hours I am going to break down crying and that is a threat."

"I love this Five." Klaus says reverently.

"March 21st." Vanya offers, finally.

"Wow! Terrifying!" Five says, clapping his hands together, "Hate that. Ten days, huh? Well, who wants to get on board the save-the-world express?"

Klaus immediately flings his hand in the air, Five points at his brother appreciatively. "Yes, excellent! I'll take the volunteer in the lovely skirt as my first team member. Any other volunteers?"

"Danke!" Klaus simpers, grinning widely like this is the vest entertainment he's had in weeks.

"I'm not just going to stand here and listen to you badmouth dad and boss us around." Luther slams his hands on the table.

"Well not with that attitude." Five snarks.

Diego raises his hand, "I would like to join team fuck dad as well."

"We can certainly debate team names later." Five says, nodding wisely as Luther gives some sort of scandalized gasp.

"Honestly, I just want to see where this is going." Klaus confesses.

Five shrugs, because he doesn't really care about the reason. "Don't you want to prove me wrong them? Prove what a well-adjusted young man Reginald Hargreeves raised?"

"Shut up." Luther grinds out, looking a moment away from throwing a punch.

"If this is all true, I have to get home." Allison cuts in, looking concerned, "I have - I have a daughter."

"I mean, if you want to give Claire a world to live in then I'd stick around, but that's just me." Five shrugs.

"You know her name?" Allison asks, obviously taken aback.

Five is almost offended, "Uh, yeah. I have her photo as well. Y'all get on like, a bizarre number of gossip magazine covers did you know that?"

Allison manages to outdo herself in terms of being taken aback once more.

There's a beat of silence, and then Five turns, "Vanya? You in?"

"Me?" Vanya blinks, looking shocked. "What can I do?"

"Yeah, what can she do?" Diego asks, crossing his arms and suddenly looking grumpy.

It baffles Five, who scrunches his nose, "Uh, like, a lot? I assume? I mean. I'm going to be honest here, just looking at y'all right now is a lot. In more ways than one! Hashtag trauma and all that, but like, name a single one of you that wouldn't be the most obvious person in the room as soon as you walked into it. Except Vanya, who somehow manages to look like a well adjusted adult, by some miracle."

"Did you just verbally say the word hashtag?" Allison asks, looking so deeply confused.

"More concerned about the trauma he tacked onto there, but y'know, to each their own." Klaus immediately cuts in.

"You think I'm well-adjusted?" Vanya asks, looking oddly touched.

"I would like to direct your attention to Diego's leather pants-scowl combo and Luther's general aura of daddy-issues." Five says pointedly, "I can practically smell the tragic comic book backstory in this room. If I'd jumped back a decade earlier this would have been Batman's wet dream of orphan selection."

"Alright! Game plan!" Five says, waving Diego's knife in his hand.

Diego's hands immediately go to his weird harness looking thing, "Hey!"

"Give me just one moment to get the tracker out." Five rolls his eyes, "Then I'll give it back, I promise. Also if someone could ask Grace for like, some antibiotics that would be good."

"What?" Allison asks, directly before Five stabs himself and there is suddenly panic at the table.

"Relax!" Five says, allowing Diego to remove the knife from his hands. He doesn't need it anyway and his hand immediately drops down to root in the wound.

"Five what the fuck!" Diego yells, but Five just pulls up bloody fingers and waves the tracker into Diego's stupefied face.

"What the fuck is that, Five?" Allison demands, looking very shaken.

"I literally just said it was a tracker." Five points out, "Now, I think our first team activity should be voting on whether we destroy it or take it out to bumfuck nowhere and ditch it to confuse the Commission."

"What the fuck is the Commission?" Diego barks.

"Man. Maybe I should just hit up Rick." Five muses, "This is going to take so much explaining."

"Who is Rick."

"So much explaining."

[samwontshare]

Okay my unasked for thoughts on Shang-Chi!

I left Shang-Chi just having enjoyed it start to finish.

Some things that stood out to me:

-Unapologetic subtitles for like 20 minutes! Yea!

-I love that the movie had not only a largely Asian cast but Asian folx behind the camera as well. It would not be the hit it is without that representation.

-The San Francisco bus scene. I live in the Bay so this was just hilarious to me. That absolutely no one reacted to a fight on MUNI was so spot on for SF, that poor woman who just wanted to work on her laptop that Shang-Chi destroys. Hilarious.

-the repeated themes of family and legacy and trauma. Reconciling the beautiful parts of your life with the worst things that have happened to you. What I appreciate about narratives like this is that Wenwu is clearly a villain, but is also suffering and his suffering created the suffering of his children. But Wenwu wasn’t discarded as a one note bad father who would just let his kids die because he never cared. It was a twisted and misguided and selfish love laden with unprocessed grief. There was only one ending for him but knowing that it was coming didn’t make it less tragic for everyone involved.

-Wenwu is hands down one of the best MCU villains and the most developed. While this story wasn’t aimed at me, as someone who had a very abusive father who passed on before we could really reconcile, I appreciate stories that move past the two reductive outcomes - “you should just forgive your abusive parents Bc they had it hard too” and “you should live angry, your parent is reduced to only what they did that hurt you.” There is a lot of healing that Shang-Chi and Xialing have to do, but there was grace in giving depth to all three characters involved. Giving space for complex feelings is always a breath of fresh air. And the tragedy is that there was so much more to say, so much potential to heal that was stolen away.

-the fight choreography was lovely.

-Awkwafina in the same scenes as the dragon - shout out to another queercoded movie, Raya.

-love Shang-Chi and Katy as BFFs. I appreciate that but the MCU has more male and female friendships than it does female friendships so I was especially excited for Katy and Xialing.

-love how much chemistry Katy and Xialing had 👀 Can we talk about how two unrelated female characters got to talk! About their own lives, unrelated to dating! And compliment each other! I was STOKED that Xialing’s trauma wasn’t cut out, that she rode the dragon, too! She was equally her mother’s daughter. Her daddy issues weren’t erased! She takes over the fucking empire! I want her and Mai Ling from Warrior to keep living their best underground empire lives. You’re doing great, Xialing.

-This movie despite some very dark themes was still hilarious. The two scenes with their overachieving friends. I never knew I needed them to bring back Trevor and close the loop on the problems in Iron Man 3. They didn’t let it slide! What happened to him in the end?

-Xialing and Shang-Chi bringing me big daddy issues angst stop I’m going to fall in love with you.

-Aw Katy got to find her calling. Love that for her. For all the kids who aren’t good enough for their parents.

-Wong! I love that we are setting up Wong for having his own thing going on. What’s he doing with the Abomination?? When will this come up again Bc we know it will? I love that it’s Wong who brings them into the fold. I can’t wait for Sam Wilson to lead the new Avengers with these two on the team.

-So the 10 rings connect maybe to Eternals or….? Celestials maybe?

-best post credit scenes ever

My quibbles:

-oh look another disabled villain played by an able bodied person who gets no development but their prosthesis is a weapon so you know they’re a bad guy. The MCU is resurrecting the stereotype of the physically disabled villain for yet another movie. Casual ableism and no recognition of disability as an oppressed identity is par for the course for the MCU so idk why I bother feeling annoyed with it.

-I could have done without the “perfect dead mother” trope who sacrificed over and over and over but they did make an effort to give her some agency rather than live undeveloped on a pedestal. Her importance permeates throughout the movie. So it wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t as bad as most movies.

-I wanted to see Katy’s family again! Thought they were gonna.

So overall a lot of fun. One of the better MCU movies hands down. Who doesn’t want to see a giant dragon battle? Would watch again. I want to see Shang-Chi and the Widows and Bucky all hang out in the “forced to be an assassin” club. Xialing can come too and fall in love with Yelena.

[drivingsideways]

In your experience, how much can a fic really improve after a shitty first draft? I can never just make myself keep writing without editing because I always think: the better the first draft, the better the final product :(

Hi! 

First a disclaimer: I am not the best editor! I hate it! When the first draft is done,  my impulse is to get “rid” of the story as fast as I can; I often feel emotionally done with the fic before I’m actually done with fixing it, even at like, basic proof- reading level. And that’s something I’m trying to fix as a writing process, but I don’t always succeed. The luxury of fanfic writing is that it’s so low stakes that you can do this, and feel only a mild pinch of conscience. 

Anyway, trufax: I don’t have the kind of patience that @rain-hat has for revisions. And I can see the difference in the quality of the fic! So this is why I’m trying to internalize and nurture within myself some discipline and patience.  

So this “first draft only has to exist” rule is really something I currently use when I’m feeling particularly stuck. Which happens a lot, especially when writing long fics, or feeling that my fic is getting out of hand. (As I write this, I’m side-eyeing my current WIP where I really want to write just That One Scene, but I’m finding myself writing 5k words of back story to get there.) 

Anyways!  I think the point of first drafts- they are allowed to be shitty. Second, I don’t think first drafts are actually first drafts in the sense that they’re not just top of the head, no filter brain to paper/ word doc writing! It’s just the first version of the story where it’s completed in the most basic sense, but within it lies many “drafts” that you’ve discarded along the way. 

Ok, so first, the different ways in which first drafts are shitty. There are so many. 

There’s the kind where at some point you realize that ohhh, a key plot point is resting on something totally unworkable/ untenable even within the universe of your fic, forget “real life.”  This is probably something you should fix straight up, as you write, because otherwise you end up with a lot of rewriting and midnight cursing.

Then there’s the kind where  you’ve got midway or even three-fourths through your initial plan, and  it feels patchy and incoherent- maybe you aren’t hitting the right emotional notes in sections or you’ve bogged yourself down in subplots that felt necessary when you started, but now JUST WON’T WRAP UP. This is the kind of thing where I think it’s super useful to remember that you can fix it later. Give the story some time to rest with you, and sometimes, writing ahead actually clarifies what it was that wasn’t working before. Enjoy going down the rabbit hole with whatever silly subplot or character is demanding your attention. Once it’s done, literally cut that section out into another document or something and let it sit there! Then come back. You’re a fic writer! There’s no deadline! Nobody outside of you ever even needs to read these parts where you reveal your obsession with idk, wine prices in 18th century NY, or whatever. It can be fixed!

There’s the kind of shitty where the sentences just sit there like ungainly rocks on a hill and you’re frantically looking up synonyms for “said”. Adjacent is the kind of shitty where you’ve been swinging between tenses like a trapeze artist within the same sentence. This is the kind of thing I’d say you can fix relatively stress free- even if you cringe a lot as you go through the edit. Thank god your English teacher won’t ever see this kind of thing.  I’m REALLY bad at this kind of fixing though, so if I can bamboozle kind souls into beta reading for me, then I do so pretty shamelessly. But wow, it’s amazing just how much, idk, just neat punctuation and fewer adverbs will improve the readability of the fic dramatically.  If you don’t have a beta reader- I think it’s great to take a few days off entirely from the fic, until you’ve more or less forgotten what you wrote. Fresh set of eyes- even your own- can help this part a LOT! 

So the other thing I mentioned- the first draft isn’t actually “first”. 

I’m also a fan of editing as I go along, or going back to a previous section to tweak things. Sometimes I write a chapter, and then wake up the next morning and think, well, that wasn’t great, and I’m not able to move on until I fix it. So then I do that, and the "first draft” version may more or less be this “second” version.  And y’know, I know some fic writers who will draft and redraft each paragraph as they go along because they can’t get to the next section in their heads until they do that. And that’s fine, if that’s working for you! But for me, what happens is that I run out of patience, and then stress myself out, which makes the “imperfect” section have even less of a chance of being fixed. 

So this is where non linear writing helps me, as a trick, to move the story along while also keeping me mentally in a good place re: the story. In my most recent fic, I actually wrote the end and then went back to the beginning. Which was a very, very weird thing to do, even for me--but after the prologue, that I’d written first, I just wasn’t able to make the introductory chapter work. Just staring at blank pages and feeling a rising panic. Because I was in that obsessive stage with the fic, y’know, when you’re thinking about it constantly , but the problem was I wasn’t thinking about the chapter I was supposed to write, it was the chapter I wanted to write. So that’s what I did! 

 And I think this trick works if your story isn’t very plot heavy; or it is, but you do have a good and detailed plot outline done. That way, you don’t mess up too much in terms of continuity and so on.  Sometimes I find that just making chapter headings clear my head out A LOT. Also then I can do the - ok, you have 3 chapters to go ONLY. (Lies, this will become 5, but still.) Anyway, having some kind of progress bar does help a lot! 

Ok, this is extremely long and somewhat rambly. I hope it’s encouraging! 

Last thing: it’s fine if you trash the first draft and start all over. (Ok, don’t REALLY trash it, keep it there. You’ll find some of it would be useful!)  Anyways, lots of pro authors say that their first draft and the final version are completely different- so you know, sometimes that does happen. Maybe the right thing to do IS trash it, and approach the story or the characters from a different perspective. It’ll be hard to do, and you need to allow yourself space and time to mourn the bits you’re trashing (the grief is REAL!) but at the end of the day, you’ll free yourself to write the better version of the story! 

Ok, really shutting up now. :D

Take care and best of luck with your writing projects!

[the-hopeless-haze]

Someone You Have to Let In (Being Alive Chapter 7)

A/N: this is another long one - like 5-6k words? IDK! Someone needs to stop me lol. This chapter gave me so much grief so I hope you enjoy :)

Warnings: mentions of past abuse, suspect gets handsy; par for the course for SVU episode

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PREVIOUS CHAPTER

Rafael walks up the stairs to the precinct, his pulse racing and his heart pounding in his ears. Even his stomach feels queasy, and he can’t remember the last time he was ever this anxious. Olivia called him at one in the morning, saying she needed him there to talk about where they could get with this case. She never mentioned you - and he knew you were set up to be the thirst trap. Why wouldn’t she say anything about how you were? All he can think is the worst, and of course, she wouldn’t say anything to him. She may have suspected something was going on between the two of you, but she was never going to push his buttons and call him out on it over the phone. But that also meant that if you were hurt... he’d be the last to know. You hadn’t called him on your own, either, so something must have happened.

And sure enough, when he gets to the bullpen you’re at your desk, alone, huddled in a shock blanket, staring listlessly at the walls. Your makeup is done up like a working girl’s, all heavy dark eyeshadow and red lipstick, and he can see peeks of a tight sequined black dress underneath the blanket and torn fishnets on your legs. Eventually, your gaze meets his and you furrow your brow in confusion as he walks quicker toward you.

“What’s the matter with you?” you ask.

“What's the matter with me? (Y/n), what the hell? Why didn’t you call me?” he asks frantically. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Rafael,” you say as he kneels down in front of you. “Be quiet. They’re going to hear you and Sonny’s gonna be back any minute.“

“You think I care about that? What the hell happened?”

“Nothing! I’m fine. Olivia just didn’t want me in the room with him. It’s okay,” you mutter, shrugging. “I’m only wearing the blanket because I’m cold. Nothing happened to me.”

Rafael walks over to you and kneels down in front of you, peeling the blanket off to reveal fresh bruises and scratches, the imprints of another man’s fingertips and nails brandishing the skin of your shoulders. “Nothing happened to you? Bullshit. What’s all over your arms, cariño?”

“He got handsy. What did you think was going to happen? But do you honestly think Olivia would let anything worse than that happen to me? I’m okay,” you say defensively as tears build up in your eyes.

“You don't look okay! Why are you crying, then? (Y/n)--"

“Why are you yelling at me?” you cut him off, your voice straining as you wipe under your eyes with the back of your hands, black streaks of eyeliner smudging onto them. “Jesus Christ. You’re making me feel like I'm the one you're prosecuting. Go do your job. Don’t worry about me.”

But he did worry, now, because you had somehow figured out how to weasel into his life even though the No Vacancy sign was flashing. And it doesn’t even feel like a choice, it feels more like he owes it to you, and he’s honestly not sure how much he likes that. Still, though, he presses his lips to yours and takes off his suit jacket, draping it around your shoulders, giving you something of him to comfort you and put over the wounds someone else caused you. And isn’t that all love is? A healing balm for the pain we’ve been caused?

Rafael swallows thickly. He can’t be bothered to think of that now. He cares about you, but he doesn’t love you. Right?

Okay then.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. Stop crying,” he says, trying to level his voice.

You laugh a little, a few tears still rolling down your cheeks. “Wow. You could teach a class on comfort. Stop crying? Who knew that was all anyone had to say?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do,” he whispers, reaching down and squeezing your hands.

“Hey. You got me to laugh. And anyway... It’s okay. I told you I’m fine.”

You don’t say anything else, and Rafael really doesn’t know what else to do, so he just kisses you, one of his hands leaving yours to smooth down your hair.

“I’m okay,” you whisper against his lips as you pull away. “You weren’t called here because of me. Go do your job.”

“(Y/n)—“

But he’s cut off from continuing because he hears the bullpen office door open and he glances up at you. “I told you Sonny was gonna be back,” you whisper, and your eyes are urging him to go but it’s too late. You’re still wearing his suit jacket and Rafael has your lipstick on his mouth. The unspoken “secret” is going to be spoken now, and fuck it, maybe it’s about time.

“Hey, (y/n), they didn’t have that tea you wanted so I got you a hot chocolate and... oh. I’m sorry. Am I interrupting something?” he says as he walks in, standing in front of your desk with a tray of hot drinks and a bag of pastries.

“No,” you say. “Rafael was just gonna go see what Liv needed.”

“I know that, but I mean...” His blue eyes dart between you and Rafael knowingly and he grins. “Guess you weren’t lying about the boyfriend just so I’d stop trying to set you up with my Fordham buddies.”

“No,” you say, winking at Rafael. “I deserve better than that, anyway. I like ‘em Harvard Law educated.”

Even Rafael has to laugh at that, especially when Carisi rolls his eyes as he puts the food down on his desk. “You got her dogging Fordham now, Barba? She used to be such a nice girl, too.”

“Mm. Rafael made me mean just like him,” you giggle, clearly having too much fun with this. “He’s an awful influence.”

“Well, damn. I guess Amanda was right. I mean, we all kinda figured, but... Amanda would’ve bet her whole life savings that something was going on. Well, good for you guys. You want me to keep my mouth shut, too, or...?”

“Can we trust you to?” you ask.

“Won’t even tell Sarge. Promise.”

“Mm. No. It’s okay, (y/n),” Rafael interjects was he glances at you. “I think it’s time we give up the charade, don’t you?”

“I’ve only been saying that for a good two months,” you tease, but you lean over and press your lips to the side of his mouth. Was this how you were going to be, now that you could show affection in front of them? Maybe this is part of why he wanted it under wraps; he didn’t want the squad to see just how much he had let you into his life. He has a reputation to uphold, and a lot of it was built on the fact that he came off as stoic, stern, and standoffish. And yet, with a simple touch, you destroyed that illusion and made it seem like the front that it was.

“Olivia’s going to be wondering where you are. I’m fine. Go,” you tell him, and he nods, squeezing your hand again before getting up and heading down the hallway to meet her.

The case seemed simple enough, although he needs a positive ID from the rape victims and the suspect wasn’t budging. He kept telling Amanda that you wanted it, and it’s all Rafael can do to not break through the glass and choke him out. And it’s not that Rafael was jealous, because he wasn’t. As long as you wanted him more than others, that was all that mattered, and he knows you’d never want this son of a bitch in a million years. But he’d never quite had the sympathy for upset significant others in these situations until now. Listening to this asshole talk in hypotheticals about what he’d do to you? Thank god you weren’t subjected to listen to this.

“Sorry for waking you up,” Olivia says. “But thank you for coming. I wanted to know what you thought when we brought him in.”

“It’s fine, Liv,” he says. “I don’t sleep anyway. Besides, it’s always good to get ahead. Is (y/n) set to testify? She’s going to need to, considering she was bait and...I know that can be difficult for her. I just want this airtight.”

“She’s just a little shaken right now. Did you talk to her when you came in?”

“Yes. You know what happened to her, though, when she was younger, don’t you? I just don’t think it’s fair to have her be the one who draws the suspects out like that, considering..."

Olivia’s eyes widen and she touches his shoulder, forcing him to look at her worried facial expression. “Did she say something to you? I know she can push herself too far sometimes, but I wouldn’t have allowed this if I thought she wasn’t able to handle it.”

“No. I think she can handle it. I just don’t think she should have to.”

Her hand squeezes his shoulder gently before letting go, and she gives him a tight smile. "I know. It's really sweet that you care so much, though, Rafael. I guess you really do have a soft spot for her, hm?"

"Oh Jesus Christ, Olivia. Just say that you know I've been seeing her outside of work,” he sighs exasperatedly.

Olivia laughs, her brown eyes gleaming. "I was wondering if you were ever going to tell me. Carisi catch you?"

"Maybe."

"So how long? Amanda thinks six months, but I wasn't sure."

Rafael snickers. "You need to keep her on a leash. But no. She's right. It's been about six months."

"Well, good for you, Rafael."

“So what happens now?”

“You take her home.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“You’re not upset?”

“Upset? Why would I be upset? I think you two are good for each other. You keep her grounded, she keeps you young.”

Rafael scoffs. “Nice armchair psychoanalysis.”

“Is that why you tried to keep it hidden, though? You thought I was going to be upset?”

“I don’t know. I’m a lot older—“

“Not my concern. If she's okay with it, who am I to intervene? She’s not someone I ever pictured you with, but... like I said. You’re good for each other, and I trust you to keep things in line. You have so far.”

“Maybe not, if everyone figured it out."

"Well, you may be careful to a fault, Rafael, but subtlety is not your strong suit."

"Do I want to know what that refers to?"

"Probably not," she says, her brown eyes teasing. "But I was sitting next to you at the bar a few weeks ago and that's when I knew without a shadow of a doubt."

It takes Rafael a minute to think back to what she might be thinking of - so what, he left abruptly? Amanda was the one who got you two in a cab together... and then he remembers his hands between your thighs and your hands between his, and he feels his face flush of its own accord. "I'm sorry--"

"Keep in mind that I have eyes, and this is fine with me, okay?" Olivia laughs. "You might have a tougher time with the D.A., though."

Rafael shrugs, willing his blush to cool down. "I'll deal with it when the time comes.”

Just then, Amanda and Nick come out from the interrogation room, and immediately Amanda’s saying, “Hey, what’s got Barba all flustered? (Y/n) in that dress too much for him?”

Rafael shoots Olivia a glare. “That leash? It needs to be about ten inches shorter.”

Olivia chuckles and looks at Amanda. “Cat’s out of the bag, Amanda. You were right. He just admitted it.”

“Son of a bitch,” Nick sighs. “I can’t believe I’m going to be out $100 for this shit.”

“You actually bet on us?” Rafael asks incredulously. “You two are unbelievable. I thought you weren’t supposed to gamble, Rollins?”

“It’s not gambling when you know you’ll win, is it?” Amanda grins. “Thanks for the $100, Barba.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he snarks.

“You charging him so we can get out of here?” Nick asks.

“Yeah. Attempted assault for now so we can book him,” Rafael says, nodding.

Rafael talks to the suspect’s lawyer and has a conversation that will give him a headache into tomorrow, but there isn’t much to be said when there’s footage of him grabbing you thanks to cameras set up outside the club. And for the first time, he gets to leave the precinct with you without staggering your departure times so the squad didn’t see you leave together. He's surprised at how nice it is, even if he could do without Amanda and Carisi's comments.

“I told you it wouldn’t be so bad if they knew. I honestly don’t think they care as much as you thought they were going to,” you say as you walk with him down the stairs, your hand in his. You’re still clad in his suit jacket, wearing it like it was yours now, even buttoning one of the buttons toward the top.

“Still. It’s not exactly appropriate that we’re seeing each other.”

“Yeah, I know. But thank you for coming around.”

Rafael doesn’t say anything, just hails a cab. You lean your head against his shoulder as you wait, your tousled hair brushing against his lips. “Are you sure you’re alright? I watched the footage and—“

“I’m fine, Rafael. Really. Bruises will heal.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

You’re about to answer but a cab pulls over and you get in wordlessly, Rafael following. He thinks you’re about to continue, but you don’t, you stay silent.

“(Y/n)? Talk to me,” he says gently after a few moments.

You draw in a breath, nodding slowly. “Yeah. I’ll be alright, honey. I mean, I had to expect that would happen. This is what happens when you’re the youngest female detective on the squad... and... let’s just say I look forward to getting older.”

“They can’t force you to go undercover like that. I can talk to—“

“No. You’re not talking to anyone for me, tough guy,” you say, smiling softly. “It’s not like that. I offered. I hate doing it, but...whenever I do, I just think about how I’m going to get away practically unscathed because I have a whole team of detectives watching out for me. What about all those girls who don’t have that? I’m doing it for them, so we get these pieces of shit off the street. It’s just... what gets to you is them looking at you like another piece of meat. That’s what haunts me, that’s what’s going to keep me up at night... but I’m okay.”

“It doesn’t sound like it! Jesus Christ.”

“It was worse doing it for homicide in Boston, looking into eyes that envisioned you dead,” you say, and Rafael feels a shiver run up his spine. “Believe me. I’ve had worse nights.”

“I just don’t think you should be doing it at all, though, given what happened to you—“

“It’s part of the job. It’s not the same. I expected this,” you murmur, and you’re silent for the rest of the ride, and you’re silent as you walk up to the apartment with him, and you’re silent as you take your makeup off in his bathroom, sullen tears slipping from your eyes down your cheeks. Rafael stands in the doorway, feeling that pit in his stomach grow stronger.

“Cariño? Why are you crying? Did I push you too far? I’m sorry.” He walks in, coming to stand next to you.

“It’s... the rape. Sometimes I still feel like I’ll never get over it.”

“Oh, bebita,” he exhales, his heart breaking a little, you seeping in through the cracks. In his career, he dealt with many victims of horrible things, men and women of similar circumstances to yours. He never quite thought about what happened to them after he prosecuted their rapists, never thought of the havoc it could wreak even decades later, and now he feels terrible for it. Who was he to think his prosecution of their rapists did anything more than placate them momentarily? “Did I do something wrong? I shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s not you. You’ve been so good,” you say, wiping your eyes with the tissue, a few leftover streaks of mascara bleeding onto it. “I don’t know. I was always told I’d never be a detective by my superiors in the academy, that I’d be stuck doing desk work because I was ‘too emotional’ or ‘too damaged’. I lasted a week in the Crimes Against Children Unit in Boston. A fucking week! The only reason I ever made it out onto the field was because the homicide lieutenant was desperate for staff. He would alternate between keeping the training wheels on and then taking them off, and it was just sickening. I never felt like a real detective. And here, I mean... Olivia’s like that too, kind of, but at least she only makes me step back when it is absolutely necessary. I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have been a detective. It would’ve been nice to have one part of my life this didn’t touch.”

“Come here,” Rafael says quietly, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and he lets you into his embrace, hugging you tightly into his chest. “You’re a great detective, and I’m not just saying that, (y/n). But you don’t have to do this to do your job. I don’t see Carisi wearing skintight dresses and I don’t see him with bruises up and down his arms, and he still gets paid the same as you.”

“Mm, Sonny in a skintight dress? That’d be something to see,” you giggle. “But I told you why I do this. It’s not just because I want to prove myself to the NYPD, it’s to protect those girls—“

“Okay. That’s admirable. But you’re paying for it now. And who’s protecting you?” You lift your head from his chest to look at him incredulously; as if he just figured out the world’s most complex math problem, and maybe he did just figure out one of your enigmas. “Let’s get you out of this dress, hmm?”

“I don’t want to have sex tonight,” you murmur. “Sorry—“

“That isn’t what I meant,” he says quietly. “Don’t apologize to me.”

“Oh?” you ask, your brow furrowing even more. “I thought—“

"No. Come on."

And it's quiet as he unzips your dress, as you slip one of his shirts over his head, as both of you brush your teeth before heading to bed. Rafael thinks you fell asleep as you're still silent for a few moments, staying stiff on your side of the bed, but you turn over and say, "Thank you, Rafi."

"For what?"

"For being so understanding. For being here, you know?" you say, pressing your lips to his. "I don't like to bring up my exes, but a lot of them just didn't get it and they just made me feel like I was never gonna be normal."

Rafael pulls you into his chest, kissing the top of your head. "You deserve so much better than that," he says, all too aware of how hollow that statement is. Of course you did. But was he really that much better? And did you love those exes? Was that all you were destined for, loving men who would never let you into their lives? You'd probably picked the most emotionally unavailable man on the block this time. But he wants to let you in, needs to, even if it terrifies him. He does care about you that much, and you had weaseled your way into most aspects of his life.

Still, though, there was a huge part of his life you hadn’t been introduced to: his Mami.

He has to let you meet her. You’ve been asking, maybe even practically begging, and he has to now. There’s a list of men and women he slept with that his mother never met, and maybe that’s a sin, maybe that’s what will send him to hell, because yes, maybe those rules about abstaining from sex before marriage are antiquated, but at least your mother should meet her, preferably before you bang her. He was too late for before, now, but you have to at some point.

The problem was that he hadn't mentioned you to his mother at all.

"Six months, Rafael Eduardo Barba, six months, you been taking this girl out on dates, you been buying her dinners, having her over your apartment, sleeping with her, and you don't have the decency to tell your mother? Ay, what is she like? Is she bonita? Is she inteligente? Oh, Rafa, is she Catholic?" His mother's phone tangent almost never ended. She wanted to know everything about you down to your social security number. Part of it was probably due to the fact that he hadn't introduced anyone to his mother in at least three years, maybe five, and she hated the last woman with a passion. God, Rafael barely remembered her name now, and he thinks Alex set him up with her.

He almost thought his mother passed out when he told her how old you were. But then, of course, she said it was a sign from God and that you were going to give her at least three grandchildren, preferably five. It was always one of Lucia Barba’s biggest regrets that she only had one child, having grown up with seven siblings, but Rafael always saw it as a blessing in disguise. His father didn’t need any more targets.

God, that phone call was hell. But he has to let you into his family life, so... it was going out to dinner with his mother on a Wednesday night.

“When am I going to meet your parents?” He asks you at dinner while you’re waiting for his mother to show up.

You smile. “We’ll see.”

“Not really fair.”

“My parents are miles away. Your mother is a cab ride away. It’s really not fair that I haven’t met her yet.”

“You use up all your vacation days to go see your brother. You could’ve taken me to meet them any of those times. You’ve gone at least three times since we’ve started dating.”

“Well. You’re always busy when I go.”

“I can ask for time off, (y/n),” he says, but that thought is left on hold as his mother walks in the restaurant, heading straight for their table. He smiles when he sees her, getting up and hugging her and kissing her cheek.

You get up too, scooting out of the booth behind Rafael. You shake her hand. “It’s so nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Barba. I’m (Y/n).”

“Si, it’s nice to meet you too, sweetheart. You can call me Lucia. So. How did you meet my boy?"

“Work,” you say, sliding back into the booth before Rafael. “He works with the squad I’m on.”

“Yes. Special victims unit. Tough job. You must be a tough woman,” she says, sympathetically. “Now...You’re a lot younger than my boy,” she says after a few minutes and Rafael almost slams the table and walks out. God, he loves his mother but this wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.

“What is it, 15 years, give or take?” you ask, turning to Rafael.

“Seventeen,” he murmurs, feeling sick. He’s never felt so old. There was his mother, who had him at seventeen years old. What the hell did she actually think about him being with you?

“Do your parents know how old he is?” Mami asks.

You nod, which surprises him. He didn’t know you’d had that conversation. “He hasn’t met them yet, though.”

“Ay, at least you have a good excuse. They live away. You know, I haven’t met anyone in a few years. Rafa’s been a priest. Or didn’t like them enough to bring them to me. You must be special.”

Thankfully, the waiter comes over, takes everyone’s order, and Rafael is able to rein the conversation in a little, talk about work, the weather, anything other than the topics his Mami was particularly drawn to. You ask about his abuelita, and his mother frowns.

“She doesn’t get out much these days. We’re worried about her health.”

“She should be in a nursing home,” Rafael says, pursing his lips. “She’s stubborn, though.”

“Let her have one more Thanksgiving and Christmas at home, Rafa,” Mami says. “We can talk about that next year.”

“I’d love to meet her,” you say. “Rafael talks highly of her.”

“Ay, she raised him the days I couldn’t. We both owe her so much,” she says, her eyes welling up. “When’s the next time you’re free during the day? Come with Rafa and me and being her groceries. She really never gets to meet Rafa’s girlfriends.”

“I’d love to,” you say, smiling brightly.

"You know, Rafa tells me you cook. You want some recipes?" She asks you. "I've always wanted to pass down abuelita's recipes, but Rafael can barely make rice, and he's never had a girlfriend who could cook either, far as I know."

"I'd love them, thank you! Rafael's always asking if I know how to make Cuban recipes, but I don't."

"Rafael eats too much takeout. I worry about his blood pressure," his mother says.

"That's what I tell him!" you say and Rafael rolls his eyes. Of course his mother would find something to gang up with you on against him. Traitor.

His mother gets a cab, and leaves you and Rafael alone on the street. “Do you think she likes me?”

Rafael laughs, hugging you. “Yes. She wouldn’t give recipes to just anyone, believe me. It’d be hard to dislike you, cariño.” He lets you go, taking your hand in his as you walk down the street toward your apartment a few blocks away.

“Really? Because you hated me when we first met.”

“No, I didn’t. Why are you saying that?”

“You sure didn’t seem like you liked me.”

“I did. I always did.”

“Even when I told you off?”

“Mm. What did you say to me? No woman wants anything to do with me?”

“I guess I might’ve been wrong?”

“You think? I got you to stick around.”

“Hey. It’s been six months. Don’t get cocky. Anyone can do six months.”

He doesn’t say anything, just squeezes your hand. He hadn’t put in over six months with anyone in well, about six years. So maybe not anyone could, but he'd let you in, and you were staying, weren’t you?

“I like her. I see where you got a lot of things from.”

“Really? Everyone used to say I look like my father.”

“I don’t mean you look like her, I mean you act like her.”

“Oh,” Rafael says, pondering on that for a moment. Maybe he could handle looking into his father’s face in the mirror if his mother’s values were truly behind it. “When do I meet your parents?”

“Christmas?”

“Why not Thanksgiving?”

“Too soon.”

“How is that fair? And it’s two months away.”

“Fine,” you grumble. “Thanksgiving. All they do when they’re in the same room is fight. I’m not really looking forward to you seeing that.”

Rafael laughs. “Looks like I won’t get in a word in edgewise. Perfect first impression: they won’t even notice me.”

You chuckle. “They care. They’re good parents. But they shouldn’t have had children together, that’s a certainty."

——

His mother calls him that night, a few moments after he gets back to his apartment. “Mami, what are you still doing up?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about that girl?” she asks.

“What?”

“You heard me, Rafael. Don’t play stupid with me, not anymore.”

Rafael sighs. “I just didn’t. I’ve been meaning to.”

“You’re my son. I know when you lie to me. There’s a reason you kept her from me.”

“Mami, I’m 43,” he says heavily.

“I know how old you are, I was there the day you were born. You give me a good reason now, Rafael. Because I don’t understand it. She’s smart, she’s beautiful. She has a good job. I can tell she cares about you. Why did you think I wouldn’t like her?”

Rafael laughs, smiling against his phone. “I knew you’d like her. That’s why I haven’t mentioned her.”

“Ay, Rafael, you make no sense.”

“Yes. I’m aware.”

“So explain to your poor madre!”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up,” he says softly.

“What? My hopes up for what?”

“Don’t make me say it,” he whispers.

“No. You say it, Rafael. Tell me so I don’t make any mistake.”

“I didn’t want you to get your hopes up in case I don’t end up marrying her!” The words hurt as they leave his mouth, turning around and stabbing him in the chest.

“But you did introduce me to her.”

And that’s where Rafael realizes his mistake.

“Do you want to marry this girl, Rafael?”

“I... I don’t know. You know how I feel about that—“

“Hmm. So you give me false hope anyway.”

“I care about her a lot, Mami.”

“But do you care about her enough?”

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? He doesn’t know the answer. You two could never be perfect; could never be the ideal he had in his head because ideals weren’t real. Fairy tale romances didn't exist. So why try? Why get married, get tied down? Why not just keep a distance? You didn’t need to live with him, you didn’t need to take his last name, you didn’t need to have his children. You could just keep him company when he was lonely, and you could leave when he wasn't. And even now - you went back to sleep at your apartment because you had to wake up early the next morning to run with Amanda before work, and he had work to do tonight, and this way you didn't disturb him. It was just easier this way.

Right?

Maybe you didn’t want to get married at all, much less to an old man like him. You were still young, and you had years to settle down and figure things out.

Why was he hesitating? Men like him didn’t get women like you every day, and maybe that’s why men buy rings and ask for signatures on binding documents, he realizes with disgust. It’s why his father did it - his father was a decade older than his mother and he knocked her up and trapped her to a lifetime of suffering before she was legally able to vote or drink. Rafael didn’t want to be like that- you should feel free to leave him without worrying about divorce papers or the wrath of God.

Okay then.

If he could only have the good parts, it'd be fine. Waking up with you in the morning, your homecooked dinners that pull him away from his work just when he's getting fed up, the teasing that drives him up the wall but eases the tension in his shoulders... it's just, when you get upset and cry too much, when he's genuinely trying to work and you want to make out... and, oh, god, when you see him, when you just look at him and act like you know everything he's been through for the past four decades... It's too much. He doesn't want all of that.

Right?

Okay then.

Taglist: @caked-crusader​ @thatesqcrush​ @arabellathorne​ @law-nerd105​

Want to be added to the tags? Let me know!

NEXT CHAPTER

[mego42]

author meme redux

HELLO I’M BACK tagged by @septiembur  to talk about how swaying evergreens came about! 

okay so the backstory goes like this:

A friend of mine and I love playing this game we call to the pain where we send each other songs with instructions to listen to them and think about this ship/scene/story/etc and sit back and watch the other one go completely unhinged and incoherent bc the right song and the right dynamic will Do That To You. she also introduced me to tow’rs and we share a fairly rabid obsession with that band.

fast forward to this past december, she kicks down the door of my messages (or texts me, i suppose, if you want to be boring about it) like hey so tow’rs dropped a christmas album and even though i don’t really go here, special edition of to the pain, listen to swaying evergreens and think of brio. so i did and, even though the song was not a vibe i would generally gravitate towards for them, it hooked me and all i could think about was soft, quiet, snowed in morning sex bc like, idk, have y’all listened to it???? literally what else am i supposed to think about.

ANYWAY so that song lowkey ruined my life and i started crying to @foxmagpie about it as i do. she went a touch feral over the concept and even though i kept saying stuff like but megan! how did they get snowed in? why are they soft with each other? how did they get there from s3? she kept saying stuff like WHO CARES MEG OH MY GOD JUST WRITE IT. it slowly took root in my head and one night i literally sat straight up in the middle of the night (being married to me is SO FUN) like OH WAIT WHAT ABOUT LISTENING VERSE and I decided to write it for megan as a present.

As far as the backstory stuff goes, I’ve alluded to it a bit on here but I’ve lost a bunch of people this year and without getting too into it, one of those losses was very fresh when I got serious about writing swaying evergreens. I’ve been thinking a lot about grief and memory and how it shapes you in ways that never unshape and how we carry pieces of the people we love with us inside ourselves. All of that was compounded by a lot of angst over not being able to be with my family this holiday season and thinking about our traditions throughout the year (shamelessly stole the its a wonderful life stuff from my dad). Additionally I’ve always been mmmm I guess extremely conscious of how little the show gives us with so many of the characters’ backstories (I know we like to point to Rio a lot and true!! extremely valid! but also like, what holidays do Beth and Annie celebrate, you know? they’re all pretty blank slate) and that’s something I haven’t really engaged with much in my fic but something I want to try and get into more.

idek where I’m going with any of this but all of that was on my mind and ended up mixing together with the quiet little romantic pwp I initially wanted to write and the result was swaying evergreens which, fun fact! i have not been able to go back and reread since I posted it because I’m still a touch raw over the whole thing tbh, hahaha.

tl;dr go listen to tow’rs christmas album the holly & the ivy bc even if you’re not into christmas music (which i am VEHEMENTLY AGAINST TBH) it’s beautiful and i love it a lot.

tagging @pynkhues to tell me in detail how fake dating is going to feature in the pirate au which is not at all the point of this meme but she dropped that grenade as i was getting ready to post this and now i can’t think about anything else

okay but also @riosnecktattoo to tell me about how she came to foist clown porn upon us all or heart and soul bc i’m obsessed (or both both is good)

and @bathroombreaks to tell me about the origin of the howl’s au that lives rent free in my head

meme questions

recently I have become really fascinated with fanfic authors and what exactly was rumbling around in their brain that inspired a fic?

Was it a line of dialogue you couldn’t get out of your head?

A scene you wrote WAY in advance and then crafted the whole story around?

An image in your mind?

Inspiration from another form of media?

Maybe someone suggested something to you and it just TOOK off from there?

What is the root of your fic? The cornerstone -what is it all built around? The idea that started it all?

Tag an author & their fic. Let’s hear about what sparked your story. What exactly got your booty movin’ shakin’ motivated and writin’

[alexandrablake]

ombrophobia

word count: 1,668 warnings: this one’s a heavy one. allusion to suicide, major character deaths, language, went on a rant about how i feel when my anxiety is really bad, typical cm violence. all around angst. a/n: yeah, idk, kind of a vent writing. partially inspired by curtains close by @kermitsaysgayrights

ombrophobia (noun): an abnormal and persistent fear of the rain, often caused by negative past experiences.

Maybe it started all those years ago. The water rushing, spilling, overflowing onto her bathroom floor, her sister's body encased in it. It wasn’t the dripping that made her freeze, it wasn’t the dripping that terrified her, but it may have been the dripping  that was the beginning of the end.

She was a young girl the first time it happened and the novelty of the billowing clouds that loomed over Roslyn's fresh grave was lost on her. It was straight out of cinema, the way the sky opened up, rain pouring over the grieving party’s shoulders. 

And, back then, she considered it Roslyn’s final goodbye. She too was shedding tears over her grave, reaching out in the only way she could to take some of the weight off her family and friends. 

Years flew by, rainstorms drowning the world out every so often. She grew up with the rain, the cold, humid Pennsylvania air beckoning it. She got used to having an umbrella tucked away in her bag, she got used to games being cancelled because of poor weather, she got used to the feeling of wet hair plastered on her neck as she walked down the sidewalk.

She never got used to the gloom.

Her father died junior year, heart failure taking him from her grasp. She’d sat by his pristine hospital bed, surrounded in the flowers of well-wishers, and stared out the window. Tear-shaped droplets of water slid down the glass, racing each other to the bottom. They left tracks, bars between her and the world without grief. 

The funeral four days later was all of the same. The world around her was drowned out by the sound of water hitting earth. They’d rushed the burial, none of them wanting to stay out too long in the November rain. Far quicker than she’d wanted, her father was whisked away from her.

She was starting to get sick of the rain.

College was a breeze. Away from her mother, her house, her memories, she could forget what she’d left behind. Afterwards, she moved even further, finally finding something she wanted to do, hoping, praying, that the distance between her and her old life would finally cease the downpour. 

It did for a while. When it rained - and it did rain - there was no burden for her to carry. She’d open her umbrella, step outside, and act like nothing was wrong, because for a while, nothing was. It was easy to pretend she was okay when all she had to do was turn away from the ever growing storm cloud hanging over her. 

Her phone didn’t have disuse in the months after Elle’s resignation. Storms happened for days on end in her absence. Every time a bright flash flew across her view, she had to restrain herself from calling. 

Reid’s kidnapping was her first clue that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t as okay with rain as she thought she was. They’d sat in that hellhole for days, eyes glued to the screen, wishing for just a tiny hint of how to help him. She’d locked herself in the bathroom, eyes averting from the tub, and stared into her own eyes in the mirror. The storm clouds had rolled into the horizon of her life. 

They’d rescued him, but the damage was done to them both. He’d hid his trauma in the depths of his mind, locked the door, and threw away the key. It was a disaster for another day for Spencer. She wished she had that luxury. 

Gideon left, leaving behind rolling claps of thunder. It was dark when Spencer had called her that dreary morning, informing her that their team member was gone, and he wouldn’t be returning. She’d hung up the phone, no tears in her eyes, but the sound of water on her window filled her ears. 

Sometimes, when it was just her, she allowed herself to cry at the sight of rain. After she was reassigned, it rained for two weeks straight, a ceaseless downpour filled her life. Will had sat by her side, arms wrapped around her shoulders, whispering words of reassurance into her hair the first time she broke down in his presence. He didn’t ask questions, as he himself had demons when it came to storms, and for that she was forever grateful.

It rained when she got off the plane after the call. For the first time she had seen rain in months, she’d wished it had been under better circumstances. Prentiss was missing, and so was a piece of herself. She didn’t carry an umbrella so the water would mingle with her salty tears. 

The conversation that she and Hotch had about Emily’s fate had taken place on a bus stop bench, the smell of fresh precipitation floating into their noses. Her hands shook when he reached to help her up, and she didn’t know if it was because of the day’s events or because she knew that her wall against the rain had a large crack in it.

Ironically, it didn’t rain at the funeral. But, god, did it storm in the aftermath. Through his tears, Reid didn’t notice hers. He didn’t notice how her gaze lingered in the collection of water on her windowsill. He didn’t notice how the shoulders his head lay on shuddered. He didn’t notice the incessant whispering that she was doing in an attempt to reassure herself. 

It was the universe laughing at her. “Oh, Jennifer Jareau is sad? Make it rain.” She knew what rain meant symbolically, she remembers that much of high school English. Yet, this was real life. Why the hell did a dark cloud just seem to be following her?

Then Will died. The explosion. Emily’s wordless apology that she couldn’t get out because of her wounds. The lack of a band on her finger. And the fucking rain. 

She had to sit with her child’s arms around her and explain over the torrent that his father was dead. His tiny fingers clutched around her ringless ones told her that he understood what she was telling him. Her eyes fell upon a picture of Rosalyn, and it was all she could do not to scream. 

Henry had insisted on wearing one of Will’s ties to the funeral, a dark blue one with the outlines of clouds on it. Fitting. Her team and what was left of their families gathered around the casket, droplets ricocheting off it as it was lowered into the ground. This time she didn’t leave early.

She sat by his headstone for what seemed like eternity before a gentle hand was laid on her shoulder. Her mother attempted a smile and murmured something about how she was going to get sick from staying out in the rain and cold. She didn’t care. 

Emily left and it rained. 

After Alex Blake retired for good, the shaking really started. Rain rolled in, and the fidgeting followed. She couldn’t sit still, not without panic rising in her chest. She was trapped in a rainy day, never escaping, no more shoulders left to cry on, no funds left to draw out of. 

Penelope tried and failed to help her. When it rained, she delivered bright flowers and had her favorite music echo throughout the hallways, a desperate attempt to drown out the sounds of the cascades on the roof. It was almost comical, but she knew Garcia was just trying to help, and for that she was grateful.

She’d sat on the couch that resided in the former office of Derek Morgan, leg bouncing, nails digging into her palm. Reid joined her every now and then, but the memories of what was no longer oozed from the walls and it was just too much for him sometimes. It was the nail for the coffin she’d lied in since she was eleven.

Little over a year later came the hammer. It was after a bad case, and the image of the girl screaming for her help danced across her vision. There was no one there to comfort her, and so she sat on the bottom of her steps, muffling her cries so she wouldn’t wake up Henry.

Her phone rang. Several times. She ignored it the first few times because there was no way she’d be able to have a functioning conversation, not with the way tears were streaming down her cheeks and air caught in her throat. But she answered when the calling kept coming.

Aaron Hotchner was dead, a collision on the freeway. The other driver hydroplaned, losing control of his car, and ran straight into Aaron. They pronounced Hotch dead on the scene, but Jack, who was riding in the passenger seat, had escaped without much harm. 

And the rain kept pouring.

There was no one to call, no one to inform, except for his brother, who didn’t seem to care too much that his own flesh and blood had just left this earth. The now orphaned Jack was placed permanently in his aunt’s care, and it seemed all too soon that Aaron Hotchner’s legacy had been washed down the storm drain. 

Because it was someone she loved, it rained at the funeral. Hotch was buried in the same cemetery as Will, close enough that if she squinted through her wet lashes, she could make out the outline of his headstone. It was a peaceful location, the spot next to Haley’s under a tree. 

But it was just drowned out by the rain.

There was nothing she could do to stop it, it was the weather, and honestly it was her fault for choosing a state with such dreary weather. But it chased her and it chased her and it chased her until she was cornered. She was cornered in a maze of grief, of loss, of heartbreak. And there was no way for her to escape.

The rain always found her.

[fairycosmos]

chloe what do you do when you feel really suicidal? but like not like before- but NOW that you are grieving such a painful loss? dont need to answer but i read your a. to the anon that felt trapped and like they couldnt leave now bc their sibling died too and like you and that anon i feel the same. im so so suicidal chloe. i cry every day and night and i feel despertate but my parents just lost their child so. how do you cope... as much as its possible. what do we do? fuck.

dude i am so sorry you're in the same position as me and you are going to hate me for saying it but there is no satisfactory answer 😔 it's a cruel joke. we're in the worst pain we've ever been in, and our instinct is to want to make that stop. but we can't because now we're obligated to stay alive, where all the hurt is, because we're one of the only ones left. and we dont want to cause more of this feeling by ending it all. it's like a contract you didn't agree to and are now trapped in for the foreseeable. grief is the absolute heaviest thing a person can carry, it's a fucking nightmare. it doesn't make any sense, it doesn't have a cure and it's disorienting as fuck. it's ok to be exhausted by it. reality has been irreparably  worsened and it's an absolute tragedy,  it's completely unfair. personally i'm more suicidal than i've ever been, but like you, i know i'm not going to do anything.  and in moments of great pain, where i want to act on those thoughts, i find myself coming back to that fact. i watch the idea of suicide run its course through my head and then i acknowledge the reality of things, that i can't leave. that it doesn't matter how sad i am and how tired i am, because i'm still here, and processing these emotions is a part of that. the urge to kill myself is there, but the actual act of suicide has never been less of an option than it is right now. so i can feel whatever i need to feel, but there's no point leaning into it or daydreaming about it. because it's not going to happen. sometimes i'm screaming and crying to myself in absolute agony while this is all going on, and sometimes i'm just sitting staring at my phone, numb. the desperation is very real, and i understand that. but it is not as urgent as it feels in the moment. no matter how many times i think i'm at my limit, i know that there's going to be tomorrow. and at the moment that sounds like a really bad thing. but i know that by waking up my parents aren't getting a call saying i'm dead, which for now is kind of the whole point. i am living to minimize their trauma, i am living for them, and an optimist would have hope that that could keep me alive long enough until i get to the point where i can eventually live for myself again. i could definitely see that for your future, even if you can't. the thing is you don't have to know what to do and you dont have to look for ways to fill the void that has been left behind by your sibling. you just have to learn to exist alongside it, and i do mean just exist. as awful as it is. waking up, putting one foot in front of the other, crying and crying and crying. that is good enough. i know it doesn't feel like much of a life, but. it's the short term answer, or so it seems to me. another thing i remind myself of is how it all comes in waves. waves are the nature of both grief, and strong suicidal urges. maybe they're always running in the background, but the moments of pure despair where you feel like you're bursting at the seams, they're so strong and harsh that they flare out faster than you realize. and they feel unbearable, and i know those moments are very frequent when you're in our position, but it's good to remember that the intensity of their nature makes them temporary.  especially if the grief is fresh, every little thing triggers an avalanche of hopelessness.  but some part of me believes these experiences will either a. become less persistent with time or b. become a part of us we learn how to navigate.  at the moment, the simple act of being completely broken by these episodes means you're surviving them. i think it's not a matter of knowing how to cope, but knowing that if you're here to ask these questions - what do i do, how do i go on, etc - then that is proof you have been coping. and it probably doesn't feel like you have been. i think there's a common misconception that coping is thriving, letting go, having positive memories. and sure that's a part of it. but there is a lot of darkness and absolute horror to work through before that. additionally,  there is no rule book on how exactly to work through it. theres just time, experience, learning what works for you and hanging on. i'm trying to hold my own hand through it, i'm trying to look at the present moment i'm in and just think about what i need at that very second.  not what i'm going to do tomorrow, not what i should've done yesterday, but what i have to do right now to make it through.  a lot of the time the answer is nothing, and i just sit and stare or cry, because like i said, ultimately nothing can fix it. theres no epiphany that can change what happened. 

as far as practical things you can to do combat suicidal thoughts goes, i have a few suggestions that i really hope you consider as viable choices: talk to your doctor/therapist - idk where you live or what your financial situation is like, but if it's at all an option i would really urge you to seek professional help. at least let your GP know what you're dealing with so maybe they can refer you to a therapist, or give you some mental health resources. grief counselling is also a step in the right direction. having someone to talk to and implementing positive coping mechanisms into your day to day life, even if it's the last thing on earth you want to do, can work wonders. understanding your own suicidal thoughts, why you react the way you do and what you can do about it, can really come in handy when you're breaking down. it's ok to reach out. it's ok to visit different counsellors until you find one that fits you. it's ok to treat your emotional turmoil as seriously as you'd treat any physical disease. there is always support and treatment options available in some form, and it is always worth looking into.

call a (grief or suicide) hotline - i've had the hotline number open in my browser for days. if you are in a moment of crisis, it can absolutely help to have someone talk you through your emotions, listen to your pain, and then give you some gentle recommendations as to what you should do next or where to go from here. you don't have to tell them your name, you don't have to say anything you don't want to say. you're in control of the call and they care about keeping you going. you're not alone. theres also online grief support groups - i'm in a sibling loss group on fb.  it's absolutely crazy how many people are in this position. 

talk to your parents/family/friends - i know saying 'this is a tough one' is a giant understatement.  idk if it's the same for you, but i've been isolating to cope and i don't want to tell anyone what i'm thinking because they're already having such a hard time grieving my sister. but if there's anyone you trust, i just want you to know it's alright to lean on them. it's up to you how much you open up, but the urge to keep to yourself leads nowhere. those around you can relate (to an extent) with your grief, and sharing it, talking about memories and crying together - it's fucking awful, god it's the worst thing ever, but it's necessary. and i don't want to say it helps, but a shared burden is always better than trying to shoulder it alone. you deserve to be listened to and supported. and if you think you're being an inconvenience to your loved ones, that's your inner self hatred talking. they would likely rather be there for you when you need it, than have you harm yourself because you kept it all pent up. it's a lot easier said than done, but it's important to keep in mind that it's an option.

try to create a safe space - try to remove things from your living space you could use to harm yourself with, and make the environment as comforting as possible. refer back to safe coping mechanisms/ distractions that have worked in the past - this can be as simple as going for a walk, watching stupid shit on your phone, meditation, having a crying session, writing to your sibling or just about how you feel in general. these are not suggestions that will solve anything or cure mental illness by any stretch of the imagination.  they just get you out of your head. that can really make a difference. 

create a crisis plan and learn what triggers you - this is a bit of a process but that's alright. being able to identify what sets you off, and being able to recognize your own toxic thinking patterns/behaviours, is the first step towards combatting them. another idea is, if you do end up talking to a loved one or a mental health professional, come up with a plan with them regarding what they should do when you're suicidal and your judgement is impaired. you can even start by just making one for yourself, like writing down a few suggestions as to what you should do when you're in a crisis, what your other options besides suicide are. 

i think that's all i've got right now. i'm sorry this got so long, especially when i know nothing truly helps. i just know what it's like having all this useless life in front of you that you're going to have to fight through without the one person who always should've been there. i keep thinking about what she'd say to me if she could see me, and i know she'd be livid if i threw my life away, but. that doesn't change the fact that she didn't get to live hers, and that i miss her so so much it aches. i keep coming back to the idea that our relationship will continue to grow beyond  death. i can still talk to her, reminisce  with her, understand her, love her. so much of this reality was shaped by her. it's not the same as when she was here, but it's not total absence  either.  anyway, i'm so so sorry for your loss and i hope you can just focus on taking care of yourself, love. because your life still has so much worth and you deserve to see your own future even if you cant stand the thought. moments of happiness and peace are still 100% possible. it's just never going to feel like it did before. and it's ok if you spend the rest of your life struggling to come to terms with that fact, because at least you got to live the rest of your life. i'm sending so much love to you and i'll be here if you need a friend. one day at a time.

*no pressure to read all this you can just refer back to it whenever you feel the need

[yasmeensh]

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - The lore

I know this is an art blog but i can’t contain myself and I need to talk about zelda2 lore. Why? You all heard about the botw sequel being darker, much darker. And people made connections to Majora’s mask, because it was a dark sequel. But you know what? Zelda 2 was also a dark sequel. Nintendo are doing it for a THIRD time and I'm proud. Sit tight and maybe grab a snack because this will probably be a long passion essay. Here we go.

Most of you MIGHT be familiar with the storyline of Zelda2, but in summary, here is how it goes: Princess Zelda from an ancient time has been put to spell by a curse. Only the power of the full triforce touched by a pure heart can wake her. Finally after hundreds of years, the chosen one came along (Link). Link must place 6 crystals in 6 palaces to break the spell on the Great palace where the Triforce of courage is enclosed. Once there, he takes the triforce, completes it with the other two pieces, and wakes zelda up. The End.

And Here is the story in MORE detail (unless you are in a hurry , I recommend you read it. The top summary is just for people who have no clue what the story is:

    The king of hyrule always passes down the power of the triforce to his son next-to-be-king. This time however, he wants to give it to his daughter, Zelda, because he believes she is wiser and more considerate than the son. The son was very upset about it and has summoned a wizard to scare the princess and give up the triforce to him. The wizard however, overcome with hatred towards zelda, uses all his magic to put her to an eternal sleep, and he dies (only recently in the hyrule historia has the identity of the wizard been revealed: he is a follower of Ganon, or an embodiment of ganon himself (sort of like ghost ganon in oot or blight ganons in botw. So in this case he might have not died but just extinguished all his powers)). The son, overcome with grief for his sister, promises that every girl born into the Royal family henceforth will be named Zelda. He locks the triforce of courage far away, so only those worthy of it will be able to access it, and leaving the remaining two in the castle, unable to use its full power.

Hundreds of years have passed by and no worthy hero came by, until now. On his 16th birthday, Link noticed that a mark resembling the triforce glowed on his left hand. Worried and Confused, he goes to seek information on it from Impa. She tells him that he is the hero chosen to save the sleeping princess Zelda. She gave Link a scroll written in ancient text that only the true hero can read to ensure that he is in fact the chosen one. Link was able to read it despite never seeing that language before. The Great Palace where the triforce of courage lies is locked with a spell. The spell comes from 6 different temples, and he must break part of the spell at each temple so he can open the gates of the Palace. To do that, A crystal must be placed in each, and that is exactly what he does.

While Link is going on his journey, the minions of Ganon are going after him, trying to capture him and use his blood to revive Ganon (It’s unclear if they want him alive or dead, or simply his blood. All we know is they want to use Link’s blood in a sacrifice to bring Ganon back from the dead). If Link dies, Ganon will be revived, so he must remain alive. At the end of the trial to the triforce of courage, Link was made to fight his own shadow by the triforce keeper. After defeating his shadow, he made the triforce whole again, wished for the curse on Princess Zelda to break, and she woke. The End.

Now that is my extensive summary on the official story. Obviously I will fill in now MY theories on some points. My biggest point is Link fighting his shadow. Why did Link have to fight his shadow? Why was Link not ready to touch the triforce? He already went through ALL the trials, so why this now? My theory is that Link’s heart was not pure. Only a pure heart must touch the triforce. A corrupted heart will corrupt the world when the triforce is touched, no matter what the wish is. Link was most likely the chosen hero, but he is not completely pure. I believe Link was made to fight his shadow as a final step to touching the triforce; to cleanse his heart from any evils that are in it. Why would Link be evil and corrupt? I don’t know, but that’s hella dark.     Another point, that can be connected to BoTW, is Link’s death, and the revival of Ganon. If you played AoL before, then you are familiar with the red screen of death and Ganon’s evil laughter. Well, if Link dies, that means Ganon will return. That means Link should NEVER die. But he is not a god or eternal deity. He will die at some point during his journey after the events of the game or simply from old age, or whatever. He will die. At this point, if the people of Hyrule really want Ganon to remain dead, then Link should simply disappear once he dies. If he were to be buried, they have to hide his body somewhere the monsters will NEVER reach. I have no idea where that could be: the dungeons of hyrule castle? Something similar to the Great Palace? Maybe. The better option is to burn him, but I don’t know if people in Hyrule do that (they probably should in this case because yikes Ganon)

Where am I going with this? I’m not sure, but It vaguely reminded me of Ganon(dorf) coming back to life in the new BoTW trailer. Who was he even? A new ganondorf? Or one we already know?

Lets go back… what about AoL Link’s death? Another option for keeping Link out of the hands of Ganon’s minions is for him to never die. To be absolutely safe, protected, and strong enough to protect himself, and to live eternally. And I know the people of hyrule (at some point) will have that technology available, because BoTW Link was revived after his death. Link can probably die countless of times and still continue to live because of that shiekah tech. Now about the tech, AoL seems too middle ages, right? WELL… this is going to sound dumb but the temples in AoL have elevator thingies in them. Shiekah technology? Maybe. It could be a manual pulley system. Or pure magic. We don’t know, but we are a step closer at least.

BASICALLY i see a lot of similar points between these two games and idk if nintendo accidentally did that or took inspiration from aol but its cool that these two games share the concept of the kind of tragedy hyrule will go through if link dies and the idea of Ganom coming back to life.     Why am I even getting into BoTW… let’s get back to AoL lore! If you played AoL, you might be familiar with the Link dolls. Dolls that save Link from death (i.e extra lives) those dolls are pretty creepy and they look like a tiny hunched over limb Link. They are scattered throughout all of hyrule, and you find them in random weird places, like at the beach, in a swamp, inside a temple, in a cave, near a graveyard, forest, etc. They are everywhere. Who put these dolls there? No one knows. But someone is totally trying to save Link from dying on his journey. If he dies, Hyrule is screwed. Could it be Goddess Hylia? The fairies? A magician? Link Dolls are extremely strange and Nintendo could have gone more in depth on them because they provide some super cool dark lore.

Also we can’t forget about Kasuto Town. All the inhabitants of the town went to camp in the forest because their town was destroyed. Why? No one knows, again (everything in this game is shrouded in mystery). There is only a single man living there in old Kasuto. Kasuto town is entirely destroyed, all the buildings are decaying and crumbling, the air looks nasty and the sky is purple. There are ghosts EVERYWHERE. And if Link didn’t acquire the cross before entering, he will not see the ghosts at all and will just die from being hit by what looks like air. Now the civilians! The civilians are hiding in the forest! In-game, you will never be able to find them unless you hit a random block of grass with the hammer, and then it will appear. They are well hidden. Something must have destroyed their town, something terrifying, and they are hiding from it. The entire population has gone to hide in the depths of the forest. Now I have a theory that these people COULD be related to the shiekah. Those people are magic experts. You learn something called The Spell in old kasuto. And in new kasuto, you use this spell to raise a small temple from the GROUND to get the key in it (idk man but reminds me of the shrines) You also receive the final magic container there. So, yeah, those people definitely have a magic obsession or *super powers*. (i’m hinting at it but these people could be the shiekah). Also one more thing, these people are begging Link to save hyrule. They are the only people who are begging him to do something. They know HE will save hyrule. In all other towns, it only seems like Link is asking for advice and they answer Link is a random nobody. However, the people of Kasuto are AWARE. (shiekah much? idk)

This is not too lore-y but it’s about how dark this game is: there is so much red in it. Game over screen is red. The lining of the triforce on Link’s hand is red. The windows in the temples are stained red (blood?). The Tinsuit sprites have fresh blood dripping down their swords. Also, sleeping Zelda’s dress is red. I can’t brush that off. Whenever I think of AoL I think of the colour red. There is so much to say about AoL... But what I want to say is that this game is HELLA dark. I hope Nintendo uses its lore in future games, and adds references, because it can totally work if they try to. This game has a lot of lore material to work with. Nintnedo should consider expanding on it (and botw was inspired by loz1, it would only make sense if the sequel will mirror the original loz sequel too :3)

PLEASe share your ideas! I’d love to hear what you all think! There are many ideas to go around so share your thoughts! And one last thing, AoL is very difficult. If you want to try it, be prepared to see the colour red a lot, cry a lot, and rage quit a lot.

Thank you for reading my very long post! Enjoy your day <3 <3 <3

[blehbleehhhh]

Isis and Osiris 💕🦂(ft. EreMika)

Another lovely reader suggested I do a piece involving mythology of some kind! I've always been really into Egyptian Mythology (Ancient Egypt anything though so so fascinating) Anyway, I was super quick to decide on these two. What I did was write my interpretation of The Osiris Myth with their names in it instead. A few facts that are necessary to know before you continue: the original gods of ancient Egypt were Osiris, Isis, Set, Horus, and Nephthys. The myth is basically Set tricks Osiris to his demise, Isis revives Osiris, etc. ancient.eu is a great website, I recommend if you're interested in learning more! Greek Mythology is amazing too, don't get me wrong, just, idk, enjoy the story. Keep requesting and thank you for the lovely comments💕

ps: I LOVE Jean, lol, so this was hard! But he and Eren always fucking fight so.

pps: dedicated to anyone who catches the Supernatural references ;)

Cast:

Eren - Osiris

Mikasa - Isis

Jean - Set

Hitch - Nephthys

"All seems to be going well." Mikasa smiles as she comes up behind her loving husband while he sits in a chair on the balcony overlooking their flourishing kingdom. The sun is low as it rests on the horizon and reflects its dazzling rays across the mighty Nile River. Egyptian citizens stand in the shallows with pails gathering fresh, clean water for drinking and cooking. "Humanity has a perfect, stable climate to thrive in and resources are always bountiful." She slowly moves her hand down the front of his exposed muscular chest that's still deliciously lean. As gods they have their duties and obligations, all of which lie with maintaining that perfect climate and the plentifulness of resources. Everything has been a paradise since the power couple were crowned as King and Queen of Egypt because they take their roles so seriously. It's undeniably their purpose.

"We must maintain this, my queen," Eren relaxes back in his seat from her touch and sighs with content. "They're counting on us to watch over and keep them safe."

"And we will." She assures as gracefully walks around the chair to sit in her husband's lap and rests her cheek on his shoulder. He wraps an arm around her back and reaches up to carefully play with her soft black hair. "Nothing is more important than maintaining this order so there remains no injustices and everyone stays equal."

"That is why we rule together," He chuckles softly into her hair and kisses the top of her head. "We have the same goals when it comes to caring for our people."

"Must we go to that party this evening? I think I'd rather stay here.." Her finger traces small patterns on his chest and he smiles, amused at the way she's speaking so innocently.

"Unfortunately, yes. Jean mentioned he had something important to show me, though I would much rather be in bed with you. Maybe we can leave right afterwards and return to messy up the clean sheets?"

"I would love that." Mikasa lifts her head to look into dazzling emeralds and places her hand on his cheek, then bumps their foreheads together gently.

"Oh, how I love you."

"And I you.." She smiles and presses her lips to his to share a deep, loving smooch that's slow and tender. Tongues collide between kisses as her fingers slide up into his hair and he rests his arm over her legs, allowing his hand to slowly wander on soft skin not covered with the skirt of her dress. Words cannot describe how much the couple crave each other, they've never been able to keep their hands to themselves when they're together, but there's quite a time constraint because of the large dinner party they have invitations to this evening. It's not as if they don't have practice stowing their sexual tension on the back burner to make something more important their first priority, whatever that may be. In this case it's a celebration being thrown by Jean, who wouldn't normally bother to invite the one guy he despises more than anything. But the envy in his heart is real and it's all because of his brother's undeniable success - humanity is thriving under Eren's powerful rule as a just, generous, and giving god of life, so the decision to take him out was an easy one. Especially after his wife later became pregnant with a baby that wasn't of his seed, though he still isn't aware that Eren had been tricked into this with a cruel spell that made her appear to be Mikasa. It wouldn't matter if he did know anyhow since his brother is dead to him now and all he wants is revenge.

Perhaps that's why Jean went to all the trouble of having a coffin constructed with his brother's exact height. He plans to do the unthinkable and kill his own flesh and blood because if anyone is going to be Lord of Life, it's going to be him, certainly not Eren. "And so anyone who can fit in this beautiful coffin shall receive it free as a gift." Jean gestures to the box made from stone, the thin gold sheets that were beautifully pressed into it reflect the glimmer from candlelight. The necessary symbols have already been painted on its entirety so his brother's soul has the directions it needs to navigate the afterlife. Many party guests lined up to participate including the one this coffin is intended for and his wife, who cuddles into him drunkenly while he keeps a protective arm around her shoulders. She smiles and rests her cheek on his bicep while he speaks with other attendees, both of them blissfully unaware of the events that are soon to take place. And just as anticipated, Mikasa very quickly became the one most horrified when the coffin's lid was slammed shut and fastened so tightly, that its a guarantee his victim won't be able to escape.

"Jean! What in the name of all creation are you doing?!" Mikasa cries as she grabs onto him desperately and uses all of her strength to throw him off, hoping that if the coffin was dropped that perhaps it would crack open. "Have you lost your mind?! That's my husband! Release him immediately!" But a few of Jean's friends were waiting on the sidelines for his cue to restrain her, something that wasn't an easy task by any means because she insists on throwing herself around, kicking, screaming, and crying hysterically. It was necessary for him to get the coffin outside, however, and she did manage to get away long enough to reach the outside of the palace. She watches with blurry eyes, screaming for her husband as the coffin is cruelly tossed into The Nile River to be carried out to sea, where it was eventually lodged in a mighty tamarisk tree in Bybalos that grew to consume it rather quickly.

The King and Queen of Bybalos walk together along the beach shoreline. They were drawn here during their daily stroll by a sweet scent emanating from the tamarisk tree and ordered it to be cut down and made into a ornamental pillar for the palace. Unbeknownst to the royal family, a goddess mourns terribly over her husband's death and, after following the river, she has found her way to Bybalos. She's already in a new form in order to disguise her true identity - an elderly woman who wails in grief over her missing love. His body is somewhere nearby, she can feel it, and her heart calls to him whether he's alive or not. Little did she know, there were a few young women standing nearby watching her with sad eyes. "Excuse me, madam?" One says sweetly, and Mikasa immediately turns to see the two of them wearing looks of true concern. They are clearly handmaidens from their attire. "Are you alright?"

"Have you a home to live in?" The other asks.

"Oh, I-I don't want to be a burden.."

"Nonsense! We insist!" And so The Queen of the Throne, disguised as a normal, elderly woman, was kindly taken in by the King and Queen of Bybalos. She was asked to be the nursemaid for their three young boys who had really taken a liking to her, a task that she rather enjoyed and took very seriously. Mikasa favored the youngest son in particular, though, and decided that she would make him immortal through a bath of holy fire. But the lady of the house caught such a terrifying act right before the ceremony could proceed and she was understandably horrified.

"What are you doing with my baby boy?!"

"Please, this is not as it seems." She says calmly as she transforms into her normal form, a sight so beautiful and mighty to behold that they were afraid for their lives. "I am the goddess, Mikasa, and I truly mean you no harm."

"W-well, what is it you want?"

"I only want my husband. The tree you made your beautiful ornamental pillar from was the one he died in and his body is still trapped."

"Oh, dear!" The Queen says, stepping back from the doorway leading out into the parlor where the pillar is displayed. "Please, help yourself. Our condolences for King Eren's passing.."

"Thank you. You're all very kind." Mikasa gently touched her palm to the foreheads of each family member and cured them of all ailments to show her gratitude, one of them had been stuck in bed for years with crippling pain that is now gone. She doesn't even do it for the praise, it's never been about that for her and Eren. In fact, that's why they were paired together by their creator, because he knew this power couple will put the needs of humanity before their own. But just this one time, Mikasa chooses to be selfish and shuts herself out from that world to focus on carrying her husband's lifeless body back to Egypt. She assumes her half falcon form and carries them both through the air as tears stream down her face. "No, no, no, no..." Not him, not my Eren. She says to herself and swallows hard as she looks down at his face, paler than before with slightly blue lips from suffocating. "I can't go on without you.." Mikasa whispers to him, and her voice quivers as she lands gracefully in the fertile Nile River Delta with him in her arms. Her wings slowly fade as she carefully sits with him on the ground, his upper half resting in her lap. She kisses his forehead and wraps her arms around his shoulders, sobbing and wailing in agony like she has been torn in half. It hurts deeply to see him lifeless. "You were alive an hour ago! This can't be!"

"Mikasa?" Hitch calls from behind her. "Is that Eren?! What on Earth happened?!" She approaches slowly and crouches down beside her sister with a look of horror.

"Jean happened. I must revive my husband so, if you'll excuse me, I have herbs to gather."

"Of course, anything you need. I'll stay here with his body and make sure nothing happens."

"Thank you." It was strange how Mikasa can look at her with teary eyes but such a cold expression. Though she and Eren have always been inseparable, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that she's so heartbroken. They were supposed to be together until the end of time, and perhaps this can still happen if she is able to gather the herbs she needs for a spell that will bring him back to her. I can't live without him by my side. She thinks as she searches desperately for supplies, tears rolling down her cheeks and falling to the ground, creating little flower buds that sprout from the ready Earth below.

Meanwhile, Jean had gotten wind of his brother's return and Mikasa's intentions, so he went out to search for them. He came across his wife Hitch, who was pacing impatiently along The Nile's coastline clearly feeling bothered by something. And he's pretty sure that he knows what it is. "Thinking about how you cheated on me?" Jean asks plainly. A simple question and yet she found herself unable to speak. "So, where's his body?" He studies her eyes and takes note of the hesitation that makes her avert his probing gaze.

"Where's whose body?" Hitch cracks her knuckles anxiously and looks down at the ground, only for him to gently grab her chin and force her to look into his eyes.

"Don't. I know you know where Eren's body is, so where is it?"

"I-"

"Where is his body, Hitch?"

"Jean.." Her eyes fill up with tears. Perhaps if she apologizes, this will all be over. "I'm -"

"I love you and I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I need to. So I'll ask you one last time, where did you and Mikasa hide that dirt bag's body?" Jean repeats much louder than before but just as emotionless. She eventually caves in and guides him to the hiding spot, not at all anticipating what her vengeful husband proceeded to do next. The body was hacked into multiple pieces then scattered throughout the land and dumped into The Nile River. Jean simply walks away without even looking at her because he finds that he doesn't care what she thinks anymore. Why put in the effort if there clearly isn't anything there? Mikasa strolls by carrying a basket full of herbs intended to bring her husband back to life and was angered to see his murderer. When she realized that he was covered in blood but his own body was absent of any wounds, it's understandable why she feared the worst. Much to her rel͏i͏e͏f, Hitch is very much alive and in one piece, but that also means something horrific has happened to Eren's body to make her sister look like that - shaking, paler than a ghost, and weeping after she's already cried a great deal.

"You were supposed to protect him!"

"He just..I-I didn't think that he would..."

"We must hurry and find every part of Eren's body!" Mikasa cries as she sets the basket of herbs on the ground. The twin sisters sprout their wings and take off in a frantic search for all of his body parts. Unfortunately, the way that the power couple had originally intended to conceive will now be impossible once Eren is revived, because all but one body part was successfully recovered. They return to the fertile Nile River marshes where his body is sewn back together and buried in the wetland up to his chin. Mikasa creates her concoction and with help from her sister, they performed the powerful spell, sending visible waves of energy brighter than the full moon into his body. The raven's tears fall to the Earth and he takes a sharp inhale before he sits up to cough aggressively, the marshland falling from his body. "Oh! Eren! My love!" She sobs into her hand as she watches him turn and meet her eyes, emerald green orbs so bright and lively that they took her breath away.

"Mikasa!" Eren says with genuine shock to his voice and opens his arms for her to embrace him tightly. He looks over her shoulder at Hitch with tears in his eyes and wraps his arms tightly around Mikasa's waist. "What the hell happened?"

"We revived you!" She sits back and gazes into his eyes, smiling and chuckling softly in disbelief. "I-I didn't think it would take because you were hacked to pieces, but here you are..."

"But my body, I feel it is not complete?"

"I'm afraid it's not, I'm so sorry, I couldn't find your -"

"Our creator..." Eren cuts her off, looking down at his body to see the sutures. "I met him. He said that our future son will be strong enough to defeat Jean and restore order to the chaos he has caused."

"But without your..." Mikasa sighs and wipes tears from her eyes, wracking her mind for some sort of a solution that could bring her husband peace. It is her duty as his wife, after all.

"The ritual...flying form," Hitch suggests as she places her hand on Mikasa's shoulder. "Perhaps it'll work?" She offers a small smile to her sister and watches her stand to sprout her beautiful, colorful wings once more. Soaring through the sky in rapid circles over his body, the seed is drawn out and brought into her own so she could become pregnant with their first and only child. With the power of the gods, a baby boy was now growing rapidly inside of Mikasa as she kneels beside her husband, trying desperately not to burst into tears because he is insisting that he has work to do in the afterlife.

"Our little boy will grow to be a warrior with or without me because he has you. You're just as fierce as I am. More so, even."

"Let's get you back to the palace, love, I'll take care of you.." Mikasa repeats for a second time as tears fall down her cheeks.

"We will be together again," Eren says calmly and carefully cradles her cheek in his hand. "Death won't keep us apart forever, then we will have all of eternity to spend together." He gives her a reassuring smile and reaches up to gently push her hair back as she leans in and presses her lips to his. Although she was most certainly reluctant to let him go, Mikasa knows that this is something he must do. And if their creator has instructed him to be leader of the afterlife, to be the judge and the jury of every soul that will come his way, then who is she to tell him otherwise? It was only a single day after Eren descended down to take on his new role that their little boy was born. But Mikasa feared for his safety around Jean because he's half of the man he hates the most, so she hid with him in The Nile River Marshes. She took care of her son, a son of two powerful gods,  during the short time required for a youngster to become full grown.

The day that their son left his mother spelled the end for Jean, who had already become somewhat of a tyrant. It's understandable how he gained control so quickly, since the boy's powerful parents have been more than preoccupied lately with their own issues - ones that made it difficult to put their loyal, loving subjects first for once. This young man is powerful, very powerful, and his uncle doesn't stand a chance against him. He gets the ultimate revenge for his father's murder and kills Jean, though it seemed pointless because he knows that won't bring his old man back. But it truly didn't matter, because now his mother Mikasa, the great Queen of the Throne and mother to all pharaohs is back in power once more. They rule together as mother and son, and everything returns to the way things were when her husband was alive - no crimes of any kind, plentiful resources, plenty of jobs and money. It's a paradise.

Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Eren sits on his throne and listens to pleas for mercy from a poor soul whose heart felt so guilty, that the feather went up in record timing. The pleas don't matter, not with the efficiency that comes from weighing guilt. He was crowned as The Lord of The Underworld and now sports green skin to symbolize the mighty Nile River and the fertility of its mud. The afterlife is running smoothly under Eren's control and when his beautiful wife Mikasa takes her throne beside him after her time is up, they will be together again.

Until the end of time.

[delicrieux]

hiraeth | t.s.

HALLOWEEN WRITING CHALLENGE!🎃 day 4, word(s): apple orchard 

pairing: tony stark x daughter!reader, some peter parker x reader

fandom: marvel, infinity war & endgame

request: so I've loved that stark!daughter fic you published long ago, can you do a part two? maybe she had disappeared in the snap so he has to tell her that Nat died and she meets Morgan for the first time? (I remember that she thinks "do it for Morgan" while using her powers but maybe it's because when they reunited on the battlefield Tony told her she has a sister idk) this is really confusing even tho I have a quite specific idea, so feel free to ignore it :)

warnings: angst (but fluffy end!)

words: 745

author’s note: read the original HERE! this is from this post and i will try to do all 30 of them!:) six, hiraeth ( a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past ).

feedback is always appreciated xoxo

masterlist | buy me coffee☕

There was something. You don’t know what that something was, but there was something in that nothingness, some sort of longing, but to where and to when you had no idea. There was nothing after the Snap; you were nothing. But you felt something, something that wasn’t emptiness, no, it was much more painful than that. Perhaps it was because of your power, because you could heal anyone and yourself and perhaps that’s why in eternity of nothing lingered something. It was torture.

The world returned suddenly and life bled back into you with a quick breath and you could move again and the empty space of the afterlife was sucked out like water down the drain to reveal the world you left. It was too much at first, those first few breaths, first few touches of the ground beneath you and you nearly broke before you could live again. Your limbs ached and your eyes were sore from tears and lips littered with your own teeth marks and that pain was familiar and somehow comforting and all of that was better than nothing or that something in vertigo.

You heard your name being called and you could not believe you could hear again. A blurry image of a shaky Peter Parker greeted your vision and before long you were engulfed into a tight embrace and you realised you didn’t want to ever let go. But you needed to. Memories rushed back, each more hurtful than the last and the word ‘danger’ flashed in your mind with sirens. The battle was drawing to an end and they needed you: your family, your friends, the millions snapped back.

We need to go, Peter told shakily. He grabbed your hand and pulled you onto your feet. The rest of the battle was a blur of magic and pain. You had only really realised this was not some desperate dream only when Thanos himself slowly turned to dust and silence fell over the bloodied battlefield.

You had met her, Morgan, that little angel when you returned home. It was not your home, not yet, and you knew you should feel welcomed and at peace but that something within you still lingered in your gut, still haunted you like some sort of terrible ghost. She smiled when she saw you, grinned from ear to ear, and with a seeming war cry rushed to you and tackled you into a hug. She was so warm and she kept repeating your name and saying “Mommy said you’d be back! She said you’d be back! Where did you go? Why did you take so long?” and you couldn’t answer those questions even if you wanted to so instead you patted her head and gave her a small smile and she returned it tenfold.

There is an apple orchard close to home and you visit it often. And if dad wants to find you, this is the first spot he’d go.

“You know…I didn’t think this life was for me, too, at first.” You look away from the trees and find him in his warmest jacket standing just a ways away. He motions with his hands, “The country…the woods…No pollutions. Takes some time getting used to.” He approaches nonchalantly, but you can tell there is something weighing on his mind, “After the…” he falls silent for a moment, “Well, you know. After that me and Pepper…we couldn’t…stay in the city. Everything just…We needed a fresh start is what I’m saying.”

“I get it. You needed to get away. To start a new life. “ You give him a faint smile and nod, “Morgan’s a sweet girl. I like her.”

“Well that’s good because the only thing she ever talks about now is you.” He grins, “You have a fan.”

“But I don’t think I can stay.” You admit, “It’s just…Too much. I miss the noise. I miss my old life in New York. I’m not fit for retirement.”

“Was that a jab at me? That was a jab at me, wasn’t it? God you get your smarts from your mother.”

You laugh. He opens his arms for a hug, “Visit often?”

“Of course.” You promise, accepting his embrace.

“You sure there isn’t any other reason you want back to New York?”

“No, why?”

“Really? No certain insect hero…Rhymes with Neter Darker.”

“Seriously? No!”

“Sounded like a ‘yes’ to me.”

“Dad…”

“He tries anything and I’m using bug spray, got it?”

“Oh my god…”

hope you liked it!