#now that were all severely damaged adults i do think it will be worse

[twoheadstones]

there should be an annual purge day where we can edit other peoples posts again

theres obviously no good reason for this i just love suffering

[sapphic-agent]

I feel bad for Mitsuki. She has a parent's worst nightmare to raise, and people are legit calling her abusive because she doesn't worship the ground at Bakugou's feet.

Maybe I'm a bit biased, because she reminds me of my stepmother. Her family spoiled her son rotten (he was never as bad as Bakugou, but he did have some severe behavior problems that alienated him from a lot of people), and she was the only one trying to instill rules and discipline in his life, which made her the bad guy in many people's eyes.

Someone tried to make the case that Mitsuki and Katsuki (calling them both by their given names for this ask) are both horrible and abusive and I'm like no way José.

Compare Katsuki's introduction to Mitsuki's. One of them is inherently painted to be more cruel and callous and it isn't Mitsuki. In fact, I'd say that Mitsuki is actually a lot more friendly. She didn't get hostile until Katsuki did. Calling her abusive from what we've seen when she did it in front of his teachers and they didn't say a damn word is so... Disingenuous? I don't even know what to call it.

A playful tap on the back of the head is not physical abuse. If her intention has been to actually hurt him, this would be a different story. But it isn't. She wasn't even upset during the first hit, so what about that screams abuse?

I'm not averse to saying that Mitsuki could be verbally abusive. But even then for me, it's more like she's careless with her words than intentionally cruel. Like when she says, "Oh hush. This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't gotten kidnapped and caused all that trouble." I sincerely doubt she actually means, "It's your fault you got kidnapped." To me, it's more like, "You were careless and other people are suffering because of it so get off your high horse."

Because as much as I agree that the LOV's actions (and UA's negligence) are not on Katsuki, he very much was careless and that contributed to him getting kidnapped and putting his classmates in danger. Which also was the reason everyone had to uproot their lives and move into the dorms. I think Mitsuki is trying to make him more humble and aware of how his actions affect others by saying this. I don't agree with how she communicated that, but I sincerely doubt her intention was to be cruel.

The problem is that Katsuki stans take one scene and run with it. But they also somehow miss the part where Mitsuki thanks Aizawa for sticking up for him and humbly asks him to make him a good hero. She even playfully ruffles his hair and he doesn't pull away. An abusive mother wouldn't care so much about her son's dream.

This same scene also implies that she regrets letting adults feed Katsuki's ego because she knows it made him worse. That's probably why she's harsher on him now, because she's aware that the temper of a 4 year old and a temper on a 16 year old are two different things and doesn't want him to continue to be violent and temperamental into adulthood. She's doing damage control the best she can.

That's probably why you relate her to your stepmother (who sounds awesome btw). Because you see a woman who's getting hate for trying to correct her violent, bigoted son's behavior before it escalates.

(Female Katsuki stans are such boy moms. No one can say or do anything to their precious Kacchan and nothing is ever his fault because he's just a poor child who doesn't know any better so who gives a fuck about his victim)

[phantoms-lair]

sweet 16

Detective Conan + BnHA

Usually solving a murder took observation, cleverness, and deductive prowess.

Usually It was not a matter of Conan and Heiji walking in on a woman bludgeoning the victim in the head with what looked like a rather large piece of bismuth with two officers of Tokyo Metropolitan in tow. (It couldn't be. Bismuth would shatter when hit against a skull, not deal the obviously lethal damage it had)

"Suda-san, why?" Takagi gasped.

The woman smiled, the expression all the more horrifying for her blood splattered face. "For this of course. That idiot Kawahara wouldn't give it to me. Not for money, not for me proving it was just 'fake' bismuth, though he had no idea the real value of what he had." She cradled the crystalline metal in her arms like it was an infant.

She was insane. Conan had met several people who were not mentally well, who killed for the dumbest of reasons, but he couldn't remember seeing insanity on this scale.

"Suda-san, put the stone down." Takagi said gently. Sato was uncharacteristically quiet, but Conan had figured out why a little bit ago.

"You're not taking it from me." Suda stood up and the crystal began to glow. "So now you'll all have to go far enough away so you can never come back."

'Sato' lifted her arm, the gun she was bringing to bare heavier and misshapen for a police firearm, but it didn't have the chance to go off. The four of them were swallowed by rainbow light.

The vertigo was overwhelming. There was no up or down, no motion or standing still. And it made the moment it stopped just seemd to make it all the more worse.

"I think I'm going to hurl" Heiji moaned.

"Sato-san? Are you okay? Sato-Kaitou Kid!?" Takagi exclaimed.

"Can't be surprised you got caught, you pulled out your cardgun." Conan snarked, not quite able to sit up yet."

"Kudo-kun?"

Okay, never mind. That startled Conan up. Had he turned back? No, he was still Conan, but Takagi was looking at him in shock. Or rather, right above him, where his head would be if he were his proper size.

"Takagi-keiji, that's Conan-kun." Kid said slowly, but in his own voice. He seemed to accept the jig was up for him.

"No it's not, it's Kudo-kun! I'm not blind."

"Err, it's really not. Like yeah, Sato-san turned out to be Kaitou Kid in disguise, but that's still Conan."

For once Heiji got his name right.

"Not it's not, that Kudo. And Kid's not in disguise, he's wearing his usually white suit. Isn't...he?" It seemed to be dawning on Takagi that no one else in the room was seeing what he was seeing.

"What's going on here?" A man who looked like he belonged in a comic book convention marched in

~

"Tsukauchi I need your help"

Detective Tsukauchi looked at his phone in annoyance. "You know I'm working on a big case right now Vibes."

"Just for a minute? I saw something really weird with my quirk and found two adults, a teen, and a kid. One of the adults is either hallucinating or lost control of his quirk and all of them...claim superpowers don't exist and heroes are only in comic books. I need to know if their pulling my chain to hide something or if they've been attacked by a villain with a mental quirk." The sympathy in his voice made it clear Vibes was leaning towards the latter.

Which was terrifying in the long term. A villain who could make a small group of people forget a main cornerstone of society and modern life...those four may have been a trail run for something bigger.

"Go." Toshinori urged him. "We've been spinning our wheels for hours anyway."

"Is that All Might?" Vibes asked over the phone.

Tsukauchi sighed. "We'll be right there."

"We?" Toshinori sounded surprised.

"You get frustrated when you don't feel you're being useful." Tsukauchi pointed out. "As you've said, we're spinning our wheels, so let's be useful."

~

"Blond skeleton!" Takagi yelped as two more people entered the room.

Conan kept a sharp eye on their reaction and Heiji was doing the same. Yep, a momentary flash of fear on the face of the normal looking man and a guy who looked even more like he stepped out of a comic book. And while comic book guy was blond, he was the opposite of a skeleton.

And yet...whatever was going on with Takagi seemed to be revealing things people wouldn't want known. He saw through Kid's disguise, literally. He saw Conan as Shinichi. And he saw that big guy as a skeleton. What could it mean?

"My name is Tsukauchi Naomasa with the TMPD." Instant alertness from their group, who knew of no such man working there. "I am legally obligated to inform you that my quirk is Lie Detector. I'm going to start with something simple. Can you tell me your names?"

"Takagi Wataru." Takagi answered nervously.

"Hattori Heiji"

"Edogawa Conan."

"Lie." Tsukauchi simply stated.

Conan stiffened and Takagi yelped.

"What wrong?" Heiji asked. "I just saw Ku-Conan-kun look severely injured. But he didn't seem to be reacting to it, so it's probably not real?" Takagi sounded just this side of hysterical,"

"True except for the name."

"Will you give it a rest!" Conan snapped. "There's no such thing as superpowers. And no one's a human lie detector! Even the best detectives are subject to falling for misdirection and tricks."

Tsukauchi sighed. "True."

"Well F-"

"LANGUAGE, YOUNG VIBES," All Might boomed, (albeit pleasantly. The man didn't sound angry, just loud). "WE NEED TO GET THESE FOUR TO A HOSPI-WHERE DID SHE GO?"

She? Oh right, Kid had been disguised as Sato-san. And had managed to escape while they were distracted by Conan. Great.

"We need to find her." The first comic book guy sounded like he wanted to curse, but didn't want to be scolded again. "We don't know who did this to them or if they'll tie up loose ends."

[goodluckclove]

Storytime: Holy Shit Going No Contact Was A Really Good Idea, Actually

TW: offhanded mentions for abuse and neglect, general parental bullshit

Okay so people were saying they're down for this so here I go.

A little context for those who don't know: I'm an adult child of pretty severe emotional and psychological abuse, as well as like comical degrees of neglect that I've been making up for over the course of the past year for so. I say "comical" not because it's funny, but because if it was depicted in like a YA novel critics would pan it for being unrealistic. My mom convinced me that doctors don't actually like it when you get checkups and get mad at you for "wasting their time", so I didn't see a doctor for like eight or so years. That's on the low end of how fucked these people are. My parents are both alcoholics and my mom is a diagnosed narcissist (she doesn't know this, but I do because my long-time psychologist was her psychologist first before she decided she was "done with therapy". He told me this after like four years as a part of his attempt to get me to realize I was in a deeply fucked situation, ultimately saving my life in a very literal sense - but that's another story). I'm not saying you can't be both of those things and not be a good person, but I am saying she did not choose to go down that particular path.

I went no contact shortly after I got married to a person who was able to see that my parents were both pretty mean to me most of the time in ways I forced myself to process as humor. They sent like one weird card before we moved and now they don't have my new address or phone number.

Unfortunately I'll still occasionally hear random updates about them - mainly from my older sister, who was the object of my mom's obsessive, manipulative, parent-ifying "love" before she left home at 18 and I became the new Golden Goose. I don't like this. I wish she would stop doing this. I asked her before, but I guess she forgot. Or maybe part of the shell shock from the damage of our childhood is that she just needs to tell someone who would understand in a more primal way than her fiancee. I don't know. She pretty much raised me when I was younger so I guess this is what I'm giving her in return.

A couple of days ago she called me and casually mentioned the latest scrambling my parents are doing. They're moving in with my grandma so she can keep living in the home she raised her family in. They're not kicking out my autistic brother anymore, they're actually bringing him with them. I don't think he has a choice. They're also bringing the family dog they've neglected even worse than they did me, despite how my grandma absolutely insisted she would never want a pet. They're going to turn my kind of run-down childhood home into a rental for extra income. My parents are landlords to be. Cool cool cool.

A lot of this is about money. I have never been comfortable talking about money - probably more so than other people. I never had it explained to me. It wasn't displayed or handled in a way that made sense in my mind. My mom complained and lamented about bills to me all the time but she also had maybe four Prada purses. It didn't make sense.

Something she told me a lot about were the details of my grandmother's will - like, from as young as maybe 16. My grandma is indeterminately wealthy in a way I don't really understand and can barely even guesstimate. She owns her own house, remodeled it, bought my uncle a house, bought my childhood home when my parents almost got kicked out and they paid her the mortgage ever since. She paid for all my siblings (except for me since I dropped out) to go to college. She has an amount of money. I have no idea how much since she's pretty buttoned up - loving, but reserved - which I was told is just a generational thing for some Japanese people. I mean she has the right. She spent like a year or two in a concentration camp as a little girl, she has the fucking right.

But yeah I was told more than a few times that I have a big inheritance for after grandma dies. My mom never told me how much but stressed that it was a lot. I didn't really know why she was telling me this. I actually felt like she shouldn't be telling me this. It made me feel sad and dirty to hear her describe it as something I should be excited for. She also mentioned a lot that I was the only grandchild in the will, and not my three step-siblings that I've known since birth.

Once again - this was NOT something I wanted to know. I had no idea what to do with that information. I tried not to think about it.

Fast forward a couple of years and I'm married and we just bought a house. So before you officially buy a house there's a point where an inspector looks everything over and gives you the details - you know, so you can make an informed decision. The inspection we got for the first house we almost bought informed us that the whole thing was hand-renovated and pretty much fucked to the point where if we bought it we'd have to replace the walls. We didn't buy that house.

The inspector for the second house we loved confirmed it was old. Most of the houses in Portland are old. But it seemed pretty much fine. The only issue was some moss on the roof and a few loose shingles, he said. So we bought it.

Turns out the roof is not good. It's very not good. And we have to replace it before October or else we'll lose our home insurance, and ultimately the home itself. Stressful! I found a pretty knowledgeable roofer and he quotes 14k for the treatment. Add that to the 10k we were already planning on spending on refinancing - a separate financial obstacle course for home owners that Riley was pursuing, since the fiances are their domain - and we were both at a loss as to what to do.

Ultimately I reluctantly decide to see if my grandma would give me part of my inheritance early. Or all of it? I debate how to phrase it for a night. I didnt want to assume how much she was planning on leaving me. I didn't really like to think about how she left specifically me anything in terms of money.

But that didn't end up being an issue! Because when I called my grandma and explained the situation, how we were hit with like three major financial blows back to back and were just hoping to get some aid until things stabilized in a few months, she casually mentioned that I'm actually not in her will. None of the grandkids are!

I immediately stammered out a series of no no nevermind then, but she stopped me and explained how she has a "small emergency fund" for situations like this and asks how much I needed. I say I'm not comfortable with that, but she won't drop the subject. She says the roof is 14k so she'll just give me that. She says 14k won't be a dent in her "small emergency fund". I have absolutely no idea what my grandma's financial situation is.

Did you know if you're given only Goodwill clothes for all of your formative years you're likely to be unable to buy new clothes at even a Target without feeling lost and sick to your stomach? Did you know that if you take Lithium they won't let you sell your blood? Do you know the easiest ways to shoplift food?

I don't think my grandma knows any of that and at this point I don't want to tell her.

I accept the check. I thank her. Riley thanks her. We both cry a lot for a lot of the morning because this is just a lot and it's very confusing. Riley says they've never accepted that amount of money before and would never imagine it coming from a family member. I say my grandma has been doing shit like this for my whole life.

But in the back of my head I'm reeling. I don't consider myself a materialistic person, but I can't help but ask why did my mom lie to me? Why did she lie, and continue to push the lie even when she saw it made me uncomfortable? Why did she bring it up when I'd get mad at my siblings as a way to force me to put aside my feelings?

It's just such a random thing to make up and double down on. Triple down, even. And I understand this whole mess comes from a pretty lucky position - we were able to buy a house and get financial aid to keep the house at a crucial time. That's lucky. We're really lucky. But why the fuck was she keeping up this bit for so long?

She could've never mentioned it and I wouldn't be upset about not being in the will. Frankly I probably wouldn't notice. But holy shit I carried so much stress for years over being the one grandchildren in the will that I had no clue how to navigate. I debated telling my siblings but after all of us were told that we should consider ourselves blood-related, hearing that our own grandmother drew a distinction sounded devastating.

I can't think of a reason why my mom would push a lie this random but so big for so long. It wasn't for me, clearly. I'm not upset that I'm not going to get a fucking jackpot when my grandma dies. I was never really able to wrap my mind around that being a thing. I'm just fucking baffled that my mom was so completely delusional for my whole life and I just followed along for so long.

So long! I was so unbelievably loyal to her despite every attempt she made to drag me into the void. The day before I got married I was telling her over video call that I didn't have a right to be unhappy not working while I recovered from my first major medication shift in years. She said, even though I am the only child of four to pay rent in their own apartment, that I should be grateful for my soon-to-be wife because "without them I'd be homeless".

Fuck that. Fuck that and fuck her. With the stories I have I could ruin my parents in my extended family's eyes forever. The only thing that keeps me from doing that is knowing that it would hurt my Grandma more to know that she wasn't able to step in while it was actually happening. And she's done so much for me and our family that I don't want her to carry that in the end of her life.

It was one lie that really made me realize some things, though. The best thing I ever did for myself was cut contact with my parents. If I didn't cut contact - if I didn't move states - I would almost guaranteed be dead. This is not an exaggeration. It was fucking messy.

But I got out. I have a wife and a few close friends, a roof over my head and some cats darting around my feet. Before we moved I was terrified of my parents showing up at our old apartment. I used to spiral imagining mom screaming outside the door. I tried to plan with Riley what we'd do if that happened. One night I claimed I wanted to take a boxing class "so I can know what it feels like to get really hit and I won't be afraid of it anymore".

I'm not scared now. These are sick people and I've spent more than enough time lamenting how awful my life would be if I continued not noticing that. I was thinking my mom was unable to perceive me as my own person, and now I'm convinced she never saw me or my sister as people at all. We were just little dollies she could whisper all her traumas to.

I hope my sister cuts contact too. I told her about the will thing and said that I'm pretty sure my parents would use that as a way to keep relationships with their remaining children. I said she should probably consider that if she decides to cut ties.

Honestly, I won't blame her if she does that and decides to stay in contact. It's a hard world out there. But I hope she does anyway. She just bought a house too and is about to get married to a man with a family infinitely more loving than ours ever was. I tell her to consider them her family. After the shit she's seen that's the least she deserves.

[phoenix-downer]

I Really Could Stay Chapter 1

I Really Could Stay: ~1700 words. Sora and Kairi are starting to feel the strain of endless battles and missions on their relationship. Neither of them are sure they want to settle down and give up their life of adventuring for good, however. But a looming separation on Christmas makes them both think about what they want for the future.

Story Info: Sora/Kairi. Set Post-Canon. Alternating POVs. Established Relationship. Light Angst, Romance, Fluff, Mutual Pining, Hurt/Comfort, Healing, Christmas.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

Sora was in one of his moods again.

Riku had known Sora his entire life, and his best friend had never been particularly good at masking his emotions. Not that he was really trying to at the moment. He was currently gripping the controls of the Gummi Ship with a scowl on his face so fierce that it would’ve been intimidating if it were directed Riku’s way.

Long gone were the days when Sora’s scowls made him look like an angry puppy. Riku was always going to be taller and bigger than his friend, but Sora had finally hit his adult height about a year ago and had the strength and fighting prowess to show for it.

Lucky bastard. He was just the right size to still move quickly while also packing quite the punch, as their sparring session earlier today had proven. Riku was stronger but not as fast, and he had a bruise on his arm from a well-aimed Keyblade blow to prove it.

“What’s wrong?” Riku asked, lounging on one of the nearby seats. He took a swig of his green tea and tried to keep reading his book. High school had to get finished somehow, and Riku was already two years past the normal graduation date. Twenty years old and still a student, how lame. At least he’d be graduating soon.

“I’m fine,” Sora ground out, though his tone made it clear he was anything but.

“It’s Kairi, isn’t it?” Riku didn’t even have to look up from his book to sense the change in Sora’s demeanor.

“It’s already been a week since I last saw her,” Sora said, his voice charged with emotion as the Gummi Ship lurched to the right, “and now I get sent on another last minute mission without any break? And right before Christmas too. What if I miss Christmas with her? How are we supposed to have a relationship like this?”

“You’ve managed this long,” Riku pointed out. A week or two weeks of separation was nothing compared to an entire year.

The Gummi Ship bounced up and down, and Riku’s tea splashed on him. He sensed more than saw the daggers Sora was glaring at him.

“Eyes on the skies,” he wryly remarked as he surveyed the damage to his clothes.

“Things are different now, Riku. We’re not kids anymore,” Sora said with just the note of petulance in his voice that made him sound like he still was one. Riku supposed his friend still had some maturing to do. They all did. It wasn’t like any of them had had normal growing up experiences. In some ways they were far beyond their peers; in others, far behind, and times like this made that very, very clear.

“Then stop moping and whining and ask Kairi to marry you already,” Riku said as he mopped up the spilled tea. His friends would have a lot more official recognition and the perks that came along with it if they would just tie the knot. They’d been dating for several years at this point. Why not just seal the deal already?

Sora groaned in frustration, running a hand through his spiky hair as he began the landing cycle. “But that would be even worse! Being separated from my wife all the time? I’d be a deadbeat husband.” He sighed and examined his hands, still tightly gripping the controls as he steered the ship. “We couldn’t bring kids into that mess either. I don’t want to be a deadbeat dad. I’m already a deadbeat boyfriend.”

Riku returned to his book. “Then you’ll have to make a choice. Do you keep traveling the worlds as the hero of the Keyblade, or do you settle down with Kairi?”

“I can’t make that choice yet!” Sora cried, his eyes flashing. Riku grabbed a spare scrap of paper to use as a substitute bookmark. This was going to take more than just a half-assed conversation to resolve. He waited patiently as Sora landed the Gummi Ship.

“If I don’t stop,” Sora continued once the ship’s engines had powered down, “it’s gonna drive Kairi and I apart! But there are still so many people out there who need my help. How can I turn my back on them?”

Riku sighed deeply. When they’d first started this adventure, things like marriage and family and long term commitments had seemed far away. Now those things loomed closer and closer. He didn’t have an answer for Sora because he didn’t have an answer for himself. And Kairi being a Keyblade wielder too made things more complicated. She was often sent out on missions as well, and even the times when Sora was on a break, there was no guarantee she would be too.

“The hero’s dilemma,” Riku told Sora at last. “We’ll never have normal lives, Sora. If you want a normal life, you’ll have to give up all of this,” he said, gesturing to their surroundings. “And no one can make that choice for you. Someday, you’ll either have to sacrifice your relationship with Kairi or your life as a Keyblade wielder. She’ll have to make that same choice if you want to make a relationship work long-term.”

Sora’s head jerked back at hearing the words “sacrifice” and “Kairi” in such close proximity to each other. But he was silent. The only noise was the faint Christmas music playing from the Gummi Ship’s speakers. It took a moment for Riku to notice the teardrops splotching onto Kairi’s lucky charm gripped in Sora’s palm.

Riku hated seeing his best friend cry. It made him uncomfortable because he couldn’t easily fix the problem.

“Listen, I’ll call Master Yen Sid tonight and ask if we can go back early if we finish the mission quickly,” Riku said. It was the best he could do under the circumstances. Maybe they could still make it home in time for Christmas.

“That sounds good,” Sora said, wiping his eyes. “I just wanted to be with her on Christmas. But I feel like Master Yen sends us out on missions on purpose when I’m more agitated and aggressive. Like he thinks I’ll fight better.”

That was entirely possible. Master Yen Sid was a good man overall, but he was also very calculating and would 100% figure out when each of them was in peak fighting condition.

“Well, do you?” Riku asked.

“When it’s between about four days and ten days of being separated from her, yeah, I do fight pretty well. After that I’m so irritable I’m worthless.” His eyes dropped to his hands. “And before that I’m too lovesick to be at my best,” he mumbled.

“With calculations like those, maybe you missed your calling as Ienzo’s research assistant,” Riku wryly replied as he opened his book again. It was surprisingly interesting and far less revolting than discussing Sora’s love life, and he really did want to know how it ended.

“What else am I supposed to do when I’m bored and frustrated?” Sora whined, flopping dramatically on the seat. “If I know when I’m in peak fighting condition, I’ll also know when I’m not. And that means I know what steps I need to take to avoid getting hurt—”

Riku scoffed. “You, be careful? You and Kairi both love to rush into danger, and then I have to fish you out of it. Imagine if you did get married and Master Yen Sid sent you on more missions together. My job would get a lot more stressful.”

“Hey, I’m trying my best here.” Sora scowled and his eyebrows did their best to express his sass, but then he sighed and rested his head against the back of the seat. “Do you think that’s why we don’t get to go on more missions together?” he asked in a small voice.

“You can’t concentrate to save your life when she’s anywhere nearby. You fight really well together, but the moment she gets so much as a cut, you panic and lose your focus.”

“So it is my fault.” Sora’s head drooped and his eyes were pained.

“I wouldn’t look at it like that. Keyblades make things more equal, sure, but you’ll always have certain advantages over her during combat. Magic can level the playing field, and she is a better mage than you—”

Sora pouted, and Riku rolled his eyes.

“—just barely, don’t look so offended. You’re never going to compete with the light in her heart and you know it. And she and you are both better mages than I am. But even with that advantage in one area of combat, the natural differences in raw physical strength between the two of you are still there. And that goes for any guy she has to fight. It’s only natural you worry about her.”

“Xemnas nearly broke her arm,” Sora whispered, resting his face in his hand. The haunted look in his eyes told Riku the memory might as well be from yesterday instead of four years ago. “Like he was just snapping a twig. And even when it’s just me and her…I’m not a big guy, but it still surprises me how much stronger I am than her sometimes.”

“But you know how to properly use and restrain that strength,” Riku pointed out, “and that’s what matters.”

Sora was silent.

“And did you just admit you’re not that big?” Riku asked, changing tactics. “Someone has finally given up on ever hitting six feet tall.”

“Hey, I made it to five ten, that’s pretty dang good for a runt!”

One look at Riku’s face made them both burst out laughing.

“Okay, okay, five eight and a half,” Sora amended.

“Who knew you had it in you.”

“Doesn’t matter, you’ll always be taller than me.” Sora was so mournful and melodramatic about it that Riku burst out laughing again. Sora grinned, and it was a welcome sight. Riku promised himself he’d complete this mission as soon as possible so his friends could be reunited in time for Christmas.

Sora was right. Riku teased him, but all those separations from Kairi couldn’t be good for their relationship. Helping his friends be reunited in time for Christmas was the least he could do.

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

A/N: This story is based on some ideas Alja and I brainstormed together earlier this year about how Sora and Kairi would handle being separated from each other frequently, and this is both a very belated birthday present for her and a Christmas present all in one. Happy belated birthday and Merry Christmas, @angel-with-a-pipette ❤️

There will be five chapters total, and I'll be updating daily until it's done.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

[kursedmayo]

I like to think that Leo didn't lose his arm or a part of his arm because it got caught in something or was getting infected by the Kraang and had to be cut off.

I now offer an even worse reason: he used it to feed someone, maybe even several people.

(TW: Blood, death, starvation and implied cannibalism)

Okay.

Picture this.

It's the fucking apocalypse. Food sources are running out everywhere.

You are Leo. You're young, handsome and inexperienced, but you're one of the most powerful people still alive to date. Leagues of people have put your lives in your hand, and you are trying your best to keep everything running smoothly.

You are on a rescue mission.

You were prepared. You accounted for every possible event and prepared for it. You were going to get survivors out of a recently discovered hidden shelter without alerting the Kraang, but the one thing you counted on never happening happened, and now everything went to shit.

Kraang discovered your team, shut down your ninpo, and destroyed your communication device. You lost one of your swords, people died, you got separated from your team, and the adults guarding the kids are missing.

You're fucked.

Day 1.

Isn't it hilarious? You were on a rescue mission, and now you're the one that needs rescuing.

You are still stuck in the shelter, underneath layers of concrete with scared children, all exits blocked. After almost being infected by Kraang, one of your arms isn't responding well to your commands. You suspect the nerves in it have been damaged somehow.

You try your best to assure the kids. It worked, naturally. They seem a bit more cheerful despite the situation.

Lying has always been your forte after all.

Day 2.

It's been 2 days. You don't know when you're going to get rescued, and the children are starving.

They are starving and have been starving for weeks, and now you're stuck with them, hungry and anxious. You've been told that despite the shelter's size and amount of rooms it wasn't supposed to hold this many people in the first place. The supplies are for maybe 6 people at most, enough for a family.

A rich family at that, perhaps, but it doesn't matter now.

What matters is that the supplies have long been running out. Scavenging can only do so much, and the people were counting on being rescued before they all died.

The youngest is five years old and looks thinner than they should ever be. The shelter is now quiet, the kids being too tired to cry.

Bored out of their minds, they just begin to talk- well, whisper more like it, about their dreams.

You keep quiet for now and listen.

One says they want to eat cake. Another says they want to play on the swings again. Someone pipes up and says they want to sleep on their own bed. A fourth kid says they wanna go back to school already.

Their friend jokes that not having to go to school was one of the only perks of being in the midst of an alien invasion.

They fight, you chuckle. Distracted, the shelter becomes a little more lively with discussions and discourse.

...An older kid wants to find their parents' bodies so they could give them a proper funeral.

A silence, but then it goes on.

They miss their brothers. They miss their sisters. They miss their aunts, uncle's, cousins, grandma's, grandpas- they miss the sun, they miss warm food, they miss fresh water, they miss the outside itself. They want to drink fresh water. They want to hug their grandma again. They miss being able to be loud and not have to worry about being found by the Kraang.

It's all "want". It's all "miss". Never "has", and if you fail, it might never be "will".

And guess what? It's all your fault. You dropped the key. You underestimated the Kraang. More than half of NYC is taken over already because of your mistake. It's all your fault.

...It's day 3.

The kids are getting desperate. You had to stop 4 kids from trying to eat chips of concrete, and some kids are so thirsty that they're biting their fingers and sucking on their own blood.

You have nothing to feed them. You have nothing to give them to drink. They're children, if this continues they're going to die hungry.

You can only hope help will arrive soon.

Day 4 arrives.

You can't even move your arm anymore. It's dead weight. What can the Medics back at the base even do? You don't even know why it stopped working. You're no technician, but you know enough to know Ultrasounds need energy that could be used somewhere else, and you sure as hell aren't worth the waste.

…

…You know Donnie would disagree.

Your entire family would.

You couldn't bring yourself to care.

Day 6.

You're desperate.

The shelter is deathly quiet. No one want to talk

anymore- or well, they can't. They have no energy left at this point.

They are definitely going to die of starvation if this continues.

You stare at your arm.

You stare at it hard.

You're desperate. They need to eat. They need to eat, now.

You don't need it anyways.

…But you shouldn't.

It's your right arm, there's still a chance the doctors can figure out a way to fix it. It's going to be awkward relearning how to fight with one arm. In a life of death situation, it's hard to be missing parts and even harder to make aids for it. Not to mention prions, and the whole being a mutant business, you don't know what will happen if a human ingests mutant flesh.

But….

You stare at the kids in front of you, empty eyed, hopeless.

...You shouldn't.

But you do.

You pick up a sword, and slash through bone and flesh. Pain smothers your vision, blood drips down and pools on the cold ground.

There was a hoarse scream. You ignore it. You make a makeshift torniquete and pick it up.

Through the haze of blood loss, you try to remember where to go. You go to the shelter's kitchen and begin to cook.

You'll remember the smell of your own burning flesh for the rest of your life.

However.

As fucked as it is…

It smells like relief.

They're going to live, you assure yourself, and for a while, it soothes your worries. This is the least you can do after all. This is the least you can do to atone.

For what it's worth, at the very least...

They're going to live.

[talanashta]

Chapter 2 of ?

Rating: M | CWs: Some Emotional Angst | Word Count: 2,440 | Pairings: QPR Stobin

A/N: Happy Halloween! Enjoy an extra chapter this week to celebrate the spooky season!

Going forward, these chapters will not be posted on tumblr due to formatting limitations, but this one doesn't need any special formatting, so here you go!

Robin was silently freaking the fuck out. First, she tripped over a stupid vine in a cave and fell into a hole into the Earth. Then, Steve fell after her and knocked himself unconscious, and she couldn’t wake him up. Next, he finally woke up, but he had another concussion. (And the doctors said he couldn’t keep getting them. That he might end up with severe, permanent brain damage!)

Then, when they went to look for an alternative way out – because they fell seventy feet down a hole! – they found a talking flower. And a goat-monster. And apparently a whole goddamn hidden civilization of monsters. (At least the goat-monster healed Steve’s concussion.)

She needed a nap. No, not a nap. A coma. She needed to sleep for twenty years and wake up and realize that this was all a dream. That when she crashed her parents’ car her junior year, it was worse than a minor accident. That she ended up in a coma in the hospital, and this and the Upside Down and all the crap she’s gone through since was just a dream.

(She’d never actually want that. That would mean Steve was just a dream. That he wasn’t her best friend, just some distant ex-classmate of hers.)

Her head kept swirling with thoughts of everything they’d heard so far from the two monsters they’d encountered. Or ‘encountered’? The flower said something about pulling them both into one. What did that mean? And what was that heart when it (he?) did it? Why was he surprised?

And the way Toriel said ‘intentions’ like it meant something more when she tried to figure out the two of them. Was that a magic thing?

(She tried not to think about the Barrier or anything about them being stuck here. She had to have faith that the kids – now young adults – and in-the-know adult-adults – and Nancy – would come find them. Until then, she’d keep herself distracted with learning about this strange world they’d landed themselves in. God knows Steve wasn’t going to try and figure it out; he usually left that stuff to Dustin and them. Without them here, the job fell to her.)

After they crossed the spike trap, Toriel led them through a couple more rooms, then a hallway that led to a room full of those spike traps. Robin gulped.

She felt Steve reach over and squeeze her hand.

“It is alright. If you follow the correct path, the spikes recede as you pass. If you do not, you will not be harmed, you just will be unable to continue forward,” Toriel explained. “The puzzles around the Underground often have hints for when you get stumped. For example, there is a sign in the hallway between this room and the last with the hint.”

Then, she leaned down and whispered conspiratorially, “The path is identical to the path displayed on the floor in the previous room.” Leaning back up, she added, “Follow me, and I will show you the way.”

(Robin had seen the sign as they passed, but it was old and carved in stone. She hadn’t been able to read it quickly enough as they walked by.)

Robin tentatively followed behind Toriel with Steve in the rear. After a few steps and no issues with the spikes, her steps grew in confidence. (It wasn’t like she could avoid walking on the grates, could she? They spanned the whole length of the room, unless she wanted to swim to the other side.)

Once they’d crossed the spike-trap room, they entered into an extremely long hallway.

Toriel started up a conversation, “You said you are not children, did you not? It has been a long time since I have been around human adults, and I am sorely out of practice determining human ages. I was unsure if you were older adolescents or not. You will have to forgive an old woman for referring to you both as youth. When you have lived as long as I, everyone seems young.”

“We’re in our twenties,” Steve said, scanning the room as he talked. Not that there was much to take in. It was pretty empty.

“Do monsters live longer than humans?” Robin asked. “Do you reach adulthood at a different time than humans?”

“Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Different kinds of monsters have different lifespans. Our children wear stripes to designate their youth, so it is easier to tell among the different monster-kind,” Toriel informed them.

She looked down at the striped sweater she was wearing and saw Steve’s shirt had a band of color around the chest. (No wonder she thought they might be teenagers.)

“Should we change?” Steve asked, brows furrowed, seeming to come to the same realization. “I think we’ve got a spare set each in our bags.” (That’d be her paranoia coming through. At the time, she was worried about them getting muddy, not falling in a hole and having this be all they have left of their lives.)

“When we arrive at my home, I am happy to find you additional clothes should you need them,” Toriel said. “In the meantime, you are fine in the clothes you have on now. You will just have to excuse any monsters that may get confused.”

“Speaking of,” Robin started, “why haven’t we seen any others yet? Besides that flower.” It was weird that this monster-woman kept speaking about others, but no one was around.

“Ah. It is because there is little out this far in the Ruins. Most monsters do not travel beyond Home to come into the Ruins, but there are still a few here and there. We will likely meet some further ahead, closer to my home.” Toriel put another emphasis on ‘Home’ versus ‘my home.’ Was this another one of those things she needed to be keeping track of?

The three of them had reached the other end of the long room and were standing by a pillar now. Robin wasn’t sure why they’d stopped, but Toriel wasn’t moving further, so she and Steve waited too. Toriel continued, “I only venture out this way in my daily check to see if any humans have fallen down, such as yourself.”

“We’re not the first?” Steve asked, sounding surprised.

“No, you are not,” Toriel told them. She had a sad-looking smile on her face. “But it has been many years since another human has arrived.”

“Wait, could we meet them then?” Robin asked her, realizing that, maybe, she and Steve didn’t have to go at this alone, that they could have a human mentor and guide.

Her hopes were shot down, though, when Toriel sighed and said, “I wish you could. They’ve long since passed.”

After a long pause, where Robin could feel the tension thick in the air, Toriel sighed again. “Although I check for humans daily, I still was not prepared for your arrival. Will you be alright on your own while I attend to some business?”

Robin looked over to Steve, trying to gauge how he felt about that. He did that thing with his eyebrows that meant he was going to defer to her judgment, so she turned to Toriel and said, “We’ll be fine.”

Toriel seemed to steel herself and nod. “I cannot stop you from wandering, as you are both adults, but please let me give you some advice. The Underground can be dangerous for those unaccustomed to monster culture.”

She had Robin and Steve’s full attention now and continued, “If you come across another monster, they may draw you into an encounter, also known as a Fight. This is common in monster culture. Please do not attack them. Just strike up a friendly conversation, and you can often resolve the situation. They may attempt to attack you as you are unfamiliar, and human, but most attacks are easy to dodge. It is… a form of testing your friendliness, of sorts. Once they see you are not aggressive, it is easy to end the Fight.”

“What does any of that even mean?” Steve asked, scratching at the back of his head.

“May I demonstrate?” Toriel asked them.

Steve did the eyebrow thing again, so Robin nodded. (Generally, Steve trusted her to read people’s intentions better than he did, but he was better at reading their emotions and wants.)

The world turned grayer, like it had when they were facing the flower, and that brightly-colored heart appeared again. Everything had barely had the chance to change colors before the world was bursting back into technicolor and the heart was gone.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I just,” Toriel stuttered out. “I swear I pulled both of you into the Fight. Let me try again.”

Again, the world turned grayer, and the heart appeared.

“Stars, just what is going on?” Toriel muttered, looking over the single heart carefully.

Then she looked up at them. “Which of you is in the encounter with me? You should be experiencing a change in your sense of vision due to the magic of the Fight, a sort of focusing if you will.”

“Me,” both her and Steve said at the same time.

Toriel laughed, a little forced sounding. “That’s not possible. There’s only one Soul in the encounter right now.”

“That flower – Flowey? – said the same thing earlier too,” Steve said. “That he thought he pulled both of us into the encounter, but there was only one of these heart things then too.”

Toriel’s brows furrowed. “That heart is a Soul. It is the culmination of your being. Since there are two of you, there should be two Souls in the Fight.”

“Wait, souls are real?” Steve asked, staring at the heart unblinkingly.

“Does this mean one of us is missing a soul?” Robin added, slightly panicked. What would that even mean?

Toriel let out another forced sounding laugh. “I sincerely doubt it. I believe you would have long since noticed if you were missing a Soul, even without knowing of its existence.” She shifted on her feet and clasped her hands in front of herself. “I am not the most educated in the details regarding the hows and whys of Souls and Fights, so I am unable to speculate on the cause of this, but I am certain it is nothing to be concerned about.”

Yeah, that didn’t really put Robin at ease.

Toriel changed the subject, “While I have you in this Fight still, let me demonstrate what I meant before we got side-tracked. I promise, I am not attempting to hit you,” she said and summoned fire.

The few fireballs Toriel sent their way didn’t move very quickly, but Steve still quickly grabbed her hand and pulled her to the side, the heart following along, where the fireballs passed them without harm.

“Now it is your turn,” Toriel said calmly.

Steve looked over at her like ‘What the fuck?’, but she asked Toriel, “What does that mean?” (Seriously, what did any of this mean?)

“On your turn in a Fight, you may do a number of actions, such as striking up a conversation as you just did! Now if you concentrate, you should get the feeling of being able to end the Fight.”

Robin closed her eyes and tried to focus inward for that feeling. As she thought maybe she had it, she felt a slight pressure change in her ears that had her popping open her eyes to see what happened. The world was back in color already.

“Found it,” Steve said.

Toriel looked between the two of them, pursing her lips and giving them a tense smile. “Good. Now, feel free to explore the ruins, keeping in mind what I’ve told you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a black, plastic brick. “Here, I have this for you to communicate with me should you need anything,” she said, offering the thing to them.

Steve took it, giving it a quick look over. “Is this a cell phone?” he asked incredulously.

Robin gaped at the thing in his hands. “How does it even work down here?”

“I am unsure of all the details. The royal scientist has created these based on human technology, and they work everywhere in the Underground, supposedly,” Toriel told them. “My number is programmed within it, and you may call me for anything.”

Robin and Steve nodded, still staring down at the device in his hands.

“Now, I must be off. I will call you when I am finished. Be safe,” Toriel said to them before leaving into the next room.

As soon as Toriel was gone, Steve stuffed the phone in his back pocket as best he could and turned to her. “Hey, Robs, how are you holding up?”

Her mouth dropped open. “How are you holding up? This is absolutely insane.”

He gave a shrug and said, “It’s not as bad as the Upside Down. Or the Russians.”

She hissed, “We might be stuck here forever.” (She couldn’t think about the actual meaning of that. Of never seeing the sun or the stars again. Of her parents never knowing what happened to her. Of having to adjust to a whole new world.)

Steve gave her another shrug, running his hand through his hair. “I have to trust that the kids will figure this out and rescue us. And if not…” He paused, before looking at her softly. “Robin, as long as we’re together, none of it matters.”

Then a little smirk appeared on his face. “And hey, maybe we can find you a nice monster-babe to date while we’re down here.”

She started playfully slapping at him. “Dingus!”

“What?” Steve asked with a smile. “It’s not like you were having any luck before.”

“You’re so mean!” She was laughing now, though.

“Says the person who kept a whiteboard with every time I struck out written on it!” he said, laughing too.

As their giggles died down, she looked at him and said softly but seriously, “You’re right, though. As long as we’re together, it’ll be okay.” She gave him a smile. “I couldn’t imagine being stuck down here without you.” (If that happened, she probably would’ve just laid down and died.)

He reached over and wrapped her in a hug. “I love you so much, Robs. Everything’s gonna be okay,” he whispered.

“Love you too,” she whispered back, squeezing him tightly.

When he pulled away, he squeezed her shoulders and gave her another smile. “Ready to go check this place out?” he asked and headed toward the doorway.

Quickly, she caught up with him, grabbing his hand and swinging it between them. “Let’s go!”

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

do you think we should forgive people who havw hurt us? even if they aren't sorry or even aware of the hurt theyve caused? you dont hava to respond to this if you dont want to , but i am just thinking, is it actually wise to let specific people exist in my life , (a parent) when they are delusionally unaware of the lifelong damage theyve caused me (and will never understand), or anyone really. Is there a point in.. getting angry, when they oncr again show that they really dont know or care. Still, i enjoy talking to them. So im thinking that maybe forgiving would be better . but i feel like that way i might be gaslighting myself. Have you ever read anything on this?

there is a good book on this anon, "adult children of emotionally immature parents", u can read it online for free if u google the PDF. it is monumentally eye opening. other than that, i can speak from my own experience w/ my parents. i'll put it under readmore cus im bout to get a lil personal;

so, basically, i have one parent, my mom, because my dad has been dead for over 15 years. my parents were alcoholics who worked full time dead end jobs and we never had a close relationship, but i was closer to my dad. when he died, my mom absolutely lost her mind, like, maybe this is dramatic but i do pretty much consider myself an orphan because in 2006 i lost both of them. my mom chose booze, despite the fact that it made her act completely volatile and disturbed, she chose the liquor over me n my sister. my sister is an extrovert and she started spending All her time at other ppl's houses so i was constantly alone with my mom. the emotional abuse she dealt me after my dad's death i think are the wounds within me that truly can never be healed. worse than having to watch him die. my mother would berate me for everything i did, my appearance, the fact i was flunking school, my friends, and most of all, she would always remind me that i am a bad daughter who doesn't love her enough. once i started w the suicide attempts her abuse and guilt trips only got worse. i made a lot of reckless decisions just trying to get away from her. i still feel immeasuable guilt that she is my only living parent but i can't be her daughter. i havent seen her in 3 years..

now that the context is out of the way, here's how i feel about forgiveness: you HAVE to forgive. you have to. for your own sake. to free yourself. for me, when im so so belligerently angry at my mom, i imagine her as a child. i think of her childhood where she was born to a 16 y/o polish ww2 orphan girl and a 17 y/o fatherless boy who had already been thru several detention camps + was forced to join the navy to avoid jail time. i think of the stories she'd tell me from her childhood where she constantly moved from trailer park to trailer park, the caretaker of her 3 younger sisters while her parents worked, her dad often disappearing for months at a time w no explanation, her mother in and out of psych wards. she's always casually bringing up how her parents would beat her if the trailer wasn't spotless when they got home. she was mercilessly bullied at school for being poor so she's never had many friends. she never got any education and has worked retail/cashier positions her whole life. she had to watch her husband slowly waste away, then go right back to work so we could just barely afford to eat. i think of all these factors and it's so so easy to forgive her, despite it all. like if i could reach into her chest and grab her heart and pour all of the forgiveness inside of me into her body just so she could feel happy and light for one single day, i would do it. we are all so broken and forgiveness is the only way we can ever put things back together.

that being said anon...i still have an immensely hard time talking to her. every time we talk on the phone she immediately just starts dumping all of her problems onto me, like how she used to do when i was a kid and she was drunk. she refuses to acknowledge she could ever possibly benefit from therapy. she can't even begin to acknowlege the ways she hurt and abused me. she is deeply, deeply emotionally immature. when i talk to her it rly feels like im talking to a severely damaged child. our conversations are short. i dont tell her anything about my life, i never have. we'll never be close, i've accepted it. sometimes i have days where i'm so angry at her that im ready to send myself to the psych ward over it. but the damage is done, it cant be taken back, only moving forward. and at the end of the day, i forgive her. and i want her to be ok.

i'm not sure what's happened to you with your parent anon, but just know, you can forgive from afar, you don't have to keep engaging with them if they continuously harm you. i really really reccomend reading adult children of emotionally immature parents. its only like 200 pages and you'll fly through it. like i said, available for free as a pdf online. i wish you the best anon and im sorry you have to go thru this but you're not alone. #<333

[frostycatblr-fandom-files]

Baby Brothers - Faro's Telling

Warnings and Information: Uh… oops? Out of my 18+ Clone OCs, Faro was supposed to be my *ONE* OC who did not have a proper/creative backstory for his name out of everyone who appeared in the NTMYB story that has since spiraled into a series. But I had an idea. This takes place before NTMYB, so rather than break the in-house rule of using their names before they actually get them, or make up CT designations that will just get confusing (and I’ll forget later), everyone's dialogue gets color-coded. Apologies, and warning, for eyestrain. This will not be a regular story-telling method. Star Wars and real-world swearing. No Mando'a here. Narrative and stylistic use of italics.

Word-count: 2,633

Key: Faro, Gunnar, Cryfar, Fluke, Canvas

By Kamino's three moons, why did he have to get pulled out of the cloning tanks first? Now he feels like he's supposed to shoulder all blame and fault for his brothers until their training is completed. It's lousy. He never asked for this! And what's worse, is he has some of the most patience-testing batchmates possible out of this whole Growth Cycle… 

The whole of the Growth Cycle gets shipped out next year. Perhaps several hundred healthy adult men within a single Cycle (he doesn't keep track of the numbers) all fit and ready to fight for the Republic. Hundreds of batches of brothers. 

Batches of brothers made up of fives. 

"All four of you are going to make me gray before we're even shipped out…" he finds himself muttering as he tasks himself with taking care of them out of a sense of obligation. Of responsibility. Brotherhood. "Kriffing hells, stop it. We're supposed to be practicing for our weapons disassembly, would you quit messing with the other two?"

"I'm helping them! One of their parts got lost. Help me find it before the trainer sees!"

One of them is cocky and impulsive sometimes, another underwent a massive personality shift in the last two years that does not seem related to developing a unique identity, and the youngest two are so kriffing hard to separate. Second youngest can be easily distracted and just as unlucky as the third. The youngest… constantly breathing down his neck and inventing excuses to stay close. 

They get shipped out next year. They're all almost fully-grown, and none of them have Names. 

He's just the oldest out of choice. So he feels he has to be mature and steadfast and a teacher for his baby brothers… He takes the worst of it from the Trainers. Either because he thinks he has to as the oldest, and therefore the example, or because he’s made the scapegoat. For some reason it’s his fault that one brother keeps getting a DC-17 hand blaster and a DC-15S mixed up when they do drills on each model. It's his fault when the oldest brother after him loses his cool. It's his fault that the youngest are distractible and shy and never feel like socializing with their other Clone-brothers outside of their batch. 

It's his fault because he's the oldest. He's only trying to be a good example. He's only trying to take care of them. But he's got four baby brothers and only two hands to take care of them all… he tries so, so hard to, anyways.

Two hands that have been trained to do so much damage can only be so soft sometimes. 

But Maker, he's trying. He's been trying so hard ever since they were little and when "babying" was more acceptable. Well just because they're nearly men, it doesn't mean they stop being his little brothers. Because he was pulled out of the Cloning tube first, these four are his baby brothers; now, forever, always. 

They annoy him, yes. But he loves them… and he loves them by protecting them before they ever set foot off of Kamino, when it will become impossible to do so. When he understands the risks that he will lose them - or they lose him - to war against the Separatists and all those who would oppose the Republic. Risks he is prepared for, but selfishly does not want to accept. 

These are his brothers. Come stormy seas or blaster fire, that will not change. Not even men like Jaccynn will change this. 

And Jaccynn is in a mood today. A particularly nasty one. "That was sloppy, CT-xxxx! Again!" 

"S-sorry, Sir! Yessir!" his middle batchmate pants, daubing his brow on the edge of his sleeve. His training uniform is soaked with sweat new and old. The training center stinks of musk and petrichor from hundreds of brothers engaged in hand sparring. He snaps all his limbs in starting position, but his knees soon begin to wobble. He's too tired to keep this up for much longer. "I-I'm upping keep as best as I can! I mean I'm keeping up!" 

That's been happening a lot more lately; the word confusion. But it's just subtle enough that the Kaminoans haven't caught on, or don't have enough of a reason to look into these reports. 

Words from the smuggled datapad from their classrooms come back to him. 

Possible brain injuries. Minor aphasia. 

His middle brother is likely suffering with minor aphasia, and there's nothing he can do about it. Except exercise yet more patience… patience that would not be shown by the Trainers. So he has to be creative and crafty with his words and his excuses when Jaccynn oversees their combat readiness. 

"Wait. It's been ten minutes since your last sip of water," he warns his brother, grabbing his bottle from the stack and bravely crossing into the combat mat's boundaries to take it to him, "And our brothers in the medical center keep reminding you that the reason you passed out last time was because you were dehydrated, CT-xxxx." Ordinarily he would not let another brother lean on him like this, having to fully support the tugging weight that threatens to take him to the floor like a bored child hanging off a parent's wrist who's too old for such behavior. But he makes exceptions for his batchmates. He has to. He sees his brother is not as fine as he claims between long, drawn-out pulls from the bottle. 

"I'll be fi-fine!" comes the unconvincing insistence after a particularly violent sway, "I'll begot this!" 

There's a loud snickering behind the two of them. "You'll kriffing what now?" 

"What did I say?" He doesn't get what's so funny about what he said, as usual. That is also a more recent problem. One that he just has to hope doesn't get any worse, or they might take his brother away from him and never be seen again. He can't let that happen. "What'd he say I said?" 

"Ignore him. Focus, brother. You're almost done, c'mon. Be ready as soon as I get off the mat." His brother has to focus. And the second oldest needs to get a hold of himself too, he can't just make these unfiltered comments out in the open. Not in front of this trainer who oversees the instruction of this Growth Cycle. 

The trainer who calls himself Jaccynn just sneers with disgust. He knows the water break was a clever tactic to stall his instruction, but he cannot delve into supplying punishments for interruptions the way he would like. So he goes about it a different way: giving the losing combatant no time to prepare himself. "Okay, now that you've had your cute little pep talk it's time to get serious… Ready. Set. Begin!" 

He's hardly had the time to brace himself to be laid out on his back, and the air bursts from his lungs in a harsh wheeze as the winning challenger makes his first and only move necessary to complete the round. He's so damn dazed that he can only grin stupidly up at the Clone brother above him asking if he's okay. 

The impulsive streak is rearing its head again. "Why that-"

"Sit your ass down, you're not a charging Reek." He pulls his brother back down with a fistful of his uniform. Retaliation is just going to spur Jaccynn on and take it out on more of his little brothers. He's sung this song and danced this dance for years now with Jaccynn. 

"But Jaccynn didn't give him enough time to get ready, I should feed him his teeth!" 

"I saw it too, mynock-brain." 

Though nearly fully-grown, the youngest are crawling on their hands and knees to avoid being noticed by the hired instructor as they try to get their brothers to stop arguing. To his memory, of all his baby brothers, these two are the only ones who have not fully abandoned this behavior when they're all supposed to be seated on the floor.

They don't opt for shuffling along on their knees like most other brothers. His batchmates are far from being like most other brothers. 

"Cut it out, guys!" the second youngest pleads, using his body as a buffer between his oldest two brothers with the help of the youngest. Their faces are probably warm with anxiety as warm as their bark-brown eyes that implore them to get along. Privileges that come with being batch-babies. 

The four of them really, really test his patience, but he wouldn't trade them for any other Batch, deep down. These are his batchmates. These are his brothers. Maker help him if he ever stopped loving them so much… 

"Alright, alright, stop. Go pester him. I'm going to make sure he's okay." Privileges that come with being the two oldest means it takes just a few words to settle the others down. And, if you're annoyed enough, you make it the other's problem. Again, where these any other brothers but his batchmates, he would not be quite as tolerant of someone nearly fully-grown trying to share his shadow. "He's probably just had his bucket rung, again. Look at him, he's grinning like an Acklay. He'll be okay." 

The simple fact he's sitting up and laughing it off bodes mostly well, at least. Second and third oldest are now joking that the third has probably seen more stars than a spacer, and he's never even left Kamino yet. "You're setting a galactic record!"

"Hell yeah!" 

Maker, those two were certainly going to make him gray before he was ten. But at least the youngest would keep him softer and kinder. "Stop gnawing on your nails, little brother." 

"Sorry…"

"I'm not angry anymore, it's-"

He shakes his head rapidly. "It's Jaccynn. He scares me." That's fair enough, he concedes. Jaccynn hasn't exactly made himself a popular Trainer with the Clones. More than one Clone-brother has wanted nothing more than to feed him his teeth for berating them, or picking on the batch-babies. That seems to be his thing. Jacc hates that across most of the facility, younger brothers are often afforded a little more leniency. 

Cared for a little more until the next Growth Cycle is old enough to really roughhouse with the rest of them. They still can, granted; it's just that they don't want to accidentally hurt any of their brothers while they're still growing, still learning. 

"All you damn Clones look the same, how can you possibly tell who's younger than you?" 

It was impossible to explain how you just knew, or why exactly they did it, but of course they could absolutely tell who was younger than them even without being explicitly told. You're older than your batchmates by mere minutes. So when you age and grow and change as fast as they do, they have to find some way of establishing a sense of… normalcy. Maybe this was something that was passed down to them from the very first generation of Clones, or something that someone saw on the Holonet and really liked the idea of. 

A living sea of hundreds and thousands and millions of brothers, of course they'd behave a lot alike "traditional" brothers in some ways. But they're a lot more unalike than nat-born brothers… they don't tend to Name one another. 

"What about Fang?"

He scoffs, insulted. "What am I, a massiff? Pass."

"I dunno, you seem like an Axel to me." 

He shakes his head again. Someone else in the neighboring batch (below them) is considering that Name. It's bound to happen, but you try to avoid too many name duplicates within a Growth Cycle.

"Rachet?" 

That's not a bad name, but no. ("Stop chewing your nails or I'll have to hold your hand.")

His middle brother gives him a woozy smile as he's helped down to medical, again. "I think he's more of a… Ozone. Yeah, I kinda like it… That's a nice name…"

"Are you sure you don't want that name for yourself?" He offers as he helps his brother into a chair and lets a medic know that yeah, it's them again, who else? while doing his best to keep him upright. 

"I'llthinkaboutit." That's fine, he promises. Only half-jokingly he replies he's more concerned about keeping them in one piece on Kamino so they can go and fight for the Republic. "There's plenty of time to find names, little brother. Even if that's when we leave Kamino." Away from Jaccynn who mocks every last name choice. Away from the bounty hunter who's only training soldiers of the GAR for a promised sum, not because he genuinely wants to make any kind of difference. But because he must feel small without hundreds who have to listen to him, one of those types of people. "One day, brothers… we'll find Names, and I won't have to keep thinking of you by your favorite colors. I'll think of you by your Names. One day I'll stop sounding like such a jackass in front of the others when I have to refer to you by CT numbers."

"Is that why you call me Yellow?"

"What am I?" His youngest brothers look at him with wide, imploring eyes. These two have always been so expressive. "Me?"

"Privately: I'm Red," he answers with a gentle chuckle, "yes, you are Yellow." he tells him with a nod, and ruffling the soft, fluffy curls of the second and then the youngest's last, he adds "You're Blue. And Orange seems to be your favorite color. That leaves our dizzy brother over here as Green."

"Green's not a creative color for a Name…" he complains softly, dodging the pinpoint of light from the otoscope in the medic's hands as he tries to check the pupils. 

"What do I use instead then?" 

He whines softly and shrugs while he tries to swat the otoscope away. "I dunno… no-go-awaaay." (He's never liked how much they have to use the otoscope on him when trying to figure out the root cause of his confusion and word-swapping.) 

"Then for just now, I'll stick with Green, okay?" 

"Eh… sure." he concedes before he allows the medic to do his job with no further complaints, since 'Red' offers his hand to hold. He's already holding 'Orange''s hand just so he settles down. Three Kaminoans have entered the medical wings. They've always made him a little nervous, much like a lot of things; he speculates that Orange has a lot of masked nervousness…

"Don't think about the long-necks…" he whispers, nudging his youngest batchmate to turn his back on the Kaminoans. "Just think about us, or what you want your Name to be. Anything but them. You're okay. So long as I'm here." 

He'd make sure of it. For all of them. He's just minutes older than them, and he never wanted to be the oldest… but for them? Maker. As much as they drive him crazy, he'd probably burn down the galaxy for them if it would keep them safe. 

These are his baby brothers. And he loves them. 

Everything. He'd do everything again in a damn heartbeat. 

He just needs to make sure if he gets another chance, another life, that he does a lot of things differently. That he stands up to Jaccynn sooner, and defends his batchmates more. That he tells his brothers he loves them, not just showing them through acts of service or sacrifice. Apologizes to his superior officers for being so closed off and stoic all the time. Thank the other brothers who showed friendship and offered their help to the youngest of his batch. 

But more important than anything else is that he explains why his name is FARO…

Note from Frost: Don't have much of an explanation for this other than "creative exercise that I don't hate", taking the advice of just writing for myself on occasion, and exploring more of what made Faro tick. This ties in most directly to "Nice To Meet You, Brother" and "I Have No Mother, Only A Brother" within the OC "lore".

[Masterlist] [Clone OC Masterlist]

[cloud-hc]

Cloud acts the way he does towards people for several reasons, from being an insecure child who didn’t know how to cope with these feelings of insecurity, so they manifested into toxic jealousy ie. beating up tifa’s friends OF WHICH, in absolutely NO media i’ve found, were those boys ever demonstrated to ever bully Cloud or exclude him intentionally. There is no evidence outside of Cloud’s own narrative, which we know is unreliable, even to himself, that he was left out on purpose. 

The novel talks about Cloud being a “strange and dangerous kid” ( which, honestly, poor Cloud; he’s a kid who clearly needs help with something ) and Tifa, who’s memory I would bet on is more clear than Cloud’s own, comments either “You’ve always been in ifghts every since you were little // When you were little you used to get into fights at the drop of a hat.”

Then Tifa gets hurt of which, depending on the media, Cloud takes blame for completely and allows himself to be berated and yelled at and banned from seeing Tifa again - just so she doesn’t get in trouble for climbing the mountain, or he’s just blamed regardless and that’s one beginning of his anger problems. You take a kid who already struggled socializing, already was insecure, already had such a low opinion of himself that he developed a superiority complex to compensate ( leaving him to believe he’s alone BY CHOICE because the other kids are too stupid anyway ) - then you blame that child for a fucking accident that was completely outside of his control.

Whatever self-esteem he had? Fucking crushed. Then he starts to believe it’s his fault - if he did this, if he didn’t do that, what if he stopped her sooner, what if he got an adult- and then he blames himself - he’s too weak. he can’t help anyone. and to boot, he lost the only other kid he was friends with in the entire town. From the time he was nine years old - NINE, until he was 14 where he met Zack - he didn’t have another friend. Imagine what the fuck that does to someone’s self worth and social abilities to be that isolated in an already isolated small town where people, adults, think you’re weird, some of them now hate you and think you’re a dangerous and bad influence - like seriously, the adults are worse on cloud than the fellow kids ever were shown to be.

He’s so incredibly, painfully lonely, and he hates it. IMO ; that’s one big factor of why he wants to go into SOLDIER; if he’s a hero, people will like him and respect him. It’ll also make him physically strong so if something bad DOES happen again, he can stop it this time. He wants the glory of SOLDIER ; it’s a child-like dream to compensate for all that loneliness to be adored by the public and adored by people you want to notice you. 

But at the same time when friendship is offered.. it’s rejected. And rejected. And rejected and rejected. The one thing he wants so badly that he’s been denied either by his own unintentional self-destruction or by the circumstances of his life and the adults that were not there to support a disturbed child who needed help and attention and care - he acts like he doesn’t want anything to do with it. I think it unnerves him. He acts like he’s hot shit but under all that is a mountain of self-loathing. Why would anyone want to be friends with him? What are they REALLY after? What the hell do they want? It’s annoying, it’s suspicious, and he absolutely DOES not trust anyone coming close to him with their hand extended.

Friendship, comradery, relationships, basic human connection - that’s alien to him. He can want it all day long until the cows come home but when the opportunity for it rises up, he turns away from it. He doesn’t trust it, and he doesn’t feel WORTHY of it. He isn’t good enough to be close to people - all he does is make lives worse and put people in danger. He’s better off alone, where at least the damage done is contained to only himself.

[casspurrjoybell-29]

Healing Ties - Chapter 46 - Part 2

*Warning Adult Content*

Several minutes later, they began to see more human shaped figures up ahead.

Familiar figures.

Raya, Lusa, Amela, all alive and well.

Atticus, the huge centaur who had been so kind to them.

Simon and Hamish, the two humans from the mage camp.

And there, standing next to Simon and looking up at Duran with slack jawed wonder, was Danya.

Duran tried to climb down from Harrison's back so quickly that Harrison almost dropped him but after a moment he managed to let the two of them down safely and Duran ran to give Danya a hug.

When Fanner wandered close enough, Danya tugged him in as well and turned it into a three way hug.

Finally, Danya pulled back, his hands cupping Duran's cheeks.

"I'm so glad to see you but... how are you here?"

"I..." Duran's gaze wandered upward as he thought over what he was about to say. "I don't understand half of it myself, honestly. But I'm here now, and I chose to be here and I think that's all that really matters."

"I'm sorry it couldn't have come at a better time."

"Well, it could have but I said no because I thought I was smart enough to make things better and instead they only got worse."

Fanner glanced over at Yore.

Several of the other wolves had gathered around him and they were bouncing about in excitement and licking his face.

So many people loved him.

After these last few days, Fanner understood why better than ever.

"Fanner," a female voice said, and Fanner jumped.

Zunda, Yore's mother, had stepped up beside him.

"Yore told us you're a skilled healer."

Fanner felt almost scared, though he had no reason to.

That wasn't supposed to be a secret anymore.

It just felt unsafe, having people know and talk to him about it, especially when Yore was busy with other things.

"Well, I... Yes, I suppose. Maybe. There isn't really a standard to compare my skill level to, so, well. I don't know if I can say that I'm..."

Fanner bit the inside of his cheek and dropped his gaze.

This was Yore's mother, the pack leader.

She was an important, busy woman.

"Sorry. Yes. I have some skill at it."

"We've got some wounded in the group. Danya's been helping as much as he can, but his ability is more limited. Can you help?"

"Oh... um..."

Fanner glanced in Yore's direction but Yore was still busy with his wolf greetings.

"Yes, well, of course. Or, I hope I can? I'll try my best."

"I don't mean to make you anxious, Fanner. I know you haven't always been given the warmest of treatment by my people but I hope we can all appreciate the importance of working together now. I will admit that even I could have done better in that regard."

"Oh, no, no, it's okay."

Fanner sent a desperate glance in Yore's direction.

He didn't want to outright say he wanted him with him for this because how could he justify that?

He couldn't even fully explain to himself why he thought he needed him.

"I'm happy to help."

Fanner had been starting to think that Yore had forgotten him entirely but the second Zunda started leading him away, Yore brushed past the other wolves and dashed to follow after him.

The person Zunda led him to was a man riding on the back of one of the centaurs.

He was so large that he had to be a werewolf and he had two bloody holes in his thigh, one where a bullet had gone in and the other where it had come out again.

"Duffy says it missed the bone but the damage to the muscle is bad enough that he can't walk," Zunda explained. "Can you do anything about that?"

When Fanner glanced at Yore, he found that he was already shifting.

He let the question hang, unanswered, until Yore was firmly on two feet.

"I think so? I can but not instantly. Faster than I heal Yore because it's fresh but..."

"We have to be careful he doesn't burn out," Yore interjected. "I'm sure healing this will be fine but we need to be careful of his limits. There's a battle coming and we'll need him more than ever after it's been fought."

"I'm sure between the two of you, you can find a balance," Zunda said as she helped the man down from the centaur's back.

"Thank you for looking after my son, Fanner. I know he's the one who ran off to rescue you but after whatever he went through to do that and to get back to us, he's ended up looking better than he has in years. I'm sure he has you to thank for that."

"Oh, well, um... maybe?" Fanner said as he crouched down to examine the man's thigh so that he'd have an excuse not to look Zunda in the eye.

It felt a little weird to hold eye contact with her, like maybe it was disrespectful even though everyone else did it.

"I haven't done much yet, honestly. It probably has nothing to do with me."

Yore crouched down next to Fanner and brushed the loose strands of his hair away from his face, leaving his hand resting on the back of Fanner's neck under the pretence of holding it out of the way.

"It has plenty to do with you. Did you forget all that time you spent healing my hips last night? I know I fell asleep quickly but don't think I'm unaware of the work you put into it."

"Well..."

Fanner shrugged.

He wanted to say that Yore's hips were just one part of him that were hurt but if Yore felt it had made a difference for him, that was all that mattered.

When Fanner glanced up at Zunda, he caught the fond little smile she aimed in Yore's direction.

She'd noticed the way Yore was touching Fanner but she didn't seem upset about it.

She gave them both a shake of her head and walked away.

"Anyway, Fanner, the man with the bullet hole whose thigh you're touching is Yan, my uncle," Yore said.

"Oh, um, sorry, yes, of course," Fanner said as he stood, hesitated and then awkwardly offered Yan his hand to shake.

Did werewolves even shake hands?

Companions certainly did not.

Yan clasped Fanner's hand with far more confidence than Fanner had offered it with and gave it a firm shake.

"On Emity's side, not Zunda's. We've got none of that fighting over leadership crap to worry about. Think you can help me with my leg? I tried to walk it off but every time I put weight on the damn thing, I fall right over."

"Oh, yes, definitely," Fanner said.

"Um, Yore? Could you help get him over to that big rock over there so that he can sit down?"

"No problem," Yore said.

By the time Yan was seated on the rock and Fanner had found a comfortable spot on the ground to sit and start to heal him, a small group of people had gathered to watch.

Fanner sent Yore a worried glance, silently pleading with him not to leave him alone.

At this point, he didn't even know why it made him so anxious.

Was he still afraid someone would hurt him somehow?

Was he just uncomfortable with this level of attention?

Companions were trained to be demure, unassuming, modest.

He hardly knew how to respond to praise.

A meek 'thank you, sir' wouldn't work here.

Yore sat down next to him, a clear sign that he wasn't about to leave.

Fanner took a deep breath in, let it out and focussed on the task of healing Yan.

That made everything easier.

When he was healing someone, the rest of the world just melted away.

There was no room for silly worries or even very important worries.

Nothing but the task in front of him.

The wound was fresh enough but it was horrendously deep.

It had only mostly missed the bone.

The bone wasn't broken but the bullet had grazed across it in a way that couldn't be helping with the pain.

It was manageable, though.

Not too complicated and certainly a lot less tedious than what he'd been doing for Yore.

He could just get stuck into healing without any scar tissue getting in the way.

Fanner wasn't sure how long it took him.

Ten minutes? Half an hour?

When he dropped his hands to his sides and sat back, he noticed there was now an even bigger crowd watching him.

Yan stood up.

He took a cautious step, let out an exhale of surprise, and then took another few more confidently this time.

The watching crowd started to applaud.

Fanner instinctively tucked in against Yore's side and Yore's arm came up to wrap around him.

Yore waved his other hand in a downward motion to settle the crowd.

"Thank you but he's a little timid."

"Sorry," someone called out and the attention of the crowd shifted to Yan.

Fanner took the opportunity to retreat, Yore's hand firmly grasped in his.

"You've earned their gratitude," Yore told him once they were further away. "I know you wanted me to protect you and I will but if anything happens... so will they. I promise."

"It's not really about that anymore," Fanner murmured, not wanting anyone else to overhear but knowing that was impossible around so many werewolves.

"Or... I don't know. I'm worried about a lot of things but what scares me about losing you is a lot more than just what it means for my own safety. I care about you."

"I care about you, too. I think my heart knew that within days of meeting you. That I wanted you in my life. I'm glad you gave me an excuse."

"I just thought I was being selfish."

Yore squeezed Fanner's shoulder.

"You're never that."

Fanner heard a series of thumps and he looked over to see Atticus beating his hooves against the ground.

Once Atticus had everyone's attention, he addressed the group.

"We have daylight left to travel by. It is time to keep moving."

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

I'll never forget a reply to a post on LinkedIn. The post was about the 16-year-old in Florida who was sentenced to pregnancy because despite the teen having no job, still going through school, and being a child herself, the judge didn't think she was mature enough for an abortion.

Most comments expressed horror at the decision and sympathy for the girl. But one man smugly remarked

No, I don't feel the slightest bit of pity for sharing a screenshot of it. This is a full grown man who feels absolutely no shame in slut shaming a teenage girl. He's doing it on LinkedIn, which means he's certain enough people will support him that it won't damage his career.

Now, there's several concerning things about this:

Pregnancy is dangerous for anyone, but especially for teenagers. If they give birth vaginally, their pelvis may break because it is not wide enough. If they get a caesarean, it will scar them, and they will likey need a caesarean everytime they give birth in the future.

A fetus always takes nutrients from its parent. It can even leech calcium from teeth. A child is still growing and needs those nutrients, but if pregnant, the nutrients go to the fetus.

Every single risk is increased for pregnant children. Preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, postpartum depression, dying, etc.

Pregnancy changes the body permanently.

Karl presumably thinks all of these are acceptable punishments for a child who had sex.

Many teenagers have sex. I don't think they should, but they do. It's natural as they grow up to be curious. And sometimes they may get pregnant. Maybe the contraception was ineffective. Maybe they didn't know enough about safe sex to prevent pregnancy. Or maybe they were just foolish. But regardless of the reason, teens are still children. They may have a mental understanding of what causes pregnancy, but they do not necessarily have the maturity levels to always make good decisions based on that knowlege. And forcing a child to undergo a dangerous and life-threatening process is not an acceptable punishment for a youthful mistake.

Here's what else Karl doesn't mention: the father. The teenager wasn't the only one to have sex, but he doesn't care about what the father did. He cares about what the pregnant teen did. She's the one who he wants to face consequences for having sex, not the one who impregnated her. And keep in mind because this is what bothers me most: He is a full-grown man, looking at a child, and demanding she be physically and possibly fatally punished for having sex...but doesn't care who impregnated her.

And this is true of most forced birthers. When you get down to it, they may want men to pay child support....but their whole spiel is about the pregnant person and what the pregnant person should or shouldn't do. And they don't care if the person is an adult or child. Was raped or had consensual sex. If they had consensual sex, forced birthers want to punish them for having sex. If they were raped, forced birthers don't want to punish the fetus, so they'll punish the victim instead.

Karl's comment horrifies me, but I've heard worse. I've read people arguments that abortions should never be allowed even if the pregnant person is dying. These are forced birthers. These are the ones we need to vote against this November.

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

Do you remember Saraya Rees? She's out of prison and now in a treatment center. This should've never happened but I thought I'd give y'all an update.

Obligatory image to humanize her.

Article on what happened.

MYRTLE POINT, Ore. -- Saraya Rees, 14, was arrested on counts of attempted murder and arson last year. However, her family is adamant that she did nothing wrong.

Her mother, Shannon Rees, said her daughter was on antidepressants due to severe bullying in school. In July 2019, she was abruptly taken off the medication by a local pediatrician.

One night, Rees said her daughter poured a small amount of gasoline in front of her parent’s bedroom door. She said she believes it had to do with withdrawal of antidepressants.

...

Saraya eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 years in the Oregon Youth Authority. She will be eligible for parole on her 25th birthday.

I'm sorry to admit that this was before my time being a BLM activist, but there's a lot to talk about here.

First of all. As a person with depression, anxiety, and panic attacks.

The sheer medical neglect displayed by her doctor. Anti-depressants can fuck you up if you quit cold-turkey like that. When you're the patient, it's easy to assume "Oh, I'll just go back to how I was before. I can handle that." No, that shit can and will fuck you up worse than you were before if you don't ween off. Her and her family are LUCKY her psychotic episode only resulted in such a small outcome.

(If you care about the science behind it. Anti-depressants increase the amount of happy chemicals in your brain. Your body gets used to you having more happy chemicals and decreases production to accommodate. So when you ween yourself off, it gives your body time to react and slowly start production up again. If you just quit, you'll end up with less happy chemicals in your brain than you had originally. Resulting in suicidal ideation, drug use, psychosis, and it can even lead to heart or brain damage depending on what you're on.)

Second of all, sending a 14 year old TO PRISON. If she never showed intent to light it, then pouring gasoline is more akin to vandalism than attempting murder.

Third of all, the trauma she went trough, but from being in an adult prison and from being taken off her medication like that.

Fourth of all, she was the victim of racism. The article only mentions racial slurs, but we know that's not the full story. We know the shit racists will say to Black people. I know it's not just a few racial slurs.

So you have a 14 year old A LITERAL CHILD the victim of racism and not protected by the adults around her. Needing to take medication to cope with racism. Then victimized again by the medical neglect displayed by her doctor when he took her off said medication. And the ruling was to victimize her AGAIN by putting her in an ADULT PRISON when she clearly needs therapy an to be put back on her medication so they can ween her off the correct way. FORCING HER TO CONTINUE HER WITHDRAWALS IN A WAY THAT'S ALREADY PROVEN TO MAKE HERSELF A DANGER TO HERSELF AND OTHERS.

IN A FUCKING ADULT PRISON.

Look I'm glad she's out and safe now, but I can't stop thinking about how much trauma she had to go through.

She's going to be 25 one day, looking at her life, realizing she needs a therapist. She's going to learn the side effects of quitting medication incorrectly.

Realizing that you had to struggle more and actually underwent trauma because a doctor fucked up... that shit fucks you up. How are you supposed to trust medical professionals when you're looking back and realizing they charged you a shitton of money just to fuck you up.

-fae

[mochegato]

Even the Losers

Chapter 15

Chapter 1     Chapter 14

Possible trigger warning.  I mention that sexual assault and worse has happened during some akuma attacks.  I don’t describe anything or say who it happened to (it didn’t happen to anyone we know) but wanted to warn readers that it is brought up.

This room really was a ridiculous room, Marinette decided.  The dining table was large enough to seat twenty.  Who needed a casual dining table that large?  Honestly.  Not to mention, a dining table that large meant there was more than enough room for Alfred to join them, but he never did.

And bringing the food out on silver trays. Did they do that just because she was here?  She kind of hoped it was because the idea of doing it everyday…  She looked over to Adrien to roll her eyes at the opulence, but he just went with it like it was completely expected.  Marinette shook her head.  Damn rich people.  She looked up just in time to catch Duke’s eyes.  He looked at the silver trays with a pointed look and rolled his eyes. Marinette giggled and nodded back.

“I forgot to ask the other day,” Dick started with a disarming smile.  “How did you two meet and when?”

And there it was again.  A perfectly normal question.  A very common question.  A question they would expect to be asked.  But there was something off in the way he asked it.  Something that just triggered her senses.  She could feel a difference in it, like its very existence disrupted the peace of the dinner.

Adrien looked over at her with a broad smile and nodded to her, letting her know she was supposed to answer it.  She plastered on a friendly smile.  “We met in school, actually.”

“Oh? Maternelle or older?”  Dick smiled again, his face perfectly emulating interest in his sister’s friend.  Markov would never be able to tell the difference.  But Marinette could.  He was fishing.  She just didn’t know what he was fishing for.

“Older,” she answered curtly.

Dick seemed to get the message that she was not happy and backed off, metaphorically and literally, leaning away from them in his chair.  His smooth smile morphed into a mock frown.  “Oh that’s a shame.  I was hoping for stories or pictures of baby Marinette.”

“Oh, baby Mari was adorable,” Adrien gushed, with a teasing grin to Marinette.

Tim quirked his head to the side.  “I thought you said you two didn’t meet until you were older.”

Adrien’s grin widened.  “We didn’t.  Not until we were in collège and she yelled at me for something I didn’t do.”

“I didn’t yell at you,” Marinette objected in mock offense, slapping his arm. “I informed you that you were a contemptible dirtbag in a harsh tone.”

Jason barked a laugh.  “Right, big difference.”

Marinette whirled on him, her serious expression contradicted by her lips trying to quirk up at the corners at his teasing.  “There is!  It was a quietly harsh tone.  There was no yelling.”  She turned back to Adrien.  “And I apologized for that.”

“Yeah, like years later and not because you wanted to,” he rolled his eyes.

“Only because I couldn’t really talk to you for, like, ever after that,” she groused playfully.  She pushed her food around on her plate with a pout.

“Apologies are hard,” Cass nodded in agreement.

Marinette beamed at her.  “Yes.  Thank you, Cass.  See,” she motioned to Cass so Adrien would look, “Cass has my back.  She agrees.”

“With what?” Duke laughed.

“Your input is not needed!” Marinette chastised him, trying hard not to laugh.  But when Duke cracked up and started laughing hard enough to have him gasping for breath, so did Marinette.

“Okay but…” Tim started after they’d had enough time to recover.

“Oh, right!” Adrien shook his head.  “There was an akuma that de-aged people.  A mom sad her son was going off to university, so her power was to turn everyone into toddlers again.  Marinette got hit pushing me out of the way of the beam. She turned into the cutest, pudgiest, little toddler you’ve ever seen.”  

Marinette batted his hands away when he leaned over to pinch her cheeks.  He chuckled at Marinette’s pout.  “I hated that one.  I felt so helpless,” she moaned.

“I loved it,” Adrien smiled.  “I got to see all of you guys as babies.  Most of you guys knew each other since childhood so you knew what each other looked like.  Alya and I were the odd ones out.  Plus, no pain.”  He looked back to the rest of the family.  “That was rare; an akuma that didn’t cause massive amounts of pain or trauma.”

“Were they that bad?” Duke asked hesitantly, afraid of the answer he was going to get back.  He had purposefully not looked too hard into akumas precisely because he was afraid of the answer.

Marinette stared intently at her plate in thought, trying to condense the experience into light, dinner topic worthy descriptions because she desperately did not want to discuss akumas tonight… or ever again. The very thought caused shivers down her spine.  “They were… most weren’t… didn’t affect…”  Her words got cut off as her body froze with realization.  Her face scrunched up in pain and she gasped after not having breathed for the last few seconds.  She suddenly pushed away from the table and stood up.  “I think… I need to leave.”

Bruce stood up at the same time and reached out for her. “Marinette are you okay?”  His concern amped up when Cass stood up as well and frowned with concern.

Adrien got to her quicker, gently laying his hands on her arms.  “Hey, we don’t have to talk about it.  We can talk about something else.  You talked with M. Fox this morning, right?  We can talk about that.”

Marinette shook her head.  “I can’t…” she couldn’t finish her sentence, her breath was becoming more ragged the longer she stood there.

“Way to go, Timmy,” Jason groused.

“I didn’t do this!” Tim objected motioning toward Marinette and standing up too.  He wasn’t exactly sure what standing up was supposed to accomplish. She didn’t know him and definitely wouldn’t be comfortable with him trying to comfort her.  It was more of a show of support.  Whatever was going on, he didn’t want to stay sitting like it was nothing.

She looked toward Bruce, her eyes slightly glazed over.  “You… you knew.  You knew about what happened when I was fourteen… and fifteen… and sixteen.  You said you checked in on me frequently, so there’s no way you didn’t know.  You knew and you just… rather than admit I was…”  She looked down at the floor, her face scrunching further as she tried to reconcile the new information.  She backed away more and shook her head, no longer really hearing anything in the room, including Adrien’s loud gasp of realization.  “I… I can’t… be here.  I have to… I need time to…”  

She turned and rushed through the door before anyone could stop her.  She could feel herself shutting down and she needed to stop it.  She knew she needed to stop letting herself turn numb.  She gritted her teeth as her frustration with herself increased.  Why couldn’t she just react normally?  Nobody else on her team did this.  None of their friends reacted this way anymore.  What was wrong with her that she did?

And she had to do it there, in front of everyone. She had to do it in front of him.  Why couldn’t she hold it together for one freaking dinner?  She’s gone through worse.  Why couldn’t she just have DEALT with it, like an adult?  Now she probably ruined the start of their relationship. He was probably going to hate her. He didn’t want to know about that stuff. He didn’t want to deal with those kinds of problems.  Those were her issues, not his.  

He wanted a daughter for the press, not a hot mess of insecurities and anxiety.  He wanted a happy, light, cheery child.  That’s why he sent her away, so that’s who she would become.  That’s probably why Dick was trying to ask all those questions, so they could know just what kind of a broken, messed up, embarrassment of a disaster they were taking on with her.  They needed to know what to prepare for when the press started getting involved.

Back in the dining room, Jason had gone from laughing, to confused, to concerned, to fucking pissed in a matter of seconds.  “What did she go through?” Jason asked through gritted teeth.

Adrien glared at Bruce waiting for him to answer the question.  Bruce looked down dejectedly and Adrien scoffed.  He didn’t bother ripping his glare away from Bruce when he answered for him. “She means Hawkmoth.  She means M. Wayne knew what Hawkmoth was doing and let her stay there when he could have pulled her out at any time.  She means he let her stay and get tormented rather than admit she was his daughter.”

“That is not why I didn’t pull her out of Paris,” Bruce insisted weakly.

“I thought the damage done by Hawkmoth was all reversed,” Duke offered.

“Oh, the physical damage was reversed, but the psychological wasn’t.  The memories weren’t.  Hawkmoth used people’s negative emotions to turn them into monsters, AS YOU KNOW,” he snarled at Bruce.  “For years, if you had a bad day, if you got sad, if you grieved, you could end up killing or torturing or raping someone, maybe someone you cared about, maybe someone you loved, maybe more than one.  

“Didn’t even have to be something big it could just be… my best friend got akumatized because my father said he couldn’t throw me a party for my birthday.  A kid Marinette babysat got akumatized because her mother took away a toy that wasn’t hers, it was Marinette’s actually, so she felt responsible for getting Manon akumatized.  Marinette’s best friends, five of them at once, got akumatized because she didn’t want to tell them something private.  Like that didn’t wrack her with guilt for years.  It didn’t take much to turn you into a nightmare.  In fact, one little kid got akumatized several times because he had a nightmare.  All it took was one moment of feeling down.  If you were lucky, really lucky, you just… stopped feeling… anything.”

Everyone was silent for a few minutes.  Adrien’s glare never wavered the entire time. Finally Dick spoke up softly. “And was Marinette… lucky.”

Adrien sneered at Bruce, “Oh, Marinette was very lucky.  She only got tortured a few times… per month.  She only lost a few limbs.  She only got targeted most of the time.  She only died four or five times, that she remembers, the actual number is significantly higher.  All despite my father targeting her specifically.  You know, nothing worth too much concern. She only watched the people she loved get tortured, screaming for her in agony before they died painful deaths a handful of times.  She only sometimes still goes completely numb rather than feel things.  Not even just bad things, good things too.  If it’s too much, she shuts down so she doesn’t expose herself, so Hawkmoth can’t get her, because we needed her.  It’s automatic.  It’s subconscious.  It’s been five years and she still has to fight the instant reaction.”  

Bruce finally spoke up apprehensively.  God, he really, really didn’t want to know the answer to his next question, but at the same time, he needed to know.  “You mentioned akumas could kill, torture, rape… You said Marinette had been tortured and killed.  Was she ever…”

Adrien’s face scrunched up in anger and frustration. “You don’t get to ask that,” he screamed.  “You didn’t care then, you don’t get to pretend like you care now.  You want an answer to your question, you’ll have to ask her yourself, if you have the balls for it.  Personally, I don’t think you do.  So use your imagination.  I guarantee anything you can imagine, can’t even come close to the things she had to live through.”

He looked down for a moment to try to collect himself.  When he looked back up it was an icy, coldness that made Tim collapse back into his chair.  “So now you need to stop lying to her that you always loved her, you cared at all.”

Damian growled and lunged forward in his chair. “You can’t tell him what he feels. You don’t get to say how he treats one of his children.  You aren’t a part of this family.”

Adrien turned his icy glare to Damian.  “And she is?  Holding her at arm’s length?  Keeping her at a distance?  Not letting her get too close?  Randomly freezing up around her.  Keeping family secrets from her.  Clamming up as soon as she’s nearby.  Sending each other secret looks over her head when you think she won’t see.  She’s not stupid.  She sees what you’re doing, what you’re all doing, she’s just too nice to point it out, too hopeful you’ll actually accept her one day.”  He turned to look at Damian with disgust.  “I might not be a part of this thing you call a family, but I am a part of hers.”  Damian only put up a semblance of a fight when Cass pulled him back down into his chair with a disappointed look.

“You kept in contact to make yourself feel better not because you cared.  Because if you did?  If you did, there’s no way you let her stay in Paris when it would have been so easy for you to do something.  There’s no way you let her get hurt and killed over and over again just so you didn’t have to admit you were related to her.  Nobody who gives even the slightest fuck about anybody, a stranger let alone family, your child, would willingly let them go through that.  Lets them live knowing that crying about a stubbed toe could make them into a killer.

“You could have done something, anything and yet you did nothing.  You didn’t even try.  She wouldn’t have accepted.  She… she was the only reason some of us survived and she knew that.  She was our hope.  She saved us and protected us.  Repeatedly. At her own expense.  Without her…” he looked away.  When he spoke again, his voice was considerably quieter and colder.

“And she knew it.  And she took it all on herself.  She didn’t even tell most people, anyone but me and one other friend really, what she went through and not even all of it.  There’s still things I know she saw but she won’t tell me about. Her own parents didn’t know because she didn’t want them to become akumas, which they’d done before over minor things.  So she dealt with it on her own.  My father barely ever let me out so I couldn’t be there for her almost ever. So she had nobody.  She made sure she didn’t.  Because she didn’t want to be the cause of more suffering.

“So she wouldn’t have taken you up on any offers anyway because she’d never abandon the people she cares about.”  He looked back up to level Bruce with an icy glare that made him lose his breath.  “Guess she gets that from her mother.”

He started to walk away but turned back to the family as he got to the door.  “You know, Marinette and I are a lot alike.  You can do anything you want to us and we’ll probably apologize to you for inconveniencing you.  But you hurt someone we care about?  Not even Hell is far enough away for you to hide in.

“So she’ll forgive you.  That’s who she is.  She will.  Hell, she’ll probably come crawling back in a day or two to apologize to you for the scene she created.  For making you feel uncomfortable.  But I won’t ever forget what you did, what you didn’t do, what you subjected her to. No matter what else you ever do for her, you will not be forgiven.” He stepped closer to Bruce, the ice in his eyes turning darker.  “And if you ever treat her like that again, they’ll never find your body.”

Damian scowled and jumped up.  “Are you threatening my father?”

Adrien didn’t look at him when he responded, continuing to glare at Bruce with a dark, warped look that even made Damian raise an eyebrow.  “I am.” He didn’t even bother slamming the door as he stormed out.  As soon as he passed the threshold, he took off sprinting after Marinette.  She didn’t have the car keys so she was walking… in Gotham… while she was a target.  He cursed and picked up his speed to get to the car.

“B?” Dick asked cautiously.

“No.  No, no, no.” He shook his head violently and looked down, trying to steady his ragged breathing.  “I asked her parents.  I checked. They said she was fine.  They said it was okay.”  He looked up at Dick with haunted eyes.  “I checked.  I made sure.”

“Well you didn’t fucking check well enough did you?” Jason growled.  “You never asked her.”  He threw his napkin on the table and stalked out after Adrien to help comfort Marinette.  Duke looked between them for a moment before sprinting after Jason.

The rest of the family looked down at their plates, except Bruce who wasn’t looking at anything.  He pushed away from the table and stumbled back to his room, a sudden wave of nausea slamming into his body.  Dick opened his mouth a few times only to snap it shut again mutely.  Cass frowned but continued eating slowly. This was new information, but it didn’t change who Marinette was to her.  It was the same Marinette from earlier in the day.  But now she knew more.  Maybe they could bond over childhood trauma like she and Stephanie had.

Damian furrowed his brow and scowled at his food, unable to determine how to interpret the new information and blame Marinette for it. She had done it to herself, clearly. She had allowed herself to stay in that situation.  Obviously it was her own fault she suffered through that… like he had.  Not knowing who to be mad at, he shoved away from the table and went down to the cave to train.

Tim blankly watched him go.  This… this was unsalvageable.  This was… they’d let her down in so many ways.  Him with the gala.  Dick with the questioning Adrien.  Damian with the accusing her and insulting Adrien.  The entire family with the keeping secrets.  And Bruce with the… everything.  How were they supposed to bring this back?  They were worse than his family, his previous family.  The Drakes just ignored him.  They were actively destroying her.  

He took a deep breath and pushed away from the table too.  He would go down to the cave but Damian was already there.  He wanted to patrol, to actually protect someone, like he hadn’t protected her.  He stood up and made his way to the grandfather clock.  Fuck Demon Spawn.  Let him try to fight him right now.  Tim wasn’t in the mood and wouldn’t hold back.  Heaven help any rogues out tonight.

Chapter 16

Tags:

@maribat-bdbwm @jayjayspixiepop @redscarlet95 @alice-hazelwood @deathssilentapproach-blog @unoriginalmess @alyssadeliv @emotionalsupportginger @frieddonutsweets @when-no-wings-do-broomsticks @toodaloo-kangaroo @colorfulmongerpsychicranch @iloontjeboontje @wolf-for-life @maribatserver @aespades @prettylittlebutterflie @imarivers8  @ certainmuffinbagelcalzone @ritacrow-blog @unoriginalmess @demonicbusiness @kking13 @lady-bee-fechin @blur-of-colours @kittenmywaythrulife @kashlyn @loysydark

[eyndr-stories]

The Stranger The Better (FNAF SB fanfic) C7 - Goodnight Moon

Read the intro to Chapter 1 (Enter A Sleepy Bitchard) for more details! I'd start reading there anyways else things won't make a whole lot of sense lol

In Summary: Reader is a forever exhausted young adult who has social difficulties doing their best to pay the bills, so when they get hired at the well-paying, almost entirely automated Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizza-Plex, they don't really hesitate to think things through before stumbling headfirst into a horror mystery surrounding this company and its crew of quirky (and surprisingly kind) animatronics.

Things To Know (lmk if I should add anything, also check the tags for more stuff):

There are some horror elements in several chapters! This chapter discusses the events of chapter 6, which include attempted murder and being attacked, as well as the use of a taser and general feelings of fear.

Eventual romance, minorly important to the plot.

Reader has paranoia.

There is much swearing.

Reader is also addicted to energy drinks, and not fantastic at self care.

Reader is nonbinary (and also trans masc) though it's not vital to the plot and only comes up once or twice.

Reader is from the south, is protective of their friends, and if you threaten their friends then I'm afraid you've yee'd your last haw and yes that is important to the plot

Previous Chapter | Chapter 7 | Next Chapter

C7 - Goodnight Moon

     Despite having a day off from both jobs followed by two days working just one job or the other, you did not have a very restful break. Management had sent you an email, saying that you must have forgotten to clock out, you’d only be paid for your scheduled hours, don’t let it happen again. So you weren’t fired. Which meant you still had to go back to work eventually.

     Luckily, the bruising on your neck was minimal, and what wasn’t hidden by a work shirt collar was easily concealed with concealer. No one said a thing at the deli. The day you were supposed to go back to work as a security guard, you were scheduled for a longer shift. Vanessa probably had the day off. You would be there from close to open.

     You distracted by finally doing your shopping and scrounging up enough energy to cook an actual meal, making extra so you’d have breakfast ready tomorrow.

     With the help of some fun tunes while you cooked, afternoon sunlight pouring in through the kitchen window, you actually felt much better by the time you sat down to eat. You ate slowly, finally thinking about what you should do when you went back to work.

     Sun would be there today, so you couldn’t talk to Moon directly. You figured you should probably apologize for tasing him. You worried for a moment that you’d really hurt the animatronic. Electricity probably wasn’t great for them. What would you do if you’d damaged Sun and Moon?? Surely management would have fired you. But maybe management didn’t know it was you? Moon had been malfunctioning for a while now, after all…

     You frowned. You’d been warned several times about Moon’s malfunctions. Moon himself had yelled at you to leave. You felt almost stupid now, for not having listened. You felt even worse about tasing Moon.

     You took a few deep breaths as you sat in the parking lot. You were a little early. Families were still funneling out of the pizza-plex, kids worn out and happy from the day, carrying overpriced merchandise of all the animatronics. You even spotted a few Sun plushies and hats and shirts among the younger kids. No Moon merchandise.

     Sitting around was the worst. You headed in and clocked in early, figuring it’d be better to talk to Sun first thing anyways. This way, you wouldn’t have to worry so much about checking the cameras while you chatted, at least until the place was actually closed.

     You slowly made your way to the daycare, stopping more than once to help people locate the exit. You stood by while a tired parent struggled to convince their upset toddler that they did have to leave, the place was closing, yes they were going to come back tomorrow, don’t you want mac and cheese with dinner?

     It took a little more convincing but the toddler finally relented, and then the path was clear. You stepped through the open doors.

It wasn’t hard to spot Sun, he was busy running around cleaning up after a day of herding and entertaining children.

     You grabbed a broom from the narrow supply closet beside the cubbies and started sweeping. There were lots of little scraps of colorful paper everywhere, the remnants of an arts and crafts project. The little plastic tables were covered in marker lines and glittery glue. There were still some art supplies laying around here and there.

     Sun spotted you sweeping after a moment, fumbling with the giant foam blocks and pillows they were carrying.

     You gave him a small wave and kept sweeping. Sun stared at you for a moment, then slowly resumed cleaning up.

     After you finished sweeping, you found some kid-safe wipes in the closet and got to scrubbing the tables and chairs clean.

     Sun put away the rest of the pillows and blankets (remnants of several pillow forts?) before cautiously coming over to start picking up the art supplies.

     You spoke up before Sun could say anything.

     “So, uh. Is Moon… listening?” you asked.

     Sun paused, then nodded.

     “First off. Sorry for tasing yall. I hope I didn’t do any damage or anything,” you started.

     Sun just stared at you.

     You got nervous at that. You powered on. “Second, sorry for not listening when Moon told me to leave. And third. Sorry for running away after, I should have stayed to make sure you were okay.”

     Sun frowned. You stopped scrubbing and wondered if you should just leave.

     “Y/N,” Sun said, firmly but gently. “You do not have to apologize for anything. You acted in entirely justified self defense. I was worried you would hate us! And never come back!”

     You raised an eyebrow. “Never come back? I still work here. But no, I don’t hate either of you.”

     “Even though we both neglected to tell you the true danger of Moon’s malfunctions?” Sun asked. “Even though Moon…”

     “I mean, I get why you didn’t. I get why that’s… not a great scene, for a guy who takes care of kids. Probably wanna keep it on the down low. But yeah, definitely inform me next time about any dangers to my person. That’d be much appreciated.”

     “Of course!! But that’s all the danger, we swear! There’s just something wrong with Moon’s systems. Usually he can control it well enough… we’re just both sticklers for the rules,” Sun explained, nervously shifting from foot to foot.

     “Right…” You realized Moon had lashed out right after you had said ‘shit’. And the other night, when you swore accidentally and Moon got weirdly upset before you had distracted him with a question.

     “Again, we’re both really sorry…” Sun looked sad.

     “Cheer up, sunflower. I forgive you. I wouldn’t be a security guard if I couldn’t handle myself, you know?” You paused. “Are they gonna fix Moon soon? You’d think they would wanna fix a bug like that ASAP.”

     “They tried once… said it was too risky to remove the faulty coding, that they might accidentally remove Moon too. They said that they needed to bring in a professional, a specialist. Could take four to eight months.”

     “How long ago was that?”

     “…Ten months.” Sun averted their gaze, fiddling with a purple crayon.

     “Hm.” You frowned. “I don’t like how management treats yall. I get it, this is a corporation and they just want money. But its not fair of them to do these things to yall. You’re more than just robots, you know? If they wanted to make sentient animatronics, then that means they’re responsible for all the consequences.” You lightly kicked one of the plastic chairs and folded your arms.

     “Don’t worry yourself, sunshine. I’m sure they’ll fix Moon up in no time and everything will go back to how it was!” Sun said, offering a smile.

     Your frown remained plastered on your face. “What if…” You shut your mouth. You didn’t want to upset Sun or Moon.

     “What if what?” Sun asked quietly, tilting his head.

     You deliberated, then finally decided it was important to vocalize your concerns, even if you upset Sun and Moon. “What if they’re not bringing in a specialist? What if… what if they’re just gonna get rid of Moon?” You thought about the soggy box of Moon merchandise in parts and service. You thought about how you never saw any Moon posters around, Just Sun and the glamrock gang. “Maybe they’re just waiting for an incident to justify it. Or figuring out how to still keep you happy enough to do your job once they get rid of Moon.”

     Sun was entirely still, their face blank and unreadable. You watched him for a long moment. Were Sun and Moon talking to each other right now? You wondered what Moon was thinking.

     “…I don’t know,” Sun finally said. They sunk down to the floor and wrapped their long arms around themself. “I don’t know.”

     Your heart hurt. You strode over and sat down in front of Sun and placed a very careful hand on his shoulder. “Now you listen to me. Both of you. I will do everything in my power to make sure that these speculations stay just that. I will not let anything bad happen to Moon, or you, Sunny. Yall are my friends and that means you’re stuck with me. Got it?”

     Sun’s face lifted ever so slightly into a smile. “We appreciate you. Moon is… conflicted. Also… you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”

     You heaved a sigh. You hated feeling like you couldn’t help, couldn’t do anything to protect your friends. Your face set once more. “This is a promise I’m gonna keep. I promise I’ll keep yall safe. It is my job, after all.” You tried a small smile. “Here’s what we’ll do. I’m gonna go out and buy a phone on my break tonight. Then, if someone tries to come do anything to you, you call me, or text me. I live ten minutes away. I’ll be here.”

     Sun smiled. “Can we also talk just for fun on the phone?”

     “Sure.” You felt much lighter at Sun’s brightening mood.

     “Okay. That sounds like a good idea!” Sun sprang up, returning to their normal bouncy self. “And who knows?? It is still just speculation, after all!”

     “Yeah, that’s true. But even in the worst case scenario… it’ll be okay,” you assured. “What does Moon think about this?”

     “Hmm… you should ask him yourself tomorrow. He needs to apologize for his bad behavior anyways.” Sun paused as a pre-recorded voice boomed over the speakers, informing the occupants that the building would be officially closed in five minutes, please make all your final payments and head for the exit at this time.

     You glanced back through the window. The hall outside was empty. You flipped through your watch, but you didn’t see anyone out and about, besides that gator guy, who was at a machine in the arcade. Chica and the wolf lady were chatting in the hall outside the line of rooms.

     “Looks like everyone’s cleared out. I’d better start my rounds. I’m hoping to make some good progress on memorizing the access tunnels tonight, since i’m working a full shift…” You paused as you thought about the access tunnels. Your hand fell to the key in your pocket. “Oh shi-oot. Shoot. Sorry. I just realized, I meant to tell Moon last night, but…” You pulled out the key.

     “What’s that?” Sun tilted their head curiously. He gingerly lifted the key and studied it.

     “That… was in the box with Moon’s stuff. I’m really sorry for taking it, I didn’t know the stuff was Moon’s at first, and it’s such an interesting key, I thought it must lead someplace cool or unlock some kinda… whatever. Um. Last night I found the door that key unlocks in the warehouse…” You paused briefly, worrying because now Sun had gone still again and was staring at you blankly. You had to be honest and come clean though, so you went on. “It was a room with a broken down, or halfway built? Maybe? Animatronic that looks like Moon. I wasn’t sure if it was… uh… yours? Or something?? And I felt really awkward about it. Again I’m sorry for taking the key.”

     “Neither me or Moon have ever seen this key before. No hard feelings about it, although you should know that stealing is prohibited in the daycare,” Sun scolded. “The animatronic however…” They hummed for a moment. “When we were first built, many years ago, they were originally going to make the two of us separate animatronics. But then there were budget cuts and plans got reworked, and then they had two AI’s and only one complete body, so they re-worked us into just the one body, saving tons of money. They must not have wanted to get rid of the half finished one, having spent so much on it already… and if they ever needed a backup body to replace us, it’d be much cheaper than starting from scratch.”

     “I see.” You nodded. You thought for a moment. “Why don’t they just finish Moon’s body and extract both Moon and the bug from you, and only put Moon back in the other body?”

     “I’m not sure if that’s how it works… I didn’t even know the other body was still around.” Sun waved the thought away. “You should be getting to your rounds. Talk to Moon about all this tomorrow.”

     “Right. I’ll see you later, Sunny.” You nodded and turned, but Sun stopped you.

     “And take this. I feel like it’s safer with you,” Sun said, handing the key back to you.

     “Oh. Okay.” You looked at the key for a moment, then put it back in your pocket. “See ya.”

     You both waved goodbye, and you started at last on your rounds. You felt much better after talking with Sun. You swung by the break room to grab an energy drink and started your rounds just as the place closed for the night.

~~~

     Giving Sun a phone turned out to be an absolutely horrible idea for your easily distracted brain. Sun kept texting you all through the day, starting with a cute little ‘Good morning sunshine! ☀️’ text that was actually really nice to wake up to.

     You texted back until it was time to go to work at the deli, stating that Sun could message you if they wanted to, but you were unlikely to answer during work. You made it clear that if something happened, Sun should call you instead and you would answer.

     You weren’t in the kitchen today, which meant you didn’t have as much opportunity to check your phone. It also meant that you closed later, having just enough time to drive between jobs and nothing else.

     Hopping out of your car and locking it behind you, you skimmed through the massive wall of messages Sun had sent you up until the lights went out at closing.

     ‘Hey Moon. Tell Sun he’s a dork. Bout to clock in’ you typed. You chuckled at Sun’s shenanigans with the toddlers. Apparently one of the kids lost a pair of star shaped shades in the ball pit and was very upset about it. Sun turned it into a game for everyone, promising that whoever found the glasses would get a piece of candy.

     ‘Will do.’ Moon replied.

     You finished your energy drink before you even made it to the daycare, finishing your first sweep of the main building in record time.

     “Howdy Moon… how ya feeling tonight?” You called as you stepped inside.

     “…Better.”

     You spotted Moon sitting at the edge of the ball pit, his back to you.

     You sat down next to Moon, your legs and knees protesting the whole way.

     “Are you alright?” Moon asked softly.

     “I’m alright. I’m a tough lad, I’ve been through worse,” you assured. “Are you alright?”

     “I… I am sorry. For scaring you. For hurting you.”

     "Yeah, that wasn't cool. However, I accept your apology. And I still want to be friends," you assured.

     "Why?" Moon asked, looking at you.

     "Are you seriously asking me why I want to be friends with one of the coolest people I've ever met?? Besides, like I said before to Sun, I'm very easy to impress. Literally anyone who's even slightly nice to me I would die for."

     "I'm not nice to you." Moon slouched forwards, looking away from you again.

     "Oh, is that why you didn't let me fall to the ground after I jumped off the top of the play structure? Or why you put a band aid on my hand?"

     "Neither of those incidents would have occurred if it weren't for me."

     "Maybe. But it's not like you're ever trying to hurt me or anything. In fact, you always seem to be trying to be nice. Unless all the playful teasing was actually just mean teasing all along?"

     "You shouldn't be around me," Moon argued.

     "Well too farting bad!!"

     Moon gave you a weird look, something between surprise and confusion, nearly smiling.

     You went on. "That ain't up to you, is it? I get to decide what I do. That's what's great about being my own person. I do what I want. And what I want is to be friends," you declared. "Is that what you want?"

     Moon stared at you blankly for a long moment. "…Yes."

     "Love the enthusiasm." You smiled. "Now enough sulking around. You wanna do something fun before I need to get back to my rounds? We can keep talking? Or I can head out early if you need some space."

     Moon considered the options briefly. "…Naptime?"

     "That was not one of the options." You rolled your eyes.

     "You need sleep."

     "I'll sleep when I'm off work."

     "Hmm." Moon squinted suspiciously at you.

     "Truth or dare?" you asked, hoping to distract Moon from your poor sleeping habits.

     "…Truth."

     "How do you feel about what Sun and I talked about last night? About my speculations?" you asked.

     "You and your stupid prying questions…" Moon grumbled. "It's never 'what's your favorite color' or 'do you have a favorite season'. It's always 'hey Moon, lets pry into your deepest troubles and fears'."

     You looked down at the colorful plastic balls in the pit. "Oh. Sorry, you don't have to answer. Remember you can always pass."

     Moon sighed. "It's fine. I'm just teasing you."

     You raised a suspicious eyebrow, but Moon went on before you could say anything.

     "I'd by lying if I told you that what you said hadn't crossed my mind. It's already like they're trying to erase me… and Sun had to argue with them for a while before they agreed to turn the lights off every other night. They wanted to keep them on all the time. And now they're hiring more human security…"

     You frowned.

     Moon explained before you could ask. "It used to be my job to patrol the building. Vanessa was there just to watch the cameras and call authorities if anything went amiss. But then I got this… bug. This malfunction. And they placed me under 'temporary dismissal' until I can be fixed."

     You realized you’d basically taken Moon's job, replacing him. "Is that why you don't trust me?"

     "It's part of it."

     You nodded. "I see." You thought for a moment. It did seem like management didn't want to deal with Moon. What they'd do about it exactly was still uncertain, but… you couldn't help but worry.

     "Truth or dare?" Moon asked, interrupting your train of thought.

     "Oh. Uh… Dare." You quickly added as Moon's face broke into a wide grin, "-and DON'T dare me to take a nap, dream boy."

     Moon scowled. They took a moment to think. "I dare you… to sing something for me."

     "…When the moon hits your dish, and you mispronounce fish, albacore!" You sang loudly, quoting a silly post you’d read on the internet.

     That got a laugh out of Moon. You smiled triumphantly.

     "Truth or dare?" you asked.

     "Dare."

     "Ah hah, I dare YOU to sing something!" you declared.

     Moon rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine. I did say I would." They sat up straight.

     Moon began to sing softly, swaying ever so slightly with the slow beat like a metronome.

     'Now it's time to say good night… Good night, sleep tight. Now the sun turns out his light… Good night, sleep tight. Dream sweet dreams for me… Dream sweet dreams for you. Close your eyes and I'll close mine… Good night, sleep tight. Now the moon begins to shine… Good night, sleep tight.'

     You didn't mean to stare, but Moon's voice was downright enchanting. You couldn't imagine any child having trouble being lulled to sleep by Moon's soft singing.

     'Good night, good night, everybody… Everybody, everywhere, good night.' Moon finished.

     You let out a sigh. "Alright. So you weren't just teasing me when you said I wasn't as good as you."

     "Hush." Moon looked away, shuffling awkwardly.

     "I think you melted my anxiety?? I feel so relaxed."

     "Truth or dare?" Moon asked.

     You smiled at Moon's embarrassment but said nothing more about it. "Truth."

     "Why are you alone?" Moon asked again.

     "This is payback for my ceaseless prying, isn't it?" You sighed.

     "Yes."

     You chuckled. "Fair enough." You took a deep breath. "Alright. I'll tell you this. I used to not be alone. I lived in a big house with three friends and… and someone I was very close with. Then… just. Sometimes, no matter what you do or how hard you try or how nice you are, how good you… you still just… you loose it all, and there's nothing you can do about it." You cleared your throat. "Lost the house. Lost contact with everyone. I was kinda thrown to the wayside for a bit there. Had to really step up my game in order to afford my own place in short notice. I'm lucky I found the place I did. Living in an RV on a lot I own isn't exactly glamorous, but by golly the area is lovely, and its nice to have my own place, just for me. There's a big structure that covers the RV and the spot next to it so I can park my car, which is really nice. And since I own the land, I've got a little garden and I'm working on building a fence myself. I plan to adopt a dog sometime in the future, but I'm worried I won't be there enough during the day to properly care for it…" You trailed off, realizing you’d started to ramble. "Man. Sorry, I dunno what it is about you and Sun, but you guys get me rambling like nobody's business."

     "We don't mind," Moon said. "We're sorry you lost your old house."

     "It was for the best, in the end." You sighed. "Just the way it happened sucked." You straightened and put it out of mind. "Truth or dare?"

     "Truth."

     "Do you have a favorite season?"

     Moon smiled at the question. "Winter."

     "And Sun's is summer, right?" You smirked.

     "…How'd you know??"

     You laughed. "Just something about his… sunny disposition."

     "Ugh." Moon deadpanned at you.

     "Oh common, Sun loved that one." You rolled your eyes.

     "He did and you're both ridiculous." Moon sighed.

     "Okay, one more and then I need to get back to my rounds. Truth or dare?"

     Moon slumped a little and hummed. They tapped their fingers thoughtfully on the rim of the ball pit. "Dare."

     "I dare you to call me if anything happens to yall," you said seriously.

     "Sun already told you-"

     "I know Sun did. That phone is for both of you."

     "…Am I also allowed to text you an obscene amount of messages?"

     You rolled your eyes. "Sure. Go wild, man."

     "I… will notify you if anything is amiss," Moon said.

     "Promise?"

     Moon sighed heavily, but reluctantly held out their pinky. You smiled and linked your pinky with his.

     "Good deal." You got up and stretched out your sore legs and back. "I'll see ya later, escalator."

     "Good night, rule-breaker."

     You finger-gunned Moon as you started back towards the doors. Moon threw their hands up, as if you were actually holding them at gunpoint.

     You laughed and 'shot' Moon, making a 'pew pew' noise as you did so.

     Moon dramatically clutched his chest and twisted around, then fell backwards into the ball pit. You snorted and quickly fell into a fit of laughter.

     "Sorry partner. This town just ain't big enough for the both of us," you said, putting on a silly cowboy voice.

     "I'll get you next time, sheriff." Moon peeked up over the edge of the pit and chucked a plastic ball at you.

     "Till next time, then." You whistled the classic cowboy showdown tune as you left the daycare.

[raggaraddy]

Restraint.

Summary: Trying to make your boyfriend jealous with another guy is never a good idea. It's an even worse idea when your boyfriend happens to be an Alpha.

Trigger Warning: Yandere Themes, Violence.

Namjoon

Alpha! Namjoon

You had so many chances to stop today from turning horrible. And yet you were trying to make a statement, so you purposefully ignored all of them. Namjoon had been driving you crazy lately. His rules were so overbearing and with even the simplest requests he wasn't allowing any exceptions. All you wanted was to go shopping in the city with a few girls you'd made friends with. It's not even like they were just anyone. They were pack members Joon had introduced you to, for the sole purpose of making friends and being able to go out with. And still, he wasn't allowing you. He was being completely unreasonable. Only repeating variations of 'You know you are not allowed to go to the city without me. If I let you break one rule now, then tomorrow you'll want to break another.'

So, fine. If he thinks you asking for him to make an exception was bad, then you'd show him how bad it could actually be. He treats you like a child, you'd show him how another man could treat you like an adult.

Tonight, the house was busy. Every month, the week before the full moon, Namjoon opened his home to the entire town. It was a chance to further strengthen the bond with the people of the town, and a chance to pass along information and orders to his pack. At sometime during the night, while Namjoon was preoccupied, you'd slipped from his side in search of trouble. Going from the crowded house to the equally packed backyard.

It wasn't long before some flirtatious looks across the patio drew one of the visiting human boys to your side. He starts subtly, but a drink later he gets a little bolder, holding your hand while he runs his fingers over the charm bracelet Namjoon bought you.

"Wow. This is almost as pretty as you." He leans in, speaking into your ear over the surrounding chatter. His fingers moving from the pendants to your wrist, as his husky voice sends shivers down your neck.

"Thank you," you blush, feeling genuinely flustered.

Steadily the compliments and comments start to flow. And soon he has his hands on your waist leading you to the centre of the yard to dance. For a moment, you're a little hesitant and embarrassed to dance with him where everyone is able to see. But Namjoon seeing it would definitely be a way to teach him a lesson on how easily you could have another man if you wanted.

As your hands come around his neck, the two of you are suddenly ripped apart. The boy is thrown back several feet into a group of people. Crashing into them. Falling in a messy painful heap. The party falls silent, all staring at the enraged Alpha who is standing between you and the boy.

Looking wild and overcome by rage, Namjoons reaction is much more intensive than you had expected. The veins on his arms are raised. His eyes shifted nearly black. Stripping his jacket and tossing it to the side, Namjoon stalks towards the boy. Seizing him by his shirt, he drags him a few feet out of the crowd, violently beating his fists into him, and smacking him into the ground. 

Unlike the rest of the onlookers, you're frozen in horror as Namjoon's power quickly turns the young man bloody.  You've never seen anything like this before. Never. Not once in the entire time you have known Namjoon had you seen him so out of control. This kind of fury and violence is not something you would have suspected he was even capable of!

Through the screams and panic of the scattering crowd, Namjoon's Beta and Gamma scramble to tear their leader away from the helpless human. Begging him to calm down with little success. Every time they get a grip on him, he throws them off, diving back towards his victim. Each strike doing irreparable damage.

With blood pouring down his face, his eyes rolling back, it's a sickening, echoing crack that spikes the hairs on the back of your neck. The boy howls an ear-piercing scream as Namjoon's fists pounds into his shoulder, shattering the bone.

The wolves becoming desperate to reign in their Alpha, a few more jump in and they finally manage to pry him back. Not entirely successful, still struggling to fully contain him. The destruction he's already done not yet satisfying his rage.

Running at you, the Beta grabs your arm, dragging you towards your crazed mare.

"Get his attention before he fucking kills the kid!" He roars, tossing you towards Namjoon.

On shaky, resistant footing, you follow the demand.

"Joon," you call, raising your hand to his chest as he fights and grapples to get free.

He's pouring sweat. Covered in blood that is not his own. His cuspids protruding. His shirt ripping. Eyes glowing auburn. You'd never seen him so rabid and close to turning without intending to.

He lurches forward. The half a dozen men and women holding him are jerked forward also, some losing their footing or grip on him briefly. You jump back in fright. Trying to build your courage, you timidly step closer, reaching your hand out, pressing to his torso.

"Joon," you say again louder hoping to ground him to you.

Again, he rips free from half of the wolves, growling and baring his fangs, making them fight harder to restain him.

"Fuck! Do something!" The Gamma roars.

Startled into action, you throw yourself into him. Pushing your arms through the others' hold, wrapping yourself around his body. You don't know how on earth to help otherwise. But you know Namjoon is at his calmest when he has you in his arms.

"Namjoon. Stop. Please." You cry out, burying your head against his chest, digging your fingers into his back.

You can feel the rumble in his chest throughout your body as he growls and snarls. His heavily breathing steadily beginning to slow. Your presence and touch having the sought after effect. His strength and resistance starting to peter out. His muscles relaxing.

"Joon." Is all you can think to say. The heat of his breath blowing down your neck.

With a crack of his neck and another deep, calming breath, he straightens himself up a little. Clinging to regain the control he had lost.

"I'm good," he scowls through gritted teeth.

Looking up at him, you can see his fangs still bared, his eyes still glowing. His territorial focus on you making you uneasy.

With Namjoon's fight dampened, the wolves tentatively back off, seeming ready to pounce on him again should he bolt.

However, true to his word, Namjoon has recaptured enough composure and is no longer focused on the human boy. He lunges at you, scooping you into his arms, dragging you to the ground. Both on your knees, he holds you under his body. His weight and his arms crushing you so tightly that it hurts. His claws digging in and ripping your skin, gripping you as firmly as he can, while he fights to hold onto his unstable restraint.

Behind you, you can hear the pack members collecting the injured boy. His moans and cries as they shift him making you feel sick to your stomach. The guilt consuming your heart.

In hindsight, you're truly not sure how you had expected him to react. You just wanted to make a point. To show Joon that if he wasn't careful you could end up with someone else.

But now, your not sure if that could ever be true.