#or even moms like. i operate off the assumption that it's usually one parent doing everything

[elytrafemme]

my dad is objectively really funny because he, like, LARPs as a domestic man teaching us the cold hard lessons of adulthood but like... i genuinely do not think this man knows how to change a diaper nor do i think he knows how to cook any better than i do so like what’s going on here 💀

[lovelyirony]

the much anticipated second part for the amnesia-related fic. 

A wedding ring. 

This doesn’t mean that he and Tony are married except that he hasn’t seen Tony with a wedding ring and he hasn’t mentioned a wife and he doesn’t sound like he has a wife and if Rhodey-if Jim had a wife, then wouldn’t he know about her? Wouldn’t they have met by now? He may not know Tony yet, but he doesn’t think that he would be that cruel. 

“Colonel Rhodes-” 

“Friday, don’t,” Jim says, swatting at the air. “What-why did you hide that from me?” 

“Sir believed it would be best,” Friday answers, tone almost quieter. “He...wasn’t sure that you would understand.” 

“I don’t understand,” he says. “Why would I marry him of all people? He’s not exactly my type.” 

“Since I am a learning program, I cannot say for sure. Humans do a lot of illogical things.” 

He’s trying to wrap his head around it and avoid Tony at the same time. 

Friday won’t let him see any wedding pictures, not until he remembers more. 

- 

Even though he’s been (mostly) successful at avoiding Tony for about a week and a half, the man is still so nice. 

He’s still operating under the assumption that Jim has no idea that they’re married, and he does stuff like leave out a cup of coffee and offer breakfast up or ask if he wants pizza for dinner.

Jim reads too much into it. 

And he doesn’t know why, because it’s not like anything has really changed, except for the fact that Tony won’t call him Rhodey. 

Jim gave him permission to, saw how much it killed him with every correction and every reminder. Told him “you can call me Rhodey, if you want.” 

And he doesn’t. 

Tony never does. 

He still almost says it, but Jim is quicker on the tongue, and he doesn’t make a move to try to push any memories at all. 

(Even though he remembers how happy Tony was to hear that memory about grocery shopping and Dum-E’s code source.) 

He does want to remember. He wants to remember why he apparently married Tony and was genuine about it, why Pepper and him are best friends and never were anything more, why he’s...why he’s so different from what he wanted. 

-

Tony knows that Jim’s acting differently. He’s not sure why. He’s not sure he wants to know why, because that might complicate everything. 

And he doesn’t want another thing to be wrong. Everyone’s walking on eggshells around him except for the one damn person that probably should be, but Rhodey’s never been good at following rules. (But he’s good at fooling people.) 

Pepper talks to Tony a lot. Asks him how he’s doing, if there’s anything she can do. 

Repair someone’s memory is a little bit outside of her area of expertise. 

“It’ll be okay,” she says, putting her tiny hand over his. “Things will work out.” 

They both know that in Tony’s life, luck has never been quite what it seems. Or existent at all, at times. 

-

Ironically, it’s their anniversary of the wedding when Jim remembers something else. It actually comes in the form of looking in the fridge and not finding his apples. 

“Quit leaving honey-crisp off of the list just because you don’t like them you asshole,” he calls to Tony. 

Tony almost yelps. 

“Out of everything in your life and that’s what you remember? Your stupidly sweet apples?” 

“Are you gonna get them?” 

“Why don’t you come with me?” Tony asks, “just so that you can get your apples and maybe get out of the house for once.” 

“Hmph. Fine,” Jim answers. “Where’s my coat?” 

“Uh...” Tony trails off, trying to find the words. “Third peg on the...right, I think?” 

“You’ve known me for years, and you don’t know where my coat is?” 

Rhodey is always the one to hang up his coat, and then put his arms out for Tony’s. 

“To be fair, I am important and fancy and a big deal,” Tony scoffs. “Come on, go get your coat and then I’m going to show you what horrible things you buy from the store.” 

“It’s not that bad. And what, you don’t like good apples?” 

“As sour as can be, sourpatch. As sour as can be.” 

-

Grocery shopping with Tony is...interesting. He didn’t think it would take so long. 

“This is why you don’t usually come,” Tony teases him. “I take so long and you end up sitting in the car and cursing at Pepper or Happy about how much time I spend dedicated to snack-judging.” 

“And I put up with that?” 

“You do,” Tony says, grabbing the cart. “Because you love me and you deal with a lot worse from me.” 

“Like what?” 

“Best not to talk about it,” Tony says. “We’re in public after all, honey.” 

“Ugh, boo,” Rhodey teases. “Give me the list. I bet I can speed-run this.” 

“How? Technically, you don’t think you’ve ever been to this store before!” Tony exclaims with a gigantic, shit-eating grin. 

“Way to rub it in you bastard,” he says with a laugh. “Now come on, I wanna see what kind of salad you think we’re gonna get.” 

“Not you thinking you’re going to be eating junk food,” Tony sighs. 

“I lost my memory!” 

“That would’ve worked, like, two weeks ago. Now I know better.” 

Grocery shopping is...fun. They make fun of foods and different products, and Tony shows him which things he might like. 

“I like...I like fruit salad?” 

“Yes, yes you do Rhodey-dear,” Tony says. “Your favorite thing in the world for fruit.” 

“Seems suspicious.” 

“You’ll have to try it again, then.” 

Rhodey watches him as they’re shopping. He’s easy to be around, honestly. He has that sort of energy that makes you feel like he’s just happy to be in that moment. 

Tony also has very questionable taste in everything. 

“Quinoa?” 

“What? You’ve eaten it before! It’s not your least favorite thing that I’ve cooked?” 

“How is it not? Is it because I’m old?” 

“No, not because you’re old,” Tony scowls. “When you’d come back from the service, you’d eat literally anything I put in front of you. I once gave you a block of cheese and you just sat there. Eating it.” 

“There’s no way I did that.” 

“You did! Ask Pepper, she has a picture of it!” 

He goes back to quiet after that, remembering the picture. 

-

Jim isn’t even sure he wants to bring it up. He’s not even sure if he could love Tony again, and somehow that thought makes his head hurt. 

He knows that apparently, he fell in love once. 

So he needs answers. 

-

Jim had talked to his parents, but he hadn’t really had an opportunity to talk about anything important. Try as he had to get more information out of them, they weren’t giving much up, except for parts about his military achievements and funny stories that he’s written to them about. 

When he gets back home and he sees Mama, she knows. 

“Come here baby,” she says, putting him into her arms. “Let me answer your questions.” 

“Why him?” 

Mama laughs, grinning up at him from her place on the couch. 

“You reacted like this when you first started rooming together, too. I was worried that I’d be involved in a court case for attempted murder!” 

“And you weren’t?” 

“No,” Mama answers. “Instead, I get no phone call from you for three weeks, until the day before your holiday break started, and you told me that you were bringing who you used to call ‘the biggest nuisance since fruit flies’ home to Thanksgiving.” 

“Why did I...why did I bring him?” 

“I didn’t get that answered until he fell asleep,” she says. “I’m making you some coffee, alright dear?” 

“Okay, so long as I get an answer.” 

“So impatient,” she mutters as she makes her way to the kitchen, Jim following. 

He watches how easily his mom pours the coffee, and remembers in a brief flash that Tony always would bring the fancy, flavored creamer to the holiday events. 

“Oh come on,” Tony said. “You have gotten too used to my kindness, and there’s no reason to stop being kind. Besides, remember last year when you nearly cried because I bought creamer from the store? Yeah, not having a repeat of that.” 

“And would that be so bad?” he teased Tony, wrapping an arm around his waist, and-

He blinks. 

That was...that was definitely a new kind of memory. 

“James, are you alright?” His mother is looking at him, and maybe she knows, maybe she doesn’t know that he just remembered something. He’s honestly not sure. 

“Uh, yeah. Fine. I’m good.” 

Mama looks across the room, smiling. 

“He was a timid little thing when he got here. Fixed up the washing machine when it broke, just in time. Nearly wore a suit to dinner, said you didn’t tell him what kind of ‘casual’ we were going for...” 

He snorts as he slowly remembers that one. 

“What do you mean you didn’t mean a suit?!” Tony had wailed, gripping Rhodey’s shirt. “You said I had to dress nice!” 

“I meant literally anything but your Black Sabbath shirt!” 

“Why would I have worn my Black Sabbath shirt? Your mom would probably think I was a Satanist!” 

They both look at each other for a moment, and Rhodey’s the first one to break and laugh. 

“Listen you idiot, it won’t be so bad. We can just ditch the coat, ditch the tie, and you’ll be...okay. A bit nicer than most of us, but hey. That’s what I get for not telling you that suits are weird.” 

“Suits are not weird, you’re just uneducated in what is sophisticated,” Tony says, turning his nose up as Rhodey rolls his eyes. 

“Oh yeah, sure, because knowing which one is the dessert spoon is going to help me save people abroad. My bad.” 

Tony looks back at him, and his heart skips a beat. It does. Really, it does. 

It almost feels like someone’s reading back to him what he already knows at this point. 

His mom squeezes his hand, smiling. 

“You remember at least some of it, don’t you?” 

“Well...uh, yeah? I-I do.” 

“Does Tony know that you know that you’re...married?” 

“No,” Rhodey says. “I know some, but not enough.” 

“Give him a chance,” she says. “And get back home, I’m sure he’s missing you.” 

Rhodey embraces his mother, and prepares for the drive home. 

- 

Being missed is a weird concept to deal with. 

He also did not exactly think of that. So he’s currently driving back and checked his phone to seven missed calls from Tony, three from Pepper, and one text from Happy that simply reads “lol ur dead hahaha good luckkkkk” 

Well shit. 

Tony, understandably is pissed and scared and a tad upset. 

Not a tad. 

“Where were you?” He says as soon as Rhodey appears back in the kitchen. Tony’s hands wander close, and he almost leans in. 

Almost. 

“I was visiting my parents,” he responds. “Sorry, forgot to text.” 

“Please remember next time, your-well, Tony’s annoying when you leave,” Pepper says. 

(Okay Rhodey doesn’t know how they got away with this for so long, it’s really, really obvious that they’ve been covering it up.) 

“I will,” Rhodey says. “Did I miss anything?” 

“I’ve elected that we’re going to cook tonight,” Tony declares. “I am absolutely sick to death of takeout, and I’m pretty sure that with your lack of knowledge on recipes now, I have you beat in the kitchen.” 

“I can still read recipes, you dumbass. Besides, I just remembered your stupid ‘bake’ hack for your stupid casserole dish, so...” 

“Out of everything, and that’s the thing you remember today?!” 

“Well, I also remembered that apparently you wore a suit to my house for Thanksgiving!” 

Tony stops. 

“What else you remember from that, or was it just that?” 

He doesn’t want to say anything in front of Pepper, doesn’t want to say anything just yet. 

“I remember that you were weird about your suit!” 

Tony deflates a bit, but still smiles. 

God, he looks gorgeous. 

Rhodey blinks. Shakes his head out of the thought.

“So. What are we cooking?” 

- 

Tony and cooking is a very interesting concept because it shouldn’t work. 

He never stops moving, can lose interest quickly, and Rhodey would think that he could burn water. 

But he doesn’t. Tony hums along to music, and he tells him all about his favorite songs and why. 

It’s not any rock music, any heavy metal. 

“I don’t listen to that all the time,” Tony says. “You always think I do!” 

“Oh right, because someone who personally has Angus Young’s number just casually isn’t someone who listens to the band all the time, sure,” Rhodey says sarcastically. 

Tony grins, and it’s probably the best damned thing he’s seen all day. 

His heart zings at the realization that Tony smiling is what makes him smile now, what makes him want to stay and learn so much more about how they came to be, what they’ve done together. 

-

Dinner is fun. Tony tells him all about college and what they used to do, and what Rhodey had done. 

Memories are coming back easier. 

“You totally emailed the professor really petty responses!” Tony cries, laughing. 

“It wasn’t that petty,” Rhodey said, huffing. “He was an asshole anyway, he hated whenever we would come late because we wanted coffee, and your order was too complicated!” 

“It wasn’t that complicated!” 

“Oh I’m sorry, them having it written down behind the register for when you come in?” 

“Oh, like they didn’t have a description of you.” 

“Yeah, as your long-suffering companion,” Rhodey teases. 

“You’ve always been,” Tony says. “Because you’re the best.” 

Rhodey stops stirring the pot for a moment. 

“Rhodey? What is it?” 

“I...” 

Tony stands there, grinning. He’s nervously fidgeting, and it’s his move to say the vows. 

“You know, I wasn’t ever sure you’d be up to marrying someone like me,” Tony confesses. “Especially since I almost burned down our dorm room one time.” 

“Wasn’t just one time,” Rhodey teases. “But carry on.” 

“You loser,” Tony says. “Even now, interrupting my heartfelt moment.” 

There’s a ripple of laughter from the small crowd that’s gathered. Rhodey smiles at him, feels tears prick up around his eyes. 

“But I knew that I loved you ever since you would always buy my favorite ramen even though you hated it, and you were the one to get the pizza when I was sad. I knew I wanted the chance of seeing you every day, coming home to you at the end of the day. You’re home, Rhodey. You’re it. No one else could ever possibly hold a candle compared to you.” 

Rhodey startles, looking at Tony. 

“I...I remember. I remember!” 

“Remember what?” Tony asks cautiously. 

(He can’t be let down. Not again.) 

“You smashed cake in my face at our wedding!” Rhodey yells. “And we got married! We got married! Where the fuck is my ring?” 

Tony laughs, scooping Rhodey into a hug. 

“I can’t believe you remember.” 

“Well I was bound to at some point,” Rhodey says. “I can be smart, doofus.” 

“Don’t call me ‘doofus’ during an emotional outburst you absolute nimrod!” 

“I’ll call my husband whatever I want,” he teases, “although I still wanna know where my ring is.” 

“Come with me and get it,” Tony says. “I hid them in my room, just in case.” 

It’s all coming back, the steps they take, the way that Tony supports him as he moves slower. 

Iron Man, for one. War Machine the next. The dates they went on, the proposal. 

The rings are simple. They’re also not wedding rings. 

The class rings. 

Rhodey remembers getting them, remembers getting his initials and Tony’s on the inside, remembers how Tony made some “adjustments” after they received them. 

“You know that you got me,” Tony had told him. 

It slides on, and it feels right. Feels like something was missing. 

He looks up at Tony, smiling. 

“Show me the pictures, Tony.” 

- 

Pepper walks in to find Rhodey absolutely terrorizing Tony about the decor choices from the reception. 

“So I agreed with red and gold? I had no problem with it?” 

“Well, I did do some major convincing, so...” 

“What does that mean?!” 

"You’ll remember later and be sad,” Pepper says. “Or happy. But please don’t tell me if you remember it.” 

“You loved the color scheme,” Tony says. “Because you love me!” 

“Now I am doubting,” Rhodey declares. “I loved you enough to have those colors?” 

“You lost a bet, Boss,” Friday interjects. “That’s why there were those themes.” 

“Friday,” Tony whines. “Why snitch on your creator like this?” 

“I am not programmed to have loyalty, Sir.” 

Rhodey laughs, taking Tony’s hand in his. 

“Well, I guess I’ll still love you. Even if our wedding theme was weird.” 

“It wasn’t that weird!” 

-

It takes about another month before all of the memories are all back to normal, and in that time Rhodey learns (and relearns) a couple of things: 

1.) The best feeling in the world is waking up to Tony, who sleeps very lightly and also wacked Rhodey in the face a total of ten times. (That’s not a new thing, he remembers.) 

2.) He special-orders peppermint-flavored coffee creamer. 

3.) Tony was lying when he said that Rhodey’s new favorite movie was The Goonies. 

(He mostly forgave him for that one.) 

[stahlop]

Making a Memory (3/?)

Once again, a big thanks to my betas @profdanglaisstuff and @thisonesatellite. This chapter was a bitch to write.

And thanks again to @gingerchangeling for her amazing artwork above!

Chapter 1 2

Ao3

The next two days felt like torture for both Hope and Alice. They had been told by the directors that they were lucky to be allowed to go into town and that they’d better behave themselves as they were representing the camp, to which Hope and Alice solemnly nodded. Henry had sent a text through Lori’s phone (another extra dollar to deliver the message) to meet at a coffee house in town at 11:00 to which Hope replied that she and Alice would be there (another dollar to text back).

 Hope had told Alice that Henry had confirmed they were sisters but nothing else, citing that this wasn’t something he could tell them over the phone. 

 “Maybe they both got amnesia and only remembered the last relationship they’d been in and that’s why they think our other parent is different?” Alice had suggested. Hope had thought that could be a possibility but then…

 “But what about the fire? Or is that where the amnesia came from?” 

 “Could be?” Alice said. “Maybe they both got amnesia from the fire and forgot the other and we just went with whichever one saved us.”

 “But that doesn’t explain Henry.” Hope said, which was also the fly in the ointment to every theory they came up with. Henry was the outlier. The only thing that didn’t make sense. As far as Hope knew, she and Henry both had the same father and Henry had never said anything different. Why would he lie to her for so many years about having a sister and potentially a different father?

 “I definitely think their memories have been altered or erased in some way.” Alice said. “My gut usually tells me if a person is lying, and Papa hasn’t lied to me once about thinking Milah was my Mama.” She frowned at the prospect that her gut could have been wrong about her Papa all these years.

 “Is it always right?” Hope asked. “I mean, you told me that it seemed to hate me on sight when we first got here, but it’s calmed down now, right?” Alice nodded. “Wait! Did you say it mainly tells you if someone is lying or not?” Hope asked, realizing what else Alice had said. Alice nodded. “My mom has that same thing. She can tell when someone is lying. I’ve always chalked it up to being able to read people well, but maybe it’s something you’ve inherited from her!” Hope got really excited about that prospect. Another piece of the puzzle being put together.

 “What was it like growing up with a brother?” Alice asked, changing the subject. Her whole world had been turned upside down and hearing about things she may have inherited from a mother she never knew existed still felt a little weird.

 “It…” Hope paused looking for the right words to describe it. “It was different. He’s 15 years older than me so we weren’t close. I mean, we were close, but not the close that two siblings would have if they were only a few years apart. I know he tried to help out mom with me as best he could. He lived at home during college when he could have lived at the dorms, and he lived at home until I was around 10 before mom kicked him out. He only lives a few blocks from us and he’s been real busy with the book writing lately. But he always makes time for me when I need to get away from mom for a little bit. In fact, he paid for me to go to camp this summer because I’ve wanted to go for forever.”

 There was a bit of silence after that. Neither one knowing what to talk about next. They’d exhausted their theories and both of them were a little leery about learning about the other one’s parent without finding out why they’d been separated and potentially lied to for their whole lives.

 Hope spent the next day reading through Henry’s novel, as if it might hold potential clues for her, even though it was a work of fiction. Alice spent them drawing pictures of various things, everything from characters in the book to things that had happened around camp. Hope was a little jealous at how good Alice was. 

 Finally, the day to go into town arrived. Alice and Hope had woken up early and were the first ones on the bus. They’d be getting into town around 10:00 so they’d have a little time to shop around before meeting Henry. They were both so antsy the entire trip there. As they got off the bus, Mrs. Hatfield remarked about how well they were getting along with a knowing look. If she only knew her initial assumption of them being sisters had been spot on, and that was the reason they were getting along, not because of the stupid Get Along Cabin.

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

 Henry had not been all together surprised when he had received the phone call from Hope. He had been expecting it after all, just not so early. He’d thought he’d have another 4 weeks, once camp had ended to figure out how to explain the situation they had all found themselves in. It wasn’t every day, after all, that one meets their long lost twin sister that they never even knew existed (although Disney would have people believing it, but they messed up most of their retellings of fairy tales, why would this be any different). But here he was, with only two days to figure out what he was going to tell his sisters, one of whom he hadn’t seen since she was two.

 He knew the situation was a mess.  It had been a mess since the twins were born. It wasn’t as if any of them had wanted this situation to happen, but it had and they’d been living with it for the past, almost twelve years. Well, Henry had, anyway, it wasn’t as if anyone else involved in this knew what the hell was going on besides him.

 The whole situation was bittersweet. He had checked up on Killian and Alice over the years, not that they knew that. He’d been discreet. Just happening to be in the same park as them even though it was nowhere near where he lived; jogging near Alice’s school as she grew up to be able to see her during recess. It had pained him to see her playing by herself in a trove of trees near the back of the playground away from everyone else. As she got older, she had the drawing pad, and he was happy that she had something she enjoyed doing. Henry had even gone to a few of her art shows and seen just how much like Killian she was in the drawing department.

 It was a lot harder to check up on Killian, as he worked at the docks and it wasn’t like Henry could just hang around the docks for no reason. He’d thought about getting a job there when he was old enough, but his mother would’ve thrown a fit. She would have given him a talking to about wasting the scholarship money he’d been given for his fancy Creative Writing Bachelors to go work, what she would have considered, a dead-end job at the docks. He had to make it part of his morning run, except that when Killian moved into management, he couldn’t get a look at him at all.

 Deciding to go into Creative Writing in college was a no-brainer. He knew he needed to get his story out, but he needed to do it in sections. Become one of those writers that had a book series instead of just one book. He wouldn’t have been able to get everything into one book as it was. The problem that he hadn’t anticipated was that no one wanted to publish it. He thought the alternative fairy tale genre would have still been a big seller, but it seemed that book publishers were more into dystopian societies again (a resurgence from when he had been a kid). It had taken him a lot longer to get Once Upon a Time out to the masses than he’d intended. The sequel would just barely be released before Hope and Alice’s fourteenth birthday and that was cutting it really close for what needed to happen.

 Henry had done the best he could in helping his mother raise Hope. He knew it was not the life she had imagined when she’d found herself pregnant. He still remembered with distinct clarity when she’d come rushing out of the bathroom waving around the pregnancy test. Explaining to Killian what the two lines meant, and then forcing Henry to go buy her a digital test just to make sure the cheap ones she’d bought over the internet weren’t faulty.  They’d been so excited to start their family together. And when they found out they were having twins, well Killian had practically spun Emma around in excitement (a little hard because they didn’t find out about the twins part until she was almost five months along and she was already huge. Alice had apparently been shy even in the womb as she was hiding behind Hope in the ultrasounds; their heartbeats always perfectly in sync with each other). And then...everything happened.

 Maybe it would be better if Henry tried to write what he wanted to say down. He’d always done better with an outline, a plan, an operation. Operation Gemini was on!

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

 The girls were already waiting at a table in the coffee shop when Henry arrived; three hot chocolates set at each place, all with whipped cream and cinnamon Henry noticed. As soon as Hope noticed him, she immediately stood up and ran to give him a fierce hug. 

 They stood there, hugging at the entrance, for what seemed a long while. Had it really only been two weeks since she’d gone off to camp? It felt almost like a lifetime. Even though Henry had moved out of the apartment, he still came by to see his mom and Hope every day. It was just the kind of family they had. Very close. 

 Henry had moved them off to the side so as to not block the entranceway, and he felt Hope shuddering in his arms. She was silently crying Henry realized as he stroked soothing circles on her back, something that always calmed her down as a little girl. He looked over to the table and noticed Alice sitting at the table waiting for her world to drastically change and all she looked like she was feeling awkward while she waited for them to finish their emotional reunion.

 “I don’t even know why I’m crying.” Hope wailed softly. “I just have so many questions and emotions from discovering that I have a sister, and it has finally hit me now that you’re here, Henry.” He was making this all real. And no matter the answer, no matter what he told her, Hope and Alice had to keep an open mind, because Henry knew the reality of this situation was going to change things forever.

 “It’s okay, Hope.” Henry whispered into her hair, something else he’d always done when she was younger. “I promise, everything is going to be okay.” He kissed the top of her head for reassurance. Hope seemed to snap out of it, and she broke away from Henry and dried her eyes on the back of her hands. Henry pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and gave it to her.

 “Always a gentleman.” Hope said as they walked over to the table. Alice, who had watched the whole exchange, looked at Henry with wide eyes. Henry wasn’t sure how either of them were going to handle what he was about to tell them, but Alice, despite the wide eyes, seemed overly calm about the whole situation. 

 “It’s nice to meet you, Henry.” Alice said, putting her hand out for him to shake it as he sat down at the table. Henry could tell she wasn’t quite sure what else to say. He could only imagine how she must feel, having grown up an only child and now she supposedly had a twin sister and an older brother.

 “We’ve met before.” Henry said sadly, taking a good look at her while he and Hope took their seats. It was like looking at a punk rock version of Hope and it was a little strange. “But I haven’t seen you since you were two and mom and Killian were still dressing you in matching outfits.” He laughed, remembering how their mother, of all people, liked dressing them the same and Killian absolutely hated it. They’re individuals, Swan, not dress up dolls! Everyone nervously took a sip of their hot chocolate.

 “Can we just cut to the chase.” Hope said. Henry chuckled at how much like their mother she was. Besides looking like her, just with a fuller face that he chalked up to still being a child, she had inherited her personality, and was always straight down to business. No pleasantries, no small talk, just get straight to the point.

 Operation Gemini hadn’t made it much past the notes phase when Henry tried to figure out how to explain things to them. Giving a speech was not the way to go. This wasn’t a book that he could plot out an outline and hope that everything went the way he wanted it to (at least not yet). And he knew these two girls were much too smart to not ask questions about everything he presented to them. He needed to know what they knew or had hypothesized for themselves before figuring out what and how to tell them about their pasts.

 Alice,” Henry said turning to her, “tell me what you’ve been told about your mother.” 

 “Uh,” Alice had not expected to be put on the spot, “her name was Milah.” Henry nodded in agreement, since he already knew that was who she thought was her mother. “She and Papa were together for about five years before they got married and had me. I’m named for my Papa’s mother. She died in an apartment fire when I was two which is also how Papa lost his hand. We…” Alice’s voice drifted off when Henry took out a notebook and started writing everything she told him down. He wrote at a very alarming rate, and it would look as if the words were magically appearing on the page, or at least, it would look like that to Alice, if she believed. 

 ‘H..how are you doing that?” Alice asked, fascinated. The pen he was using looked like an old fountain pen, the kind that required ink. Alice looked around but she saw no ink. He saw her look closer at the notebook which was an old, leather bound notebook with parchment inside. Henry held his breath. Could she see? Henry looked at Hope who was looking at Henry intently the same way Alice was, but he could tell that all Hope saw was a normal pen and notebook.

 Henry looked up at Alice with a quizzical look on his face. “How am I doing what, Alice? What exactly do you see?” From his tone, he hoped that Alice could see he truly wanted an honest answer. She looked hesitant for a moment, took another gulp of her hot chocolate, but then drew a deep breath before telling him exactly what she saw.

 “You have an old fashioned fountain pen, but it seems to not need any ink. And it’s putting the words on the parchment for you.” Alice gulped. Henry knew that what she had said would sound crazy to anyone else, but not to him. She looked over at Hope who was looking between Alice and the pen and notebook. She definitely was looking at Alice as if she just said the craziest thing ever. A wide smile crept over Henry’s face and tears sprang to his eyes. He wanted, more than ever, to just wrap Alice up in his arms like he had when she was a baby, and give her the biggest hug imaginable. He put the fountain pen and notebook aside.

 “Alice,” Henry said as he took both her hands into his, “I need to ask you something, and please answer honestly. No false modesty for my sake, please.” Alice nodded. “Now, I know Hope hasn’t read my book because she says it’s not her style,” Hope rolled her eyes at this statement, crossed her arms and mumbled “I've read some of it,” Henry gave a small laugh at that and focused back on Alice, “but have you read it?” Alice nodded, unsure of where Henry was going with this. “And tell me, my dear Alice, what did you think of it?” He continued.

 Henry watched Alice closely as she tried to figure out where to begin.  

 “It felt like I was reading about people I’d imagined my whole life. Like they’d been living in my head with no way out and then, bam! There they were on the page in front of me. And then I started drawing. Oh, I’d drawn mostly landscapes, places that were right in front of me, but I’d had these images in my head for so long of people, that about a year before your book came out, I’d started drawing them as well. And then there they were in your book. I have sketches of Snow White and Red from before your book even hit the shelves, and at first it scared me, because Papa has always said I might be psychic, just knowing little things here and there, but there it was for me to see. These people who I’d been imaging. I’d never known their story, and here it was laid out for me in the pages of your book.” She took her hands away from Henry’s and put them in her lap as a few tears, Henry couldn’t tell if they were happy or scared tears, slipped down her cheeks. Henry was still staring at her intently, his smile even wider if that were possible. He watched her put her one of her hands under her hair and rub the back of her neck, just like Killian always did.

 “Why did you ask her that?” Hope asked breaking the silence that had enveloped them after Alice had finished her revelation. Alice almost looked embarrassed about Hope asking. She’d just bared her soul about all the thoughts that had been in her head, probably for years, and how Henry’s book had opened the floodgates, and Hope’s only response had been to ask why Henry had asked that particular question? Of course Hope would be the non-believer. Like mother, like daughter.

 “That’s actually a very good question, Hope.” Henry said, his smile never fading. He beamed something that he hoped conveyed pride at Alice before looking over at his sister. 

 “I was going to start out telling you something different. I went over this in so many different ways the past two days, but I think I’m going to have to start with the storybook.” Henry said as he went to grab something out of his satchel. Hope rolled her eyes and scoffed.

 “Henry, you cannot tell us we are sisters and then just go off about your fairy tale book. I get that she’s a fan, but there are more important things going on here besides your book.” Hope said, exasperated. Henry paid her no mind. He placed two books on the table. One was a much bigger, much older looking copy of his book, made from what looked like real leather and gold leaf. Like something the publisher might sell as a collector’s edition. The other looked like his current book, only it was white with a picture of an apple tree on it in a golden frame. It also said Once Upon a Time, but not as ornately as the last book. The O was in red while the rest of the letters were in brown. Underneath the title read the words: Emma’s Story.

 “Is...is that the new book?” Alice squeaked out. Henry’s smile grew even wider if that was possible.

 “It sure is, Alice.” He said quite happily. “And, actually, Hope, these books will tell you everything you need to know about your past.” Both Hope and Alice looked at him. Hope’s expression was one of disbelief. She’d always held their mother’s belief in the practical, everything had a logical explanation, even if lightbulbs tended to pop when one of them were angry, or they’d find random candles lit without any explanation for it when they really needed to relax. Alice’s eyebrows were practically in her hairline for how high she had raised them. Henry could see that she was more open to what he was trying to tell her.

 “They’re all true?” Was all that Alice could get out.

 “Yes, Alice,” Henry nodded, “they’re all true.” Alice smiled with tears starting to form in her eyes. 

 Hope looked from Henry to Alice completely confused. He could see she was trying to comprehend what he was trying to tell her, that the fairy tales he had written about were supposed to be real, but her brain did not compute that. Fairy tales weren’t real. They lived in the real world and magical things simply did not happen. And now Hope was getting angry, because Henry still hadn’t provided any explanation to how she and Alice had become separated and why they had been told lies their whole lives about who their parents were.

 Henry sighed. “Look,” he said, running his fingers through his hair nervously, “this book here,” he pulled out the larger copy of his book and placed it on the center of the table, careful not to knock over any of their half drunk mugs, “is not just some fiction I made up.” He couldn’t believe he was in this situation where he had to explain this all over again. “Every story in this book actually happened. It’s the story of our grandparents and what they went through to eventually end up in this world.” Alice took in a breath of air while Hope looked at Henry like he was insane.

 “Henry,” Hope started, “fairy tales aren’t real. What you’re saying is ludicrous, and you’re beginning to really scare me.”

 “So, the Emma at the end of the book,” Alice said in barely a whisper, “she’s your mom? She’s actually the real daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming and the savior destined to break the Evil Queen’s curse?” Henry knew it was a lot to take in, he knew it sounded insane, but he could also see that Alice believed every word that Henry was telling her. Hope just stared at both of them with a look that said she felt like she was the only sane person at their table. 

 “She did break the curse!” he said excitedly. “That’s what’s in this book. How our mother broke the curse and the various things that happened afterwards until she came to the Final Battle. And then….” Henry took a breath trying to stave off the catch that was starting to form in his throat. “We were separated. That’s how this book ends. With our separation.” He grabbed the almost empty mug in front of him and drained the last dregs of hot cocoa that were in there, grimacing at the grainy texture of the chocolate that had coagulated at the bottom. When he looked back at his sisters (he had never been so happy to add that extra ‘s’) he could see that Alice was thoroughly convinced that he spoke the truth, but Hope was still looking at him with a mix of incredulousness and a slight hint of murder. He could see her wanting to object again but cut her off when he continued with what he had to say. 

 “The final book. The final book of my series has not been written. I have no idea how it will end. Both of you need to help me write it because it’s about us, all of us. You two, me, mom, and Killian. It’s about what happened to us and a terrible danger that we will have to face.” Hope’s face immediately tensed at the word danger; Alice’s face lit up intrigued. He continued. “It won’t be easy. I am putting us all in jeopardy, but I don’t have a choice. This is something that we’ve known about since you two were born and I’m the one who has had to carry the burden of it for the past almost 12 years.” Tears were falling from his eyes and Alice handed him a napkin as Hope had never given him back his handkerchief from earlier. Alice also had tears falling as she had listened to what he had told him. Hope just looked frustrated.

 “Henry,” Hope said, breaking in again, “are we ever going to get any answers, or are you just going to parade your books around to Alice and let her fangirl over them. We’ve been here,” she checked her watch,” for an hour and you’ve given us nothing but fairy tales. Not even that, you’ve just given us the books to decipher an answer out of! We have to meet back on the bus to camp in an hour. Are you going to be able to tell us everything we need to know by then?” She gave Henry the look, the look he’d seen too many times on his mother that showed that he wasn’t telling her the whole truth and she was getting tired of it. If she’d been standing, Henry was sure she’d be stomping her foot like the tantrums she used to throw when she was younger.

 Henry thought for a minute. There was no way he could tell them everything he needed to in an hour. Hell, would they even be able to function at camp after everything he needed to tell them? Would they even believe him? Alice definitely seemed open to it, but Hope, she was so stubborn. It was like trying to convince their mother all over again. And that’s when he made the decision.

 “Look, Alice, do you trust me?” He asked, holding out his hand to her. She didn’t even hesitate, she took his hand and answered yes. “Hope, Alice, you are sisters. I am your half brother. Emma and Killian love each other very much, they just don’t remember, and I need your help to bring our family back together. But to do that, you’re going to have to leave camp and come with me. Can you do that?” 

 Alice nodded with no hesitation. Henry probably should have been a little more concerned that Alice seemed so willing to leave camp and go off with a perfect stranger who had just told her that he was her brother with no other explanation except that fairy tales were real and she needed to somehow get their family back together, a family that didn’t even know they were broken, but he saw the belief in her eyes and the trust she had toward him and Hope, and he looked past that concern. Besides, he was her brother, just because she didn’t remember him didn’t mean they weren’t blood. Both he and Alice looked over at Hope who was still looking at them like they were the craziest people she had ever met. Henry was about to apologize for ruining her camp experience when she finally spoke.

 “Well, I guess you two don’t really leave me a choice. I gotta make sure you crazy, and yes, I mean the literal meaning of crazy, people don’t get into too much trouble. Someone has to make sure that when mom and Alice’s dad, ...our dad, whoever he is, find us that we have a sane person to explain we went willingly and Henry doesn’t get arrested for kidnapping or whatever.” Hope flipped her ponytail behind her shoulder as if she didn’t really care either way if they got in trouble or not, but Henry knew better. He knew she was coming along on this crazy ride to make sure Henry didn’t do something stupid and to be there for Alice.

 Henry held out his hand for Hope since he was still holding Alice’s from earlier. She hesitated only a moment before grabbing it. Alice and Hope both gave a slight jolt, something most people would not have noticed or thought they had just had a shiver run through them at the same time, but Henry knew, he knew that was the sign that everything was starting. It was the sign that their family was coming back together.

Tag List: (Let me know if you want to be added or removed)

@profdanglaisstuff @thisonesatellite @mariakov81 @hollyethecurious @winterbaby89 @jennjenn615 @kmomof4 @superchocovian @lfh1226-linda @ilovemesomekillianjones @cssns @itsfabianadocarmo @xsajx  @qualitycoffeethings​

[padawanlost]

“Attachment is not compassion.” What does that mean? Attachment are undoubtedly normal but I don’t get this quote

“Attachment is not compassion” Title card – TCW 02x08

Well, attachment and compassion are two different thing. The fact you’re attached to something or someone doesn’t necessarily mean you have compassion. Attachment can come from a selfish place too. That’s what Ahsoka needs to figure out by the end of the episode. Did she save Barriss out of selfish attachment (*she* didn’t want to lose a friend) or out of compassion (sympathy for Barriss and what she was facing)? Because, by choosing to save Barriss, it could’ve backfired costing thousands of lives.

On a deeper level we have to ask ourselves if it’s possible to experience real compassion without any kind of attachment. Filoni believes that the Order’s approach to compassion failed them and the galax.. you have to ask what’s compassion without action? Is it really compassion if it doesn’t translate into action? The Jedi, by becoming so focused on the greater good, failed to notice how dispassionate they had become at a personal level. They tried hard to save the galaxy but did very little to save people as individuals. We this see on multiple occasions:

Obi-wan’s initial reaction of Qui-Gon’s helping Anakin and Jar Jar;

He moved out of his seat to kneel close to Qui-Gon. “Master,” he said, unable to help himself, “why do you keep dragging these pathetic life-forms along with us when they are of so little use?” Qui-Gon Jinn smiled faintly. “He seems that way now perhaps, but you must look deeper, Obi-Wan.” [Terry Brooks. The Phantom Menace]

The Council’s reaction to Anakin:

Like Anakin, I was well past infancy when I began my training at the Jedi Temple. There was much concern about whether I was too old to learn the ways of the Force, that my Cerean childhood might cloud my judgments, but … I am not certain of how to express myself. My mind tells me I should feel empathy for Anakin, but my instinct tells me something else. [Ki-Adi-Mundi in Ryder’s Windham’s Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force]

What disturbs me most of all is Anakin Skywalker himself. It is not in my nature to make assumptions about anyone based on appearance, and yet I find it almost alarming that the boy looks so entirely unremarkable. If I didn’t know better, I would have dismissed him as a harmless raga-muffin. [Ki-Adi-Mundi in Ryder’s Windham’s Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide to the Force]

Their usual reaction to slavery:

The pirate spoke in a hushed tone. "I am Condi, from the planet Zoraster. I am not a pirate. I am a slave. As are my companions. Stolen from our home worlds by Krayn. Under penalty of death, we have been assigned guard duty aboard the ship." Condi looked at him eagerly. "Thank the moons and stars, we have rescue in our grasp at last." Obi-Wan deactivated his lightsaber. The naked desperation on Condi's face unnerved him. It was mirrored in the faces of his companions. All of them had obviously suffered great deprivations. "I am sorry," he said. "I have not come on a rescue mission." [Jude Watson. Path to Truth]

Can you help him? He did not know how that was possible. “I don’t know,” he told her, keeping his voice gentle, but firm. “I didn’t come here to free slaves.” [Terry Brooks. The Phantom Menace]

And, our most recent example, the Martez sisters.

A couple of years ago, there was a prison break on the surface of Coruscant, where you live, some gangster named Ziro. Then came the Jedi.  We watched, like so many others, as they chased Ziro and his gang down the portal, leaping from speeder to speeder as they went. Finally, some red-eyed alien protecting Ziro blasted the engine of an ascending cargo transport. The ship went spiraling out of control. The Jedi went into action, tried to gain control of the ship. There was a populated landing platform right in the path of the ship, but the Jedi steered it clear of that, right into the portal wall. And on the other side of that wall was our home. Mom and Dad saw it coming. They got Rafa and I out. But they weren't so lucky. The Jedi didn't even capture Ziro. The "distraction" of the ship helped him get away. Afterward, the Jedi came back, and one of them came over to me. I'll never forget it. She was beautiful, dark robes contrasting against her light green skin. Penetrating eyes. She looked at me, and you know what she said? She said, "I had to make a choice, but not to worry, the Force will be with you." That's it. Then she was off. And Trace and I were left without parents, without a home, just left there to find our way in their system.” TCW 07x07

Is any this compassion?

The point here is whether or not compassion means anything if you don’t act on it. You can say you love everything and everyone but if that love is not put into action is it really love?. What Ahsoka did was not the Jedi way but it’s clear she did the right thing by saving Barriss.

He looked over at Yoda. “Master Yoda, you and I have been close since I was a boy. An infant. Yet if ending this war one week sooner—one day sooner—were to require that I sacrifice your life, you know I would.” “As you should,” Yoda said. “As I would yours, young Obi-Wan. As any Jedi would any other, in the cause of peace.” “Any Jedi,” Obi-Wan said, “except Anakin.” Yoda and Mace exchanged glances, both thoughtfully grim. Obi-Wan guessed they were remembering the times Anakin had violated orders—the times he had put at risk entire operations, the lives of thousands, the control of whole planetary systems—to save a friend. [Matthew Stover. Revenge of the Sith]

Ahsoka, like Anakin, doesn’t take things that far. Her compassion is translated into actions. and that’s a result of Anakin’s training. Her desire to get involved and help individuals with their personal problems is a trait she got from Anakin, not from the Jedi.

“Not that Luminara is indifferent, but that Luminara is detached. It’s not that she doesn’t care, but she’s not attached to her emotionally. And at the end of the day, one of the questions that I guess I pose is, is that really a good thing? Is Anakin’s way of being so compassionate wrong? Because on a certain level, you have to accept that the Jedi lose the Clone War. So there is something that they’re doing that’s wrong.” Dave Filoni

“I’ve always felt that one of Anakin’s downfalls, like it’s never that Anakin was innately going to be evil, but the people around him, the Jedi, in their lack of compassion, in being so selfless that they almost forgot to care.”— Dave Filoni

“So as far back as Anakin, there is a seed of an idea of love and compassion, which admittedly in Attack of the Clones, the Jedi say they’re lacking because they’ve become arrogant and very sure of themselves. As Ahsoka gets older, her first big challenge comes when she’s abducted by Trandoshans and put an island [to be hunted for sport]. Anakin is put in a position where he can’t help her, and he obsesses over trying to find her, and there’s nothing he can do. But she survives anyway, and at the end of that she says, “I was only able to do this because of your teachings. Because the other Padawans I was with, boy, they were completely messed up. They were cracking.” So again we see this comparison of where Ahsoka is at because of Anakin, and where these other Padawans, which represent the other Jedi, are at.” Dave Filoni 

In the end, the message is attachment is not compassion but neither is detachment. Both extremes are wrong. Complete detachment and obsessive attachment are wrong. Ahsoka’s balanced approach to compassion is the best way.

[popculturebuffet]

OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes!: You’re Everybody’s Sidekick Review

OK KO was easily one of the best animated series of the 2010′s and i’ll stand by those words. The brainchild of Ian Jones Quartlery, voice of Wallow in Bravest Warriors and more importantly former head writer for Steven Universe, and current longtime romantic partner of that series creator Rebecca Sugar. That part isn’t AS important, but I still find it sweet.  Anyways OK KO was the story of K.O., a 6-11, not my own laziness for once but the show’s own way of doing age, year old boy who wants to be the best like no one ever was. In this case i’ts being a hero in a world that’s basically like if someone took the marvel universe and smashed a retro game collection and a pile of manga on top of it and then blended up the result and shot it full of gamma rays. Full of heroes of all kinds ranging from those fighitng crime to those who just want to loiter outside strip malls or cut hair.  To achieve this goal KO gets a job at Gar’s Bodega, the combination of your average bodega (for those unfamiliar with the term, i’ts a convience store) and a video game item shop, so the slurpee machine is right next to the power ups and ninja stars, and everything from skateboard polish to Spread Guns is avaliable. The bodega is owned by Mr.Gar, a mustachiosed muscle man whose basically a shoutier mexican version of MIke Haggar but with shades and a mustache. So a somehow better version of him, though with him being busy watching over the plaza itself, doing secret hero missions and what not the day to day operations are left to two teens: Rad, a muscle bound dude bro alien with telekenisis and a secret heart of gold and Enid, a cynical, slacker ninja whose also bilogically a witch because her parents are a vampire and a werewolf. So the series follows these three as they run the boedega, grow as people and fight the robots that frequently attack the plaza sent by the evil Lord Boxman who hates the place literally because it’s there and it’s existance annoys him. This is the canon explination and it is utterly hilarious.  The series was funny, had great character work, decent ongoing stories, great jokes and a fun tone that could go from meaningful and well thorught ot utterly batshit from episode to episode and was sadly canceled after 3 seasons because Cartoon Network is kinda stupid right now and dosen’t know how to handle a superhero show that still makes action a priority, but it did get a solid ending, a slew of great crossovers and a decent amount of representation under i’ts belt.  WHich brings us to today and the start of RED ACTION WEEK: A week dedicated to the series most prominent gay character and the bisexual ninja witch who loves her. I’m covering all 5 of Red’s more prominent apperances... I was just going to do the red/enid episodes but decided this was a better introduction to the series itself, as well as the fact it allows her character arc to better tie together by her final episode, which directly uses this one as a major plot point. I also threw Plaza Prom in there since, even if she’s only a supporting character, it’s still one of her few major apperances, is part of her final major episode, is one of my faviorites, and the climactic dance fights is one of the most intentionally homoerotic fight scenes i’ve seen in some time. With all that out of the way, let’s do this after the cut. 

We start at Gar’s Bodega, just after the opening two parter, with KO starting his first day of work, part of the reason this episode is a fairly smooth introduction into the show. Not even in the door he accidently shoryukyn’s joe cuppa, a stand up comedian with a cup of coffee in the big time for a head... I told you anything goes and I meants it.  After that accident, we find Enid at the counter, ignoring the customers before shooing them away and when KO asks for work, plays along with his enthusasim and tells him to clean the store.. which he does in minutes, before being told to sort the penny dish, and while he does the two discuss KO’s love of helping people: KO just genuinely thinks that’s part of his job, the right thing to do and feels good while Enid.. dosen’t feel it’s worth the effort and people are just generally ungreatful and not worth it.  I really like this scene for showing off their character dynamic beautifully: It starts showing that while at this stage Enid is largely an asshole, she does care about K.O. and while he’s cleaning, despite usually turning customers away, still let’s Ginger, an elderly patron and one of KO’s mom’s dojo customers, not only check out but pay in freaking pennies. It shows that try as she might, Enid really isn’t a cyncial or heartlesss as she claims. It’s also nice setup for later in the season as, and as i’m sure Ian Jones Quartlery and crew were preparing for, we later DO see why Enid hates people so much: her best friend, possibly more, Elodie, who i’ll certainly be covering eventually, betrayed her for a spot at Point Prep, basically UHA or Xavier’s for this world and claimed their friendship was just a ploy (It wasn’t, but again, story for another time), while her one date with Rad went terribly due to him acting like a huge jackass at the advice of his even bigger jackasses of friends. It’s easy to see why she stopped carring: When she opened up in the past it only lead to her being hurt and alone. K.O.... is the opposite. He genuinely belivies in everyone and tries to help them because, as said above, it’s just what he does and what he belivies a hero should be... he hasn’t been hurt or influenced by assholes like his friends, and thus is able to get them to open up. It’s a wonderful dynamic and I love it.  And naturally, KO is determined to help Enid see the light, with Enid responding with the wonderful line “You’ll never melt my icy heart”... give him a few more episodes Enid, give him a few more episodes.  So K.O. Decides to set out helping people, shouting about it to enid back at the store as he does because he’s 6-11 and kids in that age range are many things, but subtle is not one of them. He starts with Geoff and Nick Army, a monk and gay duke nukem reflectivity who despite having polar oppositie personalities, are both a couple, as confirmed by the creative team and then the finale, and a crime fighting duo who are having a dispute over opening a pickle jar with the good old ultra violence or non violence, which KO solves by letting both do it once, which results in a pickle jar explosion, both men in their underwear and everyone happy, especially the shippers.  KO continues his quest, going to Logical Cuts where we meet Mr.Logic, a robot who has a rather moving and well done backstory we’ll certainly get to, and is voice by James Urabanik, aka the voice of Rusty Venture on the venture bros, to my utter delight. And yes i’ll be covering the venture bros eventually, and might be this month. His customer, another one of KO’s mom’s regulars, is upset because her haircut isn’t right while Mr.Logic is upset, well as upset as a monotone robot can convey, that his usually 100% mathmatically perfect haircuts are off. KO pitches in and the new result is perfect, with both being greatful. 

KO’s next stop on his good will help people crying for help tour, after the above bit of wonderful art shift as that version of ko moveds like a south park character for some reason. Anyways, it turns out best friends, co workers and the dante and randal of this show, i.e.two best friends working a dead end job who despite arguing a lot need each other, A Real Magical Skeleton, self explaintory and Greg, a bear, are having an argument because RMS is trying to do their job and frame a baseball for a guy while Greg is being a dickhead and playing the drums constantly. As you can probably wager, I do not like Greg, probably more than rusty, partly because a future episode has him making KO doubt his macaroni art gift for his mom so he can eat it, yes really,and partly because he’s less intresting than his buddy and yet the two are shipped frequently despite my honest assumption they’d kill each other.. much like if dante and randall finally banged. However if you do ship them, I have no hostility with you. Unlike say loudcest or shipping sam with lincoln over at the loud hosue, there's nothing wrong with RMS X Brandon, it’s just not for me.  Anywho KO solves it in the hilarious and awesome manner of just putting Brandon inside one of those baseball cube things... it’s a shame he apparently gave him air holes but whatever. Proud of himself, K.O. plans to head back when he runs into the Ally Teens: Red Action, rude teen warrior from the future who just had a bad haircut, Drupe, a sentient strawberry because of course, and Greg, Drupe’s nonbinary best friend and combination of one of the bone cousins and Woodstock. K.O. offers to help and , with the trio being huge steaming bowls of elephant piss at this point, they instead trick him into waiting in a lava flow and then have drupe whip him every time the lava causes him to cartoonishily jump in the air.  Yeah despite both Red Action and Drupe going on to having supporting roles, like our good pal tom, who I will get back to this month, there isn’t nearly as much wiggle room in their first apperance. With Tom Lucitor, he was a dick.. but you could make the case, even just off that ep that he genuinely dosen’t know HOW to be a good person or that what he’s doing is sketchy at best. Here, it’s fairly obvious the ally teens know setting a child on fire and using vine whip on him super effectively is wrong, that’s why their doing it. Red, being that special brand of asshole, posts it on social media. I mean posting a video of yourself hurting a child, that’s Tucker Carlson level’s of dickery right there. Stone cold. Enid sees it and is understandably concerned, and goes over to see if KO’s allright when he returns and is forced to explain to him that no they weren’t laughing with him, they were laughing at him and were just being dicks. Also he wasn’t in lava, it was magma. It was above ground. 

K.O. glumly wonders why and Enid reitrates this kind of shit is why she dosen’t help people. K.O. also wonders how she saw it and we find out Enid is basically facebook stalking red action on her social media, as you do, and that Red’s been on a bit of a tear lately, smashing up shit and farting in Geoff’s face all because she got a bad haircut, with K.O. , likely going thorugh more of her posts, realizing theirs a pattern: When bad things happen to her she lashes out at others.. just like Enid. I do like the parallel there: Enid likely has a crush on her because the two are fairly similar.. but Enid runs cold and tens to be standoffish as a result of her past, while Red tens to take out her anger and frustration on everyone else and runs red hot. But they come together because opposities attract... it’s what noble laurite MC Scat Kat taaught us after all.  K.O. however, having Steven Universe level’s of empahty and an equal sense of wanting to help, and just as few boundries as he had as a tween, decides that it’s clear the ally teens have underlying issues to adress and gets Enid help to look at their social media. Returning to the ally,and seemingly unphased by earlier, K.O. sets out helping them, starting by helping red get her haircut fixed by Mr. Logic. Red is adorably delighted. Moving on K.O. notes that Drupe basically just follows Red’s lead but has a fashion blog and clearly an identiy of her own and we soon learn she believes no one reads it. K.O. showed it to the not at all ambigiously gay duo and Geoff and Nick thank her> That’s two blushes and two wins in K.O.’s court.  Finishing up, K.O. realizes Gregg stays quiet because they have low self esteem and feel they have nothing to be proud of. K.O. however found lots to be proud of and framed Gregg’s valdectorian certificate for him, again with some help from earlier.  Instead of graditude red just calls him weird and leaves and KO slumps back depressed. I’ts a good lesson though: people DON’T change just because you did one weirdly kind thing for them. That takes time.. as we’ll see with Red and as we see with Drupe, who has less of an ons creen journey but is far nicer after her next apperance. While Enid is grossed out over having helped someone, Gregg comes in.. and after some great deranged animation thanks K.O. and Enid admits after some prodding that it does feel good to help, and K.O. is happy to have helped her int he process. The two playfully mess around as the episode ends. Final Thoughts: This was a really good one. Reaching back this far into the series, I didn’t think it’d would be nearly as good as it ended up: It serves both as a good proper introduction for a lot of the plaza regulars, a good setup for Enid’s character arc, and was also really funny with great animation. LIke Tom, I don’t think the creators knew exactly what they were going to do with the Alley Teens and thus take the two they end up focusing on in opposite directon: Red keeps her assholishness for her next apperance and grows from it, while Drupe’s drops off by the end of this season, likely due to her fashion blog taking off, but we’ll get into Red more in a review or so and Drupe more later this month.For now this episode was good and next up we have their next apperance in Plaza Prom. Until then, follow this blog for more reviews and nonsense, like and reblog it if you enjoyed this, hit me up with asks for review suggestions or comssions and until next time, later days!

[some-jw-things]

I know you have given advice before on the best ways to leave, so you have any advice for someone with sabotaging parents? I’m 26 but I’m still not allowed anything, my mother controls my money(and I can’t try to separate any money for myself because she monitors my paychecks and completely freaks out if there’s the slightest change so I have to get pay stubs to prove what I make) I’m not allowed to have a car so I must use hers(I’m 90% sure she put a tracker on it) Im just really at a loss now

Okay so anything you do, I think you should do while operating under the assumption that the car DOES have a tracker and your mother would find out if you temporarily disabled it

You clearly have at least a little internet access and I’d recommend using it to research financial law in your area. Find out if there is a way you can cut off your mom’s access to your account when it’s time, what all you would need to do to legally establish that your money is just yours, how long that process would take, if your mother needs to do anything for that to happen. If you can’t find a way to get her name off the account, find out if you can open a separate secret account and how much you would be able to withdraw at once in a pinch. You may need to get a p.o. box to be able to get mail without her seeing— you’d set that up as your mailing address. Alternatively you could ask to receive all statements and stuff just electronically, and sent to a private email

I’d make sure you do any online stuff in an incognito browser. Keep up “safe” activity in a public browser if your mom goes through your history or you suspect she would, but I’d keep checking that email entirely in a private mode

You also need to find out what your mom could do to your bank account without your consent and exactly how much power she has over it. It might be worth it to go into your specific bank in person and ask questions. Keep as much plausible deniability as you can, you can’t bank on how people will react after you leave, and play it off to your mom as just a regular bank trip for a mundane reason if you do do this

You need to find a way to talk to a real social worker or an expert in financial abuse. It’s a common aspect of domestic abuse and shelters/orgs dedicated to that should have resources you can reach out to. Though I’ve heard some absolutely terrible things about the Salvation Army, so try to avoid them if you can. But yeah there are ways to find people who specifically help people escape financial abuse and coercion, and they should be able to give you more practical advice from experience

I would not do anything to rock the boat at all until you have a solid plan to physically leave. Get the financial stuff as done as you possibly can, have a place to go, and then just do it. There might be a way you can get at least most of your money in your name before leaving or before your mom even finds out what you’re doing— like if there’s a delay between you making a big withdrawal and her being notified of it, or obviously if you could just remove her name from the account entirely. You might be able to legally force it, if that would be an option you could comfortably take.

I know you mentioned the car as a big deal and from personal experience, areas that don’t have buses/taxis/people who actually use uber, will usually have some form of a public transportation network, though it will be obscenely expensive. In my area it’s a bunch of county-owned vans that charge over a dollar a mile, they’re mostly intended for people who are unable to drive their own car or too poor to own one. And in a rural area, that can be a big deal, but ideally you only need the money for exactly one trip: from your mother’s house to a shelter or a friend/relative’s house. From then on hopefully you’ll be in a place where there is cheap public transport or you can borrow someone else’s car if you need to

Trains are also a thing, and I’ve heard they’re cheap but I wouldn’t know personally. Also you have to first get to the train stop

I say this every time I give advice on here but try to find a way to cultivate non-Witness relationships, it can literally save your life, even if it’s just one or two casual friends or distant relatives you can reconnect to. Also put your safety above politeness. You can be rude and selfish sometimes if you need to. That’s an okay thing to do

You can always claim that anyone you’re talking to is a bible study. If you have approved social media, you can say that whoever it is reached out to you with questions online after seeing that you were a Witness. If you’re capable of coming up with reasons for you to be somewhere, I’d do it. Any innocent reason to be at a place that is not your house or the Kingdom Hall can help; even if it doesn’t help you get out, the breathing space can be very helpful for coping. There are plenty of places you can go for free to get away for a few hours even in rural areas or small towns

If anyone else has any advice, please add on

[whereisten]

Heaven-Sent

Part 1 - Part 2 Preview - Part 2 (Coming Soon)

Summary: When your marriage falls apart before it even starts, you set off to Atlanta for a new beginning. You decide to face your fear of skydiving. Your guide? Jung Jaehyun. 

Chapter Summary: You learn more about the angelic enigma and uncover the truth. But will that change how you feel about him?

Pairing: guardian angel! Jaehyun x female reader

Genre: angst, fluff

Word Count: 900

Part 2 Preview

Jaehyun remembered the first time he saw you.

You weren’t aware that the night you were crying on the rooftop was when he descended from the sky. His wings were beautiful. They were translucent with the pinks and oranges of the Los Angeles sunset. His pale skin glowed with stardust. His wavy brown hair nearly touched his bright brown eyes. He had a determined look on his face. He couldn’t be shaken.

He knew a lot about you. You were a woman who had her heart broken in all kinds of ways. Your parents never got along and the divorce was messy. Your mom never took things seriously and never grew up. So she would leave you at your relatives’ and friends’ places when she partied and traveled all over the world. Your father remarried and slowly distanced himself. Forgetting about you and only coddling his second wife’s kids. Your friends? They all led their own lives and forgot about you, all of them assuming you had other friends to rely on. A foolish assumption, you thought. And most recently, the man you thought was your soulmate dumped you at the altar.

But despite all of that, you still had a heart of gold. Your hope for something better was unwavering. You loved volunteering at the local animal shelter and the local nursing home. You felt love from other places when you couldn’t find it in your own family. You loved to draw your deepest desires. You loved to take photographs of things that were usually overlooked. You took the greatest joy in making seemingly ordinary things extraordinary.

Your work ethic was incredible. You worked in entertainment and helped promote some of the biggest names in Korean pop music. Among the millions of things you did with StarGaze Entertainment, you could negotiate with concert venues and make deals with the right designers for the promotional materials and merchandise. StarGaze rarely had dissatisfied customers and you were integral to its operation. And bonus? You’ve been living your dream of working with Korean pop artists. Who would have thought that your fangirling ways would get you somewhere successful?

Even so, the burning flame inside you had dimmed significantly after that dark day.

Unbeknownst to you, Jaehyun stood beside you. Like you, he looked out to the horizon.

Starting today, he would look after you.

Your hair swayed in the summer breeze and he inhaled your coconut shampoo.

Something about that scent was familiar, he thought. He couldn’t figure out how so he shrugged it off and continued to quietly observe you.

You put your headphones in and listened to a song that always made you smile: “Baby I Love Your Way” by Peter Frampton. You swayed as you drummed your fingers against the railing. You sang quietly along to it. Jaehyun liked your voice. It was low and sweet. It soothed him but it also sent pleasant shivers down his spine. Your eyelashes brushed against your cheeks and you looked so beautiful then that Jaehyun didn’t realize he had moved dangerously close to you.

Thankfully, Jaehyun hadn’t physically materialized yet so he quickly gave you guys some space. In case God wanted to tease him and make him materialize before you in an instant.

Which would have led to a kick to his groin and led to you calling the cops.

His Boss could have a very interesting sense of humor.

Jaehyun had to be careful. You were one of the dozens of humans he was sent to guide in the past two years.

But you were the first one to make his heart rate accelerate.

He shook his head. He couldn’t have anything with you. Fraternizing with a human was a big no-no in Heaven’s By-Laws.

Seeing you, though, was the first time in a while that he let himself long for Earth.

11

Meeting Jaehyun felt like a divine intervention. You finally understood what it meant to have a rose-colored view of the world around you. Every morning you woke up not knowing what the day would bring but you felt a twinge of excitement at knowing you would see him.

It had been two months since you two first met and you didn’t know how to describe your relationship. He made you feel safe, always asking about your day after he got off work at Highway to Heaven. He made you feel like the only person to exist sometimes.

He burned mixtapes for you. He shared his favorite songs with you and demanded your thoughts in a five-page double-spaced Times New Roman size-12 font free response. He looked at you with such affection: when you asked people to pet their dogs on the streets, when you took the first bite of your favorite red velvet cake, and when you broke out your old cheerleading routines when you beat him at Jenga. You wondered how the hell you stayed with Chanyeol for so long when someone better had been out there for you.

You weren’t ready to jump into the next relationship as much as a part of you wanted to be with Jaehyun. But thank God, he respected that.

It seemed as if he was open to whatever you wanted. In fact, it was almost too good to be true.

So you two did everything a friend and a lover would do.

And you didn’t worry about labeling it.

But you almost felt ready to let him in.

You just needed time.

[elisaphoenix13]

Operation: Date Night

"Pete...hand me that wrench would you?" Tony holds his hand out while he pokes at some build-up with a flathead screwdriver, but when the familiar weight of metal isn't placed in his hand right away, he looks up. "Peter?"

Said teen gasps loudly as he snaps his head upright from his unexpected nap, and he hurriedly gathers his papers and notebooks together. "Sorry Dad! Just meant to rest my eyes for a second!" Before Tony can say anything, Peter looks at his watch. "Look at the time! It's super late! Going to bed! Night!"

The boy nearly flies out of the lab and past a now entering Stephen with a quick 'Night Mom!', and leaves both parents looking baffled. The sorcerer recovers first and enters the room, leaving the door to slide shut behind him, and he takes Peter's previously occupied spot. Tony took a little while longer to recover. Peter had been acting weird and it was always like pulling teeth when it came to getting the boy out of the lab for the night. He went willingly this time though.  As if he was hiding something. Tony knew those papers weren't homework, but it was likely just new upgrade ideas for their suits or even new web formulas.

Of course, Peter tended to leave those ideas in the lab.

"That wasn't some really convincing copy of our son was it?" Tony finally asks.

Stephen furrows his brows. "No. He has been acting strange though. I walked into his room earlier this afternoon to ask him what he wanted for lunch and he slammed his laptop closed. You know what he said?"

Tony shrugs, grabs the wanted wrench off the worktable, and returns to his project. "Chicken salad?"

"Porn."

"Huh. That's not what he usually wan--wait. What?!" Tony looks over at his husband with bewilderment.

"I think he thought I asked what he was doing."

"If that isn't a huge red flag telling us he's doing something he's not supposed to, I don't know what is."

It only got weirder.

Peter moved on from suspicious activities to constantly hounding them about something or another. Like favorite foods or favorite music. Stephen eventually came to the assumption that the teen had to do an essay of some sort about his parents but was too embarrassed to say anything, but Tony nixed that. The genius said Peter would have fun with an essay like that, but any problems about it would be at school with students who still didn't quite believe he was actually adopted by two Avengers.

Nevermind that there was a whole news story about it that ran for two months. It only ran so long because everyone had to put in their two cents about Tony's ability to parent properly and keep Peter safe. Yes, it was hard sometimes, mostly because the safe part was hard when Peter put himself in danger every night because he was Spiderman, but Tony made him a suit. Actual parenting? At least if Peter drove him up the wall, he could pawn him off on Stephen. He could switch to Mama Bear so fast and the teen had a love/hate relationship with the sorcerer's 'maternal' side.

He loved when it wasn't directed at him.

He hated it when it was.

Unless of course snuggling was involved, then one would need to get a crowbar to separate the two.

"What are you two doing tonight?" Peter asks a couple of days later.

Tony and Stephen look up at him from their respective beverages across the island counter before the mechanic shrugs.

"Probably just going to order take-out and watch a movie."

"Oh! Well in that case--"

"Boss." Friday interrupts. "There are a group of people running around the city with alien tech. I've detected that they've planted a few power cores already as well."

Tony groans. "Hold that thought Peter."

Of course, they never got back to the conversation. By the time they took care of the 'crazy people with alien guns' (Scott's words), it was late and they were all too tired to do anything but what Tony originally planned. They ordered take-out, watched a movie while they ate, and then retired for bed.

Peter tried again the next morning but Stephen shook his head. "I have to check on the Sanctums and go to Kamar-Taj for a couple of days. Maybe more if the other masters have something for me to deal with."

And that was that. Stephen left through a portal and was gone for a week. He came back exhausted and injured, so Peter left him alone until he had healed and rested. That took another week.

The third time Peter was going to ask about their plans, he couldn't even open his mouth before Tony's phone was ringing. Stephen did seem to notice the teen's exasperation though.

"Another meeting? What's it about this time? A schedule to cough? Pep-"

Peter snatches his father's phone from him and holds it up to his ear. "He's busy! Things are already planned!" Both parents stare incredulously at their son while he talks to Pepper. "Yes. No...I told you...okay. Thanks Aunt Pepper." Peter hangs up and drops the phone in Tony's lap as he turns toward Stephen. "No sorcerer duties today for you either. I already talked to Wong and he'll take care of things for the rest of the night."

Stephen cocks his head. "When did you talk to Wong?"

"Uh...the more important question would be what the fuck?" Tony says.

Peter only smiles at them. "Go get dressed. Something not too fancy but not too casual either."

Both men stand and the teen pushes them toward their bedroom, and then to the elevator once they come out dressed accordingly. They both chose dress shirts (Tony wore a dark red, and Stephen a dark blue) and black slacks, and to Peter's satisfaction, left the ties behind.

Now they were just trying to figure out what was going on.

"Peter, if you wanted to go do something you just needed to ask." Tony says.

"Oh. It's not for me. It's for you two." He shoves them into the elevator and grins. "Have fun on your date! To the garage Friday!"

Tony and Stephen stare at the doors of the elevator when they close and then look at each other. Their kid planned a date night for them? They stand in stunned silence as the elevator descends to the garage floor, and when the elevator doors open, they find Happy standing against one of Tony's cars.

Tony points at him. "You're in on it too?!"

"So is Pepper. She made reservations for dinner. You've got a good kid."

"She called me about a meeting!"

"Yeah, that was planned. She knew you would complain and that was Peter's signal to take the phone and make sure everything was ready." Happy opens the back door and Tony slides in while Stephen hesitates. "Peter asked me to drive extra careful for you."

Stephen smiles softly. The teen even thought of the sorcerer's unease with driving. "Of course he did."

He climbs in next to Tony and the driver closes the door before getting into the front seat. "I'll put up the divider so you don't scar me for life."

Tony grins. "You know what that means Stephanie?"

Stephen smirks. "We have to be extra loud."

Happy rolls his eyes and the last thing they hear before the divider closes is a mumbled, "I hate you guys."

[bereft-of-frogs]

Quarantine Q&A

I was tagged by @anamelessdragon , so here’s my quarantine update!

Are you staying home from work/school? I have been officially laid off so YUP. I’m struggling with the fact that...I’m actually kind of into it. I hated my job. I don’t want to go back. I know this is like a really bad situation but that just highlights how unhappy I was before I have literally no idea how to fix it moving forward from this so I’m just trying to...exist in the acknowledgment that I was dissatisfied and that hopefully I can find a way to create a more fulfilling life out of this very not ideal situation.

If you’re staying home, who’s there with you? I’m alone! I feel...sort of monastic. But also I have the internet and I’ve been Skyping a lot with my parents and friends, so I’m not too lonely.

Are you a homebody? Well, I WAS. Actually, I think I had a pretty healthy balance between going out and spending time recharging at home. But now I’ve been saying to my friends that I feel like when all this is over I’m going to have like...2-3 completely wild months. Like, say yes to everything, go out all the time, etc etc.

What movies have you watched recently? What shows are you watching? I haven’t been watching a ton of movies, but as for shows, I just finished season one of The Terror last night (at like...1am...) and I’ve been watching Grace & Frankie on Netflix.

An event that you were looking forward to that got cancelled? At the risk of sounding like a weird...nerd...or something, I’m actually pretty crushed about Easter. Particularly Easter Vigil. :-( It’s sort of my favorite time of the year. Yeah...I’m pretty sad about that.

It’s also not official yet but I’m operating under the assumption that at least one of the weddings I was supposed to go to is probably going to be cancelled (she said they’re waiting another couple weeks to make the call) and even if it goes ahead I might not be able to go...and I was supposed to go home for the bridal shower in June and my mom and her mom were going to dress shopping and...yeah I was looking forward to that.

What music are you listening to? The first week I literally thought ‘I really hope my neighbors like post-metal’ because I’ve been listening to a lot of Sólstafir while quarantined.

What are you reading? I just finished The Lord of the Rings (and cried, as usual) and right now I’m reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma because I’ve never actually read it and now that I have all the time in the world I’m back on the whole ‘slow food movement’ thing so I thought I should probably finally read this. I think next I’m going to reread American Gods.

What are you doing for self-care? Hm, I guess all that baking would probably count as self-care. And running, especially on the mountain. (nature!)

I think the most important self-care thing I’m doing right now is working on not being so strict with like...having to-do lists and stuff. I’m aware I made one today, but the first week I tried too hard to have a structure and just did...nothing instead. So I’m letting myself just be like ‘oh I just feel like knitting today/baking/read a book, I’m just going to do that and not feel bad about it.’

I always get anxious about actually tagging people trying to work on it, so I tag @kiwimeringue , @aurorawest , and @adreamer67 , but no pressure or anything! and if anyone else wants to do it please consider this an open tag!

[sortasirius]

Unloveable

Pairing: Dean/Cas, as per usual lol

AN: A 15x03 Coda which definitely stems from my Personal Issues that are going on, but what can I do but write?  This is very very very VERY angsty and there’s no way around it lmao. 

Warnings: A G N S T, John Winchester’s shitty/physically abusive parenting

Words: 1580

Up on my AO3 here.

Dean had known a lot of different kinds of heartbreak. He’d lost his mother, his father, his friends, his brother, his first love, his youth, his innocence, but he never thought, really, that he’d lose Cas.

This wasn’t the heartbreak he had felt when Cassie had dumped him. That was a sharp pain, like someone was stabbing him with a thousand tiny needles. It wasn’t the heartbreak when he had left Lisa and Ben. That was a ripping sensation, like his heart was being torn in half, two pieces fluttering to the floor. As Cas’ footsteps faded, it was more all-consuming. An all over ache that he couldn’t shake, like someone had taken his heart and squeezed a little too hard.

This was his fault though, right? He had finally pushed Cas away, pushed him so far away that he couldn’t come back. Unloveable. That’s what John has always spit at him when he had made a mistake. Whether that was on a hunt or by not making Sam breakfast, that was John’s go to word for Dean. And Dean believed him. Everyone he had ever loved had either died or left him, pretty clear evidence that he really was unloveable.

He had operated under the assumption that what John said was true most of his life. He never stayed long, had no relationships that really lasted, and he was okay with that. Better leave before they got attached and realized what he was and beat him to it.  He hid who he was in one-night stands, leaving before the sun rose every time, because if anyone saw who he was, who he really was, they’d run as fast as they could.

And then he had gone to Hell. And Allistair’s torture wasn’t just physical, though physical would have been more than enough. With each cut, snap of bone, drop of blood, it was punctuated with things that Dean had never told anyone, but Allistair could see right through him.

“Unloveable”, he would sneer, sticking a knife into Dean’s heaving chest, “Your daddy really hated you Dean. And why not? What have you ever done? You break everything you touch. You’re unloveable.”

Allistair had taught him how to break others with precision, and he spent ten years hating himself while the destroyed others on the Rack.

And then, when he was 30, Castiel had entered the scene; with cracking lightning and bright blue eyes, he had stood too close to Dean, essentially not moving for eleven years. They had been through everything together. Allistair, the Apocalypse, Sam losing his soul, Cas’ betrayal, the Leviathin, Cas’ death, Purgatory, Naomi, Cas’ death....again, Metatron, Amara, Lucifer possessing Cas, the Mark of Cain, losing Cas again, raising Jack, losing Mary, losing Jack.....the list goes on.

Dean felt the pressure in his chest tighten, like he had been running a race, he felt out of breath, tears sprang to his eyes of their own accord, falling down his face as the echo of the bunker door rang in his ears. He thought of the awful words that he had hurled at Cas, playing on the things he knew would hurt the worst. Like he wanted Cas to leave. But he didn’t really, he had never actually wanted Cas to leave.He had never thought that Cas would actually walk out the door.

And now he had proved John’s point correct. He had proved himself unloveable, even to Cas.

He stayed where he was, gripping the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white and his fingers going numb from lack of circulation. He wanted that numbness to spread all over his body, calm his aching beating heart. He was still so angry. Angry at Cas, at Chuck, at Belphegor, at Rowena, at Sam, at Mary, at John, at the whole goddamn world for making him the one that had to save everyone, that Chuck had dictated every single second of his life and made him fall so in love with a stupid angel with his black hair and his blue eyes and his broken wings.

It was Chuck’s fault that he had torn himself apart from the inside out because of how he felt about Cas. How guilty he had felt about wishing he could bridge the gap between them and take and touch and possess and that was all Chuck’s fault. He didn’t want to be like this, he didn’t want to be in love with Cas, he didn’t want to be in love with any man, and it was for Chuck’s amusement, all of it. John had beaten the shit out of him for Chuck’s amusement, he had cried in a gas station bathroom when he was seventeen years old after having to leave the first boy he’d ever kissed in Spokane, Washington, and the shame that rose in his throat? All Chuck.

Dean wished, not for the first time, but certainly the most desperately, that he couldn’t feel at all. That his soul would be dragged out of him, thrown in a box and tossed to the bottom of the ocean, because this pain made him feel like he was being turned inside out, pushed and stretched and ripped and torn and there was nothing left of his already shattered heart to give to anyone else. Not that anyone else would ever want him. He could drown himself in one night stands, get lost in neon lights and drunken touches that slurred like the words in their mouths. But that wouldn’t fix the shredded thing in his chest, only numb its presence, and he didn’t know if that would make it worse or better.

Unloveable.  The word echoed in his head.

How long did he stand there? Minutes? Hours? Long enough for Sam to come upstairs and ask the words Dean knew were coming:

“Where’s Cas?”

Dean let go of the table. His fingers ached, circulation long gone.

“Moved on.”

Sam looked at him, not comprehending.

“Moved on? From what?”

“Me. Us.”

Sam was breathing hard, tears in his eyes again, but he stepped back when Dean took a step towards him.

“He’s gone? What did you say to him?”

“It’s his fault Rowena’s gone. His fault you had to-“

“You’re an idiot, Dean.”

“I-“

“I don’t even want to hear it,” Sam said, turning his back on Dean, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

“Cas? Hey man, can you,” Sam’s voice shook and Dean hated himself very much for what he had done, “Can you just come back? Can we talk about this? I know you couldn’t have gotten far and I’ll come look for you. Please Cas, just come back.”

Sam turned back to Dean, looking smaller than ever even though he was a foot taller than Dean, had been since he was sixteen.

“Why would you do that? Send him away?”

Dean longed to tell Sam that he couldn’t be around Cas when what he felt for Cas was fabricated. He wanted to tell Sam that he was broken beyond repair, that whatever was left of his heart couldn’t be salvaged, it lay in pieces on the floor, that this hurt him more than almost anything else, because he knew that he had fucked up, that this was wrong, but what was the alternative? Longing glances when the thought Cas couldn’t see? Touching himself at night and thinking of broad shoulders and dark hair and stormy blue eyes? Longing forever for something that Chuck would never allow him to have, that, even if he was in control, he didn’t think he would let himself have? It was better to be alone. He didn’t need attachments, when he and Sam had started this whole thing, when he was 26....so young, that was who he had been. He could go back to that. He could be alone. Because what the hell was the alternative?

“It was his choice,” was all he could say, and the words sounded hollow even to him. Sam shook his head.

“This isn’t his fault, mom, Jack, Rowena. That’s not him.”

Dean looked at the ground, he couldn’t say anything.

“And you know it,” Dean met Sam’s eyes. He could never hide anything from him. Not really.

“I-” he was scrambling to find an answer, not that he really had one, “All we need is family-“

“Cas is family, Dean, when are you gonna get that through your thick skull? I’m gonna go look for Cas.”

Dean didn’t even try to stop him. He heard the tires of the Impala pull out of the garage and he tried really really hard not to collapse to the floor.

Sam came back hours later, empty handed. He wouldn’t even look at Dean, but went straight to his room, closing the door behind him.

Dean’s own room was like the planet of Tralfamadore to him. He didn’t recognize anything in there anymore. He collapsed on his bed, drunk on his thoughts and the half a bottle of whiskey he had drank and he thought of Cas. Cas’ smile, his laugh, the way he touched Dean when he healed him. The way his face lit up when Dean started to sing in the car. His questions when they watched one of Dean’s favorite movies together. His hands. His hair. His eyes.

Dean was numb off the whiskey, but the shards of his heart still ached, knowing they would never be whole, because what was he but unloveable?

[qqueenofhades]

the tangled web of fate we weave: xx

welcome to what is absolutely gonna me losing my goddamn mind over these two all week and double hard after the finale. so, the ush.

part xix/AO3

Lucy wakes up the next morning (well, she’s already been up twice, at one AM and then at four, and by the time she is summoned again at seven, figures there’s no point in going back to bed) and shuffles downstairs to find that Amy, wonderful soul that she is, already has the coffee going. Lucy sits down with a groan, shifts Lily to her other shoulder, and lets the life-giving fumes waft up her nose. This will be her first proper hit of caffeine in months, and she is ready to feel good, dammit. As she sits there basking, she says, “Did you talk to Garcia before he left this morning? He was gone pretty early.”

“I woke up as he was coming downstairs, but we didn’t talk.” Amy pulls the pot off, pours it into two mugs, adds cream and sugar to hers, and gives Lucy hers black. “I figured he was off to grab his evidence backups, or wherever he was going. Or that you were both awake because of the munchkin.”

“I was. Briefly.” Lucy has a vague memory of Flynn getting up around the same time she was returning from the four o’clock feeding, but she was already falling asleep on her feet and was out by the time she hit the bed again. “Very briefly.”

Amy snorts, raising her mug. “In that case, here’s to caffeine. Sláinte.”

Lucy picks it up, takes a sip, and moans in ecstasy, unable to gulp it in embarrassing amounts because it’s still too hot. She blows on it a few times, then sips again, performing a delighted little wiggle from head to toe and scoffing at her sister’s smirk. “What? You try it!”

“I’m good, thanks,” Amy says. “But that was adorable. How are you feeling today?”

“A little better.” At least physically, Lucy thinks, though she’s still not up for any triathlons. The argument with Flynn yesterday rocked her, and she has the distinct sense that it has not been resolved or released, even if they did try to silently make it up last night. She starts to get up to make herself breakfast awkwardly one-handed, but Amy waves at her to sit and goes to put in some toast. “Amy, about this – this time travel stuff. Do you really buy it?”

“Everyone else seems to be serious about it, so…” Amy opens the fridge to get butter and jam. “I guess? I like to keep an open mind about things. You know me, I’ve always been into the idea of ghosts and aliens and parallel worlds and stuff beyond what we can see. That was what drove Mom crazy. You two being the sensible solid historians, the ones who worked with facts and logic and empirical evidence, and I was out there being all New Agey and woo-woo. Now, I guess – ” Amy stops, then continues in the determinedly casual voice that means she doesn’t want to be heaping too much of her own pain on Lucy, a shared trait of the Preston sisters. Wherever that compassion came from, it clearly wasn’t Carol. “Now I guess it doesn’t matter what she thought, huh?”

There’s a brief silence. Then Lucy says quietly, “I can’t believe she did that to us.”

“I can.” Amy unscrews the raspberry jam with more than the necessary force and digs her knife in. “I loved Mom – I still do, that’s not gonna stop, even if it’s complicated – but I could never understand how you couldn’t see her manipulating you. Her love always came at a price, her approval was always conditional, she never let you make mistakes, or at least live with them. She pushed and pushed and pushed, and you kept giving it to her and thinking it was your fault that you hadn’t been good enough before. That was why I wanted to move out, even if it meant I was living in a crappy apartment and struggling to pay my bills, rather than let her do to me what she did to you. And I could have spoken up more, I could have done something, rather than just assuming you were smart and you’d figure it out and it wasn’t my business to get into the middle of that. So. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. God, it’s not your fault.” Lucy gets up and hugs Amy fiercely, one-armed, Lily still snoozing in the other one. “You’re just my kid sister, you should never have had to do that. That shouldn’t have been on you.”

“Yeah,” Amy says, low-voiced. “Maybe. But it was, and I blew it.”

“No, you didn’t. Okay, Ames? You didn’t. You didn’t.” Lucy grips her shoulder hard. “We still have each other, and I have Garcia and Lily, and we’ll – we’ll make our own family. Family isn’t just blood. If this is going to be how it is, with us and Wyatt and Rufus, well – we’ll get used to it. It’ll be better.”

“I guess,” Amy says. She gathers herself together, and musters a smile. “But with all of this going on, it doesn’t seem like we’re about to have any cookouts or whatever soon, does it?”

“Maybe not, but we can do that later.” Even as she speaks it, the usual, casual reassurance – we can do that later, the assumption that’s always been the case for everyone everywhere – Lucy feels a pang. What if there is no later? What if all of earlier gets upended as well? She hesitates, then sits down with her toast, passing Lily over to Amy so she can properly eat. “I – look. Amy. I have something to tell you. It’s going to sound a little weird, but I guess you just reminded me that you can deal with it.”

Thus, not letting herself have time to change her mind, she tells Amy the full story of her future self coming to visit Flynn three years ago, the effect it had on him deciding to go great guns after Rittenhouse, insisting that it was time travel at stake, and the argument they had yesterday about it. Flynn thinking that the logical next step is to escalate the war before Rittenhouse can do it to them, that he has this insane plan of tracking and killing them through history, no matter the damage it could do to God knows what fiber of reality. That he scares her when he talks like that, she doesn’t know how she ends up as this other version of herself or if she wants to, and that he thinks Rittenhouse is trying to prevent them from ever meeting on the night of the car accident. That if they somehow pull it off, Lucy and Flynn will never meet, none of this will ever happen, and Lily won’t be born. A wrinkle in time, rather literally, but not one that can be fixed or unbent. They might not even know.

“Wait. Okay.” Amy has hung in there through most of this crazy shit, but she blinks hard at that. “How could someone just… vanish from history? Lily’s already born. She can’t just… not be born, right? How would that even work?”

“I don’t know.” Lucy sits back. “This is a situation that only comes up in those sci-fi movies, or Back to the Future, when Marty McFly has to make sure his parents get together so he exists. But I suppose that yes, theoretically, if they had the ability to change the timeline and stop us from meeting, she’d just… not be there.”

Amy clutches her niece protectively. “That is messed up.”

“Yeah.” Lucy finishes the last swig of her now lukewarm coffee, and pushes her empty plate away. “Not to mention all the other stuff that would change. I might never know about Benjamin Cahill, I wouldn’t know about Mom, or Rittenhouse, or Wyatt and Rufus. I would never have met Garcia. I’d just be – I don’t know. I don’t know who I’d be. Probably still at Stanford anyway, living the life Mom wanted for me. Still dating Noah.”

“Oh, honey, no,” Amy says. “In any timeline, you can do better than him.”

Lucy laughs weakly, despite herself. “He wasn’t that bad. He was a good guy.”

“Sure,” Amy says. “For someone else. Anyway. This is – this is definitely a lot, but thanks for telling me. We’ll figure it out, okay? We won’t let Wicked Witch Whitmore take this away from you. Did you say she works at Mason Industries? Can we ask Rufus?”

“Ask Rufus what? If he can fetch his evil coworker in for a chat, after she almost killed Flynn the last time she saw him, and destroyed all of his evidence on Rittenhouse? He’s probably in all kinds of danger if he does that, he might not even know who she really is.”

“Maybe not. Should we warn him, though? We don’t want him accidentally letting something slip, if he doesn’t know that she isn’t to be trusted.”

“Maybe, but then he has to see her every day and know she’s dangerous and…” Lucy stops. “No, you’re right. He deserves to know the truth. Mason Industries seems neck-deep with Rittenhouse anyway, they’re the ones paying for the time machine. It’s not fair to Rufus to just dangle him out in that sea of sharks.”

“He might know about it,” Amy points out. “He’s worked there for a while. There might be more he could tell us. Like how close it is to being operational, and – ”

Lucy shudders. “I don’t want it to be.”

“Because you’re afraid Garcia’s going to do – what?” Amy considers her closely. “Steal it, and go hog-wild screwing up history in the name of eradicating Rittenhouse?”

“Yeah.” Lucy hates admitting it, feels disloyal, but she doesn’t entirely trust what Flynn would do if that was an option right now. “Basically.”

“Maybe Rufus can sabotage it.” Amy gets up to clear the dishes from the table. “If he knows the truth about these people and what they’re going to do with it, then – ”

“That would put him in terrible danger,” Lucy objects. “It could cost him his job, his professional reputation. We definitely have no right to ask that of him.”

“Okay, true.” There’s a slight edge in Amy’s voice. “But if we are really going to stop these Rittenhouse maniacs, if everything you say is true and they are completely evil and willing to do whatever it takes to preserve that, maybe we have to figure out what we can ask, and of who.”

Lucy looks at her, startled and unsettled. “Don’t tell me you agree with Garcia.”

“I don’t know, frankly. And obviously I see where you’re coming from too. But at this point…” Amy trails off. “I’m not sure that I don’t not agree with him.”

Lucy doesn’t know what to say to that. Perhaps it’s significant that the two people she loves and trusts the most in the world have now had the same response to the situation, and she – just like her years-long pattern of making excuses for her mother, refusing to see what Amy is now telling her was obvious – is once more dragging her feet, reluctant to upset the apple cart as usual. But if this apple cart is all of time and space and known history, Lucy thinks she’s at least a little justified in keeping it upright. She’s a historian, she loves the past, she’s worked to understand it, to make it relevant to the present, to teach it in meaningful and engaging ways. That gives her some sort of mandate to be its champion, to protect it – whether from Rittenhouse, or from the man she loves. It twists and twists in her gut, it hurts almost physically, but she’s certain. She can’t let Flynn do this.

When she doesn’t answer, Amy seems to sense that she probably shouldn’t push. They clean up the kitchen, as Lucy puts Lily in the baby-sling and tries to think what to do. It’s almost nine o’clock, so she’d usually be at campus by now, unlocking her office and picking up papers and answering emails. She’s not used to sitting around the house and doing nothing, especially when there’s so much that needs to be figured out. Yes, being a mother is important work and all that, and Lucy’s not going to diss stay-at-home moms in the least (especially since she’s getting a sense of just how hard it must be), but she does other things with her time and her talents. She can’t just serve as a dispenser of food and clean diapers and naptime to an occasionally irascible small human, much as she loves her. She should do some research. See what she can find. Not that any of what she needs is likely to be online, or anything that she can get into (Flynn is another story) but still.

Lucy goes upstairs to get her laptop, and when she comes down, glances at her phone, thinking that there should be a text from him by now. They’re far from the kind of couple that constantly has to monitor the other’s whereabouts – they are both adults and can come and go as they please, without signing a register every time. But given everything that’s going on, and the fact of what happened the last time he rushed out without telling her what he was doing, Lucy doesn’t think she’s being unreasonable to expect at least some kind of touching base. He wouldn’t intentionally make her worry, or withhold contact just to be petty. Maybe he just forgot or didn’t want to bother her. She opens their chat and types, Hey, where are you? Left pretty early this am. Lmk when you have a minute. Xo.

Hopefully that doesn’t sound too worried or accusing, and Lucy puts her phone aside. She has just been trying to find the best way to position both Lily and her laptop when she hears a car in the driveway, and looks up. “Amy, is that Garcia?”

Amy peers out the front window. “Nope. It’s Wyatt. He has some lady with him, actually. Looks important.”

“Oh no, that must be the woman from Homeland Security.” Lucy jumps up, acutely aware that she has not yet showered and is still in her pajamas, as well as not wearing any makeup. “Is it rude if I run upstairs for five minutes to make myself presentable?”

“Honestly, this is your house,” Amy says. “And you just had a baby. You can look however you want.”

Lucy supposes this is true, even if she still feels self-conscious, as footsteps click on the walk and the doorbell rings. Amy gets it, admitting Wyatt (who looks as if he’s had at least a little sleep) and his companion, a trim, dark-eyed older woman with black hair cut neatly to her shoulders, a crisp pantsuit, and a folder under one arm, which she shifts so that she and Lucy can shake hands. “I’m Denise Christopher,” she says. “Department of Homeland Security. Sergeant Logan asked if I could stop by and hear something that you had to say?”

“It’s – it’s complicated.” Lucy nods gratefully at Wyatt, then tries to jiggle Lily with one arm as she wakes up and starts to fret. “My partner, Garcia, he’s the one who has most of it, and he’s out right now, but I’ll be happy to give you what I know. Just let me have a couple minutes to run upstairs, I’m sorry, I’m not very – ”

“I’ll be happy to take your baby for a minute.” Denise holds out her arms. “Don’t worry about apologizing. Go upstairs and freshen up if you want to, but certainly don’t feel obliged to dress up on my account.”

Lucy considers Denise for a long moment, and decides to trust her. She undoes the sling and hands Lily over to Denise, who boosts her expertly up onto her shoulder, pats her back with an air of firm authority, and gets her to calm down. It’s the reassuring older-woman motherly-competence thing that Lucy was wishing she could still lean on Carol for, and it briefly chokes her up. “I – ah, I’m sorry, I’m guessing you have kids?”

“My wife and I have two in grade school,” Denise says. “The early days can be hard. Do you mind if we have a seat in your kitchen?”

“That’s fine. I’ll be right back.”

With that, Lucy goes upstairs, jumps quickly in the shower, dresses, puts on a little makeup and brushes her hair, then checks her phone again. No response from Flynn; the message hasn’t been read. Renewed agitation prickles at her heart like thorns. God, he’s just been gone, he’s just been hurt. Please don’t say he’s off on another crusade already. Please.

She tells herself she can’t send another message yet, but she calls him anyway, and it goes over to voicemail without ringing. There’s too much of a lump in her throat for her to form words, so she hangs up, smiles bright and falsely at herself in the mirror, and walks back downstairs. Amy has taken care of supplying Wyatt and Denise with coffee, and they’re sitting at the kitchen table; Denise has a notepad open and is uncapping a pen. “All right,” she says. “Please tell me whatever you know about this organization called Rittenhouse.”

Lucy and Wyatt exchange a look, he nods at her to go first, and she takes a deep breath. Starts at the beginning, tells Denise about Cahill and the event in Marin County and Flynn rescuing her, then getting shot in Windsor the next morning. The trip to the University of Pennsylvania, Emma, the excursion to the house of horrors in West Point, escaping that and going back to some semblance of a normal life, but sending Flynn off for two years to hunt them around the world. The reveal that her mother was in on it, and that Flynn’s painstakingly collected evidence has been destroyed. Tells Denise everything, in fact, except about the time travel. She doesn’t want to sound completely off the ranch first thing.

A faint line gathers between Denise’s brows as Lucy speaks, and remains there when she’s finished. Denise taps her pen, clearly considering what to say, then looks at Wyatt. “And you’ve said that the Black Eagles case we both worked on had something to do with that, didn’t you? That they were funneling the drug profits to Rittenhouse somehow, and that they may have had something to do with the disappearance of your wife?”

“I think so.” Wyatt’s jaw sets hard. “Flynn does, at any rate, and he’s the expert on this. Though I notice he’s not here, again. But yeah. Thought that because I messed around with one of their golden gooses, they came after Jess in revenge. She’s alive, I swear she’s still alive. If it was just killing her, wouldn’t her body have turned up by now, a warning to stay in my lane or whatever? If she’s just gone, she has to still be out there. If we can save her.”

“I’m not unsympathetic to what both of you have gone through,” Denise says crisply. “This does fit with several other unexplained cases that have passed over my desk recently, and obviously you have encountered someone. But right now, all I have to back it up is your word, and that’s not something I can take to my superiors. It sounds like a paranoid conspiracy theory, and the government spends enough time with those. You said there was evidence that was destroyed. Where?”

“I…” Lucy hesitates. “I don’t know exactly. Garcia never told me where his safe house was, he didn’t want me liable. It’s somewhere up in the foothills outside San Francisco, but now it’s been blown up. So that’s not very – ”

“And why does your partner have an off-the-grid safe house that’s rigged with enough explosives to detonate at the drop of a hat?” Denise cocks her head and surveys Lucy critically. “You said he’s ex-special forces. For us?”

“He worked for the NSA for several years, it’s where he picked up the investigation on Benjamin Cahill in the first place. He’s been a – a freelancer for a while, though.”

“Hmmm.” Denise is clearly thinking that there are a lot more threads she could pull at this, given that the vast majority of Flynn’s activities since Lucy met him have been skirting the very edges of legality. “And where is he from again, exactly?”

“He was born and raised in Croatia, but his mother was American, he’s a dual citizen. He’s not a security risk.” Even as she speaks, Lucy can hear Flynn last night, saying that if America couldn’t survive losing Rittenhouse, maybe it doesn’t deserve to exist. “He’s a little… idiosyncratic, but his heart is in the right place. He’s just very opinionated, he’s done this for a long time, and he’s used to working alone.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Denise says. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“Soon, I’m sure.” Lucy damn well hopes so, at any rate. “Can I offer you any more coffee?”

Denise assures her that she’s fine, and starts asking them some more questions about Rittenhouse – any other names or dates or details they can remember. Lucy and Wyatt exchange a glance, as they’re not sure they should bring Mason Industries into the fray without Rufus here. Low-voiced, Lucy asks, “Should we call him? Is he at work?”

“Yeah, he’s at work,” Wyatt says. “He was acting a little weird this morning, though. Maybe we should give him a day off from the insanity.”

“Maybe.” Lucy has a brief unsettled feeling, though she can’t say why. “But this is something we need to tell her about.”

Wyatt looks back at the kitchen table where Denise is writing; they have stepped off around the corner to have a private word. Then he says, even more quietly, “Tell the government that Connor Mason’s invented a time machine and hasn’t bothered to apply for so much as a parking permit? Yeah, I can see that going really well. The place would be covered in red tape and federal agents tomorrow. There’s not any guarantee that that would go any better than Rittenhouse getting their hands on it. I vote no.”

This is essentially what Flynn said earlier, but Lucy can sense another resistance behind it. She tips her chin back to look at him. “You want to use that machine yourself, don’t you?”

Wyatt grimaces, but more as an unspoken admission that he’s been caught, rather than really denying it. He glances at Denise, then moves them a little further out of earshot into the hall. “Come on,” he says. “A time machine? A time machine? Who gets that chance, ever? We’re supposed to – what, hand it over to a bunch of cubicle-farm, pen-pusher bureaucrats who’d keep it in mothballs for eighty rounds of paperwork? No way. Rufus says they’re running advanced tests now, it’s pretty much going to be up and ready to go in a matter of months. If that’s the case, then – I can go back, I can fix my mistake, I can save Jess. Whether or not Rittenhouse ever coughs her up, it wouldn’t matter. I have to.”

“It’s – ” Lucy hesitates. “Wyatt, it’s not that easy. You can’t travel on your own timeline, you can’t go back to 2012, you wouldn’t be able to just pop in and have a re-do with her. You could only go back to somewhere before you were born.”

By the look on Wyatt’s face, that is something he does not like hearing. He whirls on his heel, stares at the wall, then whirls back. “There has to be a loophole. Someone has to have tried it. I don’t care if it’s risky, I’d only have to do it once. Or – what?”

Lucy winces. She doesn’t want to tell him about the whole future-version-of-her visiting Flynn, as that seems like it will get his hopes up in a way that will not necessarily be borne out. “I… heard about a case in which it might be possible,” she says evasively. “But I really don’t know the details.”

“Well, who does?” Wyatt glances at her, picks it up. “Flynn?”

“He – he knows something, but – ”

“Make him tell you, then. You’re married, or close enough. I’d tell my wife, I’d tell her everything, I wouldn’t keep it back. He’s MIA right now again, apparently, but whenever he gets back – he still owes me that information, remember? For what I did?”

“I know, I know.” Lucy can sense his barely restrained frustration and anger and grief, and she doesn’t blame him. Wyatt has been living in a stalemate, using up all his accumulated leave from the Army, where – frankly speaking – he would probably be happier, because at least another mission would keep him out of the squalid attic of his head. He and Rufus have become good friends, it’s better that they’re roommates than it would be if Wyatt was alone, but he still knows no more about Jessica’s fate than he did on the day she vanished. That’s a horrible way to live, one that Lucy would not wish on her worst enemy, and he deserves a breakthrough, to do something with all this. “I’m sure he’ll find it.”

Wyatt makes a noise in his throat that says he isn’t sure. His fingers tap neurotically against his thigh, a muscle works in his cheek. He looks like a man on the hair-trigger of an explosion, and Lucy, who is somewhat familiar with the sight, reaches out to put a hand on his arm. “Hey. Thanks for bringing Denise by, all right? Thank you.”

Wyatt’s blue eyes flick to her, startled, and they hold each other’s gazes for a moment. He coughs. Then he says gruffly, “Yeah. No problem.”

Lucy looks back at him, not sure what she’s about to say, when they’re distracted by the sound of the front door banging open. There’s only one person who would be entering the house like that, and she hurries down the hallway in abject relief. “Garcia?”

Sure enough, it’s him, looking windswept and grumpy, but at least no more banged up than when he went out. He looks at her in some surprise as she throws her arms around his neck, and allows her to pull his head down for a kiss. “Lucy, what – ?”

“I was just…” Lucy bites her lip. “I woke up, and you were gone again. I – I was worried.”

“I’m here now,” Flynn says, more than a little unhelpfully. “Is that Wyatt’s car out front?”

“Yes, he’s here. With Denise Christopher from Homeland Security, he brought her by. She’s in the kitchen, she wants to talk to you. She wants whatever evidence you have on Rittenhouse – is that what you were doing this morning? Getting the backups?”

Flynn shakes his head. “No, I didn’t get those.”

“What were you doing, then?”

“Later.” Flynn kicks off his shoes and strides into the kitchen like a Panzer brigade. He has clearly dialed the imposing factor up to eleven, and Lucy isn’t sure this is the best way to approach a federal agent who has already been asking a few pointed questions about his recent activities. She trots after him, feeling that a sudden need to play mediator might be called for, and steps in just as Flynn is staring at Denise, who in turn is staring back at him. There’s a pause. Then Flynn barks, “So you’re her?”

“Yes.” Denise gets to her feet and offers a coolly professional hand. “Agent Denise Christopher, from Homeland Security. You must be Garcia Flynn.”

Flynn grunts, as if to say that he is exercising his constitutional right not to answer stupid questions. Then he glances at Wyatt, who has stepped back into the kitchen, and something flickers across his face. Lucy can’t tell exactly what, but it unsettles her, somehow. Then Flynn says, equally ungraciously, “You’re here, I see.”

“Yeah. I brought her.” Wyatt stares back at him challengingly. “Because at least one of us follows through with what we said we were going to do.”

Flynn’s mouth twists. He moves to the coffee pot, discovers it’s empty, makes a noise of aggravation, and starts a fresh round. The silence remains tense and awkward as it brews, until Amy sticks her head in. “Hey, Garcia.”

Flynn makes a brief acknowledgment. “Where’s Lily?”

“In her bassinet thingy, in the living room. After Lucy and I looked after her this morning.” Amy’s tone is gentle, but pointed. “Feel like filling us in on where you were?”

“Apparently I have a lot of filling in I’m expected to do.” Flynn jabs the percolator, as if this is going to make it brew faster. “One at a time, eh?”

Amy raises both eyebrows at Lucy, who decides that for now, she’ll pretend she didn’t see that, and withdraws. Once the coffee is finished, Flynn splashes it into a cup and practically kicks out the chair across from Denise, sitting down with a jerk. “Well?”

“I have a few questions for you, yes.” Denise has managed to remain completely unfazed by the sight of a large man in a clearly foul temper, snorting and rampaging like a rhino stung by a wasp, since she is probably no stranger to it in her line of work. “If this is a bad time, I’d be happy to return later.”

“No. We’ll do it now.” Flynn swivels to face her with a wide, snarky smile. “Fire away!”

Denise utters a small sigh in the back of her throat, but commences going down the list. Flynn gives her a few answers, but when he remains utterly unforthcoming on the subject of his two years abroad, how exactly he tracked Rittenhouse, got money to do that, or basically anything whatsoever, she makes another, far more frustrated sound. “You know I can’t do my job with this if you don’t tell me anything, don’t you?”

“What do I have to tell you?” Flynn counters. “You asked me about Rittenhouse. That’s what I’m giving you.”

“You haven’t answered half my questions.”

“Maybe you should stop trying to get me to incriminate myself, then.”

“Is that an admission that you have something that might?”

“How did I know you were going to say that?” Flynn stands up fast enough to almost knock over his chair. “Still sitting there thinking that Rittenhouse is just some paranoid delusion and the real problem here is me, aren’t you? Asking all these clever questions about, let’s be frank, things that are not relevant to the investigation, so you can finger me as the culprit. Either act like you really have come here to help, or get out of my house.”

“Garcia – ” Lucy starts. “Garcia, don’t – ”

Flynn completely ignores her, still staring evilly at Agent Christopher, who stares right back. Then Denise says, “I came here as a favor to Sergeant Logan, to hear about some evil secret society that’s supposedly implanted in all levels of American government, that’s been responsible for a long-term private terror campaign, is partially funded by drug cartels, and has unknown operational capabilities, and whatever else. Don’t insult me by acting like I wouldn’t care about that, if it was real. But if all you’re going to do is rant and rave at me and offer not a single scrap of concrete proof, there isn’t much that I can, or frankly want, to do for you. Now, are we going to keep talking or not?”

“As long as you don’t – ”

At that, Lucy clears her throat. Steps forward, and says, in the dangerously sweet voice that every man recognizes if he knows what’s good for him, “Honey? A word?”

Flynn glances at her almost guiltily, but Lucy doesn’t bother to wait and see if the realization has struck on its own. She jerks her head at him, and he hesitates, then gets up and follows her. She leads them down the hall, away from both the kitchen and the living room, shuts the door, then turns on him. “You stop it right now. Right now.”

Flynn blinks. “I – ”

“Be quiet, I’m talking. I’m not even going to ask you what you were doing this morning, though frankly I would be entirely within my rights to do so, but if you keep bellowing and stamping and posing like a bull in the ring, I might change my mind. Denise is here as a favor to Wyatt. She doesn’t have to be here, she didn’t have to spend most of the morning listening to us, and she definitely doesn’t have to sit there and swallow you acting like a jackass. We barely have any allies in this as it is. Are you going to drive them off because they’re not you? Or maybe you have some better idea about who we should be talking to, some other contact who’s willing to come out here and work this through? Or are you just acting like this because Wyatt brought her, and you have some kind of hangup about Wyatt right now? More than usual, that is?”

Flynn flinches. He opens his mouth, then shuts it. Finally, he says, “I – I didn’t – ”

“Just don’t.” Lucy feels incredibly tired, in a way far deeper even than the first-night fatigue of dealing with a baby. “Either answer her questions like a human being, or tell her to go, if you’re somehow so sure we can do this without any outside help at all. For the record, I don’t think we can. But you’re the expert here, aren’t you?”

Flynn flinches again. A dawning awareness crosses his face that yes, he done fucked up, and he looks at the floor. Finally he says, “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Lucy isn’t going to hold out to punish him more, tempting as it might be, because that would go against what she just told him to do. “These people are on our side. Don’t lash out at them just because our enemies aren’t yet in reach.”

She sees a sigh shudder through him from head to heel. Again, quietly, he says, “I’m sorry, Lucy. I didn’t – I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know.” Lucy steps closer and rests her hands on his chest, as his arms come around her waist. The usual way they find themselves standing when they’re close, tucked up in two neat halves. “I’m just – I’m worried sick, my mother just betrayed me, we have a newborn, and we’re trying to launch an investigation into these evil people, and those are only our somewhat ordinary problems. I need you to be there for me, Garcia. I need you. If any one man in the world could fight Rittenhouse, it’s you, but…” She stops. “Lily and I need you to be more than the soldier, all right? We need you. Just remember that. With what we’re doing, there can be secrets, but there can’t be lies. Not between us. All right?”

Flynn hesitates, then nods. Reaches up with one hand, takes hers, and raises it to his mouth to kiss her fingers. “I don’t think either of us want a fancy wedding,” he says gruffly. “Though if you do, we can work it out. Still, even if it’s just at the courthouse, I want to properly marry you.  That is, if you – ”

“Me too.” It’s not a very traditional proposal, though they’re far from a traditional couple, but Lucy feels a smile wide enough to hurt her face starting to spread across it. “I – I want it. Very much. Now can we go back and finish talking to Denise properly?”

Flynn nods, bends down to kiss her quickly, and that’s it, that’s all the discussion they need. They walk back to the kitchen, where everyone looks slightly thrown by the delighted grins – they definitely were not expecting for Lucy to drag Flynn off in trouble and them to then return engaged – but decides not to ask. Flynn sits down and answers (most of) Denise’s further questions in a markedly more conciliatory tone, as Wyatt catches Lucy’s eye and is clearly very curious to know what happened there. Lucy mouths later, goes to the living room to check on Lily and Amy, and glances occasionally at the kitchen to see if she needs to run interference. Amy, spotting her face, says, “That’s not exactly the expression I thought you were going to have, to be honest.”

“I… told him off. It felt good.” Lucy shrugs awkwardly. “And we decided to actually get married, so there was that.”

Amy snorts. “Deciding to get married in between an argument about the best way to take down Rittenhouse? Sounds like you two.”

“I guess.” Lucy thinks of Noah’s first proposal, which checked all the romantic boxes: sunset on the beach, champagne, rose petals in the picnic basket and a ring tied with a tulle ribbon. Sweet speech that started off with how some author or poet had once defined love, and explaining how she fit that for him. It was nice and he had clearly put thought into it, and she felt very bad about turning him down. Saying that she really liked him, but they were still young, and it felt early. He took it as best as he could, and they sat awkwardly side by side without talking much for the rest of the night. Tried to stay in the relationship for a few more weeks after that, but a failed marriage proposal is kind of a sign that you aren’t on the same page, and they decided to go their separate ways. God, that feels like forever ago. Looking back on herself, trying to get back together just because she didn’t want to be lonely, makes Lucy feel vaguely embarrassed. And yet, a little frightened. Her relationship with Flynn is nothing like her relationship with Noah; she knows beyond a doubt that whatever time she has, she wants to be with him. But what if she ends up alone anyway? Or worse.

Fine, Lucy tells herself. She’s a big girl, an independent woman, she can live without a man. She’s certainly not wishing she picked Noah just because he might have a longer shelf life, and she doesn’t have any regrets. Anything she can do to tie herself and Flynn more concretely together, another reminder to the universe that they’re supposed to be this way, they chose it and they’ll keep it, also seems appealing. As he said, they don’t need fuss. Her mother was the one who envisioned a big white wedding. A courthouse ceremony is fine.

Hearing the interview winding down, Lucy gets up and goes back into the kitchen, as Denise is shutting her notepad and thanking Flynn for his cooperation in a still slightly pointed tone. As she’s reaching for her bag, she thinks of something, and glances at Lucy. “Your mother is Carol Preston? Former Stanford professor of women’s history, Carol Preston?”

“Yes.” Lucy grimaces. “As I said, she… can’t be trusted.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Denise unzips her purse and puts her things in. “I’ve read all your mother’s books, I very much enjoyed them. She shaped a lot of my thinking. I know it’s nothing to compare to what you must feel, but it’s disillusioning for me as well.”

“She… shaped a lot of my thinking too.” Lucy’s throat feels raw. So much of who she is, for better or for worse, as a woman, a scholar, an academic, is filtered through Carol’s lenses. They’ve been things Lucy has liked about herself for a long time. Even when her leave ends, can she just go back to Stanford and continue in that legacy? It feels like it would be very difficult to set foot in those hallowed halls again, much as she loves them, and keep pretending that she doesn’t know what she now knows. As if she already knows that she can’t go back. To that life, or that job, or that person, or that home.

Denise shakes their hands, tells them that she’ll try to see if she can pull anything solid out of it, and she and Wyatt leave. Once they’re gone, Lucy checks that Lily doesn’t need anything, then shuts the kitchen door and turns to Flynn. “Okay. Where did you go this morning?”

Flynn grimaces. “I thought you said you weren’t going to ask?”

“Yes,” Lucy says. “I know. And if there’s some very good reason you can’t tell me, I won’t ask again. But if it wasn’t getting the backup Rittenhouse evidence, then… where?”

There’s a long pause as Flynn leans against the counter, arms crossed. As usual, he looks too big for the room. Finally he says, “I was testing information.”

“What information?”

“Last night.” Flynn sounds reluctant, but he is keeping his promise not to lie to her. “I got a strange call, that’s why I got up. I don’t know who it was on the other end, it was scrambled, but it told me that the name I was looking for was Wes Gilliam. Repeated it several times to make sure I had it, then cut off. I don’t even know if it was a real person, it didn’t sound like one. I assume that the name is the one I promised Wyatt. About who is responsible for his wife’s disappearance.”

“Wes Gilliam?” Lucy blinks. “Is that who you were looking into?”

“Yes,” Flynn says. “I’m not some local cop. I still have my sources, my strings to pull, even without the safe house. Wes Gilliam is currently in jail in San Diego, he’s responsible for killing at least two other women. The blood at the crime scene that wasn’t Jessica’s, it was his. He wasn’t in prison when she went missing, so at least theoretically, he could have killed her. But they found the bodies of Gilliam’s other two victims, partially dressed and – ” He pauses briefly. “Sexually abused. They still haven’t found any trace of Jessica. It’s not quite his modus operandi. So I’m still not entirely sure.”

“But it’s a name,” Lucy says. Thinks of Wyatt’s anger earlier, that he’s been boxed in like this and is desperate to do something, anything, to put an end to the hellish limbo. Even possibly stealing a time machine, at which he might well agree with Flynn that that is the only way. “We promised him some kind of lead, any lead. We’re using too many people, Garcia. We can’t just take what we want and give nothing back.”

“If we do give this to him, though.” Flynn restlessly pushes off the counter. “What does he do, huh? What does he do? Probably quits the Rittenhouse investigation on the spot and goes AWOL. He knows about the time travel now, knows that just killing Gilliam won’t solve the Jessica mystery. I don’t think he’ll stop there.”

“You’re not really one to talk about going AWOL,” Lucy points out. “Or quitting investigations to take up others.”

Flynn shrugs. “I’ve been going back and forth,” he says, after a long moment. “Whether we need Wyatt or not. But for now, unavoidably, we do. I can’t give him this information and tell him to sit peaceably and not do anything with it. It’s sure as hell not what I would do, and I’m not a hypocrite. I promised it, I intended to follow through. I still do. But if we give it to him now, and he runs off and fucks everything up, then – ”

“It’s his wife.” Lucy feels obligated to emphasize the fact that Wyatt wouldn’t exactly be ditching them to run off and hit the Strip in Vegas. “And he did hold up his end of the bargain. If he hadn’t – ”

“Rittenhouse might have scrubbed my records anyway,” Flynn counters. “It’s what they wanted, for me to stay here and in sight. So no matter what he did, they might not have come us for the sake of – ”

“We can’t do that.” Lucy puts her hands on the counter and turns to him. “We can’t play the what-if game. That’s exactly what they’re doing, that’s what is going to get us into trouble. I don’t care if things could have turned out differently or Wyatt could have done more or literally anything else. He did do that. We owe him what we promised.”

There’s a brief silence as they stare at each other. Then Flynn says, “Fine. You’re right. We should tell him. But not over the phone, and not for him to go off and do something stupid. I’ll drive over to his and Rufus’ apartment and tell him in person, try to get ahead of it as much as I can. I don’t think he knows the first damn thing about the details of the time travel part, but it won’t surprise me if that’s what he wants to try. He might also want to go to San Diego and interrogate Gilliam first. Could be I can work that angle for some kind of clue as to whether Gilliam himself is Rittenhouse, or just a useful fall guy.”

“So you’re only agreeing to tell Wyatt because you think you can mine the situation for intel?” Lucy isn’t sure she should be surprised. “Never just about altruism for you, is it? About doing the right thing?”

Flynn shrugs. “Altruism without pragmatism is always what gets the heroes fucked. I don’t care about playing by anyone’s milquetoast rules, especially right now. I’m going to tell him, but I need to keep an eye on him and see if I can work out why Rittenhouse gave us that name now. It had to have been them somehow, it’s not an accident. They’re pulling something with it, whether to separate Wyatt from the investigation or otherwise trip us up. Will you and Amy be all right for a few days?”

Lucy bites her lip. “I’m sure we can manage taking care of Lily, yes. But anything else. . .”

“Do you still have the gun I bought for you?”

Chest tight, she nods.

“Get it. Keep it somewhere you can access it easily, just in case. I don’t think Rittenhouse is coming after you here, not if they’re occupied with getting the time machine ready to hurt us more permanently, but I won’t take any chances. I’ll try to keep Wyatt from botching this too badly, but if he does – ”

“What?” Lucy raises both eyebrows. “Knock him over the head and stuff him into a broom cupboard?”

“Something like that.” Flynn is unfazed. “I feel like Rittenhouse is counting on him turning against us, or just dropping out of the hunt, but we’ll see. I also need to ask Rufus more about the technical capabilities of the machines. But when I get home, let’s go and get married, eh? Run down to the courthouse. Whatever else happens, I want you to be my wife. Rittenhouse may very well try, but I don’t think they can truly take that away from us.”

Lucy looks at him, as ever struck by how he can move from coldly talking tactics and strategy, the best way to work through what is undoubtedly a Rittenhouse manipulation of some sort, and with very little regard for Wyatt’s feelings on the matter, to telling her that she is the most important thing in the world to him, and literally all of time and space cannot take that away. She pauses, then steps forward, raises herself on her tiptoes, and kisses him. “I want to be your wife too,” she says, when she pulls away. “I love you, Garcia. So just – whatever you’re going to do, whatever you have in mind, whatever you think is necessary – remember that, all right? Remember that.”

He looks down at her with all the tenderness in the world, overflowing from his eyes and face and soul. “I love you too, Lucy,” he says. “And I believe that we can defeat Rittenhouse, we can save each other, and our daughter, and our family. Get the gun, eh? Get the gun. Then I’ll see you soon.”

Lucy doesn’t want to. As if she holds back on this one thing, she can stop the planet from turning, hold it in place with her bare hands, make time stand still, and nothing else would ever have to happen. The future would not rush at them like a freight train, the past would never seem so terribly unsteady, and the present would stay as it was, just this, just them. But she has to and she gets it, and Flynn kisses her one more time, ferociously. Then he picks up Lily and kisses her too, and closes his eyes as if to wish the tears out of existence, because his gaze is cool and focused when he opens them. And he says goodbye, and he goes.

It's mostly a quiet afternoon after that. Amy and Lucy sit on the couch watching more nineties movies again, Lily snoozing on Lucy’s chest (she seems to mostly be willing to go back to sleep once the immediate needs have been attended to, which is all you can really ask for in a baby). Her tiny hand is curled on Lucy’s shirt collar, her little body molded soft and boneless into Lucy’s as if she’s still part of it, and Lucy kisses her fuzzy dark head and strokes her back, joggling her absently. They finish up with Hook and to continue the Spielberg theme, are about to start E.T., when Lucy’s phone rings.

Startled, Lucy pushes herself upright with one hand and reaches for it. It’s Rufus, which surprises her for some reason. No reason it should, though. “Hello? Rufus?”

“Hey.” He sounds terse and abstracted. “Lucy, do you have a minute? I need – I need to tell you something.”

She frowns. “Is everything all right? Are you at work?”

“I – yeah, I’m at work, but…” Rufus hesitates, as if trying to gin himself up for something, and then it spills out in a rush. “Lucy, Connor made me spy on you for Rittenhouse. I didn’t want to do it, I’m not sure I even realized what it was for, but – I did. I did it. I’ve had a recorder in my pocket, it’s been picking up all our conversations through until the last time I was at your house. I had to turn it over to Connor last night, he said that if I didn’t, the consequences would be. . . it’s not an excuse, I did it anyway, but. . .”

“What?” Lucy’s chest clenches into a cold fist. “Rufus – what are you – what are you saying?”

“I spied on you,” Rufus repeats, agonized. “For Rittenhouse. Everything I was around for when we talked about it, they know it now. Lucy, I am so sorry. I can’t begin to make it right. You invited me into your hospital room, to your house, and I. . .”

Lucy can’t answer. Her throat has closed as well, and she can hear ringing in her ears, as she slides Lily off her chest and hands her to Amy, then gets up and walks into the kitchen hallway. “I trusted you,” she says, half wonderingly, half because nothing else seems to come to mind, nothing that she can get her tongue around. Extended Rufus access on Wyatt’s account, knows in the back of her head that he would not have had a choice, if Rittenhouse (whether via Connor Mason or otherwise) knew that these meetings were happening and needed to insert a mole on them. She half-wonders if Rufus is recording her right now, waiting for her to blurt out something he might not know – does he know about the Gilliam thing? That was after he left, and as far as she knows, she’s the only person Flynn told. And yet. Logical considerations, the rule and reason of her life, have flown directly out the window. In a croak, she repeats, “I trusted you.”

“I’m sorry.” Rufus sounds even more anguished. “I – I couldn’t live with not telling you, and I – Lucy, I needed to warn you. If Rittenhouse knows about what Flynn was – is – planning to do, then – ”

“I need to call him.” All at once, Lucy realizes sickeningly, if Rittenhouse already knew what Flynn was planning when they called to give him Wes Gilliam’s name last night, that could have been the final piece in their puzzle. However they were expecting him to react, whatever they wanted – she wants to shout at Rufus, even though she knows he’s much a victim here as the rest of them, but there is not time for that. “I’ll – talk to you in – later.”

With that, she hangs up and dials with shaking fingers, praying to every higher power she knows for Flynn to pick up. As she does, she unlocks the drawer and pulls out her gun, wondering if the time is about to come to use it in earnest. The phone’s still ringing, but he’s not answering, it’s like a nightmare where everything has stretched out and turned slow. She doesn’t even know if it’s only been a few rings, because every gap between her heartbeats is taking a thousand years. Jesus, Jesus –

And then, there’s a crash from the living room. Sounds like breaking glass from the patio door, as Lucy has to make a choice: gun or phone? Right now, with her sister and her daughter in danger while she can’t see them, and the knowledge that the trap is sprung, the culmination is complete, she doesn’t have time to think. Drops the phone, still spitting tinny echoes of its rings into the air, and runs back in, pointing the gun, as –

“Hello, princess.” Emma Whitmore looks almost amused to see her, standing in the rubble of the broken door. She’s holding Amy by the hair with one hand, as Amy is frantically clutching a screaming Lily, and twisting a heavy gun into her temple with the other. “Caught up with hubby dearest the other day, but I’ve been looking forward to seeing you. First, you’ll want to put that down, unless you want both of them to die. And then – well. We have a lot of unfinished business. I think it’s time to take a ride.”

[sunnyannotations]

Sunny, Chapter 1

“Where’s Yokohama?” “I dunno, somewhere ‘round Tokyo?”

And so the annotations begin! I’ll be using the page counts from the collected volumes for reference. 

Page 9 introduces us to Junsuke (older brother to Shosuke) with his trademark harmonica, runny nose, long fingernails, and rosy cheeks, though their color is ironically subdued in this full-color page. 

Also introduced is Makio, the House Master’s grandson, though we don’t see his face.

The poster in the background of panel 2 looks to be Tiger Mask, a manga from the late 60′s to early 70s. 

Panel 4 also features posters of what I believe is Ultraman, and I’m even less sure about the smaller one below it.  

An opening splash page (pg 10-11) features various characters posed around Sunny, the car. From left to right, we have Sei, Junsuke, and Haruo on the hood, Kenji, Megumu, and Kiko inside, Makio and and Taro in the background, and of course Kurimaru and Blackie on the roof.  

PG 12 introduces us to Haruo, with his bright shock of white hair, wearing Kenji’s cool sunglasses. Also introduced is the Sunny, the manga’s namesake. It’s a Nissan Sunny 1200, model B110 from the early 70s. Here’s a commercial! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F07XMAwFGw&t=59s

PG 16 sees the intro of Sei, the newest kid to be dropped off at Star Kids Home, a kind of foster home/orphanage/care facility. Junsuke compares him to Nobita Nobi from Doraemon; he’s not far off: 

Asako, Kenji’s sister, speaks up in the 2nd panel, and Mr. Adachi shoos the kids out in the last panel, accompanied by Miss Mitsuko. We also see presumably Sie’s parents... I do believe this is the first and last time. I’ll introduce non-speaking characters as they speak, but the shortest kid in the second panel (on the right, with the widow’s peak) is currently unknown to me...

As Haruo and Junsuke show Sei around, we see a glimpse of the House Master. We never get a name for him. If my assumptions are correct, he has donated his house to this cause, and the day-to-day operations fall to Mr. Adachi and Miss Mitsuko. I am unsure if those two are in a relationship or only work partners, or if they are related to the House Master. 

PG 20 sees Taro singing his trademark song, “Row Row Row Your Boat”. A neurodivergent individual, he’s the only adult under the care of Star Kids Home. At least, I am assuming he is an adult, due to his height. 

PG 22 sees the introduction of Kenji’s porno mags, which I only mention since they are brought up multiple times throughout the series. There was an international adult magazine called Pink but the font on the cover doesn’t match this one. The Sunny serves as a hideout/daydream experience where no adults are allowed. The following page gives us a Godzilla cameo in one such fantasy.  

I am unsure what TV show they are watching on page 28, though it clearly involves a captain dressing up as a gorilla; always a funny premise.

Sei’s fantasy trip in the Sunny back to his home has him recounting things from his home in Yokohama: local business and institutions, types of trees, specific smells, types of cars, his school and teachers, his friends, and then finally the specific streets leading to his home, and in a heartbreaking conclusion, his mom. Dang, what a rough experience. 

Earlier Junsuke says he’ll show Sei where all the big beetles are this summer, and at the end we get a time jump all the way into Autumn. Business is as usual at Star Kids Home with Sei fitting right in, bickering along with the other kids and Haruo daydreaming in the Sunny.  

A couple notes. 

I noticed several round “button” panels in this chapter that I don’t recall in future chapters: PG 9 has one with tadpoles, PG 17 features a stag beetle, PG 25 a city silhouette against the night sky, PG 29 a croaking frog, and PG 41 a frog enjoying the rain. 

PG 18 features two kids playing in the hallway in the last panel, but boy if one of them doesn’t look like a creepy clown. Not sure what’s going on there. 

I love the dreamy quality that the kid’s daydreams take on; it’s a perfect visual indicator of what you’re seeing. 

That’s all for this time, thanks for reading! 

[vaguely-concerned]

UNCHARTED THE LOST LEGACY REACTIONS

- fsaldfsldfsdljfsaj It’s. So. Gay!!!!! Holy shit!!! Like at several points my sister — less prone to picking up on these things than I am — turned to me and went “So they’re in love, right? They’re ending up together?” and I just squeaked and waved helplessly at the screen because… what other explanation can there possibly be at this point. Every time they touch each other’s shoulders or reach out to steady each other my soul leaves my body etc

I hope the end of the elephant scene is foreshadowing that there’ll be a trilogy and they’ll get together and adopt a kid and gore anyone who tries to mess with them (Chloe is already That Mom taking pictures of every damn thing, it’s written in the stars)

- tfw Nadine starts calling Chloe by her first name *promptly dies, happily*

- We are so completely two for two on picking the games that perfectly suit my tastes because Uncharted 3 is a parental substitute/father figure story and The Lost Legacy is a partners becoming Partners falling in love story and those are literally my two most aching narrative weaknesses

- I LOVE that Nadine is That Animal Nerd Girl from your class (“Monkies!”), except also a stone cold killing machine when she needs to be. I wonder if we got to know more about her relationship with her dad in U4? Because from her assumptions around Chloe’s father it sounds like she really loved him, making it all the more painful that she feels like she ‘lost’ his life’s work on her watch :(

- The fact that Nadine took approximately two hours to go from ‘who the hell is this hothead madwoman trying to get us both killed’ to completely charmed by Chloe’s whole being is… truly amazing, inspiring, I feel the warmth of the Iris flowing through me

- Chloe’s weird-ass expressions are everything. Her face moves like… three times as much as it needs to and it’s glorious. At first I thought it was the facial animations in general that were a little off but then they introduced other characters and no — no, they all look very plausible, it’s just Chloe’s features being made of rubber lol. (I actually found some of Asav’s animations to almost be too realistic, to the point of being creepy. Also just b/c he’s a creep)

- I was sort of afraid that I wouldn’t like Sam, but as it turns out… he’s a useless piece of shit disgrace to humanity and a sleazy catastrophe of a person and it’s the funniest shit I’ve seen in my life ha ha, I have accepted him and whatever the hell it is he thinks he’s wearing. I can’t BELIEVE Nate is the responsible, more well-functioning brother, what the fuck

(also the people around Nate crime-babysitting his brother now that he’s out of the business is HILARIOUS, I hope they stay true to this direction of comic relief)

- The contrast of Chloe’s father losing himself to the obsession… while Chloe is here to save a friend… and ends up saving a whole C I T Y while simultaneously being saved by/saving her future wife… I cri

- One thing that is so great about Naughty Dog games is the way they subtly carry themes of interconnectedness and co-operation —  the main characters are very seldom alone and when they are it’s to set up the contrast to when you’re with the companion characters, to make you really appreciate the desolation. It makes the characters feel so alive and real that they need each other and interact among themselves as well as the environment.  

(actually I’m also playing The Last Of Us right now and istg Joel’s intention to not get attached lasted all of, like… half a day, well done buddy)

(It’s also good fodder for characterization — contrast Chloe’s repeated refusal to accept Nadine’s help until they get closer to Nate, who is his own weird squirrely collection of abandonment issues and emotional repression but relies on his friends, even clearly expecting Sully and Elena to be there when he reaches out for them… wait no… I am now very emotional… I’m so glad Nadine and Chloe are partners, may they have many years of saving each other’s beautiful butts and helping each other through character development)

- “I looked it up on Wikipedia. Like a normal person” dfahfkdhasklashd I love her so much

- Chloe is such a great character; this cynical, sarcastic, caring mess of a woman has a special place in my heart. There are some scenes where you can practically hear her run screaming to get away from her own feelings and that is very hashtag relatable, and despite her reputation as a backstabber she DOES come back to save her friends time and time again. (Nadine having to drag her out of the train carriage with Asav because even two hundred meters away from plunging to her doom she HAD to get a final sarcastic, thematically appropriate jab in was  e x q u i s i t e )

The scene where Nadine has left and she’s making her way on foot messed me up because she doesn’t even seem hurt, just quietly resigned, like ‘well what did I expect’, thank GOD these girls are so in love that their estrangement lasted all of half an hour and ended in saving an elephant

- The game mechanics are so much better in this one! I even accept the vehicle parts, even though driving in video games is literally my primordial enemy and I usually hate it with my every cell. Being able to actually take out a whole area with stealth was a godsend and surprisingly fun, because the gun fights can be the least inspired parts of this series sometimes

BTW both Chloe and Nate have one particular stealth attack that always makes me laugh my ass off where they jump up on someone like a little monkey from behind and snap their neck and it’s weirdly cute. You don’t even have to be in real stealth, it’s enough to melee a dude from behind when *he*, specifically, didn’t see you coming, so like in the middle of a roaring gun battle you can jump up like ‘maHA’ and do it, adorable  

- This game made me realize just how little I actually know about hinduism. Welp time to read up on it enough to not be a complete idiot ha ha