#maybe she has NOTHING to do with the corpse parts and just wants to kill some other runner who killed her family

[sheila--e]

Day 119. Today's Sheila E. is: On the steel ball run

Bonus:

Al igual que Gyro le da café a Valkyrie y Slow Dancer, Sheila E. también le invita una dosis de cafeína a su caballo.

(Ah, y el caballo se llama Toto)

[dyns33]

Only wastelands

I will try to do this Cooper Howard x reader in three parts, but I like the Ghoul so much, I might want to write more

People said Y/N’s neighborhood was lucky.

After a draw, they were selected to join a Vault shelter for free, if something dramatic happened one day, allowing them to survive.

Y/N had received the news with mixed feelings. She didn't want to die from a nuclear bomb, but she also didn't want to think about the possibility of a nuclear bomb falling on their heads.

There was no reason for this to happen anyway.

China and the United States had resumed peace negotiations. The war was going to end and everything would be wonderful. The vaults would then be of no use.

That day, she was washing dishes in her small kitchen. She lived alone, having left her parents who were in another state to settle near Lors Angeles.

Of course, she had first dreamed of Hollywood, and then she had been reasonable, finding a normal job, to live a normal life.

First there was the light. For a moment, she blinked, wondering if she had fainted. And looking out the window, she first saw the smoke in the distance.

Her neighbors were out, she could see them in the street which also looked towards the city center, and no doubt they were talking, but Y/N heard nothing, all her attention fixed on the smoke.

It was just smoke. She watched without being able to move as the cloud grew, before the shock wave reached her house, destroying the windows and shaking the walls.

Screams were then heard, in addition to the sirens. Falling to the ground in shock, Y/N almost didn't get up, but one of the neighbors, instead of thinking selfishly, ran to see if she was still there, helping her to get up and taking her with her to the vault.

Everything happened very quickly after that.

Y/N vaguely remembered those smiling doctors, who explained to them that everything would be fine, doing several exams before putting what they called a pipboy on them, giving them a ridiculous blue and yellow jumpsuit.

"You are now the inhabitants of Vault 8. What has just happened is a tragedy, and we are going to need you to ensure the future of humanity."

They were taken to a large room, with human-sized tubes. The doctors explained that they would be put to sleep, kept in the cold, safe, and awakened only on the day when it would be possible to go out and repopulate the Earth without it being dangerous.

No one could have known that they were not safe at all.

When Y/N opened her eyes, she had a hard time understanding what was happening. There was no light in the vault, except for the one in her crate which had just opened automatically.

Most of the boxes in front of her were open and empty. Then turning around, she discovered decomposing corpses in those that had remained closed.

Her cries of terror brought no one to come, because there was no one in the shelter, just as there were no resources, no water, no food, nothing. Because no one was supposed to survive here.

For two days, Y/N cried, not knowing what to do.

Then she decided she didn't want to die, not like that anyway, and she tried her luck outside. She didn't know how long she had slept, or what she would find, but she had to try.

Her pipboy quickly told her that the air was breathable, despite the presence of radiation in certain places. But that wasn't the most important thing for her, seeing the desert surrounding the vault.

The bombs had destroyed everything, leaving only ruins and sand. Not being stupid, Y/N moved forward cautiously, trying to stay as covered as possible, even if it was difficult with her outfit.

On her way, she encountered two-headed cows, giant cockroaches, and other horrible creatures. No humans though, and she didn't know if that was a good thing.

With war, she knew that men could be much worse than beasts. Maybe they were all dead, from the explosions or all killing each other, or maybe they were still in the other vaults.

But life always found a way, even for assholes, and Y/N was attacked by three men while she was sleeping. Real savages, who talked more about eating her than anything else, laughingly ignoring her pleas.

“Now, that’s no way to treat a woman.” someone then said, stopping them as they were about to cut open her stomach.

"We found the bitch before you, pal ! Go get your lunch somewhere else !"

"Oh, but I think I found my meal. Mistreating a lady."

“You fucking ghoul !”

Too busy trying to get away, Y/N hadn't really looked at the man who had just arrived and was shooting at her attackers. Then, still too busy recovering from her misery, she took a while to raise her head, ready to thank her savior.

He didn't really seem surprised by her terror, although he grimaced as he watched her crawl away from him. She had to put her hand over her mouth to stop screaming.

It was impossible to tell if he had been burned or peeled, but the cowboy no longer had a nose, and his skin was in a catastrophic state.

As she stared at him with wide eyes, he watched her too, his attention settling on her pipboy.

"Ah. A vaultie. I understand the screams better. Never seen a ghoul before, sweetie ? Barely coming out of your little hole ?"

"… Sorry."

"No problem, sugar. You haven't insulted me or thrown things at me yet, it's quite polite."

At first, the ghoul was not very friendly. Yes, he had saved her, but he didn't want her to follow him into the wastelands. He didn't need a burden, and even less if it was a little rich girl.

But Y/N insisted, explaining to him what had happened to her, and the man looked at her with what looked like pity, muttering that she had ended up in one of the "bad vaults".

"I don't understand. What year is it ? Why is it only me who survived ? You… Sorry, what happened to you ?"

"Hey, honey. It's been over 200 years since everything blew up, thanks to Vault Tech. I imagine you and your friends were meant to serve as a pantry or an organ bank but like all their equipment, there's had a problem, and you were very lucky not to die like the others, and since you were there when everything happened, you should be able to guess why I am like this."

The Ghoul was gentleman enough to let her cry without comment.

The world was dead, and all because of money and power. Those who had sworn to protect them had killed them all. Nothing remained but an infertile, polluted, radioactive land, where the few survivors fought between factions instead of trying to find a real solution.

"Please… Don't leave me here…"

"You know, people didn't really like guys like me. It's not a good idea, sweetheart."

“They don’t like cowboys ?”

The question made him laugh. Maybe that was why he let her follow him. Or maybe because he wasn't as bad as he wanted to make out. Surely he felt lonely too, and it was nice to have someone who had lived in the same era as him , and who didn't judge him on his appearance.

Y/N didn’t understand ghoulophibia at all. Yes, they were scary, but that was no reason to mistreat these poor people.

"Okay, we judged on lots of things before, skin color, clothes, religion, but… Now, it's as if we were pointing at a cancer patient and shouting 'Look, he's sick Insult him !”

“It’s more complicated than that, sugar.” sighed the Ghoul, taking out a sort of hynalator to swallow its contents.

He explained radioactivity and the risks for him of becoming feral when they arrived in their first city. A chance for her to stay safe with people, their paths separating quietly.

But after three fights and an attack by Deathclaws, she preferred to stay with him.

So he taught her how to survive, use weapons, hide, follow a trail, earn caps. When asked why caps and not something else, he made a noise, saying he had no fucking idea, but men still wanted something to make business instead of helping each others for free.

After several months, he gave her a name. Cooper. Cooper Howard. He groaned when she asked him if he had anything to do with the old actor who did the Vault Tech commercial.

“Thanks for the bad memories, sweetie. An autograph ?”

“No thanks, never was a fan.”

"Ouch. Not even now, with my new look ? Do you think the cameras would like me ?"

“Let’s say that you will need less makeup for certain types of films, and a bag for others.”

Cooper laughed again, smiling at her with his slightly yellow teeth. It was obvious that it had been a long time since he had laughed like that with anyone.

He told her about his daughter after a year together in the wastelands. Handing her a photo, Y/N could see him as he was before, holding the little girl in his arms. They looked happy.

As she was about to give it back to him, he told her to keep it. It was the most important thing to him, so Y/N could keep the picture safe, and she would know that he would always come for her.

She muttered that she didn't doubt it anyway, putting the photo in her bag.

It was even longer later, when she had proclaimed herself the accountant of their small group, that Y/N noticed an inconsistency between the caps earned and the number of vials Cooper had.

“You should have five more vials.”

“Sugar, leave it.”

"No, really, I counted three times. I know the price by heart, you had fifty caps on your way to town, you should have fifteen vials. Is there a problem ? Has the price changed ? You… You Are you feeling well ?”

"I'm fine, sweetie. Sleep."

“But Coop…”

“Y/N, sleep.”

In the end, the price hadn't changed, Cooper was fine, but since they met, he had been spending his caps on non-irradiated water and food. For Y/N.

This discovery was a shock to her, who often watched him drink from puddles or eat human remains.

He didn't want her to do this. For her to become like him. When teaching her how to shoot, he added that it was just in case, because she wouldn't need to fight while he was there.

And now they were arguing about food, and he was ordering her to promise that she would continue to take what he gave her without question.

"You don't drink that dirty shit. You hear me, sugar ? Can you promise me ? You'll never drink that."

"… All right."

Their relationship was complicated. Cooper had probably told her everything, and yet he kept a distance. He didn't like her touching him, patting his shoulder or snuggling up to him to sleep.

Maybe he was afraid of making her sick. Maybe he thought she would rot on contact with him, and not just her skin.

Y/N really liked him anyway. They were both over 200 years old, even though she had been frozen during that time. They had spent a lot of time together. And even if she was still a little dizzy by his lack of nose, it wasn't the most important thing in a man.

It would have been two years when the raiders attacked. Far too many, so Cooper yelled at Y/N to run, to hide far away. He would come get her later.

Several days passed, and nothing. She was good at hiding, he had shown her, so it was possible that Cooper hadn't found her because she had become too good.

So she returned to the town where he came from, to at least find some informations. People did not easily forget the passage of The Ghoul.

But she didn't have to ask. She saw him in the bar, drinking and chatting with several guys.

Silent, discreet as a shadow, she came close enough to hear, thinking that he was in the middle of an business, and that she could surprise him when he finished with a beautiful reunion.

“You really don’t know where she is, Ghoul ?”

"Nah. Look guys, I know she was a real lil puppy that followed me everywhere, but I finally got rid of her, so I don't really care where she is. Not my problem. It was fun at first, but good riddance.”

She had seen the bomb fall, she had seen the bodies of her neighbors, but Y/N had never felt so bad as in that moment. She could feel her heart breaking in her chest, as Cooper and the others laughed together, mocking her.

Once, he had said that she should never trust anyone. It was an important rule to survive. But Y/N never believed that rule would include him.

With her bag and her weapon, she ran into the night, alone in the middle of the wasteland for the first time since she left her vault, and completely unaware of what she was going to do.

Only one thing was certain, she would never see Cooper Howard again.

[mourningsbane]

Okay this blog and the story has been circulating slowly in my head for days now and I feel like tossing out a theory because I never theorize but here I am

So. Tanglefern’s greatest mistake. I believe that he may have poisoned Honeyspring in some way. If not a direct poisoning, he was at the very least aware of and partially involved in Honeyspring’s rapid death. But I also think he was not aware she was pregnant. I do not know if the kits were not quite right because they were too early in development, some kind of curse stuff, or because of the poison/illness. Either way, it seems Tanglefern wished them no ill will due to the intense despair he felt when the crude surgery (is it surgery if on a corpse?) failed. Another note; I’m not fully sure Tanglefern meant for/wanted them to die. ‘There’s nothing more I can do for you’. And it seems very heavily implied that Rootstar ordered the c-section, which is where the ‘no respect for the dead!’ Line comes in from Bearface. Along with this, I’m like 99% sure Honeyspring and Flaildrizzle were in a romantic relationship and were planning to raise those kits together. Honeyspring looked so soft in her dream, maybe they were trying to look less spooky as to not scare Flaildrizzle?

I do not believe Honeyspring is ‘evil’. She is scared and oh so alone, and is lashing out because of it. She just wants help, as I believe that is what the messed up mouse is huffing at Tanglefern, and potentially Sweetkit too. Tanglefern even wonders why StarClan won’t take them, implying that in life she never did anything evil enough to warrant going to kitty cat hell. At least, not that Tanglefern would know. And, seeing how their mere presence is warping the prey, I think she could have killed Sweetkit if she wanted, but they didn’t.

A very out-there theory is that Honeyspring may have been kept from StarClan because of the rage fuelling the end of her life (towards Tanglefern?). In my opinion, she seems aware that her death wasn’t natural. Their first headshot reference says ‘I will never forgive you’ which I believe is specifically aimed at whoever orchestrated or at least played a part in her death. Her second reference says kind with a question mark in brackets, which means they were at the very least kind in life. Not being able to communicate with anyone, those who see her being terrified, not being allowed into StarClan, they must all tear at their mind and likely their overall stability. I honestly don’t think she’s as malicious as we seem to be getting led to believe.

This may also be me grasping at straws but with the ‘there’s something underneath the ground’ and the description of her disease-reeking blood seeping into the dirt floor I wonder if that’s something. Definitely not I’m reaching but meh it’s fun.

Finally, I’m not fully sure that, whatever Tanglefern’s involvement was, he intended for them to die. ‘Distantly, some raw part of him, carbed open like the body before him, realized it was all for nothing’ now while it’s likely this is just in reference to the c-section, I feel this could also be the fact Honeyspring died and may not have been meant to. There was some kind of plan, I’m just not sure what it was’

Basically a summary I believe Tanglefern had an influence in Honeyspring’s sudden demise but was not aware of the kits, Bearface was NOT happy about the c-section, Flaildrizzle and Honeyspring were a couple and going to raise those kits, Honeyspring wasn’t evil in life but is now losing stability due to being so isolated, and Tanglefern may not have intended Honeyspring to die. I may be super off I am not good at theories and it is very late. But hey. All in good fun.

Anyways giving Honeyspring a big hug I love them and she is spinning around in my brain like a rotisserie chicken 24/7

also omg sorry this got so long i got lowkey rambly here but my brain is going whir because oh my god this is so cool-

Worry not, I do not mind receiving long post! I, too, tend to get rambly when talking about things, so I certainly don't blame you. Plus, I love reading theories! It gives me insight into what people think, and I don't want any lore elements to feel like they came out of nowhere! <3

As for your theories, you are very close! Tanglefern gave Honeyspring Mourningsbane instead of Clottingroot when treating the injury on her hind leg.

Honeyspring and Flaildrizzle were mates, and you're right that Honeyspring tried to look "softer". The time is soon, and Honeyspring didn't want to startle her. Honeyspring is weak and intangible at the moment, but not for long. And you're on the right track with her "disease-reeking blood seeping into the dirt floor"; her rotting body taints the very soil.

I agree that Honeyspring is not a villain in the stereotypical sense! She was very well-liked in life, and had a lot going for her! I would say that she's both a victim and a perpetrator.

[aconitum-fields]

There's literally no way in HELL Foggy is dead. For a show this well written? Nope! Especially when Foggy's had his death faked not once, but TWICE in the comics.

There is so clearly something amiss, because why would Bullseye hit Foggy in the chest rather than the head? It's not like he missed. That shot was purposeful. To be fair, Bullseye in the comics is a bit of a tomfooler. A sick fuck who loves to play with his food (and we love him for it). So, I would not put it past him to have shot Foggy the way that he did specifically to torment Matt, knowing he'd have to listen to his best friend choke on his own blood while he could do nothing about it. That's the kind of thing that would make a kill oh-so worth it.

But this aspect of Bullseye's character hasn't been concretely fleshed out in the show yet. Furthermore, does he even know that Matt is Daredevil? Would he know how important Foggy is to DD? Let alone know the capacity of his abilities? It's fully possible that he put two and two together (he did in the comics, after all), but Dex was so clearly going after Foggy specifically -- like this shit was orchestrated. Did he seriously just go after him because he has a grudge? Against Foggy? Of all people? Foggy? For what, the selfie??? ... Maybe -- BUT THAT"S NOT THE POINT I'M TRYING TO MAKE. There's something bigger at play here. Someone hired Bullseye and specifically told him not to go for a headshot on Foggy.

Now, even if the scene is laid out differently, it can be no coincidence that A. Matt and Foggy are apart when Foggy's injured, B. Matt frantically listens to Foggy's heartbeat to confirm it's still there, and C. that there has been a funeral without us (the viewer) ever seeing a corpse.

Aaaaaaand who's behind it all? Who hired Bullseye to shoot Foggy in the chest rather than the head? Who's hiding Foggy from us? Queen diva Vanessa Fisk herself. Whether she spoke to Dex herself or through a third party is undetermined, but she is most definitely behind this.

After all, did she not tell Fisk that she "made this business bulletproof"? Would this not include her having some form of leverage against Daredevil if he were to step on their toes -- something to keep him away or to possibly get him to do something they want? She knows how much dirt Matt has on her and Fisk. So, why wouldn't she ensure that she has something to dangle over him in return?

This first episode plain as day establishes that while Fisk was going about his stuff with Echo, she's been plottin', schemin', and fortifying their business all on her own without telling Fisk anything. He's completley out of the loop! And hell if she gives a fuck about the deal he made with Matt in s3 ep13.

Speaking of season 3, the final couple episodes clearly established that being a part of Fisk's world was a top priority to her -- she is passionate about this. Hell, even her sitting in his chair compelling him to have Ray killed was clearly meant to be some form of foreshadowing.

There's an obvious rift between her and Fisk, and she has so clearly become the puppet master of their operation -- the queen always having more moves and opportunities on the board than the king.

Due to how many questions and holes are surrounding Foggy's death, and with Vanessa implying that her and Fisk's illegal doings are iron-tight, I am so incredibly convinced that the show is adapting this aspect of Brubaker's run. That Vanessa hired Bullseye to gravely injure Foggy, then when he was taken to the hospital and operated on (luckily coming out of the ordeal alive), she had his death faked while he was thrown into witness protection.

Now, why would she do this? What's her game? Honestly, I'm unsure! It could just be insurance over Matt for future use, but this is pretty fuckin' elaborate to just be that, no? There must be some game she's playing -- some long-run scheme she's been concocting. I'm unsure of what it could be! Vanessa wasn't in Soule's Mayor Fisk arc, so I'm curious to see how her presence will effect that plotline. Good God it is literally going to kill me having to wait a week per episode!!!

--

Now to finish this off, the good news is that though we may be weeping out of sheer guttural agony right now, know that we'll be getting the sweetest reunion in time <3

[freewilllife]

@aod1098

The pro-life movement does not just think of men as humans. We consider the fetus (little human) as a life and it is one worth protecting. Women are also considered in this equation. Despite popular belief, women do not benefit from abortion. Women's mental health are affected by killing their unborn children. Females who have had abortions are more likely to suffer from mental health issues (Medicaid study in California) and do not receive adequate care afterwards (Vincent Rue Study) and suffer deeply from their abortions. Everyone is a human in the pro-life movement. We don't hate males or females for whatever reason.

In all kindness, I do not suscribe to your belief system, therefore it is pretty irrelevant to me, if you believe this or not.

Men's half is a very important part after all we couldn't have the baby if not for their half. It takes two and both sides are equally important.

It is the women´s body who builts the baby, who has the greater costs in that process, who takes the greater risk, therefore the opinion of a man is pretty irrelevant regarding abortion.

Abortion is not a human right. Our rights extend until it affects the life of another. When a woman is pregnant, there is another life that is involved, the most innocent of them all. Abortion procedures are inhuman, it takes the life of the child and in brutal ways. No one should have the right to end the life of another.

Oh, but it should be. The right for all women to abort, if they want to or to keep it, only if they want to.

The child is a parasyte that merely lives dependant on her life and body. So it should be absolutely possible for the woman in question to end this situation, if she wishes it.

By the way, that means you are even against all abortion, where the life of the woman is at stake? Even when the child is already dead inside the poor women and it might cost her life?

You would honestly rather traumatize a woman to have "give birth" to a corpse?

And you would rather condemn a child to live in utter pain, if the defects are too gave?

That also means that are blind and deaf to the misery of the oh-so-importan-life, if the child suffers due to the circumstances it is birthed into? Sometimes it is the correct decision to abort, if you can literally cannot afford a child or if the child would face neglect or abuse. There are enough horrible parents on this earth.

You lack clear empathy for other women. You can decide for yourself to have as many children until your teeth fall out, but why would you deny another woman agency regarding her own body. Are you jealous, maybe? Nope just concerned for other women because I (and other pro lifers) are concerned for the ladies.

Ah, so you show your empathy by taking away their agency? That´s a far cry from empathy, if you ask me...

This is a gross sentiment (among other things you said) I see a lot from the other side. I don't see how spreading hate on the other sex helps your side one bit. Division causes nothing but more pain. Men and women are equally important and needed in daily life. They are usually the ones who do jobs none of the women like (oil riggers, firefighting, and more physical straining jobs) as well as the other half to creating life. If you want to make change you should try getting others on your side, not hating on half of the population, it just draws people away from your cause...Not that I want your abortion stance to draw more people. You can do whatever you want with your body. As long as you don't effect the life of another (life in the womb included) I don't care.

I honestly don´t know if I should cry or laugh about this.

I think, I prefer laughing.

I hope, you are as concerned with the misogynistic moids, who rape and dehumanize women, as with a woman like me, who just wishes to stay the fuck away from men.

I curious as to what cult you were raised in. Everyone's environment influences how they turn out later in life, in different ways for everyone. For religions people leave their religions they were raised in and others stay. It's different for everyone. Happens a lot. Around 93% of America was Christian in the 60s, not anymore (not even close). A lot of people left. Also the pro life movement is a lot more divisive then you think. There's Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, and more. Men and women are in the movement as well. I agree there are some religions that don't treat women fairly at all. Not all of them though. Some religion may have mistreated women, but some religion has also helped women elevate their status and gain more rights. After all women are biologically weaker than men, men could easily overpower women if they wanted to. Religion has helped this from happening through morals.

I am not American and I hardly share sensitive information like this. According to my religion teacher in middle school, the belief I had was classsified as a cult. And I went to a catholic school...I got additional religious education by the church, we went to and by my father. As a child I was scared of god, greatly...All the sins I committed by being basically alive.

Show me a religion who does treat women well? Their common ground seems to be that they all oppress women, only the degree differs greatly.

I think I have an interesting book for you:

The better half - On the genetic superiority of women

by Sharon Moalem

And religion has been used for thousands of years to justify oppression and evil deeds...in the name of god. Murder seems to be absolutely

Also the pro life movement is a lot more divisive then you think. There's Christians, Muslims, Atheists, Agnostics, and more. Men and women are in the movement as well.

Spectacular, so many fractions that have something against women having agency and a choice in that matter. I am sorry, but this is disheartening for me.

Abortion is dangerous (whether it's legal or illegal) whether it be the procedures themselves or the mental or physical affects afterwards.

Self-inflicted abortion or by an untrained person is absolutely dangerous, by a trained person and legally, not more dangerous than other medical operations. The sooner the better even.

Some woman go to great length to get rid of the child. Allowing it makes the process safer...Often the woman has to wait too long to abort.

If the woman decides not to give the baby up for adoption, there is pregnancy centers that are designed to help these women (at least in America). If a country doesn't have this, they should.

She still has to go through an unwanted pregnancy that changes her body. Some women just don´t want to go through it.

And the child suffers due to the process. An adopted child often has issues with feelings of abandonment. It is not as clean and easy, as you make it sound.

Taking care of a baby is also not the end of the world and can be quite joyful.

Who are you, that you can decide for every woman?

Some women aren´t born to be mothers and I absolutely wish for them to stay childless, if they want to.

Additionally there are enough already abused and neglected children on this world.

Not a form of self defense. Having the baby doesn't mean demise for the women. It is questioned whether we ever need abortions since technology has advanced so far that we could just have the woman give birth early and take care of the early birthed baby for any health complicated pregnancies. The baby poses no threat so it can't be a form of self defense.

Again, you cannot say this, without actually knowing the situation of the individual woman. In some cases, it is very well an absolute catastrophe.

The fetus cannot be considered a parasite either sense the women and the child are from the same species.

It very well is, if you like it or not. The child does not give the mother anything useful during pregnancy, but takes from her body important resources.

There is a reason, why pregnancy is not possible, if the women is too thin and lacks nutrients.

I sorry to hear about all those experiences of those people you know and for the ones that occurred in your own. Also can take years for the affects of abortion to actually take affect, but they do come. Life can be very cruel. Any hardship the child might have in their life does not diminish the importance of their life. I do think that everyone should work to make a better system for children who may have been unwanted by their mothers for whatever reason. We shouldn't be killing humans with unfortunate lives though. I do wish you would value yourself more. You're more important than you give yourself credit for. It's just sad.

Thank you, that is nice of you, nevertheless.

A woman having or not having an abortion results both times in some kind of negative feelings.

I´d rather wish only for women, who like to be mothers, to become a parent.

The problem with your stance...it takes agency away from the individual woman due to your own flawed belief system. Just that you understand me right: My own belief system is also flawed, because it is subjective. My moral compass are not rules forced upon others.

However I´d rather not play god, but let the people in question have a choice.

This seems to be a better approach than forcing people, that more often than not leads to tragedy.

You cannot change the fact, that the mothers didn´t want the child...you cannot brainwash people to that degree. The child still knows and still suffers. Even within the most stable families.

We all wish to know, where we come from. Preventing this, takes even agency away from the child.

I would call having extreme defecies and great pain not "unfortunate lives"...that would be too superficial.

[phantomchick]

Just a few more Jason Todd-centric fic recs for the road...

Asymmetrical Warfare by orangesky37

An ~UtRH AU that follows the events of A Death in the Family and diverges from canon at some point during Lost Days (pre that scene, which is most definitely not a part of this AU). Survival Instincts starts out after Jason has been in Gotham for several months. His plans to establish himself in the Gotham underworld have run into some snags and his motivations are in flux. Works are ordered chronologically. If you are new to the series, I'd recommend reading all previously published parts in chronological order and then new parts/chapters in the order they are posted.

A League of Their Own by GoAwayOlivia

He doesn’t know why she’s here, why she chose to come to Gotham, to kill the Joker, or pull him out of the rubble, but she did. She stepped forward and crushed Jason’s most horrifying nightmare under her foot like it was nothing. The Joker is gone. Dead and gone forever. And now Jason will follow Talia to the ends of the earth. “Okay,” he tells her. ***** In the wake of the fallout of his final confrontation with Batman and the Joker, Jason Todd tries to move forward. After careful consideration, Talia decides to help him, and maybe herself while she's at it. Canon divergence post Under the Red Hood.

Celestial Recalibration by HappyWiggleTime

After having a talk with Talia, Jason recalibrates his plans. Kill the Joker? Yes, obviously. Fix Gotham's wealth disparity? What the hell, why not? This new goal combined with his nosy siblings leads him back to the family sooner than he would’ve liked.

The Penny Drops, The Penny Dreads by Batbirdies

Jason’s background as a victim of abuse and childhood homelessness means it’s hard for him to trust, and to ask for things. After only a couple months in the manor, he still isn’t sure about Bruce Wayne. ___ When you come from nothing, it’s hard to adjust to having everything.

the living sea of waking dreams by r_astra

The telepath flips through Jason’s memories like cards in a Rolodex, rooting around for every terrible thing that’s ever happened to him. Jason tries fighting it, tries bolstering his will into mental walls like Bruce taught him. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t do anything. The second that hands press against Jason’s face, he’s gone. He’s wherever he wants him, whether that’s kneeling beside his mom’s cooling corpse or shivering through a cold winter night on the street or cringing away from the jingle of a belt being unbuckled. It’s not like remembering. It’s not like a nightmare. It’s like he’s there. It’s like he’s living it all over again, all the pain and fear and grief just as strong as the day it happened.

The Hellblazer's Apprentice by Blue_lotus

If there are two things Jason knew for a fact that Batman hated, it's magic and John Constantine. Both were unpredictable and often dredged up chaos whenever they were present. So when Jason runs into Constantine while on his murder training world tour, he realized he could kill two birds with one stone. Piss off Batman and learn magic to use against him? He'd be an idiot not to take that opportunity.

When Grownups Fail to Adult by NerdyLibrarian

What happens when Jason's brothers want to know why he's upset with the JLA? Jason's explanation of his side of the story, along with ways the hero community as a whole could make simple changes to protect their kids, might just change everything.

Echoes of Future Past by orangesky37

Jason is fifteen and dying, choking on smoke in a warehouse. Jason is sixteen and buried, clawing his way desperately to freedom. Jason is seventeen and drowning, waking up to green fire. Jason is nineteen and dying for the second time, bleeding out to the sound of laughter in an abandoned apartment building. Jason is sixteen and six feet beneath the earth again. But this time, when he wakes up he’s in a hospital bed, and he’s not alone. Jim Gordon, meanwhile, would really like to know what the hell is going on in his city this time.

[pixeldolly]

The Survivors, part 5

(the last batch)

☢️Erwin Pries (by @frauhupfner )

Erwin knows what nobody else seems to - that it wasn't a government experiment gone wrong or an enemy bomb which destroyed that secret lab and unleashed the zombie virus - it was the ALIENS! That's right - wake up, people!

Erwin may look and sound like a kook, but his ideas are surprisingly persuasive - or maybe people are just desperate for an explanation.

☢️Todd Estrella (Sim & bio by @moyokeansimblr)

Todd is rather arrogant but he's a sweetheart deep down. He's not malicious, just big headed and bad at reading social cues to know when he's out of line. He thinks he's tough, so expect him to go into this experience EXTREMELY over-confident before realizing he knows nothing about simanity, let alone apocalyptic simanity. IE volunteering to do things he can't, being places he shouldn't. But he's an excellent hype man. I imagine this experience to be very humbling for him and bring him closer to simkind.

Todd's sexuality should the opportunity present itself, is everybody. But he does have a preference for whatever big strong man is actually the one in charge of everything.

Todd is afraid of everything but masks it with curiosity. His biggest fear is the dark and his bedroom in the UFO he arrived in had six nightlights but don't tell anyone that.

Todd thinks that because he's an alien he's immune to sim germs and grime. But he very much is not.

☢️Hernesto & Nicolas Esposito (Sims & bios by @gvaudoiin-tricou )

Hernesto was one of the scientists in charge of a failed experiment that cost him an eye. When he found Nicolas, he knew the boy was special, but what truly caught his attention was his bright red eyes...and not the fact that the boy was covered in blood, surrounded by corpses. In that moment, he knew neither of them would be alone anymore.

Nicolas never knew who his parents were, or at least doesn't remember their faces. When people started killing each other and resources became scarce everywhere, Nicolas was just a kid hiding in an alley among corpses. Maybe he killed them, maybe he didn't...he doesn't remember either way.

☢️Anne Cleves (by @clouseplayssims)

Anne was a rich, sheltered girl whose family wanted her to marry a much older, several-times divorced man for money.

If not for society collapsing, Anne would probably have gone along with it like a good, dutiful daughter, but now she doesn't have to. If anything good could be said to have come out of the disaster, it is her freedom. Anne would rather take her chances with the zombies, honestly.

(This is my take on a post-apocalyptic Anne of Cleves, lol)

☢️Almalexia Goth (Sim & concept by @veronadragon)

They were the fruit of an affair between a rich Pleasantview socialite and a local man, and as a result she has grown up with many complicated feelings regarding their family.

On the one hand, they are away from all of that now - on the other, ruins are awfully cold and uncomfortable to sleep in compared to the cushy Goth manor, to say nothing of rampaging zombies...

☣️Hoppie AKA Patient Zero (by @andrevasims )☣️

When Hoppie drifted into Fallow Shores, she wasn't feeling very well, so she steered clear of the other survivors.

She'd seen what happened to the others!

That was not going to happen to her - she just needed to sleep, she'd feel better in the morning...

[generic-enthusiast]

Johnny always loved the sea. There wasn’t a first time he thought of it, or some grand moment of realisation, it just always was.

He’d never seen the sea, of course, living in Tulsa, but he had imagined it. Someday, once he got out of that house and made a life of his own, he was going to see it. Maybe he didn’t have an exact plan as to how, but he knew he would. 

The ocean was freedom. He didn’t need to have seen it to know. It was there, in “Oh Captain, My Captain”, and Impression: Sunrise and all of Ponyboy’s drawings and everything he read out loud when the two of them sat alone in his room, passing the time when there was nothing else to do. 

There were no buildings out at sea. No Corvettes, no greasers, no Socs with their rings and Mustangs and Madras. There were no stifling houses with screaming parents, no cement beds with newspaper sheets. 

It would just be Johnny and his boat and more water than he could ever imagine. 

It would be beautiful, too. So beautiful he wouldn’t need Ponyboy to remind him to pay attention to it, not the way he needed to remember to watch the sunset, sometimes climbing a tree so he could see over the buildings. Not the way he needed to remember fireflies were dots of flame, flying around, not pests he wanted to kill. Not the way he needed to constantly remind himself that someone designed that house, someone grew those flowers there, someone put everything where it is right now, because they wanted to make it beautiful. 

It would just be beautiful. 

At just sixteen, he didn’t know where life would lead him, other than out of Tulsa. He didn’t know how he would get to California or Florida or anywhere else he could finally see the ocean. 

He just knew that he would. No matter what it took. 

Molly doesn’t know what she was imagining when she went to nursing school, but it definitely wasn’t this. 

She thought she would be calming down babies who needed to get shots, telling kids to stay still so the doctor could measure and weigh them. At worst, she thought she might get a moody teenager with an impatient mother. 

She’d be helping people, putting her years of memorising body parts and metabolic processes to use. 

But they don’t teach you how to comfort a fourteen-year-old with a dead best friend in nursing school. So she hands him a handkerchief and offers to call his parents. He doesn’t seem to notice she’s there, just grabs onto the dead boy’s hand stronger — sixteen, he was just sixteen — and whispers his name. Johnny. 

She walks away after a couple minutes. There’s paperwork to be done when someone dies, and it’s her turn to do it. Linda showed her how to do it in her first week.

Quite honestly, Herbert just wants to go home. Working at the local registry office isn’t fun, it isn’t mentally stimulating, and he really would like to just go home, have a glass of wine, and read the same book to his kids for the thirtieth time. 

With still an hour until closing time, a young woman steps inside. 

“Hello there, how can I help you?” 

“I’d, um… I’d like to register a death. And get a certificate for a cremation.”

“Of course.” The job may be boring, but most of it is better than this. Dealing with mourning families who have to sort through funeral rites and paperwork. It seems cruel to put them through it. “Name?”

“Mine or of the… the deceased?”

“Yours first.”

“Right. Molly Waters.”

“Relation to the deceased?”

“I was the nurse whose care he was under. He died of uh… we’re not entirely sure what. Could have been smoke inhalation, intense burns…” She trails off. Ah. First time. 

“And his name?”

“Jonathan Cade.”

It never gets easier to handle corpses. 

Michael’s been working at the crematorium for almost ten years now — known he actually wants to be an engineer for eight — and he can still feel the acid rolling around in his stomach with every body he’s given. But if the old bodies are depressing and unsettling, Michael can’t begin to describe what the corpse he’s just received has made him feel. 

He can’t have been older than fifteen, this boy, and never ate a good meal by the looks of it. He’s so thoroughly burnt it seems cruelly ironic that he would ask for a cremation. Makes you wonder what sort of a teenager has funeral rites on his mind. 

Michael tears his eyes away from the boy and closes the box. 

Time for the chamber. 

He sets the clock and starts to wait. 

Most of the cremation process is waiting — there are shortcuts, he’s sure, but they’re heartless, not to mention probably illegal. 

So he waits for two hours until it all turns to ash. Then he takes what’s left of the boy out of the chamber and waits for it — him? — to cool down. Once he puts the ashes in an urn, he has to wait for the closest family member — a man named Darrel Curtis — to come pick it up.  

Most of Michael’s life has been spent waiting. Waiting for the chamber to do its work and waiting for the time to be right and waiting for his father to retire and waiting for a sign from the universe. 

Waiting for time to pass him by.  

At least he’s done something with his life. He’s done something small here or there, something that actually mattered for once. It adds up. Slowly but surely.

But this boy… he’s hardly had enough moments for any of them to count. And he won’t get any more. 

Someday, neither will Michael. 

And Jesus if that isn’t depressing. 

He closes the crematorium chamber and picks up the phone, taking a mental note to ask around for a replacement. 

“Hey, Rosie? It’s Mike. Yeah, I know it’s been a while. I wanted to say sorry.”

Sometimes, if Darry doesn’t talk for a while, his lips will start to fuse together. Something else probably also has to happen — they don’t always stick —, but under the right circumstances, his lips will stick together a bit more than usual and it feels sort of nice to have himself closed off. It used to happen in class all the time, until he was called on and had to unstick them. It was always kind of disappointing.

It hadn’t happened in years when he walked outside to get the mail and found a bag stuffed in their mailbox, a shoebox on the floor next to it holding more bags and their usual letters.  

Two-Bit’s started carrying the chewed-up pencil tucked behind his ear, Steve’s wearing his DX nametag again, Soda still hasn’t told them what he found, and Ponyboy carries the drawing folded up in his pocket and opens it up sometimes. Darry has the football in his closet, beside his work shirts. He takes a moment to look at it before he gets dressed every morning. Takes a moment to remember.

Three days ago, Darry went to sleep with that same feeling of his lips being glued together. It had been a while since he felt it last, probably back in high school, when he was expected to spend hours in silence, listening to teachers. 

Only his lips still feel like they’ve fused together, because he only ever opens his mouth to eat, and ten minutes after eating, it’s like nothing ever happened. 

No one’s said much. 

There’s not much to say.

They’re still waiting for closure. Dally’s buried already, has a tombstone nearby Mom and Dad. But Johnny wanted to be cremated. They’re still not entirely sure what to do with his ashes, ashes Darry only brought home today. 

“Darry?” 

Ponyboy’s voice sounds small, like it has for a week. Darry wonders when it’ll go back to normal. If it ever will. 

“Yeah, Pony?” Unsticking his lips has always been a strange sensation, but never more relieving than right now.

“I was thinking, uh…” Ponyboy opens his mouth and closes it again, trying to find what exactly to say. “I remember we used to talk about the— the sea.” Darry’s about to ask who “we” is before realising there’s only one possibility. “He— he always wanted to see it. Said he’d get to see it if it killed him.”

The sentence hangs in the air between them. 

“I figured, since we don’t know what to do with his— his… him. I figured we could spread the ashes at the sea. I think it’s— it’s what he woulda wanted.” 

“Oh.” 

Ponyboy stays still, looking at him expectantly. 

“I– uh, yeah. We should… we should do that.”

Darry spends the next couple days tracing out a route on their map. His dad always told him not to do it, that it would end up confusing him if he drew out too many, and the map would end up being useless. 

Somehow, he can’t bring himself to think Dad would disapprove. 

The closest beach is Galveston. Due south, through Dallas. 

He tries to find a way around it, another beach they can go to, but everything else is too far and they can’t afford that many days off of work. How ironic. Go through Dallas to bring Johnny peace.   

There must be some sort of metaphor there. He’d ask Pony if it weren’t so fucking depressing. 

The gang all manage to carve out a bit of time, so come Saturday at seven AM (with no small amount of grumbling) they pile into Darry’s truck and start heading south. 

Ponyboy’s carrying the urn in his lap, and he looks down at it every couple seconds, as if to make sure it’s still there. He’s on the far right of the back seat, Soda beside him, Steve on the far left. Two-Bit’s next to Darry, sifting through the bag of snacks he brought. 

Usually a road trip just means Two-Bit and Soda are more annoying than usual because no one can escape, and Steve and Ponyboy start elbowing each other and jostling the whole car until they have to stop to get them to sit further apart. But no one feels like laughing right now, and there’s just three people in the back seat — more than enough space.

The engine in Darry’s truck has never been as loud as it is right now, rumbling underneath the silence, not daring to break it.

Sometimes the urn catches a bit of sunlight and Darry can just make it out in the corner of his eye. 

“Are we supposed to talk about him?” Ponyboy asks after a good ten-minute drive. 

For a beat, they’re all quiet. 

“I don’t think there’s any sort of ‘supposed to’ right now,” Soda answers.

And they fall back into silence. 

Darry should be saying something. Following through with Ponyboy’s idea, starting a round of memories. Lightening the air by telling a nice story, something to remind them all of how Johnny really was. 

But all he can remember is when he failed him worst.

“Y’know, when Pony told me that Johnny wanted to see the sea —” Two-Bit smiles at the play on words but it’s tainted by the sadness that’s dripping all around them “ — I didn’t remember anything about it. Thought it was one of those things they just talked about between them, that none of us knew about.”

It’s subtle, but the whole car’s listening to Darry. Steve’s looking out the window, but his eyes flicker from the cars outside to Darry; Soda’s playing with his hands, but he slows down when Darry starts talking; Two-Bit’s sifting through the snack bag, but he’s making sure not to make anything crinkle too loudly; and Ponyboy’s drumming his fingers on Johnny’s urn, staring at Darry with wide eyes. 

“Then I thought about it a while. And uh— it wasn’t. Johnny tried to tell me, one day. Bit after junior year ended, I think. I was tellin’ him ‘bout how I wanted to get out of here, go to college and study finance or somethin’ like that, and he said that he wanted to too, said the buildings were suffocating, you can hardly see the sky.

“He was just startin’ to talk about the sea — called it beautiful an’ freeing, I think — when the phone rang and I told him to hold on a minute. It was Paul, or Mark, or someone. They were gonna play ball and I headed out with hardly a goodbye.”

This is the part where someone says it’s not his fault. Where someone says he couldn’t possibly know it would be that important to him, he couldn’t know the conversation would matter, he was just a kid, he made a mistake. 

But no one does.

They settle into silence again. It takes thirty seconds for anyone to say anything else and it’s just “That’s fucked up” from Steve. 

There’s not much to say to follow that, so the silence frees up some space in Steve’s throat, letting the scream nestled in his chest crawl up his esophagus, scratching at the back of his tongue.

He wants to scream. He wants to yell at the top of his lungs, holler until he can’t anymore, until there’s no air left inside him, until he’s as empty as he feels.

There’s so much he didn’t tell them, so much he never had the guts to say, and he can’t stop thinking about what he would do if they had more time. 

The name tag’s still in his hand, the pin needling at his finger pad.

"Don’t pretend like you hate the kid. You're not foolin' anyone but him, an' someday it'll be too late."  

Jesus, he wants to scream. 

But he can’t, not inside the truck with all his friends around him, and he can’t, not so soon after Johnny screamed for the last time. 

Because if it weren’t for Johnny, Steve would still be that stupid, angry kid that kicked shit when he was mad. If it weren’t for that one day, one completely normal day where Steve got kicked out again and he ran to the Curtises’. 

And it was empty — he thought it was empty because he called out and no one answered — so he threw the pillows down on the sofa and punched the wall until his knuckles hurt and did all he could to make everything else hurt — everything but himself. 

And once he was done, standing next to the couch, gripping the armrest, Johnny came walking out of the kitchen and said evenly, “I usually just scream.”

And Steve froze. It was supposed to be empty. 

“I’m alone,” Johnny told him. 

Steve sat down on the couch. “What do you mean, you scream?”

“I mean when I’m mad, I scream. I find some place where no one can hear me — I ain’t got a car so nowhere too far — and I scream. Usually near Buck’s. Music’s so loud no one can hear, and if they do, they assume it’s a fight they don’t wanna be in.”

Then Johnny walked past Steve and out the front door. 

“Where you goin’?”

“To get Pony from the library. Wouldn’t put it past the Socs to jump a twelve-year-old.” When he was about to leave, he turned around on his heel and looked Steve in the eyes. “I don’t reckon anyone’d think too much ‘bout someone yellin’ ‘round here.” He laughed humourlessly. “God knows my folks do, and no one bothers much.”

And he turned around and left. 

And, y’know, Steve never thanked him for that? Not when he came back with Ponyboy, and Steve was sitting in Darrel’s armchair, drinking water to relieve his throat. Not when a drunk caught him out behind Buck’s and he just narrowly escaped a jumping. Not when he found a field a half hour away where no one could hear. Not when it all became too much for Soda, and Steve brought him out so he could scream too. 

Hell, Soda probably doesn’t even know Johnny thought it up. 

“We didn’t do good by him, did we?” Steve asks the silent car. 

“I don’t think we could,” Soda answers. “Was too good for this world.”

And it’s the truth.

Ponyboy once told Soda that it was like he understood everyone. Soda smiled and ruffled his hair and said “thanks, buddy” and didn’t ask who was left to understand him because he already knew the answer was no one. 

Maybe someone could’ve but no one bothered. No one bothered to try and look past the smile that came as easily as breathing. Whenever it fell, whenever the mask broke, a couple pats on the back and half-hearted smiles were supposed to be enough. 

Even Steve didn’t know what to do when Soda came crying to him. He tried, sure, but he could never get the right words out. 

So when Soda cried, he cried alone. 

Until he collapsed onto the couch after skipping seventh and eighth period and rolled his head back and let himself feel the tears tickle as they crawled down his face because for three hours — three hours — he tried to get it. He spent an hour trying to read it last night, even had Pony try and read it out loud to him (isn’t that humiliating, having your little brother help you with school?) but he just couldn’t concentrate so he skipped out on chemistry to try and read it but the words swam in his head and he was thinking about the conversation he had with Steve yesterday and then the bell rang and he still hadn’t read a paragraph so he took math too and then it was English and he still hadn’t read the homework and Mr Anderson called on him and—

He let out a pathetic little sigh, hiccuping through it quietly. 

The couch cushion sank beside him and his head shot up. Johnny was sitting down next to him. 

“You okay man?” He asked, eyes flickering to Soda. 

“Why’m I so fucking stupid?”

Oh, don’t say that, honey, you know it’s not true. 

No, you ain’t. 

You’re a smart kid, Pepsi-Cola. If ya just try a bit harder I’m sure your grades’ll go up. 

You ain’t dumb, Soda. Just takes you a while longer to learn, that’s all. 

“School’s bullshit,” Johnny said, and lay his head on Soda’s shoulder. 

And he let Soda rant until their family came home. About school, about grades, about how stupid Mrs Morrisson made him feel, about how Pony could do better than him in his classes.

When the rest of the gang got back from wherever they had been, Johnny said they’d been talking about last week’s drag race and they changed the topic to Kyle Terry’s obvious cheating, everyone talking over each other so loudly they hardly noticed when Soda didn’t contribute. 

And then Johnny never mentioned it again. (Neither did Soda. Didn’t thank him, didn’t ask if he wanted to talk about anything.)

“Didn’t deserve the cards he got.” Two-Bit sighs and shuffles around a bit. 

A couple of them hum in agreement but no one answers. It’s not fair that they’re here, talking about him and that he’s here but not really, here but not whole, here but not alive.

He meant it when he said they could get along without anyone but Johnny. Johnny’s the only one they couldn’t take losing.  

He lays his head on the headrest behind him, looks up, and closes his eyes. 

It takes a little over half an hour for Two-Bit to hear the sobs. He’s clearly trying to cover them up, but the house isn’t exactly big, and the walls aren’t exactly soundproof, so Two sneaks out of his bedroom. 

Johnny’s on the couch Two-Bit’s Mama bought at a flea market two years ago, his face pressed into that pillow Grandma made before she died. His chest is shaking and his knees are pulled up against him.  

Two-Bit tries his best not to scare Johnny as he sits down beside him, but he flinches anyway. Kid’s been trained to jump at any small noise. That fucking bastard. 

“H-hey.” He hiccups, burrowing his face in the pillow again. “Sorry for wakin’ you.” His voice comes out muffled.  

“Don’t be,” Two-Bit says. 

“An’ I’m sorry for bein’ here so much, I know you ain’t got the space or nothing, but it’s only been three days and Darry— he can’t—”

“I know, Johnnycake, I don’t mind.” He puts his arm around Johnny’s shoulder and pulls him towards him. 

There’s only two years between them, but something about Johnny reminds Two-Bit of his little sister and turns him into a big brother whenever he sees him. 

“I miss ‘em too,” Two-Bit whispers, “We all do.”

“I know,” Johnny whispers back. 

Two-Bit is rudely snapped out of his half-lucid dream by an obnoxiously loud clang coming from the trunk. Ponyboy jumps and grabs the urn protectively as though someone would try to steal it. 

“Shit,” Darry mutters and turns back to try and see what it was. 

“Just an old beer bottle,” Soda calls out, “bumped into a bucket or something.”

The silence settles back in and it’s so acutely uncomfortable. It’s never happened before, that silence is uncomfortable with the gang. They know each other so well, they’re so attuned to each other that silence hardly ever exists, and when it does, it’s never awkward. Or, at least, never awkward like this.  

“Can we, uh… Can we put on music?” Ponyboy asks. He could deal with silence most of the time, but this one was suffocating. 

“Yeah, sure, little buddy.” Keeping his eyes on the road, Darry feels around for the button and turns on the radio. 

Everybody loves somebody sometime

Everybody falls in love somehow

Of fucking course it’s this song. Because what else could play while a cold urn burns holes in Ponyboy’s legs?

He can’t ask for them to turn it off though, not without someone asking why, and he’s not about to get into that. 

He’s not about to get into that summer day last year, when it was too hot to do anything so Johnny and Ponyboy just laid around in Pony’s room, listening to the radio. Then the song came on and Ponyboy started wondering. 

Most thirteen-year-olds had at least had a crush. Boys in Ponyboy’s grade whispered things to girls in class and they giggled back; plenty of them called things out at girls down the street — which, sure Pony did too, but they actually meant it —; and every kept on shoving Mary at Thomas to see how he turned red. Soda said he’d grow into it eventually but shouldn’t he have already grown into it? Everyone else had. 

“Hey, Johnny?”

“Yeah?”

“D’you— D’you think they do?”

“Huh?” Johnny asked, sitting up on Pony’s bed. Pony looks up at him from where he’s laying on the floor. 

“D’you think everybody really does love somebody? Like the song says?” 

Johnny took a moment to think and the question started to weigh down on Ponyboy’s chest. It was a stupid question, wasn’t it? Johnny’d think he was some sort of freak.

“I dunno,” Johnny said after a while, “I don’t think everybody does anything.” A beat. “S’not bad not to, I don’t think. Don’t need it to be happy.”

Ponyboy hummed and Johnny lay back down and they went back to listening to the radio, as if the conversation never happened. 

Sometimes Ponyboy would wonder if Johnny even remembered the conversation. If he remembered it when a distant relative asked too many pointed questions about whether he liked any girls yet, when school friends pointed out hot girls on the street, when a love song came on on the radio, or if that just happened to Pony. 

The car stutters to a halt. 

Here they are. Four PM, they didn’t even stop for food. 

They walk along the beach, trying to find a place to settle down and… do whatever it is they need to do. Their shoes kick up clouds of sand that get in each other’s eyes, and they have to circle around a couple groups of people. At some point, Ponyboy — who somehow got put in charge of leading the group — stops and walks towards the sea, stopping right before the wet sand starts. 

Quite honestly, the beach is depressing as shit. 

The sun’s light is relentlessly bright — he can’t even look down at the urn without being blinded, they can still smell the highway that isn’t that far behind, and the sounds of the city reach them perfectly well. There’s no direction Ponyboy can turn in so he doesn’t see the skyscrapers — taller than Tulsa’s — looming over him. 

This isn’t what Johnny would’ve wanted. 

“He thought—” Ponyboy laughs humourlessly, “He thought it would be beautiful and freein’.”

“Well, fuck me if this is beautiful,” Steve says. 

The sea— it isn’t even blue. It’s closer to the murky grey of old concrete. 

“I sure as hell ain’t spreadin’ his ashes here.” The metal’s growing hot under Ponyboy’s hands. 

“Maybe it’s better that he ain’t here to see this. It’d be worse if he lived his whole life waitin’ for this only to get here and have it be…” Soda gestures vaguely at the disappointment that calls itself the sea.

“Ain’t it good that he had somethin’ to hope for?” Darry asks, speaking for the first time since his impromptu confession in the car, “Maybe it ain’t the way he imagined, but it gave him somethin’ to dream about. Look forward to, maybe. Made him happy, even if he never saw it.”

He pauses for a second and Ponyboy wonders if there’s anyone there that isn’t thinking about Darry’s dreams of going to college. 

“You don’t gotta get everything you want. Sometimes it’s the wantin’ that makes you happy.”

The drive back is a whole new level of dangerous, starting in the late afternoon and going into the early hours of the morning. No one drives for more than two hours straight, and they all get something drawn on them when they fall asleep next to Two-Bit.

Ponyboy holds the urn between his arms, same as he did on the way there, and once, when Steve and Soda are bickering and everyone else is asleep, he brings his mouth near the top of the urn and whispers: 

“I hope wantin’ made you happy, Johnny.” 

Based on this post by @ outsidersheadcanons

[npookie0]

Hello, hello! I hope you’re having a great day/night! Angst-loving anon here, new to the KC fandom, and I was wondering if we could get a fic, drabble, or headcanon (or whatever format you prefer) about the LIs’ (separate) reactions to MC getting killed and/or how they’d cope? Bonus points if there were warning signs, like MC going, “Hey, gang, there’s this guy who keeps stalking me 🧍.”

Idk I’m not very creative haha, feel free to take any creative liberties, and feel free to ignore if this isn’t something you’re comfortable or interested in writing. <3

'Til death do us part.

These are hcs because I have a whole writing cooking up and I want to write hcs :3

Ronin - The Devil's Incarnate.

When Ronin found out that you were murdered he felt the world break, you, his fallen angel, was found dead. Fucking dead. And he could do nothing about it.

If you left hints about someone following you, sending threats, anything that seemed dangerous, but Ronin ignored it or didn't notice until it was too late, he will feel rage, at himself and that fucker who dared to kill you.

He will made his own witch hunt, find the person responsible for your death and make them suffer.

Ronin will definitely be impacted by your death, be less active in the server, drive himself more into murder, more gruesome, anything to keep his mind off of your death.

Your grave will be a place he will avoid for a while, deep down he's scared of the realisation that you're truly dead, that another person who he cared for - in his sick way of course, was found dead.

But if he visits your place of eternal rest, he will spend hours there, sitting behind your grave, his back on the cold stone, talking as if you could listen to him.

He will see you in his dreams, hear your voice, it would be different if you were a victim, if he was the one to kill you, but since you slipped away from him the haunting will be unbearable.

Angel - The Sweetly Sick Lover.

For her the news of your death were like a nightmare, a nightmare she desperately wanted to wake up from. She couldn't accept it, not now, not ever. That grief was strong.

If there were signs of someone endangering your safety and Angel didn't notice them in time she will hate herself, beat herself down about it, feel so agitated at herself just for letting you die.

She will avenge you, find and kill that bastard. That frustration, sorrow and anger will be a fuel that will make that kill truly gruesome.

She won't be able to live normally after your death, maybe work could work as an escapism but for how long? She knows you're dead, she can see or feel signs of you being in her life before.

Your grave will be a place bringing pain and comfort. She knows that she has a place that you'll always be in, even if bones will be your only remains.

She will spend as much time as possible at your grave, so much that Ronin will have to carry her away so she will go back home to sleep and eat something.

She will feel your presence even after your death, she'll wear your clothes, use your perfume, anything that smells like you. On one hand she wants you to stay in her memories, on the other she's hurting herself by keeping your things and reminding herself of you and your death.

Misaki - Forever a Child by Heart.

Misaki will deny it, hold onto their thoughts of you being alive, even if they'll see your corpse, they will never believe that you're dead. Once they'll accept it, their grief will be painful, take over their life.

A signs of you being stalked and they ignored them? Oh they will blame themselves for everything, no one from the server will get through to them.

Of course that bastard will be dead, they will be the one to shot them. They won't even feel guilty or anxious, it's not their regular kill, it's payback.

Their life will be turned upside down after your death, their parents, Angel, anyone else who will try to help them, will fail. Misaki will be in too deep in their grief.

If they're able to visit your grave they will go there every day with flowers. They just need to see the place of your rest, know that you're in peace.

They will talk to your grave, cry at it, say how much they miss you, as if it was supposed to bring you back or save them the pain.

Misaki will see you in their sleep, or in the corner of their eye, but with time your face will slowly fade and they will try to hold onto it like it's their lifeline.

V - The Justice Seeker.

For V the news were unbearable, his love dead? It can't be. Who dared to murder you? These beasts... He had a hard time accepting your death, especially with him promising to keep you save.

If there were obvious signs that V didn't pay attention to in the past he will treat your death as if he was the one to kill you, like he is the beast responsible for your suffering. What boyfriend was he if he couldn't even see the danger?

He will leave every other serial killer behind, your murderer is his priority, he needs to avenge you, to bring justice after your death, to let you rest in peace with your murderer burning in hell.

His life will be... empty. There's no one to tease him, no one to fill in the void that was left behind by you, there's just... nothing. Even his animals will feel the pain, be it them noticing your absence or them reflecting their caretaker's grief.

Your grave will be a place he will visit frequently. Taking care of it, you deserve a well kept resting place.

V won't show tears or talk to your grave, he will stare at it for a while, sadness in his eyes as he wishes that he could see your smile, hear your voice, hold your hand. Gods, even the teasing was something he missed now.

He won't be haunted by your ghost, nor would he hear your voice, but he will feel the lack of your presence, and it will break him every time.

[fckbatmanhiskidsareminenow]

Kill me slowly, Baby you know I don’t fucking mind

warnings: vent fic about illness, mildly graphic depictions/imagery of physical and mental illness

tim drake centric

title: life waster by corpse (don’t look at me ok im embarrassed)

word count: 912

beta read and edited by the lovely @vespertilionis

Do not cry. Do not cry.

That’s all Tim can tell himself as he stiffly walks back to his car. He knows how this is going to go, he’s not too sure why he got his hopes up. He feels like an idiot.

Finally, in the safety of his car, he actually looks down at the referrals he has been given. One for a CT scan and the other for an overabundance of blood tests. He didn’t ask for either. All he wanted was a referral to see an ENT, but the doctor hadn’t even looked at him before she started talking over him and suggesting other ideas.

There’s a few things we can do before you see an ENT. It’s been a year since he started feeling like this. All he wanted was to see a specialist, someone who would know what was wrong.

It’s probably not what you think it is. Probably?

You’re crazy, nothing is wrong with you.

Nothing is wrong.

Nothingiswrongnothingiswrongnothingiswrong

He throws the referrals across the car before slamming his fist into the steering wheel and letting out the loudest scream he could.

It peters off into a sob when he realises he can’t hear anything. Well, anything but a high ringing. He sits there hyperventilating in his own version of silence.

He calls the CT place while driving, desperately trying to sound like he hasn’t been crying. He almost breaks down when the receptionist mentions he had the same test done around this time last year.

As he pulls into the driveway of the manor, he takes a moment to calm down. Firstly, because he doesn’t want to talk about it, and secondly, because he feels guilty for being upset. At least the doctor was running tests. Sure, she didn’t really listen to him and suggested tests for allergies and anemia, which he is sure he didn’t have, but she still decided to do tests. Other people have been sick for years and don’t have doctors listen to them, so he should be grateful.

Maybe she doesn’t think he’s crazy.

He tries not to think about the fact that if the CT scan comes back and shows his sinuses blocked, the doctor might put him on his fourth round of antibiotics. Even after the other three rounds have completely tanked his immune system. Or that if the blood tests show he is anemic, she might focus on that instead of the actual problem. Like the horrible constant congestion that makes him feel like his brain is being compressed into a liquid that’s going to explode out of his ears and nose. Or that if he does have the disease he thinks he does, he might lose his hearing. He really doesn’t want to think about that part.

When he enters the manor, he heads straight for the cave. He’s hoping for the perfectly healthy distraction of vigilantism. His hopes are immediately crushed when Bruce turns to him and asks him how the appointment went.

“Oh, uh, it went ok. We’re redoing some of the tests we did last year,” he says awkwardly, wishing for once Bruce would notice he didn’t want to talk about it. Once again, his wishes go unheard as the older man just looks concerned.

“You don’t seem too happy about that.”

No shit, man, no clue how you got the title of world’s greatest detective.

He tries to push away the resurfacing anger by laughing, but it comes out wrong.

“Yeah well, last time the results didn’t really get us anywhere. So, I was kinda hoping she would try something else.” Another laugh. Bruce nods and turns away. Either he finally got the hint or doesn’t know where to go with Tim’s response.

Relieved that the conversation is finally over, he starts heading to the computer when he hears Jason scoff.

“Ya know what I think you need? Some concrete to harden you up.”

Harden you up. Fucking whiny baby.

Harden you up. Ungrateful child.

Harden you up. Nothings wrong with you Tim, you’re out of your mind.

Tim stops in his tracks and turns his head slowly to face the older boy.

“What?” he says coldly, causing Jason to raise his hands in surrender.

“Hey! I was just joking with you.” he laughs, and Tim’s eye twitches.

“No, explain it to me, so I can understand how it was supposed to be funny.” He can feel the anger rising again. Jason lowers his arms, looking guilty for his ‘joke’, but Tim couldn’t care less.

“I just meant that you complain a lot. It’s kinda miserable.” He answers, sounding defeated, but again Tim couldn’t care less.

“Why do you think that is Jason? Do you think I’m complaining because it’s fun?” “No—“ “No! I’m not! I am fucking miserable! I’m exhausted and dizzy and I feel like my brain is rotting in my skull! And I’m sick of people not listening to me and thinking I’m fucking CRAZY!”

His throat hurts from screaming. He’s hyperventilating again, but he can’t hear it over the sound of the ringing again. It hurts. He shakes his head to try and clear it, but it just makes the world spin around him. A hand reaches out to steady him but he pushes it away.

“Don’t fucking touch me.” God, his voice is always so much louder when his ears are blocked.

He stumbles up the stairs, knowing he’s probably stomping, but he can’t hear that either.

[mbrainspaz]

what the hell was that Heather vs Muse scene? What was that? What was the dynamic between them even supposed to be? Why did her book inspire a serial killer? Why did she freeze like a deer in headlights when dealing with mentally ill people is supposed to be her whole job? What did he even want from her? He obsessed over her and then he was just gonna kill her like all the other randos? In her office?? In the middle of the day???? Why pretend to want therapy just to attack her? It kills me that the whole therapy sesh dialogue only existed to explain that he knew Taekwondo so that he could last 60 seconds longer against Daredevil than your average thug in another utterly underwhelming and cramped fight sequence. Gods the storytelling could not get any stupider.

It's impossible to miss that half of it was awkwardly dubbed, too, so maybe they started out with something that made sense. Honestly her acting makes so little sense that I think in the OG version he drugged her. Even that wouldn't explain some of the dumb stuff she said. "Don't you care about all the people you killed? Huh? Do you feel nothing?" WHILE she's being cut open by a guy wearing a mask with bleeding eyes. "What the f*ck are you doing?"—Clearly dubbed, and yeah, this is said while he's approaching her with a knife. The dubbing saga continues with: "You've kidnapped me and then you're gonna what, SHOOT ME? HUHHGH?!" *Killer picks up gun* Girl... yeah. Probably. Take a hint. Then... then she just calls him a coward for wearing a mask. Rolled a 1 on the survival check.

I laughed even harder when the bad cops said 'Someone stabilized the victim.' Bro she's still unconscious and bleeding out. Daredevil didn't even wrap up her arm.

Muse wasn't even scary once Matt kicked his ass in the last episode. And why did he hate Fisk????? Why did Daredevil even go back to Muse's lair and go directly to his portfolio of paintings of his girlfriend?—Which he was only able to recognize because the paint was so thick they were practically sculptures (and done in a completely different style than all his murals), which was so convenient I had to roll my eyes. They even tossed in a flashback in case we forgot that he could TOTALLY recognize her face because he touched it 20 minutes ago. Just like he's touching the paintings! Wow. Just... if your plot hinges on a character whose whole thing is being a blind man (who can magically 'see' his surroundings but canonically can't read screens or stuff on paper) finding and looking at a bunch of paintings to immediately find the bad guy who just happens to be attacking his girlfriend at that very moment, drag that corpse back to the f*cking drawing board. Honestly between all the nothing sandwich plots, the spectacularly bad therapy scene, and the elbows-in-your-face CGI fight sequences this show should be studied forensically to track down everyone who murdered it. I looked up who was responsible for the writing and found out Dario Scardapane gave us at least some of Season 3 of Jack Ryan, which was one of the most nonsensically dull seasons of TV I've ever tried to watch, so that tracks. The credits mention almost a dozen producers and one 'staff writer', so maybe that was part of the problem. Said writer, Devon Kliger, hasn't done enough to pin him down, but imdb says he's currently working on Furby, the movie.

One last nitpick is that you've gotta expect all the MCU IP nods to other characters now that Disney has their grubby mouse paws on it, but honestly even those have gotten on my nerves in this show. 'OOh, we know who Kamala Khan is tee hee.' Okay try mentioning her once instead of a dozen times.

And all of this is exactly what I've come to expect from Disney. The squad of dirty cops that they're (i hope) setting up to get taken out by Punisher, and Fisk and Matt's acting are the only things making it bearable.

[felixcloud6288]

Dungeon Meshi Chapter 2

First thing I had to do was compare the map in the chapter 1 title page to the chapter 2 to confirm they are different maps. I'm two chapters in and I really want to play a game where hunting and eating monsters while exploring the dungeon to sustain yourself is a key mechanic.

This is really neat.

So is the basic idea that each floor of the dungeon corresponds to an actual floor of the tallest tower from the golden castle and some magic is being used to alter the terrain per floor?

It looks like there's a water level a few layers down.

Did Marcille's staff always have a little sprout growing out of it?

I'm with Marcille on the bats and rats. That sounds like an easy way to getting sick.

WAIT!! I've seen this meme!

Laios looks so upset and shocked that Marcille wants to eat normal food rather than hunt monsters.

The matagi are winter hunters from Northern Japan. They're known to hunt deer and bears. I guess that's the idea Laios imagined when thinking about hunting monsters or beasts.

So are Matagi a thing from where Laios is from or did he hear about them from the samurai guy who left the party and that's what he imagines they are?

Laios's explanation about how baraselia don't eat people but instead wrap their tendrils around victims to kill them and convert them into compost is not reassuring.

So there's a corpse retrieval and resurrection service. But it's not a union benefit of any kind. And since the resurrected have to pay a percentile fee for being resurrected, this would incentivize finders to prioritize retrieving rich adventurers.

Not sure what stops people from just robbing the corpse instead.

I might as well save each instance of Marcille casting magic and try parsing anything about the language she's speaking. Maybe see if there are any recurring runes in that language.

Kinda interesting how Marcille holds her staff in her right hand when they're traveling but switches it to her left when she begins casting magic.

I already said she was right-handed, but it looks like she prefers to use her right hand to the point that she doesn't use her left hand at all unless it's necessary. She prefers gesturing, holding, and acting using her right hand and will only use her left when her right hand is busy.

The moment her spell-casting was interrupted, she started transferring her staff back to her right hand. And when she was grabbed by the plant, she was gripping her staff with her right hand but doing nothing with her left.

To summarize, Marcille has no instinctive use of her left hand and you could probably easily hit her with a sneak attack from her left side.

Last chapter, Marcille got attacked by a slime. This chapter she got captured by a plant. I hope this isn't going to be a recurring thing with her.

I think the chapter is really brushing aside the part where Marcille was grabbed by a parasitic plant that plants its seeds under other creatrues' skin. Her clothing is probably thick enough to have protected her, but they should check her her skin for any cuts or scrapes and should look through her cloak for any seeds that might be embedded in the threads.

The plant would probably have let Marcille go after a minute or two since it likely wants its victim to be far away when its seeds sprout.

That face Marcille made conveys so many thoughts and emotions, the first of which is the dawning realization that she's going to learn things about Laios on this journey that she never wanted to know.

Marcille probably wasn't thinking how snug the shadowtail's grip was when she was more concerned about being eaten or having seeds implanted under her skin.

If Laios was the one who had been grabbed by the shadowtail, he would have been excited and asked everyone to leave the plant alone while it tied him up.

Love how the hollow comes with a fire pit, a broom, and a sign asking adventurers to clean up the place. Are there guild members who just scout out the dungeon for camping areas and prepare them for adventurers? Someone had to build that bridge they were crossing, right?

There's nothing strange about plants making fruit that other creatures find tasty. The strategy is the fruit and seeds will get eaten by whatever animal wants them and the seeds will pass through the creature's digestive tract and get pooped out somewhere else. The plant is using whatever eats its fruits to transport its offspring and provide some initial fertilizer.

The plants that use their fruits to lure in prey probably generate fruit somewhat independently of when they actually need to eat. If they only produced fruit when they are hunting, then most prey animals would either refuse to approach the fruits or adapt to become able to avoid the plant's traps entirely.

Baraselia might even have a gimmick where it has active and inactive tendrils. Most of the tendrils would be inactive and be meant to trick the prey into thinking its safe to approach the baraselia fruit. But then some random tendrils are active and are meant to catch prey that has concluded it's safe to approach.

And considering how shadowtail works, it likely doesn't produce fruits since it has other means to spread its seeds hence why it wasn't in the list of fruits in the tart.

I'm having fun with this. I'd like to know what kind of adaptations the local animals have to combat or avoid these plants so they can get to the fruits.

back

[clatoera]

Picket Fence is Sharp as Knives Chapter 12: Proof of Life

Hey guys, tik tok went down so I had to write fanfic again. Thats how this went. In reality I had been working on this for a while and I just work a lot of hours so it takes me a lot of time! That being said here it is, Chapter 12 (!) of PFSK. Crazy Crazy. We are now officially on year..three.. of ARWBFB au writing which is crazy. If y'all are still around you deserve an award.

This is also interestingly the first chapter that is not a taylor swift lyric. It's entirely because the entire concept of this is so distinctly different examples of proof of life, and I cant find a lyric to reflect that the way I wanted.

AO3

Masterpost

If you do not like blood or body imagery this is not the chapter for y'all that is for sure. I also toned down the sex to nearly nothing sorry guys.

As always I'm like..let me thank my friends especially @ohhowwehavefallen who listens to my clato rambling all day every day. @districtonekisses is an ACTUAL angel who listens to my ranting about this au on the DAILY and i'm so thankful to her. @afterfawn as always, of course who puts up with my BS.

Well lets just do it!

Fragile. Fleeting. Futile. 

These are the things Clove knows life to be, in different words. After all, she’s been motherless for six years, and is reminded of the futility of her own existence by the cruel sneers of her grandmother. It’s at the academy, in the eight daily hours of training, where she is reminded ad nauseam that if she loses focus for even a moment her life will be fleeting and abruptly ended before she is nineteen years old. 

Being desensitized to death, or maybe being made indifferent to life, starts early in training. 

The bodies belong to criminals, the enemies of the Capitol that exists to protect and guide them all. They are post execution, and their bodies are so generously donated to the future tributes, to give the opportunity to give these criminals the chance to turn the shame of their discretions into pride for the district through training future victors. 

(Rumor is that older trainees actually perform the executions, something Enobaria refuses to tell Clove no matter how many times she asks over dinner). 

“It’s an honor to have training tools like this, no other district gets such personal experiences with anatomy before the games.” Enobaria lectures, leading Clove with hands on her shoulders to stand at the left side of the corpse. “You can’t kill effectively if you don’t know what you’re aiming for.”

Leave it to District Two, to leave out crucial parts of human anatomy and physiology in their education, but breeding incredibly effective assassins in their children. 

They were excellent anatomists where it counted. 

There is no preparation for this lesson, no lectures on circulation or where to aim. It’s meant to be this way. The shock value was supposed to be a tool to wean out the first batch of the weak— as if an eight year old flinching at the sight of an open corpse was anything less than normal. 

“Come here, Clove.” Enobaria pulls her flush to the metal table, and sneakily slides a metal stool beside her to lift Clove onto. Fair is fair, and how would she learn if she couldn’t even see?  

(Clove never finds out that no one else in her class was too small to see on their own)

It’s her first time seeing a dead body in the flesh. She has seen all of the games, including her mother’s, over and over again. Yet there’s something about this- flesh that is still too pink, organs ripe with blood, and a smell- god a smell she cannot explain— absolutely assaulting her senses. It’s her job to take him in, the neat flaps of skin and muscle dissected back to expose the internal organs like wrapping on a package. She makes the mistake to look to his head, where glazed over eyes stare straight ahead, lifeless. There is the briefest moment where she swears the grey eyes of the cadaver flickered over to look at her. 

Clove gasps, and nearly steps back to fall off the stool, when she is caught on the arm by Enobaria The organs are plush and almost healthy looking, and that heart- that heart undeniably beats in his chest. “Baria, is he alive?” Clove half whispers, eyes flickering over the stuttering motion of cardiac wall. 

“He’s dead how it matters, Clove. And it’s Enobaria only here, don't forget.” Enobaria warns, bringing Clove’s hands back to the open body. “It’s a development from the capitol, and we’re thankful for the opportunities this gives us. Give me your right hand, Clove.”

She doesn’t wait, and simply grabs Clove’s little arm, pinching her second and third fingers between her own. “Okay so, what you’re feeling now, ignore it. It’s bowel. Cut through it, they’ll die eventually, but it’s not what you want. You want to be sure you’re going to get a kill, seconds can matter in the games.”

As soon as her arm hits the warm, gooey, worm-like structures she wants to recoil, her head whipping to look away from what she sees before her. “I-“

“No. Don’t you dare flinch. You aren’t getting eliminated like this Clove, you’re not weak, your mother didn’t die for you to get knocked out at the sight of intestine, look at me, and learn what you’re doing.” Enobaria snarls, grabbing Clove’s chin in her left head and forcing her to look down and into the cavity. 

Clove braces herself as her fingers are woven deeper, until they settle on something soft and tubular, a couple of centimeters wide. It pulses under her fingers, and with the little bit of pressure of Enobaria’s fingers squeezing over hers, she can feel the tension building and releasing, a pulse becoming a thrill, ebbing and flowing with the pressure of their hands. 

“This right here is what you go for to kill someone. It’s the biggest artery in the body, that comes right from the heart. If you’re drawing a kill out, if it’s about the entertainment, this isn’t the way to go. Once you hit this, it’s going to go fast. It’s called an Aorta, and it’s the money shot. This feeling under your fingers, no matter how faint, is proof of life. And you need to be sure you stop it. ” Enobaria takes her left hand, and runs from nearly the top of Clove’s spine all the way to her hips which makes the little girl shiver . “It’s all thought here…it connects to the heart. Then down your hips it splits into other arteries…” 

Enobaria leads Clove’s hand down to feel the split, then back up to feel other points of bifurcation. “Any of these, kid. Hit any of them. The ones down here, they go to the legs. Cut the inside of the thigh for those. This whole big tube though, you just need to knick it. It’s easiest between the ribs and hips, where there's less bone In the way. You can get a kidney too, but this is your goal.” Clove feels her fingers pressed a little deeper, running into something hard. “This is spine. It’s going to protect this from behind. You need to come in on an angle..squeeze, feel how the flow changes with your pressure..” Enobaria smiles in approval as Clove’s little hands constrict, and Enobaria can feel the change in pressure on her own. “Good job, kid.”

Enobaria keeps elaborating on anatomy, on the best places to cut for a fast versus quick death. How in the bloodbath it’s about fast, bloody kills, and the best spot to hit. She is an excellent teacher, as if Clove should expect anything less from her recently victorious mentor. 

Clove tries to internalize all the words and their paths-the aorta, the Iliacs, renal something- but all she can focus on is the strum of a pulse under her fingers. Someone’s entire life line contained in this little soft tube.  “Why isn't there any blood in this guy?”

“It’s all contained. Blood isn’t floating around, it’s contained in all these little tubes and channels. You have to open one for blood. Keep your hand there..” Enobaria’s instructing, but her hand slips out of the field of Clove’s vision. 

She’s so distracted by the thrumming she doesn’t notice a thing until she feels something cold In her free hand. When she looks, she realizes it’s one of her beloved little knives fitting naturally in the curve of her hand. Clove’s head snaps up to look at Enobaria, a million little questions filling her evergreen eyes. Questioning, almost, if Enobaria is suggesting what she thinks. 

“Go ahead. Cut it.” 

“Where do I-“ Clove stammers, looking rapidly between Enobaria and the body, her fingers still hooked around Aorta to hold it steady.

“You just go for it. Figure it out.” Enobaria instructs, but stealthily takes a step back. “No hesitation, Clove.”

She braces herself, not letting her eyes look to the face, when she takes her knife in her right hand and all but severs the structure in two with one fast swipe of her wrist. 

Clove watches, as the heart first flutters faster for merely seconds, before stuttering to a final stop in under a minute. It dawns on her now, as blood fills the cavity and coats her hands, that the body does not work at all like she thought. There's no thrumming, no pulse, no..anything..dancing under her fingers now. 

Would that count as her first kill?  She wonders only momentarily, before she feels her hands being pulled out of the sticky, coagulating substance . 

“You didn’t take any fingers off, right?” Enobaria inspects, ensuring that none of the blood is Clove’s own. Satisfied by her evaluation, she brushes a thumb over Clove’s cheek. “You’ve got blood freckles.” She returns to inspect the body, heartbeat ceased and firmly dead even to Clove’s untrained eyes. 

“Good work, Clovey. Get going, you need to shower before class.” Enobaria gently takes her off the stool, gently nudging her between her shoulder blades to move forward. “Go. You did good.”

“…thank you, Baria.” She murmurs, practically running off to find a shower before her basic math class that morning. She finds her blood covered fingers coming up to her neck, her wrists, the bend of her leg, desperately searching for her own pulse, finding proof of her own life and viability. 

Life is fragile, she decides, if she can feel it fading under her fingertips. 

——————————————————————————————————

She had watched him in the games, watching as he cut someone clean in two through the torso, leaving their upper and lower bodies in two hemorrhaging halfs. She watched him kill a lot, with that sun kissed flush to his skin and the sweat gathering at the base of his neck. He was efficient, he was ruthless, he was hot, and most importantly to her, he was alive. 

So Alive, Clove notes, her hands planted firmly over the places of his chest from where she is on top of him. His hands squeeze into the flesh around her hip bones, bruisingly tight, guiding the rise and fall of her hips when all she can do is close her eyes and whimper for more. 

He is so alive, he is alive and under her, he is alive and inside her, he is alive and holding her now. 

Even with her eyes squeezed together, she can undeniably feel the shared life between them in the way he moves inside of her, the way her hands desperately grasp at the sunburned skin of his chest. 

It is under her fingertips, where she can feel the increasingly speedy but steady beat of his heart under his skin. It races, likely as does her own, and even with her eyes squeezed shut she can feel with certainty that they are alive. 

In this short moment it does not matter that she has to go to training in the morning without him, that walking is going to leave her with an aching reminder of her current –and frankly, all night long– activities. It doesn’t matter that she’ll likely be physically punished for what she’s doing now. 

All that matters is that he is alive and so is she, and when she comes the gasp that escapes from between her lips is yet another example of proof that she is alive. 

Alive, Alive, Alive. 

——————————————————————————————————

They throw her into her cell. That is not an exaggeration. They grab her under the arms, lift her feet from where they drag on the ground, and fully toss her against the concrete floor before slamming the door locked behind her. 

She does not give them the satisfaction of hearing her breath catch when she hits the floor, of giving them the satisfying groan when it feels like her bones crunch under the weight of her body, or letting herself whine out loud when she reflexively puts out her hands to catch herself and the bleeding, broken remnants of her wrists flop in agony and let her land right on her face. The door slams shut and she feels it reverberate through her body as it echoes through the cell, somehow bouncing off of her cinder block prison. The second the door is shut, and she can be sure they don’t get to see her suffer, she lets out the sob she had held back, trying to use what strength she has left in her legs to get up against the wall. She can barely walk, barely move her legs without the feeling of her hips being ripped out of their socket. She cannot support herself on her arms, with the breaks in her wrists, her severed tendons, and certainly not to forget the dislocations and bruising around both of her shoulders. She doesn’t know what she looks like, but she can only imagine it’s a corpse. 

She can see the horrific purple and blue discoloration of her hands, of her legs. If she turns her arm the right way she can see greens and yellows, evidence of bruising that is already healing. It’s the same way with her scars– all horrific, jagged lines in various stages of healing– some of which have even been reopened time and time again. All are markers of her stay, markers of the things they do to her. 

Her body carries the scars of knowing that it does not matter that she was the best. She was the most loyal. She had given her life to these games, to her district, and it didn’t matter. 

She didn’t matter.

All of the blood is not only trapped in her joints and in her skin, but it pools around her. Crimson red and sticky, and it is not the first time she has been coated in blood, and as of late it was not uncommon to be covered in her own. She isn’t even sure where this particular episode was coming from– she just seemed to be bleeding from everywhere all of the time. For all she knows her back could be flayed open and she is so blinded by pain she is none the wiser. 

There's a lot of blood this time, so much so that the already small room seems to be caving in on her at a rapid speed. The fingers of her right hand find her left wrist, and she fights through the agony when she presses down to desperately search for her own pulse. She can’t find it and she’s dead, she has to be dead, why else wouldn’t she have a pulse? She can hear Enobaria in her head– Enobaria, is she alive? Is she angry at her?-- telling her to check, always check for the pulse, make sure the job is done. 

She didn’t think death would be like this. 

She doesn’t mean to lay back down on the floor, but the concrete meets her skull anyway.  She must make some noise, and when she forces her eyes open, through the single missing cinderblock in the top left corner, she is face to face with Marvel through the six inch space. 

“You’ve looked better. You’re so pale it’s like you’ve never seen the sun.” There's a sunken look to the skin of his eyes, but still an unmistakable spark of kindness as he tries to make her laugh, but that kindness is quickly replaced by something that can only be relayed as concern. “Clove? Hey, Clove seriously, are you okay?’

She forces her eyes open as wide as they can go, which is barely enough of a slit for green to be seen. “I’m dead. We’re dead and we’re in hell.”

“You’re talking to me, you aren’t dead.” Marvel chides, but doesn’t look away from her as she very clearly has to fight not to die. “Why do you think you’re dead?”

“No pulse…” she slurs, using all the effort she has left to lay her wrist by her face. “Dead with no pulse.” Her ability to form coherent, abstract thought clearly slips away from her as fast as the blood pours from her body. 

Marvel slips his own skinny hand across, and when he goes to grab her wrist she retracts in pain, actually unable to hold back her cry this time and his hand instinctively drops hers with a soft apology. 

“Hey, hey I'm sorry…” He instead finds the side of her neck and presses in, giving her a reassuring pat on her shoulder before his face comes back into view with the retraction of his arm. “It’s there. It’s weak, but it’s there. You’re alive.”

“I don-wanna-be” Clove mumbles, eyes fully shut now, “everythinghurts, I can’t breathe.” 

“No no, you want to live, You want to live to get home to Cato, remember? Out of the two of us you gotta get home.”  And in reality, it would more likely be him than her. They starved him, they gave him a few beatings, but really they just showed him the truth of Glimmer, maybe in a way they did him a favor.  At the very least Cato might kill him if Clove dies and he doesn’t. 

“Mmm…you got…-immer.” Clove tries, but the words escape her as she feels the sticky warm sensation of blood reaching her face. “Cato’s dead.”

“I don’t have her, I never did.” Marvel cools, but this is not about him, this is not about his own losses or the betrayal he faced at the realization of Glimmer’s disingenuity. “He isn’t dead. If they were dead they’d have killed us already. Why hurt you if it doesn’t get to him, right?”

“He didn’t come.” Clove slurs, trying hard to catch her breath and never seeming to be able to get enough to make her brain feel less fuzzy. “He always came when I needed him and he didn’t. He’s dead too.”

Marvel gives a soft sigh, and shakes his head though she cannot see it. “Clove you don’t know- Clove? Clove where is all this blood from-” It’s seeping through the single block opening now, deep red and metallic, a slow but unending trickle. “Clove, seriously Clove this isn’t funny, wake up.”

It’s a last ditch effort, not that he can do a single thing for her if she’s dead, but he reaches his hand back in and feels for her throat. Her breathing is there, shallow, uneven, but there. He finds her pulse, too, thready, weak, irregular. 

But it is there. She’s alive. For how much longer she will be, though… well. 

(He never tells anyone, but he is absolutely sure if they were not found when they were that she would have been dead within a week)

——————————————————————————————————

“Clove?” Her voice is soft, wavering, unsure as it calls out to the otherwise silent room. They sit in beds a few feet apart, in an otherwise bare and nondescript room. It’s technically Clove’s room, too, but she spends all nights and the majority of the time with Cato understandably. Now, Cato is at some mandatory meeting, and Marvel is…well she doesn’t know because he doesn’t want her to know. 

Clove sits in ‘her’ bed for now, laying relatively still as she flips through some book that is so old Glimmer cannot read the title. All she can really see is that the pages are so old they’re tinted yellow. She doesn’t glance up, only flipping through the pages absently, as if she is waiting to find something interesting. “Yeah, Glim?”

Her voice cracks in her throat before she can even get the words out, as she anxiously scratches at her wrists. “...can I come sit with you?”

Clove starts to make a face, she can feel her eyebrows scrunching together, before she looks up from the old novel in her hands, to actually see Glimmer. Her eyes are so red, the skin around her nose raw from the irritation of continuous tears. Her hair is in its seemingly permanent frizzy state, honey blonde grown to the top of her eyes before the bleach and capitol coloring continues past that point. She is such a far cry from the bombshell the capitol loves to exploit, and yet, she seems so much more authentically Glimmer. “I…yeah. Sure, Glimmer.”

Clove shifts to the left side of the bed, and Glimmer wastes no time, untangling her legs and hopping off the bed before she scurries over to Clove’s half of the room. She doesn’t press under the covers, only to sit side by side on the left half of Clove’s bed. 

“Do I want to ask if you’re okay or…” Clove starts feeling, instead of shared body heat, the actual weight of Glimmer curling up into her side, a blonde head resting on her shoulder. “Glimmer?”

“I just miss being wanted.” Glimmer whispers, curling up on her side and clinging to Clove much against her invitation. “Everyone wanted me and now no one wants me. It’s nice to feel another person.”  She explains, and as much as Clove may not like it, she can feel warm tear drops hitting her skin through her District issued pajamas. 

“Oh.” Clove says softly, shutting her book with her left hand and placing it on her thighs. She doesn’t even mean to do it, but she lets Glimmer take her right hand to hold, too. “...We want you, Glimmer. Maybe not in the way you’re used to, but I like having you around.”

“You don’t have to lie, Clove. I’m not anyone’s person anymore. Maybe no one ever liked me to begin with! They liked how I looked, but even I was just a cheaper, second rate version of my sister for the people who couldn’t afford Cashmere.”  Glimmer explains, quickly working herself back up to a sob, a heavy, awful sound that catches in her voice. “It’s all I was ever good for.”

“No..No, Glimmer that's not true. At all. We like you Glimmer. We don’t care what you look like. I don’t care how good you are in bed. I don’t care, Glim. You’re…my friend. You are probably my first friend, because Cato doesn’t count now. I’m glad you’re here, with me. I’m glad you’re alive.” Clove finds herself intertwining her finger’s with Glimmer’s, squeezing so softly that it was both uncharacteristic for her but also the best she could do with the current weakness she still faced. “You’re like..my best friend, Glimmer. And I am so glad you’re here. Who else would I talk to? Annie, so she can tell me all about using the ocean to clean her energy? Even when we get out of this place you will still be my best friend, Glimmer. I’d say even a District apart, but there’s not even going to be a Two to go back to at this rate.”

“...you can come live with me, if you want. While Two rebuilds…” Glimmer offers softly, her other free hand coming to hold their joined hands. “Thank you, Clove. I’d really like to stay your friend.”

“I think we’re kind of stuck together now, Glimmer. Especially if you let Cato live in your house, he might never want to leave.” Clove subconsciously drops her head on top of Glimmer’s, dark hair mixing in with blonde.  “You’re worth so much more than they made you think.”

Glimmer just sort of shrugs, nodding her head towards the book in Clove’s lap. “What were you reading?” 

Clove grabs the old book in her left hand, and thumbs through the pages for Glimmer to see. “It’s a recipe book, from something called a Depression? And not the way we feel but I guess it was a thing a long time ago, where people had no money and had to make really bad food. I guess that’s what we’ll be working with when all this is over, but the options suck” 

“I’ve never used my kitchen, you can break it in however you like.” Glimmer flicks through the pages absently, before handing it back to Clove.  “What’s the first thing you want to make?”

“Anything with flavor.” 

Glimmer laughs, a soft girly giggle that Clove can’t help but echo on her own. She feels the soft shaking of her shoulders as she leans on her, but she is drawn to the feeling of someone else's hand in hers. 

There is a comforting strum of Glimmer’s thumb over hers, a gentle occasional squeeze between the bases of her fingers reminding her that she is here, she is with her, and they are alive in this place together. 

——————————————————————————————————

“I’m glad you’re too slow to get off the couch, I think if you could still get up on your own I’d be dead.” Cato teases, holding both his hands out to her, not really giving her a choice to accept them before his large hands are encircling her elbows and pulling her to a standing position. His hands come to rub at her upper arms soothingly, “What’s wrong, baby?”

“Don’t fucking underestimate me.” Clove tries to threaten, but it falls short as she audibly sighs with the ease at which he pulls her to a standing position. “If I was going to kill you it was going to be last night when you ate that incredibly looking steak that was just so red and juicy and I felt like I had to chew on leather–” Clove starts to complain, but she is quickly out of breath and needs to take a deep inhale before she can even consider continuing her ranting. 

“You’re..upset over dinner last night? I can go get you some right now-” Cato quirks an eyebrow, but gives her arms a reassuring squeeze. “That I could fix–”

“NO. Cato. I can’t have that, because I am growing your child, and I can’t eat that because it could hurt him. Or Her. But him.” Clove snaps, but goes to lean her head on his chest. She is stopped by the barrier that is her own body, and the space that is filled with their well grown child gets in her way. She wants to scream in frustration, but instead her body betrays her with the threat of tears. “Speaking of him, he’s kind of my problem. He was supposed to come out Tuesday and it is now Friday and would you look at that, he’s still nestled up in my fucking ribs, Cato. I need this kid out.” 

“I promise you, as soon as he’s out, I will go cut you a piece of steak right out of one of Annie’s cows, it’ll still be breathing when you take a bite.” He offers a playful smile, but her frustration is palpable, and instead his hand comes to cradle the back of her head, pulling her against his chest. “I know, babe, I know. I mean we could try what Glimmer said–”

“I know what Glimmer said, and no, we are not having sex. That got us in this fucking mess, in fact, we’re never fucking ever again.” She huffs, before burying her face in the thin fabric of his shirt. She can hear, and feel, his heart beating under her ears, a steady, solid sound that has now carried her through an entire war. It’s almost the sound of home to her.

 “And Glimmer only said that because Annie said that, you know she wasn’t doing that. Besides, Her girls had the courtesy to come four weeks early, not overstay their welcome by four days. She’s a hypocrite.”

“He’s just cozy in there, Clove. I can’t blame him, I’d also just live inside you as long as I could if I was allowed. You’re literally his home.” Cato plays, but lays his chin on top of her head, the hand that is not cradling her head coming to rub circles on her lower back. “It’ll be over soon. He’s just an overachiever. Or maybe he doesn’t want to come out because he knows he’ll have to meet our friends. Would you want to come out knowing you’d have to see Marvel?”

“I thought about literally cutting him out myself–”

“Okay no you are not doing that, I know you’re good and all Clove but–”

“Shut up. I said I thought about it. I obviously didn’t do it. I couldn’t really see where I'd need to cut, and frankly I wouldn’t be able to stitch myself back together, and yeah you’re good with your fingers but you have never been good at a suture, even when we were teenagers.” Clove tries to shift her weight, looking for any comfort she can get in this permanently irritating state. Everything hurts. Her joints, her back, her neck, hell even her feet just ached. “Mostly, I know I could hurt him, and we have made it way too far for me to risk hurting him now, Cato. He’s safe in here. I’ll never be able to keep him this safe again.”

“We’ll protect him Clove, even on the outside.” He promises her, letting his hand come down to the under curve of her belly, letting himself press up just enough to take the extra strain off of her joints. She audibly relaxes, not only melting into him but letting out a genuine sign of relief at the release of weight from her hips and spine. 

“We’ll try, but he’s just so safe, and he’s warm, and he’s never hungry…I feel bad trying to evict him.” Clove murmurs, pressing herself just slightly forward to take advantage of shifting even more of the weight of her abdomen into his hands. 

“It’s our job to take care of him, Clove. He’ll be safe and he’ll be warm, and unfortunately he’ll probably be hungry a lot because he’s mine but we’ll take care of that, too.” He kisses the crown of her head, his thumb stroking at the side of her belly. “What do you think he’s doing in there?” 

“Mmm, he’s moving because you’re talking to him.” Clove brings her own hand down, hovering a few inches above her pubic bone before pressing in. “Here’s his big head..” She tracks her fingers up, expertly following the curve of her baby’s spine and body, until she reached, “here’s his body.. and his feet are all the way up in my lungs. Where he kicks them incessantly.” 

“He’ll just be a fast runner, strong legs and all.” Cato tries, holding her cheek and chin in the flesh of his palm. “Do you actually think he can hear us talking?.”

“A runner? What are you going to have him training for, Cato? His interdistrict baseball team? And what if it’s a girl?” She teases, but lays her head to be caressed in his hand more fully. “Of course he hears us, he’s right there, and he moves a lot more when you talk. He likes you.”

“Hell yeah I am. We’ve got Victor genes, baby. They aren’t going to waste. Hunger Games or baseball, I don’t care, he’s gonna win whatever it is. Our five year old will absolutely wipe out a five year old from district one, it’ll be a big rivalry. A girl, too, our daughters will also be incredibly athletic you know. They’re kind of bred for that kind of thing.” Cato grins, leaning down to catch her lips in a kiss, that while it starts soft and gentle, quickly evolves beyond that with the fiery passion that so often becomes all that is Cato and Clove. It’s her who pulls away first, with significantly less lung capacity these days, gasping for a deep breath.

“Do you still like me even though i’m fucking huge?” She almost pouts, blinking green eyes up to him with skepticism. “Like really fucking huge.”

“You’re not huge you’re straight up entirely baby, I am quite literally holding our kid through your skin right now.” He offers, leaning back down to catch her lips in another quick, yet equally as adoring, kiss. “Of course I still like you, babe, I love you. So much. Plus, you’re like so hot. Maybe even hotter than usual-”

“I’m still not having sex with you ever again.”

“I know, but I mean it.” He promises, and the warmness in his voice almost makes her believe it. “Besides, I don’t want to hurt it-”

“Oh fuck Cato, your not that big, i’m sorry to tell you–” She rolls her eyes, turning her face up and out of his hand. She winces as she feels one of those big shifts in her rib cage, and ends up stepping back away from Cato. “Can you go start a shower for me? That way by the time I make it upstairs it’ll be warm enough?”

“It’s big…” He mumbles in response, but withdraws his hand away from her lower belly in retaliation. “Sure. Can I join or-”

“No, Cato.” 

“...I can just watch.”

“No, Cato.” 

He huffs, loud enough for her to hear, but turns to stomp up the stairs anyway. “I’ve seen you naked before you know.”

“Not like this!” Clove calls up after him, before turning on her heels and sinking back into the couch he had hauled her out of. It was exhausting, at this point, to even be on her feet that long. 

She pulls her feet up to the couch, having learned her lesson of letting them hang on the floor and barely being able to walk as a result. All the shifting and motion translates directly to her child– boy or girl, which technically it still could be a girl– who decides to roll it’s back to the other side of her abdomen with feet still solidly extended into her torso. 

Her fingers find the spine of her son again, and she prods gently to feel him roll to the other side. “Your dad loves you a lot, you know that? He wants you sooo bad.” 

But then again…so does she. 

“If you could just come out to actually meet us that would be great.” Clove whispers, firmly poking at her own belly. She is greeted directly with what is so clearly a limb– could be a foot, could be a hand— sliding up under her skin and looking as if it is going to break out and escape right through her flesh. “I’d like to see that hand from the outside.” 

She pokes again, and is once again responded to with movement that she can feel so distinctly that she would swear her son is right there, just under her skin, even though she knows it not to be the truth. There’s muscle between them, skin, fat, fascia, and even more muscle that keeps them apart. Something like six or seven layers of her own tissue separating her from the baby she made. Seven layers one way, but at the same time there is nothing that separates them, as he literally exists only inside of her. 

There is so much between them and yet nothing at all. 

Is he just abnormally strong, to so clearly be felt under her fingertips? Or is this just a reminder of how fragile her own body is, how thin seven layers can feel between herself and the thing she wants the most. 

“I just want to see you, buddy. I’d also like my spine back, but mostly I’d like to see you. Find out what you look like… maybe finally name you..” Clove talks aloud, a sweetness in her voice truly reserved only for the moments when she is alone with herself and her body. He reacts to her, like he always does, wiggling around and pressing into her as if all he wants is to see her too. LIke he’s also trying to break through to actually see the woman whose voice he never ceases to hear. Maybe he also would like to have a name, even, and not continuously be referred to as baby or buddy. 

She has felt a lot of life under her fingers. Pulses, heartbeats, sweat, a hand in hers, a muscle twitch. This, though, is unlike anything she has ever fathomed. A pulse is an abstract way to connect to a heart beat, but this? This is pure, distinct life under her fingertips. 

A few days later, he is real and he is fragile on her chest, but he is alive. It’s fascinating, almost instantly, how naturally he fits exactly there, how his favorite place seems to be right over her heart, as if that is the place he had been living and growing. 

(Maybe it may as well have been, because it certainly feels like she is looking at the embodiment of her heart when she watches him nestle into her skin.)

She even finds that while she started to love watching his little hands and feet under her skin, she is even more in love with the way his entire hand grasps her finger. 

It dawns on her, when he falls asleep again and again over her heartbeat, that while Cato and the sound of him alive is her home, maybe the proof of her own life is home to her son. 

Life is fragile and fleeting, but it is anything but futile. 

Life is fantastic. 

[innerchorus]

Arslan Senki Chapter 130 (Part 2)

Here we go, the second half!

Sam's little bow of gratitude as Team Hilmes walk away!

And up the tower we go, to get a better view of what's happening in the streets. Innocentis has been taken into custody on Arslan's orders (he specifies 'alive'; no doubt thinking of Estelle's request)

Innocentis getting snaked for the second time.

The doorway getting darkened by the distinctive silhouette of none other than Andragoras (this party has now been crashed twice lmao). I was in a good mood by this point because things are lining up and I know where this is going!

Andragoras cuts a fearsome figure, cloak and armour bloodstained from the fighting he's had to do on the way here. He's such an imposing figure whose presence seems capable of cowing others, yet ARSLAN STANDS UP TO HIM and refuses to hand over Rukhnabad. Being reinstated as Crown Prince isn't enough.

"I did not come back here to become Crown Prince. I am here to become Shah!" FUCK YES.

[insert soft "holy fuck" here]

That line... That admission of Arslan's calibre... Just whoah.

And then of course Andragoras tries to fucking kill him and take the sword (and at first I thought an earthquake was taking place but actually it's the effects of Andragoras's voice causing everyone to shake)

Azrael (whose name is misspelled as 'Asrael' though at least he got to PWEE and not PEE this time) soars past the window and causes a momentary distraction and as Andragoras notes this must mean Kishward has reached the palace, he also misses detecting the approach of a very possessed-looking Innocentis behind him

Given that Azrael bears the name of the angel of death that PWEEE was probably him saying "You're going to fucking die" and that's exactly what happens, with Innocentis wrestling Andragoras towards the window and out of the tower. There's no way either of them could survive that fall. The last panel of the chapter is their bodies in space, hurtling towards the ground together.

So you all know of my theory that Team Zahhak intended for Hilmes to be the replacement for Zahhak's crumbling body. But if it's not him, it could be Andragoras instead. I'm going to get into some novel spoilers for a moment so please look away if that bothers you!

In the novels, Zahhak doesn't return fully until late in the second half, after a timeskip. Andragoras dies in basically the same way, but the novels don't mention Team Zahhak being involved in Innocentis's actions. Later, Andragoras's body, stolen from its mausoleum, becomes Zahhak's vessel. The fact that Arakawa has Team Zahhak manipulating Innocentis here might be nothing more than giving them more of an active role at this moment to keep them in the forefront of our minds, but it could also hint at them deliberately engineering this moment so they'd have an easy body to appropriate. Maybe that's also why they previously convinced Innocentis to duel Andragoras, hoping that the poisoned sword would give them the royal corpse they desire.

Personally, for many reasons I'd still prefer for it to be Hilmes (though obviously I don't want any harm to come to him, I just think it'd be good for his character) but I'm going to trust whatever direction Arakawa is going in because so far she's pulling off the final stages of the story very well.

[evergreen-femme]

edgy vent writing cw: suicide

i think about the corpse i’ll leave behind all the time.  it used to frighten me.  maybe i’ve shot myself in the woods behind my house, and the body is crawling with insects and maybe has already had some of the meat torn off of it.  maybe she finds a fragment of the skull without too much gore attached and keeps it.  i wonder if it would still hurt to be eaten after i’m dead, if the nerves will somehow still be active and i’ll feel thousands of tiny mandibles tearing into me and not be able to do anything about it.  or maybe i did hit a tree head-on and follow through with my intentions.  parts of the body are crushed by the car, completely unrecognizable; there’s a branch piercing the throat and leaves glued to the face with dried blood.  maybe i’m falling into the quiet ocean where the corpse will be buried in the mud and slowly feasted on by crabs and amphipods and worms.  no one would find it there.  i used to feel revulsion when i thought of these things, but now i can think about them with ambivalence and even a level of fascination.  the corpse isn’t mine, the body isn’t mine.  if i died like this, i could return the elements that comprise what’s left of my existence to nature, and there’s a strange comfort in that.

my corpse, the one that belongs to me, is inside of me, and has been for a while now.  it’s a young girl’s body; i don’t know the age, because she had memories i don’t.  this body grew around it like rings on a tree; what’s left of me is cocooned deep within this sarcophagus of flesh, and it is, of course, dead.  maybe i was stillborn, reanimated by my mother’s desire to have a perfect mirror for herself, a kitten to play with, an entity to play the emotional role of her partner, completely bound by the rules that govern infant psychology and development.  i don’t think that i’ve ever been me.  what i see in the mirror isn’t me, and it never has been. 

how do you live when you are a corpse within a walking corpse?  there isn’t anything that excites me, there’s nothing in particular i want to do, the only things i feel are pain, shame, and guilt.  it is difficult for me to get out of bed; sometimes i just don’t.  i can’t do basic tasks without feeling like i’m dropping my brain in a vat of acid.  one day people will lose their patience with me, and the scraps of work i’m able to do won’t be enough anymore, and i’ll lose my income and my home.  i can feel it growing closer.  it’s always crawling closer, inevitable, lurking in every shadow.  i don’t have the energy to resist it anymore.  every effort i’ve ever made has been for nothing.  i’ve never seen personal gain from it in a way that actually spoke to me.  all the ‘gain’ i’ve had from working, working, working, making my life be work, has been worthless gains for the construct of flesh that is sealing me in with no escape.  the gains are the promise of more work of greater difficulty.  i am a young girl who somehow got a last few gasps of air and realized she was alive inside this living tomb, who tried to claw her way out, before realizing that it was impossible.  there is no way to regain what i’ve lost.

i can’t keep going on like this.  my brain won’t cooperate with my attempts to keep the construct functioning enough to keep my life in stasis anymore.  nothing is in stasis anyway, it never was. flesh grows old, breaks down, mutates and warps unrecognizably regardless of whatever is going on in your brain.  i just can’t make it keep going anymore.  i will lose my job.  i have nowhere to go.  there must still be a part of me that’s alive in there, because i don’t want to die, but the pain is too much to bear, and any life i could have will be a fraction of what it should have been, consigned to the margins of society and left to rot and fall apart.  i used to wonder if i would be in the news when i killed myself, but i know i won’t be.  people kill themselves every day, it’s one of the most common causes of death, and nobody cares about another dead tranny.  the world will blink and i’ll be gone and it won’t matter. 

what i need is a love that is impossible, one that i could never reciprocate, because i’m incapable of real love or affection.  i wouldn’t even be able to recognize it if i was getting it; hell, i probably am, i’m just too broken to feel it.  maybe nourishing an ecosystem at the bottom of the sea is what love feels like.

[hulijingemperor2]

Shen Jiu: *hugs Ayao's arm one hand, while his fan was opened in the next~ as they walked to Fangfei mansion.*

Yao: *flutters his fan* would you like any staff, dear? All concubines, except for team dimple, has a staff here.

Shen Jiu: of course, Huangdi. I would be so honoured. They must help me look good for you.

But why don't team d have staff? Or did they kill them all.

Yao: *laughing* Shen Jiu, team d consider themselves my servants, so they decided not to have them. Minshan however has his clan staff, yangyang and yuyu have their assasins and own henchmen to carry out certain operations and assist them in fierce corpse experiments.

Other than that, there are palace maids who clean their residence so.

Shen jiu: ohh. Well I would like a staff. Now let's go make team dimple jealous.

You know, since we'll be alone, in a room. Probably decorated with roses.

Yao: ahaha, and peonies.

Shen jiu: hmm how fancy, my emperor.

Yao: I asked them to decorate the room with peach blossoms, and serve peach blossom wine. As I sensed that you love those flowers.

Shen Jiu: yess! I do. Thank you so much, Huangdi.

Team dimple: *peeping*

Mo xuanyu: what is he doing with my Yao gege.

Xue yang: obviously gonna bang him.

Su she: he's so proud of himself huh.

Xichen: oh team dimple, let then spend some time together.

But you know, I really wish it was me.

Mo xuanyu: keep it as a wish. Because he's mine!

Yao: *looks over his shoulder* team dimple. I can hear you.  Care to come out of hiding.

Mo xuanyu: *squeaks* team d is not here at the moment, Yao gege.

Xue yang: leave a message.

Shen Jiu: the emperor want to see you three twinks.

Xichen: four twinks actually.

Su she: ugh, lan lips. Huangdi. Sorry for eavesdropping. *kisses hand*

Yao: it's fine, beloved. I'm used to team d stalking me.

Xue yang: because you're sexy.

Shen Jiu: *jealous*

Yao: you guys teamed up with Huan?

Mo xuanyu: never!

Su she: he's not a part of team dimple.

Shen Jiu: can you tell me who is a part of team d.

I'm a new concubine, so I got to know.

Xue yang: Minshan, Yuyu and I.

And Jiggy. Well Jiggy is the reason for team dimple. He's our God.

Shen Jiu: yea, now leave your God alone. He's with me. And I will impregnate him.

Xichen: what??

Yao: what??

Shen Jiu: nothing.......I got carried away. Ehem.

Su she: you feel you're hotter than us, Shen Jiu?!

Shen Jiu: uh....yes?

Xue yang: Peak lord. Have you given Jiggy any gifts?

Su she: that's so selfish of you. You don't deserve my Huangdi then.

Mo xuanyu: Yao gege, deserves everything on earth.

Xichen: ah, I'm glad I got a vacation from team dimple.

Ayao.

Shen Jiu: Huangdi to you, Lan lips. *smug* and I'm planning on a gift, team d. Or I can always tie you three up and use you like a center table.

Xue yang: try.

Mo xuanyu: how dare you!

Shen Jiu: you will decorate Huangdi's living room.

Xichen: Ayao: *kisses* 

Shen Jiu: hey!

Xichen: *ignores* Ayao, I'm going to do some meditation.

Shen Jiu: wow wow wow. Why are you telling Huangdi that, Lan lips?

Yao: have fun Huan. *smiling* and team dimple, please behave. Or I'll get my sons to babysit you.

Shen Jiu: I think that's a good idea.

Xue yang: really? Them?

They can't babysit us. And we don't need babysitting.

Yao: you're right. Rusong Dianxia, who's able to let the Jianghu kowtow before him and give up their weapons, can't babysit you three.

Let me keep you occupied then. Team dimple

You go spy on the reformed Wens, to see if there's any uprising. Just to make sure.

Su she: will do, Huangdi.

Yao: mhm.

Shen Jiu: bye team dimple. Good riddance.

I mean good luck. Maybe you guys can learn how to not be so stuck up. Like I understand you want to lick Huangdi's dimple out of devotion, but do it in style. Come on. DO BETTER!

Mo xuanyu: we are doing it in style?! What do you want us to do?

Shen Jiu: *sigh* team dimple. You and Lan lips are getting in the way of my lovestory with the emperor.

Yao: oh gosh.

Su she: we knew him first!

Mo xuanyu: hey! We're not associated with Lan lips!

Yao: what a normal Tuesday afternoon, when the simps start fighting over me.

Xue yang: you're a team dimple anti!

Shen Jiu: no, I'm not your aunty. I just believe that I have the right to Huangdi and his hot self.  And I don't care if you know him first.

Shen Jiu: now will you excuse me. I'm going to sweep huangdi off of his feet and into my arms.

Yao: *amused* Shen Jiu!

Team dimple, I still love you. Don't be like that. Every harem member deserves their emperor.

Su she: we apologize, Huangdi. We're selfish when it comes to you.

Xue yang: Shen Jiu, if you dare impregnate him!

Shen Jiu: what you gonna do.

Yao: *laughing*

Shen Jiu: I can't wait to kiss those dimples. Oh my God.

You're so tiny, and gorgeous.

Xue yang: aren't you fighting with me?!

Shen Jiu: oh shut up, I'm looking at Huangdi's dimples.

Let's go Huangdi.

Xue yang: weirdo.

Mo xuanyu: that's our Yao gege.

Su she: everyone's mad for Huangdi's dimples.

~

Fangfei Imperial Mansion 📍

Shen Jiu: *sits and admires his Huangdi*

Yao: ah, serve yourself, won't you. I just got to get comfy.

*loosens his clothes, then makes his nine tails and fox ears appear.*

Shen Jiu: *drinks wine and admires him*

Yao: *eyes became more golden*

Shen Jiu: I'm gonna be destroyed tonight. But it's ok.

Maybe some other internet twink who choked on a bun can summon me again.

(Shen Qingqiu, what are you saying. You're the real Sqq, not Shen Yuan)

Yao: so you like my residence? *eating Dongying rose petal cheese*

Shen Jiu: it's magnificent. Just like the resident. 

What's this?

Yao: cheese from Dongying. I love to eat cheese with wine, like the people of the West.

Classy right?

Shen Jiu: definitely. *hugs and squeezes thigh* Huangdi. We're all alone.

Yao: *lifts chin* oh yes we are.

Shen Jiu: *kisses his dimples delicately.*

Yao: *kisses him in return, while brushing his fingers on his chest*

Shen Jiu: would Huangdi be upset with me if I impregnate him?

Yao: ahaha, not at all. But you know team d would have a problem. And my citizens may think that you misbehaved with their Huangdi.

Shen Jiu: oh dear.

Well I'll fight everyone then.

Yao: Shen Jiu. Don't fight them. I'll explain.

Shen Jiu: as you wish.

Yao: you're just being a harem member.

There's nothing wrong.

Shen Jiu: *kisses his neck and shoulders* Ayao, you can't be left alone. I love you so so much. I'm actually spellbound by you.

Yao: dear, that's what they all say. Ahh.

Shen Jiu: you're mine.

Yao: no, Peak lord. You are mine!

Shen Jiu: *laughing* I'm so happy to be owned by Huangdi.

Yao: *lifts chin* as you should.

Shen Jiu: *snuggles* Yao Huangdi, I'll definitely punch team dimple and Lan lips in the face for you.

Yao: oh please don't.

Shen Jiu: I don't want anyone to get between us.

Yao: and what about A-Su.

Shen Jiu: nah, I respect Huanghou. And she's hot, so.

Yao: good thar you know your limits.

You think A-Su is hot.

Shen Jiu: she's a supermodel. You two are a hot couple.

Yao: well she is a jewel. Some people either love her or jealous of her beauty.

Shanshan thinks she's hot too.

Shen Jiu: always team dimple. They want to take the whole cake, don't they. *pouts*

Yao: they're simps. It's their nature.

Shen Jiu: I heard from that fan guy. Huaisang. That Qin Su doesn't like Lan lips.

Yao: yea, they bicker sometimes. She thinks that he takes up too much of my attention amd believes that he's the empress.

Shen Jiu: ohoho *laughing* I love harem drama.

Zewu Jun do act like he's the empress.

Yao: I disagree though. Zewu Jun is so sweet, loveable and peaceful. He won't hurt a fly, and he knows his position in the harem.

We love each other. Even before he knew I was the hulijing Huangdi.

Shen Jiu: awww. But I still don't like anyone who takes you away from me. *kisses dimple*

I'm devoted to you, my beloved Huangdi.

Yao: so let me get this straight. You dislike team d and Zewu Jun.

Shen Jiu: no one in the harem actually.

Yao: *laughs daintily* oh dear.

You're one of a kind.

Shen Jiu: maybe, I kind of admire Chifeng Zun. He definitely loves you but won't admit.

Yao: exactly.

Shen Jiu: his brother is kinda shady.

Yao: ah yes. But he's working on it.

Shen Jiu: he should try harder. *hugs* it's not a good look on him.

Huangdi, I have good news for you! My sect will be a part of your Meng empire.

Yao: excellent! I welcome you!

Shen Jiu: happy, my beloved?

Yao: of course.

Shen Jiu: I want you to visit some time. Maybe after the renovations. Everyone must see their Huangdi.

Yao: I agree. Tell me when, dear. Anyways, I have to go to Moling later in the month, for the sect leader conference.

Shen Jiu: hosted by Shanshan, right?

Yao: yep.

I used to be the chief cultivator, but passed it to Shanshan. Now I go as the Jianghu's Huangdi.

Shen Jiu: that's so amazing, Ayao. Everyone should know your power and position.

~

Yeaa it was posted twice becsuse of my wifi•