#oh snap! this was my 200th post!

[zephyrchama]

Though you might be forced to leave the Devildom, it will always be there. It will remain even if you can never go back. It existed long before you became an exchange student, and it will exist for long after.

It exists in the photos you've taken. Selfies, polaroids, and printed photographs. Screenshotted conversations and video recordings. In paintings and doodles and sketches. In journals and notes that are safely tucked away.

It exists in the days, months, and years' worth of memories you've accumulated. The time you've spent with its denizens and the hard work you struggled to accomplish won't just disappear. You built so many friendships. You filled so many attendance cards simply by gracing everyone with your presence. Worked so many jobs, learned so many new things, became so much stronger than when you first arrived.

It made you smile. It made you laugh. You can picture it in your dreams. It's part of the tears you shed, the anger you felt, and the silly jokes you put up with. Real emotions from a real world that changed you.

You may drift apart from the Devildom. At times you might even forget it exists. It's okay. It will come back when you least expect it. You'll experience so many new things, but none of them will overwrite the time you've spent with those who care for you.

You'll see them everywhere. You'll catch a glimpse of them in everyday objects, in snacks and books and money and more. You'll hear them in the wind on a typical evening when the sun is setting and the sky is a myriad of beautiful colors. In much the same way, they'll see glimpses of you on the roads you walked together every day, in the stores and parks you frequented. In the classroom window and in every doorway of the house. They'll see you in their dreams, too.

It's normal for humans to be in the human world. To be away from the supernatural and ignorant of what goes on outside of this realm. That's the natural order of things. That doesn't mean the Devildom is not there anymore. That doesn't mean they're all gone. It will always exist and you will carry its pieces with you forever.

[banannabethchase]

Adam is in his senior year of high school and, after the devastating end of the spring soccer season the previous year, his life has gone to hell. Enter Jon Moxley, who ushers in a whirlwind of self discovery.

~

Welcome to the Wrestling High School AU. This will be multichapter, but I'm not sure exactly how many. This is my 200th fic posted on AO3, so this has a special place in my heart. I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

~

Adam is shaking.

It’s his first day of his senior year of high school, and he’s shaking like a leaf.

He grips the steering wheel of his truck as hard as he can, trying to force all of this anxiety out of himself. “Stop thinking about it,” he chides himself. He doesn’t look over at the soccer field in front of him. He doesn’t look out to the bleachers. He doesn’t allow himself to remember.

He can’t forget.

“Stop thinking about it,” he says, a little harder, teeth gritted. “Stop it.” Eyes closed, he practices the breathing: in for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight.

It helps. His teeth stop chattering and he’s not as cold as he was.

“You can do this,” he insists to himself.

He turns off the truck and swings out, adjusting the belt buckle so it’s right in the front. He checks his face in the mirror, checks his hair. Pulls on the bun, just a little bit, just so it looks right.

The parking lot is mostly empty, a few little sedans here and there, and that’s by design. Adam feels his anxiety settle, just a bit. The place won’t be too busy for a bit, and the sun rising on the horizon is prettier than Adam thinks he deserves.

He pulls out his phone and snaps a photo, when somebody pops up into frame.

“The fuck?!”

“Hi!” John Silver waves at him. “Hi.”

“Hey, John,” he says. He laughs a little nervously. “What’re you doing here so early?”

“Walked here,” John says, falling into step as Adam works his way toward the doors. “I live a mile or so away, I woke up too early, you know how it is.”

Adam doesn’t. He lives in the rural part of town about 10 miles out. “You looking forward to the year?”

“Yeah, yeah,” John says. Adam forgot how much this guy is like a puppy on cocaine. “Sophomore year. I’ve got Balch, McKenny, Anderson, and Jefferson. You know them?”

“You’re on team 10x?” Adam asks. “Yeah, I was on that team. Balch is a stickler, but as long as you believe in climate change he’ll be cool. McKenny is out, like, most years having a baby, but she just had one last year. You should be good. Anderson’s so obsessed with math she gets too excited, but she’s a great teacher.” He wrinkles his nose. “Jefferson and I didn’t exactly get along, but that was more because he’s the one who made us change from Bullet Club to Baller Club.”

John nods. “Cool. Good. I’ll just not have a weird little clique.”

Adam raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t Brodie make you, like, the de facto leader of that DND club when he graduated?”

John nodded. “Yeah, and?”

“Don’t you call yourselves the Dark Order?” Adam fights a smile. “Jefferson had an issue with us having a gun reference – what do you think he’ll do with you guys having a club based on inaccurate mythology?”

“He wouldn’t dare,” John says, and he sounds so confident Adam’s half convinced to believe him.

Adam makes sure John gets to the correct classroom for the morning, since the first class is their homeroom and it’s easy to miss it entirely and get marked absent.

“See you at lunch?” John asks, giddy. “Johnny hungie.”

Adam decides to move past whatever that was. “Are you second block for lunch?”

John’s glee, for the first time all day, fades. “Oh. No. I’m first block.” He frowns. “And Stu and Uno, they’re third. Anna and Alex and Alan are with me.”

“Preston?” Adam asks, and he sounds so pathetically hopeful it hurts.

John shakes his head. “Third, too.”

Adam considers not even eating when the time comes. Even maybe just running away. “Okay,” he says, voice small. “Um. I’ll figure something out, don’t worry.” He does his best to smile. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

John nods, then dives in, giving an incredibly firm and fast hug.

“Jeez, what do they feed you in Dungeons and Dragons?” he mutters.

He makes his way to the main building for his first class: Advanced Placement Human Geography, or, in layman’s terms, anthropology for beginners. He shouldn’t have walked John, for his own sanity. As every second passes, as every step falls, the odds get better and better that he’ll run into Them and he doesn’t have any way to avoid it.

Halfway up the stairs, and he can see the halls are filling. The halls are filling, and Adam is putting every prayer in that he doesn’t run into Them. Not today. At least, not right now.

Nobody’s listening to him, though. As looks through his phone, pretending to be enveloped while actually hyper aware of everything around him, a familiar flash of long hair catches his eye. He can’t help it: he looks up.

Kenny Omega is walking down the hallway, head high, with Matt and Nick Jackson flanking him. Nick’s a year younger, but some it doesn’t matter to Matt or Kenny. They treat him like a god, just like they treat themselves. Just like he treated them.

Just like they used to treat him.

Adam feels the panic attack rear its ugly head, and he does his breathing practice as he tries to duck his head, hide in the book. He wishes he wore the glasses, cut his hair, something. In a fit of sheer panic, he turns around and runs around the corner, promptly slamming into the first person he managed not to see.

“The fuck, man?”

Adam wiggles a bit to see Jon Moxley, who he remembers vaguely being on the football team at some point. His biggest calling card now is the pink hair and the general disdain for authority. “Sorry,” he says, pulling his legs out from the tangle. “Sorry, I just.”

Moxley peeks out around the corner. “Ugh, fuck. Douchebags.”

“Are they gone?” Adam asks, before he can stop himself.

Moxley moves back. “Aren’t they your friends?”

Scoffing, Adam shakes his head, putting his books back in order. “Not anymore.”

“Then I like you.” He hops to his feet with more grace than Adam expected, and holds out a hand. “Come on, get up.”

Adam takes his hand, calloused and strong, and stands. “Sorry I bumped into you. Had to, uh.” He pauses.

Jon studies him, a roll of his shoulders, blue eyes piercing. “Were – were you running from them?”

Adam freezes, and he couldn’t even imagine the look on his face. “I want to say no.”

“But you can’t,” Jon finishes for him. “I’m not even gonna ask. What class do you have next?”

“AP Human Geo,” he answers.

Jon adjusts the back on his shoulder. “Me, too. Come on.”

“You have an AP class?” Adam asks before he can stop himself.

Jon raises an eyebrow. “Wow, country bumpkin is also slightly classist. Cool.”

“No, I just,” Adam feels himself fumbling, “look, you were a football guy, and they usually don’t spend time on the big classes, so…” He trails off, shrugging. “Sorry.”

“Nah, I’m just fucking with you.” He claps Adam on the shoulder, pausing to squeeze. “Damn, you rural kids really are corn fed and country strong, aren’t you?”

Unable to answer that, Adam just follows Jon into Viet Pham’s classroom.

“Look at the tables and find your name,” says Mr. Pham. “We will begin the semester in alphabetical order, because if y’all move around, I will never learn your names.”

In this class’ roster, Moxley comes right before Page, so Adam sits next to Jon.

“Can’t get enough of me, huh, Cowboy?” Jon asks with a grin.

“It’s alphabetical!” Adam replies, and he can tell he’s leaning into Jon’s goading, he knows, but he can’t stop it.

Jon just keeps smiling at him, like it’s the best joke he’s heard. Adam does a terrible job of listening to Mr. Pham explain the syllabus, but he’s not thinking about Kenny and the rest of them for a full block.

~

The morning goes by quickly, but lunchtime presents him with a problem he’d been trying to ignore ever since that conversation with John.

Cody’s gone, at Audelaire Prep in the city. He hasn’t even called since he left at the end of the fall season the year before, when he was passed over for junior captain in favor of Kenny. He’s not going near his old table – Kenny, Matt, and Nick are probably filling in their ranks with new freshmen and sophomores to be part of their club, now.

He’s half convinced to go eat in the library, park in one of the study alcoves and hope the librarian doesn’t catch him, when he hears somebody yell, “Adam!”

He startles, expecting, almost, to get jumped. Instead, Jon is waving him over. “Get over here.”

He shuffles over to Jon’s table, where he’s sitting with Eddie Kingston. He refuses to look behind himself just in case, because there’s no way the Elite didn’t hear all of that. But he won’t look at them. He won’t give them the satisfaction. “Yeah?”

“Sit, duh,” Jon says, gesturing to the seat next to him. “You looked like a deer in the headlights. It would have been a war crime to let you stand like that.”

Adam isn’t sure if that’s a kindness or not, but he sits either way.

“This who you were talkin’ about?” Eddie asks. “I had a physics class with him last year, for a little while.” He nods at Adam. “Hey.”

“Hi. Sorry, I thought you graduated?”

Eddie scoffs. “You gotta be here to graduate. I skipped half of last year to go do my real job.”

“Which is?”

He laughs. “I’ll tell you another time, kid, let me eat my lunch without thinking about blood.” He leans in and shovels some of the cafeteria pasta in his mouth, giving Adam the chance to look at Jon, bewildered.

“Don’t mind him, he’s always this way,” Jon says, shooting a fond smile over at Eddie. “Anyway, you really didn’t have a place to sit?”

Adam shakes his head. “I didn’t really, um. When I got here, and I was part of the soccer team, it was like they were my friends and that was it.” He pushes some noodles around on his plate. “Then Kenny and I…and then it was over.”

He can’t help the memories from playing across his mind. His and Kenny’s first kiss, under a strategically placed spring of mistletoe at the Jackson’s Christmas party, freshman year of high school. Before that, when Adam was the youngest player to make an assist in a championship game and Kenny was the youngest to score a goal, the goal that locked in their win. Their repeated victories in the spring and fall seasons until spring of junior year, feeling on top of the world with the guy and the stardom and the ability to skip class for any game they had.

The disgust on Kenny’s face last May, when Adam’s mistake cost them everything. The spring season destroyed because Adam wasn’t good enough.

The way Kenny wouldn’t even meet his eyes when he told Adam he didn’t associate with losers.

“Wow, bud, come back to earth.”

Adam lifts his head to see Jon staring at him, concerned. A flop of pink hair falls in his eyes. “I – sorry.”

“You’re a real piece of work, kid,” Eddie says, mouth full of broccoli. That in itself earns a bit of Adam’s respect. “Real fucked up.” He slaps Jon on the arm, but rests it there, like it belongs. “You pick ‘em good, you menace.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Look, forget them. All the sports kids are assholes.”

“You were a sports kid,” Eddie mentions.

Jon pinches the skin on the top of his hand, and Eddie punches him in the shoulder. “We don’t talk about that,” Jon grumbles. He turns attention back to Adam. “Look, I like you. I think you’re funny and I think you’re kinda cute, and you’re welcome to hang out with us.”

Adam blinks. “Is this some sort of initiation? Whether or not I can handle you two being weird?”

Eddie shrugs. “Do you have a problem with us being weird?”

“No,” Adam replies. “You’ve got nothing on the attempted murder the Jacksons went for using Monster and crushed up Tylenol two years ago.”

Jon tilts his head. “That may be the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”

“They heard somewhere too much Tylenol could fuck up your liver,” Adam explains. “They thought three was too much.”

“Wait, was that the Cole kid?” Eddie asks. “Yeah, I remember that! I was on the peer review board for that, well, until I got kicked off for calling him a pussy. But he was being a pussy, so what other option did I have?”

Jon reaches up and covers Eddie’s mouth with his hand. “We’re working on not incriminating ourselves,” he deadpans. “But, yeah, you’ll do fine. Eddie’s got a gig after school, so he’ll be gone, but meet me out by Wilson Road and maybe you can drive me home?”

“That’s a bit presumptuous,” Adam says, spearing one of the broccoli bunches and testing it. It’s better than it was last year, so maybe Eddie’s less of a daredevil and more just hungry.

“I doubt you’re gonna say no,” Jon says, “but you don’t have to if you don’t want.”

“Nah, it’s cool. I just put gas in it. But it smells like hay and kind of like chickens, ‘cause it’s a farm truck.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “You really are a country bumpkin, aren’t you?”

~

He’s on his way to the agricultural and animal husbandry barn while he scans his agenda, checking to make sure he’s gotten down all the really important stuff for the first day. He has Chemistry class with Alex Reynolds, AP English with Anna Jay and Uno, who still won’t give anyone his real name, and he has AP French with Nyla Rose, who he didn’t realize until now he deeply needs to be friends with.

And then, of course, there’s AP Human Whatever with Jon. It feels silly, but it seems like it’ll be a good way to start every say.

His Creative Writing class consists of no one else he knows, which is fine, but he’s hesitant to feel comfortable sharing anything. His animal husbandry class is full of people he went to his tiny elementary school with, which would be nice if Dalton Castle hadn’t yelled, “Hey, Poopy Page!” the second he walked in the door.

“It was chocolate!” he hisses, socking him in the arm. Dalton just grins.

“Oh, come on, man, everybody knows it was,” he winks, “just chocolate. Plus, it was kindergarten.”

He sits down, next to Dalton, because he really is one of Adam’s favorite people from Silver Elementary.

Dalton throws an arm around his shoulders. “Aw, you’ll be fine. You’ve got old Dalton around.”

“You hate animals, why are you even here?”

“Had to take a science class, and you’ll be dead before you see me doing anything involving math.” He pats Adam’s cheek. “Come on. Let’s get settled.”

After a whirlwind of the AH teacher explaining the horribly explicit details of inseminating a cow instead of outlining the syllabus, the final bell of the day goes off. With a wave to Dalton, Adam almost automatically walks toward the locker room before he remembers: he’s not on the soccer team. He’s not in the Elite team, he’s not part of Baller Club. He doesn’t even play anymore. But he does have somewhere else he can go, someone else he can meet up with.

It’s surprisingly comforting to know he’s not as alone as he felt in the morning.

Shouldering his backpack, he ducks behind the barns and makes the short walk behind the lacrosse fields to Wilson Road.

There, leaning against a tree, is Jon Moxley. And Adam forgets he’s supposed to be normal about this.

“Hey, Cowboy,” he says, waving with the hand holding the cigarette. “Was worried you wouldn’t show.”

“You’re smoking.”

Jon nods, and puts the cigarette back in his mouth. “Yeah.”

“We’re on campus!” Adam hears the prissiness in his own voice. He’d call himself a narc.

Jon laughs, and the smile is unexpected. “No,” he says. He puts one foot on the road. “That is on campus.” Then he puts his foot back on the dirt. “This is not. Ergo whatnot, I’m not on campus.” He takes another drag from the cigarette, fingers tantalizing in a way Adam’s not particularly comfortable analyzing. Holding the cigarette between his teeth, he says, “You smoke?”

Adam shakes his head. “I – don’t really do drugs.” He intentionally doesn’t mention the beers he’s stolen from his dad, chugging them in the shower through body wracking sobs, drunkenly collapsing into bed after four of them. Because those don’t count – it’s just beer.

He lets out a bark of laughter, head thrown back and eyes crinkling in a way that makes him look less serious, less worn. “Oh, baby, if you think these are drugs, I can’t even tell you what I’ve done in the library.”

Adam tilts his head. “Well, now I’m curious.”

Jon pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, holds it between his pointer finger and thumb. He uses it like punctuation when he spokes, and Adam wonders if this guy has ever taken theater classes. No person is this animated, like, as a default. “I used to do, like, a fuckton of cocaine, and then I sneak in to the library at night and read, like, all the books.” He sighs. “Oh, and once Eddie and I had sex on the checkout counter.”

Adam startles. “Oh. Right. Eddie.”

He apparently does a miserable job of keeping the disappointment off of his face, because Jon says, “We’re not exclusive, if that’s what that look on your mug means.”

“I didn’t,” Adam pauses. “That’s not – I wasn’t thinking that.”

Jon raises an eyebrow. “You weren’t?” He shrugs, taking another drag. “That sucks.”

“It does?”

Jon steps toward him, flicking the end of the cigarette. “You can’t possibly be as naïve as you look, cute a look as it is.” He’s back on campus. He’s inches from Adam. “You thinking about me and Eddie fucking in the library?”

Adam doesn’t think before he answers. “A little.”

“Not to be nosy, but I dug around and learned about the bullshit that went down with you and Omega last spring.” Jon grins. “You looking for a rebound?” He licks his lips.

Adam decides to stop thinking. “A little.”

Jon licks his lips, then drops the cigarette on the ground, crushing it with the heel of his boot. “That’s what I like to hear.” Before Adam can reconsider whatever he’s doing, he leans in, meeting Jon’s lips. He tastes like smoke and snark.

Adam leans in, sliding his tongue across Jon’s lips, and Jon opens his mouth, hand on the back of Adam’s neck, other hand on his hip. He can’t help it – he sighs into it. He considers it a bit strange for a first kiss, but, hey, he didn’t expect to kiss anyone again, not for a long time, so he’s counting this as a win.

Jon pulls away, grinning. “Okay. Cool. Don’t need to teach you how to kiss.”

“Offended you think that’d be a possibility.” It’s easy, kissing Jon. He lets Adam lead when he wants to, and takes over when Adam falls back. There’s no battle here, no need to check himself. Shivers roll down his back when Jon slides his hands into the back pockets of Adam’s jeans, hauling him close. Adam finds himself laughing into Jon’s mouth, and they stay there like that, longer than they shoulder.

“I, uh,” Adam says, pulling back. His hands are still in Jon’s hair, and he plays with it, just a little. Wonders what made him choose this neon level of pink. Wonders if Jon would want him to tug at it in the future. “I need to get home soon. My parents’ll freak out if I’m not there.”

Jon nods, but he won’t keep from glancing down at Adam’s lips. “Yeah. Right. Good idea.” He rubs a thumb along his bottom lip. “Yeah. We still good for that ride?”

Adam nods. He wants to reach out and grab Jon’s hand, but it feels wrong, like maybe it’s too much or something. Instead, he grabs his backpack from the road and starts walking. He smiles when he hears Jon jog a little bit to catch up, the chains on his wallet jingling a bit.

“No need to rush,” Jon says. “God, why are you so fast? We’re basically the same height.”

“Maybe my legs are longer than yours,” Adam muses. “What, can’t keep up?”

Jon shoves at him with his shoulder, harder than Adam would have expected. “Don’t be an ass,” Jon says. “I go out of my way to befriend you and you make fun of me? Dick move.”

“I could show you dick moves,” Adam says under his breath, and, when he turns to Jon, he’s grinning like a devil.

“Oh, I like you,” he says, practically skipping. He grabs Adam’s face while they’re walking and presses a big kiss to his cheek. “This is gonna be fun.”

They reach the parking lot, and it’s near empty. Adam points to his truck, looking more battered and rusty in the afternoon light than it had when he’d left it in the morning. “That’s me.”

“Sweet!” Jon says, hopping up into the bed. “Can I ride like this?”

“Absolutely not,” Adam says, grabbing at his sleeve. “What are you, feral? Get down here.”

Jon practically giggles as he crouches at the edge of the tailgate. “You gonna make me?”

It’s as much an invitation as anything, so Adam grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls him down, rolling him until his feet hit the ground. Jon backs him up against the tailgate, with one leg between Adam’s. “God, you’re an easy mark,” he laughs against Adam’s mouth, and Adam doesn’t care, not at all, because Jon’s hands are on him again and this is the best he’s felt all summer.

~

When he drops Jon off at the townhouses on the other side of the town from his house, Adam doesn’t even care he’s gone out of his way. Jon leans over the center console and kisses his temple quickly before leaving with a, “See ya tomorrow, Cowboy!”

Adam’s playlist on the way home is higher energy than he’s picked in months. He’d planned for devastation, is the thing. He had feared and fretted for weeks about this day, going over every possible outcome. But nothing even close to the horrors and banality he imagined happened. Kenny didn’t humiliate him in front of the whole school. Hell, Kenny never even looked at him, which hurts in a different direction than Adam expected to feel. But it’s not debilitating. And it’s eclipsed by the excitement of Jon Moxley, whatever it means.

His parents ask him why he’s so happy at dinner, Mom looking almost worried at his reaction.

“I don’t know,” he says, unable to keep the sunshine out of his voice. “I just – I guess this year I’m less worried, you know? I was super anxious about soccer every other year, and this year I don’t have to worry about that. Or Baller Club, either.”

Mom sighs. “I wish you boys would have come up with any name but that. It’s bad enough that Tyson keeps going by that Kenny Omega name. It sounds ridiculous.”

“It’s his name, Mom, don’t be weird about it.” It’s not his name, actually, Kenny hasn’t even decided if he wants to do a legal name change, but it’s what he asks to be called and Adam’s always thought that comes first.

“But Baller Club?” Dad asks, looking concerned. “That’s still happening? I mean, it’s better than Bullet Club, that would’a put y’all on a list somewhere, but Baller Club sounds…” He trails off.

“We all know how it sounds,” his mom says, rolling her eyes with a hint of a smile. “Well, I know how hard it was when you and Kenny broke up.” She rests her hand on his. “Honestly, honey, I was a bit worried about you today. I almost had Janet check up on you, but I had a feeling you would hate that.”

“Yeah, good call,” he says, squeezing her hand back. “That probably would have killed me if you had one of the office ladies check in on me.” He shoves some spaghetti in his mouth for emphasis.

“Okay, you could chew and swallow, make it look a little less like you were raised in our barn,” she pokes him in the shoulder. “But today was okay?”

“Yeah, it was good. Hung out with the kids from Dark Order. Bunch of ‘em are in my classes.”

“Well, that name’s better than Baller Club,” his dad says. “Those the nerd group?”

“It’s called D and D,” Adam corrects. “It’s a tabletop game. It’s pretty cool. I think I might ask to go to one of their meetings, just to see.” He fidgets with his glass. “Met some other cool people, too.”

“I know that smile,” his mom says. There’s a bit of a fraught silence that settles over the table. His mom’s eyes, studying. Dad’s presence, steady, ready to catch either of them at a moment’s notice. And Adam, unsure if he’s ready to share what’s happening with Jon with anybody but Eddie, at least not right now. “Don’t fall too hard, okay honey?”

“And I don’t know if I can promise not to sic the chickens a second time,” his dad adds, pointing at him with the fork. “Still haven’t ruled out sending Bradley to the Smith’s house and letting him reign terror.”

“Please don’t sic a rooster on my ex-boyfriend,” Adam groans, dropping his head in his hand. “Tell me about your days. Please, anything but this.”

[sidespart]

Made-up fic title: Forget-me-not Blue (Have a lovely day!)

Cannonverse Time-Loop,  platonic DLAMP and Demus, Janus centric 

So after Putting Others First ends, Patton suggest Janus come to breakfast with the light sides the next day. It will give them a chance to explain everything that’s happened to Logan and Virgil, and he and Roman can *dad hint* both apologise and make up after they’ve both had some sleep/ time to cool off. 

Jan isn’t so sure it’s going to be that easy to make nice with the others but he’s willing to give it a shot. So he makes a suitably dramatic entrance the next day, appearing in the kitchen whilst the others are setting out breakfast.

It does not go well.

Patton shrieks when he appears, completely surprised. Roman pulls his sword out, Logan scowls and Virgil demands “what the hell do you think you’re doing here Deceit?” Janus looks at Patton expecting him to explain (and kind’ve annoyed he didn’t tell the others he was coming tbh) and Patton looks...scared. And just as confused as everyone else. After standing there in awkward silence for a moment Vigil snaps out something like ‘don’t you think things are already stressful enough with the stupid wedding today without you showing up?”

Which - the stupid wedding today? Janus checks the calendar on the fridge. And then goes back to his room to check his own calendar. It’s April 13th. Again. 

So the first repeat Jan manages to convince himself that he dreamt the first April 13th. He always tries to plan out his various schemes/interactions with people so meticulously- maybe he’s just doing it in his sleep now (it would explain the whole giant frog thing). But he goes through the whole day and it’s identical to his ‘dream’ (including the giant frog thing). And at the end of it he wakes up and its April 13th again.

By loop 3 he decides this is Romans fault. He’s the only one who left the discussion in the original timeline unhappy, and as creativity he’s a pretty powerful side - he cant affect the real world but he could potentially create a fantasy ‘time loop’ scenario in the imagination and stick Janus in it. He spends multiple loops trying to keep Roman happy, stalking him to see if he does...something... after the discussion to cause the loop (he never does), learning as much as he possibly can about him (and in the process starts to feel seriously guilty about how his actions in his previous two episodes have affected Roman) and eventually they get to a loop where Roman ends up agreeing and even defending Janus at the end of the discussion. Both of them, Patton and Thomas leave happy and Jan goes to sleep thinking he’s finally fixed it. And then he wakes up and it’s April 13th.

He decides maybe it’s not Roman. He goes through a very similar process with Patton, then Logan, he pulls Virgil into the discussion (which blows up SPECTACULARLY the first 6 or so run throughs) and does the same thing with him, learning more and more about them each time.  The (60th? 200th? he has lost track completely) loop, everything is perfect. Virgil joins in the post wedding discussion. Logan get’s to say his piece, in person, with everyone listening to him. Roman understands that he was pushed into making a decision he wasn’t happy with and that no one blames him. Patton is able to understand that it’s okay to not know everything, and that its unfair for Thomas and the  others to expect him to, without turning into a giant frog. Janus reveals him name and no one laughs. They all leave as friends.

He wakes up and it’s April 13th.

He goes to their breakfast again. Flips the table over and bursts into tears. He’s tired. 

He’s able to convince them he’s in a time loop by telling them things they’ve told him in previous loops. This is the first time he’s asked for help and is a bit shocked when they agree. After suggesting multiple ideas that he has already tried Logan suggests Thomas could be the problem - not during the discussion that Janus has been focusing on but somthing that happened during the rest of his day.

So, montage of Jannus trying to fix everying that Thomas does that day. With ideas ranging from ‘get off your fucking phone and talk to someone at this wedding you sad sack of sh*t” to “ring the callback people at 6 am and tell them you changed your mind. DO IT DO IT DO IT”. Nothing works. 

One loop (83? 356? he has no idea) whilst Janus is lieing face down in a bowl of cereal and the others are brainstomring ideas he has already tried, Virgil laughs and says it’s a shame Jan got caught up in a time loop and not him. Janus frowns at him 

“what?”

“well.... you can literally say or do whatever you want and there’s no consequences. Even if you say something stupid everyone will have forgotten by the next day. It’s...kinvde my dream honestly”

“...huh.”

SO, comedy montage of Janus living all of his best lives. He flings a ‘The Office’ DVD box set at Thomas’ head whilst screaming SELF CARE BITCH. He traps everyone in the theatre and performs a choreographed rendition of razzle dazzle to slightly confused applause. He spends entire days naked. He invents a new cocktail. He unleashes the orange side and watches the chaos whilst lazing on the sofa in a face mask. He snogs all the other sides at LEAST once each. He heads to Remus room and enlists him transform the whole mindscape into a beach. After spending the day building sand castles (or sand brothels in Remus’ case) and watching the other sides battle a kraken Remus grins at him and says 

“That was fun! What do you wanna do tomorrow?”

And Jan kind’ve sighs and shrugs because he really should be getting back to trying to fix this whole mess..and Remus scowls and says “oh right. You’ll want to be getting back to your real best friends”

Jan frowns. “You’re my best friend idiot”

Remus rolls his eyes. “Yeah. That’s why it’s taken one hundred and eighteen Aprils 13ths for you to even come and see me”.

Janus stares at him. He hadn’t told Remus about the time loop when he came to him with the beach plan.

His original idea about creativity being the only side who might be able to cause this? 

Looks like he wasn’t wrong after all.

Remus, desperate not to loose his only friend after Jan started making nice with the light sides, has either consciously or subconsciously trapped them both in this time loop on the last day where they were both ‘dark sides’.

And with Remus quickly running away after their conversation, Janus still doesn't know how to fix it. 

For the fake fic titles asks (please do NOT send me anymore to do for now)

[reeleev]

200 Messages - KiHyuk

Summary: With Kihyun going away for the next month, Minhyuk’s left without a way to contact him as often as he’d like. And, with Minhyuk being the drama queen he is, he just doesn’t know how to handle it.In celebration of my 200th fic, I wrote this little one shot of one of my fav pairs~! ^^ I hope y’all enjoy! <33

Word Ct: 3720

AO3 Link

“Just don’t go off and meet some hot art student while you’re gone,” was what Minhyuk had wanted to say. But, instead, he barely even managed a small, “Stay safe out there, Kihyunnie,” before the his same-age had gone off to board his plane.

 Now, Minhyuk lies awake, staring up at the squeaky fan on his ceiling as it spins and spins, much like the thoughts filling his mind.

He shouldn’t have chickened out that day. He should’ve grown a spine and told Kihyun how he feels. Now here he is, running the risk of Kihyun meeting some random hot guy in France who’ll then whisk him away, leaving Minhyuk to die alone. He wants so badly to call him, to text him, to contact him in some way. However, it costs too much to use a phone overseas like that, and Kihyun never checks his email.

“Don’t even bother trying to text me, Minhyuk-ah,” Kihyun had nagged at him for the umpteenth time before he left. “I’ll have it set so that I can’t even receive them in the first place. Anything you send me won’t come through until I’m back home.”

Minhyuk plays with his hair as he stews, carding his fingers through the blonde strands. It doesn’t come close to how comforting it is when Kihyun does it…

He sighs in defeat, reaching for his phone. Minhyuk goes first to his photos, trying to rid his mind of his friend—crush—by looking at every silly selfie the slightly-younger has ever sent him, that he and the other have taken together. Of course, that doesn’t work, so he tries going on Instagram and Snapchat… But, of course, among the silly couple selfies Hyunwoo and Hoseok spam his feed with and the random pictures of lyrics Jooheon tends to post, the edgy landscape pictures Changkyun always puts up and the pouty-faced selfies Hyungwon take, there Kihyun is, posting all these fantastic photos of himself off in Paris, having the time of his life on this foreign exchange program.

Finally, Minhyuk sees something in one of the gremlin’s photos that makes him unable to stand it anymore. He goes to his messages and types out a small, “I miss you, Kihyunnie~ I hope your trip is going well <33” and sends it before he can even think twice.

A pretty boy that seems about Kihyun’s age, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the shorter as they smile up at the camera for a selfie. It’s the most recent photo on Kihyun’s profile, and the one that causes a jealousy the likes of which Minhyuk has never before felt in his young life. It burns within him, incinerating away any thoughts of optimism for Kihyun not meeting someone else—because it’s only a month, so who would he meet?

I should’ve just told him… Minhyuk sullenly thinks as he tosses his phone to the side. I should’ve just balled up and told him how I feel. It isn’t as if I didn’t have enough chances… Now, it’s too late.

He falls asleep that night, pouting to the dark due to his own failure.

 “You’re just reading too much into it, hyung,” Hyungwon assures him the next day, sticking his fork into the slice of cake they’re supposed to be sharing. Minhyuk isn’t feeling very hungry, though, and Hyungwon seems more than happy to make the sacrifice of eating the five-layer red velvet slice all by himself. Minhyuk whines, dropping his head to the table with a dull thump.

“He looked so happy, Wonnie,” he mutters, his voice muffled by his own shirt. “And that guy was so handsome… Kihyunnie’s probably working on becoming a permanent exchange student over there so they can stay together forever!” Hyungwon rolls his eyes, shaking his head at his melodramatic friend.

“He’s supposed to make friends while there,” the younger points out as he stuffs the bite passed his plump lips. The icing is a bit thick and sticks to the roof of his mouth. He smacks his lips as he adds, “That’s the whole point of going on this program. Well, that and taking landscape shots, but that’s besides the point. He’s just enjoying his time there. He’ll be back before you know it, and everything will be fine.” He swallows the bite before finishing with, “Maybe this’ll teach you to confess your feelings before your crush leaves the country.”

Minhyuk’s head bolts up, scowling in protest at his dongsaeng.

“I don’t see you rushing to pour your heart out to a certain underclassman,” he spits back, feeling incredibly defensive at being called out. Hyungwon’s brow furrows together, and he slowly takes another bite before responding.

“Don’t snap at me just because you’re feeling insecure about your place with Kihyunnie,” Hyungwon tells him, his voice much lower than normal. His eyes glint with a warning light, and Minhyuk seems to physically deflate. Hyungwon ‘hmmph’s under his breath, shifting in his seat as the older drops his head to the table again. He lets the older stew in silence as he finishes the cake, losing himself to his own thoughts of a certain maknae…

 At the end of the week, to celebrate finishing up finals, Hoseok hosts a typical stress-relief party. It’s on the nicer side of town, in a penthouse overlooking the skyline of Seoul. Booze line the counters, glittering bottles of tequila, vodka, whiskey, and gin reflecting the overhead lights. Fruit juices surround them, providing ample mixers for the liquors. Hyungwon drags Minhyuk there under the pretense of needing a designated driver for their ride back, but really Minhyuk just thinks the younger will need someone to keep him from stripping when he gets drunk… again.

Minhyuk checks his phone as they ride the elevator up on the off-chance Kihyun had turned on his texts for only a moment. After all, he’d been sending countless messages late at night—when his insecurities become too much to bear—telling Kihyun how much he misses him, what reminded him of the younger that day. Really, you’d think the two were already dating from how sappy some of the messages were. But, among all these, Minhyuk still hasn’t found the guts to confess (no matter how obvious it is now).

Hyungwon lets him stare holes into the digitized screen, having given up on keeping the older from making a fool of himself.

The elevator slows to a smooth stop with a small ding, and the doors open directly into Hoseok’s private apartment. Pristine hardwood floors stretch for as long as the eye can see, and a flat screen sits on the far wall of the room with a large sectional in front of it. The bar is off to the left and, despite the small amount of people here, Hyungwon leaves Minhyuk to get a drink. Minhyuk stifles a sigh as he slips his phone into his pocket, chewing on his bottom lip as he drifts towards the couch.

“Minhyukkie!” Hoseok greets as Minhyuk plops down on the plush piece of furniture. “I’m glad you came! I honestly wasn’t sure you would, you know, with Kihyunnie gone and all.” Jooheon, whose sitting beside Hoseok, shoots him a warning look that doesn’t go unnoticed by Minhyuk.

“Hyung,” Jooheon hisses, bumping his knee with the older’s, “Wonnie-hyung said we shouldn’t mention you-know-who…”

“You can talk about Kihyunnie around me,” Minhyuk defends, poking his bottom lip out in a pout. “Why wouldn’t you?” Hoseok glances between his two dongsaengs, chewing on his bottom lip as he’s obviously quite conflicted about who’s words he should obey. His eyes shine with a light akin to that of a frantic bunny’s.

Jooheon sighs defeatedly after a moment, waving as if to give the older permission. Hoseok beams in relief. He leans over to give the younger a chaste kiss on the cheek, and Jooheon immediately blushes in response as he takes a drink from the neon purple plastic cup in his hand. Hoseok coos and pulls at Jooheon’s cheek, calls him a cute little baby, and Jooheon whines about how Hoseok should stop calling him that because it’s all kinds of not cool.

Minhyuk breaks his eyes away from the nauseating couple, standing with a huff at being so easily forgotten. He trudges over to the counter, where Hyungwon seems to have gotten distracted in his quest for refreshment by the transfer student, Im Changkyun. Hyungwon has himself leaned oh-so elegantly against the counter, an eyebrow quirked up as Changkyun seems unable to form a complete sentence without stuttering and blushing like crazy.

At the sight of the birth of a new couple, Minhyuk can’t help the bitterness that rises in his heart. He blindly grabs for a bottle, any bottle, and mixes it with a fruit juice in a plastic cup. He chugs half of it in one gulp. Though, never having been one much for drinking, Minhyuk almost voms out what he’s just consumed in the next second. His empty stomach roils, and a headache immediately begins to form at his left temple.

He ignores it, though, and empties his cup before pouring out another drink, this one containing more alcohol than the first. He winces, taking absolutely no pleasure in the taste of nail polish remover filling his mouth. He plops down with a huff on the nearest bar stool, pulling out his phone as he sends a text to Kihyun with only a slight buzz.

“Kiihhyunniieee~~~ I wish you were able to answer your texts ;-;”

“Um… hyung?” Hyungwon’s voice suddenly asks, causing Minhyuk’s gaze to jerk up at him. He looks concerned, a slight frown pulling at his lips and his gaze filled with a soft light. “You doing okay? You never drink at these things…”

“Even I’m allowed to have fun, Wonnie!” Minhyuk tells him, his voice coming out much louder than he intends. “I can still have fun, even if I’m not some hot French art student!!!” He huffs again, looking back to his phone to type out such a message and send it to Kihyun. Hyungwon watches him for only a moment more before turning back to Changkyun, giving only a half-shrug as he continues their conversation.

He figures if drinking is what Minhyuk needs to do to finally confess to Kihyun, then the older should go for it.

 The rest of the night is a blur for Minhyuk. The last thing he remembers is getting invited to do shots with an already-drunk Hyunwoo. People gathered around them, cheering for one or the other, though Minhyuk didn’t listen. He just chugged down the tequila, pausing only to send Kihyun more texts.

 The next morning, he awakens on the floor of Hoseok’s beautifully tiled bathroom with a pounding headache. He feels as if he’s been pulled inside-out. The smell of bile fills his nostrils, definitely not helping his already-present nausea.

He struggles to pull himself up off the floor, his legs feeling like jelly and his stomach grumbling loudly in protest. His limbs ache with fatigue, and he has to physically pull himself from object to object to get out of the room. He hangs onto the wall as he walks, not sparing a glance to his fellow classmates passed out all around the apartment.

Hyungwon’s curled up on the couch, looking like a frikkin’ model just laying there. Minhyuk can’t help but think of how unfair that is as he staggers his way to the kitchen. He barely manages to make it to the fridge for a bottle of water before his phone dings.

He pulls it out confusedly, hoping beyond hope it's a message from Kihyun despite his mental haze and physical pain, but it's only a game notifying him he hasn't played it in the last five hours.

"We need to go," Hyungwon suddenly says behind him, causing the older to jump. He immediately regrets it as his stomach roils in protest.

"I'm surprised you're awake," Minhyuk comments, his raspy voice much more gravelly than usual. Hyungwon rolls his eyes, reaching forward to grab Minhyuk by his elbow and lead him out of the apartment.

"I didn't sleep," he spits at him. "Someone had to keep you from trying to sleep with every guy you came across last night." Minhyuk winces, remembering the other reason why he doesn't ever drink.

"That bad?" he asks, his voice pitiful. Or, at least, it would be to a better-rested Hyungwon.

"Yes."

Minhyuk whines at his own misery, clutching the water bottle and his phone tightly as he's forced out of the apartment.

 On the way home, Minhyuk dares to look at his text conversation with Kihyun. He scrolls by text after text he'd sent, walls and walls of slurred words and—

Oh, God...

Minhyuk groans, thunking his head against the passenger-side window over and over. Hyungwon only chuckles from behind the steering wheel, not even sparing him a glance.

"I tried getting that thing away from you last night," Hyungwon tells him, but you said something about putting me into a hospital with a coma with a different name? I don't know, it seemed pretty specific coming from a drunk teenager, so I just let you be."

Minhyuk doesn't reply, shoving his phone between his thigh and the cracking leather seat as he casts his eyes towards the side of the road. They pass the body of a small hare, belly turned up and tongue lolled out. Dead.

Minhyuk knows exactly how it feels.

 Kihyun releases a relieved sigh as he steps into the Incheon airport. After a month of traversing foreign streets and an almost-11-hour flight, it's good to be home. He takes in the smells, the lights, the voices. The familiar sound of Korean puts his mind at ease, and he makes a beeline for the luggage pickup.

 He doesn't even think to turn on his messages until he gets home. He’s just about to take a shower after putting his bags in his room, but he pauses for a moment to check his phone. He isn’t expecting much, as all of his friends had known of the strict no-texting rule he’d set himself whilst abroad.

Imagine his surprise when a total two hundred messages came flooding through his notifications all at once. He drops the phone in surprise as it keeps dinging and dinging, it still buzzing incessantly on his comforter as he watches in utter shock, his lips parted in a small ‘o’ and his eyes widened ten times their normal size.

Finally, after what seems like hours, the device finally settles down. Kihyun sighs, picking it up to see just what the hell happened.

Two hundred messages. From Minhyuk.

…Huh…

Kihyun bites back his own irritation at his same-age friend, opening his phone to read just what was so damn important. The feeling melts away, though, just at the first message he sees.

I miss you, Kihyunnie~ I hope your trip is going well <33

Kihyun can’t help but coo, eagerly going on to the next message. If they’re all this sweet, maybe he won’t nag Minhyuk quite as much when he sees him.

 What he finds, though, is something he doesn’t expect. A barrage of drunken texts, spouting in varying levels of coherency how much Minhyuk cares about him, likes him—really likes him—, loves him, wants to die with him and have a family with him and even though he’s a total troll sometimes he still loves him and—

And then it stops. It ends with a single text from the following day saying: “Please, God, if you care about me at all, just delete this entire conversation and don’t ever ask me about it.”

Kihyun smirks wryly at his screen, quirking up a brow. He sighs heavily, poising his thumbs with all the expertise of any other high schooler and types out a quick message.

Minhyuk-ah~ You should come by and take your dear friend out for some barbecue for coming back home ㅋㅋㅋ

He doesn’t even have to wait a full minute before he gets a reply.

Kihyunnie!!! You’re back???

You didn’t see my texts, did you???

Nvm

I’m on my way

Kihyun chuckles breathily, hurrying his tiny self to the bathroom to take a quick shower. He absolutely does not want to look like he’s just spent so many hours on a plane for the conversation he’s about to have.

 Minhyuk pulls up to Kihyun’s apartment building only a short time later, shooting him a quick text to let him know he’s there. Kihyun seems to have been waiting for him, bolting out the lobby a second later and hopping into the car. Minhyuk can’t even hope to fight the urge to lean over to center console to tug his friend in for a warm hug. He smells like roses and lavender, a familiar smell that makes Minhyuk’s heart race.

“Missed me, huh?” Kihyun asks teasingly as they break apart, wiggling a brow at him. Minhyuk rolls his eyes, jabbing a finger into his ribs before turning his attention back to the road.

“Now why would I ever miss you, you gremlin?”

Kihyun yelps out a laugh, his eyes crinkling closed and his dimples appearing in his cheeks. Minhyuk feels a warm sort of fuzziness overtake him, making him feel all gooey on the inside, and he has the notion to plant a quick little kiss on Kihyun’s cheek.

He doesn’t of course, as that’d be all kinds of telling, and he drives into the street, knowing just where to go.

 They arrive at a small barbecue place they and their families have been going to since they were little. They manage to even get their favorite table, a small one in the very back that’s perfect for watching the other diners. Neither have to even glance at the menus before ordering, and their drinks come in record time.

Minhyuk sips at his coke, lips pulling anxiously as the straw. His legs bounce up and down under the table, and he doesn’t meet Kihyun’s eyes. The slightly-younger watches him, a knowing little smirk set on his features, and Minhyuk can’t shake the sense of foreboding filling him.

“So… how was Paris?” Minhyuk asks, trying lamely for conversation. Kihyun chuckles under his breath, and he gives a little shrug.

“Okay, I guess,” he replies. “Met some nice people, took some pretty pictures, ate some great food. But, ya know, it isn’t home.” He pauses then, slurping at his soda before leaning forward. “I missed it here,” he says, his tone dripping with meaning. “I missed you.”

Minhyuk could probably run a marathon purely off the adrenaline that single sentence sends coursing through his veins. He stiffens in his seat, though, boundless energy just running through him. However, he needs to play it cool, as he’s still holding out hope that Kihyun had taken mercy and deleted all the messages he’d sent.

“I-I missed you, too, Kihyunnie,” he mumbles, his throat tightening at saying the shorter’s name. Kihyun hums then, leaning even closer, propping himself up on his elbows. The light in his eyes sets Minhyuk’s blood a’boilin’. He swallows thickly, frozen where he sits. His heart hammers in his chest, threatening to burst free and just jump into Kihyun’s hands.

He doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to know if Kihyun made himself witness to the absolute mess he was those few weeks ago at Hoseok’s party. He cringes just thinking about it…

But, as always, he just can’t keep himself from saying what he needs to.

“Did you… read my texts?”

“Yeah,” Kihyun replies without missing a beat, slurping again at his coke. Minhyuk chokes on pure oxygen, lurching back in his seat and hiding his face in shame.

“Oh, God… Oh God oh God oh God…” he mutters over and over, his face burning as he grows more embarrassed with every syllable that passes his lips. Kihyun yelps out a warm laugh across from him, but he ignores it. He can’t even bring himself to look up at the shorter.

“I don’t know why you had to wait for me to leave the country to tell me all that,” Kihyun tells him plainly, his tone only slightly nagging. “We’re best friends, Min. You should’ve been honest with me. I mean, I felt I was being pretty obvious in my feelings towards you, so…”

Minhyuk gasps overdramatically, his eyes going wide as he just takes in the slightly-younger’s words. Could he really mean…?

As if hearing his thoughts, Kihyun hums, nodding his head oh-so coolly. Minhyuk furrows his brow, feeling incredibly defensive suddenly. Kihyun’s just giving him that haughty, knowing smirk he just hates yet loves, and he doesn’t know how to respond other than to argue.

“Well you could’ve just said something!!” he fires back. He begins to pick at his bottom lip, eyes shining with a relieved light. Kihyun ‘hmmph’s, rolling his eyes as he sits back in his chair, though the amused sparkle to his eyes tells he isn’t really all that annoyed.

“I could say the same to you.”

“I did!!”

“Before I left the country and you got drunk!! What was with that, anyway? You don’t drink.”

“Yeah, well…” Minhyuk mumbles, unable to answer him. After all, what’s he supposed to say? That he got so god-awful drunk because of him?? Absolutely not. Kihyun would lord that over him for years if he did. Kihyun sighs, and his foot slides across the floor to Minhyuk’s to press against it gently, consolingly. Minhyuk meets his gaze, and he feels himself ease.

 Their appetizers come before either can say anything, and then their food soon after. Kihyun only glances at Minhyuk once, and Minhyuk knows he hadn’t needed to worry all this time. No matter how many times Kihyun goes off to foreign countries for whatever reasons, he’ll always be Minhyuk’s… whatever that may entail.

Minhyuk finds himself thinking that it may mean much more than before, as Kihyun’s foot begins to rub its way up and down his skinny leg. Minhyuk shoots Kihyun a guarded gaze, and Kihyun only blows him a flirtatious little kiss before diving into his food.

The slightly-older has to stifle a sigh, only just then beginning to imagine what kind of mess he’s gotten himself into with this one…

[shadlad24]

The Forsaken Hope

“Mother?”

Gabrielle flinched from the word and the sweet voice speaking it. Oh, gods. Solan! I’m- He- What is he doing here? She watched mutely as Xena cut through the prison encasing her son until the small boy slumped onto her. Oh, gods; oh, gods! Has he been here the whole time? T- …two years now! How? Why? He didn’t do anything wrong! It was me! Me!

Xena got the answer out of her child, who was somehow even smaller in the afterlife than he had been in death.

Most of the color had drained out of his eyes so that they had become pale blue, reflections of his mother’s. “I didn’t want to go.”

Oh no… Somehow, Gabrielle knew why though Xena got mired in greater disbelief.

“You chose this?”

The bard’s aching heart once more ground its shattered pieces into a fine powder at Solan’s soft-spoken response, how he looked to her whenever he hesitated to continue explaining himself. How can you even think to spare my feelings? Oh, Solan...

“Hades told me that, in the Elysian fields, y-you—” the first worried glance that pierced Gabrielle’s soul—“don’t even know you’re dead. You just live the same day over and over, thinking your family’s gonna be home any minute, but they never come—” a second, innocent lance to her desecrated spirit—“And the next morning, it just starts all over again…”

/

From the depths of her cocoon, Hope shifted to try and get more comfortable.

It never worked.

The moment she rose up from sitting on her heels to recline more on her spine as if in a hammock, the constricting embrace that she so wished was Gabrielle’s snapped and let her upper half drop. Much like how Gabrielle had released her daughter and ran out of her parents’ barn so many months ago. “No!” Hope cried dully, though she knew in another few months, she’d change position again and maybe be squeezed hard by the cocoon once more. If not, then maybe a few months after then, or a few years. Maybe a decade.

Eternity stretched before her, offering unlimited possibilities of tantalizing misery.

She was in Tartarus, after all.

Her near-white eyes drifted to the cocoon that was somewhat beside and in front of hers.

Where Solan was.

Part of her punishment had been to watch the poor boy miss his mother, languish without her embrace, as Hope did the same thing. Watch his profile avidly drink in every moment that he could of his and Xena’s life together, from the second he was born to the moment he died. Watch the life drain out of him though he had been dead longer than she had.

Hope watched Solan shrink, little-by-little. Lose ever more color from his skin, eyes, hair. Sometimes she wondered if the same was happening to her but could not see herself. Furry, fuzzy coils always wrapped around her, loose yet unrelenting. She could not shift them to see even a flash of her own skin or hair, for they were Gabrielle’s, something Hope ached for but could never have, even before being condemned to the dark side of the underworld.

. Hey all,

A month of Intertwine, and it’s all over. *sniffle* I, uh, HOPE you’ve enjoyed it. Thanks, all. Words of support would be great, for the work I’ve done and that still yet to be done. …A willing, able, and reliable alpha/beta reader would be even better. Here’s to HOPING! :’) Until next time,

ShadLad24

PS: Guess what! My next post will be my 200th! What should I do to celebrate? Hmm…

Somewhere

Flash-fic mood. Did you ever, like me, wonder where Gabrielle went during “God Fearing Child” while Ares was dogging Xena? Well, wonder no more! (LOL) Please enjoy this excerpt from one of my one-shots.

—

Sprinting back the way she had come, past Xena and Solan, the blonde hurtled toward the catacomb of cocoons. She would rip each one to pieces to find her own child if necessary.

I know you’re out there; somewhere! My, my love; my hope. Please; let me find you…

#

Hope was around every corner in the underworld, always glittering out of reach and slipping through Gabrielle’s scrabbling fingers whenever the battling bard tried to take hold of it.

“Please, Hope,” she said lowly as tears leaked through her perforated soul and cascaded ever faster down her invisible face. “Please…”

Bright blue eyes glowed in the dark aways ahead; an abandoned baby sat in the middle of the tunnel, dressed in burlap and chewing on the lamb toy she had been given by her mother.

The woman raced to scoop her infant up into her loving arms but was too late; a looming warrior appeared and ran the tiny child through with the sword that had once been Gabrielle’s salvation. “No!” she screamed, tearing at hair she no longer had either.

Long honey-blond locks, so like her own before another of Xena’s blades chopped them off, flashed in the light of a mounted torch even farther down the path to nowhere.

Gabrielle pursued those silky tresses with renewed vigor. “Hope!”

But they turned to a frazzled orange mop, turned to ashes on a funeral pyre, before she could even touch them. 

Her empty hands clutched at steadying wood that wasn’t there until the staff that she had long since thrown away cast a shadow on the cavern wall another few feet ahead of her.

A vision of Ares taking Hope out of a razed town in a flash of light, the replica of her mother’s quarterstaff throwing a sliver of darkness over the bard for a split second, blinded her.

In her momentary disorientation, Solan’s first words to her on their first reunion played in her head. ‘Hi, Gabrielle! Wait ’til you see! I got a staff; just like yours!’ 

But she never got to see Solan’s staff, never saw him alive again after Ephiny, the giver of Gabrielle’s first staff, shooed him and Xenan out the door. Instead, the bard had given her last staff a meaningful look before closing that same door on it and then leading her daughter by the hand to her first death.

“No!” Lunging for her old weapon only for it to be carried away by a river much like the one she had set her Hope on and thus lost forever too, she soon realized that the sounds enveloping her in their own constricting web had changed.

Instead of the muffled wailing of the damned, she heard her own sweet little giggles, the laughter of a shy child playing with her mother.

Thick voice catching in her narrowing airway, Gabrielle choked, “Oh, Hope! Please! Mommy’s here. Mommy loves you! She just wants to hold you…” A deathly sigh rattled her chest and broke apart the lump in her throat. “Mommy can’t hurt you anymore, baby. W-won’t! Never! Please let mommy see you…” she begged though she knew the effort was futile.

“Give it up, mother,” that hateful growl rustled the short hairs on the back of her neck.

Leaping to her feet and spinning around on the spot, Gabrielle pressed her senses to their limits in hopes of regaining her lost hope.

All that was left to her was the familiar hollowness around and within her. The weight of her guilt and grief, of her sheer Hopelessness, crushed the childless mother into the dirt.

I will go mad if I keep this up. I will wander the bowels of Tartarus until I die. Then I will leave my body behind and continue searching for all eternity…

There was something else I was supposed to do. What was it? Watery green-blue eyes sought the answer in the flickering shadows. Proxidicae! she realized in a dread-filled second as a contingent of Zeus’s personal guards marched to and past her in military formation without ever knowing she was there. The baby! Solan! Xena!

One last prayer escaping from her ruined Pandora’s box of a heart, Gabrielle conceded defeat. Alright, my love. You do not want me with you; I understand. I will leave you be for now. But I cannot do as you asked. I will never give up on you, Hope. Never. I’ll find you and bring you home someday. I promise.

[gossipnetwork-blog]

Inside Jesse Paris Smith's Bold New Plan to Fight Trump, Save Planet

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/inside-jesse-paris-smiths-bold-new-plan-to-fight-trump-save-planet/

Inside Jesse Paris Smith's Bold New Plan to Fight Trump, Save Planet

Jesse Paris Smith remembers the exact day she became a climate activist. Late on a school night, in a Manhattan deli, frantically skimming the New York Times to finish a last-minute homework assignment in 10th grade.

Trump vs. Planet Earth

In pulling out of the Paris climate deal, Trump showed America is a clear and present danger to civilization itself

“I loved nature, so these words like global warming, greenhouse gases, fossil fuels struck me,” Smith, 30, says while sitting in a Midtown Manhattan conference room. Smith is warm and unimposing. She smiles when she speaks so her eyes are like little brown crescents framed by her plum knit cap. 

Back at home, Smith continues, she messaged the one still-awake person on AOL Instant Messenger to see if he knew anything of these intriguingly named concepts. “It was terrible,” she said flatly. “It felt like I was dealing with the end of the world and nobody was talking about it.”

That genuine fear she felt as a teenager was also a call to action that she’s developed as an adult. In 2014, Smith founded the nonprofit organization, Pathway to Paris, which hosts inventive events where a hodgepodge of artists, academics, politicians and scientists together on one stage to talk about environmental rights. Smith – daughter of Patti Smith and the late Fred “Sonic” Smith – met her co-organizer, the cellist Rebecca Foon, over Facebook before the People’s Climate March the same year. High-profile artists like Thurston Moore, Michael Stipe and Thom Yorke became regulars, drawn to Pathway’s message and its clubhouse-like vibe. Last summer, for example, Pathway threw a 200th birthday party for Smith’s favorite poet, Henry David Thoreau, in an intimate wine bar. Stipe read the great transcendental work, “My Love Must Be As Free.”

Michael Stipe reads Thoreau at Pathway to Paris event at City Winery

But in the dark aftermath of the 2016 election and President Trump’s abrupt decision to pull the United States out of the global Paris Agreement, Smith and Foon concocted Pathway’s most impactful idea: 1,000 Cities. Starting this year, the new initiative will provide funding and awareness to help cities become completely carbon-neutral by 2040. As part of a new climate-fighting triptych with the United Nations Development Programme and grassroots group 350.org, Smith is energized by the new solution-oriented direction.

On Sunday at Carnegie Hall, Pathway’s Smith, Foon, Stipe and Patti Smith will be joined by a cadre of eclectic names including Joan Baez, 350.org founder Bill McKibbon, Cat Power, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Talib Kweli and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to begin the vital new chapter. 

How has the feeling around Pathway to Paris intensified since Trump got elected? It’s still horrible, but if there had to be a silver lining [to Trump’s presidency] it’s that it ignited a whole new wave of action. After the election, everyone who lives in my neighborhood – we all gathered at this same place – and in the morning everyone came in like a zombie. It disturbed me to see how upset and angry and how totally beaten down everyone was. Something snapped in me, where I was like, ‘We can’t sit around – this is more urgent than it was before.’ And, of course, it was already urgent.

And now, without Obama, we’ve got something to lose.  Yeah. And it’s good to talk, but we can’t just sit around complaining about how terrible it is. That just normalizes [these issues] into becoming a conversation piece. After Trump it was like, everyone’s sad and everyone’s heartbroken, everyone’s sick and anxious and worried. So how do we fix it? What do we do? That’s what helps me to cope. Even if you don’t know what impact something will have, doing something feels better than sitting at home, being sad. 

What was your reaction to the business community and politicians pledging to uphold their emissions targets despite Trump backing out of the Paris Agreement? I felt it was like a whole new wave of citizen uprising; a new voice of citizen activism. The day Trump pulled out of the agreement, you saw people talking who weren’t talking before. They weren’t talking a year or even five years before that. 

For example, Pathway to Paris had been going on since 2014, but it was still tough to get people to listen, come to our events and join into the movement. Now it’s easier. Even with my own friends, there was a big spike, and I’m like, ‘Guys, I’ve been here doing this for 10 years!’ [Laughs].

How do you envision a 100 percent renewables-based city? It’s almost a metaphorical idea. Because what that looks like for New York City would be different from how it would be in New Delhi, which would be different from Tokyo. It’s fun to imagine how, as we went into the industrial revolution, we can also go into this new era of renewable energy. It could be a brand new era of our world.

How will you measure the progress of partnering cities as they work on becoming more carbon neutral? One thing we’re using is a free tool called City Insight. It basically inputs all the data of a city – its economy, budget, and so on – and it creates a climate plan to follow in order to go carbon neutral by 2040. That’s what they used with Toronto – a 1,000 Cities partner – and it was successful. Our other hope is to help developing cities get funding. And then the music and the concert aspect of [Pathway to Paris] is there to keep the issue in the culture, where people feel connected and can get involved.

Jesse Paris Smith speaking at the United Nations earlier this year with her mother, Patti Smith.

The individuals you gather for Pathway events are increasingly eclectic – Bill McKibbon to Michael Stipe. Why that approach? Well, one of the first problems [we had to tackle] was that there is no real cultural voice in the climate movement. That’s what people like Bill McKibbon also kept telling me. On the other side, [musicians like] Michael Stipe were excited, too. I really love the mutual admiration of the events. When the [United Nations Development Programme] got involved, they were like ‘Oh, no one wants to here from the speakers, we just need more music.’ And then the musicians were like, ‘We have too much music. Let’s get one more speaker.’

You’re only 30, and in addition to Pathway to Paris, you’ve curated unique music and arts events at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rubin Museum and the annual Tibet House fundraiser. Where do you think your desire to curate came from? When I was younger, I’d go on tour with my mom and her band during the summers when I was a teenager, I was more interested in assisting her tour manager. I really liked the behind-the-scenes stuff. Setting up the stage, checking microphones, printing things, calling everyone to tell them what time they’re getting picked up in the morning. Whereas my brother’s a guitar player and he would go and play with her. I wanted to learn how to manage.

And you were like, what, 14?  Yes, 14, 15,16 [laughs]. I loved playing music and I wanted to take piano lessons when I was 13, but I always thought of music more as my own private hobby. 

When was the first time you performed with your mom onstage? I was 16. We played “Imagine” for John Lennon’s birthday at the Free Library in Philadelphia.

Were you nervous? Terrified [laughs]. You know, I wasn’t a musician and now I’m going onstage with this band that’s been playing together for like 30 years? But I was like, ‘They need me to do this. Just be cool, don’t mess up.’ [Laughs].

It’s like what you were saying about poetry – how it’s a lot easier to get up onstage when you’re reading a poem as opposed to singing a song. That’s how I learned to compose music – writing music for my mom to read poetry to. She would give me a poem or this piece of writing to read at an event or recording. So together, we’d like look at the poem and be like, OK, what’s the feeling of this poem? Is this hopeful, is it sad, is it peaceful? Does it change? We’d go through and diagram what lines or parts sounded intense, solemn, or maybe required something else that was different, interesting.

Bill Mckibben reading Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry

What’s your earliest memory of feeling a connection to nature? Well, I was born in Detroit and grew up in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, which is a little town on the lake on Lake St. Clair. The whole town was called the nautical mile. Behind and in between all the houses were canals. Our backyard was overgrown with beautiful trees; the lake was at the end of this dead end street. And there were tons of kids on the street, so basically [we’d] get home from school and go on an adventure. So growing up there I was just fully immersed in nature.

Did you have a boat? No, but some friends did. We’d go fishing on our deck for – muskies? Yes [laughs] – I think that’s what they’re called. You’d have to ask my brother. Where we lived was filled with shops selling all kinds of lures. There was a bait shop, a marina, a supply store for sailing clothes and souvenir shops selling little sailboats and lighthouses. We moved to Manhattan when I was nine. It was an intense transition. I don’t know if I’d have the same love of nature if I was born in Manhattan.

Why do you think you think climate change had such a strong impact on you? It felt like I was dealing with the end of the world and nobody was talking about it. When I was 15, I said okay, I have to become a climate scientist! And I’m gonna have a science lab and live on the glaciers and study the ice melting! [Laughs]. 

I started to volunteer for different environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Environmental Defense. When I was a teenager, I was a little shy, a little awkward. I didn’t really know how to find other people who felt the same way as I did. So every night I’d go on my computer and sign petitions, write letters to the mayor for hours by myself. 

That’s amazing. I remember there was a section on the Environmental Defense’s global warming campaign website called “Undo It,” where you could download all the materials to start your own local chapter. I downloaded all of the brochures and signup sheets and posters. I went to Kinkos and made copies, I had a filing system, clipboards, pens – I was so excited about starting my own chapter! 

But then this fear set in. And I was too afraid to find anyone. I was even afraid to hang up a poster. I went out one day to hang them up and I just remember thinking ‘I can’t do this.’ I still have the box with all of those materials. I didn’t even tell my friends at school about it.

What was holding you back? I was just so solitary and quiet. But being an activist and having a nonprofit is all about bringing people together and collaborating. So in order to do that, I had to change.

What did you do after high school?  I was determined to be a climate scientist, even though I wasn’t particularly good at math or science [laughs]. But I was also torn between pursuing science and music. It felt like choosing between what was in my heart and what came more naturally. So I deferred my acceptance to Sarah Lawrence College to figure out how I might do both. I applied to Columbia University – they have this incredible climate program – but got rejected. I was also in my first band at the time and I thought, I’ll forget being a scientist and I’ll work on music instead. But I kept going back and forth.

I took courses at the New School about environmental writing. I also worked in a book bindery on 27th Street. I think I’ve probably bound hundreds of books. And because of those experiences physically making books, I suddenly wanted to write a book. I felt unfocused, but I was just trying to figure it out. And my mom inspired some of that, too.

Because you saw it was possible to do more than one thing?  She’s singer, a songwriter, a writer, a poet, a photographer, an artist. You can choose more than one path.

Do you see the 1,000 Cities initiative becoming bigger than Pathway? Definitely. My hope is that Pathway to Paris continues to bring that cultural aspect and becomes a global event, where people in different cities can organize their own Pathway concerts as a way to bring people together around this issue.

To participate or find out more about Pathway to Paris’ 1,000 Cities initiative, sign up here.

Source link