#schrodinger's mourning

[heedra]

god i wish i could just move on from this one specific thing in my life im godawful about moving on from

[zorosdimples]

cw: mourning, angst, and hurt/comfort. sweet ino takuma. in the same vein as this post. dedicated to @schrodingers-romy mwah mwah <3

it’s fucked up.

days bled into weeks, weeks seeped into months, and you’re still neck deep in the tides of mourning. along with the love of your life died your future, your hope. the once cosy apartment you shared with kento is a shell of a home—a painful memory of what could have been.

you’re curled in a ball on your sofa, the spot where he always settled at the end of a grueling day: tie discarded, collar unbuttoned, belt removed, scotch in hand. his clothes still hang in the closet (your therapist says it’s okay to take your time with his belongings, so you do). you’re swimming in his old, faded grey sweatshirt, along with a pair of pajama pants you bought him for his last birthday.

takuma is kneeling on the floor in front of you, beanie tossed aside, running a calloused palm up and down your forearm. you bemoaned your appearance when he showed up at the door with your favorite takeout, but he can’t help but think of how beautiful you are, even with swollen eyes and bitten lips and tears for another man—his mentor—glistening like dewdrops on your cheeks.

i’m fucked up.

“i’m s-sorry it always ends up like this,” you croak, a wry chuckle fluttering past your lips, dying almost instantly. you flash him a pathetic smile and use the sweatshirt cuff to swipe at your dripping nose. “go, takuma. you’ve done enough for me already. you should have fun instead of listening to me cry.”

the young man simply shakes his head, umber eyes filled with a bone-deep warmth—a hearty soup on a snowy day. “i want to stay.” please don’t make me leave. he squeezes your hand. “you don’t have to be alone right now.” all i can think about is you.

for the first time all evening, you grace takuma with a genuine smile, its radiance piercing his heart and flooding his bloodstream. he feels lightheaded as he sits next to you on the couch, like his chest might explode when you snuggle into his side. he wants nothing more that to kiss the tears from your face and swallow your sorrow and carry it as his own. but he’ll wait—he’ll always wait for you.

i’m sorry, nanami. but i think i’m in love.

[pearwaldorf]

(jumping off from this)

Thinking about Deadpool and Wolverine and how the movie uses ironic camp to disguise its homophobia (sometimes). And how the puerile humor (hurr hurr the sword in the guy's butt is a penetration metaphor) has changed very little from when I first saw it in the 90s.

And the jokes haven't either. Like yes Wade is canonically pansexual but he's still going to couch it in a way that gives him some plausible deniability because this is Disney. It's Schrodinger's snark--you can always backpedal if somebody takes it seriously because it would be weird if it was sincere hahaha right

One of the people in the thread mentioned Jack Harkness as an analogue to Wade but here's the thing. You saw Jack flirt with men and women and aliens. You saw him kiss dudes (in 2005!!!) and fall in love with them and mourn them when they died. He was allowed to be unapologetically queer in a way we're never going to see with Wade.

I'm not trying to yuck anybody's yum. If you want to build on what you see in the movie, I'm genuinely happy it works for you. But after being in fandoms where I got a canon queer ship it's unpleasant to see something where the text can only strongly imply it at best. I don't miss it.

[skelavender]

He doesn’t know how to do this. He’s been scared for her life before, he’s seen her pale and unmoving in a hospital bed with a machine breathing for her, but he’s never had to see her covered in a sheet on the cold, unfeeling metal of a morgue slab. OR Wetwired: marriage of convenience style.

read closed doors on ao3, or below the cut!

Mulder��s shaking. He struggles to hit the correct button to hang up the phone. 

Dead. Scully’s dead. 

“What happened?” Frohike asks from behind him.

“Maryland State Police.” He tries to keep the shake, the fear, out of his voice. “They think they've found Scully.”

“Is she okay?”

“No, um... they think maybe I should come down and I.D. the body.” He chokes on the last word, and closes the door behind him before his friends can react. 

Mulder doesn’t remember the drive to the county morgue. When he parks, he’s still trying to hold back his tears, his grief. This isn’t right. 

What is he supposed to do? She can’t leave him a widower, once again partnerless within the FBI, chasing her ghost through the X Files. It’s not right.

He’s hazy through a confrontation with his source, letting the anger at the injustice fuel him. He yells, and it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. If Scully’s gone, then what’s the damn point. They’ve already gotten away with it. 

He kicks the door of the man’s car, and goes inside to identify his wife’s body.

He doesn’t know how to do this. He’s been scared for her life before, he’s seen her pale and unmoving in a hospital bed with a machine breathing for her, but he’s never had to see her covered in a sheet on the cold, unfeeling metal slab of a morgue tray.

But it’s not her. It’s not Scully. There are no words for the relief he feels at seeing another woman through the slats of the blinds. He almost collapses right there, the tension of mourning fleeing his body. Scully is still Schrodinger’s cat, both alive and dead as long as she remains unseen. Though the dead woman is still somebody’s loved one, she is not his wife. 

“It’s not her. Somebody has to call her mother.”

“We already tried.” The coroner says, “We weren't able to reach her.”

“She's not answering her phone?” 

Just like that, Mulder knows where Scully is. 

***

Mulder knows that he has a pretty good relationship with the woman who is technically his mother-in-law. It helps that Maggie is one of the most kindhearted and likable women he’s met, and that she doesn’t know he’s married to her daughter. 

As a result, Maggie has never, ever, told Mulder to go away. Not on the days when Scully was missing that she couldn't stop crying, not when Mulder showed up shaking and swaying on her doorstep. Never. She had always offered that motherly, soft smile and opened the door with a “Come on in, Fox,” and scolded him when he tried to address her formally. 

This time, when he casts his shadow across her doorstep, frantically knocking and peeking in the windows, she tries to close it in his face. She makes no comment on her name. 

He pushes past her with a half-hearted apology. He needs to see Scully, to wipe away the mental image of another redheaded woman on a metal slab, laid out and labeled potentially with his wife’s name. 

Mulder sees Scully’s gun before he sees her. Her weapon leads her from around the corner, and it is immediately trained on Mulder’s figure. Instead of tensing up at the threat, Mulder relaxes. She’s alive, she’s upright, she’s breathing.

He knows she won’t hesitate to shoot, hell, she’s already shot him once, but he’s not scared. Not for himself, at least. For Scully, out of her mind from too much TV, yes. For Maggie, who Mulder is trying his best to keep behind him in case Scully does fire her weapon, yes. But he’s not scared for himself. Even if Scully shot him now, straight to the heart and he bled out in seconds, the pain wouldn’t compare to the half an hour this evening when he thought she was dead. Nothing can hold a candle to the horror that had sunk into his bones. 

“You’re in on it. You’re one of them.You’re one of the people who abducted me. You put that thing in my neck! You killed my sister!”

The accusation stings. There’s always been a part of Mulder, buried deep in a chasm of guilt over Samantha and everything else, that has felt responsible for Melissa’s death. If he had never dragged Scully into the conspiracy shrouded corners of the world, her sister might still be alive. So maybe Scully’s right, in a twisted way; maybe he did kill her sister. 

“That’s not true, Dana.” Maggie steps out in front of Mulder’s human shield. 

“It is! He’s been manipulating me since day one. He even m–” she removes a hand from her gun and presses it to her mouth to keep in a sob. Mulder can fill in the rest of the sentence. He even married me to manipulate me. His heart breaks.

“I want you to listen to me.”

“Mom, just get out of the way!” Scully sobs. Her gun shakes in her single hand. 

“You trust me, don’t you? You know that I would never hurt you? That I would never let anybody hurt you. That’s why you came here, isn't it? You’re safe here. Put the gun down, Dana.” Maggie steps closer as Scully’s gun retreats to the ceiling, her arms folding to her chest. “Put it down.”

Finally, Scully lets herself crumble in her mother’s arms, dropping like a puppet with her strings cut and sobbing, sobbing, sobbing like he’s never seen her do before. She doesn’t let go of the gun. 

Mulder steps closer on light feet, approaching to release the weapon from Scully’s chokehold. Unfortunately, he hits a creak in the floorboards. 

“No!” She screams and lifts the gun to him again.

“Scully, please.” Mulder begs, his voice cracking. “Please let me help you.”

“It’s okay, Dana. Fox loves you, he’s not here to hurt you. It’s okay.”

Mulder stays across the room. “Do you two want to get into your car to go to the hospital, and I can follow?” he asks Maggie. She nods. “Okay. Scully, would you hand the gun to your mom, please?”

Maggie puts enough space between their bodies for her to receive it, then holds it out to Mulder, who finally approaches to retrieve the weapon. He clicks the safety back on, removes the magazine, and places them in separate places around the living room. He does the same with his own, and helps Maggie lift a still-limp Scully upright. 

“I’ll go grab my keys, Dana, you’re safe with Fox, okay?”

Scully, leaning most of her body weight on Mulder and completely out of it, makes a vague sound of agreement. While Maggie is out of the room, Scully shifts to lean her head on Mulder’s chest. He rests his right hand on the back of her neck, running a finger along the two chains that lay there: her cross necklace from her mother, and her wedding ring necklace from him.

The wedding ring that Maggie doesn’t know exists. Shit.

“Scully, I’m going to take your necklace, okay?” He whispers, “So your mom doesn’t see.”

Scully lets out a little whine from the back of her throat and nods slightly. Mulder’s fingers fumble at the clasp, and he manages to slide it into his pocket half a second before Maggie reenters the room. 

***

Mulder puts his hands up as he enters Scully’s hospital room tentatively, trying and failing to make a joke of the situation. Maggie, thankfully understanding their need to talk in private, exists as Mulder enters. 

“How are you feeling?” He asks, taking a seat beside Scully’s hospital bed. He scoots the chair closer in before grabbing her hand in his, and lifting the other to brush her hair from her face. 

“Ashamed,” she confesses. “I was so sure, Mulder. I saw things, and I heard things… it was just like the world was turned upside down. Everybody was out to get me.”

“Now you know how I feel most of the time.” Mulder tries to lighten the mood, to make her feel less… guilty, if Mulder is reading her right. It doesn’t seem to work.

“I thought you were going to kill me.” It comes out as a whisper, as another confession. 

“I'm not surprised.” He leans toward her, and explains the common link between the victims and their hallucinations, turning their worst-case-scenario anxieties into a reality in their eyes. 

“Like me thinking that you'd betray me.” Scully offers in understanding, “I was so far gone, Mulder, I thought that you had gone to the other side.”

She tells him what she had seen, him conferring with the Smoking Man in the parking lot, selling their secrets. She doesn’t tell him about seeing a smudge of lipstick on his collar, or the scent of an unfamiliar perfume in their motel room. For the sake of her own sanity, those shall remain unmentioned and she will just accept that they, too, were hallucinations induced by the recorded television programs. 

Mulder considers the Smoking Man for a moment, formulating a theory as to who was behind the induced mania. 

“Why don't you try to get some rest?” He says, and rises to leave the room. Before he crosses the threshold, he remembers half his reason for coming by. “Oh!” He turns towards her, and fumbles with the pockets of his coat “I almost forgot.” He pulls out a familiar chair, with an even more familiar ring dangling at the bottom. 

Scully smiles softly and holds her hand out for Mulder to drop her wedding ring into. “Thank you, Mulder.”

“I… let your mom take the lead, with the hospital. She still doesn’t know.” He says quietly.

Scully nods and slips the chain over her head. She motions for him to come closer, and he leans down to her. She presses a soft, grateful kiss to his cheekbone. 

“I’ll just uh, go take care of the Cancer Man and stuff.” He bends down to place a final kiss to her forehead, and steps out the door.

He’ll deal with the rest of it. He’ll clear the path of obstacles, of things they need to investigate, so she can focus on getting better. 

***

When Scully is discharged to Mulder’s care and he takes her home, she beelines for the loveseat that backs the kitchen. What Mulder considers her solitude chair. She sits sideways, crossing her ankles and pulling her knees to her chest, and sets her book on the arm of the chair.

Knowing she’s unlikely to relocate to the couch, he stretches out across the length of it so his feet are closest to her and grabs the book he left facedown on the coffee table last week, which Scully had placed a bookmark in and closed to save the spine. They sit quietly, absorbed in their respective books, each enjoying the quiet, steady company of the other.

“I’m going to go to bed.” Scully says, breaking the silence and rising from her seat.

Mulder smiles up at her, “Goodnight, Scully.”

She gives him a watery smile and disappears down the hallway. 

When Mulder gives up on his book an hour later, he retreats down the hallway after her. When he reaches Scully’s bedroom door, accustomed to sliding into bed with her as has for the past few weeks, he pauses with his hand on the knob. 

It’s closed. It’s never closed. 

This is… new. Scully closes the door when they retreat to bed together, and had done so in her own apartment as well when he had stayed there. It hadn’t surprised him in the slightest, Scully’s a practical person, and a closed door is safer in the event of a fire. Usually, on the nights he joins her late, he closes it behind him. So far, she’s always left it open those nights. 

But it’s closed now. The invitation he’s been eating up so greedily is closed, at least for now. Mulder turns to the other side of the hallway, swinging open the door to his own bedroom. The hinges creak. 

Without even stepping in, Mulder knows he can’t sleep there. The room is cold, stale, hollow in a way an extra blanket and Scully’s fancy scented candles can’t fix. It’s not Scully’s room, with her soft pink walls and soft mattress and, well, Scully. His own bedroom serves a walk-in closet with a mattress.

There’s no love here. 

He clicks the door closed and retreats to his leather couch, pressed against the staircase in the basement room that they use as a home office. At least on the couch, there is no empty side where someone else should lay. 

***

When Mulder wakes a few hours later to shift positions, he feels the pressure of something resting against his knee. He opens his eyes to see Scully leaning against the couch, legs folded under her, dozing with her head rested on his knee. It’s not dissimilar from when she had snuck into his old apartment months ago, an instance they had never outright addressed. 

He tries to shift his cramping leg slowly, gently, as not to wake his partner. She rouses anyway, turning around to blink up at him sleepily. 

“You alright, Scully?” he asks, voice rough. 

She nods. “I’m sorry I locked you out.”

“‘S alright.” He stretches to relieve the ache in his leg, and once it’s gone, lays flat and reaches his arms out to her in invitation. She rises, only to lay back down on top of him, legs intertwined and arms wrapped securely. Her head rests on his chest, and he presses a kiss to the top of it.

“I do trust you.” Scully’s voice is quiet beyond a whisper, and Mulder’s not entirely sure he actually heard her say it.

“I know.”

“I’m just…” She sighs. “Unsteady. Like I’m not sure what’s real.”

“This is real, Scully.” He says into her hair. “We’re home, we’re safe.”

“But are we?” She lifts her head to look at him properly. “Mulder, we’ve been manipulated and abducted, there have been attempts on both of our lives. I’m not certain we’ll ever be safe, much less feel it.”

“You’re right that it’s possible that this will go on forever.” He replies. “But it’s also possible that that’s not the case. It’s possible the Smoking Man will be dead on our doorstep tomorrow morning, and we won’t have to worry about him anymore. It’s possible that we’ll get a tip about Samantha’s tomorrow. If we worry about every horrible possibility, we also have to let ourselves dream about the wonderful ones.”

If only you knew, Scully thinks. She does daydream about peaceful and happy futures, and every single one of them involves him. 

[lee-hakhyun]

got an orv au idea based on the schrodinger’s clown post you reblogged :D

tw: themes of self-harm and suicide (don’t worry about reading this if you can’t or don’t want to; all ideas here!)

au where kdj dies and revives only when it’s funny, but it’s specifically mainly funny to the people around him - all it does for kdj himself is prove that he’s unloveable, again and again

when he’s alone, he can’t end things because he’s the only one there and it’s not funny to him, which makes him laugh bitterly; isn’t that ironic? isn’t that just grand? his fate is not in his hands; he’s a literal cosmic joke. it’s another thing that he finds himself taking comfort in yjh on when he reads twsa; resurrected over and over for another’s entertainment, forced to start over with no close bonds to guide him. it stops being as much of a problem for him as he fades into obscurity with age, unperceived and unknown.

when the apocalypse begins, he realizes it could be a useful tactic the first time he dies and comes back to life when people least expected it, and considers twisting public opinion to consider deeming his constant revivals funny. except… the longer this story goes on, the less and less he’s able to even die.

because it’s not funny to his friends, you know? he’d spent so long knowing he was literal comic relief to everyone else that he’d forgotten what it was like to be wanted. being mourned is foreign. guilt drags him down as he thinks he’s tricked even his beloved people into thinking he’s worth something.

it all comes to a head when kimcom gets to the fourth wall and sees 51!kdj- and realizes that the person who kept killing and reviving kdj all that time was himself. a version of him who went through almost the exact same thing as a child, who hated himself so much he kept imagining himself dying as a teenager and wondering if it would’ve been better that way. if it would’ve been funnier that way. if people would’ve been better off seeing him as just a joke.

and seeing a parallel version of his friends breaking down through the train window, begging him to let them in, he quietly realizes that the answer is no.

(post)

oh. oh kim dokja... people start caring for him and he just thinks he's tricking them :') i'm glad he realizes his worth in the end, at least

[greycappedjester]

hey! hope you’re doing well. I’m starting to reread the HQ at Hogwarts series because I needed a change of pace from my work at uni (and it’s a comfort read of mine). anywho, I was wondering if you had a favorite quote from any of your stories that you wrote and why (or just the quote if it is to avoid spoilers)? like were there any quotes that really made a scene worth writing to you?

Oooh I love this ask, thank you!

Let's see, I don't know if these are my favorite but they're lines that come to mind a lot that I'm specifically proud of (tbh I tend to forget lines until I'm re-reading one of my stories and see it and go "oh yeah, that one")

I'll try to do one per series. I can't really pick one from Past is a Mirror or Call Me Your Home At Night yet, I'll have to wait until they're more done:

ATFO:

Oof somehow this is the hardest series to choose just one line from. That said, it's a super dark line for a dark chapter but I really love the use of homophones in this one.

Dick tilts his head up to the sky and laughs.

Laughs until it hurts and it does, it hurts so much, and that just makes him laugh more--throwing his arms out like he can fly on the ground and turning in a circle in a dirt covered Gotham alley that even the morning can’t erase.

Because Robin always smiles when it’s dark. Until it’s morning again.

Or mourning again.

….Dick’s laugh fades out.

Cards:

And, eight years old and with a bone deep gravity too heavy for his small body, Kuroo Tetsuro quietly made a vow even if Kozume Kenma would never hear it.

I’m going to build a kingdom around you.

(Not a line but Tsuki and Hinata's final conversation in Shufling the Deck is what really sold me on writing that sequel)

Walking With My Eyes Open/ In Spite of Ourselves:

Honestly for short stories this series has some of my favorite conversations; but, a couple of favorite lines are these two.

But, human shoulders weren’t meant to bear the expectations of divinity.

and

A riddle, Schrodinger’s long lost love letter. Gen had proof he fell in love--was dying to try even--yet still couldn’t quite believe it. So, which was the lie?

Hq at Hogwarts:

I really love the prologue for Department of Mysteries; I wrote it waaaay before I posted it and was excited about posting it for awhile. I think the end just eally says everything about how long and how deeply Akaashi does love Bokuto.

He was bright and happy and so deeply good in a way that was everything Akaashi wanted that he fell in love by the time he took the hand.

“I’m Keiji.”

Investigators Inc.:

Truthfully, my favorite of my humorous stories; I like this exchange a lot from when their van breaks down. It just eels like it really fits all of them.

“I’m looking up directions,” Suga said, already pulling out his phone.

“But….but, map !” Oikawa held it up even as it drooped around him.

“Great,” Kuroo said, “we can use it for shelter when we’re stuck out here and have to take up foraging.”

Bokuto brightened. “Ooh, I’ve got a pocket knife!”

“Yay, we’ll need it to fight off the wolves,” Kuroo said.

“I don’t think it’s that dire,” Suga said, showing them the screen. “There’s a town pretty close by. Can’t find a taxi or a towing service, though. We may have to walk if Iwaizumi can’t fix it. It’s about an hour.”

Kuroo shrugged. “Honestly, Iwaizumi can probably fix it. He’s like the machine whisperer or something.”

“Iwaizumi cannot fix it,” Iwaizumi said from right beside the passenger window and Oikawa jumped. “The transmission’s out.”

“Then, put it back in,” Bokuto suggested.

Iwaizumi stared. “I’m seriously having all of you read a car manual one of these days."

Thanks again for the ask! Trutfully I always love hearing what people's favorite lines are; I just think it's really neat to see what sticks with people and I'm always touched that it could be something I wrote.

[daenystheedreamer]

i like treating theon like schrodinger’s cat. i want to put him in a cardboard box with polonium and poison and keep him in a state of quantum superposition until i open the box and then i can mourn in widow’s weeds screaming crying and cursing god. or he is alive and i give him hugs and tell him oh its all better now. he’s my little kitty cat<3

[empty-pizza]

thoughts on harrow the ninth chapter fourteen and fifteen

God, in this story, gets at a lot of things I find really interesting about immortal characters. Or at least, immortal characters as I want them to be portrayed — people who are just immortal. Not booming voices from the heavens. What happens when you live forever, but still talk and think like a normal person? If your indefinitely extended duration leads not to becoming a slow-talking sage, but just, being a normal person who's lived that long.

I have to wonder how much it's performative and how much it's natural. Does he cling to normal conversation, silly little jokes, or is it what he defaults to? Does he enjoy the effect that has, that their god speaks like a regular man, or does he do it because he wants no effect?

He's going to die. Will we mourn, or cheer? There's different ways to play this. He could be a decent man all along. He could be the worst one of them all. It makes me very curious.

The fact that the book keeps giving me things like that to think about is why I'm still enjoying it, because man, I'm 30% in and it feels like I'm at where the book should have started. All the setup before this is very justified and I can see it leading to great things, but Harrow finally feels like Harrow again and is interacting with what's around her in the way that works for a story.

I think this is the first confirmation I'm actually getting about there just, being other populated planets around. I like that; start as fantasy, pull back and show yeah there's people all over. God's kinda being a dick by saying BOE is an acronym and not saying what it stands for, though. There's a lot of implied history going on, if the cult was seeking out God's gang before God even knew about them. I enjoy when big information is dropped very casually. When it's not something God treats as a big secret (at least, not to his lyctors) but still naturally something Harrow wouldn't have known before.

lol big g knows her parents are dead. cat's out of the bag and schrodinger killed it. but he still didn't know the details of harrow's birth. i love secrets being revealed.

these are good conversations and all. i just want to see more movement, still. i want to see harrow push toward a goal.

i do not think harrow should tell him about going in the tomb though. i think he'd probably kill her. also, hmm, blood of eden. sure sounds mysterious.

oh, fifteen's short. let's read that too.

you know, i should have thought of this earlier, but i'm PRETTY sure harrow seeing the body is a new thing, not something that was true in the gideon timeline/memoryzone. maybe. hard to say. harrow never gave gideon the speech about how she's insane. but maybe she wouldn't have considering she hated gideon at the time.

who knows. maybe the body was the one who gave harrow the instructions to do a bunch of fucky shit and write the letters. i wonder if the body's presence was implied in the parts from harrow's perspective at the end of gideon.

this conversation does imply that it is the girl from the tomb, not gideon. i mean, it already basically said that ages ago, i'm just trying to keep an open mind (or coping, if you want to look at it that way). unless harrow's perceptions are really fucked up. the "she asked me not to tell you" definitely has some implications.

[thequeenofsarcaasm]

something I wanted to know is why in jujutsu kaisen the deaths are so superficial death in jujutsu is very different than in other animes The deaths also don't have as much impact, which is quite notable. I think there were only two deaths that had an impact outside of Toji and Geto, both of which caused problems in the jujutsu world.

It’s giving Attack on Titan season 1 😭

Many deaths don’t really serve the plot if we’re being honest. My girl Nobara (I know she’s in Schrodinger’s box and not confirmed dead but still) didn’t have to die. Nanami died just before her and it triggered some character development for Yuji so why kill her too?????? What was the reason??? Also, Yuji’s rage ended up being useless anyways since he didn’t even get the satisfaction of killing Mahito. I could say the same for my dear Yuki and Tsumiki. Gege hates pretty girls.

But that’s besides the point. I think that one of the main themes of JJK is “meaningful/less death”. The characters aren’t even striving to live atp (ahem Megumi ahem Mai ahem Yuji). Yuji wants to know what a “good” death is and I think it’s up to us to decide. Is dying while trying good enough? Gege doesn’t necessarily want the deaths to serve a great purpose. In a way he wants to depict how the meaninglessness of death is its meaning and how it’s an important moment for the dying person.

I may get it but it still infuriates me when great characters are killed for shock value or used as plot devices.

Also, I understand that not everyone’s death can impact the plot the way Geto’s or Riko’s death did (it makes sense after all) but I wish Gege would let his characters mourn their friends/coworkers in a more impactful way. If I can’t get over Nanami’s death then no one should 😾. Everyone should be crying constantly about him and Nobara. No one even mentions Yaga anymore btw (not even Gojo when he came back but Gege made my boy as cold as an iceberg after he was freed). And don’t get me started on Gojo’s death. Lol

The ramifications of Riko’s death were extremely well depicted so I know Gege can do it but he just doesn’t. Shock value over everything else i guess.

Thanks for asking 🫶🏾

[5-golden-eps]

ElliahRose- is a popular author for dsmp. She wrote the heartbreaking story: If We Could Go Back (I'd change the world for you). Along with Schrodinger's avians. She is mostly inactive.

If We Could Go Back (I'd change the world for you)- is a modern setting with no magical effects, except one. The craft family mourned the loss of Kristin, all sad to see her go. Out of grief, they start to blame the youngest, Tommy, for killing her. He is neglected, hated, forgotten, and very alone, even though he is only a child. After a horrible accident, the crafts lose Tommy and finally see their faults, but it's too late. The family eventually breaks apart, and they don't care for each other. But, when Wilbur wishes to fix their mistakes, a certain green-eyed man gives them a second chance. Now, they have a chance to change the future of their family.

If We Could Go Back (I'd change the world for you)

[freaks-and-facades-ravenloft]

Freaks & Facades: Session 0 - Cast of Characters

Welcome to all you wonderful readers!  

Here is an introduction to the wonderful character cast for the Freaks & Facades campaign!  This is meant to be a brief overview on the characters’ starting personalities and goals (with some insights gleaned after feeling them out between sessions 1 and 3). 

We hope you love them all as much as we do!   Check them out below the cut!

-- Aboleth Eye!

Pryrrish Norfaer - ( @moonstruck-vixen )

Pryrrish of House Norfaer was once one of the serene and mysterious star elf race; now exiled from their cloistered and dying realm of Sildeyuir.   

She is a forsworn scholar, hunting for the most hidden secrets of the otherworldly.  In her hands she clutches a tome of spiraling script, the cause and salvation to her quest for knowledge.  Only she can truly understand what the maddening, spiraling script deigns to tell her.  For her eyes and souls both hold that same spiral of unreadable darkness within them…  

Her youth was cut short after witnessing devastation on the Material Plane.  The dreaded Day of Mourning.  And when she endeavored to uncover how it had come to pass, that foolish quest brought her no answers.  Only terrible personal disaster.  Paying a price she never anticipated, Pryrrish was branded a heretic.  Forced to embrace the darkness of her new accursed patron--the Elemental Dark itself--to save and begin her life.  The dark book’s secrets both doomed and saved her; perhaps it will now guide her to what it all means?  There must have been a reason behind her misfortune.  A reason for why she was offered the brand of the Elemental Dark upon her soul…  

Will she find what she seeks through her determination to reclaim knowledge thought lost?  Or will the Elemental Dark, forever whispering in her ear, consume her in this foolish quest’s end?

Star Elf Warlock 6

Ludwig Hossler Schrödinger - ( @atlysium )

Ludwig Hossler Schrodinger is a young man fascinated by the world around him; and people fascinate him more than anything, for reasons we all take for granted...

He appears a proud scientific noble of Lamordia, tastefully austere and rational to a fault.  Except when it comes to human osteology, the study of bones.  His parents (who love him very very much) helped him acquire a taste for this little-understood branch of science.   But they never truly introduced to the world beyond their cryptic household.  How odd, considering their influence as Markgrafs of the mountain village of Schwartzsteinburg…

It was a great surprise when Schrodinger’s idea to travel beyond the town was embraced wholeheartedly by his parents.  For their darling son hoped to meet with the Society of the Enlightened Mind in Ludendorf!  Lady and Lord Schrodinger thought it would be a life-changing opportunity for their son to share the fruits of his labor in the field of osteology (and osteomancy).   And so, departing from the safety net of his protective and equally gifted parents, he has proudly shared his life’s work to the Society! But the Society, unfortunately, quite misunderstood his enthusiasm for this strange new science.  

Is he a victim of academia tirelessly struggling to be understood?  Or, perhaps, the Society saw his endeavors in self-experimentation as the unnatural obsession it truly is?  

Human Boneblade 6

Fenri Sunwillow - (Redbrown [not on socials])

Fenri Sunwillow is an exceptional, strong-willed halfling priestess; her smile lights up a room even in the darkest of times.  

She is tirelessly devoted to the teachings of the Dawnfather Pelor–God of the Sun, Healing and Mercy.  With her unshakeable faith, Fenri has gone on many adventures beyond the Free City of Greyhawk.  She has faced monsters, scoundrels and failure, all alongside friends who welcomed her gifts and her optimism.  She treasured them wholeheartedly and offered them the grace and healing of her god!  

But now Fenri the halfling is no longer among friends.  She is a light with no one to shine upon.  She continues what the tenets of Pelor ask of her, seeking to find those most in need of her gifts.  And her friendship.  Everyone is a friend Fenri hasn’t met yet!  But life is hard on such a small bundle of joy, and the Sun does not shine all day without rest.  And yet Fenri shines and shines–through true faith, inner strength or misguided delusion, who could say?  

Will she push through what awaits her, through the darkest time in her life?  Or shall the Sun inside her heart not be enough to sustain her once its out of reach?

Halfling Cleric 6 (Patron Deity: Pelor)

Channa Devir - ( @aureliagaming )

Channa Devir knows much about sacrifice; and she is willing to risk much in order to reclaim what is hers.  

An aspiring prodigy in the arts of elemental theory and magic, Channa was lifted up and taught by some of Khorvaire’s greatest conjurers.  They taught her about the laws of reality, and how to make a life with the gifts she was given.  She followed their guidance and friendship, becoming attuned to the  principles of elemental earth in the process.  Earth is steadfast and patient while the world seems in flux.  And she felt through her mentors she had sacrificed enough of her body and soul to have real achievement in this crazy world.

But then her foundation for living was suddenly lost.  Her best friend; gone without a trace; not even a note...  She went to their mentor, supposedly the greatest conjurer in the realm for answers.  Together Channa learned more and more, hoping to unravel the elemental ritual left behind by her friend...  But then her mentor, her only support and teacher, vanished as well.  The ritual remnants in their laboratory...   Channa had lost everything to this mystery, so she decided to follow in her friend and mentor’s footsteps.  To make them answer why they had abandoned her.  The sacrifices needed to for such a ritual would be great, but Channa would follow it to the end.  To be with them again!

Will those she searches for weep that she was drawn onto their same path of mistakenly pursuing knowledge?  Or has Channa offered herself before a hungering evil that has fed upon greater mages than she and her friends?

Human Duskblade 6

Solange Therese Charron -( @owldork1998 )

Solange Therese Charron has long embraced her lot in life, forever on the outskirts.  

She had a rough start of it: a strange foundling raised by a pair of poor gravediggers, just beyond the walls of decadent and lively Port-a-Lucine.  She was born touched by the grave in more ways than one, however; for Solange is a caliban, a creation of humanity’s aspirations twisted by the darkness of taboo and unforgiveable sin.  She is forever forced to hide her  deathly beauty behind the veil of the mourner; which suits her fine.  No one asks a  gravedigger why they hide their face...  But those that linger beyond death have taken notice of her, a being trapped between worlds.  And to hone this connection and defend the living, she was invited to watch over the crypts of the city’s oldest bloodlines.

She became a gravekeeper of St. Leonburg’s Cemetery by night, hoping to earn the experience to see what the Order of the Moonlit Vigil protects within the uncharted catacombs below.  The dark of those bone-decorated labyrinths calls to Solange, but she instead pushes towards her duties of protecting the noble dead (and tolerating the living nobles who visit the cemetery to socialize and scheme).  But she cannot truly escape the call, literally and metaphorically...

Can one seemingly born to serve death find peace in her duties among them?  Or must Solange dare to walk among the living to find answers about her spectral-afflicted existence?  

Caliban Gravedigger 6

Read the next part, Session One - Vignettes (Part One) here!

Thanks for reading!  We hope these characters fascinate you with their tales!

Parts: Zero/Cast, One P1, One P2, Two, Three [tbd]

-- Aboleth Eye @aboleth-eye

[bloggerspam]

Danny thinks about his death constantly.

It surrounds him, is the thing. Like a blanket.

Like an avalanche.

He's constantly reminded of it--day to day to day.

He died.

It was easy to forget, in the beginning. It was nothing but pain pain pain until it wasn't--until he woke up and Sam and Tucker were there, crying over him.

They told him his heart stopped, for a couple minutes. He wonders about that nothingness everyday--he thinks about that nothingness every time he wakes up.

And then it was all about keeping himself there--keeping himself tethered. He didn't know it then, but he knows it now.

He was desperate to stay real.

He was desperate not to fade.

But back then it was about his powers--about the other ghosts, about his responsibilities.

It was easy to not think about it, in the beginning. It was all about saving the day from the ghost of the week.

It's hard to remember what it was like, before.

It's hard to forget, to not think about it, now that things have settled.

And it gets harder and harder every time---when he met Sydney and Ember and Desiree.

When Box Ghost and Lunch Lady tell him they don't remember their names.

When he found Sydney Poindexter's yearbook picture in his school's library.

When he found a signed Ember McClain CD on Ebay.

When he found an article talking about a mover's untimely demise in a factory bearing a striking resemblance of a certain Box Ghost.

He wasn't even named, the "unfortunate factory worker."

That makes it worse.

Jazz tells him it's unhealthy, the way he's been pouring over old articles over murders.

She tells him it's not something he can control, Death. It's natural.

She looks him in the eyes, and he can tell that she means it.

When he looks at himself in the mirror, he wonders what it's like, to look at him and not see Death for what it is: an uncertainty.

He came across a dead kitten, once.

He had scooped the little thing up into his hands, and realized that it was just an object then. A dead thing. Cold.

He carried it to the woods, dug a little grave for it with one hand. When he buried it, he marked it with a jagged rock.

He could see his breath, but he didn't look for a ghost. He didn't want to get his hopes up, he didn't want to be crushed. It would be both regardless of if he saw one or not.

He let the breath be fog. He let the breath be his ghost sense.

Danny thinks about his death when he lays in bed.

He let it be both, and then he let it go.

Schrodinger's boy mourning Schrodinger's cat.

He's woken up 3 times by now, from nightmares.

About falling through the earth and never getting back up.

About the burn coursing from his hand to his heart.

About dying, but never able to stay dead.

He lets the tears soak his pillow, feels his breath fog in the warm summer air.

He thinks about dead things, and lost souls, and the uncertainty of it all.

He thinks about being frozen in time, with his not-dead-death and ice core.

Danny thinks about his death constantly.

It's always there, is the thing. Like time and space.

Like a guillotine.

He's constantly in the face of it, when he stands before a mirror.

He's dead.

He's alive.

Do you ever think about how sacred life must be for Danny?

Danny who interacts with ghosts every single day. Danny who is half ghost himself, but also half human.

I feel like sometimes people forget Danny is also half human.

He knows his rogues. He knows the ghosts of the Ghost Zone. He knows they were alive, at some point, and their lives must have been intense enough or their deaths traumatic enough that their souls decided that one lifetime wasn't enough.

For him, killing has to be the worst possible offense. How dare you strip someone of their life. How dare you cut short someone's time, knowing how scarce it is for humans? And it must be even worse for Danny because he knows not all humans become ghosts. He knows they won't get the second chance he did. He knows their murderers will never truly understand the atrocity and horror of their actions because they haven't seen the things Danny has.

Do you think it keeps him up at night? Do you think he spends hours on news sites, reading about the people whose time has been stolen? Thinking of all these souls that went away before they were due? Do you think he tries to look for them in the Ghost Zone? Do you think he mourns for them when he doesn't?

Do you think it ever makes him think about his own mortality? He's half dead, sure. But he's also half alive and that half can die. Do you think he ever cries himself to sleep, knowing he'll eventually have to go through that again?

[anniethelen]

Thinking how different TFATWS could have been if Steve had died in End Game. The characters could have actually mourned him. (From what I know, Spellman wasn’t allowed to know if old Steve was alive or dead.) Bucky and Sam could have talked about Steve without being so vague.

I could imagine a scene where Bucky is walking around aimlessly and he passes an alley and has a flashback of smol Steve getting into a fight with a bully. Or Sam is out shopping and someone walks by and says “on your left.” And he does a double take. Bucky in his apartment looking at pictures of Steve or maybe having a headstone for him put next to his mother’s. Bucky and Sam can both deal with survivor’s guilt.

Bucky and Sam could be annoyed at the public perception of Steve because Steve was nothing like that. There could be an episode that ends with them sharing stories about Steve and smiling.

[pigtailedgirl]

So because I can’t let Steve go anymore than the MCU can. Or, in the MCU’s case, you know let his character be grown if that was really the best end for him, complete or anything other than a joke. The way that have to keep mentioning him and Tony in every project to fill in or tease more character. To try an explain the plot hole or emotional hole of loss each brings. Tony’s lack of connection to the other’s emotional story, versus the Iron Man cast, versus not really examining anything about his death narratively as it relates to what it meant morally, or physically for those close to him. Sure Peter and Happy miss him, the world mourns... Is there a reflection of who and why in Tony’s legacy and death?

Same with Steve. The MCU clearly doesn’t care who and why Steve is or was.  Steve’s ending clashing so hard with his connections not only to Sam and Bucky, but the present, to all these emotional parts of character’s lives that he was related to. Nat’s and Tony’s friendship. Wanda’s mentee. T’Challa’s respect. America’s old icon and morale. The question of Hulk’s serum alt. All of it dropped. 

The important context to Steve now is he loves and has sex with them ladies. On the USO tour. As beefy, good ass Steve. 

How incredibly shallow a take on the character.

How sad that they are so obsessed with these takes...he’s left in character limbo hell, where he’s as the narrative so far as decided a public and private Schrodinger. Is he dead to them, is he on the moon, is he in the past happily living, is he back as an old guy? It’s all pick your options but realize none of them are going to be considered in the emotional weight on him or whoever thinks it. 

I think if the MCU heads have brains, they realize the character’s as they wrote and their endpoints were narratively unfulfilled. This is why they can’t let them rest or have the new ones compellingly take over. 

[phantomrose96]

Buds After the Frost

This was supposed to be a short warm-up writing exercise yesterday and then it got... longer. Enjoy!!

...

The doors opened for Maddie Fenton with a pneumatic hiss. Pressurized nitrogen released, splitting open the vacuum seal on the door as its twin halves slid apart, slotting into the wall-mounted sleeves. The nitrogen misted out, cold and dry, air currents catching in swirls around Maddie Fenton’s lab coat. Her feet thocked against hollow metal, amplified by the coldness and the vastness of the containment room beyond.

She paused short of the specimen’s cell, mindful attention drawn to the panel of controls nested rightmost against the wall. The monitor read out stats, tracked metrics of the specimen’s heartrate and blood oxygenation and blood pressure. Dials beneath the screens offered her means of interaction, manipulating the cage’s environment without needing to tamper with it by hand. She ignored these, as she had been ignoring them the entire time, and paid mind only to the single switch which would seal shut the doors behind her.

She pressed it. Another pneumatic hiss followed, locking out the world behind her. Her breath curled, cold. She and the specimen were alone.

“No coffee this morning?” he asked.

Maddie sat down at the control panel, elbow leaning against the dashboard for support. She turned to the cage. “No. One of the interns broke the pot last night. New one should be delivered today.”

Phantom let out a huff of air. “You mean in this whole gigantic mega-hyper-futuristic government lab, there’s nothing that can stand in as a coffee pot?”

“I wouldn’t stay employed long if I tried using equipment to brew coffee.”

“Use one of the big ectoplasm beakers. Ectoplasm washes out with soap and water. Just suds it up and throw it in the coffee maker. I’m an expert about these things.”

“It’s more about protocol.”

Phantom waved her off. “’Protocol.’ Bureaucracy is standing between you and a delicious cup of ectoplasmic coffee, Dr. Fenton.”

Maddie looked forward now, taking him in. He’d hovered to the front of the cell, translucent reinforced glass separating him from the rest of the lab. Green eyes shined above a cheeky smile, a dusting of loose white hairs falling over his eyes, the rest of his bangs swept slightly to the side. His tailed flickered, his aura pulsed, his vital readings blipped out steady, normal, healthy.

“Phantom?”

“Yeah?”

Maddie paused.

“Why are you still here?”

The ghost boy let out a small guffaw. He motioned his arms around him, hands waving. “I dunno. Maybe the big ghost-proof box I’m in has something to do with it?”

“The shield is down, Phantom,” Maddie answered quietly. She set her eyes to Phantom, investigating. “…I put it down last night. It’s down now. You knew this.”

Phantom took just a moment too long to react, eyebrows arching up. “Oh, huh! Nope I didn’t notice. I mean it’s not like I’m constantly throwing myself at the barrier to electrocute myself so no I just didn’t try getting past it last night so I didn’t notice.”

“Phantom,” Maddie said again, voice measured, words stern. “You saw me crank down the dial that controls the shield.”

“Well I don’t know what all those buttons and dials do.”

“Yes you do. You’ve been observing me since day 1. You knew.”

Phantom kicked back in the air, floating a fraction back and higher. “Well maybe I thought it was a trap, I dunno. Or maybe I just like to get in your head, you know? What unpredictable thing will Phantom do next! Gotta write another 200 equations about ghost theory to figure that one out, Dr. Fenton.”

“Phantom.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you not want to leave?”

“Oh I wanna leave.”

“Then why aren’t you?”

“We’re having a conversation. That’d be rude.”

“Will you leave as soon as I exit the room?”

“Who knows?”

“Phantom.”

“Yeah?”

Maddie stood. She left her chair and the control panel behind. She walked up to the specimen cage instead. It was cubic, a skeleton of metal bar ribbings with a metal mesh that plastered the glass sides like a membrane. The top anchored to the ceiling, the bottom—raised by about a foot—anchored to a pedestal on the floor. Maddie stared through the mesh into Phantom’s eyes.

“Is there anyone who realizes you’re missing?” she asked.

Phantom chewed on the question. “Nah. Well um, trick question, actually. Probably not. Assuming I do this right, then no one has even realized I’m gone.”

“Do what ‘right’?”

“You know that thing about Clockwork I explained?”

“You said he’s the ghost that controls time and reality.”

“Yeah. SUPER powerful.”

“And you said you …were from one of those other realities.”

Phantom nodded. “Maybe I touched some things in Clockwork’s lair I wasn’t actually allowed to touch. Jury’s still out on whether I’m in trouble for that or not. I’ve been a little too ‘stuck in this reality’ to know if Clockwork is pissed. But yeah, I got um, bopped into your reality instead of mine. So technically my reality is lacking me right now, and yeah there’s people there who’d know I’m missing.”

Phantom flipped upside-down, as though laying on his back. He rested his palms beneath his head, elbows out, suspended in an invisible hammock, head tilted far back so that he still stared at Maddie. “Especially since it’s been, what, a month that I’ve been gone?”

“2 weeks.”

“What? No way. I’ve been here absolutely forever it has to have been at least a month.”

“This is day 14 of your observation, Phantom.”

Phantom blew a strand of hair out of his face. “Anyway. Two weeks is still long enough to have a search party out on my butt. But whether or not that’s happened is up to – it’s kind of a Schrodinger thing. Because here’s my strategy. Assuming Clockwork hasn’t banned me from reality-hopping forever, I can just get him to send me back to my own reality at the precise moment in time I vanished. And then bam, no one ever knows I was gone. And it makes no difference whether I do that today, or next week, or next month. So assuming you eventually let me go, then I’m all set there.”

“You say that almost like you don’t care when it happens.”

“I dunno, more like I’m just not losing sleep over it. It’s not like I have a say in the matter. You do. I don’t.”

“Is the time you spend here just meaningless, to you?”

“I wouldn’t say meaningless. I’m still aging goddammit.”

“You’re a ghost.”

“I’m complex.” Phantom flipped right-side-up again. “If I start growing facial hair, send me back. I’m gonna have some awkward questions to answer if I show up again with a ghost beard suddenly.”

“…And what if I never send you back?” Maddie asked, careful with her words. “How does your plan work if you stay here forever? If I destroy you first?”

“Um. …It doesn’t, I guess.” Phantom set a hand to his chin, thinking. “Yeah um, please don’t do that. I don’t wanna worry my whole family like that.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“What part?”

“That you have a family.”

“I mean. I think that came up in Interrogation Session #3. Consult your notes.”

“I just have a hard time believing you.”

“Because I’m a ghost?”

“Yes.”

“I’m a complex ghost.”

“I know. You keep saying that.”

“It’s true.”

Silence filtered in between them.

“…What is your family like, Phantom?”

Phantom stiffened a fraction, his eyes finding Maddie’s and shifting away. “Oh, you know, family.”

“Do they exist here too?”

“Huh?”

“You’re from another reality, at least you’re claiming you are.”

“I gotta be. The me from this reality died 6 months ago, didn’t he?”

“The you from most realities is dead, Phantom. You’re a ghost.”

“A complex ghost.”

“The you from this reality was destroyed 6 months ago.”

“Which you validated with your own sciencey equipment, right? You said so! So you know I’m not lying. Unless you think I recombobulated myself from being a protoplasmic smear on the sidewalk.” Phantom caught himself, registering the flinch in Maddie’s body. He deflated a bit, eyes averted. “S-sorry. Inconsiderate phrasing.”

“Why?” Maddie asked, tone flat, blunt.

Phantom’s eyes shifted back. “Um. Just. You know. That accident was. There were um, you know—”

“Human causalities.”

Phantom squirmed. “We don’t have to talk about that, you know? No one wants to talk about that. Okay as a ghost I guess ‘talking about how I died’ is sort of a bit more normal, but this is weird yeah, ‘talking about how an alternate-me died permanently’? That’s morbid. No one wants to talk about that.”

“Okay then. You can go back to answering my previous question.”

“Um. I forget.”

“Does your family exist in this reality?”

“Um, well who really knows, you know? I had like a grand total of 20 minutes of freedom in this reality before you captured me, so, don’t ask me like I’m any kind of expert about your reality. What’s it matter?”

“I want to know if there’s anyone in this reality who’s mourning you.”

Phantom’s face schismed with surprise. His front dropped, and the first look of genuine emotion sank into his glowing eyes. “Woah… That’s um, weirdly nice, of you, I guess. Why do you… want to know?”

Maddie said nothing.

“I. Um. I think the answer is no? So don’t um. Worry about that. If you were worried? Which is weird. I’m the enemy, aren’t I? Evil spooky ghost to be studied?”

“I’m not so sure what you are…” Maddie answered. “I heard you got destroyed trying to save them.”

“The um… the human casualties?”

“Yes.”

“I said we don’t have to talk about that.”

“Phantom.”

“What?”

“Do you know who they were?”

“The… casualties?”

“Yes.”

“Come on we’re on a different topic now.”

“Do you know who they were?”

“I don’t—how’m I supposed to know? I don’t know how I died here, you know? You think I’ve got some kind of like… parallel-universe death vision?”

“So you don’t know?”

“N-no.”

“I have a different question, then.”

“Okay, good, because I haven’t been liking these previous ones.”

“Are you staying just to keep me company?”

Phantom faltered. He looked left, then right, hand scratching at his chin. “I’m staying because I’m in a ghost-proof box.”

“It’s not ghost-proof anymore. The shields are down.”

“I feel like you’re circling around some accusation I’m not smart enough to follow. This feels like entrapment.”

“Then I’ll be more direct.”

“Oh no there is an accusation.”

“I think you do know how you were destroyed in this universe, Phantom.” Maddie took a step forward, and she let her left hand touch the glass, eyes focused on her fingers. “I think you know what happened at the Nasty Burger.”

“That’s—um—the human food… consumption… location… that the local human adolescents meet at, yes?”

Maddie looked up, and she locked Phantom with her stare. He squirmed, and he relented.

“I um…” he continued. “I—yeah—yeah, okay? I know about the Nasty Burger accident. It was supposed to happen to me too in my reality but I—Clockwork—stopped it from happening in my reality.” Phantom glanced left, right, as if staring beyond the confines of his cage. “When I first got knocked into this reality, I went to go find the Fenton portal so I could try to refind Clockwork and fix this and… Well it wasn’t there. And I tried to find some people I know and… I checked out the library in case the Fentons just lived somewhere else and. I um. I found the articles.” His eyes focused on hers again. “They all say you were the only survivor, yeah…?”

“I was sick, that day. It was just a cold. My husband Jack went without me.”

“I’m sorry…”

“It took my daughter and my son too.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“And it destroyed you.”

Phantom opened his mouth, but no words followed.

Maddie looked up.

“You knew this. You’ve known this ever since I captured you.” Maddie let her hand slide away from the glass. “Did you let me capture you?”

“Why would I let you capture me?”

“Because you feel sorry for me.”

Phantom’s eyes flickered about, unwilling to meet hers. “…Nah. Nah. I don’t—come on ‘sorry’? I’m a ghost you know? Bane of humanity! We’re enemies. You were just too skilled a hunter and you captured me.”

“And yet you won’t leave.”

Phantom lapsed silent.

“I um… I wasn’t happy to read about—to know the, the thing at the Nasty Burger happened here, okay? That’s something that I kinda didn’t want to believe existed in any reality anymore, but I guess… And if you were still alive. I was… maybe just kind of happy to see you? That you were okay. And still hunting. That was kind of, like a small relief.” Phantom glanced away, back again. “I wasn’t evil, you know. In my reality or this one. I care about what happened to the Fentons…”

“You let me capture you. …And you did it because you thought it would be a nice thing for you to do for me.”

“I Just—I thought maybe, um… I mean when you phrase it like that. I mean what else could cheer up renowned ghost hunter Maddie Fenton quite like a ghost subject to study? Me, especially? The ghost boy or public enemy #1 or whatever. I’m fun, aren’t I?”

Silently, Maddie pushed away from Phantom’s cage. She moved to the control panel, stiff movements and numb fingers. She entered the release code into the console, and unslung the key from her neck to twist into the override, and she threw down each successive lever in the row of four lining the top of the mechanisms.

The scrape of glass sliding away sounded behind her. All four walls of Phantom’s enclosure dropped away, metal mesh sliding away piece-meal. Phantom stared at her, blinking, floating in place.

“You’re free to go, Phantom.”

“I—uh—well hang on, I don’t think the Guys In White would be too happy about that. You can’t just let me—”

“Go, Phantom.”

“They could like, fire you.”

“I don’t care about this job.”

“I—come on, you still wanna study me, don’t you? Chat with me? If you feel bad maybe just get me a couch and some video games for my cage then I’ll be—”

“Phantom.”

“What?”

“Go home to your family.”

The half-hearted smile dropped from Phantom’s face.

“Come on. You can’t just evict me on such short notice. I’m not ready for Clockwork to kick my ass so soon.”

“Go home.”

“I’m not in any rush! I like talking to you. Don’t you—don’t you like talking to me too? In like a scientific way?”

Maddie lowered herself into the chair by the control panel. She leaned forward, arms pooled in her lap, eyes to the floor. “You have a family to get back to, Phantom.”

“It’s—there’s time travel shenanigans! Like I said they don’t even know I’m gone.”

“Every single day, Phantom,” Maddie looked up, eyes stern, “…I wish every single day that my own family would just come back home. I won’t do the same to you. I won’t do the same to your family.”

Phantom said nothing. A somber acceptance sunk into his eyes.

“They’re… alive, you know. In my dimension.”

Maddie dropped her head, and she blinked away the wetness in her eyes.

“I actually… in my dimension I’m kind of closer to the Fentons than I think the, the Phantom in this dimension was. It’s… complex.”

Maddie said nothing. Silence built between them.

“Jazz is um… Jazz is applying for colleges, y-you know. She got in early-acceptance to Yale but um, we all—they all—visited Columbia last month and I think that’s what she wants the most. I can see Jazz in New York City. I think she’d rock it.”

Maddie blinked again. Tears plicked into her lap.

“…Should I stop?”

“Jack… Tell me about Jack.”

“Oh. Yeah he um… big and goofy as ever. He’s got some kind of eight-armed-octogun he’s working on. I know because I was his target practice, involuntarily by the way. He keeps trying to merge “Fenton” and “octopus” together with mixed results. We—Mo-addie—you… are still trying to talk him out of ‘Fentoctopus’.”

Maddie’s ribcage shuddered, a repressed sob, a repressed laugh.

“And Danny?”

“Danny… um… Danny is...” Phantom’s shoulders fell a little bit. He looked away, and then back at Maddie. “He loves you. I know that.”

Maddie blinked, and blinked again, and her eyes wouldn’t clear.

“And are they happy?”

“They’re happy.”

“Am I happy…?”

“You’re…” Phantom’s tail bounced. “You’re happy, I think. I like to think so. I think you’re very happy. You have a great family.”

Maddie nodded.

“Now go.”

“But I still—”

Maddie reached forward, and she grabbed the ecto-gun propped against the control panel. She lifted it into her shoulder, and flicked the safety, and the charge built along the rising whine.

“Go.”

Phantom balked. He blinked. He kicked away from his wall-less cage. “Not forever. I’ll be back. You won’t be alone here forever.”

He was gone.

And Maddie was alone again.

…

Clockwork surveyed the boy in front of him whose head was bowed nearly to the floor, white bangs trailing along cobblestone, hands clasped, apologies repeated, begging case made.

Clockwork ran a hand along his beard, which unfurled, drew back, undid itself with the shifting of his form to a simple child.

“So let’s see. You have the audacity to break my rules andbeg me to meddle on your behalf in the time stream, all in the same breath? Apologies don’t usually come with additional requests for favors.”

“I know,” Danny’s head dipped lower. “You can punish me however you want for touching the restricted timelines but you have to help it, or let me help this one timeline. Please, please just send me back to the Nasty Burger incident so I can save it.”

“It’s already been saved.”

Danny faltered. He looked up.

“You died at the Nasty Burger incident that night,” Clockwork elaborated, form shifting older. “There is no you to ruin that future. That timeline is safe. It’s a very lucky timeline.”

Danny blinked. “N-no. No that’s not what I mean. Save it like you saved my timeline.”

“That did happen. You’re describing your own timeline.”

“I mean do it to THAT one.”

“You are misunderstanding timelines.”

Danny lapsed silent. Worry bled into his eyes, and Clockwork sighed.

“There is no undoing timelines, Danny. There is only forking them by meddling in the stream. All futures and pasts you witness exist, and do exist, and continue to exist,” Clockwork paused, “with the exception of realities I needed to cull, to prevent utter catastrophe.” His gaze fixed on Danny. “The futures that your evil self destroyed, I did have to cull. And culling a reality is not to be done lightly.”

Clockwork motioned with his staff. “There were a handful of surviving realities that I was able to save. That room you meddled in without my permission—they contain the realities off the main track where, for one reason or another, something else succeeded at destroying your future self. …Your own deaths, in fact. In every one of those realities, Danny, you are dead.”

“I don’t…” Danny shook his head. “So then just tell me how to save that one I was in, okay?”

“Oh, that’s easy.”

“How?”

“You don’t.”

Danny said nothing. Clockwork shifted young.

“You can let it live on in that room, or you could ask me to cull it, Danny. You could ask me to cull every reality in that room, so that the main branch, the one you’re from, is the only reality in existence. So you never have to worry about any existence where your family is unhappy. And it will be that way until you, or I, or someone else, meddles with the timestreams again, and more splits occur.”

Still, Danny said nothing. Clockwork continued.

“Sometimes, a mass culling of realities is healthy for the tree of time, like pruning a plant down to its stalk to survive an unforgiving winter, or a terrible disease. But I did that, just recently, to save all of time from the blight of your future self. It would feel cruel to snip off the first buds that have come after the frost.”

Danny lowered himself to the floor.

“Okay…”

“Okay?”

He nodded. “Okay. Just. I have a different question then.” He looked up, a young devastation wet in his eyes. “Can I still go back and visit that reality, sometimes?”

“No. I cannot give you permission to do that.”

“Please!”

Clockwork spun his staff. A portal swirled into being in the space between him and Danny. Washes of color formed patterns, shapes, objects, images. Like a mirror, it reflected Clockwork’s lair beyond its shimmering surface.

“This is a portal back into your own reality. It is set to the location and the time that you vanished. Go there, and leave through the Fenton portal, and nothing will be amiss.”

“No. No no I won’t. Clockwork you have to let me—”

“I am doing you a favor, Danny, getting you home after you caused more trouble. Do not make further demands of me.” Clockwork curled forward, old, sallow skin sagging, and he turned his back to Danny.

“You have to give me permission—”

“I am the only one who has permission to meddle in realities, Danny. This is an absolute.” Clockwork glanced over his shoulder. “And because this is an absolute, I have no reason to have a lock on the room housing those budding other realities.”

Danny blinked.

“I wonder if anyone might break my rules anyway. I wonder if anyone might be nosy, and enter that room anyway, and water the plants in that greenhouse without my permission.” Clockwork stared forward again.

“Clockwork…”

“Luckily I am the master of all time. I would be able to see this coming. And maybe plan for it. If ever such a person would come into my lair, and meddle in my timelines, and try to spread a bit of his own kindness to the realities he couldn’t quite save, I would be fully prepared to stop him.” Clockwork spoke into the green abyss beyond him. “Unless, maybe, I were to accidentally have my back turned.”

Silence trailed after Clockwork’s words. He kept his back to Danny, staring into the abyss of swirling green ether beyond.

“…Thank you,” Danny answered, quietly. “I’ll be back.”

“I imagine you will. Those realities may get lonely without you.”

When Clockwork glanced back over his shoulder, both Danny and the portal were gone.

[bluegarners]

#and jason — this child — did not die quickly#this child was beaten and bludgeoned and left to die#and his birth mother may have been there but for all intents and purposes this child died in agony and alone#which is so important to note because his death wasn’t quick! he spent his last minutes suffering and hopeless#there is so much focus on the fact that he died but not on what led right up to it#no other characters alive know the amount of pain he was in#it’s been a while since i read utrh but as far as bruce knows jason was already dead before he made it to that warehouse#jason died slowly and in pain and that is a pain you carry#and he finally found his father whose response to that pain was … well. @thychesters

yes yes yes!!! OUGH i love that you touched on the whole theme of "he was already dead" idea with bruce because that's another central thing to it all!!! like.

so much of being human is feeling pain in whatever form it comes in. so much of being human and being alive is just feeling whatever whenever no matter the circumstance. when no one acknowledges someone's pain or what they went through, it's sooo difficult to recognize it as a true part of yourself because it's like it doesn't exist. a part of it becomes phantom, unreal, because no one else seems to see it

and that's!!! jason's whole thing!!! he died slowly. that is unbelievably important. the bomb may have been the final act, but leading up to the void? hours, minutes, seconds, a whole eternity. jason died slowly and painfully. he laid there and watched the timer tick down closer to his death, but he did so alive. he was breathing and in pain and bruce will never know that. it can't even be schrodinger's cat at that point because, say it with me now, jason was always going to die. bruce watched the warehouse explode and held his dead child in his arms. jason was always and already dead to bruce and everyone else but jason reminds them that he wasn't always!!! he was alive!!! he had a life and lungs that worked and a heart that beat!!! and he was in pain!! he suffered!! he died but he also suffered!!!

and when his entire sense of self is constructed around his death, his suffering ceases to exist. it ceases to be a part of himself because everyone else has already jumped straight into mourning a loss, a funeral, a gravestone

and going back to utrh, jason gives bruce a chance to recognize that. he gives him the chance to look him in the eye and remember that his little boy wasn't always dead, that he wasn't always a fatality on a list, that he wasn't always the "lost solider". but bruce doesn't recognize it, he can't because to him, the narrative will always control his actions and the narrative explicitly states that jason todd is dead and that is always how it was meant to be

so. when bruce chooses to save joker's life, chooses to hurt jason, what does jason do? he lays there. clutching his neck and shoulder. he lays there in a perfect mimic of how he died: bleeding, hopeless, and in agony. and it's not just his wounds that leave him in agony. it's not even the physical pain at that point. it's the realization that he has to accept his role in the narrative now- he is and always will be the dead boy, the dead robin, and no one will ever remember him as otherwise

he becomes a ghost in his own story, in his own life, because even before he died, before everything, no one will ever remember that without coloring it over with explosions and lazarous pits and white light memorials. suffering and pain cannot exist in jason's story and he is so angry about that and, like so many people in the rbs have been saying, a character's pain can be so personal....

thinking about how in utrh jason specifically mentions how much pain he was in when he died. how he was left beaten bloody and in agony. “if it had been you that he left in agony… i would have done nothing but search the planet for this pathetic pile of evil, death-worshipping garbage… and sent him off to hell.”

like, he died. that was what bruce and everyone else grieved over. but jason doesn’t really specifically mention his death. he says “taken from this world” but doesn’t use that as part of his reasoning for why he’s upset in that moment. jason focuses on the physical pain he felt. the agony, as he puts it. so much of his life revolves around his death but no one brings up the actual pain of it and that’s all that jason thinks about- the pain, his suffering, how utterly miserable and hopeless he was and how he can’t even imagine bruce going through what he did because it was that horrible and even the thought of it, of bruce beaten bloody and in agony, even after all they’ve been through, jason still gets angry at the thought

pain is so central to so much of jason’s character and i think it’s a real testament that everyone else thinks it’s only his death that changed him and not the suffering and agony he felt in his entire body before he died. death was the relief for him after all of that, and still the one person he needed to recognize the absolute anguish he went through did nothing as retribution

it was like the torture he went through, the bones he broke, the blood he spilled, didn’t matter. none of the pain, the agony, he endured mattered. only what happened after was central and i think that’s sooo striking in utrh for jason because no one talks about it except for him. he’s the one that has to bring up the fact that he didn’t just die but was abused and wounded so severely that he couldn’t sit up or do anything to escape. he’s the one reminding everyone that a little boy didn’t just die but was tortured and bled. he had to look his father in the eye and see that all of his pain didn’t mean enough for something meaningful to be done about

just. physical pain, not even mental or emotional, as a core part of a character is so personable and fleshy and human and yet jason is the one that has to tell people he felt it and still feels it