#my father would be dead to me. like flush your ashes down the toilet dead to me

[amithedevil]

[chandlerxfitzgerald]

No Requiem // self para

Chandler never minded living in luxury's generous lap. He spent the money on designer clothes, owned the latest advances technology offered, and practically slept on silk sheets night by night. He even held the option being driven around the city by another, but today, this is something that required a trip alone. No private drivers means no one would judge him. True, he oftentimes enjoyed an audience of his flourishing dramatics, this time isn't the right moment for a performance.

He stepped out of the Rolls-Royce as soon as he pulled up along the edge of where he knew Douglas' grave sat and slung the duffle bag over his shoulder with a gentle huff. As he began the trek through the newly trimmed grass, he passed tombstones engraved by the names of the dead and placed aside the thought of how much he truly despised cemeteries. They were depressing, a reminder that a majority who ended up there had died at Urie's hands, at least that is what the young Fitzgerald imagined. Chandler finally reached the final resting place of the man who caused so much damage to everyone around him. The tombstone was tall, foreboding in a way, and a sculpted angel sat at the very top, looking down on him as if in mockery. Douglas was no angel in life, definitely not one in death. It may as well have been Lucifer's previous angelic form overseeing the former Hedgestone leader.

"Well, hey. Pops." Chandler greeted sarcastically, dropping the bag he hauled to the ground and sticking his hands in the pockets of his wool coat. His gaze briefly flickered the etching on the stone, the elaborate border lovely if it weren't for its place on a monster's marker. The header, Father, son, husband, dedicated leader forced a snort from the irony. Dedicated leader, Chandler's ass. "You're probably gazing up at me from Hell and wondering why I've wasted my time coming all the way here. I have a faction you cared more about than your own children to help run." He waved a hand dismissively and continued, "Personally, I think we should've cremated your ass and flushed what's left of your ashes down the toilet like the piece of shit you were. Would've been funnier."

"Morrigan's doing fantastic, by the way." Chandy couldn't deny the smug grin stretching his lips, glowing pride overtaking every inch of his being. "You underestimated her, Pops. She can be ruthless when she sees fit, she instrokes fear in an artful precision you never succeeded during your reign, and we both know who we have to blame for that. Don't we?" The thing they didn't talk about, those nights of torment and psychological warfare waged by their father leaving scars in different methods.

Chandler erased the memories from his mind for the moment. "She stole a page from your book, though. Messing with someone's head, forcing her victims to believe something that was not actually true just to make an example." He nodded once, "True, Momo knows you wouldn't have hesitated executing two traitors if you were still in charge, but she bloodies her hands when needed. She isn't the meek flower obeying under a dominate man that you thought she would be. The prize, the submissive whose only purpose was providing her husband a male heir. A sexual object incapable of thought." Morrigan rose above and proved her worth. "She's a kingless queen. And I her loyal second-in-command standing proudly through thick and thin."

His eyes hovered over the death date, practically burning a hole in the granite, as he fell silent for a long minute. "Do you know the day I remember often? I was fourteen. It had been about a month since I came to live in the mansion and you forced me to a suit fitting. You gave the spiel about how I was flying the Urie banner and shoved the responsibility of sharing duties with Desmond down my fucking throat." There was another pause. "That's also the time I finally understood how worthless you thought about your own daughter. You made me her replacement and I never asked for it." A sardonic chuckle exited Chandler's mouth at the next statement. "However closeminded you became, no matter my particular lifestyle, you'd rather suffer a flamboyant son than hand over power to a woman. I wasn't about to make it easy for you, Pops...I wanted you paying for it every goddamn day."

"Do you want to know a secret between us manly men with our superiority just because we have dicks? The same way you underestimated Morri, I underestimated you with your cruelty." Chandler began fidgeting with the sleeves of his coat considering the tightness those memories created constricting inside his throat. When most people experience severe trauma as the siblings endured, a brain would block out what causes the pain and buries it deep. Untouched, forbidding access until the person is ready if they ever reach the point in their lives. "Four days. You dragged me from my room to your office and subjected me to Morrigan's imprisonment. The whippings, every punch, I felt along my flesh as if I was there. You fucked with the temperature of my bedroom. Freezing cold with nothing to keep me warm but the sound of Morrigan's screams all night long as company. I couldn't sleep with that sound ringing in my ears. If I ever broke free from that room, I swore I would have hunted you down and separated your head from your body. Without question."

Chandler perceived himself as an overall friendly extrovert who could be bothered offering kindness to anyone that didn't deny his hand of friendship. He was the life of the party and welcomed the adoration, which made his interests of theater in his high school days reasonable. A temper tantrum and revealing the wrath wasn't synonymous with Chandler's personality, but as guarded as he is with emotions, he experienced them ten times stronger than most. "You were a suffocating presence in my life, Douglas. There was this," His hand hovered to the side of his temple, indicating his head, "This noise I couldn't silence. Your voice and her screaming repeating over and over like that fucking recording. I wanted to die. Believe me, those thoughts crossed my mind while I laid there in my bed. Shivering one night and sweating the next." The man's expression grew somber for a flicker and then drained completely of anything. "I was taunted by the pair of scissors in my desk drawer. The letter opener on my desk Dezzie gave me for my sixteenth birthday, it'd be that easy ending my suffering and spiting you in the process."

Another unspoken secret not even his psuedo sister knew and had she, it would break her heart surely. "I fought for Morrigan to stay alive, so I bided my time obediently. I knew the moment that diploma landed in my hand, I was gone. Away from Hedgestone, away from my responsibilities, from you. Running was the only option I had. Still...you didn't break me how you wanted." It sounded falsely confident and certainly, the sake of his self-esteem depended on faking until he could make it, and providing Douglas the gratification wouldn't ever materialize. "Then I arrive home to hear you and Dezzie perished in a car bombing. While my brother's death caused ripples of mourning in the community, yours was met with no deserving fanfare. As they say, the kingdoms never weep when the villain falls."

Chandler dropped to one knee beside the bag and unzipped it, removing the only object contained within and rising to a standing position. The brand new sledgehammer he purchased for this specific visit came highly recommended by the hardware store he purchased it from. The clerk clearly knew who he was the moment Chandy strutted through the door and was right forgoing asking questions as to why a Urie elite required the piece of equipment. "No one lights a candle to remember you, Douglas. No one prays while your corpse rots, certainly not me." Chandler gripped the handle and inspected the metal piece attached to the top thoroughly, "I want you to know the punchline. That boy you mutilated and tossed in the river like garbage, the name you thought you beat from your daughter, wasn't the one Morrigan was seeing. His name's Julian Reese."

Chandler raised the sledgehammer over his shoulder, uttering the small sweet victory, "You lose." The mallet's first forward swing landed right in the middle of the epitaph, poetically making contact on Douglas' name. The satisfaction instantly shot down his spine and slowly traveled from limb to limb. A euphoric experience exploding from pent up aggression and placing feelings underneath the floorboards. He lifted the hammer and struck the stone again with a forceful grunt, sending substantial sizes of rock flying every which way. It was a miracle he wasn't hit by anything, but he didn't stop there. Watching Julian take out his rage on a batting cage sparked the idea and he wasn't pulling his shots with losing complete control like the other did. While Julian feared the strength of his anger, Chandy thrived on his. The hammer created contact several times, enlarging the cracks along the surface.

The pedestal in which the tombstone sat on finally gave way with Chandler taking a small step backwards as the remaining pieces collapsed in on itself and sent the angel toppling to the grass, shattering in two pathetic slivers. There is a certain beauty when destruction happens, chaos St. Cascadia brings out in its citizens. That even the most civilized man like him could become monstrous when facing a tormentor. If Chandler cannot kill Douglas, he would erase the last piece of the Urie patriarch's identity. "No one will remember you now, bitch." Shooting a middle finger at what was left of the gravestone, Chandy stuffed the sledgehammer back inside the duffle and looped his arm through the straps.

As Chandler moved away from the ruins after a long minute staring at what he created, he stopped at another gravestone that wouldn't suffer the same fate by a million years. "Hi, Dezzie. Don't mind the mess beside you. Though, if we're being a hundred percent honest, you were always a witness to mine. This is one I don't want you cleaning." The wrath previously dissipated and melancholy formed in its place. A heavy heart. "I'm sorry I wasn't here for the funeral. You'd want me not blaming myself, but the second I leave, I lost you. I was supposed to be at your side and I wasn't, Dez. I was supposed to protect you and I couldn't because of my cowardice. We needed you." Chandler did his best pushing back the tears no matter how they stung. "I still need you." The sentence hung in the air. "But I'll protect her like we've always done and I will spend every day making you proud. I promise." He reached out a hand and placed it on top of the stone.

"I love you, big brother."

And somehow by design, Chandler almost sensed Desmond saying it back.

[aloysiavirgata]

In The Gale

Title: In The Gale

Author: Aloysia Virgata

Rating: PG

Category: MSR

Author's Notes: For @perplexistan, who asked and helped me make it better. This is shortly after settling into the Unremarkable House. I tried making sense of their legal status, but it’s simply impossible and I gave up.

Our heroes quote from Melville, Shakespeare, Sagan, Baudrillard, and (Emily) Dickens.

***

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us And pray that I may forget These matters that with myself I too much discuss Too much explain Because I do not hope to turn again Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

***

She recites The Raven to herself on the drive in, lists all the state capitals in alphabetical order, and goes through the periodic table. Her body fizzes like a shaken soda, tiny anxious bubbles rising through her blood. They’ve done so much for this, called in so many favors. Mulder put his book on hold for a month, quizzing her with dog-eared notecards. 

“Immediate treatment of myocardial infarction,” he’d call, and she’d say “MONA TASS.”

She feels a pang for the simplicity of the other life, the hiding one, where she just had to ring up cigarettes and herbal Viagra at gas stations.

***

She’s the new girl at the cafeteria table, awkward and alone. Mulder had prepared her a lunch like it’s the first day of school, and she stares at it, wishing for an appetite.

From the corner of her eye she sees two colleagues - an MRI tech and an obstetrician, she thinks - talking softly and glancing over. Scully thinks she hears “FBI,” and she looks up and smiles, uncertain.

They blink at her, look away.

***

Ybarra comes around the corner, gliding in his cassock like a disapproving ghost. “Dr. Scully,” he says, in his pinched voice.

She smiles thinly. “Father Ybarra.”

“Nurse Mossing was looking for the chart for Mrs. Sullivan. Imagine my surprise when I found it in Room 314 instead of Room 413. That’s a potential HIPAA violation, Dr. Scully. That’s a federal law.”

Scully curls her hand so that her nails dig into her skin. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Father Ybarra, please forg-”

He holds up his palm. “It won’t happen again,” he says, and glides onward.

Scully closes her eyes and leans against the wall. She breathes through her nose until the ringing in her ears stops.

***

She wants to collapse into his arms and cry when she gets home, but that would be giving in. It would be letting them down.

“How’d it go?” he asks. He’s wearing basketball shorts and a Knicks shirt, a five o’clock shadow.

She smiles brightly. “It was good. Learning curve, but good. I think Father Ybarra might be a tough nut to crack, is all.”

Mulder rubs his cowlicked hair. “Put your feet up, Scully, since you won’t wear sensible shoes.”

She does, and accepts the glass of wine he holds out. “Thanks. I’ll sleep well tonight, anyway. There are miles of hallways.”

He sits next to her on the couch. “I wrote a few pages,” he says. “I deleted a bunch, but I think there was a multi-paragraph net gain.”

“I’m glad you’re able to stop focusing on my stuff now,” she says. “Both back in the saddle.”

“Go team.”

She clinks her glass against his. She drinks her wine too fast.

***

Ybarra had come in during her rounds that morning and startled her into knocking a metal bedpan onto the floor. Scully thinks the reverberations of that sound will follow her to the grave.

She’s now in the chapel, tucked into a back pew. She’s been staring at the small altar, at the stained glass windows flanking the crucifix. The Blessed Virgin smiles beatifically down at her, a wretched sinner.

Scully laces her fingers on the back of the pew in front of her and bows her head against them. “Please,” she whispers. “Please.”

***

Mulder wakes her with tea and eggs. “You haven’t been eating,” he says, brow furrowed. 

She rubs her eyes, yawning. “What?”

He sits next to her on the bed, sets the plate and mug on her night table. “You just push your food around your plate, you hardly talk when you get home. What’s going on, Scully?”

She sits up, looking at his worried face. He’s sun-browned and tousled, beautiful, with a mouth that still makes her weak in the knees. “Nothing. It’s just a lot to jump back into.”

“I’m sure it is. And I still want to help you with it.” He pulls the flash cards from his pocket, touches her wrist with his other hand. “Let’s see - causes of upper zone pulmonary fibrosis?”

She looks at the ceiling, back at him. “I don’t need help.”

Mulder blinks, stung. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You just don’t need to hover over me. You have your own things to work on. Work on your book, patch up your henhouse. ” Her voice sounds snappish to her own ears.

His changeable eyes, now mossy green, darken. He chews his bottom lip, nodding slowly. “I thought you were one of my ‘things.’ Sorry to bother you.” He rises, walks downstairs.

“Mulder,” she whispers.

The tea goes down fine. Scully tries to eat the eggs but feels bile rise in her throat. She flushes them down the toilet instead of leaving them behind, because that is love.

***

She arrives at the nurses’ station on the second floor with three dozen donuts and two cardboard boxes of coffee. She deposits them on the desk. “Good morning, Annabel,” she says.

“Anneliese,” the woman says.

Scully nods, walks away.

*** 

He slides his hand up her pajama top, tracing circles on her ribs, sliding his fingers around to her breasts. He kisses the back of her neck. “Scully,” he whispers, his breath warm and ticklish in her ear.

She wants to pretend to wake up, to turn towards him and lose herself in his body. She wants to tell him everything, to be held and loved and petted and reassured. She wants him to remind her that she once stared down Congress, that some backwater priest and his prickly staff should be a joke to her. She wants them to laugh together at these silly, petty people.

But she can’t, she can’t disappoint him. He’s been so proud of her.

Scully stays still, breathes evenly until his hands move away and she’s alone again.

***

Her car rattles over the driveway, through shimmering waves of heat that rise from the crisping grass. It is the kind of late July afternoon where the sun is a hazy white ball in the west, and clouds of gnats are a permanent feature of the landscape. 

Scully parks, avoiding a puddle in which a peacock is standing. Mulder has recently become enamored of yard fowl. She narrows her eyes at it while opening the car door. 

“Good boy, Kevin,” she calls to it, wary.

Scully picks her way over the gravel in her thin heels. The peacock mews an alarm as she approaches, but doesn’t charge. She lets herself inside, shuts the heat and sun and wildlife outside. The house smells of coffee and microwave popcorn.

She walks into Mulder’s office and finds him hunched at his desk, typing. “Hey,” she says, and drops a kiss on his head. There’s a sketch of Baphomet taped to his monitor, her worn flash cards atop a tome about Raëlism.

He turns in his chair. He puts his arms around her hips. “Hey.” 

“Kevin behaved himself,” she offers.

“You two will be friends yet, you’ll see.”

She peers at the computer. “You get a lot done today?”

Mulder shrugs. “Eh, a bit. Waiting on a few emails, and I had to run that tubing to drain the sump down into the woods. Ate up most of the afternoon.”

Scully shakes her head in admiration. “I don’t know how you manage all the multitasking.”

“Well, the book helps me avoid the house, and the house helps me avoid the book. It’s a perfect system. That Ybarra guy still riding your ass?”

She chews her lip. “No,” she lies. “I think we’re okay now.”

“Good,” he says. “I’d hate to have to beat up a priest.”

***

Scully gazes at herself in the empty locker room. She looks thin and tired, and her hair is frizzing up, even pulled back like this. All her makeup has sweated off except for smudged crescents of mascara. Her bra is the color of a Band-Aid, her underwear white and sensible. Between the two is the hard white rose of her gunshot scar, like a second navel, an artifact of a second birth. It is numb when she touches it, indifferent. There are no stretch marks from William, a tale missing from the anthology of her skin. She unhooks her bra, lets it slide down to the damp floor. Scully turns to observe her body in profile. The scar is gone this way, the tattoo hidden as well, and she smooths her hands along her ribs. Her breasts seem out of place to her when they are unbound, frivolous somehow. Vestigial. 

She looks away.

***

The hospital is labyrinthine, having been constructed of various additions when funds allowed. There are dead ends, pointless staircases, and a mysterious storage closet filled with old televisions. She makes little maps on notepaper. 

“So where did you work before this?” an orthopedic surgeon asks her.

A diner in Wyoming. 

“I was out West for a while,” she says.

***

A week in, and Mulder has made a cake to celebrate. A bouquet of Kevin’s shed tail feathers ornaments the table.

An offering, Mulder calls it, tickling her chin with one.

A week down, she thinks, and blows out the candle. She wonders when she’ll stop counting the time.

***

Shy, he gives her a chapter to read. It’s good, and she tells him so. It’s very good. She hears his voice in her head when she reads it, his passion. She loves the esoterica tucked into his gyri and sulci.

“Your prose was never this clear in your reports,” she remarks. 

“Hey if you can’t blind them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

Scully laughs. “You want to read a few medical reports?”

He looks at her, suddenly serious. “Yeah,” he says. “I would. It would be nice to hear about your day for once.”

She wonders if love is the weapon that lets them wound so casually.

***

“You’re late,” Ybarra says softly. 

She doesn’t explain that she’d somehow ended up at the TV closet again, that the room numbering system in this hospital had been designed by nihilists, that the nursing student had Dermabonded her glove to a patient’s forehead.

She lowers her eyes like she did at Catholic school. She promises to do better.

***

“What’s going on?” Mulder asks her for what feels like the hundredth time. “Talk to me, Scully.”

She presses her hands to her face for a moment, drops them to her sides. “Nothing,” she says again, frustrating them both. “I’m tired. It’s a hard schedule.”

He places a throw pillow on his lap and pats it. “Come here,” he says. “Please.”

She acquiesces, curling on her side with her back to him. He runs his fingers through her hair, traces the Fibonacci spirals of her ear. She wants to relax, to melt into his touch. She indulges in a Mulderesque conspiracy theory that the hospital microdoses the water with tetanus toxin to keep everyone rigid and tense.

Scully gazes at the windows, at the hard white light of summer streaming in. The curtains are blue with an arabesque pattern, and they looked very chic in the store. She wonders now if they seem desperate in this odd little house. She thinks of Meg March, dressed up in borrowed finery at the Moffats’ ball.

***

Scully clomps up the steps to the porch and kicks her rain boots off next to the umbrella stand. It contains four umbrellas and a gnarled hickory limb that Mulder claims is going to be polished into a fine walking stick one of these days. She goes into the house and is dismayed to find it stale and stifling and dark. Dust motes waft in Brownian motion through shafts of sunlight, undirected by fans or air conditioning. 

“Mulder,” she calls, and there is silence.

She twists her hair into a bun as she pads upstairs, old wood satiny under her bare feet. She pushes open the bedroom door, and the air is hot and still. 

“Mulder?” She needs his help with her zipper, but there is no reply.

She wrestles herself out of her silk sheath, sticky and irritating, and lets it puddle on the floor. Her bra follows. She feels guilty, as Mulder has turned out to be a surprisingly diligent housekeeper. His office is filled with perilous stacks of home improvement books and arcane journals about lake monsters, the walls papered with clippings and blurry photographs, but he seems able to quarantine his own entropy.

She is trying to do the same.

Scully pulls on soft cotton pajama shorts, a gray tank top imbued with the compressive powers of Lycra. She uses lotion to rub away the mascara beneath her eyes. She goes downstairs and out the back door, shielding her eyes against the piercing sunlight. A mosquito whines at her ear and she pinches it out of the air.

“Still got those reflexes, kid,” Mulder says from somewhere off to her left. 

She turns and sees him crouched next to the hulking green block of the transformer. “All the lights are off, and the house feels like a rainforest. I take it you’ve had an eventful day?”

He sighs. “Not really. Well, not the event I was hoping for, which is the power coming back on. There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm around one and that’s when the electricity blew.”

She sits on the bottom step, knees drawn up. She likes to watch him working, a side of him they’re both still learning about. There was never much call for home maintenance at Hegal Place, or living out of cash-only motels. “You call the power company?”

He huffs. “Yeah, they told me they had no reported outages and the power should be fine. I explained that I was trying to report an outage and that it definitely was not fine and she promised someone would be here between tomorrow and eventually.”

Scully smiles. “And that’s why you’re out here toying with death?”

“Not much else to do, really. Can’t write with the power out.” Mulder sits back on his heels and shrugs. “You, uh, have a good day?”

She hadn’t. “Yep. Starting to feel like part of the team.”

“Good. You need to get your career standards as high as your standards for men,” he says, getting to his feet.

“Oh, well, that’s an obviously unattainable bar.”

“Obviously.” He sits next to her on the step. “You wear that to work? You know I think bras are a tool of the patriarchy and you shouldn’t bother, but I’m just surprised Our Lady of Perpetual Shame takes such a liberal view.”

She laughs a little. “I figured as long as I tossed a lab coat over it, I’d look like a real doctor. It worked when I was a kid.”

“Hey, that’s what I did with my badge half the time. Listen, Scully. The house is pretty tropical. You want to bunk up in a hotel until they get the power sorted out?”

Scully thinks about the convenience it would afford. Maids and room service and maybe a pool, depending. But she is tired of hotels, even nice ones. She is tired of polite signs that remind her that the pillows and towels and hairdryers aren’t hers, the tiny toiletries an indicator of her temporary status. She is tired of living out of suitcases and dressers that made her clothes smell strange, tired of running from her own life.  She wants to be home.

“Nah,” she says. “We’ll manage.”

Mulder looks surprised, but doesn’t question it. “I’ll call Lowe’s about getting a generator delivered tomorrow. We ought to have one anyway out here.”

She’d always had a vague idea that Mulder had money - it was the only explanation for his complete disinterest in it. But when they’d come back, when they’d talked to his lawyers, she'd been staggered. The Vineyard house alone explained his casual international jaunts. They can have things now, endless things, and there is something frantic in her that wants to spend the money. Bingeing chocolate bunnies after Lent.

Mulder peels his shirt off, wadding it into a limp ball. He tosses it so that it hooks over the doorknob. “Still got it,” he says. He preens.

“Does the NBA realize the tremendous talent they’re missing out on?” she asks. “Do they even know that, at this very moment, a six foot tall middle aged white man is out here flinging his clothing a distance of several feet?”

He snuggles up to her, wrapping his sweaty arms around her shoulders. 

“Ugh,” she says, and pushes at him. “Mulder, you’re disgusting and it’s a thousand degrees out here.”  

“Hoping that cold, cold heart of yours might cool me off.” She sniffs disdainfully, and he releases her. “Scully, how do you feel about bees?”

“We have a history, bees and I,” she observes, tapping the back of her neck.

Mulder curls his hand over the scar, kneads the muscles there. “Well, these wouldn’t be fancy bees.”

“Hmmm,” she says. “I’m not inherently opposed. Why do you want bees, Mulder?”

He shrugs. “I’m getting older, and I’ve got to consider funeral plans. The last one didn’t really go as expected, so I thought maybe I’d mellify myself this time.”

She nods. “Makes sense. I mean, of course, there’s no actual proof that mellification actually occurred, but that’s never stopped you.”

“I also like honey,” he adds. “And bees are good for the planet.”

“Honey often contains botulism spores,” she remarks. “Botulinum toxin is the most lethal toxin known, and it’s estimated that as little as 40 grams of it would be enough to kill everyone on earth.” She doesn’t say you shouldn’t give it to babies, that she sweetened her smoothies with dates and maple syrup so that -

“Well, nobody better piss off my bee army and me,” he says darkly. 

“Everybody eventually pisses you off. Mulder, is that old tent in the shed still? We could sleep in that tonight.”

He shakes his head. “Heavy mildew and dry rot, so I threw it out. We could sleep out here if you want, though. We’ve got that big air mattress.”

“Let’s do that,” she says. “We can put it on the porch. Tell you what - you get stuff together, and I’ll even make dinner.” Scully doesn’t like cooking, but she wants to create order, to complete a finite task. She can be domesticated again, like a lost house cat finally returned to a hearth.

“We having eggs or peanut butter?” he asks, smirky.

“I’d hate to spoil the surprise,” she snips, and goes back into their sauna of a house. 

In the kitchen, she stands in front of the open fridge, letting the delicious leftover cold soak into her skin. She’ll deal with the spoiled food later. Eggs had, actually, been her plan but it’s just too hot. The stove doesn’t work, and she doesn’t have the fortitude to turn the grill on. She finds some leftover shrimp pasta that Mulder has made, some vegetables, and assembles it all into a passable salad.

There, she thinks, pleased. I’d pay twelve bucks for that somewhere. She uses her foot to scratch a mosquito bite on her calf.

Her skin is clammy, hair stringy and damp from sweat. Maybe they should just go to a hotel after all. Perhaps she should stop ascribing symbolism to every damn thing and enjoy herself once in a while. But she thinks of packing, of driving, of unpacking and somehow it’s all too much and her eyes start to fill and her sinuses sting.

Scully pinches her wrist until it passes, feeling weak and hating the weakness in herself. It’s the heat, it’s the exhaustion, it’s the heavy mental load. She considers going outside for a dip in the pond, but suspects the water will be unpleasantly warm. Instead, she drags herself back upstairs for a cold shower.

She sits on the edge of the bed, weary, and stares at a framed picture of a sea turtle on the far wall. If she lets her eyes drift out of focus, it looks like it’s swimming. She tips her head back for a better angle, watches it float across her vision. It slips away then, into the black of the deep waters.

***

She startles awake when he touches her shoulder, gasps.

“Jesus,” Mulder says, and sits next to her. “Bad dream?”

Scully sits up, dazed. “What? No, was I asleep?”

“You’ve been out cold for over an hour, but I wanted to make sure you got some food. Water at least, it’s too hot up here.”

She blinks, confused. “I don’t remember,” she says. Peering to her right reveals night outside.

Mulder holds a hand out and she grasps it, letting him pull her to her feet. She wavers and he steadies her, arm about her shoulders. 

“I just need some water,” she says, defensive.

He guides her down the stairs and out the front door onto the porch. The air outside is substantially cooler, a light breeze kissing her face. She settles into a chair, stares deep into the felty dark. She still can’t remember falling asleep. 

Mulder hands her a water bottle from the little table and she rolls it between her palms, the plastic crinkling. “Hey, I thought you were setting up the air mattress out here,” she says.

“No air flow behind the wall,” he replies. “Drink that up like a good girl and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

Scully obeys and feels better. The water tastes stale, but it’s cool and wet. “Maybe you should have my job,” she says, looking up. “Caring for live people is so much work.”

“Everybody eventually pisses me off,” he reminds her. “Come on, Doc.”

She follows him down the steps and around the side of the house. Their property is vast and feral, pocked with mole burrows and rabbit nests. The floodlights are out with the power, and the house is nearly swallowed up by the vast night. Scully glances up at the Milky Way, at the waxing moon, and marvels again at the sky they have out here. We are star stuff, she thinks.

“Moonstruck?” Mulder asks.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.”

“As long as you can tell a hawk from a handsaw,” he says, and tugs her along.

She follows him to the back of the house and then stops, smiling. Mulder has hammered some old two-by-fours into a frame, draped the structure in white bedsheets. Inside, the air mattress is piled with sofa pillows. Outside, camping lanterns, candles, and two strands of solar lights make it into a kind of fairy circle.

“Mulder,” she says, delighted. “This is ridiculous.”

“Indian Guide saves the day,” he says.

“Your architecture badge is definitely more impressive than your fire badge,” she says, walking over to the little tent. He’s brought her salad inside, and there is a cooler packed with ice and water bottles. Cans of bug spray sit at the flap. She crawls inside, suddenly ravenous. 

Mulder joins her on the mattress, which bounces in response. “Remember my water bed?”

She laughs, piling food on a plate for each of them. “What a swinging bachelor you were.”

She remembers the water bed fondly, the leather couch and the fish and the postage-stamp bathroom in his apartment. It shouldn’t hurt still, but it does. She knew herself there, her place on the map. She eats her salad, wistful for Chinese food and beer at that battered coffee table.

“Scully,” he says.

“What?”

“Scully.”

“Just middle-aged nostalgia, I suppose,” she murmurs.

He reaches out to take her hand. “You’re scarcely middle aged.”

She smiles, squeezes his fingers. “If you go by life experience, we’re both about two hundred years old.”

“Like those Galapagos tortoises. But you need to tell me what’s going on at work. You won’t disappoint me.”

It can be very disagreeable to live with a profiler.

Scully drops his hand. She bites at the fleshy part of her thumb. This is real, she thinks. This place. It is not down in any map; true places never are. She can only deflect for so long, and her armor is rusting away. “I’m afraid,” she whispers, then chances a look at his face.

His eyes are soft, searching. “Why?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, I don’t…” Her sinuses sting again and she presses her palms hard into her eyes. “Please.”

Mulder’s hand on her back, in endless, gentle figure eights. He pulls the elastic from her hair and lets it tumble down to her shoulders. He shifts so that her back is to him, his long legs on either side of her body.

“Mulder, what -”

“Shhhh,” he says, and gathers the hair at the crown of her head. “It’s not a real sleepover if you don’t get your hair French braided.”

Scully blinks. “Since when do you know how to braid hair?”

“Little sister, absent parents. Now stop moving and talk.”

She keeps her head very steady, thinking of her own sister’s deft fingers when their mother was too busy for anything but ponytails. Mulder tugs at another little section of hair. Scully thinks she might be okay if she isn’t looking at him, if she can’t read herself in his eyes.

Moth shadows dance across the white sheet wall, drawn to the flickering candles outside. It fascinates her that they never figure out that fire burns.  “I don’t know how to do this,” she says, and her voice is thick.

“To talk, or to be still?” he says in his Oxford psychologist voice.

She isn’t sure of what she means either. “Yes,” she says, with a hiccupy laugh. “Both.”

“Me too,” he says, slipping his thumb through the strands behind her ear. “I don’t know how to do this.”

She swallows hard. “I just...I’ve always had something to consume me. I had the FBI, we traveled all the time, and then we were running and I thought it was hard but it was so easy to just survive. There were no decisions. I didn’t care about, I don’t know...plates.”

He pauses in his work. “Plates?”

Scully chews at a hangnail, frustrated. “Just things, the things you buy for a house. Long term things. I did with William and then…” she trails off, her chest tight. “I feel like I’m playing a game sometimes, like improv theater. Fox and Dana Build A Home.”

“Fox and Dana?” he repeats. “Surely not.”

“Well, we’re hardly Mulder and Scully anymore, are we?” Her stomach clenches and that’s it, she sees. That’s the fear.

He finishes the braid and fastens the elastic at the end of it. “Of course we are,” he says. “We are who we are.”

She turns to him then, the whispering anxiety back with a roar. “And who is that, Mulder? I was plain old Dana Scully until I met you. And we had this life, this strange and wonderful and terrible life where I was Scully because I was your partner and now that’s over. It’s all nothing.” She’s crying openly now, quietly, and it feels cleansing.

“You’re still my partner,” he says, and his eyes are shining too.

She wipes her nose with a paper napkin. “Am I? At what? I go to work and see patients but I forgot there’s no closure with the living. People get sick and get better and get sick again. It doesn’t end. And this house, the power is always going to go out and the chickens will always be hungry and -“  she stops, feeling hysterical.

“You don’t have to work,” he says softly. “The settlement from the FBI, my inheritance…”

She shakes her head. “You know I have to work.” 

He sighs, rubs her knee. “I know you do. But it doesn’t have to be this. It doesn’t have to drain you.”

He’s right, of course he’s right, but he’s also so terribly wrong that she wonders if he knows her at all. She has to be a doctor for her father, for William. For him. She has to see something through. Scully smooths her hand over the back of her head, feeling the even ridges of the braid. Mulder is so competent with everything he does, so easy with himself. He’ll get his damned bees and become some kind of honey magnate in no time.

“People at the hospital, they ask me what I did before. And I don’t know how to answer. How can I possibly answer that question? I just say I was with the government, but that isn’t really the answer, is it?”

Mulder shrugs. He’s never felt the need to explain himself to people. “It’s true.”

Scully stretches out on her stomach across the mattress, chin on the pillows, watching the moths again. They tumble like acrobats, untethered in the thick air. “There’s this number called Graham’s number, used in Ramsey Theory, which is, well, nevermind. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, it was in the Guinness Book for being the largest specific number used in a proof at the time. And Mulder, this number is so big that writing out all the digits would exceed the bounds of the known universe.”

“Nobody likes a math nerd, Scully.”

She rolls onto her back to glare at him. “Yes they do, they give them Nobel prizes. Anyway. A whole new notation system, Knuth Notation, had to be developed to express these massive numbers. Graham’s Number, Tree(3), et cetera. And I feel like that at times. That there’s this endless amount of vital, inexpressible information inside of me that is so essential but that I have no way to share.”

She blinks a few times, spent by this unburdening.

Mulder stretches out next to her, propped on his side. “You can express it to me,” he says, massaging her temple with his thumb.

Scully closes her eyes. “I feel like a ghost sometimes. How do you do it, Mulder? How do you just keep moving forward without getting lost?”

He sighs. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you have a tendency to compile people into perfect specimens, then measure yourself against that imaginary standard. It’s the precession of simulacra.”

She looks at him, indignant, then realizes he could be right. “Well,” she says. “It’s possible. But Mulder, is that such a bad thing, to want to hold myself to the highest goals?”

He tugs her onto her side so that she’s facing him, nearly nose to nose. Her lips feel tingly. “Yes,” he says, stroking her hair. “When the goal isn’t attainable. And when it puts everyone else on pedestals where we’re ill equipped to balance. And when it puts you in a constant state of frustration and anxiety. No one is perfect. Not even you.”

“I don’t want to be perfect,” she lies. “And I don’t need you to be either.” That part is true, at least.

He laughs in reply. “Apropos of being Galapagos tortoises, Charles Darwin once said ‘I am very poorly today, and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.’”

“He rode the tortoises,” Scully says, calming. “I can’t defend his methodology.”

“See? You’re better than Charles Darwin.” He kisses her forehead.

“Well,” she says. “Well.”

“Scully, look. You’re not alone here, feeling at sea. I went to the feed store and some guy picked a fight, shoved me pretty hard with his shoulder. And this reflexive part of my brain wanted to grab my badge, stick it in his face, and put him against the wall for assaulting a federal agent. But I ignored it and bought the chicken feed and just headed out. And I felt like, is this who I am now? Some pushover with yard birds and home improvement books?”

“You made a little fast and loose with your authority sometimes,” she says, thinking of Roche. She curves her palm against his cheek, thumbs the fine ridge of his zygomatic bone.

He bumps her nose with his. “You broke into a secret morgue.”

“You made me.” She sniffles, laughs a little. “The good old days.”

“These can be the good days too,” he says. “They can, if we work at it.” He traces her mouth with his finger.

“Okay,” she says. Hope stirs in her, a thing with feathers. “Partners?”

“Partners.”

He kisses her, in their small tent, in their ring of light.

[whatamidoingwithmylifeman]

MK OC Randomness part 5

listen... at this point, what are you expecting from me? Actual work? No.. Never. Now enjoy the content.

Megumi: Squiggles you son of a bitch! How are you still alive? I saw you go over that cliff! No one could've survived that fall

Squiggles: *hisses*

Megumi: You sly bastard, I would've never thought of that.

Tremor: I I I'm sorry, can she actually speak snake, or is she just messing with us?

Ayeka: Knowing her, it could very well be both

------

Kano: I want half

Klaudia: I'm sorry, what?

Kano: I did half the work, so I want half the code.

Klaudia: This isn't some material I can cut in half, Kano. It's a bunch of 1s and 0s, it's not the simple.

Kano: Then I want the 1s.

Klaudia: Fuck you, I want the 1s!

------

Melantha: Well, you did just kill somebody. Shouldn't you at least feel something?

Nozomi: Oh feelings? Yeah, I don't have those anymore. Went cold turkey.

Melantha: What!?

------

Mr. Hasashi: Oh um, hello little girl. How did you get into our house?

Young Michiko: I I do not remember

Young Hanzo: Oh yeah! I'm sure that'll hold up with the Grandmaster!

------

Old LK GM: Look. Let's just cut right to the chase here Shen. What's it gonna take for you to say yes? Money, items, Michiko?

Michiko: Excuse me!?

Old LK GM: What? It's a compliment

Michiko: Wow, Grandmaster, I didn't think you knew any magic. But look at you, turning women into trophies.

------

Fuyuka: On an unrelated note, are you at all concerned about the delight your daughter seems to be taking in all this?

Little Illythia: Go for the eyes mama! That is their weak point!

Onaga: Not really. Why?

------

Charu: Just stay calm! You have everything you need to beat it.

Cacti: The power to believe in myself?

Charu: No, a knife! Stab it!

------

Sektor: What would you of told dad of I died!

Michiko: Hey father, I got some good news and some bad news.

Michiko: The good news is we finally got room for that operation room you wanted.~

------

Shariah: *gets stabbed* HRKK! *Through gritted teeth* This is the greatest day of my life.

Shao Kahn: Do you mind!? I am trying to kill you!

------

Shao Kahn: Enough! How dare you mock me in such a manor!

Nozomi: Well, how would you like me to mock you? I take requests.

------

Kronika: How did you know we were lying?

Fuyuka: Oh that's simple. I'm not an idiot.

Geras from the magma mold he's being held in: Yep, that'll do it.

------

Klaudia: Ok, sweetie, I'm gonna let you in a little known secret of comedy.

Klaudia: Bad things, aren't funny when they happen to mommy.

Little Ash: What about daddy?

Klaudia: Oh daddy's fair game. Go for the throat.

------

Ryder: Look. Do you wanna keep giving me shit? Or do you wanna figure a way out of here?

Red: Oh don't think I can't do both. I am quiet the multitasker!

------

Klaudia over the phone: Bust his kneecaps, then he'll talk. I gotta go, I'm in a meeting.

Klaudia: *hangs up the phone* So you said Ash was into finger painting? That's adorable.

------

Melantha: Nozomi wake up!

Nozomi: Five more minutes.

Melantha: You've been in a coma for two years!

Nozomi: Ok? Two more minutes.

------

Krow: Would you rather, kill Gae or-

Shinnok: Yes kill him!

Krow: I didn't say the other-

Shinnok: I don't need to hear it.

Gae: I'm feeling a little unsafe.

------

Kristy: It's like you're giving me the cold shoulder.

Kabal: Ok? You me to just heat it up for you?

------

Symphonia: Now you sing!

Someone random: HOW BOUT YOU SING? IT'S WHAT I PAYED YOU FOR!

Symphonia: *taking the microphone back* Alright tough crowd

------

Mavado: *Blows Kristy a kiss*

Kristy: *catches it then flushes it down the toilet*

------

Reiko: *Blows Nozomi a kiss*

Nozomi: *catches it then puts it in a blender*

------

Kamden: Drive!

Kristy: Why?

Kamden: I just robbed the bank! Drive!

Kristy: You what!?

Kamden: *holding up a pen* I took their pen from the front desk! Drive!

------

Reptile: Wanna go out?

Nyx: Oh sure! *starts leaving*

Reptile: Where are you going?

Nyx: Out! Farther away from you the better!

------

Some random dude to Satoru: Hey I like you. Let's go out sometime

Satoru, pulling out an adoption paper: Sign this for me will you?

Random dude: Uh. What is this?

Satoru: It's an adoption paper. I'm going to adopt you so you can never ask me that again

Random dude: You could've said no!

Satoru: *vaguely gesturing to his Ace ring and Aro hoodie* You could've read the signs!

------

Megumi: There's blood on your pants.

Terra: Don't call the cops alright?!

Megumi: Here's a tampon- wait what!?

Terra: Right! My period! I didn't kill anyone!

------

Tremor: What kind of spider is that?

Ayeka: I think it's a daddy long leg.

Tremor: Ok it's a good looking spider, but I wouldn't call it daddy.

Ayeka: Wait, what!?

------

Little Satoru: I have a gift for you Uncle Shi. *hands over a muffin*

Sektor: *smacks it away* I'm not stupid you piece of garbage!

Little Satoru: What?

Sektor: If you want me dead, let's fight right now!

@feistyfandomthings

@deepinthefog

@doodlewagonbug

@yuvononik

@yuvon

@toomanyf4ndoms7

@maddenedroses

@dontunderestimatemypoison

[leagueofidiots]

Just when we thought my habit of accidentally deleting asks was a thing of the past

My first time writing the LoV:

Triggers! Self harm, mention of gore, mention of past "death".

Shigadabi half a sentence of hinted spinarakidabi oof.

Terrible and out of character writing. This was a vent and I didn't mean for it to be ever published, but chapter one of my NaNoWriMo nonetheless lol

Also the first thing I ever published

Endeavor was the number one hero. All Might had fallen, and Enji Todoroki had risen to take his place. The newscaster's words crackled over our shared TV in the corner of the bar, Toga's feet still swinging off the stool as she sipped on her orange juice. I feel the tips of my fingers light for a moment, and Shigaraki looks over at me. "Watch it, ash tray, this place is trashed enough as is."

I clench my still-warm hand into a fist, and storm off to the bathroom. He can't be. He can't be. I always knew it was possible, but I'd never thought All Might would fall in my lifetime. I slam the door and clutch the sides of the sink, watching myself try to breathe properly. My eyes burn with a rage I often see in my fire. What has he ever done to earn this?

Whatever. My purpose remains. I must kill him. Whether for me or for Fuyumi and Natsuo and Shoto and Mom. Endeavor must die at my hand. He will burn. I will watch him burn the way he made me burn. I want to hear him scream, I want to watch his hair fade to ash, and I want to see his skin melt, and I hope he writhes as it happens.

Back alley. Burning. Pain. Terrible smell. Numb. Why? Black. Blue. Hands shaking. No. Mom? Red black red blue black. Hot. Fuyumi. Black. Numb. Why? Help! Black.

I hope he wants to be dead long before he gets that relief.

My wrists are bleeding at their seams from the strain I forced upon them. I chuckle softly, pulling out one of the staples, prompting a soft squelch and a twinge of pain in what little nerves I have left. Pull out a few more. Peel the skin back to reveal red. Charred, rotten, red. A few on my face. Some on my chest.

I snap out of brief psychotic breakdown, and look down at myself. Blood pools around my feet, a steady drip down my fingertips and heavy stains on my loose, white shirt. The mirror makes me look like Toga when she finds a small animal in her moments of boredom. The red stuff drips down my cheeks and pools in my mouth so bubbles of it blow out when I exhale. Fantastic.

My head swims as I steady myself on the sink. The red smears left by my fingers almost makes me appreciate Toga's fascination. As I let out another soft laugh, Shigaraki pushes open the door a little. "Hey, are you puking in here, or wha---" 

His face finally peers in at me. I feel my eyes in their more crazy state, open wide and irises narrowed. The laugh makes it worse, I'm sure. He looks instantly uncomfortable, cringing as his red eyes hit my face.

Suddenly I'm angry. Face like his, and he wants to cringe when mine gets a little messed up? "What's wrong, rat's nest, can't handle a little blood?"

"Dabi, I---" He looks squeamish, starting to scratch at his neck with both hands, pinkies extended outwards.

"You what? You wanna puke, go ahead. See if I care." I turn back to the mirror to stare at my work. In my peripheral vision I see him lean against the wall, now forcing his thumb to avoid the surface now. "Go right on ahead and puke your filthy guts out if you want."

He adjusts his dumb hand---Father---on his face. "I was raised by All-For-One. I think I can hold my own." His voice tremors as he says it, though his hand has found some stability.

"You look pretty queasy," I say a bit more softly, folding the skin on my wrist back to its original place.

"Just wasn't expecting you to be...I dunno, doing whatever it is you're doing." He scratches some more. The noise, though quiet, digs into my brain. "What is it you're doing?"

"What's it to you, creep?" I push a staple in with a sickening noise.

"Nothing, I just think I should know what my team members do in bathrooms after a nice breakfast." The sarcasm in his voice finally assures me he's not gonna pass out or anything.

I might though. The blood loss is making my feel dizzy. Not that I'll let it happen. I move on to reaffixing my jaw to the rest of my head. "I'm just adjusting things. You can leave."

"I dunno...You seemed kinda---"

I stiffen as a jolt passes through me, and my world blacks out for a second. When it clears, my knees have buckled, and I'm on the floor. "Crap," I mutter, and try to heave myself back up to no avail.

(Tomura) No, Shigaraki, comes further in and does his best to lift me up with eight of his fingers and thin arms. "Idiot." He forces me onto the toilet seat, then flicks a strand of his pale blue hair away from his eyes.

"I'm...I'm fine." I shove his tentative hands off of me. Get away, stop caring.

"Toga, get in here," he rasps in a quiet yell. Dumb, calling a phyco in to deal with a guy who's bleeding out.

She skips in. "Yeah, Shig?" Her eyes sparkle at me as she sees the mess I've made of the small, previously white room.

"Can you please get Kurogiri to bring in some medical supplies?" Annoyed tone. Good. Annoyed is not concerned.

She nods, and wiggles her fingers in a goodbye to us before slinking back out. "I don't need any medical attention, Shigaraki, I'm just---"

"Bleeding out on a clogged toilet."

"Shut up," I mutter. "There are worse ways to go." Burning burning burning burning burning numb.

Toga enters once more after a few minutes, Spinner peering over her shoulder. "Got 'em." A bag of bandages and such is tossed to Shigaraki, who looks at her in mild disbelief as he lets the bag fall on his lap. "Bad reflexes."

"I'd destroy it if I caught it, numbskull." He carefully opens the bag up and passes me some gauze. "Now go do something not weird."

"Fine," she says lightly, flouncing out. Spinner waits a moment before following.

Bad decisions were made shortly thereafter. Already light-headed from the blood loss, the moment that I press scratchy gauze into the open wound that is near my very-sensitive eye, I black out.

While the bar counter I wake up on is no more comfortable than the floor I sleep on, it was a good effort I suppose. My eyes open to see a crowd of faces hovering above mine, expressions ranging from boredom to amused.

I groan, and those who were looking elsewhere all gaze down at me. "Morning, sleepyhead!" "Took you long enough," from Jin.

"Why am I spread out on a wooden platform that I know for a fact has had Compress' sock collection on it?"

"We were fixing you. You're all stapled back now," Magne says, her vague hand movement presumably gesturing to my general existence.

Another grunt from me as I try to sit up. "Stay down, charcoal."

I roll my eyes, but do as I'm told. "I was fine."

Twice shakes his head. "Nah, your heart stopped once. We were worried." "It was funny."

I blink up at them. "...So why did you save me?"

Toga grins at me like I made some joke, her pointed teeth glinting in the bad lighting. "'Cuz that's what family does!"

Family burning fire not safe help protect miss crazy kill save hurt numb.

"We're not a family, we're, we're a conglomeration of smaller groups of close people if anything, and I'm not in one," I say hurriedly.

"Dumb idiot, you and Shig here are basically married already," Magne protests, rolling her eyes.

The pink flush on Tomura Shigaraki's face shows easily even past Father. "We're what?" I ask, more confused by this than anything.

"She's right, you really are dumb," he mumbles before he grabs the front of my shirt and lifts me up into a kiss.

It's soft, the most powerful part of it being his grip on my shirt, bringing me to his face. His chapped and scarred lips are rough, but his slow, gentle pace somehow convinces me that he has the loveliest mouth in the world.

After the initial shock, I begin to kiss him back. He was cute after all, and what else could I do? After what feels like both an eternity and only a snapshot of a moment, he lowers me back onto the countertop and sits himself back in his barstool.

"So, what were you doing anyway?" he asks loosely, like nothing had happened.

I blink a few times, considering. Family.

"Hello? Earth to Dabi?" Toga demands after several moments of silence.

"Touya."

"Sorry, what?"

"Touya Todoroki. I'm Endeavor's son."

[craftygoateeprincess]

ITinktober Day 7: Knife

A/N: trigger warning for mentions of past rape, homicide, and some gore, it gets worse before it gets better kiddos xD

“I’ll see you again soon. Your friend, Pennywise.”

Someone might find it ominous, but you weren’t just anyone. To you this was hope, this was peace, this was what you had been waiting for this whole time. A sign that he could hear you, see you, feel you. And now you had it in your trembling hands and the task that lay in front of you seemed much easier.

You had been defiled, but you were not broken. You rather felt like a phoenix, you had been burned to a crisp, had our ashes scattered to the winds and been dismissed. But now that only ashes remained the first spark of an ember was growing, an ember that was going to erupt and consume this whole damn town.

For the better part of a decade, you had sat silently and been abused. Wearing ribbons, lace, and makeup to hide the bruises. No one second looked at the eight-year-old packing her own lunches to school or walking herself home afterward. You were a ghost to them, an unperson to people to caught up in their own lives to care. Oh but they’d all be forced to know soon, consequences be damned you were going to make them know the hell you endured.

Pulling on your clothes about your body there was a dangerous aura to you, you knew what you had to do. The moment pennywise had whispered to you about was here and if you timed things perfectly, you could get off scot-free from any blame. 

You were barely seventeen years old, you had been out late drinking. You came home late and with alcohol on your breath ad this had enraged your father causing him to beat you, then, in a vile attempt to show who was in charge, he raped you and you killed him afterward.

All you had to do was make the timeline match up.

You headed down to the basement first though, after that note you were more convinced than ever this house was tied to Pennywise, not to mention the dream you’d just had of him that still caused you to blush fiercly as you placed a hand on the well.

“There’s talk about this town y’know? That they have the highest crime rate in the nation and yet shit police protocol. Until tonight I've never thought twice about it, but I hope they’re wrong. Tonight is the night I take my freedom back pen, and then I'll be free to wait for you again….because I changed my mind, I think we both know I could never move on from you,” once more your words bounced down into the inky blackness, but this time they strengthened your resolve and revived the long-dead flame in your heart. For once you felt like you were making the right decision, and not simply desperately trying to survive.

“But I'm not going to trust the cops alone, I know better, reported rapes rarely get solved. I’m going to kill him for it first, and then when I go to the hospital I'll say it’s in self-defense, even if they don’t want to act, with our cops record and the evidence, I'll get off scot-free. I don’t know where that will leave me, but I'm sorry Penny, I can’t live with that man a moment more,” this time when you pulled your hand away from the well you felt nothing, like the house was neither trying to stop or encourage you, but instead letting you make your own decision.

Or maybe you’d simply gone crazy, talking to wells, falling asleep in tubs, and reading the moods of old houses. Pretty soon they’d be giving you your own late-night show. But right now you needed to keep your wits about you, if anything went wrong here you could easily get yourself in a lot of trouble. But you had to do it, there was no backing out now.

As if summoned by desire alone you found a knife laying beside the door. you could use that, with the rape allegation and murder, no one would spend much time going over the murder weapon, after all, it was a common item in your typical urban household. So bending down briefly you wrapped your fingers around the handle and smiled as you picked it up.

“Thanks Pen, I'll try to clean all the brains off of it before I return it to you,” again not questiong how, or why, or if this was even related to pen and not just something someone left in the six months since you’d been here, but you didn’t care, stepping out of the house a cold breeze hit your face and you felt that familiar resolve from six months ago, though this time it was of a darker nature. But the adrenaline was fueling you and there was no stopping now as you ran down the porch and the street, turning corner after corner, knife clutched tightly in hand. The moon was still high in the sky, bright and eerie, the perfect backdrop as you willed your body to run the godforsaken distance between your own house and Neibolt House.

But finally, you were there, stepping up the porch, opening the door. Father wasn’t watching you, he was watching tv and didn’t even glance at you as you entered. Was he ashamed of what he’d done? Did he know what you had decided? Or had he finally just stopped caring? As you approached him you think it was a little of everything. He had known what he had done was wrong, he knew when you ran off that when you came back you would bring hell, and he simply had given his last fuck since mother died, of course, maybe he didn’t quite expect that you had come back to murder him.

But you didn’t give him time to change his mind, leaning forward you slashed at his throat the man stumbled forward and hit the floor. Much as you’d love to drag it out, individually break each and every bone, smashing his nose, his jaw, his ribcage all one by one, the police needed to see this as self-defense rather than the murder it was.

Dad looked up at you with eyes that lacked any surprise. Either dazed from shock or knowing he had it coming. you didn’t give him time enough to recover, didn’t utter an apology or prayer, You just brought the knife down again, and again, and again. The

(satisfying)

Horrifying sound of bones crunching and soon after the sputtering and gurgling of blood rushing to the sight of injury, trying to clot the caved in broken mess that was his head. You allowed the knife to drop from your trembling hands and stare at the mess below. Your

(rapist and abuser)

Father was dead and gone, he couldn’t hurt you anymore. You were covered in his blood and your stomach churned with the last amount of feeling you could ever manage for the wretch of a man. But it wasn’t guilt, or shame, or fear. Just pure disgust at the mess that lay beneath you. You struggled to turn away and run to the toilet as it crawled up your throat and was expelled into the toilet and just like that, with the flush of the toilet, you were free from any feelings you could ever summon from the man, and with a rub of the towel over your face, most of his blood and brain matter was gone too.

You were free.

The walk to the hospital was easier, calmer, you felt as though you were floating in the air, weightless and free. The moon shown down on you and you breathed deep in the crisp summer breeze. No matter what happened from here on out, no matter how convoluted or scary it got, you had taken care of yourself, you had ended your fathers reign of terror and to you, that was all that mattered.

And if this all went tits up and you found yourself in jail…..well by the sounds of it you’d have a visitor soon.

[lannpaige-blog]

NaProWriMo 2019 Prompt List

Day Sixteen Prompt: burial at sea

PG - Warnings for Death Mentions, Fire, and Pet Death.

Characters: Virgil, Roman, Logan, Patton and Remy.

Pairing: Royality

Word Count: 1695

This is a Logicality parents, Roman child situation with Virgil as the angsty younger brother of Logan, who lives with them because their parents died and Virgil’s too young to take care of himself.

Burial at Sea

This was stupid.

The last thing Virgil wanted to do was to go down to the park with his brother, his brother’s partner, and their five year old son so they could all take part in some childish burial for the little kid’s dead fish as some sick form of “family bonding”. But here they were, taking the car to the park ten minutes away, with Roman clutching the Popsicle stick boat he made and sniffling in the far left seat. He was so quiet. Virgil should have been thankful the brat wasn’t wailing or screaming like he normally did, but the sniffling was so disquieting. Virgil tossed the kid a glare first. Then a glance. Then a peek. Roman’s watery brown eyes never lifted from the boat or the red beta fish inside the little cabin.

Virgil pulled out his phone and opened his messages. He flicked to his best friend’s chat and typed, We’re out to go bury the fish.

Remy typed back, Wait, you’re burying the thing? What happened to flushing fish down the toilet?

Roman wanted a burial at sea Viking style so he could be with his fish friends or something.

Doesn’t that involve fire?

I doubt he knows that. I’m sure Lo and Patton didn’t tell him.

Oh you’re on a first name basis with the husband now? That’s cute.

Shut up.

The car stopped. Virgil peered over his phone to see the park beyond.

We’re here. Gotta go.

Let me know how the fish torching goes.

Virgil got out of the car and stuffed his cell phone in his pocket. It lightly tapped against the lighter hidden there. Shit. He stole a glance at Logan to see if his older brother heard, but he was clearly more preoccupied with Roman, who was struggling to get out of the car with the boat clutched in his fingers. It took a second, but eventually the kid got out and the car door was shut behind him. Then they all started  Patton’s open hand was on the boy’s head as they walked. Virgil stuck behind the three and their tight little family as he hunched over and sulked. God did he want this to be over.

Luckily, the walk to the water wasn’t bad. Even better, there wasn’t a layer of ice on the pond yet. And the cold air warded off any birds that might try to ruin the moment by being in the water. Shame, that. Could’ve been a great story. Oh well. Maybe next time Roman wanted to be dramatic something interesting would come out of it.

The little boy sniffled again as he stopped at the water’s edge. Patton knelt down next to him and moved his hand to the upper part of Roman’s back.

“You ready, kiddo?” Patton asked. Virgil winced at the softness of the man’s voice. Then he glared at the ground and bit back a scoff. It was just a dumb fish. There was no reason for Patton to be so gentle with the kid.

“Can you light it, daddy?”

Virgil’s eyes flicked up as he watched Roman hold up the boat. Patton placed a hand on his pocket, then stopped. He rummaged over all his pockets, stood, checked them again, then looked up. Patton and Lo traded a glance. Patton’s worry clashed with Logan’s stoic resolve hiding his clear panic. Great. They’d left their own lighter. Virgil rolled his eyes at the two and then his gaze fell on Roman. He caught sight of the boy trembling. Virgil knew the young boy’s face was about to crumble and the screeching would begin. He could run back to the car and wait for the moment to be over, he was sure Logan wouldn’t fault him for that when the guy clearly looked like he wanted to bail as well. But he had a lighter. Sure he’d have to explain the whole “I don’t smoke I just like setting small stuff on fire outside” situation, but there were worse conversations to have, especially when his son was about to fill the pond with more salt water at any second.

Virgil stuffed his hand in his pocket, fished the lighter out from under his phone, and walked to Roman. He knelt down next to the kid and held out his free hand.

“Here, I got it,” Virgil said. He was surprised by the lack of irritation in his voice. He was also surprised by Roman’s willingness to hand over the boat without hesitation. Virgil stared at the boat, then placed it at the water’s edge. Then, with a flick, he started the lighter and placed the flame at the top of the stick structure. It took a second, but soon the wood caught. Virgil pushed the little raft out towards the middle of the pond and shut off the lighter. The little boat stayed afloat, but the flames were causing the thing to fall apart. He couldn’t quite make out the fish in the blaze, but that didn’t matter.

Virgil felt tiny hands on his arm then. They clutched at his black hoodie. A deep, heavy sniffle resonated next to his ear. Then a little sob came. Virgil tensed. Patton was bound to rush in at any second and whisk Roman away. But that didn’t stop Virgil from moving his arm and wrapping it around the kid, tucking him into his side. The fingers, which disconnected from his sleeve because of his movement, clutched at Virgil’s side.

They remained there as the flames tore the boat apart. They remained as fire was doused by the slow current of cool water. They remained as ashes flicked against the soul and started to salt beneath the surface. Virgil felt Roman tremble and felt his body heaving, silent sobs. All he did in response was pull Roman a little closer. Eventually, the sobs eased, but the trembling didn’t. In fact, as a cool gust slipped over them, Virgil felt Roman tremble a little more and move closer to him with a little whimper, almost imperceptible to Virgil even though the kid was practically attached to him. He looked up at Patton. It took a second for the man to register that Virgil was actually trying to get his attention with that stare. Patton blinked, then knelt down himself.

“You ready to head home, kiddo?” Patton asked. Roman nodded. Patton reached. Virgil let Roman be taken out of his grasp. Once Patton and Roman were a foot or two away and headed back to the car, Virgil stood and glanced at Logan. He expect to see a stern look. Instead, a stoic expression with just a touch of warm stared back.

“You never smell like smoke,” Logan said, his voice a whisper so Patton couldn’t hear, no doubt.

“I don’t smoke,” Virgil answered. They started walking after Patton. The other adult was talking, but Virgil couldn’t make out his words over Logan’s.

“What is the lighter for, then?”

Virgil shrugged. “Remy and I like burning stuff in his driveway sometimes. Paper, old mail, stuff like that.”

“Well, if you are in need of papers to do that with at the house, you are welcome to use the documents I intend to shred. All I ask is that if you decide to go such a route, you burn them in the grill and you remain safe.”

Virgil blinked. “Are you serious?”

“Of course.”

Virgil stared at Logan again, then he looked at the ground. A little knot twisted in his gut.

“Are you unsatisfied with this arrangement?” Logan asked.

“No, I just... expected you or Patton to be mad or something.”

“Virgil, you are sixteen-years-old. You will participate in events that I will not be fond of. If the reason you possess a lighter is to burn paper with your friend within the safety of his driveway, then I am fine with that arrangement. In fact, it can also be beneficial for us, so long as the burning is done in a safe environment. In addition, while you are legally within the care of myself, I am not your father. I do not wish to treat you as my child.”

“Why not?”

The question left Virgil’s mouth so fast he couldn’t stop it. Like he couldn’t stop the flood of memories with Logan and their parents. He’d watched their parents fawn over Logan’s achievements, watched their teenage son participate in band, watched as they helped Logan prepare for prom, watched as he left for college, watched on the days he returned. He longed for that himself, even at that young age. But now, the cycle was broken. There were no parents. It was just two brothers, with the youngest too old now for the hugs and whispers of assurance in the late night hours when nightmares roamed and panic attacks were common.

Tears came then. Virgil brought up his left arm and brushed them away. A hand reached out and took that arm. Virgil stopped walking. Logan stopped with them. Then, Virgil glanced over. Logan’s expression had shifted into something far more serious. The elder’s hand lowered.

“I did not want you to resent me,” Logan said. “If you are in need of a parental figure, I-”

“No, it’s... it’s fine,” Virgil said. Then he sighed and looked down. “I’m just...  I miss then, you know?”

“Yes, I know. I miss them too.”

Virgil gave him a little smile. Logan returned it, though anyone else probably wouldn’t have seen his face shift. Then Virgil turned and started walking towards Patton and Roman again. By the time they made it to the car, Patton was already putting Roman inside of it and helping the kid with his seat belt.

Virgil climbed into his side of the car. He shut the door, reached for the seat belt, then paused and looked over. Roman’s gaze was still down, eyes still wet, face red and splotchy with unfiltered emotion. With only a second more of hesitation, he moved to the center seat, buckled in, and put his right arm around Roman’s smaller body. The car started. All for of them moved forward in silence.

[freyjaiam]

H9b

Rogue Canary— Superhero AU— “Let me remind you that I had said no.”

“For someone who claims to be a hero you sure like to do the wrong thing.”

Leonard Snart froze then slowly turned around to face the last two people he wanted to see. The two were a constant pain in his ass and if he wasn’t the hero and more like them he’d probably have killed them by now. She was in her typical black leather, her purple hair loose around her shoulders. Her mask hid her eyes but he could still see the stunning blue. Her lips weren’t purple tonight though. They usually matched her hair. Tonight they were a soft pink and he had to look away only to see the male at her side. He never talked much. Not with his mouth, anyway. He always used his fists to get his point across. And his powers. He had his usual sleeveless red shirt on along with his dark denim jeans with black boots. He always showed the scars he got the day he acquired his powers, as if they were something to be proud of. 

Perhaps he was proud of them. 

They’d earned the names Crimson and Blaze, due to her ability to draw blood and his to set things on fire. Names that Leonard, for once, didn’t make fun of Cisco for using in his quest to name all the bad guys in Central. They fit.

“Shouldn’t you two be out torturing some innocent soul instead of here bothering me?” asked Leonard, his signature drawl earning a smirk from Crimson.

“Oh, now, Cold… You and I both know people are never that innocent,” she said with a mock pout, spinning a lock of her purple hair in her fingers before letting it drop. She had dubbed him Captain Cold a long time ago. An inside joke between the two of them because he was ‘too serious’. Cisco and all of Central knew him only as Absolute Zero because of his powers. A name he wasn’t all that fond of but it had stuck. He’d be damned if he’d admit he liked the name Crimson gave him instead.  “Seriously though, what are you doing here? This isn’t your usual stomping ground.”

“Been spying on me?” he asked.

“Always,” she answered with a grin. “Need to know all your secrets, Cold.”

“Look. I’m not in the mood tonight. So how about instead of our usual-”

“Ah, Leonard, you came…” A man’s voice had Leonard stiffening. Not because the man had just given out his name to the two people who he considered his enemies. No, because the man was the reason why he was here. “…though I distinctly remember telling you to come alone.”

“Ah, Dad, now you and I both know you didn’t come alone either,” said Leonard, his drawl cold and emotionless. Crimson and Blaze shared a look, as if debating on leaving, before deciding with a shrug to stay. “I got what you wanted. But first you need to hold up your end of the deal.”

“Your sister is home and safe,” said Lewis. 

“Thinking she had a fun day with good ole Dad, too, huh?”

“Of course,” he said with a grin. “She had no idea about this.”

Lewis held up a remote. Leonard stepped forward to take it.

“Nuh uh!” said Lewis, wagging his finger. “Step back. Or the deal is off and I press this button and your sisters brains are splattered all over that new sofa she just bought and wouldn’t shut up about.”

“Jesus,” muttered Crimson.

“I count five,” muttered Blaze.

“Easy pickings. Stay sharp,” murmured Crimson.

“Got it, Boss.”

“Here!” shouted Leonard, pulling out a small velvet sack. He tossed it forward and it landed at the feet of his father. Lewis picked it up and opened the bag. He hummed in satisfaction. “Not give me the-”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Lewis. “There is a lot more I’d like for you to do. You hurt my feelings when you decided to play hero instead of partake in the family business. We have a lot of time to make up for.”

“We had a deal!” shouted Leonard, angry.

“Plans change, Son. Now, don’t disappoint your sister by-”

It all happened in a flash. Leonard extended his hand. A large shard of ice shot forward and embedded itself into the heart of Lewis Snart. Lewis dropped to his knees, the remote and the large diamonds falling from his hands. Chaos erupted but Leonard was oblivious to Crimson and Blaze killing the men his father had brought with them. He was deaf to the screams. Blind to the flying blood. All he could see was his father, dead at his feet. 

“Cold?” Who was talking to him? They sounded so far away. “Leonard?”

He snapped out of it when a hand went to his shoulder. He twisted and pushed the person back, a wild look in his eyes as he brought up his hands to defend himself. It wasn’t until a ball of fire formed in his face that he snapped out of it, stepping back so he didn’t loose all the hair on his eyebrows. 

“Back off, Cold!” snarled Blaze. 

“Get out of here,” muttered Leonard.

“A thank you would be nice,” said Crimson, a hand on her hip while she twisted a blood-stained dagger in the other. 

“What…” Leonard looked around. His father wasn’t the only dead man. “Shit…”

“Them or us. Easy decision,” said Crimson with a shrug. 

“You two need to leave.” 

“You’re staying?” asked Crimson.

“I just killed my father. I need to…”

“What?” she asked. “Turn yourself in?” She laughed. “You’re serious? He deserved it! At least, from what we could see.”

“No— I… I need to…”

Crimson rolled her eyes. Leonard turned his back to her. A mistake. She lashed out quickly. A quick strike to the back of his head. She then turned to her partner. They spoke without words, as they normally did, and soon he was bending to pick up the unconscious meta. 

.

.

.

“Let me remind you that I had said no to him coming here.”

“Shut up, Mick.”

“Seriously, Boss… He could blow our whole hideout,” said Mick, aka Blaze.

“We have many hideouts. Losing this one won’t hurt us at all,” said Sara, aka Crimson. She tapped a few keys on a keyboard and watched the monitor. Leonard was awake and pacing the small room they were keeping him in. She grinned. He looked pissed. She always liked it when his feathers were ruffled. “So, shall we go talk to our guest?”

“Hm… I guess.”

Sara and Mick walked to the door. Sara gave it a rap with her knuckles.

“Knock, knock!” she called out cheerfully.

“Get me the hell out of here!” shouted Leonard. 

“Say pretty please!” she said in a sing-song voice. He was silent and she once again rolled her eyes before opening the door. She saw the punch coming and deflected, twisting her body so that she could throw him over her shoulder. He struggled as she kept his arm in a hold, her foot planted at his back. When he ceased his struggles she released him. He rose to his feet, looking around the room and taking everything in. It wasn’t much. It was one of the shittier holes her and Mick had picked out. As soon as they let him go they were going to burn it down and move on. “You should be thanking us.”

“For what? Kidnapping me? Assault?”

“You were about to make the biggest mistake of your life by turning yourself in.”

“I didn’t know you cared,” he said.

“We don’t,” inserted Mick. 

“Deny it all you want, Leonard,” said Sara. “But you’re just like us. You try and try to be good but there is that little monster buried deep that wants to come out and play. You push it down again and again but we saw it tonight. You should let it out more.”

“Or maybe you should think you could be more than a killer,” said Leonard seriously before looking to Mick. “Or a pyromaniac.”

“Doesn’t pay well,” said Mick.

“Well, this has been fun, but I’m leaving,” said Leonard. He put his hands up as Sara moved forward. “Don’t try to stop me.”

“We won’t,” said Sara.

Sara and Mick watched as Leonard left their safehouse. 

“He’ll come around,” she said. 

“Fifty bucks says he’ll turn himself in.”

“You’re on.”

.

.

.

Leonard never turned himself in. He paid for a funeral. Pretended to care that his father was dead. The world was better without Lewis Snart in it. Lisa was the only person to truly mourn him. He told her to keep the ashes. He would have just flushed them down the toilet. Those he worked with in the hero circle noticed a change. That he was a little darker. Took things a little further than he should. He was still a hero, just not by the book like the rest of them. They all asked questions and he deflected them. He’d go home after each night and drink and plan his next move. He hadn’t seen Crimson or Blaze in weeks. Then, one night, he got a call about a robbery in progress and that the first responders were busy containing a fire set miles away. It stunk of those two and so he took it. He cut through traffic with his bike and when he saw two other bikes, one with an occupant with bright purple hair, he took chase. He could’ve easily shot out some ice to make them skid to a stop… But he wanted this tonight. Street after street whirred by as the speeds increased. When they hit a dirt road he put on the brakes as they slowed. 

“That was fun!” shouted Crimson.

“Just hand over the money you stole and we’ll call it even.”

“Oh, that’s no fun,” teased Crimson. “Besides, we have a proposal.”

“And what is that?” he asked, arms crossing over his chest, amused. 

“Join us,” prompted Crimson, making Leonard snort. 

“No.”

“But why not? I’ve been hearing through the grapevine that you’ve changed. Now, we both know why that is… C’mon, Leonard, straight and narrow is boring. Besides, we know you like us. Our hideout has yet to be compromised. And so we returned the favor by not telling anyone who you really are.”

“Why do you want me so bad?” asked Leonard. 

Crimson bit her bottom lip, white teeth digging into purple stained flesh as she looked him over from head to toe. She was clearly checking him out and he felt the collar of his coat get a little warm. 

“That’s a question to answer for another day.”

They left. And he didn’t stop them.

.

.

.

A fire broke out in an apartment complex. It was nasty. People were trapped inside. Leonard was doing his best to get to them. He was at the top floor holding a child when he realized he was in a bad spot. He had the child covered with his coat and she clung to his neck as he used his powers the best he could to escape the flames. When he realized he was stuck he went out the window. He fought to stay conscious as the child screamed from the fall. He shot ice at his feet, looping and swirling to slow his fall until he landed with a slide to the ground below. People cheered, but they sounded muffled to him. He barely managed to hand the child to a firefighter before he passed out. When he opened his eyes he was in a hospital room alone. His chest hurt and his eyes felt gritty. He felt a pressure at his hand and he turned to see Lisa sitting in a chair beside him holding his hand. 

“You’re one tough sonuvabitch,” murmured a familiar voice. Leonard turned to see Crimson and Blaze standing there. He knew it was them, but they were different. Blaze looked normal in his jeans and flannel shirt. Crimson had her hair up in a bun and her mask was off. She looked almost innocent without the mask on. 

“Why are you here?” he asked, or tried to. Crimson grabbed a cup of water and offered it. He gave her a skeptical look before taking a sip. “Why…”

“Because everyone knows who you are now. You save the town and they repay you by blasting your name all over the news. You aren’t safe. Lisa isn’t safe. I’ve already heard rumors of the Watchtower Order coming to take you out. You’ve pissed a lot of people off in the past… And they want your blood. And, well, they can’t have it.”

“If anyone is going to kill you,” continued Mick. “It’s gunna be us.”

“How reassuring,” murmured Leonard. 

“Get some rest.” Sara nodded to Lisa. “She’s safe with us. I had a sister once. I know what it’s like to want to protect them.”

For some reason he believed her. So, he went to sleep, knowing in that moment that those two were about to get what they wanted. He was about to become one of them… Because they were right. He’d saved this city again and again—and their repayment had been to put his name out there. He wasn’t safe. Lisa wasn’t safe—And he had no one to turn to because he’d slammed a lot of doors after he’d killed his father. And so, on this day…

Leonard Snart was going rogue. 

send me a prompt

[farareusis]

The therapist sat across the table from Aisha, a legal pad in front of her, one hand holding a pen and the other a glowing cigarette. Aisha glanced up at the ceiling, squinting in the harsh light. No smoke detector. Unusual.

“So,” the therapist began with a smile, tapping the legal pad with her pen. “How have you been this week, Miss Daring?”

“Mm.”

The therapist waited for elaboration, but when none was forthcoming, she smiled again. It looked somehow out of place on her. “Any highs or lows you want to talk about?” she prodded. “Good days? Bad days? Things you’d like a second opinion on?”

Once again, Aisha declined to answer. The really odd thing, now that Aisha noticed, was that the room didn’t seem to have any doors or windows. How had she gotten in? And, more importantly, how would she get out?

Almost before the thought had entered her mind, the left wall revealed a door, as if it had always been there. The therapist didn’t look at it, but her dark eyes narrowed and grew colder. “Miss Daring,” she tried once more.

“Who are you?” Aisha interrupted. “Where are we?”

The therapist let out a light sigh. “My dear woman,” she said, her voice growing thick with sugary condescension. “I would have thought you, of all people, would recognise me.”

Aisha tried to focus on the woman’s face. Her skin was dark, her nose wide and straight, her long hair thinly dreaded. She looked extraordinarily familiar, painfully so, but the last tumbler of recognition refused to fall into place. Then, before her eyes, everything Aisha saw began to peel like charring paper. The woman’s professional pencil skirt and cardigan burned away to reveal an elaborate formal gown of black and gold. The table between them crumbled to nothing. The blank walls of the room vanished, replaced with a flat, white void that cast no shadows, leaving Aisha with a vertiginous feeling of two-dimensionality.

“Better?” asked the woman, lounging as if supported by an invisible lawn chair.

Aisha stared at her, brow furrowed.

The woman took a drag from her cigarette. “Not much of a conversationalist, are you?” she said. The smoke blew towards Aisha, a cloud of menthol and cherry flavor. It reminded her more of Ben than Piper. “Well, that’s alright. I’m quite used to entertaining myself at the expense of others.” She tapped ash into the air, and it disappeared. “Although I’m sure you know all about that.”

Aisha felt the barb like a physical sting in her gut. “Who are you?” she repeated.

“You and I are already quite well acquainted,” said the woman, her smile becoming an insincere pout. “I knew your friends wouldn’t get it until later, but I thought for sure you would see. I’m almost a little hurt.”

It wasn’t anyone she’d worked with. Aisha had a very good memory for the faces of her contacts and clients, anyone who could be a future problem. Unless it was someone from her childhood - perhaps a relative? Aisha’s scalp prickled, growing warm. This woman could be her mother and Aisha still wouldn’t trust herself to have the slightest clue.

The woman let out a sudden, lilting laugh, touching her hand to her mouth. “Oh, you should have seen your face!” she said. “I’d recreate it for you, but it wouldn’t be as good without twenty-nine years of stoicism behind it.”

“I don’t… understand,” Aisha mumbled. She couldn’t seem to get her bearings, in the conversation or in the surroundings. The stranger didn’t seem to intend her harm, or if she did, it was in a way too obscure for Aisha to predict.

“No, we’ve established that already,” said the woman, flowing to her feet. She crossed the distance between them without seeming to have moved at all. Aisha was well used to others towering over her, but this was different.

“Now, what I’ve done with your cohorts is,” she continued, “I created a hypothetical scenario perfectly tailored to their heart of hearts and watched as their irrational subconscious did the rest.” She straightened one of Aisha’s dreadlocks over her forehead with an almost motherly touch. “But that won’t work with you, will it? You’re much too… self-aware.”

Aisha opened her mouth to respond, but all that came to mind was another I don’t understand. She closed her mouth again.

“And so, here’s what we’ll do, my dear,” the woman went on, clapping once. “We’ll simply go on a little trip, you and I. Back through our shared history. How does that sound?”

“Shared history,” Aisha repeated.

“Yes,” she said. “Do try to keep up, darling — you’ll remember me soon enough.” She took Aisha’s face in her hands, and before Aisha could react, everything shifted.

Her pet rat crawled slowly over the treadmill of her circling hands. Stacks of books stood around her in the dusty debris, all closed save for the one she kept just to the side of her crossed legs. It was little more than a folder of loose papers torn from a handful of different volumes, a distillation of the only information she felt she could trust, and she still couldn’t be sure it would work.

The rat ran over her palm, and she took it by the throat, her thumb pinching its jaw so it couldn’t turn its teeth on her. It felt so large in her young fingers. Her father’s pocketknife clicked open in her other hand. Oh, she thought. I understand, now.

The rat’s blood cooled quickly as it ran over her hand and onto the decrepit barn floor with a dull splash. She watched as if it were happening to someone else. Slowly, she knelt on the cement. Pressed her knuckles to the small pool of blood, rat’s body still in hand.

The blood shot out in a series of ever-entangling designs like a thicket of brambles, darkening as it went until it seemed to suck the light from the air around her. The temperature began to fall. Her rapid breath clouded in an almost constant stream. She hadn’t known, back then, what was coming. Not really.

Night-black smoke erupted from the spell, enveloping her in a cylinder of darkness. She choked, sharp ozone heavy in her lungs, her blood thundering in her ears. No, she hadn’t known what she was doing. What she would do. But if she had… would it have made any difference?

Another sudden shift put her heart in her mouth. Her hair was rough and matted against her neck and shoulders, threaded with old braids and half-formed dreadlocks. It was cold, the dead of winter, but it didn’t bother Aisha. She was perched on a streetlight like a cat on a fencepost, staring down at the road. Her entire body felt hollow, the sensation of months without food or sleep still horribly familiar - it was almost comforting, in a twisted sort of way. Like bones popping back out of place after adjustment.

No, she thought. A man stumbled down the sidewalk below. No. No. No. Not again. Not again.

The man was tall and corpse-thin, middle-aged, and smelled like wood alcohol. Aisha knew long before he got within a hundred feet of her. She’d told Piper once that it was impossible to remember everyone she’d killed, and it had been mostly honest - but only as far as the ones whose faces she’d never seen.

She dismounted. A hundred and seventy pounds dropped on him from two dozen feet above had the man as good as dead even before his head hit the cement with a sickening thunk. Just to make sure, Aisha turned him over with her foot, touched her fingers lightly to the side of his neck. The skin opened up in a perfectly straight, laser-thin line to the other side, and blood seeped out to join the already considerable puddle under his skull.

Aisha sensed an alien satisfaction from the darkness around her. She, herself, felt absolutely nothing.

Another shift set her head spinning. She held a large pair of shears in one hand and a three-foot-long clump of black hair in the other, blood still drying on both it and the hand that held it. Red streaked the filthy sink in front of her - she’d tried to wash it off, to no avail. The lights of the bathroom were bright around her, casting stark shadows that made her double take at every creak. The smell of gasoline and mildew permeated the air.

With hands that shivered so much she could barely operate the shears, she chopped up the hair into tiny pieces and flushed it down the toilet. No more, she thought. No more.

She sat down on the toilet seat. Without them, she’d have to start living like a normal person again. Eating, sleeping, talking. She’d have to work, and learn, and meet people — she tried to remember the last time she’d actually spoken to a human being. Months. Years, probably. She wasn’t sure she even remembered how to do it. She did remember enough to know that, if she tried, everyone would be able to tell that something was very wrong with her. Humans were supposed to be good at that sort of thing.

Her breath came out in an unsteady sigh. Her stomach suddenly seized up with four years’ worth of suppressed hunger, and when she managed to come back to her senses, she knew the exhaustion couldn’t be far behind. She needed to get out of the bathroom, find somewhere safe to spend the night, decide on a plan of action. She couldn’t go back home. She’d missed most of middle and high school, and she had no resources. She’d have to find a life outside of the system, at least until she was old enough to—

The tears came came so unexpectedly, she didn’t have any breath to spare for them, and her body forced out a hoarse wheeze before sucking in air for a bout of soul-wracking sobs. She hadn’t cried for longer even than she hadn’t eaten, and the depth of her sudden suffering terrified her.

“I can’t,” she gasped, her voice an atrophied croak. She muttered it again and again until the letters scrambled and lost their meaning.

She couldn’t face life like this. A shambling, blood-clotted teenager with a sixth grade education and the social skills of a praying mantis. No money. No family. No future.

The lights flickered, and she startled, looking around so fast her neck protested. Nothing. They still hadn’t found her. The only thing moving in the room was her reflection, and—

She froze.

The girl in the mirror smirked, waving her fingers.

Aisha’s knife was in her hand before her eyes were fully open, bedsheets pulled off and feet halfway off the mattress. She stared into the moonlit shadows, her breath coming in ragged heaves, until she convinced herself that it had only been a dream. One more vivid than anything she had ever experienced before, even in her worst flashbacks — but only a dream. She was twenty-nine. She’d been a real person for over a decade. That was her real life.

She dissolved into the darkness and reappeared in the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water. It would all seem, if not silly, at least less material in the morning.

The knife shot back out as she saw something in the kitchen window. The dark glass reflected the room back to itself, a ghost of a face hovering near the edge. One she’d recognised only in the last moment before waking, and couldn’t understand why it had taken so long.

The nightmare woman was herself. 

Of course.

[not-your-bon]

i wish it could be you and i forever: chapter 13

summary: in which we get some news

word count: 1697

on AO3: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

chapter 13/?

“Now, Gabriel, let’s be reasonable here. We’re not in the financial state to expand to America yet. New York would be a huge investment, and our numbers have been going down over the last year.”

 Gabriel tried his best not to roll his eyes. “I’ve told you this many times already, Alan, but I’ll repeat myself again. This is not up for discussion. And please, let me remind you that you’re not the only one who holds an MBA in this room.” Gabriel feels his phone vibrate in his pocket and pulls it out to check the caller. Nathalie. “Please excuse me, I need to take this call.” Gabriel briskly walks into the hallway and answers the call. “Nathalie, you know that I have a mee­–”

 “They found the plane.”

 Gabriel felt his blood run cold. “What did you say?” he whispered.

 “They found the body of the plane. It’s in the middle of the North Atlantic. They’re going to recover as much as possible.”

 “Recover as much as possible,” Gabriel repeated. “As in, as much of the bodies as possible?”

 There was a short pause. “Yes.”

 Gabriel felt his legs carrying him down the hall. He pushed open the door and bent over the toilet before emptying his stomach’s contents into the bowl. He coughed and spat into the toilet before flushing it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before lifting his phone back up to his ear. “So what happens now?”

 “Because of…the state the passengers are in, officials will have to either run DNA tests or check dental records to verify their identities. Because there were nearly 200 passengers on the flight, the process might take a while.”

 Gabriel stares at himself in the mirror. His skin is ashen, eyes dull, and the harsh fluorescent light only enhances his ghastly appearance. He sets his phone down and puts Nathalie on speaker before splashing water onto his face and rinsing the acidic taste out of his mouth. “Will you please escort Adrien to my office after school?”

 “Of course.” 

-- 

Adrien frowns as they take a left instead of their usual right. He leans forward in his seat. “Don’t I have Chinese lessons?”

 “Your father requested to see you. I’m not sure how long it will be, so I’ve cleared your schedule for the rest of the day.”

 Adrien could feel the knots forming in his stomach. “Is this about my mother?”

 “That’s a question for your father.”

 If there was something that Nathalie was good at, it was keeping her composure. But, if there was something Adrien was good at, it was reading people. Despite her expressionless face and nonchalant tone, her jaw was now clenched, and her knuckles were white from holding on to her tablet so tightly.

 Adrien leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes. It’s not your fault, he thought to himself. It’s not your fault that your mother is dead. He could feel the heavy feeling of guilt spread throughout his body. It’s not your fault!, he screamed in his head. It felt like an elephant was sitting on his chest and he tried to hear Marinette’s voice in his head, telling him that it wasn’t his fault. But it was my fault, he thought. It’s my fault that I don’t have a mother, and that my father doesn’t have a wife. All. My. Fault. Adrien felt tears trickle down his cheeks from the corner of his eyes. He opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling as he gasps for air. Why was I so selfish? He feels arms wrap around his shoulders. Fingers running through his hair. Someone pulling him tight to their chest. He can’t hear what they’re saying, not with the blood pounding through his ears. He tries to take deep, calculated breaths, but they’re shaky.

 “That’s it, Adrien, slow, deep breaths. Good job. In, and out.” It’s Nathalie’s voice, soft and soothing. “You’re okay, Adrien, you’re okay.”

 He lets Nathalie hold him for a few more minutes before he tries to sit back up. He avoids her gaze and looks out the window and realizes that they’re pulled over in the front of a supermarket. He wipes the tears away with the back of his hand and clears his throat. “Sorry. We can go now.”

 The rest of the ride to Gabriel headquarters silent. Adrien wrung his hands nervously, praying that Nathalie wouldn’t tell his father about the incident.

 --

 Gabriel’s thumb hovered over the number he was so close to calling just two years ago. He took a deep breath and pressed call.

 She answered almost immediately. “Hello?”

 “Hello Sabine. It’s Gabriel. Adrien’s father.”

 “I know. I have your number saved.”

 Gabriel coughed awkwardly. To be quite honest, no one scared him quite as much as Sabine did.  “I guess I’ll just get to the point then. Could Adrien stay at your home tonight?”

 There was a short pause. “You know Adrien is always welcome in our home, Gabriel.” Sabine’s voice is cautious. “Is everything alright?”

 “Erm…I just received some news regarding the plane. They found it. And they’re recovering what’s left of the bodies.” He had to force that last word out. Sabine’s gasp was audible through the phone.

 “I am so sorry, Gabriel.” She pauses. “But don’t you think that tonight would be a good time for you to spend a little bit of time with your son? You two are both going through this. He needs his father most right now.”

 “I don’t think I will be good company for my son tonight. He would probably rather find comfort in his best friend than me.”

 “Well,” Sabine says slowly, “Adrien is welcome to stay for as long as he’d like, but I really do think you should talk to your son and spend some time with the boy. Even if it doesn’t seem like it, he needs you right now.”

 “Thank you, Sabine. And I will think about that. You should expect Adrien after dinnertime.” Before Sabine could say anything else, Gabriel hung up. He was not in the mood for a lecture about parenting.

 Gabriel leaned back in his chair and thought about what Sabine had said. He knew that he should be there for Adrien right now. Hell, he should’ve been there for him for more than just the first couple weeks. But he and Adrien were never close. A part of him had wished that tragedy would’ve miraculously brought them together, but it didn’t. It pushed them even further apart. And Gabriel knew that it was mostly, if not entirely his own fault. He tried to make excuses for himself—he didn’t know what a father-son relationship was like because his own father was more interested in a relationship with a bottle of whiskey, or that the company required too much of his time and attention, or that Adrien simply wasn’t interested in his love.

He knew they were all pathetic excuses.

 He thought that having Adrien work at Gabriel would ease the tension. It would be something that they had in common. And the cameras love Adrien, just as they did Amelie. Gabriel smiled a little at that, remembering how natural she was at modelling, along with designing and handling Gabriel’s most elite clients. A jack of all trades, she used to joke.

 Adrien seemed to enjoy modeling. Gabriel had watched a few of Adrien’s first shoots and was amazed at how naturally his body fell into the poses, and how easily his expression could change to the mood the photographer was looking for. He would praise Adrien during the short breaks, and his heart warmed at how his son’s eyes would light up for just a moment, how the corners of his lips would turn up to form a small smile.

 He’s pulled out of his reverie when Adrien knocks on his door. “You wanted to see me, Father?”

 Gabriel feels his heart start racing. “Your mother,” he managed to get out. “They found her plane.” Adrien didn’t seem surprised so he continued. “I wanted to speak to you about funeral plans. Your mother and I never discussed it because we didn’t expect for it to be necessary so soon.” Adrien flinched slightly at that. “So, what do you think?”

 Adrien crosses his arms and stares at the ground. “I’m not sure, Father. I don’t really know how this all is supposed to work.”

 Gabriel takes a deep breath and wonders if he should even be asking Adrien such questions. “Well, we can either bury her, or cremate her.”

 Adrien makes a face at that. “Would it be weird to just have a jar of Mom’s ashes in the house?”

 “Well, you could think of it as having her close to us all the time.”

 Adrien looks up to meet Gabriel’s gaze for a split second before looking away again. “Could we do both? I mean, bury an empty coffin and have a nice headstone and funeral, and then cremate her so we can have her around?”

 “I think that’s a good idea, Adrien.”

 Adrien relaxes a little at that and Gabriel feels the weight in the room shift. “I’ve also made arrangements with Sabine for you to spend the night at the Dupain-Cheng’s. I thought you’d maybe like to spend some time with Marinette tonight.”

 Adrien makes a face at that and turns his head up to look at Gabriel in the eyes. “As much as I love spending time with my best friend, don’t you think that I would like to spend some time with you, my last living parent?”

 Gabriel opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Adrien continued to speak. “What’s the excuse this time? You’re working on the fall line? Is fashion week so much more important than your son? I’ll see you when you actually want to be my father.” He turned on his heel to leave Gabriel’s office.

 Gabriel could feel the heat rise up his neck and spread through his face. “That is no way to speak to your father!” he thundered, but the door had already slammed shut.

[justine1518]

PORTENTS

Positive, she said cheerily, as if I shouldn’t go out and hang myself this instant. I held on to the phone for a long time; I was sure that if I let go I would fall down. The coffee turned to mud in my mouth—I ran to the sink and heaved. Congratulations, it’s a fetus. You frigging idiot. 

Afterwards I sat at the kitchen table and tried to make sense of the stuff swirling around in my head. Visions of blood and umbilical cords and feeding bottles whirled before my eyes like malevolent frisbees. The newspaper was lying next to the platter of toast; I read the headline about two hundred times. “May use poison gas, Iraq warns.” Next to it a picture of a dead Kurdish woman clutching the body of her dead child. Mother. Child. I felt like throwing up all over again. I imagined a creature ripping out of my stomach in a gory mess, like the monster in Alien. 

There was a Post-it note on the mirror: “Lunch with Lawrence, 12:30,” Lawrence being a fifty-fifty candidate for the father. I painted a face on and stared at the mirror. I saw my belly swelling up, my clothes rising like a circus tent, and all I could think about was the ten pounds I’d just lost, and the new dress I bought to mark the occasion. Finally I got my new dress out of the closet and put it on while it still fit. 

In the elevator my next-door neighbor smiled and said Good morning. She had this sort of knowing smile, and I found myself wondering if she knew about me. I wasn’t just being paranoid; this is Manila, the neighbors know everything. They are extremely sympathetic, and if you let them they will take over your life. It turned out she was just trying to sell me a watch. Her husband had managed to get out of Kuwait by driving across the desert, and when he got home the banks refused to change his Kuwaiti dinars. That’s why she was selling his watches. I felt kind of sorry for Mrs. Santos, setting out with her imitation Gucci handbag and several dozen gold bracelets to sell her husband’s watches. Or was it Mrs. San Juan, I can never remember.  A nervous breakdown would’ve been in order, or a fit of tears and keening, the kind that comes with a runny nose and smeared mascara. But I’ve never been one for hysterics. Thanks to my parents, by the time I was eight, the sight of a chair being hurled across the room was no longer cause for alarm. Maybe there is something to be said for a lousy home life. Ramon says my emotional range is limited to rage, guilt, and occasional hilarity. He neglected to mention blanknesss—there are times when I just don’t feel anything.  Ramon also claims he can read my thoughts by looking at me—he says I’m transparent. I hope so; it’s embarrassing to tell somebody there’s a fifty per cent chance that he may be a father in several months.  By the time it occurred to me to catch a ride I was halfway to my office and decided to walk the rest of the way. I was swallowed up by the crowd of people hurrying to work; rising above the din of traffic, their footfalls sounded like the marching of a distant army.  In front of the church where rosaries and good-luck charms were sold under the baleful stare of the Archangel Michael’s statue, a strange figure appeared on my right; a filthy man with long, matted hair. A tattered bag was slung across his bare chest, upon which his ribs protruded like spikes. A thick layer of soot covered his emaciated body—he looked like a walking pile of ashes. He started speaking to me in urgent tones, as if he were revealing important secrets, and there was a crazy glint in his eyes. I understood nothing. He was speaking either in dialect of in gibberish, I couldn’t tell, I looked on stupidly. People stared, expecting perhaps that he would produce a cleaver and hack me to death. The man went on with his weird recitation; why he chose me I had no idea, maybe he could see past the designer clothes into my dark and grimy soul. After a while he frowned like a teacher who had just given up on a particularly moronic student. Then he wheeled and dashed into the church, stopping a moment to rub with his filthy hand the scowling face of the Archangel Michael.  Through the glass I could see the cashier, Wilma, on the telephone, spewing vile words like poisoned toads into the receiver. She was screaming at some poor bastard who owed her money. Across from me, Pocholo, in his pink shirt and red paisley necktie, sat flipping through the morning papers.  “It’s exactly as Nostradamus said,” Pocholo said. “He predicted earthquakes signaling the end of the world, and we had that big one last month. Then he said a leader from the Middle East would launch a world war. I thought it would be Khadaffi but no, it’s Saddam Hussein.  “Sure,” I said. I watched Wilma slam the phone so hard it fell to the floor. Cursing mightily, she stopped to pick it up. On this particular day she was clad in polyester cloth abloom with pink and purple flowers, which made her look like a demented sofa.  “Anyway,” Pocholo continued, “my aunts say they saw this vision in Taal.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “They saw a horseman in the sky.”  “A what?”  “A man on a horse. Riding across the sky. A hundred schoolchildren saw it. According to my aunt it looked like the statue of St. Martin that stands in their church.”  “St. Martin on a horse?” I said. “Maybe it was St. George or Joan of Arc. I don’t think St. Martin rode a horse.”  “No, stupid,” he said. “You’re thinking of St. Martin de Porres. We’re elating about St. Martin of Tours. And you know what? My aunt says they saw the same vision just before World War II. Then the Japanese arrived.” He ran his fingers through his artfully moussed and tousled hair. “Oh my God, what if it’s really the end. I mean, I don’t even have a kid yet.”  I looked away so he wouldn’t see me grimace, and was just in time to see Wilma spitting into her wastebasket.  All morning I wondered whether I should ask Wilma for her abortionist’s address. She would give the address, I knew, even accompany me to the place. Probably some decrepit wooden house in the fetid alleys of Tondo, where the gangs hunted each other down with homemade revolvers. Wilma hid nothing, she wore her brazen honesty like a soiled and rusty halo. She had had four abortions, she told me casually while I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom; the washerwoman down her street performed the operation, she owed Wilma money. I imagine Wilma’s insides, as torn and bloody as a battlefield. She said she’d regretted her last abortion: it was a girl, she’s always wanted a baby girl. She put the fetus in a jar of formalin and kept it in the drawer where her wedding dress, which had outlasted her marriage, lay yellowing among mothballs and dead flowers.  The others she’d flushed down the toilet.  Lawrence ate his lunch the way he lived his life: very carefully, as if he would choke on it. Everything about him was resoundingly correct, from his hair to his Italian shoes, from the schools he’d attended to the fashionable gym where he wrestled with machines three times a week. I knew that as he read the menu he was figuring out how much cholesterol, how much sodium and fat were in the entrees.  “It’s going to be bad,” he was saying. “By next year the official exchange rate could be 28 pesos to the dollar. That’s a conservative projection. We haven’t considered oil prices and the damage from the earthquake.” Daintily, he chewed on his vegetable. “Inflation will go through the roof,” he added, almost with relish.  While he delivered his analysis of the economy, I twirled the noodles around my fork but I hardly ate anything. No appetite. Idly, I wondered if Lawrence was sleeping with someone else. One of the girls from his office, someone tall and svelte who worked in PR, shopped in Hong Kong, and wore linen suits with tiny skirts. I concluded that he wasn’t—I had no illusions about his undying love and fidelity, but I trusted his fear of AIDS.  “Am I boring you?” he said at last. Mr. Sensitive. He put his hand on my knee—maybe he expected me to salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know we haven’t seen each other much lately, but it’s been hell at the office.” Without missing a beat he slid his hand up my skirt. Boy, he was smooth, no one would’ve suspected that the earnest-looking young man in the pinstripe shirt could be doing something as ignoble as giving a girl a feel in a restaurant. “That guy from the head office is a major asshole. Goes around trying to catch people loafing. The office feels like a...”  Abruptly he withdrew his hand and stood up. A large, red-nosed white man in an ill-fitting brown suit was approaching our table.  “Mr. Fowler,” said Lawrence.  “Alvarado,” said the man, shaking the hand Lawrence extended.  “How was the beach?” Lawrence said. I had to restrain myself from calling the waiter and asking for a receptacle I could puke into.  “Fine,” said Fowler, “Well. Enjoy your meal.”  “Is that the asshole from the main office?” I said.  “Sssh,” Lawrence hissed. “He might hear you.”  “Let him.” I reached over with my fork and speared food off his plate. He hated it whenever I did that. Lawrence had a very definite concept of “mine.” For instance, all his books were stamped “Private Library of Lawrence R. Alvarado.” The strange thing was, he didn’t even read his books. They were lined up according to height on his antique bookshelf, neatly covered in plastic. One time I took a book out of the shelf, and it had been there unopened for so long the pages stuck together.  “Anyway,” Lawrence said, “where were we?”  “You mean until your sahib came along?”  “What’s the matter with you?” he said. Funny he should use the exact same words he said coming up to me at Diday’s birthday party while I stood in a corner holding my breath to get rid of my hiccups. He said he was Lawrence and I should breathe into a paper bag, so we went into the kitchen and rummaged in the closets. There weren’t any paper bags, and when he found a plastic shopping bag I didn’t need anymore, my hiccups were gone. He got my name and my telephone number, it was as easy as that.  “Miggy,” he said. Miggy, for Chrissakes. I knew Lawrence wasn’t going to follow me, he hated scenes—and I walked out of the restaurant, it was as easy as that.  I wandered around the mall for a while. I went into stores and looked at things. There was this outfit that looked like our uniform at the Academy of Our Lady’s Seven Sorrows—white blouse, blue necktie, and a navy-blue skirt—only the skirt was too short. At Seven Sorrows, skirts had to cover the entire knee area. If your knees were exposed the nuns would give you a lecture on modesty. There was no spanking—the nuns were an enlightened bunch—but after fifteen minutes of having guilt laid thickly on you, you’d wish they’d give you ten lashes instead and get it over with.  Corporal punishment would simplify everything. For sleeping with a guy you weren’t married to, you’d get, say, five hundred lashes. For sleeping with two guys, neither of whom you were married to, one thousand lashes. For even thinking about abortion, ten thousand lashes. And I’d been such a good girl too, until recently, anyway, so I’d probably get five hundred extra lashes for being such a disappointment.  I made a mental list of the reasons for and against having this baby. Pro: This child would be mine, really truly mine, which couldn’t be said of a lot of things. Pro: Maybe I’ll turn out to be a genius who will invent something beneficial to mankind, like a device that would cause world leaders to self-destruct if they got the urge to wage war.  Anti: I’m not sure I’d be such a hot parent. I have serious deficiencies in the responsibility department, as the credit card people will attest. Anti: The lack of a husband, the resulting social stigma, and if not that, my own paranoia. I would drive myself crazy wondering if someone was going to cast stones at me. Anti: my mother would freak. She’s in California, running a Filipino restaurant, and she’s always going on about the decline of traditional Filipino values. I don’t think she would appreciate having me prove her theories. I can just see her talking to my father, blaming him for dying young and leaving her to raise his daughter to adulthood (I was always “his daughter” everytime I screwed up).  When I got back to the office people were scurrying about like newly-beheaded chickens.  “What’s going on?” I asked Pocholo. He was alternately squirting his asthma medication into his mouth with an inhaler and stuffing folders into his briefcase.  “There’s going to be a big earthquake at 2:30,” he said, only there were no pauses between his words.  “Says who?” I demanded.  “It was on the radio,” he said. He snapped his briefcase shut. People were running into elevators. Wilma let loose a steady stream of obscenities while she stuffed into shopping bags the fake Benetton shirts she sold on installment.  “That’s crazy,” I said. “You can’t predict exactly when an earthquake will happen.”  "It was on the radio,” Pocholo repeated, as if media coverage were an infallible confirmation of truth. “2:30. Powerful earthquake, intensity nine.”  “Well, I’m not leaving,” I declared. “I’m not going to fall for an idiotic prank.”  “This building could collapse!” he screeched. “Like the Hyatt Terraces!” “You can’t predict an earthquake exactly.”  “What if there is one? Be reasonable!”  Reasonable! I nearly laughed at that. Pocholo gave up, gathered his briefcase and inhaler, and ran to the elevator.  “Come on,” said Wilma, “It’s almost time.”  “It’s a prank,” I said. “I’m not leaving.”  “They’re closing the building,” she said. “Everyone’s getting out. Do you want to get locked in?”  She had a point. I got my bag—I could use the afternoon off, anyway.  I figured I’d go home and get some sleep; maybe when I woke up this whole thing would turn out to be a bad dream like the one that killed my Uncle Danding. One night he ate too much rice and stewed pork, then went to bed and started screaming horribly in his sleep. They slapped him, poured cold water on him, pounded and bit him, but he never woke up. He died uttering strange garbled noises. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest, but everyone said it was bangungot, the sleeping sickness.  It did seem like a dream, the crowd of people gathered at the parking lot and looking at the building, waiting for the swaying to start. Idiots, I muttered, as I flagged down a taxi.  “Where to?” the driver snarled.  “Salcedo,” I said.  “Too near,” he snapped, zooming off before I could get in the cab. Taxi drivers! This was not a great moment for humanity: everyone was being an idiot or an asshole.  All the taxis were taken, and the buses were so full people were sprouting out the windows. I could see the passengers crammed together like fillings in an enormous sandwich, bumping and rubbing against each other with every lurch of the bus. Maybe if something asks who my kid’s father is, I could say I took a really crowded bus and got knocked up.  By the time I got back to my apartment my feet were throbbing. A menu from a pizza parlor that delivered had been shoved under my door; reading it I had a sudden wild craving for anchovy pizza. Pregnant women are supposed to have these wild cravings, but I was slightly worried. I’ve heard old people say that what you crave during pregnancy determines how your child will turn out. For instance, if you crave guavas, your child will be stubborn. My friend claims her clumsiness was caused by her mother’s fondness for noodles. And singkamas is supposed to produce fair-complexioned children, no matter how dark their parents are. I thought, if I ate a lot of anchovies, would my child have scaly skin, or look like a fish?  I phoned the pizza place anyway, and when I put the phone down it rang. “Hi,” said Ramon.  “How did you know I was home?” I said.  “You’re always home on Sunday.”  “It’s Monday.”  “Oh. Are you going out tonight?” he said. “Can I come over?”  “Okay.”  When I hung up I noticed how quiet the building was. No radios blaring, no TV, no brats squalling down the hall. For a second I wondered if there really was an earthquake. The last time, when the tremors started there was a stunned silence. The phones stopped ringing, the printers stopped whirring, conversations paused in mid-sentence; everyone sat gripping their desks, their eyes wide open and their mouths shaped into O’s. Then people dove under tables and Wilma was saying “OhGodOhGodOhGod” and there was a loud wailing in the air. When the tremors stopped I heard Pocholo’s radio, and the B-52s were singing, “Cosmic! Cosmic!”  I switched the TV on. There was this soap opera about a little girl whom everyone maltreated. The actress was played by a little girl was so good at being a martyr, it was as if she had a sign on her forehead that said, “Kick me.” The soap was interrupted by a news broadcast: 262 more Filipinos had fled Kuwait. A middle-aged woman told a reporter she had been raped by Iraqi soldiers. Why should I be ashamed, she said, I didn’t want it to happen. It was amazing how casual she was. How could she be so cool? War could break out any second, and that madman could use chemical weapons. I thought of worldwide recession, rioting for food, and pictures I had seen of Hiroshima after that blast.  Maybe Pocholo and his aunt were right, the world was coming to an end. What a lousy time it was to be born, with madmen waiting to gas you or blow you away, and the earth opening up to swallow you. On the other hand, with everything going against you, you didn’t need your own mother plotting to get rid of you.  Ramon came in at six. His hair looked like he’d cut it himself, which he often did. He brought a take-out box of friend noodles and a videotape of Road Runner cartoons. I heated the pizza leftovers and he ate them on the card table on the terrace.  He looked exhausted. “I stayed up late filling out the forms for my grant,” he explained, rubbing his eyes.  “I had a weird day,” I said. I told him about the street crazy in front of the church, and his strange message.  He rubbed a spot of sauce off my chin with his thumb. “Maybe it was an obscene proposal. Or maybe he was speaking Aramaic. Repent or else.”  “My officemate says the world is ending,” I said.  He ate the last crumb of pizza. “Maybe.”  “Doesn’t it worry you?”  “It’s not like I can do anything about it. If it’s true. What’s scary is being the last person on earth,” Ramon said.  "Everyone else is dead, and you wander around the rubble and slowly realize you’re alone.”  “God,” I said. “What would you do?”  “Keep looking for another survivor. Try to go crazy,” he reached over and picked a noodle from my plate. “We’re being morbid tonight.”  “I can’t help it,” I said. “All this talk about war.”  It started to rain, so we got up and went inside. As I closed the door to the terrace I thought I saw something in the sky—a man on a black horse, riding through the rain.  “You want some coffee?” Ramon called from the kitchen.  “Yes, please,” I said. My knees were wobbly, I had to sit down. You’re seeing things, I told myself. Pregnant women do it all the time, it’s hormones or something.  “What’s wrong?” said Ramon.  “Nothing,” I said, and in the pit of my stomach I felt a little kick.

Malevolent- having or showing a wish to do evil to others.

like malevolent Frisbees- The persona in the story feels like the problem she is facing is being thrown towards her.