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letarasstuff · 4 years ago

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"I don't wanna leave you, Daddy"

(A/N): This was requested by an Anon and it's based on this concept. I hope you are ready for the feels.

Summary: Hotch's daughter is an introvert. A quiet one. But why does she go even quieter after her mother's death?

Warnings: So much hurt. Angst. Fluff. It's bitter sweet.

Wordcount: 2.3k

✨Masterlist✨ _____________________________

(Y/N) never really was an outgoing person. Even since she was able to walk and talk, she still clung to her parents. She refused to play on the playground when other children were there. Socializing was just not her thing. Her parents were sure that she would never be the person to stand up and perform on stage spontaneously. And it is ok.

This doesn’t really change when Jack comes around. Sure, as he grows older and more capable of things (Y/N) plays with him. But it really seems like he is the only one around her age she is not afraid to befriend.

Aaron and Haley reassure themselves that their daughter will find friends in elementary school. After all this is an institution where many children go to and there also are adults trained for helping them coming along. She definitely will find at least one other kid to hang out with regularly and learn how to be a proper child. Because as of right now (Y/N) is more like a little adult, taking responsibilities, like watching over her little brother, she doesn’t need to do voluntarily. Maybe she will be more messy, rebellious, anything but a perfect child.

But this doesn’t exactly happen. (Y/N)’s teachers are really happy with her. Every parent-teacher conference is about how well and polite she is, always behaving good and following the rules. Sadly, they don’t have any good news regarding her social life. It’s not that she doesn’t get along with her classmates, it’s just that she isn’t able to strike up a conversation or is very good at keeping one long enough that a kid is interested in her.

Knowing that (Y/N) is mostly quiet in her school days, Aaron makes it a habit to bring her more often to the office. She surprisingly warms quickly up to his team and whenever she is around them the girl is an unstoppable tornado running loose around the bullpen.

This is kind of how she grows up until the age of middle school. (Y/N) learns some social skills and makes a few friends over the last few years. Unfortunately these friendships are not as deep as the parents wish, still it’s better than nothing.

Things get difficult when Aaron and Haley start to separate. It never is easy when parents fall out of love and it is not only difficult for Jack to see his father not as often as he used to, considering he still is a toddler needing both parents. Especially (Y/N), who is more of a daddy’s girl than a mommy’s girl, suffers from the situation at home.

Of course it’s hard on her to not see her father for a week or two at a time, but ever since her parents are going on parted ways she sees him at most one weekend every three weeks. This also changes her social life dramastically.

“(Y/N), don’t you wanna do something with your friends? You can invite them over for the weekend”, Haley suggests after watching her daughter not going out with somebody outside of school for several days. For the past two weeks the ten year old just comes home, does her homework and puts her nose in one of the books her Uncle Spencer recommended.

The girl only looks up at her mother to shake her head. “Why not, Sweetie? I haven’t seen William and John in so long. Are you still friends with them?” (Y/N) nods again. “So what is it? Are you guys fighting?” Haley sits down next to her on her bed.

“No, they just-just don’t know about this. I don’t want to tell them. And I want to stay home. It’s ok how it is right now”, she admits. Her mother’s heart breaks at that statement.

In this moment she realizes that anything a parent does has immediate consequences for the children. “I’m sorry, Sweetie. I didn’t know this is so hard for you. Maybe you can talk to them over the next few days about it, I think it’ll help you. Do you want to watch a film with me for now? Jack has a sleepover at a friend’s. We can do a girl’s night. We hadn’t had one in a long time.”

(Y/N)’s eyes light up at that. “With all the candy in the world?” Haley smiles at the newfound excitement. “Of course. Anything you want.”

From only seeing Aaron every now and then it suddenly turns to not knowing when she will see him next. After George Foyet ambushes him and makes his family into the next target, (Y/N), her brother and her mother have to go into witness protection.

The goodbye at the hospital is painful and filled with tears. “But Dad, I don’t want to leave you. I’ll miss you too much. I don’t like not seeing you. And what about you? You will be more lonely and-and I can’t leave you”, she confesses, sobbing into him.

Hotch has to hold his own tears back. He doesn’t want to come over as stoic, but as the strong father figure he always tries to be. “Honey, I know I’ll miss you so much. You have to be strong for your mother. This will not be easy and I know it. I promise to do my best to get all of you back as soon as possible, ok? Please be good for your mother and behave. We all need to work together for you to get back fast and safely.”

(Y/N) continues to cry into his hospital gown. Aaron can’t help it and dissolves in tears himself while trying to calm her down. “Shh, Honey. Everything will be fine. I’m so so sorry for all this. I never wanted something like this to happen. Shh, we will see each other real soon. The team and I will do our best. Just please, don’t cry. Please, it all will be better. I can’t let you go without seeing your beautiful laugh for one last time.”

“I don’t wanna leave you, Daddy. I-I wanna stay with you and Uncle Dave and Auntie JJ and Uncle Spencer and Uncle Der and Auntie Penny and Auntie Em. I’m scared you won’t be fine when we come back.”

It’s needless to say that nobody cracked even a smile that day.

Going into witness protection made Haley worry about Jack especially. He is just four years old and she isn’t sure how much he understands about what’s going on. Surprisingly the boy gets accustomed to the situation pretty fast. Of course he misses his father and his people from school, but he is also quick to meet new ones in the town they moved to.

(Y/N) has bigger problems. New school. New kids. New everything.

“Maybe you can see it as a fresh start. Here is nobody you know. You can be whoever you want to be. I can take you shopping and you can try out a new style”, her mother tries to make the situation sound advantageous to her. But the girl dryly answers: “When somebody doesn’t like me how I am now, how will they like an act?”

Sam Kassmeyer regularly reports back to Aaron about his family’s well being. “Jack is thriving. His teachers describe him as a bundle of joy. (Y/N) slowly gets acclimated to the change. Haley told me she started making friends with a girl in their neighborhood. I already ran a background check and the family is clean.”

Hotch lets out a sigh of relief. He turns towards the image on Penelope’s monitor. “Happy fifth birthday, Buddy.”

A few weeks after that it seems like the events overturn each other.

Foyet coming back. Kassmeyer getting tortured. Foyet finding Haley and the children. Them coming back to their house. The call. Working the case with Jack. The gunshot. The fighting noises. Hotch opening the box and hugging both of his children, relieved to see them alive.

The following weeks are difficult for the now smaller family. They mostly consist of watching videos of happy memories and talking about their feelings. Although it’s more like Jack talking about his feelings, (Y/N) went mostly silent ever since their mother’s death. This worries her father more than anything.

Two months have gone by. “Hey Honey, I’m going into the office today. Do you wanna come with me, stay at home or go to school? Anything is fine by me”, he asks her softly, kneeling beside her chair at the table. The girl is munching on her cereal halfheartedly.

“Can I come to the office?” (Y/N) asks in a hoarse voice. It’s actually the first time in four days that Aaron hears her voice. A small smile forms on his face. “Of course, that’s nice. Aunt Penny is asking me after her favorite Hotchner for days on end now. And Uncle Spencer got a stack of books he has for you to read.”

His daughter nods and quickly gets ready. They are soon on their way to Quantico after dropping Jack off at daycare. “How are your classmates? Do you like the new school?” They decided to send (Y/N) to a different school. She couldn’t bear the thought of only being the girl whose Mom died because of a serial killer.

“It’s fine. There are a few girls who are really nice. I think we can be friends. Mo-” She suddenly cuts herself off. Aaron glances over at her. “Continue, Sweetheart. Just tell me what’s on your mind”, he tries to encourage her.

The girl hesitates before following her father’s advice. “Mom would have liked them,” she mumbles. It’s quiet for a few seconds. Hotch is looking for a suitable answer. After all it’s the first time she talked about her mother since her death. “I’m sure of it, Honey. Maybe you can invite them over and I can get to know them. Think about it, no pressure of course.” (Y/N) nods to indicate that she heard him.

Not long later they enter the bullpen. “There she is! My little Hotchner! How you doing, Baby?” Derek asks her and envelopes her into a hug. But she only shrugs her shoulders. This goes on for the rest of the day. Whenever anyone talks to her, the only answer is given by her body language.

Hotch watches helplessly Spencer trying to engage in a conversation with her. His arms and hands are waving around. (Y/N) though just looks at him without being really there mentally. It seems like she is lost in her own thoughts, like it happened so often over the last few months.

“Have you tried talking to her about it?” Dave asks, sitting down on the chair opposite of him. Aaron looks at him funny. “Of course. But (Y/N) is just not ready to talk about Haley and everybody grieves differently. I can’t force her to speak, Dave.”

The older agent leans back in his seat. “I don’t think she needs to talk about her. This probably is too soon. She needs to talk about you. The changes.” After a short pause, in which the other one still doesn’t get the point, Rossi continues. “That little girl just lost her mother. She is scared to lose her father, the one with the high risk job. I think that is enough to talk about.”

This occupies the agent for the remainder of the day. Aaron was so invested in fulfilling both parent roles, that he forgot that he is just a father. The man his children go to when they have a nightmare. The one, who is more lenient than their mother. He can’t be both ones. He can’t be two people in one.

A kid trusts a mother and a father usually. And he can’t be mother and father at once. Hotch has to accept the fact. The fact that (Y/N) and Jack are going to grow up without a mother. But luckily not without mother figures.

Later that day, after tucking Jack in, Aaron knocks on his daughter’s door. A small “Come in!” echoes back to him. He enters her room and spots (Y/N) already in her bed reading a book Spencer gave her today.

“Hey, do you have time before it’s lights out?” He asks, still wanting to give her the upper hand on this. The girl nods and scoots over for her father to take a place. He lays next to her, pulling his daughter into a hug.

“I know I can’t promise it. Coming back to you every time. You know it as much as I do. But I promise you to try anything and everything in the books. You guys keep me going.” Tears roll over both of their faces.

“I-I just”, (Y/N) moves her head onto his chest to sob into it, “Just don’t wanna lose you, too. I-I don’t think I-I can’t be the girl, who doesn’t have a mother AND a father. C-can you stop that from happening?” Hotch has to wipe his eyes before answering.

“I-I try to keep that from happening, Honey. I promise.”

This is how they fall asleep, squished in a twin bed close to each other. In the morning they both are overheated and got a visitor during the night. Jack wakes them up, asking why they had a sleepover without him.

This morning is the first time Aaron sees (Y/N) smiles since day zero.

Taglist:

All works:

@dindjarinsspouse @big-galaxy-chaos

Criminal Minds:

@averyhotchner @mggsprettygirl @herecomesthewriterwitch @ash19871962

#criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #x reader #reader insert #fanfiction #aaron hotch fanfiction #aaron hotchner #aaron hotch imagine #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotch x child!reader #aaron hotch x daughter!reader #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x child!reader #aaron hotchner x daughter!reader #x daughter!reader #x child!reader

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ghostofstudentspast · 4 years ago

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OBLIGATORY part 4

Draco x Pureblood!Reader (Series) MASTERLIST

Back again with another part to the series!! Since I’ve been on hiatus for so long I’m taking this story in a completely new direction which I am SO excited about. I really hope you all enjoy it! I know chapters have been a bit short but I’m building to some bigger events soon ;)

PART 5 Word count: 1400

A hangover after a five-day bender. That’s the only way you could describe the way your body was feeling. Your stomach cramped up and a whimper escaped your lips as you curled in on yourself, soft sheets beneath you. Soft sheets. Not the cold hard floor of a dungeon classroom. Cracking open your eyes and sitting up slowly you peeked around the room before you.

Not the hospital wing either. The room itself was spacious, with a big window on one side, golden light streaming in through light curtains. There was a small desk in the corner, a cushy arm chair next to a small bookshelf and a fireplace. The bed you found yourself on was impossibly soft, with the fluffiest duvet you’d ever felt in the world. But still you had no idea where you were.

The soft click of a door drew your attention to the other side of the room. A familiar face slipped through the door before spotting you sitting up, awake.

“Ah, so you’re not dead after all.” You watched Draco walk towards you carefully, almost as if he was approaching a feral cat.

“No-I….where are we?” Your throat felt dry and your voice was barely above a whisper.

“I know why you did it,” He ignored your question and stopped next to your bed, handing you a glass of water you hadn’t noticed. You gratefully accepted the drink but never took your eyes off Draco. “It’s this isn’t it?” he’d rolled up his shirt sleeves and turned his arm towards you to expose the harsh black lines of the skull snaking down his porcelain skin.

You shook your head silently, too tired to stop the tears from welling up in your eyes. You tried to come up with the words. How could you tell him it terrified you to spend your whole life under the dark lord’s thumb when Draco was so loyal to him. You could feel your breath hitch and the panic bubble in your chest.

“Hey, look at me,” his tone was surprisingly soft, almost gentle. He perched on the edge of the bed, closer than you were prepared for. His hand carefully gripped your elbow and you couldn’t stop your body from flinching slightly under his touch. You looked up at him as a tear rolled down your cheek and your chin trembled. His eyes held no malice anymore, no anger and none of the disgust she was expecting.

“I’m just as scared as you are.” He spoke as if saying it out loud for the first time. Maybe it was.

Of course, you knew he’d taken the mark, but you’d been so caught up in your own anger and fear that you hadn’t considered the toll it would have taken on him. The bags under his eyes spoke of restless nights. He looked frazzled, nothing close to the usual perfectionist persona you grew up with. For the first time you looked at his dark mark voluntarily. It made your skin crawl but now you could see the raised skin under the tattoo. The edges were red and looked as uncomfortable as you felt.

“Why did you take it?” you whispered and looked back at his face.

“He would have killed my family Y/N,” he didn’t look back up at you, instead focussing on the tattoo, disgust clear in his eyes. He dropped his arms into his lap and picked at the material of his trousers. “My father angered him, and he offered me up like a scapegoat for his actions.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I just thought…” you took a deep breath, “I’m sorry.” You grabbed his hand to stop him from fiddling and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Me too.” He finally met your eyes again and offered you a tiny smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“Truce?” you wiped your face from tears and a small laugh cut through your sob. He squeezed your hand back this time and nodded. “So, how do we know if me almost dying actually worked?” you pushed your hair back and took a deep breath, collecting your thoughts.

Draco pushed himself off the bed and walked over to the little desk in the corner of the room. He picked up the contract and brought it back for you to take a look at. At first glance you could only see blood splattered across the page and it looked like a crime scene. But when you took a second, closer look at the paper, the words had started to fade. Certain sentences had already disappeared off the page and others were hidden behind dark spots of your blood.

“It’s disappearing?” You looked up at Draco questioningly.

“It’s been fading for as long as you’ve been out.” He nodded, “but it hasn’t changed since you’ve woken up.” You kept flipping through the contract.

“So, we’re still bound to this,” you muttered, “but there’s enough missing that there must be a loophole here somewhere.” A spark of hope flared up in your chest and a small smile graced your lips.

“I think so,” he agreed and allowed himself to drop into the chair next to the bookshelf, inspecting at you from a safe distance.

“I’ve cast a charm on the copy of the document so anyone who looks at it will be fooled into thinking it’s the real one, so we have time before our families find out about this,” your brain was in idea mode, words tumbling out of your mouth before you could completely process them.

“You’re an idiot,” Draco spoke up, but it didn’t hold any malice this time, “but you’re a clever idiot.”

“I can get us out of this.” You grinned at him.

___________________

“Y/N!, where the hell have you been!?” Daphne screeched as soon as soon as you set foot in your shared dorm room. You’d come out of the room on the third floor dazed and a bit baffled but hope still sat in the back of your mind. As soon as you’d turned to ask Draco a question, the room was gone and so was he.

“Literally to hell and back.” You flopped onto your bed, body still sore. You launched into a full explanation as you showed your best friend the bloodied contract.

“This is insane!” She gasped as she read through some of the clauses, “and Draco, he’s…he didn’t want…?” she whispered even though you were alone. You nodded silently, he was in the same boat as the two of you. A scared kid.

“Look,” you pointed to the top of the contract, ‘The two parties will enter into a magic bound partnership’, “Before, all of the clauses pointed towards marriage, but now,” You flipped to another page with some vague outlines of the magical bond, “it only has to be a partnership. If we stick to the remaining demands, we can live the rest of our lives separately as long as we don’t break any of the rules.”

You were already planning on how to avoid some of the written demands. If you just made a list of the things the two of you had to stick to, you wouldn’t even have to live near each other. You just had to interpret a new meaning of the word partnership.

“This is insane, you almost died,” Daphne was still in shock, “I would have murdered you for that you know,” she smacked your arm with very little force behind it.

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving you to fend for yourself without me,” you teased her and pulled your friend into a hug, relief spreading through you. One problem was dealt with. Now you had room to imagine a way out of danger for you and your friends. If you could keep your head down, play pretend for a little longer, you might make it out of here alive.

“We’re out of here as soon as we turn seventeen,” you promised Daph quietly, still holding her tightly.

“We have to be,” she squeezed you gently.

If you were going to survive your families, the Dark Lord and the stirring trouble that was brewing among the entire wizarding community, you’d have to keep up the loyal daughter façade for one more summer. Seventeen was when you’d be ‘marrying’ Malfoy. Seventeen was when you were considered your own person in the wizarding world. Seventeen was when you would find your freedom.

Obligatory Tag list:

@xkonpinkx @detroitobsessed @follow-me-down-to-wonderland @pointlesscoconut @irlkell @thehumanistsdiary @mo-onstarrs @summer-writes-words @aplaintart @jjjmaybank @rainstorm22 @weird-pale-blonde-person

#draco malfoy fic #draco x reader #Draco Malfoy #draco malfoy series #Harry Potter #harry potter fanfiction #harry potter series #obligatory #Obligatory series #hp fanfiction #hp fanfic #HP Fandom #HP

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cutie1365 · 4 years ago

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Hello Detective Chapter 72

Pairing: Sherlock x Reader

Word Count: 2.3k

A/N: Had a spark of inspiration after some funny comments on my Wattpad version of this story. See the power of feedback for writers lol.

Any and all feedback is appreciated and encouraged!

Masterlist | Add yourself to my taglist | Chapter 71 | Chapter 1

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

You walked around the empty flat, waiting for Sherlock and John to return from the hospital. Mycroft was calling for backup to do a drug sweep due to his recent relapse. The place was quiet, eerily so. You hadn’t walked these halls for weeks, but it felt as if years had worn them down, turning them dark and lifeless. Nothing like the flat you knew. Nothing like your home. It’s like in their bones they sensed your absence. They revolted against it. You glanced towards the closed bedroom door, not being able to bring yourself to open it. You missed him too much for that. The memories you’d made in that room would be too much to face now. Now you had to hold your mask high, you had to play your role and not become distracted.

Downstairs you heard the creak of the door slowly opening and prepared yourself for the confrontation. It was never pretty when Sherlock and Mycroft went at it.

Mycroft was sitting at the bottom of the steps anticipating their arrival. You waited at the landing, not quite stepping into the light yet, using your last few moments to compose yourself for the inevitable argument.

“Well then Sherlock, back on the sauce?” Mycroft spoke immediately as they entered the room, hoping to employ the element of surprise. But of course Sherlock was expecting him. He’d straightened the knocker, of course Sherlock would notice.

“What are you doing here?” Sherlock rolled his eyes, not in the mood for another insignificant lecture.

“I phoned him.” John admitted.

“The siren call of old habits.” Mycroft muttered disapprovingly.

“Old?” You raised a brow, taking a few steps down into the light. Mycroft turned to look at you, concern flashed across his face. He acted like Sherlock ever stopped using, but you knew better.

“You phoned him?” Sherlock asked John again, who wasn’t in the mood.

“Course I bloody phoned him.” John said, exasperated. Did he forget he just pulled him from a drug den? Of course he was bloody concerned.

“And her?” Sherlock asked, with malice in his voice, directed straight at you.

“Oh I’m here against my will, don’t worry I’d never come here voluntarily.” You retorted.

Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, but Mycroft changed the subject before he got a chance. He was too tired to deal with the two of you at eachothers throats.

“Now save me a little time. Where should we be looking?” Mycroft asked.

“We?” Sherlock asked, raising his brow.

“Mr Holmes?” The voice of Anderson echoed from upstairs.

The look of simultaneous anger and surprise on Sherlock’s face caused you to laugh.

“Oh I take it back, this is going to be fun.” You chuckled darkly. This is just what you needed. A good old Sherlock-Anderson standoff like the good old days. God things were simpler back then, even with the homicidal maniac who tried to blow you up.

“For God’s sake!” Sherlock called up to Anderson, pushing past you and Mycroft while making his way up the stairs. The three of you followed in tow.

“Anderson?” Sherlock asked annoyed and exasperated, hoping that he’d misidentified the voice, only for it to be confirmed.

“Sorry Sherlock, it’s for your own good.” Anderson apologized as the rest of you filed into the flat. He stood next to who you assumed to be his new girlfriend, you recognized her from your trip to his apartment all those months ago.

“Oh, that’s him, isn’t it?” The girlfriend asked, “You said he’d be taller.”

She turned and muttered her last statement to Phillip, but you knew that would strike a cord with Sherlock. Just like the hat, it was a delicate subject.

As you suspected, Sherlock flipped up his hood, turned and curled up into his chair, literally folding his body into the fetal position and resting his entire body on the cushion. Frankly, you were surprised he fit.

“Some members of your little fan club, to be polite. They’re entirely trustworthy. Even willing to search through the toxic waste dump that you were pleased to call a flat.” Mycroft said, as John took a look around the place, no doubt noticing the stark change since his absence. You noticed his chair was gone too. “You’re a celebrity these days, Sherlock. You can’t afford a drug habit.”

“I do not have a drug habit.” Sherlock argued, and you scoffed.

“No, he’s a user, remember.” You retorted, and on that subject you didn’t have to act so disappointed.

“Hey, what happened to my chair?” John asked, looking down to the empty spot on the carpet.

“It was blocking my view to the kitchen.” He answered, but you knew that was a lie. More like ‘I missed my wife and the sight only reminded me of her absence’.

“What have you found so far? Clearly nothing.” Mycroft turned back to Anderson.

“There’s nothing to find.” Sherlock yelled from the living room, hoping to stop them from digging.

“Your bedroom door is shut, you haven’t been home all night,” Mycroft began to walk back towards the bedroom, and Sherlock’s head shot up. “So, why would a man who has never knowingly closed the door without the direct orders of his mother bother to do so on this occasion?”

“Okay, stop!” Sherlock yelled, jumping up as Mycroft’s hand neared the door handle. “Just stop!”

What was it he didn’t want anyone to see in there? John noticed his frantic behavior as well. The two of you shared a confused look, and then it hit you. You turned to Sherlock with a surprised look, and he knew you had figured it out. Oh god was she in there? Your face said it all. For a moment Sherlock’s eyes pleaded with you for forgiveness. For a moment the two of you shared an entire conversation through only two glances that quickly slipped away to not jeopardize the roles that you were both playing so well. Mycroft was right, Sherlock never shut the door unless the two of you were in there together.

“Point made.” Sherlock said, and you shook your head, putting your mask back on. They were expecting drugs, but you knew better. He didn’t want to put you through that, knowing he had to fake date another woman was one thing, but flaunting it in your face was another. And that was a line he would not cross. Charles was different, he was in on it, he knew you were married. Hell, you didn’t even know who he was fake dating. While Sherlock and Charles had never officially met the two sure knew a lot about the other.

“Jesus, Sherlock.” John said, shaking his head. Of course he’d think this was his fault partially. He should have checked up on him, he should have been here. Obviously he was taking him getting married and moving out a lot harder than he expected. Of course that wasn’t the whole story.

“I’ll have to phone our parents, of course, in Oklahoma. Won’t be the first time that your substance abuse has wreaked havoc with their line dancing.” Mycroft sighed. How these two boys came from those two parents, you’d never know.

“This is not what you think, this is for a case.” Sherlock explained, hoping Mycroft would understand.

“What case could possibly justify this?” Mycroft asked, and you were curious too.

You’d never pressed and you trusted him when he said it was important, but now, maybe you wanted to know. You could handle the anonymity when you were away from Sherlock but now that he was finally standing in front of you again you wanted to help. Your curiosity was getting the better of you.

“Magnussen” He spoke, and you swore you stopped breathing. “Charles Augustus Magnussen.”

You tried not to gasp but you may have let in a sharp breath that caused Mycroft to turn to you. He knew you were currently a part of the enquiry into him, so you really couldn’t get involved with anything Sherlock was about to say. Panic began to set in and it took every ounce of your MI6 training to not let it show on your face. This was what all this was about? Mycroft sighed and turned back to Anderson and his partner.

“That name you think you may have just heard, you were mistaken. If you ever mention hearing that name in this room, in this context, I guarantee you on behalf of the British Security Services that materials will be found on your computer hard drives resulting in your immediate incarceration. Don’t reply, just look frightened and scuttle.” Mycroft threatened, as Phillip and his girlfriend ran out of the room, closing the door.

Mycroft turned back to John, “I hope I won’t have to threaten you as well.”

“Well, I think we’d both find that embarrassing.” John deadpanned, causing Sherlock to laugh, he looked at you hoping to share in a quick smile. He was met with your unamused face, eyes still slightly wide as you fought to keep your breathing at a stable rate.

“This isn’t funny.” You said, one hundred percent serious. He furrowed his brows a bit. Normally you would have found that hilarious, but clearly something had changed. That wasn’t just a part of the act. That felt real.

“Magnussen is not your business.” Mycroft said to John.

“Oh you mean he’s yours.” Sherlock pointed to Mycroft. You could feel your throat tightening, you urged the feeling to go away. You could not show any signs of fear. Magnussen held your entire life in the balance, you couldn’t allow even a tiny slip up.

“You may consider him under my protection.” Mycroft said, you turned to him furrowing your brows for a moment. You didn’t know that, though it didn’t change much. You now had a face to the immunity power that Magnussen had.

“I consider you under his thumb.” Sherlock seethed. You moved your hands behind your back to hide them shaking. You tried to keep Sherlock away from your Magnussen mess and here he was smack dab in the middle of it.

“If you go against Magnussen, then you will find yourself going against me.” Mycroft said.

“And me.” Your voice wavered. If Sherlock attacks Magnussen there's nothing stopping him from releasing the information on you and your uncle. Your words shocked everyone in the room, even Mycroft. A quiver of a brow was all you got in response from Mycroft but you knew that wasn’t the end of the conversation.

“Okay, I’ll let you know if I notice.” Sherlock shot back. He began to walk towards the door.

“Erm... What was I going to say? Oh, yeah. Bye-bye.“ He opened the door and pointed out. Mycroft made his way towards it, as you followed.

“Unwise, brother mine.” Mycroft said, just having to get the last word. You were ready to roll your eyes before Sherlock jumped into action, surprising you. Sherlock grabbed Mycroft’s arm, twisted it behind his back and pinned him against the wall.

“Brother mine, don’t appall me when I’m high.” Sherlock seethed in his brother's ear, causing him to groan in pain.

“Hey!” You shouted, pulling Sherlock off of him and pinning Sherlock to the wall instead. Maybe this is what Mycroft meant by backup. You raised your elbow, pinning him in place as he winced slightly. That wasn’t fake. Having never seen this side of you, his eyes danced curiously across your face looking for any glimpse of an explanation. You held your demeanor.

“I hope you fully understand what you’re about to get yourself into here.” You scold, hoping he understands your warning. You didn’t just mean fighting with Mycroft, you meant Magnuseen. He was not someone to fuck with, and whatever he was getting himself into, it wouldn’t end well for anyone.

Mycroft picks up his umbrella and makes his way down the stairs, straightening his suit and thankful for your help, though he’d never admit it. You remove your arm from Sherlock's neck as he sucks in a breath of air. You turn and follow Mycroft down the stairs without another word.

You were angry, seething on the inside. Magnussen was ripping your life apart at every turn. You hated him, you wanted to kill him, to dismember him limb by limb, but you were powerless. You couldn’t even talk back to the man without fearing the repercussions. He owned you.

As you stepped out onto the street Mycroft turned to you, glancing around to make sure no one was in earshot.

“Keep an eye on him. Don’t let him dig too deep into this.” He said, keeping his voice low.

“Absolutely not.” You shook your head, you couldn’t do that even if you wanted to.

He seemed unsatisfied at your volume, and quickly glanced up to the window into 221B above you. Something must have caught his eye because he grabbed your arm and pulled you back under the awning of Speedys, keeping the two of you out of eyesight.

“I don’t care that the two of you... broke up.” He waved his hand, as if saying those words disgusted him. “That can’t stop you from doing your job.”

“Mycroft, we shouldn’t even be discussing this. With the enquiry going on, you know I can’t get involved. My hands are tied. Magnussen is untouchable, even Sherlock can’t get to him.” You pressed, shaking your head, holding back your anger.

You turned and walked back towards the street, raising your hand to hail a cab. As one began to pull over you heard Mycroft begin to call your name. You whipped back to him before he had a chance to continue the conversation.

“Drop it.” You said forcefully, pointing your finger at him, turning and opening the cab door.

Before stepping in, you turned and glanced up at the window, feeling eyes on you. Sherlock stood, watching the interaction carefully. You shot him what you hoped was a warning look as you sank into the backseat and slammed the door.

You let out a groan as the car pulled away, wishing you could take Charles up on his murderous offer.

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

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luverofralts · 3 years ago

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Post Arkhelios

Adam stayed by his nephew’s side as long as he was allowed. He hadn’t been allowed in the operating room, but there was no removing him from the recovery area.

The bullet had gone clean through Roman’s chest, so fortunately there was nothing to remove, and once the bullet was found, it could easily be compared to the one that had killed Abraham Helios. Roman had lost a lot of blood, and there was still considerable damage caused by the bullet, but everyone agreed that he’d likely recover from this attack. Malika had stumbled upon him in just enough time to save him.

Malika had been equally difficult to remove from the recovery area. Adam at least had staff privileges, while Malika was in the recovery area by sheer force of will. No one dared escort her out when she was that intense about staying. The hospital hadn’t really hired any security in the past decade since their previous most serious case had been Zane Hydes eating fifty grilled cheese sandwiches in one night and becoming quite ill from it. They’d never needed security to take on family members overstepping proper procedures before. At least both Wanda and Salem were directly impacted by Roman’s shooting, and probably would approve any budget increase the hospital asked for.

There had been another positive change caused by the shooting. Malika had actually embraced her son Adam, and he may have been hallucinating it, but he thought he may have heard her whisper that she was proud of him. After years of her being indifferent at best towards him, Adam wasn’t sure he knew how to process this sudden display of maternal praise.

Omar and Kamalani were so beside themselves with worry, they didn’t even bicker with each other as they sat next to their unconscious son. Omar left his spouses and kids at home for obvious reasons, but Wbuna had sent along homemade muffins to supplement the horrible cafeteria food in support of the family. Salem had eaten a few before Malika’s arm had “slipped” and dropped them in the trash.

“I should have had him living with me,” Omar groaned finally. “This would never have happened if I-”

“If what?” Kamalani snapped. “What would you have done? What have you ever done?”

“What have I done? I didn’t abandon him for months without any explanation or even a goodbye.”

“No, you just let your incompetent parents raise him for you, until he let a Helios seduce him into breaking-”

“Kamalani!” Malika’s voice cut across the room sharply and her ex-daughter in law’s mouth snapped closed immediately. The two women shared a knowing stare that Omar couldn’t interpret.

“Well, I’ll be fighting to get custody of him again. He’s going to need his father more than ever after this,” he declared and nearly everyone in the room tried to stifle a laugh.

“Oh honey, we all appreciate you trying to lighten the mood, but now isn’t the time for joking,” Malika chided, tousling his hair like he was still ten years old.

Someone needed to hold down the fort at the Bellamy home, and Wanda and Hunter volunteered. They chased off some reporters, and checked in every hour with the hospital, but were otherwise left alone with their thoughts.

“This is all so crazy,” Wanda said. “Nothing makes sense.”

“I know, who would want to shoot Roman? He’s just a kid.”

Wanda wasn’t entirely sure about how to broach the subject of motive with her husband. She’d been having doubts for weeks now about anything concerning Roman’s recent troubles. Kamalani was as rude to her as the blood related Bellamys, and it was no surprise that Malika had Kamalani around more than her actual son. The two of them were both vipers hiding behind a deception of sincerity. But what were their real motives? Wanda got to be included in simple things like summoning Roman, but was left out of their private tea times, and whispered conversations in the yard.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that the person who killed Abraham shot to kill him, and then shot Roman clear of any major arteries or organs?”

Hunter frowned.

“Maybe they were a lousy shot,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter, I’m just thankful that he’s going to pull through this. He could have just as easily bled out.”

Wanda picked at the corner of one of her nails absently. This needed to be said in the right way.

“Don’t you think it’s odd that your mother was walking in Factory Park so late at night, just in time to find Roman?”

Hunter’s frown grew deeper.

“No, she got a text message from the killer. That’s why Roman went too. She’s lucky to not have been a victim as well.”

“I know, but she...” Wanda paused and changed tactics. “Have you noticed anything strange happening lately? Especially around Roman? I saw him throwing chairs at his bedroom window the other day, trying to break the glass.”

Hunter shrugged.

“He’s a troubled kid,” he replied. “A lot’s changing in his life and he’s acting out.”

Wanda shook her head adamantly.

“No, it’s more than that. Kamalani and your mother talk about him all the time, but stop talking the instant I get close to them. He’s been cooped up in this house for several weeks, and never once left to see Abe who lives basically down the street. You’re telling me that Roman, the boy who runs away from everything, stayed voluntarily in this house when he could be sneaking out to see his boyfriend?”

Hunter’s shoulders stiffened, and Wanda knew she’d pushed a bit too hard, too quickly.

“What are you saying? That Roman should have died because Abraham died? That my nephew is usually out roaming the streets looking to impregnate other teens and him trying to spend a time of crisis with our family for support is suspicious?”

“Yes!” Wanda blurted out, too frustrated to care anymore. “Yes, he should have died! Just like my brother died! Your mother had no time to see and react to the text and still make it to that park in time to save him.” Her hands clenched into fists. “This family is insane, and it would be insane to expect support from them! Your brothers are thrown out of your family now, but they were never really included in the family before! Who lets their son’s ex-wife stay in their house, while shunning their son? Omar’s a bit dull, but he’s way better than Kamalani! And Roman has been a budding sociopath as long as he’s lived with your parents. He has no friends his age, and keeps condoms that he uses with someone in his wallet. For god’s sake, you could tell me that he shot Abraham and I would believe it. I try and I try with that kid, and nothing outside of being with Abe seems to get through to him. No wonder both of his parents abandoned him here!”

Wanda was practically hyperventilating. All of her frustrations, all the little micro aggressions she’d had to endure while living here spilled out of her, and for the first time in months, her chest didn’t feel burdened down by the Bellamy family.

Hunter said nothing, but Wanda could see the anger burning in his eyes. He stood up slowly and headed for the hall.

“It’s been a very stressful night, and tensions are running high,” he stated with the same bitter edge to his voice as his mother. “I think that maybe it would be for the best if you spent the night with Melvin. To clear your head.”

Wanda rested her head against the smooth wall outside of the hospital main entrance. She and Hunter had never really fought before, and she didn’t like feeling out of sync with him. There was so much adding up that she didn’t understand about the Bellamys, and about Arkhelios itself. Maybe a night apart would help give Hunter some perspective on his family. Maybe it would help her decide if she truly wanted to be a part of the Bellamy family at all. She would go spend the night on Melvin’s couch, and they would put their heads together and solve this nightmare once and for all. The constant stream of funerals had to end before the entire population of Arkhelios was buried in the church yard.

Still, she felt bad about what she’d said about Roman, especially since he was still in such bad shape. Could she be wrong about having suspicions about his injuries? Maybe he had just been luckier than Abraham and she was forcing connections to help her cope with how her brother had not been quite so lucky. She decided to pop in to see Roman quickly before she headed to Melvin’s just to ease her guilt. Maybe supporting the Bellamys when their guard was down was the key to winning them over. If they endured this all together, they would have some common ground to work with.

The hospital wasn’t very big, and had a limited amount of rooms for Roman to be in. She found Salem and Omar napping on couches in a waiting area, with several empty styrofoam cups of hospital coffee strewn across a nearby table.

Well if they’re able to sleep, that probably means Roman is doing okay.

She peeked into the first room on the left. Nope. Empty.

She wandered to the next room down the hall. No, no Roman. She was about to continue her search when she heard familiar voices echo down the hall. Malika was crying to the point of actual sobs, which made Wanda extremely uncomfortable. Malika never broke down and showed her feelings, especially if they made her look vulnerable. It felt like an intrusion to hear her in this state, but this brief glimpse into Malika’s actual feelings may be the only chance Wanda ever got to understand her bewildering mother in law. She hid in the room she’d entered behind the door, and strained to hear what was being said just up the hall. Thank god the hospital walls were poorly made and exceptionally thin.

“I...I can’t get the blood out of my coat,” Malika sobbed, and Wanda could hear Kamalani make comforting shushing sounds.

“It’s okay, we did what we had to. Things will be better now. You can buy a new coat.”

What they had to do? That probably just means the CPR.

“And my hands, under my nails...there’s a gaping hole in my grandson’s chest, I saw it! I practically raised him! I kissed him good night every time you gave him to us.” The sobs increased until Wanda could barely understand what she was saying. “And now I’ve watched him slowly start to die! People cut him open right in front of me! His shirt...bleeding...and pieces of bone....”

Malika was barely making sense and Wanda felt shame wash over her, listening to a grandmother grieve this horrible trauma. Maybe Hunter was right, and there wasn’t anything deeper to Roman’s shooting. Malika had been lucky to find Roman when she did. The stars had just aligned correctly to save Roman. He had beat the odds, and Zane simply didn’t. Just random chance.

“Shhh,” Kamalani whispered. It sounded like Malika was calming down. “’Screw your courage to the sticking place’, remember? You know what’s at stake here, and our plan is working. That Helios boy almost came here once already. With Roman immobile, he’ll be drawn here eventually. Arkhelios can be saved. Roman will be saved.”

A chill ran down Wanda’s spine and she pressed harder against the wall instinctively. She definitely didn’t want to be discovered now.

This had been the wrong thing to say, and Malika started sobbing once more.

“His-His eyes though! I saw him look at me when he fell. When he struggled to breathe! I thought when we started this it would be easy, but I can't forget the look on his face. The smell of his blood! I can only pretend that I don't know for so long. How do I tell him when he wakes up? How can I make him understand?”

Kamalani sighed heavily, clearly growing impatient with her ex-mother in law.

“Tell him that you weren’t involved. That you found him after I left. You’re not the one who pulled the trigger after all. He may not even remember seeing you there, or confuse it for when you called Adam." A long pause and more sobbing carried over the air to Wanda. "If it makes you feel less guilty, I can shoot you too. That will throw suspicion off of you.”

Wanda had to clasp a hand over her mouth to keep from reacting.

Kamalani shot her own son? Why? And does this mean she killed Abraham too?

“You had one job this entire time,” Kamalani hissed as Malika’s sobs grew louder. “All you had to do was put him on a plane and keep writing checks until some duke or prince caught his interest and you couldn’t even manage that. Now how do you think he'll feel when Abe turns up dead? You could have spared him that pain if you'd only stopped this when I warned you."

Complete silence fell in the hospital. The only sound was the faint hum of the lights, and an occasional beep from down the hall. Wanda looked through the crack of the door hinges, and saw Malika poke her head out of the room they were in, looking for any sign of eavesdroppers. Salem and Omar were still sleeping and the woman at the front desk far down the hall seemed to be busy typing. Wanda held her breath, trying to remain as still as possible. Satisfied that they were alone, Malika ducked back into the room.

“What do you mean?” she hissed, shock replacing her tears. “Killing Abe was never part of the plan. We only need to prevent the child-”

“It’s been too long, that child could be born any day now and survive. Our only chance is to act swiftly, and end the threat immediately. You must realize how close to ruin Arkhelios is. A lot more people will die if Abe doesn’t. You know this, Malika! You were the one who chose this to begin with."

Malika sighed and seemed to be gathering her composure again. The cold mask she presented to the world (and especially to Wanda) was slipping back into place.

"You're right," she admitted. "I don't have the stomach for the act itself, but it's necessary. We've been too subtle, too timid hoping that this will resolve itself. Roman will understand one day, and if he doesn't, then maybe he'll feel pushed to leave Arkhelios on his own."

#sims 2 #ts2 #arkhelios #post arkhelios #vague spoilers of the Arkhelios mystery that are incorrect #sorry for the novel

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fallen-gravity · 4 years ago

Text

Fightin’ Back Chapter 5

Chapter Notes: Heeeere’s Sock Opera! Clocking in at over 5k, this is the bulkiest chapter in the entire fic, and if the final one following this ends up even longer I'll be officially terrified of the power I have. This time around this chapter's dedicated to @eri-descent, because her works were a huge inspiration and drive for this chapter.

Bit of a content warning in this chapter for mentions and references to past child abuse. Not in regards to Dipper or Mabel, but there are quite a few nods to Filbrick sprinkled in this chapter. Fuck him.

AO3

“Seriously, I need to go to the hospital”

“Pssh,” Mabel waves a dismissive hand. “I’m sure that’s just the haven’t-slept-in-three-days-and-haven’t-eaten-in-eighteen-hours talking. Nothing a little ordering a pizza can’t fix, right Grunkle Stan?”

“No promises,” Stan quips, and stands from his charred theater seat. “Theater folks are probably already planning on charging me for your little fireworks stunt. What kind of caretaker would that make me if I bought you pizza after all of that?”

“Uh, a fun one?”

Stan blinks. “You know? You’re absolutely right.” he stuffs his camcorder into his suit jacket. “C’mon, if we book it now these theater jerks’ll never be able to catch our plate in time”

“See?” Mabel turns back to Dipper. “What’d I tell you? Pizza solves everything”.

Dipper blinks very slowly. “Actually…” he places a hand covered in cuts gently over his stomach. “Pizza does sound really good right now”

“Great!” Mabel beams, and starts half-skipping towards the small staircase attached to the side of the stage. “First one back to the car gets shotgun!”

“Mabel, you know running is the last thing I’m capable of doing right now” Dipper follows sluggishly behind. “If anything I should be getting carried to the car, in case I-”

Stan’s just quick enough to turn back towards Dipper to see his eyes roll into the back of his head. He only has one foot on the step below where he’d just been standing, but Stan isn’t taking any chances. He just barely hears Mabel’s horrified “Dipper?” before he rushes forward to catch Dipper as he faints. Stan’s relieved that Dipper’s head smacks into his arm, rather than the floor or the stage, but adjusts him in his arms so his neck won’t hurt when he wakes up again.

“Dipper?” Mabel chimes in again, and she’s by Stan’s side in a moment. When she catches sight of Dipper’s paling face and gently closed eyes, her breath audibly hitches in her throat. “Dipper, can you hear me?” she shouts towards her brother’s unconscious body, but keeps her arms glued to her side like she’s afraid he’ll shatter if she touches him. Instead, she places a hand on Stan’s arm, and when he meets her gaze there are tears building in his eyes.

“I thought he was exaggerating! I thought for sure it was because he hadn’t slept, because we both fell from the catwalk in the cake prop and I walked it off fine, I should’ve listened to him the first time he told me something was up and needed my help, because now he could be hurt or worse, and-”

“Hey,” Stan takes a knee and places a gentle hand on Mabel’s shoulder the best he can. “He’s gonna be okay. Probably just passed out from exhaustion like you were saying earlier. You see his chest rising and falling like that? Just means he’s sleeping. Think it could be a good idea to bring him to the hospital, since, uh, that was a pretty far drop, but it’s just precautionary, okay?”

She sniffles. “Okay”

He gently taps her shoulder since his arms are too preoccupied to rustle up her hair, and he stands to his feet. Just as he’s about to head towards the door, though, another thought comes to him. “One more question, okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah?”

“This have anything to do with that spooky journal? I couldn’t help but notice he was chasing you around stage trying to take it from you”.

Her shoulders tense, which is good enough an answer without her even opening her mouth.

“Look, I’m not gonna be mad, okay? Dipper and I talked about this earlier. I’m not gonna take it away if you say yes. I just wanna know the severity of what we’re dealing with here. Don’t even gotta specify which monster it was, if you don’t wanna”

She buries her mouth into the neck of her sweater, and for a moment Stan’s sure she’s not going to answer. He adjusts Dipper in his arms again to prevent him from slipping, but just as he’s about to walk away again she murmurs the quietest yes he’s ever heard.

“Okay,” he sighs. “Okay. We can work with this. Just means he’ll probably be staying for a few hours instead of a quick checkup, okay? Let’s get him to the car”

Mabel squirms a little bit, like there’s something she still isn’t telling him, but she squashes that down and gives him a half-smile. “Okay.”

The walk to the parking lot isn’t a very long one, but Stan swears it’s the longest the three of them have ever gone without speaking a single word all summer. Sure, Stan will give some of the credit to the fact that Dipper’s currently passed out in his arms, but every other time that he and Mabel have been alone together this summer she’s talked his ears off for nearly an hour straight.

Not that he’s complaining! He wouldn’t want anyone else to blabber his ears off about things he doesn’t understand. But right now Mabel isn’t speaking a single word. She’s staring at Dipper passed out in his arms like a hawk, like she’s at the ready to catch him if as much as his arm slips out of place. Once they’re back at the car, she opens the back door for Stan to help Dipper inside, and won’t even climb in herself until she’s sure Dipper looks comfortable.

When Stan climbs into the driver’s seat and adjusts the rear view mirror, he notices that Mabel’s shifted in her seat so Dipper can lie against her to prevent him from falling over and smacking his face into the seat. Stan smiles, and rolls his eyes at the pair as he pulls out of the parking lot.

About a minute passes before Stan hears the sound of even more shifting around from the back seat, and a tired, raspy voice.

“Grunkle Stan?” Dipper slurs, and blinks slowly two times. “Wha happen? Where are we?” he places a head to his forehead. “Why am I so dizzy?”

“There you are, kiddo” Stan lowers the rear view mirror so Dipper can see his face better. “Mabel and I were worried sick over when you were gonna wake up”

“Wake...up?” Dipper repeats, like he’s processing each of the words individually. His face pales. “Did I pass out? What day is it? What year is it?”

“Whoa, whoa, let’s not get you worked up and passing out again. It’s only been a few minutes. You passed out walking to the car from Mabel’s puppet show. We’re driving you to the hospital to check and see if you’ve got a concussion or anything”

“Ugh,” Dipper moans. “Good thinking. I already feel like I’m about to pass out again”

Stan smirks. “Yeah, well, your sister’s right there. Pass out all you want. But if you even start feeling a little nauseous, you’re telling me so I can pull over. I’m not letting anyone blow chunks all over my baby” he taps the dashboard of the car affectionately. Dipper groans again, and leans against Mabel, smushing his face into her shoulder.

“Got it,” he mumbles, and his voice is muffled by the fabric of Mabel’s sweater. His eyes close again, but thankfully this time Stan doesn’t notice them rolling into the back of his head, which means he probably closed them voluntarily to stop the car from spinning. The sound of his breathing increasing in volume concerns Stan for a moment, but when he double checks through the mirror and just sees that he fell asleep, Stan sighs in relief.

Dipper’s real lucky he decided to faint after the show ended, rather than before, because if they’d left the theater just ten minutes prior they would've been stuck in dinner rush traffic for at least an hour. Thankfully, though, all of that’s passed, and since everyone who came to see Mabel’s show left much earlier than they did, the drive to the hospital is a quick and smooth one.

“You think you can walk in on your own, bro-bro?” Mabel asks as he unclicks herself. “There’s no way I’m letting you in there without me either way, but say the word and I’ll piggyback you in there myself”

Dipper’s laugh is weak but genuine. “I don’t think they’ll let either of us in if you tried that, Mabel”

“Oh boo,” she pouts. “We never get to use the piggyback maneuver”

He laughs again. “I’ll tell you what, if they don’t make me stay here overnight, we can use the piggyback maneuver to get out of here” Dipper offers out his hand, and Mabel beams as she takes it in her own.

“It’s a deal!”

Stan clears his throat. “I appreciate the enthusiasm about getting out of here as quickly as possible, but if we don’t get inside soon they’ll make him stay over just for checking him in too late, which means charging us more for no reason, which nobody wants.”

“...Right, sorry” Dipper mumbles, and stumbles out of the car. Mabel’s beside him in an instant, throwing an arm around his shoulder to help support his balance. He reciprocates the gesture, and the two of them hobble towards the entrance behind Stan. Luck must really be on their side tonight, because there’s not much of a wait in the waiting room lobby of the hospital, either.

Upon noticing both of the children behind him hobbling in slowly, the receptionist stands to her feet. And maybe it’s Stan’s eyes playing tricks on him, but he swears that she’s staring daggers into him for a moment before she reaches into her desk to pull out an admission form.

“Alright, who are you checking in?”

“The boy,” Stan gestures with his thumb towards Dipper behind him. “His sister’s fine, she’s just helping him walk so he doesn’t pass out”

The receptionist doesn’t respond. She scribbles something down on the paper.

“Where’s the worst of his injuries?”

Uh.

Stan glances back towards the twins. Dipper’s standing on his own now. He shrugs his shoulders, immediately regrets that decision, and tentatively rubs at his shoulders in a gentle motion. Stan tugs at his collar.

“Nowhere. Uh, I mean, no, he didn’t have time to specify where. Soon as he passed out uh, at home, I drove him right over here”

She doesn’t seem to like that answer either. Her mouth forms into a thin, tight line, and she scribbles an even longer sentence down on her paperwork.

“Did you find him passed out, or did you see how he hurt himself?”

Stan’s not sure the last time he’s felt this interrogated by someone who wasn’t a police officer. These are standard hospital entry questions, he knows, but there’s something...off about the way this lady is questioning him.

“Uh, yeah. He, uh…”

He what? He fell 15 feet from a theater catwalk? He hasn’t slept in three days? He was attacked by some monster he found in the middle of the woods, because he got too caught up in reading a spooky journal he found lying around whose author disappeared under mysterious circumstances?

“He fell down the stairs! Kid’s so sensitive, he fainted at the sight of his own blood”

“I see…” the receptionist’s expression remains stone old, until she clicks her pen and places it down in front of her. “Mind if I talk to the kid? I need to ask him a few questions too”

“Uh, sure” Dipper replies from behind him, and steps forward to stand beside Stan.

“Date of birth?”

“August thirty-first, nineteen ninety-nine”

“Cause of injury?”

Dipper doesn’t hesitate. “It’s like my uncle said. I fell down the stairs”

“Name?”

“Dipper Pines”

She shakes her head. “I said your name, not your nickname”

Dipper shares a very brief, very confused glance with Stan. “I...just told you. It’s Dipper Pines.”

She audibly sighs, pinching at the bridge of her nose. “Listen, kid, I don’t have time to joke around. There are hundreds of other patients in this hospital, and I don’t appreciate you taking my time away from them because you won’t give me your real-”

“He’s not joking” Stan interrupts her before she can finish that sentence. “And I don’t appreciate you trying to tell my nephew what his name is or isn’t. If he insists that his name is Dipper Pines, that means his name is Dipper Pines”

She’s staring daggers into him again, before she sighs and sits back down in her swivel chair. She rolls herself over to the computer where she prints out Dipper’s wristband for him, and gestures towards the hallway to the left of the lobby. “Alright, then, Pines family, come with me”

She leads them down a fair number of different hallways until she brings them to a room with a single bed in it. Dipper is quick to climb into the bed and under the covers, and Mabel is equally quick to pull up a chair beside him. She leans in real close to whisper something to him, something Stan can’t hear, but the journal is unmistakable when she pulls it out from under her sweater and slides it under his pillow.

Stan can’t help but smile.

Those kids never change, do they?

“Don’t get too comfortable,” the receptionist says, once she looks up from her clipboard and notices that Dipper’s already lying in bed. “I have to go submit this paperwork, but a nurse is gonna come by and take you to radiology so they can give you an X-ray and check for any fractures or breaks, okay?”

Dipper sits up, his hair somehow already affected with bedhead. “Okay”

Just as the receptionist turns heel to leave, Stan speaks up as well. “And, uh, I’m gonna run to the cafeteria to get some coffee. I’ll be right back”

He follows the receptionist out of the room, and just as they’re out of ear and eyeshot of the twins, he taps her on the shoulder. “Hey, mind if we talk?”

“Mister Pines, I don’t have time for this”.

“It’ll be quick, I promise,” he says, and removes his fez to demonstrate the sincerity of the statement.

She sighs, but tucks the clipboard under her arm and leans against the wall. “Fine. What do you need?”

Stan fidgets with the tassels of his fez.

“I know what you’re insinuating”

“What?”

“I know what you’re insinuating about the kid. Look, I know the injuries look bad, and the story doesn’t make any sense, but I promise that it’s not what you think it is. Those kids’ parents trusted me over any of their other relatives to take care of them for the summer. They’ve been staying with me for a little under two months now.”

Stan’s not typically an anxious person, not in the least. But even the thought that the hospital could let one bad lie slip and send the kids back to California by tomorrow terrifies him to his very core.

“I love those kids in that room more than anything else in the world. I’m getting older and don’t have much, but those two are the light of my life. I’m not the kind to go around telling strangers my life story, but I need you to understand that I’d never do anything to hurt them. I’ve been through that wringer enough times myself to never wish that kind of treatment on anybody.”

There’s a deafening silence, as she reads his face like she’s searching for a lie.

“Please,” he murmurs, even though the word still makes his chest burn.

She sighs, taking another glance at her clipboard. “It checks out. I could see you three talking in the parking lot before you came in. He seems perfectly happy. I’m so sorry I was being so accusatory.”

Stan waves a dismissive hand as he puts his fez back on. “Eh, I’ve been accused of a lot of things” he shrugs, and reaches into his coat pocket for a wallet. “But just so we’re clear, this conversation never happened” he pulls a fifty out, and gestures vaguely towards her clipboard. “And that never happened either. You let any misinformation on that clipboard slip and I’m suing the hospital for malpractice.”

Her face pales. “Understood,” she replies, swiping the fifty from him before starting her way back to reception.

Stan watches her go for a few moments, just to be sure that she’s not going back on her words, before he turns heel and heads towards the arrows pointing out the cafeteria. With all the adrenaline from driving Dipper over and checking him in gone, Stan’s finally come to the realization that he hasn’t eaten in a few hours.

He knows, realistically, that he can’t leave the kids alone in that hospital room for long. But Stan also knows how hospitals work, and how they can only bring so many meals to so many patients so quickly. He’s not even sure he remembers the last time he saw Dipper eating anything in the past few days, and he knows if they try poking his arms with shot needles and IVs without any food in him the kid’s gonna black out for sure.

As he’s passing the fridge full of cold sandwiches on the way to the coffee machine, Stan grabs the thickest ham and cheese sandwich he can find, and a bag of barbecue chips from the rack beside it. Beside the coffee dispensers is a small display of wrapped baked sweets, and once he picks out a toffee brownie and makes himself an extra-large cup of coffee, he hauls his load over to the checkout.

“Long day?” The cafeteria employee asks.

“More like a long week” Stan replies, pulling his wallet out of his pocket again. “Most of this stuff’s for my nephew, though. Poor kid hasn’t gotten to eat all day”

“Yeah, hospitals will do that to some people” they reply as they punch their numbers into the cash register. The screen dings with the total amount. “Hope he gets better soon”

Stan grabs his haul in one arm and drops the money on the counter in the other. “I’m hoping too,” he says, and without another word he’s on his way back to the kids’ room. He gently shoves the door open with his shoulder, and when he turns to hand Dipper his food, he notices that he’s fast asleep in the bed with the journal opened face down at the foot of his bed.

“How’s he doing?” Stan asks as he takes the seat beside Mabel. “He pass out again?”

“Nah,” Mabel shrugs. “Finally convinced ol Dipdop to take a nap. Willing to bet this being his first time in a bed in over twenty four hours also had something to do with it too”

Stan laughs, taking a sip from his coffee. “Nice try, kiddo. But the nurse is coming by to take him to his X-ray in about five minutes, so it won’t be much of one”

“Oh, boo” Mabel crosses her arms. “I was so sure that he’d be out long enough to sneak him out and bring him home early”

Stan laughs again, and there’s a light knocking on the door as a nurse walks in. The noise startles Dipper awake, and he sits up, stretching his arms. “Am I all done? Are we going home?” he asks, and his voice is groggy from his short nap.

“Fraid not, kiddo” Stan replies, reaching a hand over to ruffle up his already messy hair. “You still gotta go and do your X-ray and sit through a bunch of boring tests first. Could still be a few hours”

Dipper flops back against the pillow, groaning the same way he would if Stan had just asked him to clean out the attic. Stan chuckles, but the nurse clears her throat before he can say anything in return.

“I don’t mean to rush you two out of the room, but we really have to move things along”, she says, tapping at her wrist. “If you could wait in the waiting room we’ll gladly call you back in when he’s all done”.

Mabel’s the first to jump from her seat, grabbing the journal from Dipper’s bed on her way out the door. The walk back to the waiting room is a near silent one, and at first sight of a chair she climbs on board and hugs her knees to her chest. Reaching under her sweater, she pulls out Journal 3, and holds that close to her chest as well.

If he looks close enough, her hands look like they’re trembling.

Stan takes a seat beside her. “Something on your mind, sweetie?”

Her face flushes pink, and she buries her mouth into the collar of her sweater. “Grunkle Stan?” she pauses a moment to turn her pleading brown eyes towards him. “Is Dipper going to be okay?”

Stan blinks. “Of course he is, sweetie. What makes you ask that?”

Her blush darkens, and she buries herself even further in her sweater.

“I mean…” she twiddles with her fingers. “Dipper and I have gotten hurt a bunch of times fighting the supernatural over the summer, and this is the only time either of us have been hospitalized for it?” She hugs the journal even closer. “I just...I can’t imagine why that would be unless all those times were okay, and this time we messed up real bad and I underestimated how he was feeling”

Now Stan’s the one blushing, because he can imagine exactly why they hadn’t taken a single trip to the hospital since arriving.

When Dipper came back to the shack from the woods the first afternoon the twins had arrived, Stan was the one who patched up his cuts and cleaned up his scratches. When he’d come home from supposedly getting into a fight with one of Wendy’s friends, Stan had been the one to give him some home remedy tips he’d had left over from his boxing days. Even when he’d just had a bad day, and didn’t need any medical attention at all, it was Stan who intervened.

If Dipper hadn’t passed out walking out to the car, Stan wonders if he’d come to him for help this time around, too.

“I’m sure he’ll be better than okay, sweetheart. You said it yourself. You and him have been fighting these monsters all summer and you’ve walked away from them fine.” Stan smiles. “Matter of fact-” he starts, fully intent on telling her everything, but before he can get another word out the nurse from before pokes her head from around the corner.

“Pines family?”

Stan and Mabel jump to their feet at the same time. “How is he?” they ask, also in perfect synchrony.

“He’s fine, just resting in his room while he waits for his x-ray results. I told him he could have the time to rest up by himself, but he insisted that I come back because he wants to talk to you guys instead,” she rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. “You really ought to fix that sleeping schedule of his fixed”

“Trust me,” Mabel says. “I’ve been trying to get him to work on that for years”.

When they get back into the room, Dipper’s sitting up in the bed munching on the bag of barbecue chips, with the half-opened sandwich pack sitting on his chest.

“Hey, buddy” Stan waves a hello before he reaches to open the sandwich for him. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” Dipper groans, and takes a giant bite out of the fattest part of his sandwich. “Starving”

“Yeah, we didn’t need the hospital to tell us that. How did the tests go?”

“Oh,” Dipper replies through a mouthful of sandwich, and wipes some excess honey mustard off of his face with his now-bandaged wrist. “They didn’t think they saw anything, but they’re gonna give me stitches so my cuts won’t reopen”

Mabel frowns. “Are they gonna make you stay overnight?”

“Nah,” Dipper shrugs. “Just for a few hours. If the rest of it really is paperwork, I’m gonna try to sneak in a nap or three before then”

The same nurse comes knocking on the wall again. “Sorry, one more time.” She says, and when she comes inside she’s followed in by a doctor. “I’m sure he’s already told you, but all we have to do now is stitch up some of those cuts, and then he should be good to go” she flips through the stack of papers in her hand. “There’s nothing in the x-ray that could indicate breaks or fractures, so the only follow up you’ll need is to have the stitches removed in a few weeks.”

She checks her wristwatch. “A lot of patients prefer to be alone when they get stitches so they don’t get too fidgety and distracted, so I’m going to have to ask you to leave one more time. I think the cafeteria should still be open for another half an hour if you wanted to grab food. I’m more than sure he’ll be all done by the time you finish eating”

Despite Stan being in the cafeteria just a few minutes before, it seems much quieter now. He’s willing to chalk that up to the fact that he’d been in a hurry and probably also going into sensory overload from all of the uncertainty of Dipper’s condition. But now that they’re certain he’s coming home tonight, and they don’t have to sit in the waiting room anymore, Stan can feel every last nerve in his body relaxing at once.

He turns to Mabel, holding out a five dollar bill. “Here you go, sweetie, buy yourself something nice”.

“Five dollars?” Mabel snatches the bill from him, beaming. “I’m rich! I’m gonna buy one of everything!” She squeals, and bounces off towards the kitchen. Stan smiles as he watches her go.

The list of things he’d do for these kids is endless, he swears.

He finds a table to finish off his coffee and his toffee brownie, and soon enough Mabel comes slinking slowly out of the kitchen with a large bowl of soup, moving like she’s afraid that if she drops the bowl it’s gonna flood out the entire cafeteria and lead them all to their brothy demise, or something.

Stan’s chest warms at the thought.

“Hey!” she grins once she sits down. “Sorry that took so long. They told me I could take the rest of the soup since they were shutting it down for the night and I may have gone a little cray-cray with it”

Stan chuckles, dismissing the comment altogether, until she rolls up her sleeves to eat and she notices that her arms are spotted with bruises and scratches, too.

“Hey, uh…mind if I take a look at those?” he gestures to her arms. “Might save us a trip if you need stitches from falling from the catwalk, too”

“Oh, uh…” she hesitates, rubbing at her arms for a moment. “...sure!” she half-smiles, and rolls up her sleeves before offering her arms to him. He takes them gently in his hands, turning them over to check for any deep cuts or splinters.

“Mmm, doesn’t look to me like you’re gonna need stitches, but some lotion and a bandage or two couldn’t hurt. Should still have some of both left over in the car if you don’t feel like waiting until we get home”

“Left over from what?” Mabel cocks her head to the side, but before Stan can even open his mouth to respond, her eyes go wide and she gasps in realization.

“Grunkle Stan, have you been the one taking care of Dipper all this time?”

He leans back in his chair, laughing. “What, have you been thinking that all this time Dipper’s been taking care of himself? Kid wouldn’t be able to win a fight against a punching bag if his life depended on-”

He’s cut off by Mabel nearly knocking him off his chair in a hug.

“Grunkle Stan, you big softie!” she squeals, and his cheek flush pink as he pats her head in response.

“Yeah, yeah, okay” he rolls his eyes to divert eye contact. “How’s about you finish up that soup so we can head back and bring your brother home? I’m sure he’d much rather fall asleep in his own bed then in that stuffy old hospital bed”

“Okay!” she grins, pulling herself away from the hug. “I don’t think anyone can realistically finish this much soup in one sitting, though, so I’m just gonna smuggle this out to the car in a to-go cup so I can eat it in bed later”

“Hah!” Stan ruffles her hair. “That’s my girl.” He stands to his feet and stretches his back. “But seriously, we have to leave before it gets too late. Apparently it’s “illegal” for me to drive too close to the town border after midnight, whatever that means”

She snickers, moving to grab a to-go cup from the coffee dispensers near the entrance. “Before we head back to Dipper’s room, though, you think I can stop over to the vending machine? He mentioned wanting a candy bar when you went to get your coffee, but I think you were too far away to hear it. Do you mind?” she holds out her hand for another dollar bill, and Stan swears if anyone else on the planet kept asking him for money he’d just laugh in their face.

But…if she runs off to the lobby, that means that he could have a moment alone with Dipper. Stan wants answers about what happened today, and Mabel’s not budging.

“Fine,” he grumbles, reaching into his wallet for a single dollar bill. “But only one.”

She beams, taking the bill from him and sprinting her way down the hallway. “Thanks Grunkle Stan!” she yells after him, waving a hand in the air. He smiles after her, and once she’s out of his sight he shoves his hands in his pockets and starts making his way back to Dipper’s room.

When he knocks on Dipper’s door and invites himself in, he’s sipping from a plastic cup of ice water. “Where’s Mabel?”

“Raiding the vending machine for you. How’d all this go?”

Dipper’s cheeks flush. “Well, uh, it was going great! It was going so well when they came in the room and started talking to me, but, uh…” he takes another sip of his water and evades eye contact. “…I blacked out as soon as the needle hit my skin, so they had to wake me up and bring me some water so it wouldn’t happen again”

Stan snorts. “Yeah, well, maybe if you didn’t keep running around picking fights with monsters six times your size, you wouldn’t need stitches in the first place”

Dipper frowns into his plastic cup, and murmurs something that Stan can’t hear.

Stan raises an eyebrow. “Come again?”

“I said it wasn’t like that,” Dipper murmurs, nervously crinkling with his cup. “I-I mean, in the past, sure, maybe, but it really wasn’t this time! All that was happening was that I got too caught up in my research trying to figure out the password for the laptop we found last week, and I couldn’t bring myself to hurt Mabel’s feelings and ignore her project to work on it during the day, so I ended up spending at least four nights straight trying to solve it at night, and the night before the show I tried moving up to the roof so she wouldn’t wake up, but then I-”

“Whoa, whoa, back up. What laptop?”

Dipper’s cheeks burn red. “D-did I say laptop? I, uh, I meant the journal! We were investigating the journal”

Stan sighs, scrubbing his hands down his face. “Dips, what did I tell you about keeping these kinds of secrets from me? I don’t care if you found a laptop, or a game station, I don’t even care if you found Bigfoot. I’m not gonna take it away from you and lock it up forever. I want you to tell me these things because I need to know if it’s something you need protecting from. I’d never forgive myself if anything serious ever happened to both of you because you kept me in the dark one time too many. I shouldn’t have to be asking your sister how you got hurt while we’re driving to the hospital.”

Dipper’s face is flush with embarrassment. “I…” he says, staring down at his hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry”

Stan sighs. “Look, I know I’m not the gentlest person you know. I know a lot of these townsfolk think I’m crooked. But I don’t want you to feel bad about this, okay? I guess I just must’ve inherited some of the tough talk from my dad”

He nearly flinches at the comparison, but he buries that down for a conversation at another time.

“I love you kids. You know that, right? All I wanna do is keep you safe”.

Dipper painstakingly pushes himself up into a sitting position, and reaches for Stan to wrap his arms around him in a hug. “I know,” he sighs, and if he hadn’t been hugging the kid back, Stan’s sure he wouldn’t have been able to hear him murmur “We love you too.”

#gravity falls #my writing #stan pines #dipper pines #team brawn

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vgckwb · 4 years ago

Text

ML: Too Much Chapter 4: Day 1

Marinette woke up the next morning on her chaise. She got up and stretched. “G'morning Tikki” she said. She picked up her phone. “WHAT?!” She got changed, grabbed her stuff, and rushed downstairs.

As she started to run through the bakery, her dad stopped her. “Woah! Sweetie. What’s going on?”

“I’m totally late for school!” Marinette said.

Tom looked confused. “Um, we called you out of school for a week.”

“Oh” Marinette said. “Oh, you were serious.”

Tom nodded. “It’s for your own good. We don’t want you to burn out so badly you can’t reignite.” Marinette looked sheepish. “I know it can be hard sweetie, but we just want what’s best for you.”

Marinette smiled. “Thanks papa,” She said. She gave him a kiss on the cheek and headed back upstairs. She sat down and sighed.

Tikki popped out. “I agree with your dad,” she said. “In fact, I was warning you about this exact thing.”

Marinette glanced at Tikki. “I know Tikki. And I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.” Marientte looked sad.

Tikki took notice. “It’s OK, I forgive you,” she said, hoping to cheer up Marinette.

Marientte smiled. “Thanks Tikki.” She laid down on her chaise and sighed. “Tikki, can I ask you something?”

“What is it Marinette?” Tikki asked.

Marinette stared at the ceiling. “Has any of your previous Ladybugs even been full-time?”

TIkki seemed confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well…” Marinette began. “It’s just, everyone was worrying about Marinette. What if I have to give that identity up? To just BE Ladybug. What if there comes a point where there’s no Marientte to worry about?”

Tikki looked at Marinette. “Is that why you’ve been going crazy with helping people as Marinette?”

Marientte nodded. “I figured if there ever comes a time I can’t be Marinette anymore, then I can get the full Marinette experience now.”

Tikki felt Marinette’s fears. “Well, I certainly can’t say what the future holds,” she began, “but I can tell you that no Ladybug devoted themselves completely to the mask.” Marinette sat up. “They each had rich, fulfilling lives of their own. And I believe you will too. But not if you’ve burnt your candle at both ends.”

Marinette slightly giggled. “Thanks Tikki.” She tickled her chin. “Maybe this week off will be good for me. Wait. Does this also mean a week off from being Ladybug?”

Tikki smiled. “No. Not that you would want that. But taking time off from everything else might help you as Ladybug. For one thing, you won’t be fighting an akuma on an empty stomach.”

Marinette laughed. “I guess you’re right.” Marinette’s stomach sounded. “Speaking of which, I think I should go get something to eat.” Marinette headed down to the kitchen. Her parents were in the bakery, so Tikki joined her in making food.

While Marinette and Tikki ate, Marinette told Tikki something. “Once I’m done eating, I’m going to work on something.”

Tikki was stunned. “But what about taking a break?”

“Relax Tikki,” Marinette said. Tikki looked at her sternly, knowing what happened the last time she said that. “I mean it. I’m not going to work on one of things I was working on. I’m just going to whip up a little gift for Cat Noir. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“Oh” Tikki said, relaxing. “Well, as long as it’s not too strenuous.”

“Besides, if I spent this whole week not doing anything, I’d go stir crazy” Marinette said. She took the last bite of her food. Once she was finished, she headed back upstairs. She put on a TV show she was behind on, and began collecting supplies. She started crafting while also watching her show.

Tikki observed all of this. “So this is what you’re doing.”

“Yeah” Marinette answered. “Like I said, this is just a small thing. I’m in no real hurry to finish it right now. But I think Cat Noir would like it. You know, as a thank you for rescuing me.”

Tikki got concerned. “Hmmm.”

Marinette looked at Tikki. “What’s wrong?”

Tikki’ brow was still furrowed. “Well, I can’t shake the feeling that Cat Noir knows who you are.”

Marinette was concerned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just, I don’t remember transforming back,” Tikki said. “It’s hard for me to say, but I think you passed out as Ladybug.”

Marinette was shook. “Well, in all honesty, I don’t remember transforming either. But everything between the akuma attack and waking up in the hospital is a blur to me.” Tikki couldn’t argue that. It was kind of a blur for her too. “Besides, if he had, why hasn’t he said anything? Well, I guess Adrien was with me all night. He couldn’t come up and tell me he knows who I am when I had company the entire night.”

THAT’S what Tikki was hung up on. She knew Adrien was Cat Noir. So if he knew, why didn’t he say it during any of the times he and Marinette were alone last night? “I think I’m going to go have a chat with Cat Noir. I just want to be sure. Are you OK on your own for a bit?”

“Well, yeah…” Marinette said. “But are you sure about this?”

“Don’t worry Marinette,” TIkki said. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just be gone for a little bit. You better keep your promise though.”

“I swear,” Marinette said. Tikki nodded and flew off. Marinette then continued working, while also watching her show.

Meanwhile, school today was odd for Adrien. He was the one that had to explain what happened to the class. Still, he did it with poise and grace, as he does a lot of things. Doing this while also not telling them the full story also gave him the rush he usually gets when he’s protecting Ladybug.

He prepared a card to wish Marinette a good recovery. He walked around to make sure everyone signed it. He even got signatures from Chloe and Lila (through a little bit of guilting on his part). He absolutely reveled in getting Lila’s signature. Even if he knew she didn’t quite mean it, he liked seeing Lila doing something good for Marinette.

As Adrien was about ready to head for lunch, he felt a small push on his leg. He looked down to see TIkki, discreetly trying to get his attention. He looked up at Nino, and then looked at his phone. “Sorry. Something just came up. But it shouldn’t take too long. I’ll meet you afterwards.”

“Well, OK bro” Nino said. He walked off.

Adrien looked down, took another look to see if anyone else was watching, and then opened his jacket to usher Tikki inside. He then rushed to someplace private to discuss. Tikki flew out. “You’re Ladybug’s kwami, right?” he asked

Tikki nodded. “Tikki. Now, I have a question.”

“What is it?” Adrien asked.

Tikki was caught a little off-guard. She knew she had to confront Adrien, but if he was telling the truth, that he found Marinette passed out and NOT Ladybug, then she would give it away. “Well… what happened yesterday after the akuma attack?”

Plagg decided then to rear his head. “Why does he need to tell you?”

“Hm.” Adrien said. “It’s alright. You’re referring about Marinette passing out right?” Tikki nodded, wondering what Adrien was going to say. “Figures. After all, you’re her kwami, right?”

Tikki was shocked. “So you DO know!”

“Of course I know,” Adrien said. “She passed out mid-swing. I managed to catch her as she fell.”

“So why aren’t you telling her?!” Tikki asked.

Adrien looked mournful. “Because… You’ve seen the state she’s in. This will only cause her to worry more. I want to tell her. More than anything. But if I did that now, she’d be worse off for wear. And I don’t want that.” Tikki was stunned at that explanation. “However, you’re her kwami. You know her better than I do. You can tell her if you so choose.”

Tikki thought about it. Marinette needs people to be there for HER at this moment. She glared at Adrien. “Fine. I won’t tell her. For now. You’re going to have to eventually though.”

“I plan on it,” Adrien said.

Just as Tikki was about to leave. She paused. “By the way, I know you seem to be planning on it, but try to be there for Marinette this week. She needs it.” She flew off.

Adrien thought about what Tikki had said. “Why’d you tell her?” Plagg asked. “I mean, you got the result you wanted, but…”

Adrien smiled. “Because I trusted her. She knows Marinette better than I do. I figured I should follow her lead.” Plagg looked at him. “Look, if the roles were reversed, I’d expect her to trust you in the same way.”

“You put a lot of faith in me” Plagg said. “Who says I wouldn’t just tell her to get me more camembert?”

“Oh, I KNOW you would,” Adrien said. “But I know you well enough where you’d also help me.” Plagg relented to Adrien’s logic, but still refused to say it aloud. Adrien giggled. “C’mon. I’m going to go meet with Nino.” Plagg hid.

Adrien began walking and pulled his phone out to tell his father that he’s going to spend a little time with Marinette today. His father agreed to it. Once he met up with Nino with his lunch he sat down. “Hey Nino.”

Nino was confused. “Uh, no offence, but that was pretty fast.”

“Was it?” Adrien said.

“Uh, yeah. Compared to all the other times you left” Nino pointed out.

Adrien thought about it. He was always being dragged away by his father or leaving voluntarily to don the guise of Cat Noir. Adren chuckled. “I guess you’re right.” Nino joined in the chucklefest. “I was just messaging my father about visiting Marinette today. You know how he can be.”

“Yeah, I hear ya dude” Nino said.

“Say, why don’t you and Alya come with?” Adrien asked. “It’ll show her that we care without overpowering her.”

Nino smiled. “Sure. I’ll give her a message.” Nino texted Alya. “She said yes. She seemed really excited.”

“Well, I can hardly blame her,” Arien said. “But maybe we should tell her to take it down a notch.”

“Good idea,” Nino said. He messaged Alya back. “Uh, she just got mad at me.” Adrien laughed. “Don’t laugh. I’m telling her that was your idea.” He messaged her again. “She just said ‘And you listened to him!’” Adrien laughed harder. “C’mon dude.”

“I’m sorry” he said, in between laughing. “But this kind of couple banter is stuff I don’t get to see that often.”

Nino realized the underlying meaning behind that statement, and decided not to comment further. Instead, he just smiled and said “Well, whatever. You can tell her yourself if you so choose.”

“With pleasure” Adrien said.

Tikki got back to Marinette. Marinette had stopped working on her gift to Cat Noir. “Marinette?” Tikki said.

“GAH!” Marinette shrieked. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Sorry,” Tikki said.

“It’s fine,” Marinette said. “I just got so engrossed in this show I’m watching. So, what did Cat Noir say?”

Tikki looked at her earnest face. Marinette wasn’t sweating bullets, worrying about what could go wrong. She was just enjoying a quiet day to herself. Cat Noir’s right. It would only trouble her further. “He found you as Marinette.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for asking anyways” Marinette said. “Man, when you said that this morning, I got so worried. That’s a weight off of my shoulders.”

“Yeah...” Tikki said.

After school, Adrien, Nino, and Alya entered the bakery. “Oh, what brings you all here?” Sabine said.

“We’re here to see Marinette!” Alya said.

Sabine smiled. “Well, I appreciate your enthusiasm, maybe you can tone it down a bit.”

“We tried telling her that, but Alya is the kind of person to march to the beat of her own drum” Adrien replied.

“Hey! My best friend is feeling down! If I’m going to cheer her up, I’ll do it my way!” Alya said.

“Well, come on in then” Sabine said. “I’m sure she’ll love seeing you all.” The three teens headed inside the house and made their way to Marinette’s room.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug fanfic #Marinette #Tikki #TOM #adrien #plagg #nino #sabine #alya

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themidnightfarmer · 5 years ago

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Wingman || Lydia & Jared

Timing: Before the poisoning.

Location: Faetal Attraction

Tagging: @inspirationdivine & @themidnightfarmer

Description: Lydia and Jared take a night on the town.

Triggers: Violence tw

Lydia buzzed with excitement. If you looked closely, you could see the tiniest blur around her ears, where the glamour didn’t quite stretch to cover her jewellery. It didn’t matter, though, because in a minute she wouldn’t have to wear the glamour at all. When Jared had told her he’d never been to faetal attraction, Lydia had sworn to fix it at once, so here she was, waiting for him just outside the door. “Jared! It’s wonderful to see you again!” Especially when she wasn’t frightened for her life.

Jared wasn’t quite sure what to expect. He’d heard about the place, but up until recently he’d had no fae friends to go with. Anytime he’d gotten close either he was with a human friend that had been given a serious stink eye by the person at the door taking admissions, or he’d started to feel that tingly feeling in his fingertips. A feeling that until now had been unknown to him. However, this time, as he’d approached Lydia the feeling was known. He was with fae. His smile reflected his own excitement. “Hey!” He greeted her exuberantly. “You too! This was a great idea!”

Lydia smirked, tilting her head. “I can’t believe you haven’t been here before. You’re in for such a treat. That finger tingling of yours is going to be intense tonight. There are a few non-fae in here, but it’s mostly people like us in there.” She offered her arm for him to take, before leading him into the bustling, warm club. Her chest rang at all the other fae, in a technicolour crowd of every type of appendage on view. Lydia dropped her glamour as soon as she’d paid for them both to enter. “Where do you want to sit?”

He’d been such a hermit for so long, unaware of all the joys of being a fae, that Jared was fully dazed as they entered. He stumbled over the lip in the doorway and his eyes couldn’t stop moving. Person to person. It was incredible. “Wow.” he said less than eloquently. Looking down at Lydia in awe he just blinked at her for a moment dumbfounded. She was still Lydia, but without her glamour she was a whole new image to take in. His mouth worked soundlessly before Jared finally caught up with himself. “Anywhere you’d like. At the bar?”

Lydia caught him as he stumbled, looking up at his with a concerned smile until he had righted himself again. Watching him was almost as intoxicating as watching the crowd. This was how she wished Regan was. Full of wonder and excitement, rather than fear and doubt. Lydia followed his gaze to a woman with fluffy moth wings, a man whose wispy dark skin gave way to glorious antlers, an individual with skin like glass, more than a couple folks with horns. All sorts. Without her own glamour, Lydia literally glowed, her brown and yellow beetle-like shells shifting as she walked, dark translucent wings poking out between them. Her ears stretched to the tops of her head and were adorned with dozens of sparkling gems. “Like what you see so far? Bar it is. What do you want to drink?”

Dropping his own glamour wasn’t even a thought to Jared, he simply had forgotten that it was an option in public. He was so unused to it, even in his own home he was rarely seen without it. Although that might have been just in the hopes that someone might come to visit at any time. Even with their arms linked, Jared lagged behind Lydia as she led the way through the crowds. Watching her wings shift in the light and noticing her hair tangle lightly over a gem in her ear. He could see why she could be called a muse. He beamed and pulled out a stool for her when they arrived at the bar. “Let me buy you a drink, yeah? What would you like to drink? Pick your poison.”

He looked around like a toddler at the lightshow, and Lydia couldn’t help but giggle at his wonder. Not to make fun of his perspective, but to delight in him as much as he delighted in the space. She waved Julie over, one of the few humans in the entire establishment, and one of the few Lydia ever voluntarily interacted with. “Oh, in which case, I’ll have a red wine. They do a lovely Sauvignon here,” Lydia said, smiling warmly at his offer. “You know that you don’t have to look human here, right? There are no wardens, no dangers here. Everyone here is community. Cousins, even.”

“Make that two large glasses.” Jared ordered of Julie before taking the seat beside his company for the evening. A sheepish grin took over his face and he slowly let his human skin fade. Black veins appeared first, followed by slightly glowing purple eyes. And then the horns, all four of them sprouting at once. His skin settled to grey and he shivered slightly. “Feels really weird.” the nymph commented, wiggling his shoulders as the usual soft connection to his charges doubled in strength. He gave out a laugh and rocked on his chair in wonder. “I feel like I’m doing something bad.” he admits with the air of a child who wasn’t even sorry that all the cookies were gone.

Lydia had seen him without glamour before, but not nearly long enough to truly and fully appreciate it. He looked eerie and dramatic, and all the more beautiful for it. From the grey pallor of his skin, to the distracting amethyst in his eyes. Like this, he couldn’t be mistaken for something human, and it made Lydia completely breathless. Even without her glamour, if one squinted one might consider Lydia human looking, like you could say for Regan and Deirdre. People like Felix, Morelia and Jared were completely different. “That is a tragedy. You should feel comfortable in your natural skin. You look beautiful like this.”

It was a rush. Jared could feel a lot more of his connection to his creatures, and it buzzed in him like an old radio springing to life. He ended up shrugging his shoulders once again, as if shrugging into a coat and not just his natural form, just to get used to it in less high stress situations than he was used to. “Is that how you feel? Comfortable? I mean in a …. Like a uh-” he struggled for the words to express what he wanted to know for a moment before nodding. “Comfortable rather than like you’re high? Is it something you get used to? Is it just me that feels like i just took a belt that was too tight off after dinner?”

“Yes, I feel more comfortable like this that with a glamour. A glamour takes concentration,” Lydia replied as Julie returned with their glasses of red wine, setting them in front of her. “Put it on my tab,” she said, otherwise ignoring the very human bartender. “Wait, when you take off your glamour you feel high? What on earth are you talking about?” Lydia laughed, sipping at her wine. “Like the belt, yes, or taking off a bra, but nothing close to feeling high. How often do you take your glamour off, exactly?”

Jared would have made a noise of disagreement at the mention of a tab, as he’d wanted to buy Lydia a drink. But as it was, he was a little too distracted to do much else than try and keep his feet on the ground. “It feels like Cap has sneezed and zapped me by accident again.” He tried to describe, “But in a good way.” Jared shrugged and smiled lifting the glass of wine towards hers to clink their glasses together. “Not often.It can fall when I sleep sometimes, but mostly I can keep it on non stop for a few days.”

“Sorry, you’re going to need to explain that. Who is Cap? Why would him sneezing zap you?” Lydia smiled despite her confusion, because the young nymph was ever so charming, even in his strange ways. She clinked glasses with him, before her eyes widened even further. “You sleep with it. Why? Do you have a partner or friend that lives with you who doesn’t know?”

“Oh, Cap, as in Capacitor. He’s a new addition to my kids. He’s a Raiju I bought from some weird guy online. He’s a sickly little thing I think he’s allergic to dust. But he zaps.” Jareds knees were bouncing and he was speaking animatedly. The effects of taking the cap off of his body had him practically fizzing. He took a long sip of the wine and then set the glass down. “I used to. Grew up in a family of human deniers. There was something on me until my eighth birthday that helped hide me I think. But it wore off I guess so I learned to glamour fast. Endless trips to the hospital about my skin and all that you know? Not anymore though, Guess habits die hard. The only people who stay the night both know. Just don’t want to spook them I guess as well.” He smiled widely at Lydia. “It’s not a big deal, I just didn’t realize it had been so long being normal.”

“Capacitor? That is darling,” Lydia smiled, and nodded as if she knew what a Raiju was. Apart from, of course, that it apparently zapped things. Which meant that it was likely another creature she likely wanted to avoid, no matter how sweetly Jared smiled around his wine glass. As he explained his childhood, Lydia’s smile fell slightly, dripping into something closer to sympathy. “Right. Of course. I’m sorry.” All the same, he was grinning, bouncing and floating with his energy. Even if she flinched at him calling it normal. “This is you being normal. Look, there.” Lydia pointed behind him. “That Nix certainly looks interested in you from over here.”

“He’s a sweet little guy. I’m lucky he wanted to stay after I bought him.” Jared waved a hand as if dismissing her apology. “It was what it was. It was tough, but I’m happy with how it all turned out. Inherited a farm, and got to grow up in the weirdest town in the state.” The nymph looked over his shoulder recklessly, before whipping back around embarrassed when he heard Lydia's reasoning for having him look. His cheeks warmed to a slightly darker tone and he took another drink of his wine just for something to do with his hands. He laughed a little and figetted. “Right, I don’t even know all the rules anything like this involves. I assume there are fae dating rules and all sorts I have no idea about. I really do know almost nothing.”

“You bought him to free him, then?” Lydia asked curiously, looking him over anew. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re their nymph.” She nodded at his explanation, with a small smile, and opted not to comment on it again, because family could be complicated even for the best of reasons. There were members of her family Lydia didn’t talk about either. “What a beautiful farm it is too,” Lydia said instead. She grinned as he looked behind himself, his cheeks and ears flushing darker. All that nervous, skittish energy had to go somewhere, and Lydia chuckled as he drank frantically from his drink. “I think most rules don’t stretch much further than not having sex with humans, but not all fae here even agree with that. Then some extend the rule to not having sex with other supernatural species. Dating really isn’t that complicated.” Lydia glanced back to the Nix with a small laugh. “She’s very determined to catch your gaze.”

“The advert made me feel like if he was truly what was advertised, then he couldn’t go to someone who would use him as described. He was so sickly when I got him, I was right about this one.” Jared confirmed. “They all need protecting, even if they don’t stay long.” He wasn’t a novice in dating, he’d had a few relationships, but he fell completely out of touch. It had admittedly been a few years since his last attempt, and adding fae rules into the mix made him even more nervous than he would have been normally. “No humans huh?” he echoed before adding “You sure it’s not you she’s interested in?” He asked, determined not to look around for fear of making a fool of himself. So instead, his fingers tapped on the bartop, and his knee continued to bounce with unspent energy.

“That’s incredibly nobel of you. I know you’re their nymph, but it is still astonishing,” Lydia said, with real admiration glinting in her eyes. She swivelled her glass before finishing it off. “Not all fae agree on that one either,” Lydia said airily, as if just recalling Beatrice’s existence didn’t make her stomach want to turn. As if she didn’t deliberately avoid thinking about Deirdre’s relationship prior to Morgan’s death. Lydia turned her attention back to the Nix with a much warmer smile. “Maybe she’s interested in the both of us, you don’t know.” Lydia chuckled warmly. “I’ll stop winding you up, shall I?” Lydia nudged him with her elbow.

Jared was coming down off of the initial high of being free, and was settling into a warm appreciation for the feeling instead. “Cap is almost domesticated, they tried really hard with him. So while I would have liked him to be normal, it’s good he stayed. Not sure he’d have made it on his own. I just want what's best for them is all.” He shrugged but still bounced his knee and even brought his thumb up to bite at the nail on this thumb as she teased him. The nymph spared a sneaky quick glance back at the Nix before turning back and huffing a breath at Lydia when she nudged him. “It’s so easy it’s almost rude to wind me up like that.” he pouted at her. “Don’t take advantage of the blond.” he tutted, hiding his smile poorly.

Lydia’s lips twitched slightly. “That’s a shame. I don’t know much about the beasts and creatures that share our world, but the wild ones should always be wild. No matter how frightening they might be. I’m glad he has you.” Lydia laughed as he glanced back over at the nix, as if one last glance would answer his questions. “You’re right, I’m being ever so terrible to you.” Lydia winked, spinning her empty wine glass between her fingers. “You’ll have to forgive me.” She looked around at all these beautiful, familiar faces, and her heart rang loud and clearly. This was as much a home as any. “Do you have plans for the upcoming fairy ring season?”

“I’ll forgive you for now I suppose.” Jared said poking his tongue out at her childishly in response following this up with a laugh. His eyes flickered around the bar again when Lydias did the same. He still felt like he was doing something so dangerous and bad, and yet, everyone here was doing the exact same. It was so strange, but also too invigorating to want to leave. “Oh I usually just haul up on the farm for a while. Lock the gates and text my friends I’m going on migration. It’s usually better that way. I don’t do very well with it.” he laughs uncomfortably. “I’ve gotten carried away one too many times when I was young.”

Lydia laughed, pushing his shoulder as he stuck his tongue out at her. “I’m not convinced anyone does well with it. We all end up seeing far too much of each other, in every meaning of the phrase, humans and other species get annoyed, it’s a whole time.” A human had died the last time Lydia had been in a fairy circle, which didn’t altogether bother her, but she did want to spare her friends that did care such troubles. Fortunately, there were many, many activities one could get up to that didn’t involve murder or even torture. Some would almost certainly make Jared flush bright red.. “I don’t think getting carried away is to bad a thing, but I know not everyone agrees.”

He thought he’d picked up on what she was putting down and Jared blinked before his voice lowered into a whisper whilst leaning in. “So being naked is like a full thing is it? Like for real, the urge isn’t just like…. Me being a weirdo?” He’d met so few fae, that anything to do with the upcoming season he usually kept firmly to himself. Everything that came with it always seemed so odd, but he was slowly learning that this mindset was definitely more human, and he most certainly should abandon it. “I guess….never let myself enjoy it, or at least not for a good few years. How do you…?...but also keep it a secret?” He wanted to know everything. He had so much catching up to do. “You seem to do all this so gracefully, one day maybe I’ll be half as good at being ...normal?” He laughed noticing her glass empty and trying to catch the bartenders eye for another, smiling warmly when they filled Lydia's glass again.

“What, no! Everyone gets naked. It’s a whole thing. It’s very freeing, to be honest. Everything about the fairy rings is freeing. No holding back, no compunctions, just joy and thrill,” Lydia giggled, a little too loud as she leant in to match his whispers. “Well, that part is tricky,” she agreed. “I know some people handle it better than others and feel they have more control. I usually limit my social media, and I don’t party with non-fae, which limits the exposure. I try not to be naked during the day, and keep things safe.” She rolled her eyes at his self deprecating nature. “You’ll learn, darling. You are still so young. You have centuries to learn. Mushroom season isn’t always for everyone, either.”

She described it so wonderfully. It sounded amazing to be free like that, to just throw away the shame that humans taught themselves and just be how you wanted to. In a smaller way that’s how Jared felt about being without his glamour in this bar. He’d been missing out by not knowing how to identify other fae, that was very clear to him now. “Gotta unlearn all the human things first, but I’m getting there,” He lifted his glass and tapped the wim with her now refilled one. “But hey, tell me your plans. You sound like you’ll have all sorts of great things going on. You have people to party with?” He sipped his wine and paused before asking more tentatively. “More friends with wings?” Was it rude to comment on another faes appearance? He had no idea, but her wings were definitely catching his eyes every time they shifted behind her.

“You will get there,” Lydia agreed with an encouraging smile. He gave her hope for Regan too. She picked up her wine, swirling it as she thought about his answer. “The problem is the increased hunter presence in town. I tend to keep early august pretty easy. There aren’t as many rings around now anyway. If I happen to find myself in one, then that’s of course wonderful, but I don’t plan any until late august. From then? Normally, nonstop party until Halloween. Parties, with friends, with humans to prank, with the local leprechauns, whomever is available.” She smiled at him, wondering why he’d asked. “Not necessarily. Most of my friends here don’t have any, as it happens.”

Non stop partying sounded like a great time. Jared just knew he would never manage that, even if it wasn’t from the very start of the season.He loved his farm, but maintaining the place took a lot more than people realized. He’d be lucky to have even a few days free to parry without worry. “Wings are so pretty, but the idea is terrifying. Being able to wander away when you're high is already such a risk, but with wings you could just take off. And then flying itself seems so scary. Can you actually fly?” It seems the wine was loosening him up. He worried he’d overstepped again, but this time regretfully after he’d already said it.

“The idea of having wings is terrifying?” Lydia repeated, staring at him with wide eyes in confusion. “What? Jared, what?” She laughed, standing up. She looked around herself, making sure there was enough room behind her before she opened up the brown and yellow striped shells that stretched from her shoulder to the back of her knees. They raised up behind her until they were nearly shoulder heigh, where her wings rose up to her side. She was drawing more than a little attention and her wings began to trill and beat as her feet lifted from the ground. She reached up to tap the ceiling, before coming back down.

“No flying inside,” Julia said, and Lydia rolled her eyes and imitated her mockingly.

“My point is, I can’t fly any higher than I just did. I’m not going to buzz off into the night sky.”

“Yeah flying just seems wild.” Jared responded. He watched in awe as Lydia stretched out her wings and took to the air. She was up and down before he could even fully register what she was showing him. He nodded solemnly and then quickly his face took on a cheeky grin. "Oh so you can't fly far, you'd need strong wings like a Valravn to get anywhere in life huh? Pretty wings like yours can’t carry you far.” And while Lydia would see the teasing smile, it seems the tone was completely lost on a gancanagh trying to get another beer behind the nymphs back. Jared was woefully unprepared as he was grabbed and yanked off his barstool forcibly.

“No, they can’t,” Lydia agreed, flicking them happily all the same. They were beautiful, and glowed with the same light that the rest of her did. They didn’t need to take her into the skies, just flutter her up into the branches of trees, and let her hover as she danced under the gaze of the mushrooms. Lydia didn’t notice the gancanagh either, not until it was much too late.

“You insulting her wings?” He asked gruffly. “You goddamn flatbacksh, no reshpect!”

“Sir, you’re drunk,” Lydia said, standing up in warning.

“Better drunk than him,” The gancanagh said, aiming a swing for Jared’s head.

His shirt was being held tight in the gancanaghs fist. Although he was taller than the other, Jared was completely lost with shock and had stumbled instead of finding his feet. This ended up putting the nymph at the mercy of the other fae. Jared raised his hands in panicked surrender but the other didn’t seem interested at all. His fist made contact and Jared could only tip his head back and take it in the jaw so that the drunk didn’t shatter his hand on the nymphs horns. Despite the threat, he didn’t want to cause lasting damage to someone standing up for Lydia. Jared wasn’t sure if he had been offensive or not. Addled by the punch and the drink, but perhaps he should have had better sense than to call himself stupid under his breath.

“Stupid? I’ll show you stupid you bastard.” The gancanagh dumped the nymph onto the floor and set to work rearranging his no good disrespectful face.

Jared brought his arms up finally to try and ward the other off. Stronger than him,but not by much he didn’t make very much headway.

Lydia jumped back with a yelp as the fight fell out. “Stop this!” She shouted, her voice jumping an octave and decibel. “Stop hitting him!” She winced, cringing away as Jared was punched in the jaw. Oh, lord, she hated violence. Fae were inevitably better than this, they had to be! They settled disputes with their tongues not their fists! “Stop this!” She yelped again, swatting the gancanagh’s dragonfly wings with her own firefly ones. It was enough to make him stop, if only because it was so rare for fae to ever touch each other’s wings as strangers, considered off limits and taboo. Especially for flatbacks, but wing-to-wing contact wasn’t quite as egregious. “Stop!” Lydia yelled again, grabbing the gancanagh’s arm and pulling him back with strength that didn’t seem like it ought to fit in her small frame.

Jared was trying to do some damage limitation. As he was being punched he curled up, arms over his face to try and stop the other doing too much. But he couldn’t do anything until the gancanagh let up. As soon as Lydia had touched wings with the guy he froze to look over his shoulder at her. This was the chance Jared took to help Lydia push the guy off of him. Once free to struggle out from under the bulkier fae, Jared shoved him to the ground and found himself at Lydias side a lot more banged up than he’d expected to be on a chill night drinking with a new friend. And he felt enormously guilty about it. “I’m sorry.” He said to her instantly. He couldn’t believe he’d said something offensive enough to be punched. What sort of idiot fae was he? They’d gotten the attention of the whole bar at this point and Jared hunched over as the bouncer came to remove them all.

“No more tonight. Go home.” The bouncer said, hauling the drunk gancanagh to his feet.

She wasn’t too shocked when Julia, snitching human, called the bouncer over, although Lydia did roll her eyes, extremely pointedly. As they walked back through the door, her glamour slipped back on like she might a coat. “Why? You didn’t offend me, my dear, I don’t even know what a veal-ravine is.” The gancanagh glowered at them, before stalking off. Lydia chuckled. “You know, I suspect that might just have been the start of the fairy ring season. What a ringing welcome to the incoming season. At least it can only go up from here.” She winked at him, before looking him over. “Are you hurt?” She asked softly.

Jared followed Lydias lead once again, his own glamour feeling a little bit like that feeling when a child was told playtime was over. It was back to feeling normal now that they were on the street. “I really thought I had considering…” His words trailed off as he watched the gancanagh walk away sheepishly. “First bird that popped into my head, skeletal raven, strong and amazing creatures. uh…. I didn’t really think it through.” Maybe describing the creature wasn’t the best way forward. Jared had to laugh when she spoke so positively about being thrown out of a bar. The nymph shook his head “Had a lot worse than a beat down, it’ll be okay.” Any discolouration was already covered by his glamour. Changing your skin so much tended to mean you covered an awful lot more than people thought. “Didn’t mean to get us kicked out, can I walk you home?” He offered her an arm. “In compensation.”

Lydia’s eyebrows vanished into her hairline at his explanation as to what, exactly, veal-ravines were. “As… fascinating as those sound, I think I’ll stick to my wings over anything skeletal.” She laughed softly, falling in step with him as she took his arm. Even in heels, her head barely reached his shoulder - they must have made quite the pair as they walked through the town. “Ah, c’est la vie. Company with you was all I was really looking for.” She said with a simple shrug. Faetal Attraction was the one losing out. “However, I must say, Mr. Nymph of Vicious Creatures, you really weren’t very vicious in there.”

“Oh yeah for sure, for sure.” Jared agreed on the spot. “Your wings are wonderful I was just trying to joke around...guess I’ll have to work on my humour too.” he chuckled accompanied by a shrug. Nothing he could do now, but try and remember wings were definitely a no go topic in public. The nymph makes a noise of disapproval and bumps his hip into her. “Hey now, just because my kids are vicious doesn’t mean I have to be. I’m soft so my kids can do the damage. Plus I thought I’d messed up, wouldn’t have been fair.” He pouted at her pitifully. A master of the puppy dog look as he’d been able to replicate the eyes of one of his bonedoggle pups when they were whining. “You absolutely overpowered the guy though, my hero.”

Lydia snickered as he hip bumped her. “You are a big softie. Not the only one in town, either.” He pouted at her, and Lydia resisted his puppy eyes for a whole second before giving him a light push. “That isn’t playing fair.” Lydia laughed as they reached the causeway, the sea still and soothing on either side of them. “Oh gosh. If he’d thrown a punch at me, I would have gone down like a stack of dominoes. We’re a strong species, but that doesn’t mean I know what to do with it, beyond lifting couches to clean under them.”

“Well being kind doesn’t cost a thing, so maybe I’m just trying to lead by example. See if it’ll rub off on the people who need to know that the most...like not letting that drunk guy shatter his hand on my horns. Boy would he have really not been happy with that.” Jared laughed and stumbled sideways slightly before pulling himself back in with their linked arms. “Ah but why be fair when you can win by being cute?” The thought of the other fae being punched didn’t sit well with Jared, she was so small, not defenseless, definitely not weak, but the ganacash had been rather huge in comparison. “You clean under couches?” He asked jokingly to brush past the image of her being knocked out in his mind. The breeze was pretty nice as they continued to walk. He was letting her lead the way considering he had no idea where she lived, but it seemed to be a really nice area.

“Being kind cost you a punch!” Lydia disagreed vehemently. “Although no, I suppose punching your horns would be rather… unpleasant. Then again, he oughtn’t have been aiming for your horns in the first place.” She rolled her eyes, although he was entirely correct - Jared was cute as hell, in both meanings of the word. “Well, I normally have a cleaner in twice a week to do it for me,” Lydia winked, leading them towards Harris island. “But yes, should the need arise. Are you saying you don’t?”

“Ahh what's a punch in a bar every now and then. Maybe the guy thought horns were sensitive or something. They’re absolutely not, but drunk brain can get to you if you’re not careful.” Jared reasoned for the guy who’d clocked him in the face. “Ohhh fancy, a cleaner. If I could afford one I don’t think they’d be too pleased with the state of the place, even after Nell and Blanche moved in and out again.” The nymph laughed. “I didn’t really think about lifting the couches, I just sort of...sweep around it? Probably harbouring some cute new kids under there soon. Dust bunnies are adorable.” He nudged her playfully. “You should let one move in.”

“Drunk brain is no excuse for such…. Abhorrent behaviour. Jared, you are far too kind to the man who punched you,” Lydia said, her affectionate smile softening the comment. She rolled her eyes, not about to be shamed for her well earned wealth - she’d worked hard for it! So had her humans. “That’s the great thing about cleaners. You pay them not to judge you.” At his suggestions, Lydia couldn’t help but pull a mildly disgusted face. “Jared, you could be the cutest person in the whole town, and you would still never be able to persuade me to let a dust bunny move in. Having a dog around is bad enough, in terms of the mess.” Lydia stopped in front of her mansion, modern and gleaming with its large windows on every floor. “Unfortunately, this is my stop, and I must bid you goodnight, my dear.”

The nymph waved her worries away. What was done was done, and truly Jared had no hard feelings for the ganacash. Maybe the guy was too quick to jump the gun, but clearly he had some bad experience with people talking about wings. The change on Lydias face however sent Jared into a whirlwind of laughter. “Woah really? Not even if I do the puppy dog eyes? Dust bunnies are adorable!” He was only teasing, even if everything he said he did consider true. But his outlook on creatures would never match up to other peoples. He’d come to accept that. Stopping at the door Jared looked up at the house and grinned. “Nice place. Goodnight Lydia. Thanks for taking me out, and not letting that guy bash me in.” Jared was a trail of light laughter as he walked back the way they’d come, waving at Lydia all the way until he was gone from her sight.

#C: Lydia #P: Chatzy

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mobius-prime · 5 years ago

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265. Sonic the Hedgehog #196

Hedgehog Havoc! (Part 2)

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: Jason Jensen

Sally is in the middle of a furious argument with Alicia, insisting that trapping Sonic in Moebius with Scourge was unacceptable. Alicia, of course, doesn't care what Sally thinks, and when Sally orders Tails to restart the star posts she's initially angry until Miles assures her that by now, Sonic should have easily beaten Scourge. Both the Freedom Fighters and the Suppression Squad go through the reopened portal into Moebius… just in time to see Super Scourge, having completely decimated all resistance against him, just finishing up beating Sonic into a pulp. He's quite pleased to see some new "fresh meat" enter the arena, as he hasn't quite gotten all the bloodlust out of his system yet.

I think it's fair to say this situation royally sucks ass. After beating the rest of the Suppression Squad into the dirt, he targets Miles specifically, who's utterly terrified, as he knows Scourge knows he was the ringleader of the mutiny. Before Scourge has a chance to kill him, though, Silver finds enough strength to get back to his feet and stop him.

Well, it was worth a shot, buddy. Sonic forces himself back to his feet as well, trying to think of what his own weaknesses are when he's in Super form, but his thoughts are interrupted by a metallic hand grabbing him from behind. Metal Sonic has decided that since its chances of taking out Super Scourge are nil, it might as well go after Sonic himself. Shadow jumps in to save him from Metal, and they discuss ideas on how to remove this secondary threat from the field so they can focus on Scourge.

…fair enough! Rosy tries her hand at beating Scourge up once more, but he throws her aside, and Rob fires off an arrow with a rope trap on it, securing Rosy in place to make sure that she stays out of the fight for her own and everyone else's safety, telling Amy that though she may not be his true cousin, he still doesn't want to see her hurt. Sonic asks Miles if there's any more Anarchy Beryl they can use, but Miles says that they stored all of their stock somewhere far from here, having been unaware up till now that Scourge was secretly keeping some for himself in his throne. Miles is certain that they're doomed, as Scourge will have easily wiped the floor with all of them before he powers down, but Sally puts a new plan into action. She orders Silver, Boomer, and Bunnie to all use their heavy-hitting skills to slow Scourge down, at which point… everyone dogpiles him.

"Nice plan"? Are you kidding me, Sonic? I love Sally, and normally she's quite intelligent, but this is easily one of her worst plans! You can't just dogpile someone who's gone Super! Sure enough, Scourge proves this immediately by releasing a blast of energy that sends everyone flying. Sonic doesn't give up, trying to smash into him to take him back down, but Scourge grabs him and flings him outside, where a dramatic rainstorm has started up. He angrily beats on Sonic some more while reminding him that he threw away his chance before to become a twin king of the multiverse alongside him. Sonic runs away into the forest while trying once again to think of what weaknesses he has when he's Super, but can't think of any, noting that even once he powers down he gets a small boost. That suddenly gives him an idea, and he stops dead, allowing Scourge to catch up with him. Sonic admits that he's lost this fight, but then mocks Scourge for having to go Super to even have a shot at taking him down. When Scourge insists he could beat Sonic even in his normal form, Sonic invites him to prove it, and Scourge voluntarily powers down… and immediately falls to his knees. He's shocked, and Sonic smugly explains his line of reasoning - since this is the inverse zone to Mobius, coming down from a Super transformation doesn't give him a boost, but rather saps him of all his energy. Scourge furiously but weakly tries to protest that he conquered the planet himself and Sonic is nothing compared to him, but Sonic isn't having it.

Ah, yes, the customary "and that's why good is good" speech at the end to put the villain in their place! The next day, the Suppression Squad reluctantly takes down the globe posts so Buns can return them to Kintobor. Miles slyly tries to invite her back into the Squad since she's now quite powerful in her Omega armor, but she refuses, going back with the Freedom Fighters to Kintobor's hospital tower. Miles speculates that she'll likely be back as someone like her can only "play the hero" for so long, and sycophantically assures Alicia that he's ready to restore her to her rightful place on the throne, but she dismissively tells him that they both know she's a figurehead and he's the real one in charge due to his intellect. I mean, fair enough, Alicia, you may not exactly be leadership material, but also remember he's like, eleven years old…

Honestly, I find it a little bizarre that here in his first appearance Silver is quite serious and focused, not showing much doubt, considering that his entire characterization in his debut game was about how uncertain and scared he is - basically just a scared child trying to figure out how best to protect his world, and being easily misled as a result. Having him search for a past "traitor" was a good way to translate his Sonic-hunting motivations into the comic considering Mephiles isn't exactly around to give him false leads, but honestly, the thing that bugs me the most about his appearance here is that he can apparently just travel through time using a warp ring, begging the question of why no one else tries such a thing in this universe. I mean, they've only ever been shown to link up to other locations, and other zones if they're properly charged, so why can Silver just randomly travel back and forward in time with one? Ah, whatever. Kintobor hands a chained-up Scourge over to Sonic for safekeeping, and Sonic invites Sally and the others to head back to Freedom HQ while he instead goes to the "parallel zone," presumably referring to the No Zone, to hand Scourge off to the Zone Cops so he can't ever cause this level of destruction again.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 196 #writer: ian flynn #pencils: tracy yardley #colors: jason jensen

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blue-mood-blue · 6 years ago

Text

She looks just like her brother.

Jane knows that’s what they’re thinking. Every time someone glances in her direction instead of staring at the ornate box they’re all gathered around in the noonday sunshine, she can practically hear it, whispered silently into the air around them: Oh, she looks so much like him, what a shame, how awful that she didn’t make it back in time. She doesn’t pay them any mind; she’s not here for any of them.

The strange pair standing together at the edge of the crowd, though, hanging back - they catch her attention. Jane’s never met them, but she knows exactly who they are. Duck told her things, little pieces of whole he wasn’t ready for her to see yet, so she knows Aubrey Little and Ned Chicane. If everyone else is only glancing at her, Aubrey is staring with a stricken expression and Ned is looking at everyone and everything else instead of her.

More importantly, she knows why they’re here and why they haven’t come any closer.

To Aubrey’s credit, she tries. Jane sees her creeping closer after the casket is in the ground and people have started to leave, waiting patiently behind Jane to introduce herself.

Jane decides to save her the trouble. “Aubrey Little, right? Duck mentioned you a couple of times.”

Aubrey hesitates, and Jane guesses she was caught off guard. “Um, yes! Yes. You must be Jane. I’m so sorry —”

“You’re part of that... neighborhood watch thing, right? Keeping the town safe?”

Her hesitation is longer this time, weighted. Aubrey says a lot by not saying anything at all, and it’s the answer that Jane is looking for.

Duck was a shit liar, but sometimes he could slide by the truth if it was close enough to being honest. Sometimes he’d tell her just enough. “Had to visit the hospital,” he’d say, without saying how bad the injury was or how he’d gotten it. “There’s something weird going on in Kepler and the police could use an extra set of eyes,” he’d explain, without ever mentioning if the police agreed with his assessment. Jane had known for a long time that Duck was doing something dangerous, she just didn’t know the details. And she hadn’t even thought of trying to stop him, because if Duck was voluntarily doing something dangerous, it meant someone was in danger.

She should have stopped him. If she’d come back sooner, if she’d been here when it happened... but she didn’t, and she wasn’t. She got on a plane after his last phone call, all veiled worry and forced calm, telling her that if anything happened and she needed better answers, she should find someone named Mama. “You won’t need to but... figured I’d mention it, since I won’t be able to call for a little bit.” The implication that something might happen was enough to bring her home so she could ask Duck about those better answers directly, and by the time she got to Kepler he was already gone.

And this Aubrey Little knows more than Jane does about why her brother is in the ground and not filling her in on the local gossip. And maybe it isn’t fair - it definitely isn’t fair - but that makes Jane hate her, just a little bit. “Yeah, he told me. Not nearly all of it, but I’m gonna find out the rest.” When Jane turns to look at her, Aubrey looks pale. Even guilty, maybe. “Were you there, when it happened?”

“I —”

Jane shakes her head. “You probably shouldn’t answer that, actually.” Jane turns around to leave, well aware that there is more of her brother left in the forests he loved so much than in this patch of meticulously maintained lawn of headstones. “See you around, Aubrey.”

When Jane glances to where the two of them had been standing together, Ned Chicane is already gone.

Jane has a dream that night that she’s talking to a woman made of light. The woman seems to know her brother, but Jane has never seen her before. She calls Duck a warrior, which seems inaccurate, and she calls him merciful, which sounds a lot more like the Duck Jane remembers.

“I do not know if you wish to continue your brother’s fight, Jane Newton,” she says. There’s something in her voice that speaks of old grief, and Jane has the strange thought that this woman will miss Duck more than half of the people at the funeral who offered her empty condolences. “You do not have to. But his sword is yours, should you choose to accept it.”

Jane is about to tell the woman how insane the thought of Duck carrying a sword is, but she wakes up in his apartment instead, surrounded by half-packed boxes. There’s a sword on the ground next to her, and she’s sure it wasn’t there when she fell asleep.

The sword is looking at her - she’s sure of that, even if she doesn’t know what makes her think so. She doesn’t know what compels her to pick it up.

“Jane Newton, I presume.” The voice comes from the sword, the sword that has a mouth that she can see now that it’s moving, and she almost drops it. “My name is Beacon. You, now you have the spirit of a warrior. You would wield me in battle, would you not Jane Newton? Your brother never did use my full power, pacifist that he was...”

The sword says it like an insult, and Jane squeezes the hilt as if anything she could do to it would actually hurt a metal object. She remembers the coroner’s hesitating, uncomfortable report, spoken with long pauses as if Jane might change her mind about wanting to know how Duck died. Every detail was followed by a silence as if to say are you sure, do you really need to know, wouldn’t you sleep easier if you let me tell you kinder lies. Jane kept asking for the truth, and she barely slept at all that night.

“My brother died fighting, didn’t he?” Beacon doesn’t answer and she shakes him, aware that it’s a useless gesture. “What more did you want from him? He fought, and he defended people, and he died. That’s not enough of a warrior for you?”

Beacon is silent for a long moment. Finally, quietly, he admitted: “Yes, Duck Newton fell in battle.”

Jane takes a deep breath. She reminds herself that she already guessed as much, but it’s different to know for sure. “Yeah. So, I don’t want to hear you talk shit about my brother. I don’t need a fucking sword, and I’ll throw you in the river to rust if you start with that shit again.”

She might be imagining the hint of respect in his voice when he says “Understood.”

Leo finds her a couple of days later, when she’s unlocking the door to Duck’s apartment. He doesn’t have any more answers than Minerva does, can’t tell her the why or how of any of it, but he points to Beacon and tells her that he can teach her.

“I’m not an expert but I know a few things. Better than nothing, right?”

He’s one of those people Jane almost knows, the kind she’s seen around but probably hasn’t had an actual conversation with in years. Duck was always better at that kind of thing than her, was always around to remind her of names that had slipped her mind. If she was going to do this, if she was going to stay and protect these people, she was going to have to get better at that. She couldn’t be Duck, but she would have to make the effort.

Jane takes him up on the offer. It’s... surprisingly good for her, actually, to swing Beacon and take her anger out on targets. Leo seems to get it; Leo just gets a lot of things, a lot more than she would’ve given him credit for on first impression.

“I’m sorry about Duck,” he tells her eventually. They hadn’t talked much about Duck before then. Jane’s pretty sure Leo didn’t know how to start the conversation. “You’re brother was a good guy. He’d be proud of you, you know.”

Jane likes to think she knows, but it’s good to hear it from someone else. It’s good to be sure.

When Jane finds Mama, she’s on the porch of the Amnesty Lodge. Mama sees the family resemblance and the sword on Jane’s hip, and she doesn’t have to ask why Jane is there.

She does ask if Jane knows the details of how Duck died, and if she’s sure. Jane is sure, and Mama doesn’t question her resolve. She just tells Jane the truth, hands her a patch, and welcomes her.

Jane sits beneath the trees for a few hours, staring at the patch. She wonders how Duck felt when he was given his. She could guess, she could ask the other members, but she couldn’t talk to Duck so she’d never really know.

“This probably isn’t exactly what you wanted, when you told me to talk to Mama,” she says to the empty air. It feels like he’s there anyway, the way it always does when she’s in the forest. “I’m sorry. But I have to - you probably felt like you had to at the time, didn’t you? I bet you were thinking about everyone else but you.” She sighs and leans back against the tree. “I’m gonna need you to help me, Duck. I’m not as good as you. I’m not as brave. I need your help if I’m gonna do this.”

A breeze rustles the branches, and Jane smiles.

Jane is waiting for Ned when he unlocks the Cryptonomica. He freezes in the doorway when he sees the shape of her leaning against the front desk, Beacon gripped loosely in her hand.

“Hey Ned, how’ve you been?”

He closes the door slowly. “I’ve been... fine. Reasonably well. And how have you been, Jane?”

“Could be better.” She’s worked hard, to let go of the anger and the hate. It’s working but it’s working slowly. She’ll get there - she’ll have to, if she’s going to fight monsters with these people. “Have been better. You and me need to have a conversation, Ned.”

Ned flinches, but he doesn’t make excuses or try to run off. That’s progress since the last time she’d seen him. “What about?” Ned makes an attempt to sound composed, but Jane isn’t fooled.

“What do you think? I want to talk about Duck.”

“Jane --”

“Just listen, Ned. Just shut up and listen, for once.” Ned shuts up, and Jane sighs. “You were there, right? That’s what I hear. He wasn’t alone - you and Aubrey were there.”

He hesitates before answering. “Yes. We were there.”

“But you were distracted, both of you were. You’d lied to Aubrey and she was upset, and neither of you were on your game. And when it was go time, when whatever that thing was went after my brother,” she pauses, taking a moment to breathe. Her voice had been getting loud, angry, and she needed a second to not go there. “When that thing went after my brother, neither of you saw. And it killed him.”

“Jane, I’m so sorry.” He sounds sincere. When Jane looks up, there are tears on his face, and she’s thrown. He has changed - the Ned she knew didn’t cry for people.

“Are you?” He’s about to answer, but she cuts him off. “Are you really? Because if you’re really, truly sorry, Ned Chicane, that shit will not happen again. You will have my back. Aubrey will have my back. And when we’re facing a threat, the only thing that matters will be protecting each other and the innocent. That’s what you can do for my brother.”

“You?” Jane turns enough so that Ned can see the patch on the shoulder of her jacket, and he stares.

“Me. I’m going to finish what my brother started. Now, I’m going to have this conversation with Aubrey and then we should all be on the same page. Can you do that, Ned? Can I trust you?”

Ned looks up when she asks, his expression as serious as hers - the expression of someone who’s lost someone and feels the loss keenly. Jane realizes, for the first time, that Ned and Aubrey were more than Duck’s teammates. They’d been friends. Duck was missed all over Kepler, and here too.

“You can trust me.”

Jane sheathes her sword and holds out her hand to shake his.

#taz #the adventure zone #taz am #taz spoilers #character death #so i wondered #if the confrontation might make ned and aubrey unable to work together well #and what that might mean for duck #and what might happen in the worst case scenario #so!#here's what i came up with!

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petitepistol · 5 years ago

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headcanon;but it is very messy

oh god strap in because this is going to be 3k words worth of rambling under the cut which you don't actually have to read since i posted it at 5am so it probably does not make much sense!! also I have only just recently accepted that my elena does not follow compilation timeline to the letter because I fucking hate the fact that before crisis placed her age at being a high school student almost immediately preceding the start of the original game and I always saw elena as being at least aerith's age by the time she became a turk so please bear with me as my elena uses a floating timeline to prevent her from being...like a literal teenager for original game fuck that noise they had cissnei be the uwu fifteen-year-old turk and elena gets to be her own character when im writing her so compilation can fuck right off

so first off her dad is a military man, and that entire side of his family? kind of just defaulted into the military for generations. well before shinra at least, the old shit. I'm constantly flabbergasted by the idea that shinra is the dominant military force on the planet when as little as forty years before game them were a fledgling company, and I'm fascinated by what kind of insane shit must have gone down to facilitate shinra going from defense contractor/power company to defacto global superpower, and what they superseded when that happened. so yeah her dad is military, and even after he was put out to pasture he still wound up teaching at a prestigious shinra sponsored academy in junon and both of his daughters attended.

her mom was upper middle class and driven as hell, had a ballet career which got cut short due to injury in her late teens. then she wound up going into nursing by her early twenties and spent some time working in deepground when it was still a run of the mill army hospital where she met elena's father who was...voluntarily a candidate for some biotech stuff that shinra was doing back when shinra was still a defense contractor, go figure he was one of many early examples of mako conditioning. they didn't get along at first but did wind up marrying but never actually settling down because of the nature of his career. she retired from nursing but did medical coding part-time.

elena's sister was born in deepground (canonically from the 'midgar slums' but deepground is pretty fucking close and it makes sense to the era and background worldbuilding), and things went as smoothly as possible at this point in time. elena herself was born in icicle because lol military stationed there (elena being an icicle native was also a very popular piece of fanon in the pre-compilation era and I feel like it may have had some supporting evidence in something like kaitai shinsho but I never really managed to cross-reference that so probably not true and just a gut feeling), and by then things were getting...fishy. details being covered up about the full extent of the side-effects of mako conditioning and rumors that shinra had an egregious amount of influence over the military at large. these things all turned out to be true, but elena's father kept his head down and did his duty because he was a good soldier. he was also in wutai on and off during this, before the situation over there fully hit the fan, so he had more pressing matters to worry about.

anyway, elena was born in icicle but she and her mother and sister weren't there for more than a year or so before it was back at it again in midgar because dad was being put on some kind of assignment that had him closely working with shinra. the general implication of this is he was doing legwork for the implementation of SOLDIER in a few years, but what that means can vary by interaction from being paperwork to mk ultra style endurance testing to teaching an adolescent jenova project specimen how to integrate into military procedure before they drop him in wutai which is slated to become an all-out conflagration very shortly. it all depends but the point is it is sticky and worsened significantly when his wife is killed in a car accident. if this seems familiar it is because I firmly believe elena is the aya brea of ffvii and parasite eve featured similar background story. I'm borrowing deal with it.

by this point, elena is around eight and in school but elena is just barely four and in the vehicle when it happens. mom is killed instantly, elena survives but barely fares better. she's in intensive care for a while and there is a period where they don't even know if she is going to be brain dead or just have permanent brain damage in the first few days. her sister is basically staying at a school friend's house for like...way more than a fortnight while this got sorted out because their dad still actually has orders to carry out, even if he isn't on a battlefield. at one point on of his higher-ups implies that it could be arranged to transfer elena from the civilian hospital to the recently renovated deepground and he turns it down and feels like shit for it because yeah, deepground probably would mean a better chance at his youngest daughters survival because of that cutting edge shinra biotech, but at what cost? he knows well enough now something is wrong and justifies his willingness to let fate take its course with elena by focusing on the fact that her sister is still alive and well and he needs to keep his head down for his older daughter because she needed him too, even though they barely saw each other during the crux of this.

so lo and behold elena does recover and goes through the icky sticky of physical therapy and does just fine. great, right? well yes but the family dynamic is stupidly fucked up. dad has done either really good or really bad on his assignment, and gets put out to pasture in junon to teach at a military academy that is now nearly entirely funded by shinra (yeah so in before crisis it is all but implicit that academy is in midgar but fuck that junon is the seat of military power it would be near there if anything). this is great because it keeps him in work and both of his daughters will benefit. which they do. elena's sister is an ideal student, and the roughness of losing her mother happened at a sensitive period but a period where she was old enough to understand what was going on. she was capable of being a little trooper through all of it, but the cost of it was not being able to emotionally process the loss of her mother and the fact that her little sister was still alive when mom was not. the seeds of discord are sown there and that will be an ongoing thing throughout their childhood and into adulthood. they don't hate each other, but the relationship is fraught with tension and it is far from a healthy dynamic, especially since their father has pulled back almost entirely from fatherhood. he has no idea what he is doing without his late wife, and can't organically interact with his daughters so he defaults to being an instructor. both of them flourish despite this, but it is not a good family dynamic.

paint over this family drama with the fact that wutai is now well and truly happening. the military is effectively controlled by shinra and very very soon the propaganda blitz surrounding SOLDIER is going to push that over the edge and shinra will be accepted on a public and official level as being the army. the slogans are changing and going from an old fashioned sense of unity to focusing on becoming top class and singularly extraordinary. there is an emphasis on joining to be great rather than joining for the greater good. the recruitment plays into the deeply seated neurosis of adolescence for a reason because the younger some kid joins up the more malleable they are to both the shinra rhetoric and the by now very refined mako enhancement process that costs so much but nets such spectacular gains. in fact, it costs far too much to ever justify wasting that kind of money on doing it to women. so yeah it is blog canon that women in the shinra army is not a thing that is encouraged and like hell would they ever be in SOLDIER. the company culture is an old boys club steeped in misogyny and the only reason scarlet succeeded is because she took that and marinated in it and played the game very well. dirge era deepground operatives are little more than a consequence of years of unethical human experimentation left to rot in a basement. we don't really see women in actual military positions in the original game. sexism is alive and well and it serves my characterization of elena and her development.

so yeah it is a time of paradigms shifting and reforming very rapidly. elena's sister takes to this with aplomb, she is a perfect cadet and in elena's eyes a perfect daughter. someone easier to idolize than the SOLDIERs on the glossy recruitment posters and more available than their emotionally distant father. she is pristine and by extension beloved, things elena wants to be as well. elena is too young to realize her sister doesn't have any better of a relationship with their father than she does, but who knows if that would change anything. she emulates her ideal sister but remains a half step behind, which makes perfect sense because elena is four years younger. from a critical perspective that half step is a very close gap because even if elena doesn't realize it, she is just as prodigious as her sister is. the difference is while her sister can follow orders to the letter, elena has the makings of a maverick. not a positive thing in the strict environment of a military academy, no matter how high her scores are. idealization goes hand and hand with a quiet resentment, the latter of which her sister has also harbored towards her ever since their later mother died and elena did not.

that simmering toxicity stays at a low boil until her sister graduates. at the top of the class, even she could not become anything. or at least, to elena it looks that way, as she watches her sister back her things for midgar where she will start as a trainee for an administrative/auditing position for the shinra electric power company. elena does not know what a turk is at this point, even if her father does. he seems as impassive as ever, even if that is not the case and in actuality he is struggling to accept the reality that his oldest daughter is far too smart for his own good and is entering a profession no one would ever want for their child. despite his distance and his lack of connection and all of his failings as a father he does love his children and that will eat away at him until he dies no doubt. but all elena sees is her shining example of an older sister being doomed to desk work. when gun leaves (because she becomes gun the moment she is added to the payroll) the real constant of elena's childhood also leaves. and during adolescence, that is hard for anyone. more so when you realize no matter how sharp your skills are your future is off the chopping block and there is no path for you to take with them.

elena goes from being a prodigy prone to pesky critical thinking to a prodigy with a chip on her shoulder. her technical marks don't plummet, in fact, quite the opposite. she picks up a secondary battle specialty, close-quarters combat, which will set her apart from her sister. she flourishes with equal parts precision and aggression, despite her small size. the academic commendations feel entirely hollow to her though, and in the way teenagers tend to do she convinces herself she is not much more than nothing. the memory of her sister becomes tarnished with the bitterness of her negative self-image. her instructors must hate her for her failures, she tells herself with false objectivity. her instructors include her actual father, who is nearly clueless aside from a vague feeling in the pit of his stomach and he doesn't know if that is due to his oldest daughter going into wetworks or the fact his younger daughter is shattering academic record after record with the sheer force of what he assumes to be ennui driven spite.

at least he is clueless until in the spring just after she turns fifteen she files for early certification to leave academy, just like every other boy in her year as well as every other boy on the continent and beyond. they do it to catch the recruitment push and join the army soon enough to have a shot at making SOLDIER before they age out. but elena can't do that and he knows it and braces himself to have that conversation with her, calling her into his office where she keeps her stance formal until he tells her to be as ease and even in the chair across from his desk her posture is tense. spine straight, eyes ahead. he begins what he thinks is going to be the "you know you can't join SOLDIER" conversation but she cuts him off in what he thinks is a somewhat uncharacteristic display, but to her is just another example of how disgraceful her conduct is and how she needs to get out of academy before brings the value of the whole institution down. she tells him this, she tells him she is aware of her shortcomings and the fact she has no future in a military career and her intention is to go to midgar and learn how to be a civilian on her own terms. he signs off on it because none of her bullet points are actually wrong.

midgar is a city of industry and a city of vice and she hasn't been there since she was a child. it is good to her and it is bad to her, as she unlearns years of quasi-military discipline and figures out how to be her own person. she still sometimes wears the academy uniform because old habits die hard and it is a durable thing. she has a one-room apartment in the slums and a job tending bar in wall market. the hours are early evening to after the last train ends and her circadian rhythm adjusts from 4am wakeups and beds made with hospital corners to the distorted clock that comes from living under a plate with no natural sunlight. there are just as many fights and skirmishes to be had in midgar but none of them are like the training exercises at academy. each one is a beautiful short-lived shrine, sometimes they are fun and on her terms, and other times they are fraught and meant for survival. elena relishes them all as a skillset she once thought was a dead-end turns out to be valuable once more. the major negative point is her sister.

gun is in midgar and wears a sleek black suit along with many other people in sleek black suits. elena hears the term 'turk' for the first time. whether they are urban legends or hired killers or pencil pushers who do double duty waterboarding enemies of a power company turned judge and jury doesn't matter. what matters is the deadness she can see in gun's green eyes when she drops by the bar before closing, oftentimes with equally dead-eyed coworkers. those confrontations are never pleasant, they are a powderkeg. elena would like to reach out to her sister, chase away the exhausted look in her face the way she can with other patrons, but the sentiment gets stuck in her throat and they just snipe at each other. gun is a terrible adult and so are all of her colleagues and they are trying their best to neutralize a growing terrorist threat and they are failing. when they come around in the low light of the bar illuminates the stark futility of everything after midnight.

elena does not know exactly what is going on at the highest level of intrigue but she has a good guess. shinra is shitting the bed, and that includes the turks and SOLDIER, which seems to her to be in the middle of a massive coverup as their public-facing 1sts disappear one after another. she wants no part of it and her agenda switches from mastering the nuances of being a civilian to finding sustainability and meaning outside of shinra as the cracks in the facade split ever wider. when the sector six plate is effectively destroyed, it takes the bar she worked at with it and elena decides it is time to get the hell out of midgar.

her years in wall market set her up with some interesting connections and the owner of a small weapons shop (who she might have married for tax purposes but that isn't fleshed out) sets her up with a distinguished older gentleman who is a complete asshole and happens to run guns all across the continent. despite his immaculate coiffure he is not a people person and requires someone who is both qualified to demonstrate his product and more pleasant to deal with than him, because the market is hot right now. shinra has never had much interest in dealing with flyover country. sure they build reactors in some of the backwaters, but not all of them. and no reactor meant no need for shinra to spend the money on protecting hick villages from increased monster presence. the planet is dying and the monsters are restless in the same way wildlife gets in the real world. the people in those tiny towns do their best to defend their homes and livelihood and that means purchasing weaponry, mostly old stock from competitors that shinra has long since crushed or acquired. shinra lets this happen because it is not a threat to them.

so, for a few years, elena is a pretty face with a bang and it is almost scarlettian. she never comes close to the sex appeal of the actual weapons development director of shinra, but it is enough to help move merchandise. most of the buyers are just people trying to survive in the middle of nowhere, but not always. sometimes they are rougher than that, but the money is good enough that she doesn't care about that, or the fact the man who employed her hates her guts and doesn't care much whether she lives or dies. it is a thrilling rush and it is outside of shinra and more than ever does she want to put as much distance as possible between shinra and herself. because her sister is dead according to a notification that tseng of the turks had been cordial enough to send to her father, news that he passed on in a voicemail to elena with a hollow tone. maybe he was trying to reconnect with her because she was now all he had left in the way of family. maybe he just had the same sense of duty as always. she never calls back to ask.

midgar calls her back though. one day her employer informs her with a vindictive grin that he has sold the business part and parcel and that includes her as an employee. acquired by shinra. the reason, ironically, is scarlet, whom she has been doing a two-bit impersonation of. scarlet is a forward thinker but that doesn't mean she can't be swayed by a stockpile of vintage firearms, and with the viciousness required of her position she can throw weight around and get her hands on anything. the weapons are what she wanted and elena knows this and rejects the notion that she will become apart of the shinra payroll because of this little merger. this is proven wrong in short order as her assets are frozen systematically because the turks are hard up for people. they know her. they knew her sister and they know her, even if they haven't kept tabs on her. as soon as the papers cross his desk tseng seizes the opportunity.

the interview with hr to place elena is a mere formality. there is no other place for her there but in the turks. elena, for all her audacity, accepts this and plasters on a professional veneer. the game begins and the world ends.

#ooc #headcanon #somebody sent me a very broad development ask and i wrote several thousand words in the middle of the night #holy shit im sorry for the wall of text someday i will clean this up i swear #some of this has been touched on in existing headcanon posts but not as a whole #as a whole it is...a lot to take in and whoever reads this has my condolences

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journeysintowebcomics · 5 years ago

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Worm Liveblog #119

UPDATE 119: Guided Missile

Last time Francis took a power, and gave half of a vial to Noelle. How will the results of this action be like? I suppose I’ll find out in this update! Let’s see...

Noelle screamed, her back arching.

“Well,” Krouse said, as he reached for the tubing that led from the bag of blood to her arm. He pulled it out, then removed the tape that had held it in place. “That’s bound to get someone’s attention.”

Nothing out of the ordinary so far. From what I recall from when Battery received her power, and from Francis’ own reaction last update, it’s at first a painful and kind of electrifying process. But yeah, screaming like you’re being flayed alive is not what you want to hear a patient do. Someone’s bound to come check what’s going on.

Apparently it’s normal for your heart to stop beating from time to time while you gain powers. Wow. That sounds so dangerous. Once another thing you don’t want to hear happening to your patient, I bet a load of alarm messages are being sent to the nurses’ office right now.

He stood and blocked the door of the room with the chair he’d been sitting on. Noelle screamed again, a howl, almost ragged.

Had he screamed that much? Or taken that long? He felt a twinge of anxiety.

I’m not sure what to think. Hearing someone you love scream in obvious suffering is bound to seem eternal even if it doesn’t last long...or maybe Noelle really is taking too long. Who knows.

During Noelle’s vision, Francis sees it as well. It’s the usual vision about unfathomable beings twirling and approaching Earth, nothing particularly new...I think. Usually the core of the vision is the same, without much variation other than the events themselves. This must be a sign Noelle is receiving her powers right now – the moment Noelle’s life took a turn for the worse. Well, leaving aside everything else that has happened to her this morning.

The vision got Francis distracted enough for a guard to come, bust into the room, and...start attacking and kicking Francis instead of helping the patient in distress. Which, fine, this is a guard and not a medic, but still, where are the doctors? I know the hospital is understaffed but goodness gracious! Francis had good reasons to believe she could die, there’s just no way a serious medical emergency can be solved quickly.

While he’s getting kicked and hit all over, Francis examines the objects to try to find a good one to swap with the guard’s rifle or with the guard, but it’s hard to think while you’re getting kicked in the head, really. All he manages to do when the vision ends is swap the guard and his own position, and that only gets him a second to fight, second he uses to tackle the guard and try to find something to swap with the gun.

Noelle screamed.

This is taking longer than mine did.

Yeah, honestly by now a rather long time has passed. Francis didn’t writhe and scream for so long, neither did Battery from what I remember reading yesterday. The narration has its way of making the moment as long as possible, but somehow this feels like it’s taking longer than usual. A consequence of only having half of the power, perhaps?

He knew if he lost it, he’d probably get shot. The use of his power had been the only way to avoid being beaten into unconsciousness, but he suspected it also raised the stakes. Given a chance, the officer would kill him in self defense.

I think he’s right. I said last update I suspected the hero who exploded was killed precisely because he was a parahuman. Francis has revealed he has powers, so if he loses the fight, he’s doomed. He has so many incentives to stay alive. Say, this room must have security cameras or something, right? So they should know something’s happening with Noelle, and if she shows signs of having powers, she’s dead too.

Francis can swap not only things that have a similar shape, he also can swap objects according to mass. He does that to gain access to the gun by swapping it with a blanket, and attacks the guard now that he’s unarmed. Gotta knock him out, anything to prevent him from leaving and getting more help – if none isn’t coming already, that is.

Krouse closed his eyes and slammed his forehead into the lower half of the uniformed man’s face. He headbutted the guy once more. Blood welled on his own forehead, where a tooth bit too deep into the skin.

I have never understood why the hell headbutting is a move people do. True, your skull is a rather tough and hard thing, but...it’s your head. Colliding against something that’s most certainly not soft, because often it’s done against an enemy cranium. I sure know I wouldn’t be able to fight any better if I had a throbbing headache from headbutting my opponent. Also, hitting your head sounds like a great way to get your brain rattled. No, thanks, I’d rather not give myself a concussion.

The fight ends once Francis takes the rifle and swings it at the guard’s face, knocking him out after a few blows. He’s alive, I think?

He managed to climb to his feet, blinked slowly as he looked down at the uniformed man. Not a cop, not a soldier, something else.

PRT agent, perhaps? From this area’s PRT?

Oh, the doctors and nurses are there, in the hallway! Running away because they’re afraid of Francis. Since the coast is clear, he returns to Noelle’s side, who is still having visions. This really is taking much longer than it usually takes. Curious, I’d have thought taking half of the serum would make her have like half of the vision, not a vision that’s like...four times as long. With nobody else interfering, Francis is able to stay there by Noelle’s side until she’s done.

There’s some consolation: Noelle is healed. Hm. Maybe it took so long because of the extent of her injuries and because she had to regenerate so much of her guts. How long did it take for Alexandria to have her vision, I wonder? Regardless, Noelle is healed, ready to go, and gets dressed while Francis makes sure the rest of the power concoction is safe.

So! Now it’s time to deal with the current obstacle: escaping a hospital that is already aware there’s a madman doing who knows what to one of their patients. Perhaps this is the moment the extent of Noelle’s powers will be revealed?

“Well, you only got half a dose. If you get any powers, they’re liable to be pretty weak. Could be that you burned up whatever juice is in that stuff, healing the damage.”

If only. Maybe things wouldn’t have gone as badly if any, any of the other power vials had been in half.

Noelle feels her skin fizzing, what a curious sensation that must be. She doesn’t see any changes, but she feels fizzing. Brings acids to mind, really. Looks like it’s mostly on contact with her clothes, for some reason, touching other stuff around makes nothing happen. Hm...Francis is on his own here, doesn’t seem like Noelle will be able to do anything – voluntarily, that is. If something very powerful and very awful and deadly happens, I’m sure it’ll be accidental.

Outside, people have been gathering to tackle the emergency, and it isn’t just PRT agents. Myrddin – who apparently got a sex change when I wrote about him two updates ago, my bad, Myrddin – is here with six other superheroes. Many would say this is overkill when dealing with a parahuman who barely can use his powers well, having it for...like two hours so far. Perhaps Francis got captured and the rest helped him escape the heroes?

I think in this room you’re the one who knows the most about Myrddin, Francis, and what you know is very little. Welp! Time to learn on the fly, because Myrddin flies, shatters the window, and lands inside the room. Will he recognize Francis from the very brief moment he saw him?

“Stand down,” Myrddin ordered.

“I’ll pass,” Krouse replied. He looked at the injured P.R.T. soldier, “We’ve got-”

“Begone,” Myrddin said, pointing his staff.

The officer vanished in a cloud of mist.

“-A hostage,” Krouse finished.

Hah! Great job, Francis. Nothing like making clear you won’t let this end peacefully by saying things like ‘We’ve got a hostage’. Also, using ‘we’, implicating Noelle in the process. Honestly I’m pretty sure he singlehandedly made the situation worse for himself and Noelle with one single sentence. Amazing.

Two other heroes flock into the room. How big is this hospital room, holy crap. Where I come from, I can assure you there wouldn’t be enough space for a hospital bed, all the lifesaving equipment, and five people. Well, the people would certainly be able to move and all, but there sure wouldn’t be any space for fighting. It’d be the worst fight ever.

One of the heroes – Anomaly, is her name – uses a ball of something to try to attract Francis, Trying to subdue him. With some quick thinking Francis swaps Noelle with the third heroine, and lets that heroine be trapped in Anomaly’s power. Hah! Noelle almost falls down the window, before that happens Francis swaps her again, this time with Anomaly, and so he just defeated two heroines in a few seconds flat. I’m aware they were fighting a newly discovered parahuman and therefore they didn’t know what he could do, buuuut losing a fight against someone who’s had powers for a couple hours at most doesn’t speak well of these heroes’ skill. I’m sure they’re good at their jobs and what not, but they sure kind of lost pitifully here.

“Who are you?” Myrddin asked.

Krouse glanced out the window. No. This might go badly before he had a chance to execute their escape. If he had to teleport to the back of the crowd, they could wind up in a situation where there was no escape.

“Nobody dangerous.”

Says the guy whose first words to the hero were ‘We’ve got a hostage’. You can’t trust anyone who goes with hostage-taking as the very first measure to try to get an edge over your opponent!

Myrddin’s turn to so something! Francis theorizes about the nature of Myrddin’s power, thinking he has personal dimensions with different rules. One of those dimensions has energy, and with the staff, Myrddin opens it according to the shape drawn with the staff, hitting the opponent with the blast. That actually sounds like a pretty cool power! Great!

Thinking about other dimensions makes Francis ask Myrddin if he can open doors between worlds, and that alarms Myrddin because for a moment he thinks Francis and Noelle are like those monsters the Simurgh brought into the world. The least you’re associated to the Simurgh, the better, so that’s something you don’t want the heroes to think about you. Francis hurries to disguise his interest as idle curiosity.

No more questions to ask, time to leave! Seeing a police car approaching the scene, Francis swaps Noelle and himself with two people in the crowd, and then does it again to be placed inside the car, and he proceeds to drive it as nonchalantly as possible. Flawless escape! He had the advantage of nobody knowing what he could do, that was what tipped the balance on his favor. Now they have to return to the rest of the Travelers.

He reached for Noelle’s gloved hand and squeezed it, but she didn’t smile, didn’t show any relief. She looked troubled.

He realized why. Her left hand was undamaged where she’d slashed it on the shattered glass of the window.

Oh, that means she has fast regeneration, right? Maybe that’s what the fizzing was, her body getting prepared for regenerating. Not bad! For her. Because healing fast is going to get in the way of fighting her if necessary, in the present.

Finding the house where the rest of the Travelers are gathered was easy enough, and they go in to find their friends gathered. Cody isn’t among them, because he’s still an outsider to the group. Mars hugs Noelle right away, and Luke says Francis was stupid for all he has done. But at least Noelle is healed, and that’s good. Should help with the morale.

Obviously the rest don’t approve that Francis went and gave powers to someone else, and this time it does get to him because it’s a friend saying it instead of Cody. All Francis can do is try to make excuses for all this, saying it’s the Simurgh’s fault, and while that’s correct, the distinction isn’t as notable as Francis hopes it is.

There’s Cody! And heeeee has powers. Fucking Cody. Of course he demonstrates what he can do, to boast about his newfound abilities.

“I got powers. The paperwork said it was the ‘Vestige’ can. And as luck would have it, my power counters yours. Totally and completely.”

Naturally. He got seriously lucky, then! Is this his chance to finally one-up Francis? He sure seems to think it is. Everyone else tells him to stop messing around, while Cody uses his power to punch Francis. Seems like some sort of...time travel? Luke agrees, and Cody explains more. Hah! It’s for the reader’s benefit, really, because otherwise I’m certain he’d love to keep the details of his secret hidden from the guy he loathes.

Cody shrugged, “Directed time travel, anyways. Backwards only, a few seconds at a time. You teleport away, I set you back to where you were, then kick you in the balls for being an asshole.”

Hmmmmm...it can have its uses, uses beyond the pettiness Cody is indulging in. It’d be great for second chances, if things went disastrously wrong immediately. Wouldn’t be useful for extended fights or choices. I’m kind of interpreting it as a way, way weaker version of Coil’s power in that Cody gets into a specific timeline, rewinds, and tries something else. Maybe Coil’s power comes from the Vestige kind of power too, just that with a much stronger configuration, the kind that costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

Brushing aside with kind of admirable nonchalance that Cody most likely gave him like two dozens beatings with his power, Francis decides now they need to work on getting out of the quarantine. Easier said than done, really, I’m sure Myrddin is arranging things so everyone’s on the lookout for Francis and Noelle. Good thing the rest of the Travelers are still a mystery for them, that could be the element of surprise they need.

Mars mentions ‘their stuff’, and when Francis asks what she means, Cody rewinds so nobody can answer what he asked, and once again tries to get everyone to ‘stop catering to him’. Oh, shut up. Fucking Cody.

“You’re being as bad as he ever was,” Luke said.

Cody turned towards Luke, “No. No I’m not.”

“You’re making calls on our behalf. You’re not being a team player, and you’re making things harder than they have to be to get your way.”

“It’s not the same,” Cody said.

Honestly I think I wouldn’t mind that as much if he was self-aware he’s a jackass. I think that’s why I’m liking Francis much more than him, Francis at the very least makes no attempt to pretend he’s on the right. Cody covers his ears and shouts he has done nothing wrong and that Francis does things worse.

I think this interlude has improved my opinion of Francis somewhat, really. He’s not on my favorite characters list by any means, but at least I tolerate him now. It helps that he’s not being antagonistic towards characters I like a lot – like Skitter, who he clashes with by virtue of Skitter being the main character. Also, following his train of thought and knowing his backstory helps a lot too. Frankly, this whole thing has endeared me more to the Travelers in general! Especially Sundancer. I like Mars.

Since arguing with Cody is a futile endeavor, Francis decides to make an example out of him by throwing him against a bookcase, and doing it again and again and again when Cody keeps rewinding. When Cody uses his power on himself he never remembers what happened, leaving him vulnerable to the same thing happening over and over. Soon he realizes that, and stops rewinding. Hah! Not even with powers he’s able to get an upper hand over Francis, the guy managed to find a weakness in...five minutes. That was good.

He isn’t satisfied with this, though. He asserts to everyone Cody fighting him every once in a while is a problem, and that he’s turning into a liability because he can’t control himself. Oho! Is this what leads to Cody’s absence from the Travelers? Because by now it’s pretty clear he’s not ballistic, and none of the Travelers has his power. Something must have happened to him.

As if crushing Cody’s delusions about how having powers finally got him ahead of Francis, Francis makes pretty clear that if he ever fears for his own safety or feels Cody is actively harming their efforts to return home, he’ll kill him. And he means it. Cody can tell Francis means that. Well then! Guess that answers what happened to Cody before the Travelers arrived to Brockton Bay.

Well at least the arguing is over now. With some luck that’ll be the end of this, buuuut I’m not holding my breath.

What they meant with stuff is that they went to steal everything they may need. It was a necessary evil, given they have zero money. Other than the stuff they stole, they should also try to take as much cash as they can, because they’ll be needing it. Luke still has some degree of consideration towards Francis, they used to be best friends. Sure aren’t in the present, what with Ballistic not being in the best of terms with everyone.

Now that I think about it, the widening distance between the Travelers – in the present, I mean – must be a result of the stress and having to go around with nothing but promises of being able to reach their goal of helping Noelle and go back to their world, because here, at the start of everything, they weren’t as distant with each other. They seem to me like a generally united group, no doubt because they used to be a gaming team. I also think having Francis as a leader must have made that even worse.

So far Noelle hasn’t revealed what power she has, even though she experimented by touching stuff around. Hm. Can’t really guess what power she has...

While Francis was out there healing Noelle, the rest gave some consideration to taking some powers of their own, or at least Luke did.

Luke was nodding a little.

“Luke!” Jess said, aghast.

“What? Half the damage is already done,” he said, “And as far as I’m concerned, the benefits of getting more powers outweighs the possible danger. We don’t have any real income, we don’t have anybody to go to for help, and it’s going to be far easier to get funds if we can do something like mercenary work with a team of people with powers. Like Cody was talking about, we could hire someone to get us home.”

Ah, that’s not a bad idea. I notice Luke didn’t say ‘team of heroes’, he simply said people with powers, meaning he wasn’t refusing to consider working for villains right from the start. You know, they’re rather lucky stumbling upon heroes and villains is rather easy, given they don’t do much of a job staying hidden – when it doesn’t involve their real identities, of course. He also brings up they’ll have to keep Francis and Cody under control, and that’ll be much easier when they have powers.

What gets Jess to be interested in taking a power is that it may be able to heal her legs. You know, it sucks that it didn’t. Why didn’t it heal her legs not even a little bit? I know the serums have only a chance of healing, instead of being guaranteed, but there wasn’t not even some healing, from what I know. Rather unfortunate the one thing that got Jess’ attention ended not happening.

“I am,” he echoed her. “She set Cody against me, so I had an adversary, putting me off balance. Then used Noelle’s injury to push me to act. And you guys? You, Luke, Marissa and Oliver? She kept you occupied. Kept you focused on yourselves. You want to talk about the Simurgh’s game plan? It centers around me. I can’t see any other way of looking at it. She isn’t aiming to have you guys get mondo powers and kill a president or something. Why would she make Oliver feel like crap if that was her end goal?”

“It’s you?” Luke asked.

“Doesn’t it make sense? Just look at where the focus is. She distracted you guys because you were the ones who could have talked sense into me. The can of worms is opened, and I’m the person she’s turned into a guided missile.”

Ahahahaha, oh, my, he was so close and got it wrong, and I’m pretty sure that’s because his head consciously refuses to consider the truth. Okay, so, speaking from what I have seen in this arc. I think he may be right about the Simurgh intending to keep everyone else busy with the problems the Simurgh reminded them of. She bombarded them with those memories and thoughts, so they’re unable to make Francis think twice when it’s about everything he has done. All that exposure has made him focus on Noelle so much everyone else wasn’t a priority. Now that Noelle is okay, maybe they’re all on the same standing – until things become ‘help Noelle return to normal’, I suppose. So yeah, helping her was Francis’ entire motivation, so...if the Simurgh intended to keep everyone else busy so Francis would be able to carry out what he pushed him to do, wouldn’t that make Noelle the guided missile, not him? Because if they had been able to calm him down and make him think, then Noelle wouldn’t have gotten powers. Also, she’s the one people dread in the future, not Trickster. Noelle must be the cornerstone of the Simurgh’s plans.

What I’m not sure is how Cody fits in this. He fighting Francis at every turn would get in the way of helping Noelle. That’s the one thing that doesn’t mesh with my interpretation. Unleeeeeeess...maybe Cody really did push things a little too far and got himself murdered by Francis – Cody will be so pissed off about that – and that led to the current fractures in the group, because none of them are comfortable with being under the leadership of a murderer. It’s a plausible possibility, in my opinion.

Jess is in. No word about if Mars and Oliver are interested, but I suppose they won’t back down now that everyone else has powers. If it wasn’t because there was half a vial left, I’d even think Oliver wouldn’t take any. Oh well. They’re deciding who takes what.

“I’ll take half,” Oliver said.

All eyes turned to him. Oliver continued, “If Noelle doesn’t want to finish it, I’ll take half. I’m not strong, I’m not brave, or smart, or creative. I don’t have it in me to be a hero. So as long as you don’t ask me to risk my life fighting stuff like the Simurgh, I’ll take the half, try to find other ways to help.”

If Oliver isn’t really that interested in powers and won’t even give use to them, they really, really should give Noelle the other half. From what I have heard, he can’t do much in the present, so his half of the vial didn’t really change him in any significant manner, taking him around wouldn’t have been any different if he had been powerless.

Goddamnit they won’t. But at least Francis said a kind word to Oliver for once.

“Okay,” Krouse said. “Anyone want to call dibs on the others?”

“Robin,” Luke said. “Sounds like it might mean I could fly.”

Hah! That sucks. He’s going to be so disappointed he can’t fly, since it seems like that was why he picked that specific vial. I mean, maybe he could stand on something large enough and then propel it through the air, but that sounds so dangerous and unlikely to work it’s not worth it. Why was Ballistic’s power under ‘Robin’, I wonder.

“Mars?” Jess asked. “You care?”

Marissa shook her head.

“Then Deus for me.”

I should have known the Deus vial was Genesis’, now that I think about it. The name is a pretty big indication of what she can do.

Everyone will take a vial one at a time, so they all have time to writhe and scream and have their visions, and they’ll leave before sunrise. And so, the Travelers were born. Change of scene!

I’m kind of disappointed there’s no scene of them escaping the quarantine. I knew it was guaranteed they would escape, but it can’t have been too easy, can it? Not when the heroes knew there was one, possibly two rogue Simurgh parahuman thralls on the fly. But no, the next scene opens with them already on the road, driving their stolen cars. Things seem to be generally okay right now, no word on where they’re going first to start their mercenary work and look for someone who can get them home.

They had their powers, and there was a slight cast of disappointment for everyone involved.

No kidding, I imagine Jess was disappointed she wasn’t healed at all. Luke is also disappointed he can’t fly, and Mars hasn’t realized yet the extent of her powers, but given how much she dislikes hurting people with it, I bet she’ll be disappointed too. Hm. Maybe things would have been a little better if Luke had gotten the Deus vial, since it’s versatile and would have given some flight even if it was with a creation. Jess may have done well with any of the others. Mars...uh...well if she dislikes destructive powers then she wouldn’t have been happy with either. Sorry, Mars.

There’s Francis, thinking everything is okay and not about to take a turn for the worse in...hm. How long did it take before they realized something was wrong with Noelle, I wonder? If it was so bad they needed to keep moving and lock Noelle in a vault, then it’s not something that can go unnoticed for long. The other shoe must be about to drop.

The Travelers stop at a highway stop, and they go inside to the facilities. Aaaand there it is. Disaster strikes, Mars comes out a little later, frightened, from the women’s bathroom. Everyone else is inside except Cody, who keeps getting isolated from everything, and Francis gets in, finding Noelle on the floor.

There’s something on Noelle’s leg, a pretty big burn-like thing. My first thought had been that Mars had accidentally burned her, but then I recalled Noelle supposedly had fast regeneration, so that shouldn’t have mattered. Then comes the reveal.

Beneath the angry red skin on Noelle’s thigh, there was an eyeball, twice the normal size, with a broad yellow iris. Noelle’s hands were clenched into fists, gripping the cloth of her jeans as the eye’s gaze darted from one member of their group to another. It settled on Krouse.

Accusatory.

I’m not sure what exactly is going on besides the obvious ‘she’s growing an eye on her leg and that’s not okay’, which is already pretty bad for Noelle. This is obviously a byproduct of her power, and given her terrified reaction, I suppose it’s not something she wanted. What is her power? It can’t be just growing body parts, because that’s not destructive enough to warrant all the danger in the present. Something’s off here.

That’s the end of the chapter. Whatever’s going on will have to be for next time. No way this is the last chapter for this arc.

Next time: in three updates

#worm #worm liveblog #webserial #liveblog #webserial liveblog

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idexstuck · 5 years ago

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LBTW’s current outline under the cut. suffer with me

1.0 - the letterbomb initiative

1.1 - ceaseless flight (RnR)

1.1.1 - ruth awakens to find rich has gone missing, seemingly voluntarily. after going about his daily routine, he gets a dispatch from verne to kill mysthuntonium. after assuming that

1.1.2 - the party agrees to lay off accelerating for a while, so ruth spends a good deal of time looking around the dimension he accelerated into. while doing a solo search, he comes across a temple that's seemingly taken the place of where he and his boyfriend used to live. inside, he finds a scrap of paper with standard galactic on it.

1.1.3 - at solar edge, johanna and emerson have a surprisingly civil conversation (only because reese and ruth are there to keep johanna from getting charged with murder). emerson does ruth a favor, translating the SGA on the paper into english. it says 'NOCTURNE.'

1.1.4 - with this, ruth is determined to accelerate further. the party advises against it for his own health, but after insisting he's survived worse, ruth and reese accelerate while johanna says she'll tag along later. she has some choice words with emerson, but follows the party to their next destination. led only by the paper scrap, ruth returns to the site of the temple with reese and finds nothing. after consolidations, ruth's resolve to find his boyf is restored.

1.1.5 - in all of her wisdom, verne has done some extraneous scouting for ruth, and says that- in uncertain terms- rich is alive and well. ruth is relieved, but unsatisfied with the answer; verne says that this NOCTURNE is a threat that bears immediate neutralization. his goals slightly shifted, ruth asks emerson for more help. emerson makes it a 'date,' of course, but he does disclose that NOCTURNE isn't connected to the wireframe at all.

1.1.6 - armed with new information, ruth begins devising new severance patterns to break through the wireframe and neutralize NOCTURNE. johanna and reese say he's jumping the gun, and after hours of failed attempts, johanna invites him to deal with things her way. her methods are questionable, but ruth does relax a little, and promises to stop putting himself in jeopardy.

1.1.7 - it's been a week since accelerating into the current dimension, and despite it being the middle of october, the weather is strangely warm. johanna and emerson have an entirely UN-civil chat, and reality starts falling apart.

1.1.8 - entirely unaffected by the strange happenings, ruth damn-near works himself to death conducting tests on the wireframe with severance patterns. emerson pays him a visit, somehow, and his true colors start to show. instead of watching ruth scramble to destroy the wireframe, emerson gives ruth the pattern that leads to NOCTURNE- but just before things start going xiang-liu levels of haywire.

1.1.8.1 - rich, entrapped by the NOCTURNE, reminisces on his time alone.

1.1.9 - ruth falls into the space outside the wireframe. encompassed by a wintry landscape on all sides, he begins his trek, and is quickly interrupted by a catatonic rich and what he can assume is the NOCTURNE, who appears now as a specter instead of its real form. ruth severs rich from the nocturne- or, at least, repels the nocturne, and they have a very cute and tearful reunite. the outside destabilizes without the NOCTURNE at full power, and ruth and rich fall into the septenary gardens. ruth delivers his letter, and the two of them make their way back to the nearest dimension.

1.0.10 - normalcy has, for the most part, returned- ruth gets his pay, rich gets sick leave for almost dying, and johanna and reese treat the main party to drinks on the house (emerson uninvited). even verne shows up!

1.2 - gridley and the septenary gardens (ruth)

1.2.1 - gridley zimmerman, on the brink of death from NOCTURNE, makes a 'tether' with one of the seven fundamental rules of reality: the septenary clocktower of consciousness. through her extreme faith in the goddess, she's granted theodora von ennekern's personal blade, forged with the purpose of being able to cleave anything in twain. training montage!

1.2.2 - gridley is getting used to her new powers, and tries to create an illusion in which her home was never destroyed. it ends badly, and, consumed with rage, she accidentally cleaves an entire timeline apart.

1.2.3 - focused entirely on vengeance, gridley travels around a few dimensions- one still engulfed by the mirror war, one archaic (theo cameo!), and one close to the present.

1.2.4 - ruth gets a notification from verne that a new threat is on the loose. he nicknames it neptuniomega-237. meanwhile, gridley is pulled back into the septenary gardens after a choice incident with 209 (not shown). while at solar edge, she talks to ruth one-on-one, and says something to the effect of 'i know who you are, and i know what you do, but stay out of my way.' ruth figures this is his target.

1.2.5 -

- show off the clocktowers

- gridleys out to find nocturne right? but like shes mad so shes destroying everything in her path (she doesnt know emerson is doing the exact same thing lol)

1.1.x - within the collapsing sixth clocktower, gridley and ruth have their final confrontation

1.3 - miranda and phoebe (reese)

1.3.1 - while mulling over a drink he can't consume, reese is approached by miranda cassidy and phoebe francis with a deal: he can go back in time and get a do-over of the incident that nearly ended his life- no strings attached.

1.3.2 - at the discretion of even emerson, reese accepts M&P's deal- in his eyes, he's got nothing to lose but his life for the second time. he meets up with M&P at phoebe's bar, and after tasting some of phoebe's house mix (bad idea), miranda and phoebe send him back a week before the incident.

1.3.3 - reese, restored to his old organic form, quickly remembers how the week before the incident played out, and begins to retrace his steps at the dis-advisement of phoebe and miranda (acting as the devil and angel on his shoulder in a sense). on wednesday- the seventh day before the accident- he tampers with the strange purple section of the wireframe he encountered earlier.

1.3.4 - thurs

1.3.5 - fri

1.3.6 - sat

1.3.7 - sun

1.3.8 - mon

1.3.9 - tues

1.3.10 - wed

1.4 - emerson (johanna)

1.4.1 - emerson and reese go on a 'date,' and when reese gets back to solar edge, he's nearly killed by johanna. johanna finally admits why emerson makes her so mad, but in vague terms at best. reese, determined to know why, presses further, but she avoids the topic by getting hammered and refusing to answer any more questions.

1.4.2 - while trying to visit an old friend in gracetown's hospital, johanna is stopped by emerson, and, constrained by social order, they catch up with each other. emerson is as slippery as ever when it comes to goals and motives, but johanna makes it 100% clear that her next move is ending his life.

1.4.3 - johanna asks ruth to help her in severing things from the wireframe. we get a lesson on wireframe mechanics, and a nice bonding bit between johanna and ruth. johanna is surprisingly competent, and ruth is a surprisingly good teacher.

1.4.x - within the wireframe, the party confronts 210, johanna leading the charge. in a final attempt to eliminate the neutralizers, emerson consumes the prime material plane. through sheer force of will, johanna survives, and severs emerson's connection to the wireframe, essentially killing him. his body collapses, and johanna is thrown into a (all things considered) pretty normal version of gracetown.

1.4.x - johanna and emerson (somehow still alive), have a chat about morals and stuff.

1.5 - reverse actor (RnR)

2.0 - catch you on the flip-side

2.1 - unit 12 & mirror stuff (reese)

2.1.1 - through a hole in the septenary gardens, the party finds themself on the flip-side, a mirror dimension from which the mirrors originate. they meet johanna's flip-side variant, and begin to explore this weird version of the world.

2.1.2 - while coming back from a scouting dispatch by verne, ruth is stopped by a strange man named unit twelve, who claims to be something called an observant. he says that ruth has tipped the cosmic scale of good and evil too far in the "good" direction, and before ruth can ask why that's a bad thing, U12 makes it clear that he's out to eliminate the neutralizers for good.

Unit Twelve Healing Chapter where he learns how to bake and Heals

do it like in HCDND i beg of you- u12 is concoting some runic shit to contact the nocturne directly and gain its favor- like, backstory then, etc etc

2.2 - marcia (main three)

2.2.1 - the main party wakes up in a gaudy ballroom, golden and clean, but inhabited by nobody. they quickly meet marcia, who has been alive and well this whole time, albeit under the dominion of the NOCTURNE. while showing them about the place, NOCTURNE sees it as a chance to strike. the group splits up- ruth with marcia, johanna with gridley, and reese with rich.

2.2.2.1 - ruth, while hiding from the NOCTURNE, gets some answers from marcia about NOCTURNE and the flip-side.

2.2.2.2 - johanna and gridley have found some kind of supply closet to hide in, and they find out that they're more similar than they thought.

2.2.2.3 - reese and rich share relationship advice (and cooking skills).

2.2.2 -

2.3 - nocturne (main three)

2.3.1 - the party regroups after sneaking around the NOCTURNE's shadow, and finally shows itself in its true form- a body double of ruth. it lets itself be 'defeated' by the party, but not before ruth is shown an illusion in which he becomes one of NOCTURNE's lackeys. afterwards, the ballroom returns to normal, and marcia seems mildly disappointed at the outcome of the battle. she offers to treat them to dinner, but specifically reese refuses, and they head back to flip-side solar edge.

2.3.2 - ruth and rich commiserate about missing home.

2.3.3 - over dinner, the party discusses just how they plan on getting home. verne contacts them with a call and ensures that she can and will bring them home- but the hurdles won't stop after that.

3.0 - zero mercy; red string

3.1 - the helena effect & more on the red string theorem (mercy)

3.1.1 - verne leads ruth and rich on a duo mission towards a woman named mercy helena, who is trying to deduce whether or not soulmates exist. through extensive testing, the answer seems to be no- but in a final gambit, she tests her experiments on ruth and rich. as it turns out, testing for the red string means that she has to sift through the entire story of how they met.

3.1.2 - turns out, ruth and rich met at solar edge!

3.1.3 - ruth takes a dispatch mission from verne, and runs into rich along the way. ruth comes clean about his true occupation, but rich seems to not mind.

3.1.4 - while on break, rich and emerson share relationship advice.

3.1.5 - ruth and rich go out, officially, at a nearby restaurant.

3.1.6 - after a particularly dangerous dispatch, rich patches up ruth in the med-bay. this is our first look at rich's healing magic!

3.1.7 - after another stressful day of dispatches, ruth and rich go out at solar edge.

3.1.8 - a few weeks after moving in with rich, ruth notices his boyfriend is acting a little on-edge as of late. when he tries to ask what's wrong, rich clams up and refuses to answer.

3.1.9 - rich, unable to sleep, makes tea and observes late-night gracetown. ruth, also unable to sleep, plays some tunes on his ol' guitar (gin blossoms, of course). rich simply requests that ruth stays with him instead of trying to fix his problems. ruth insists that rich's problems are his own, but rich is having none of it. the next day, ruth finds that rich has voluntarily gone missing.

3.1.10 - after intense calculations, helena determines that rich and ruth are indeed soulmates- and the whole backstory thing was just a tiny part of what she needed. as it turns out, the two of them are tethered to the zeroth and most enigmatic clocktower- that of which helena theorizes is human bonds.

3.2 - xiao lei and the zero

3.2.1 - a psychic woman named xiao lei asks gridley for help on her own time, and not because of a verne dispatch. gridley agrees to help, but for some reason, xiao lei can't be mind-read like anyone else normally can. she introduces gridley to the idea of the zero- a place beyond any '-side' that exists- the very edge of unobservable reality.

3.3 - anti-freeze

3.3.1 - in a strange twist of fate, ruth is the one that goes missing this time. he awakens in a strange laboratory, accompanied by a woman who calls herself "five" and claims to be part of an "anti-freeze initiative." they chat, and as it turns out, five has never heard of the clocktowers, and comes from an awfully odd place.

3.4 - macy and valentine's day

3.5 - vivian

- theo's whole thing

- alter-egos (main three)

- 209 proper (main three)

- who is R.Z. (RnR)

- astraea (theo)

- vernes backstory (verne)

- angelica (rich)

- vivian and more about the outside (main three)

- em alter (johanna and em)

- diagammathetium

- Girls' Frontline Healing Chapter Except It's Letterbomb! A Whole Part of Fluff!

- phoebe gets in lots of trouble for fucking w cosmic waste

- septenary clocktowers except its mirror temple b-side from celeste

- cass (oldie)

#textpost #NOTHING HAPPENS WHAT THE FUCK

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rainkilled · 6 years ago

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PETER COLTON AND HELO MORRIS a summary for those of you who love our boys but cant keep up. Lets be real, even we cant always keep up. @warsache

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Helo and Peter had never met before the dropship. They were sat next to each other. During the crash landing, Helo grabbed Peter’s hand and that was their very first contact ever. When they stilled, they never dropped hands. Peter was silent, and didnt get up as fast as everyone else, and Helo stayed with him despite at this point still not having exchanged a single word. When they did exit the dropship, they laughed and they touched the ground and they grinned at each other. And then they kissed. and THEN they exchanged names.

And they fell in love in that exact moment. But they tried to hide it, to be casual about it, pretend nothing happened. Helo became one of Bellamy’s pals, and the first time they had sex was because Helo was trying to get Peter’s wristband. Then they became fuckbuddies, but it was always more. Helo called it off because it was getting to be too much. Peter got really drunk. They ended up back together but still not public. Helo broke up with him again because he didn’t like how strong his feelings were getting. They got into a physical fight in front of the whole camp. They got back together. Then Helo cheated on Peter. Peter forgave him. They made themselves officially together, and public. There was at least one, I think two more break ups after that. Then they were taken by the mountain.

Helo disappeared first and Peter went insane. He couldn’t focus on anything but finding him. When he returned, they were only together a short time before the mountain people tried to take Peter’s best friend for drilling and Peter fought to take her place voluntarily. Helo went crazy with grief, knowing what they would do. When the delinquents were all caught and brought in, Peter was inches from death, lifeless and discarded on a table.

After the mountain, Helo breaks up with Peter in the hospital because of fear of losing him. They end up back together not long after that because they realize how dumb that is. They both become guards, Helo struggles with his temper and his demons. They break up again. Peter finds out his mom is dead, and follows Pike out of blind loyalty to Bellamy. He and Helo end up back together when he realizes what a mistake hes made and falls apart. Wrecked with guilt, he takes ALIES chip pretty early on. ALIE uses him to try and get to Helo, who stands against her for a long time. Finally, they crucify Helo. Peter (under ALIES control) being the one to give the orders. When he still wont break, Peter stabs himself in the stomach in front of him. Helo takes the chip to save his boyfriends life. For a minute, they’re happy in the COL. When the city falls, they realize all the things they’ve done. They break up, both thinking their codependency is unhealthy and its causing them to risk their lives.

They learn of the radiation wave. Peter sneaks out over and over and over to search the wreckage of factory station for his mom, knowing she’s gone. His dad comes after him, they both get caught in the rain. Mark Colton dies, and Peter is burned within inches from death. Helo, back at Arkadia, is with Kane, listening over the radio to Peter’s screams. Peter begs for the radio to be turned off, because he doesnt want Helo to hear it. Even broken up, they’re so clearly in love. Bellamy is able to rescue Peter. They get back together when peter wakes up from his unconscious state in Medical at Arkadia. After that, the rain terrifies him. Any time it rains, he has full body nightmares that make him shake and scream. Helo breaks up with peter after he decides he doesnt want to make it to the bunker. He never tells peter the reason. They end up back together when Peter searches him out, scared of the rain at night. they break up again for the same reason a few weeks later. Peter still doesnt know. Peter’s best friend dies in DNR. They get back together AGAIN, when Helo finally tells peter he doesnt want to live, and Peter says they either live together or die together. No matter what happens, its both of them or neither of them.

Peter makes a deal with Octavia, securing himself and Helo both a place in the bunker despite knowing the Helo doesnt want it. When he wakes up, they have a physical blow out. A big big fight in front of everyone. But they don’t break up. They both become soldiers at Octavia’s side, Peter acting as something more like an executioner. Something very against his peaceful nature. Helo hates it. For the first time, Peter breaks up with Helo. Helo refuses to be broken up with. 5 years in the bunker pass and they’ve seen so much blood and death and horror, but they’ve not broken up a single time since they were on the ground. Peter asks Helo to marry him not long after they reach the ground again.

Happiness is short lived, as they have the prisoners to deal with, and the defectors, and spacekru coming back, and getting to eden etc. They both remain loyal to Octavia, loyal to each other. When they go into Cryo, their chambers say “Colton-Morris” after their names.

And here we are.

#long post #im so emotional #*. Maybe it's time to come home there's an awful lot of breathing room but I can hardly move / sh. heloter / @waldenborn

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indieks · 7 years ago

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Silent Treatment 🔇 Mark Tuan || Part.1

💭 Pairing : Mark Tuan x Reader

💭 Genre : Angst, Fluff, Supernatural-ish

💭 Word count : 11k.

💭 Synopsis : Ever since his accident, he has forbidden himself from speaking ever again, as his voice hasn’t been useful the time he had needed it the most. Until he meets you, the one and only girl that could possibly help him overcome his trauma, as you make his heart and mind want to speak up again. You, who can hear his deepest thoughts through your special ability, yet still doesn’t see him as a desperate mute, but a mysterious man worthy of your care.

💭 Notice : The sentences written in bold are Mark's thoughts, and when *written like this between stars*, it means the character can hear them.

Part 01 🔇 Part 02 🔈 Part 03 🔉 Part 04 [END] 🔊

💭 A/N : I’m back!!!! Finally, I’m writing for GOT7, I’m so happy! This time, it’s a short series (normally 3 parts) that came up into my mind a long time ago but without the knowledge of where to take it nor who to choose… Until I finally opened my eyes on my own bias that suited the story too damn well, and helped it growing on its own…

I just wanted to add that I would never pretend that I know about psychology and how to treat patients! Everything comes out of my pure imagination! And please, if you ever feel bad for any reason, reach out, you matter! ♥

Thanks for ever reading this! As usual, I hope you’ll like it, and any comments, good or bad, are welcomed! I love your feedback ♥

Disclaimer : For the first time in my life, I can proudly say that the GIF is mine!

The young man was sitting lazily on the leather couch, his eyes deprived from any light or life, with his fingers gently scratching the damaged pieces of fabric that were soon going to fall to the ground.

"Hmmm I see..." the psychiatrist mumbled as he wrote down some key words on the blank sheet in front of him. "He still doesn't want to speak?"

"No, doctor. I've tried everything I could. When I'm forcing him a little or approach him too close, he pushes me away pretty brutally... I don't know what to do anymore."

"And what about his best friend, J... Jason? Jason is that it?"

The mute had been about to break his vow of never speaking ever again in order to correct that annoying error, but he bit his bottom lip right before doing so, only glancing at the doctor who gladly caught that small reaction.

"Jackson, and he's doing really fine! He keeps on telling him that he doesn't blame him... Why would he even–" his dad sighed. "They still are best friends, well, at least I hope so... They used to laugh all the time, the house was so lively whenever the whole group of friends came, but ever since Jackson got out of the hospital, each one of their visits has been them talking to a wall and leaving with an upset expression on their faces..."

"How long has it been since the accident? Two months right?" the doctor asked while swinging slowly in his black chair.

"Yes..." the father answered, his voice trembling and, anticipating the fall of heavy tears that had accumulated under his tired eyelids, he grabbed a tissue from a box on the desk in front of him. "Two months since my wife died... And two months since Mark hasn't said a word."

The eyes of the said Mark landed on his father's back, whose shoulders were so down that he could clearly see how heavy the weight he carried on them was, and his heart squeezed in his chest.

"Mark? Can you come forward for a second?" the psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, Dr. Woodam Hwang, called for him along with a motion of his fingers signaling him to sit on the empty chair across his father's.

Mark executed himself, all the while looking at the ground as he exhaled quietly, and he sat on the chair, spreading his legs nonchalantly. After the tatters of the couch, he started to play with the ones of his ripped pair of jeans, not showing a bit of interest in the man in a white blouse facing him. Everything coming from his demeanor and facial expressions could tell how annoyed he was to be here and to have those psychiatric sessions that were far from helpful, at least in his eyes. Two months and four different doctors without a concluding diagnostic had passed ; why his father still hadn't given up on him just like he himself had?

Like the previous times, the doctor would pretend he knows everything that was stepping on his mind as well as the reasons he was doing this to himself, but up till now, it only had been wrong assumptions.

Like the previous times, his father would believe in the doctor's words, as they sound pretty right when they're coming from a professional's mouth. And because he can't talk anymore, Mark won't be able to tell him how ridiculous the diagnosis was, nor to explain himself.

Like the previous times, the link between his father and him would only shatter even more, destroyed by Mark's silence and the scary names that were given to his "sickness", or "trauma" as they say.

Aphasia, check ; temporary disablement, nope ; post-traumatic syndrome, maybe… Four doctors, and none of them, after having gone around those popular medical possibilities, had saved a final solution to the main problem : Mark had made a choice. None of them, had found the key to unlock his blocking that made him aim to shut himself up, forever.

So, in the end, Mark was once again going to be everything the doctor would want him to be. Two had said it would stop "sooner or later", remaining the vaguer possible – probably to get his father's hopes up ; and the other two had somehow reached the truth, as they had concluded that no one can really do anything against the power of human's will – at least without using force.

But still, where all of them had went wrong anyway, was when they had prescribed him a psychiatric treatment in the end – to cash the check, right? Or was it really because of their duty to take care of their patients, even the lost causes like him?

And, like the previous times, this psychiatric treatment wouldn't work, because Mark wasn't sick ; he was doing this voluntarily and didn't want it to stop. And that, his father either refused to accept it, or wouldn't believe it.

"I'm not expecting you to talk when it's only our first session together, Mark. But I'm going to deliver you my first conclusion, and if you don't agree, or if there's anything you want to tell, write it down there."

Dr. Hwang slid a blank sheet of paper along with a pencil in front of the empty-looking boy who nodded without great conviction. Mark felt the hopeful look of his father on him burn his cells, but he didn't mirror it as he laid back in his chair, waiting for the fantastic diagnostic this doctor would have reached. He quickly eyed the pin on the man's blouse and almost rolled his eyes at the sight of its lettering.

A hypnotherapist? Seriously dad?

"The shock must have affected you a lot, and I totally understand that. But what I'm fearing right now, is that it is transforming into a trauma that would block you for life..." the psychiatrist started, his eyes going back and forth between the two gloomy men on the other side of his desk. "Everybody knows that the loss of a mother is really hard for the child, whatever age he or she is, but even more when it has been as brutal as what you went through. In fact, the main problem is, that you were present when it happened."

Mark finally looked up to gaze at the serious doctor's face, who bent forward to lay his elbows on the desk, linking his fingers together as he was slowly reaching the heart of his analysis.

"And what I think is that... You feel guilty. For not having cried for help when you should have in your eyes, because you were the only one that was still conscious when the car crashed. I think, that you believe that you speaking is useless now, because your voice hasn't been of any help at that time. You believe that she died because of you, so overall, you feel guilty for having survived, and not her. Am I wrong?"

Shit, that bastard. He's… right?

Mark only shrugged before looking away from the doctor who smiled quickly, feeling proud to have seemingly pinpointed the problem.

"But what I believe, Mark, is that your mother surely wouldn't want you to inflict this to yourself."

He caught the angry stare of his client and it made him even prouder. He was getting closer.

"I believe you're too young to waste your life like this. Do you know that it is only normal that you didn't cry for help? You just had an accident, Mark. You were upside down when they found you that night ; you were hurt and shocked as well! Yes, people came late, but they still did, and it saved both your life and your best friend's! You shouldn't feel guilty for that, but lucky!"

Mark felt a sudden wave of rage running in his whole body. What did he even know? Was he there? He hadn't been that hurt, there was the proof : he only stayed three days at the hospital, while his best friend laid one month in a bed and his mother... His mother...

"I know. I know you're deadly mad at me right now, and you have all the rights to be. I saw how you had been about to curse at me earlier when I misspelled Jackson's name, so I know you can talk. I know you can, but you won't. And my job consists in, helping you. So I'll try to help you as much as I can. I'll help you until I've found the thing inside of you that would make you want to talk again. You're a good person Mark, I can see that, as you take all the blame for yourself. But let me help you overcome this trauma, will you?"

I'm not sick. I'm not traumatized. Leave me alone, fuck.

Unexpectedly, a quiet sob broke out, and when Mark turned his head to the left, he spotted his father hiding in his coat's sleeve, a hand up in the air to excuse himself, as he was crying. The only time Mark had seen his father cry, in his whole 21 years of existence, was no other than at his mother's funeral. Not at the hospital when the doctors had pronounced her dead, not on the first night they had spent home without her presence to lighten the mood, not at the church when they had celebrated her beautiful personality and heard touching speeches on how a good woman she was, no ; at the cemetery, when her coffin had sunk deeper and deeper into the ground. When he had finally realized that she was gone.

But there he was, the proud and strong man he had always been, crying in the doctor's cabinet because of him, again. Mark's own tears were about to come out, but he rolled his eyes in the back to prevent them to do so. Because of me. I'm the one who should've died.

"I think we should at least try, for you, but also for you and him" the doctor smiled. "You're 21, so I won't treat you like a child. I can't impose you to come. It's only up to you, Mark."

Mark hated this idea. He wanted to be left alone and live his own life as a mute ; hell, he was fine like that! He grabbed the pen in front of him and was about to write an immense "BULLSHIT!" that would have taken all the paper before crumpling it and throw the ball at the psychiatrist. Yet, as he caught his father looking at him expectantly, the tears now wiped away from his face but his eyes still shimmering with hope and something near a plead, Mark resigned himself and reluctantly wrote a small "ok.", and he heard the doctor sigh in contentment.

"Fine! I'll set you an appointment in two months. You can come, if you want to."

Two years later

He approached his face to the mirror, searching meticulously for any sign of tiredness that needed to disappear as soon as he'd went out the door, because he hadn't the right to be tired. His boss had been kind enough to accept him in spite of his disablement, so Mark felt like he had to do extremely well as a payback.

Suddenly, the bathroom's door creaked and Jackson pushed it open, the morning's mist still readable in his squinted eyes, and after having blinked a few times to get accustomed to the light, he finally recognized his best friend that was looking back at him.

"Oh, hi Mark, woken up early" his raspy voice managed to be heard and Mark chuckled before reaching out his hand, waiting for their own greeting.

A few tricks of palms and fingers later, they both were now brushing their teeth with their eyes closed, undeniably wishing they could've stayed longer in their beds.

"Why do we have to wake up and go to work or classes, huh? I'm going to collapse sooner or later" Jackson whined with his toothbrush still in his mouth, but Mark kicked him in the arm before placing a finger on his frothy lips, signaling him into the glass to make less noise. "Ah right, the boys are sleeping, them, at least."

Mark had moved out of his house seven months ago, right after he had finished his cooking distance lessons and found his job as a kitchen clerk – if he wasn't dishwashing during the worst days – in a restaurant downtown. It was the perfect job where he didn't need to talk, as he was only executing orders without questioning. The perfect job that also fitted him and his lonely character, as he was most of the time left alone while preparing the steps of one meal or dressing up the plates. That, was the only thing he was thankful for Dr. Hwang, who had come up with a great plan B when he had dropped out of college – to his father's despair.

He was now living along with his six best friends in a huge colocation that was noisier, cheerier and livelier, yet more comfortable than with his own father. Some would say he was avoiding him like a coward as well as the tensed situation he had come to build between them ; still, his true friends right here had deeply understood when he had explained in their groupchat that he felt the need to leave, persuaded it was for the better.

He hadn't expected a positive response from each one of them when he had randomly offered to move in with him, as he still was thinking he was an ultimate burden for everyone he was close to, even more now that they had to speak through messages or properly learned – yet personalized – sign language. However, here they were altogether, and Mark could really tell the difference : he could finally breathe.

No more duty to go the appointments with Dr. Hwang every two months in order to please his dad ; no sensation of guilt every time he would catch him looking at pictures of his mother, still mourning two years after that ; no need to see him desperate as he was facing the non-evolution of his son's situation. He loved his father, deeply and truly, and that's why he felt even more satisfied that he had left, as he was sure it was taking a thousand of worries out of his mind.

Also, Mark had turned 23 years old, and his young adult's aim for independence had dragged him out of his house full of sorrow. His days were no longer guided by the routine of his distance learning for the cooking diploma – sending pictures of his creations and being with people only for the final exams had truly been better than dealing with his disablement at college –, nor by his fucking psychiatric sessions – seven months he hadn't gone to one, oups.

Now, he was a full-time worker, earning his own life, and living his youth the best he could with what he allowed himself to have. He mostly had a social life thanks to the random parties his roommates would throw from time to time at the apartment with their other friends, or the late-night snacks he shared with them before TV series, or the beer-and-chicken after dinner – if there even was a dinner ; sometimes the boys were too lazy or tired to cook.

Because aside from those six dorks, Mark hadn't made any acquaintances, not even at work where colleagues remained colleagues, as even if they were all really kind, the barrier of his silence and his secretive personality were making it difficult to get close to him. And unfortunately, his will to speak again was nowhere to be seen.

Deep inside, Mark had been in perpetual suffering and blocking, his dark thoughts resurfacing more frequently than what he had expected, even if Jackson was doing more than well now, and his mom was surely resting in peace. Even if his friends were trying to reach out to him and make him talk sometimes, once he was drunk or when they had serious conversations about life, hoping their mate would break his walls and finally let go.

Mark hadn't put any efforts in his psychiatric sessions, and while Dr. Hwang clearly knew about that, he hadn't given up on him. Every two months since he had left his father's house, Mark had been receiving a small text reminding him there still was an appointment reserved for him – same time, same place – and that it would be the case until he clearly tells he doesn't want to come anymore.

Nevertheless, Mark had always left the psychiatrist on read. Not that he thought of returning anytime soon, no – maybe ? –, but because every time he had been about to turn it down once and for all, the face of his father had popped up in his mind, and he had been unable to do it. Guilt. Always that fucking guilt. His father, whom he lied to when he was telling him he had went, as the latter wasn't accompanying him anymore under the doctor's wish. For now, he had been lucky enough that Dr. Hwang hadn't said a word about it, but for how long…

Bzzt bzzt.

Is it this time of the month already?

Mark looked down on the sink where his smartphone was placed, and when the screen lit up, he indeed saw the text popping up and he swallowed a sigh. Maybe I should tell him I won't come anymore. Maybe it is time.

Jackson had looked down too from the corner of his eye, and if he had bit back his tongue for the past three sessions, this time he couldn't stand it anymore.

"Aren't you going to go?" he asked while combing his hair.

Mark looked surprised as he addressed him a curious gaze, his brows up on his forehead, so Jackson grabbed the opportunity to go on.

"I wasn't going to say anything but shit Mark, I know these appointments are doing you good bro!" he half-exclaimed half-whispered, and suddenly his friend's expression turned into a pissed one.

No they don't, Mark implicitly answered with a move of his head and index from the left to the right.

"Yes, they do."

Silence. Jackson sighed as he was searching for the right words to say now that he had opened his mouth.

"You know… Shit, I'm telling you I don't care." he muttered in a low voice at first, before looking straight into his best friend's eyes. "I heard you talk a few weeks ago, in your bedroom" he bluntly confessed as he crossed his arms on his toned chest.

***

Indeed, one night, Mark hadn't been able to sleep. He had tossed and turned in his bed, sometimes looking at the ceiling of his empty bedroom, sometimes scrolling down his social media, sometimes putting his head under the pillow. Numerous thoughts had crossed his mind, out of nowhere, from his souvenirs with his mother, to some with his friends from back then, to the work he would have to do only in a few hours. And to add to his suffering, his throat had been terribly sore. It had burned and itched, and after some clearing of it, Mark had been surprised himself when his voice had come out.

Out of curiosity, with his heart pumping in his chest to the point it felt like it would tear his ribcage apart, Mark had dived under his sheets and, once he had been hidden like a child in his hut of blankets, he had dared to talk, after two years and a few months of locking up his own instrument, of sewing his lips, of punishing himself.

"A-A-Aaah. Aaaaah. Ah. Oh shit I can talk. Shit shit shit. That's weird. Fucking… weird. Enough now. Ouch, it hurts… Oh god it's… so weird. I should stop now… They're going to hear me. Why can't I stop? Stop it Tuan. Oh… fuck."

Putting a hand on his mouth, a heavy-breathing Mark had finally stopped ranting as soon as he had felt some kind of pleasure in talking again, because if he really did, he knew he wouldn't be able to stick to his vow anymore. So he had laid back on his pillow with his mouth still covered, his eyes wide open in shock and the tone of his voice piercing his eardrums. No need to say, that he never found sleep.

***

"What?" Mark's eyes told Jackson.

"Yes I did, and because I'm smart I let you live. I was fucking shocked too you know, I just woke up to go to the bathroom and when I heard your voice in the middle of the night, I got scared at first, thinking someone was there!"

Mark blinked a few seconds more, and for the first time in their friendship, he felt uneasy under Jackson's eyes that clearly were daring him to try and lie about it into his face.

"Look, even if I still think that's nonsense, I can continue to respect that you don't want to talk. It's been two years already but well, I can try to get that. But you have to understand that it's pretty frustrating to know you actually talk to yourself, when even with us you don't..."

The fake mute quickly grabbed his phone and started typing something hastily, too irritated to think of the hands' moves he had to do to depict what was on his mind.

"It was accidental, and it only happened once! I didn't talk to myself after that! And I won't!"

He showed the memo piece right under Jackson's eyes, which he instantly rolled before sighing loudly.

"Don't tell me it didn't feel great when you did! It's been two years, you can stop now! I'm doing fine, your mom's in peace, why are you doing this to yourself?"

"You know why" Mark simply wrote after having snatched the phone from his best friend's hands which had been up in the air from frustration.

"No I don't know anymore! Let's count down the reasons you shouldn't be that way : she was the one driving, you were shocked, pretty hurt too, nobody in this situation could have cried for help, we are alive, I can walk and dance, it was an accident…"

The skinny man's hand suddenly hit the glass and the noise resounded in all the room, making Jackson jump in surprise before he took a few steps forward to firmly grab Mark's shoulder. The latter didn't shove him away, as he was busy dealing with his heart that was vibrating along with his arms because of his clenched fists. He exhaled slowly so that he wouldn't smash the mirror into million broken pieces, just like he were.

"Mark. I'm sorry but you leave me no choice. I won't repeat it twice. It's either you go to this session and the ones that will follow and try a little bit harder to overcome whatever is blocking you, either I go myself and tell what I heard to the doctor. And I might tell the boys as well, and they won't leave you alone, especially Jinyoung and you know it, he's still actively searching for a way to make you talk after two years."

Mark straightened himself and he turned around to face Jackson who gulped in anticipation, because even if he was being straightforward right now, deep down he knew the risk he had taken by digging up the past to finally let it all out.

"You gotta be kidding me right now" Mark carefully wrote this time before showing up the screen, his eyes darkening with annoyance second by second as he watched Jackson's next moves.

How could his closest friend do this to him? He felt betrayed at the highest point, and the Chinese boy in front of him could read it in his turned off eyes that targeted him.

"No, I'm not. I want you to feel better. Don't tell me you're fine as it is, I'm done with this bullshit. Go. To. This. Session. Or I'm waking them up right now."

Mark didn't want to. He hated being treated as a mentally ill patient. He was fine. He had a job, he had true friends, and he had a nice flat, what else did he need? Yes, this memory still tortured him, but how talking again would do him any good? It wouldn't change what happened, would it?

However, now that he was facing this ultimatum that was more challenging than what he had expected, now that he could decipher on Jackson's traits how worried but determined he was, Mark's weaker side took the best of him and he was about to give in.

"C'mon. Grant me like, five sessions, where you actually make an effort. And if in the end I am wrong, I'll let you live as I always have" Jackson's raspy voice pierced through the thick silence that had settled for long seconds after his threat, and slowly, Mark nodded with his brows furrowing, showing his reluctance as he did. "Yes! You'll thank me later!"

And with that, Jackson left the bathroom in a dancing pace to go change, leaving a numb Mark that couldn't think about anything else but the session that was tomorrow. Not even about the fact that the clock had been ticking with all this mess going on, and that now he was almost late.

Grey. The sky was just grey. A light tint of grey with a glimpse of gold, the one that could hurt your pupils and burn your eyelids if you stared at it for too long. But still, it was a pretty grey. The sun's rays shined right above the accumulated clouds who luckily hadn't cried yet, making the overall light outside so bright, and leaving a calm veil over the town in the streets of which you were now walking with a smile on your lips.

The only thing you were hearing was the loud music in your earphones, its volume almost turned to its maximum, but you needed to make sure your eardrums were focusing on the singer's voice and that only. Not on the million concerned speeches of the people buzzing around you – like it had done lately, to the point it had given you headaches. Well, now that you were thinking of it, it had been a while since you hadn't heard a single unfamiliar voice infiltrating your head before those constant hummings, another one than your own that is.

Your godfather, who was a talented psychiatrist and hypnotherapist you were really close to, had told you that you were gifted once he had acknowledged that you weren't crazy. Because as crazy as it sounds, ever since you were little and without you being able to explain why, you could read minds. No, more specifically, you could hear the negative thoughts of people you came to know personally, without them wording it to you.

It seemingly depended on two things : either you had a sufficient bond with the person – a classmate you saw each day, a friend, a lover…–, either they had so many bad thoughts that you couldn't help but hear it. So sometimes, just talking to them or greeting them shortly once made their worries, their pain, their boredom, their anger flood through your ears.

At first, your parents hadn't believed you when you had told them you could "hear voices" while everybody in the class was quiet, and that it was disturbing you so much you couldn't concentrate on the lesson. You didn't have any idea of whose voices it was or what they were saying, as you were too young to master your power and focus on it yet. However, firstly when they had seen your grades dropping from your lack of understanding of the teaching ; and secondly when they had witnessed themselves your ability the day you had repeated word for word what they had thought deep down after you had complained another time, they finally had let go of their rational side in order to help out their daughter.

They did a great job at protecting you, not even talking about it to their closest friends, too scared that anyone could become a greedy enemy once they got to know that the supernatural did exist, or that, even while being of good faith, they would spread the news so that soon enough you would have been under the spotlight, exposed as an alien or whatever gifted child the medias would have labeled you, stealing your childhood and putting you at risk of scientific experiments.

But in the middle of all that implicit protection you hadn't seen, you yourself still had to deal with those non-stopping rantings into your head. And as a young and innocent child, you couldn’t know the harm it would do to you once you tried to help the others. You couldn't understand the concept of privacy, nor the one of family's secrets, nor the idea that you alone couldn't find a solution to everyone's problems.

Still, you tried to, with your school's friends and their own little concerns – not that being hungry and craving for something to eat was difficult to solve –, but when it had come to really mean yet childish comments about someone into their heads or more serious problems, you quickly had started to feel depressed to know of the dark side of this life and world, moreover because you couldn't do anything about it.

You still remembered that friend and classmate of yours back when you were in 3rd year of primary school, who had constantly been complaining to herself about how bad her arms hurt and how much she didn't like her father when he hit her and her mom and yelled at them ; and every time she had been watching other's loving dads at the school's gates, you had heard her envious comments. So one day, as you had finally seen him coming to pick her up, not a smile to curl his lips as you had approached him along with her who had been looking at the ground, you had blurted out :

"Why are you hurting Myeoli, mister? She's hurting, why?"

Your own father that had been standing next to him had suddenly grabbed you by the shoulders and pulled you closer, apologizing on your behalf with his heart beating loud as he had quickly gotten a hold of what you had been insinuating. It had been innocent, a true and thoughtless question from a kid who couldn't quite understand what domestic violence was at that age, and while your friend had looked at you with surprise and fear pulling her traits, the scary man's face had decomposed itself for a second before it turned into something unreadable.

And unexpectedly, you had caught only one of his thoughts : "So you're talking about it to your friends, huh? Let's see if you would want to after we go home". Little did you know what it had meant back then ; but the next day, you had caught her covering some blue bruises while changing for the sports lesson, and overnight, she had started ignoring you and never talked to you again, because she would have been "beaten to death" if she did, as you heard.

And then, with the bond being broken, with her striking you out of her life, you had stopped hearing about her concerns, while the situation the little-you couldn't have saved anyway, never ceased. It was another aspect of your weird power, its capacity to turn off as unexpectedly as it had turned on with someone. It looked like you only had one shot to repair the person's situation, and with her, you had missed the target.

After that girl, you assumed the thing you had was a serious deal. After that, your parents took you to your dad's best friend who also was your godfather, a psychiatrist and hypnotherapist who then was eccentric enough to believe into psyche and any mystic thing that could explain your ability. After having listened to the whole story and without even using his hypno tricks, he confidently told you he would help you deal with it thanks to the bit he knew about it.

And he did. Thanks to him, you learned to focus on some voices only, but also to shut every one of them up whenever you didn't want to know. Because the more you grew up, the less you wanted to know. Indeed, when you finally understood the notion of intimacy, you felt awful for trespassing it even involuntarily, mostly because it was with your own friends. You felt as if you were a traitor only building unhealthy relationships where the person couldn't help but getting naked in front of you, and that even before she had legitimately granted you the right to see her wholly.

On top of that, hearing all the misery of the world pulled your own moral down, because the sensation of being powerless while facing the worst situations ate you. And even when you tried to help, it only resulted in you being hurt because you had given too much of yourself doing so, either as some people took advantage of your kindness, or as you got way too implicated.

However, at some point, you had had enough. Enough of being kind and understanding, enough of having headaches by trying hard to ignore the constant white noise in your ears, enough of dealing with people's shit and whines when you had your own to begin with. This angry state of mind along with the will to throw your Mother Teresa's costume out the door once and for all made it harder and challenging for your godfather's helping words to reach you. Still, he didn't give up and kept on telling you how and when you could use it in a way that would make you proud because, as he loved to remind you, you were gifted.

And in the end, you had been left with no choice but to grab his hand, and you learned to use it more than to duct it. You learned to feel things. To feel when your friends truly needed your help and support, so that you could permit yourself to open your ears and, instead of bluntly revealing what you knew, you threw clues at them that you were getting the problem and were here for them.

To feel when you definitely had to shut the voices up, mostly when it came to acquaintances or the people you cherished so much that it killed you to violate their intimacy – you first had tried it on your godfather himself, successfully. And when you caught something bad but not on purpose, just because of your loss of focus, you learned not to feel guilty, nor to take it to heart or too seriously.

"We have over 60 000 thoughts going on our minds per day, Y/N. How can you believe each one of them is accurate, is full of sincerity, or is actually what's the person's thinking?" your godfather had said once, leaving you speechless, as always.

And when college time came along with the choice of your main course, you picked yours without hesitating, the one leading you to become like your role model : your godfather himself. You decided you'd help people every day but through your job – "without cheating" like he would say – as you had now developed some true psychologic and understanding skills without even using your power, and you liked it. No, you loved it, helping people, finding solutions, removing some burden off their shoulders and seeing their faces lit up.

So right now, your 23 year-old self was on its way to Dr. Hwang Woodam's cabinet with pressed strides, as it was the first session of many more he had proposed you to attend after classes, in order to build yourself a better idea of the job. Many sessions which would lead you, hopefully, to being a well-prepared and irreproachable psychiatrist at the end of your diploma.

The second you slid your headphones from your skull to your neck, murmurs joined the sounds of the busy town you were in and you frowned. It was really weird. How come you were hearing random voices now? Or had you met every single human being in this huge town? Impossible. You knew your power was constantly evolving, changing its characteristics whenever it wanted to, but what you couldn't stand was the fact that you felt like all your hard work to control it was in vain. You sure would share a word about it to your godfather at the end of the day.

You pushed his cabinet's door at 1:59pm precisely and, the second he saw you come in, a smile lit up his face.

"Y/N! My lovely niece, come here!" he called for you as you hurried yourself before him, and he held you in his arms. "We don't have the time to chat as the first client of this afternoon is already here, but let's have dinner together after that, okay?"

You nodded as you retreated, and you thanked him a thousand times when you saw he had prepared your own little desk next to his, with some files waiting for you to go through, an empty notebook with a beautiful cover, pencils in a little pot and a mug waiting to be filled with whatever would help you stay awake throughout the afternoon.

You immediately started to read the first patient's folder, and its seriousness instantly plunged you into the intensity of the job. If sometimes you had thought you were having a hard life hearing negative thoughts all the time, you once again reminded yourself that if your godfather had been that helpful with you, it was because he too had a hard time dealing with this, yet he still did, without failing or complaining. It was so fascinating, but you could already guess how tiring it should be.

Because hypnotherapy had become a trend nowadays, some patients that came by merely had problems, or ones you didn't consider as really serious psychologically speaking, so you allowed yourself to stop taking notes of the sessions in order to read further the upcoming cases. And one particularly grabbed your attention, because of the number of missed rendezvous – already three? –, as well as the question marks next to a list of the patient's "potential syndromes" on the front cover.

You discretely put it in front of you and, after having tied your hair up in whatever hairdo that would keep them from your face, you started your lecture of the first page, slower than with the previous ones as your godfather's notes were really intriguing. First of all, the man – named Mark Yi En Tuan – was the same age as yours, so his case interested you even more : maybe you would be able to understand it a little bit better and suggest something this time…?

Wait a minute. Mark Tuan. You definitely knew this name. Where had you heard it? Where did it come from? You kept your right index on the name printed in bold characters before closing your eyes as you searched through your memory, and some bell finally rang into your messy head, making you gasp. You suddenly put both of your hands on your mouth to smother the exclamation of shock that had been about to follow. Mark Tuan, of course you knew him! He had been your crush a little more than 2 years ago at the university!

He was a guy with some crazily handsome features, and you had come to know, while digging facts about him back then, that he could spin swiftly in the air like a ninja and that he was able to speak English, Korean, Chinese and Japanese fluently, without languages studies being his major – what had been his major already...? You had never talked to him, only luckily sharing one English class with him during your 3rd year, where you had first spotted him and slowly went head over heels for his looks, his sexy English accent and his quiet aura that made him even more attractive somehow.

Simply looking at him from afar during a semester, too focused on your studies and your friends to even think of approaching a guy, you still had remarked when he had suddenly been absent from classes during the second part of school year, depriving you from your weekly daydream spent at eyeing him. And later, you had heard the boy had dropped out of college, for a reason you never got to know. Some of his friends were still attending the same university as yours this year, yet they had never shared a word about it to anyone. Not even Park Jinyoung who you knew quite well and talked a lot to, as you shared a few classes with him since he majored in contemporary literature.

Maybe the reason was lying right under your eyes? You were torn between contrary emotions, the embarrassment of being about to read something so personal about someone you "knew", the familiar sensation of guilt you were fighting every single day because of your power suddenly submerging you ; but at the same time, excitement and curiosity were bubbling in your stomach, preventing it from knotting harder and harder under your discomfort. Anyway though, you would eventually come to know about it if he ever passed the cabinet's door so…

… So you opened the file. And the more you were going down the lines, the darker his story was becoming and you felt as lost as your godfather – who was busy transcribing in his own notebook the last session at the moment. Your brows furrowed as you discovered the testimony of Mark's father, telling about an accident in which the wife and mother died. It had happened a little more than two years ago… Mark and his best friend called Jackson – oh my God Jackson Wang? The student council vice-president?! – had been coming back from a trip to China, their flight landing at 2 in the morning, and Mark's mom had been kind enough to come and pick them up before driving them home.

However, the boys soon fell asleep because of the travel, and the mother, from the lack of something to keep her awake, had found her eyelids closing for longer and longer as the miles went by, also tired from this round trip in the middle of the night. And unfortunately, her car had went out of the road, making tons of rolls down to the side to end upside down in the middle of nowhere, at night. Being the only one conscious, Mark had been too weak to come out of the car and crawl up to stop a driver for help.

He had witnessed his mother's last breath, he had seen she was dying under his eyes, and he hadn't been able to do anything, neither his body nor his voice responding. And… What?! He felt guilty for that?

Your eyes almost popped out of their holes as you read, reread, and rereread those last words your godfather had underlined. Ever since, he had been refusing to speak because, according to the diagnosis, he considered that his voice hadn't been useful when he had needed it to be, so it was its punishment. Mark was punishing himself… for an accident.

Why hasn't he come to the last three sessions…?

You flipped the pages that always concluded the same thing : "No progress". It seemed like Mark was really out of reach, but it somehow made you eager to try yourself. You took it as your own personal challenge, and you couldn't wait to see if, today, you would be lucky enough to sit once again in the same room as him. Deep down too, you were eager to see his beautiful face again after all this time.

Your eyes started to look up at the door on your left every two seconds after you had finished, waiting impatiently for his frame to appear. And under the table, you kept your fingers crossed, wishing he wouldn't recognize you nor accept the proposition of you leaving that your godfather had made with every patient up till now.

You were lucky, because Mark did come. At 6:00pm, a really deep, low, and masculine voice resounded into your ears, even if you had successfully suppressed the ones of every single client you had met today.

*What am I doing here… Jackson I'm going to kill you. Why did I oblige? I shouldn't have. Shit.*

Jackson? Jackson… Oh my God! The best friend! It must be Mark!

You bit back a smile and a giggle of excitement as you needed to remain silent during the session going on, still you bounced a little on your chair as you put his file on the top of your pile once again. He had a really pleasant voice ; such a shame he was hiding it from everyone's ears, but it made you even gladder that you had caught at least a glimpse of it. Yet, you closed your eyes and took a deep breath, focusing in order to stop hearing him as you had promised yourself you wouldn't use your power if you were willing to be professional. However…

*Great, he's late now. I have the time to go, shouldn't I? It's even more embarrassing now that I skipped 3… Fuck my life.*

As you still could hear him, you realized he should be of the category of people that had so many bad thoughts that you couldn't help but hear them. It alarmed you about his true lack of well-being, because three years earlier, you had never heard his voice inside your head, not a single time. Well, now that you were thinking of it, it only made sense as he presently never let them out, so they surely kept buzzing again and again into his mind.

The patient before him left the room, and if your godfather had been about to sigh in defeat at the sight of his next appointment, when you lightly tapped his shoulder, it was as if you instantly shared your thrill with him before you even had announced the great news, as he felt some chills go down his arm under your touch.

"He's there" you smiled, and Woodam almost jumped out of his chair, his brows up on his wrinkling forehead as he smacked his hands together.

"You must be kidding me?!" he exclaimed a little bit louder than expected, and you eyed the door with concern, worried that it would make the angel-like boy fly away before you even got the chance to watch him land into the room.

"I can hear him. And he's pretty stressed out right now" you chuckled and in no time, your godfather was in front of the door frame, greeting that particular someone with a bright smile.

You stood up, drying your palms that had grown sweaty from anticipation on your thighs and, for the first time in your life, you suddenly stopped hearing Mark's ceaseless ranting voice, but not because you had chosen to ; because it got covered by the loud beatings of your excited heart that sped crazily its tempo the second he entered the room.

Handsome. He still was so handsome, as depressed as he was supposed to be, as affected as he should be, as fragile as he must be. Mark walked quietly in the room at a lazy pace, targeting the leather chair on which he naturally seated, not even greeting you with his eyes that were stuck to the ground – well, no sound had come out from your mouth anyway, as your crush for him was resurfacing and oppressing every single one of your muscles.

He was wearing a black trench coat which length almost reached his ankles, with a black turtleneck under it, and a navy blue pair of skinny jeans suiting his thin legs, ended by a pair of black sneakers that seemed huge on his feet. His deep brown and shiny hair wasn't styled in any way, parting naturally in two after he had combed it with his ringed fingers, and when he sighed discretely, your eyes went down on his face that had dug with time and probably depression, and you almost could decipher the small dots of a beard above his plump lips.

The question was : for how long had you been staring at him to be able to see even those small details?

Too long, obviously, and you realized it when you had to shake yourself out of your trance to notice that the boy was now looking at you with his brows furrowed, while your godfather was smiling at you awkwardly.

"He's okay with you staying, Y/N, you can sit now…?" Woodam tried and you jumped in surprise, looking at him with doe-like eyes before you executed yourself, your head becoming a hot-air balloon about to pop under the pressure and embarrassment.

Woodam has already asked the question? Why didn't I hear it? Y/N, focus!

Mark hadn't recognized you, and it was the only thought that came to soothe your internal lecture and make you dare to look at him once again. However, you hadn't expected for him to be staring at you in return, a curious light in his dark eyes that quickly avoided yours when it reached more than two seconds. He tilted his head to the side and you gulped, scared that he was about to change his mind, because it now looked like your face was familiar to him. Had he paid attention to you back then? Stop it Y/N, you're raving and giving yourself too much credit.

I've seen her before. Where? Where… Where?

Luckily for him, it wasn't a bad thought, so you didn't catch it. Unfortunately for you, though, but you probably would have succumbed to the shock. You needed to suit yourself back into your professional skin, not the one of a ridiculous and immature girl in front of an old crush she should have forgotten about by now. But why did it inch at every end of your tensed body to have him in the same room as you after all this time?

"Well, Mark, I'm really happy to see you today. I must confess that I thought I'd never see you again at this point, but looks like my persistence has won! Here" your godfather finally spoke up as he slid a pen and a few sheets of blank paper along with a book as a hard surface to easy the writing to his patient, who put them on his knees before actually starting to write something.

"Thanks for not telling my father."

You eyed Woodam who smiled warmly and nodded, his chin resting on his hands he had joined.

"I've told you since the beginning that I won't treat you like a child. The only adult I'm doing this to is my niece right here, she's still a baby sometimes even though you're the same age!" he chuckled and you frowned as you felt embarrassed that he was making fun of you before Mark.

This time, Mark clearly squinted his eyes while looking at you, and you read in his pupils that he was analyzing your face in order to picture it somewhere into his memory. Don't recognize me please, I'm a nobody, I swear…

Who the hell is she? *God why am I not good at remembering like Jinyoung or Jackson seriously!*

You gulped and your eyes grew big at the hearing of such a thought, indicating he was indeed investigating his memory because you were familiar. Mark knew your face, a face he was sure he had already commented himself about its prettiness, but why couldn't he bring his memories back together? Somewhere in the mist of his confusion and his deep thoughts, he could picture those two eyes that were looking back at him, still he didn't know which was the right landscape he should be drawing them in. Had it been at the uni? At one of his friends’ party? At a random café?

"And may I ask you why you decided to come back, out of a sudden?" the psychiatrist interrupted his torments and Mark finally stopped staring at you intensely, helping you breathe again as you had started to feel smaller and smaller under his gaze.

As far as you could remember, he already had seemed to be this kind of straightforward and nonchalant guy that was doing whatever he wanted to do and how he wanted to do, not slightly disturbed by the fact that he had been staring at you without blinking, contrary to normal people who wouldn't dare to do the same with strangers, unless they'd feel embarrassed, just as you had been earlier.

Mark drew a line under his first answer, concentrating to make it the straighter possible with his fingers displayed on the sheet to prevent it from moving, and you admired his taste for perfection. While his face was down, you permitted yourself to look him over one more time, changing your cosplay back for the young student with hearts in your eyes before the beautiful guy at school, but you couldn't care less. You loved being a teenager for the last semester you could allow yourself to, before you officially could become an active women, a psychiatrist with her own patients under responsibility and no time for those kind of daydreams anymore.

"Jackson blackmailed me this morning." Mark wrote honestly with a neat writing he showed your godfather, before drawing another line in anticipation for the next question.

You could see it wasn't their first session together, as they had their own codes for communicating, and as Mark was laid back really lazily in the chair that looked like his own.

"Oh he did? I guess you'll have to thank him for me! What was so challenging that you said yes? I'm sorry but I can't help being curious" Woodam pursued in a lighter tone, a smile never leaving his lips.

Mark hesitated an instant, his hair falling before his eyes that hadn't left the paper under them, and he sighed once again.

*He can be so intrusive sometimes…*

You caught that. You clenched your fists, your natural instinct of a niece feeling attacked by this poor remark about your godfather who was nothing but caring, not intrusive.

"He threatened me to tell something to the others at home" Mark showed, and your brows furrowed, wondering what kind of secret he was refusing to unveil fully.

"Oh a secret? A secret between best friends?" Woodam joked and Mark only shrugged, his facial expression telling him he could qualify it as whatever he'd like to. "Looks like it was kind of personal or embarrassing for you to take the deal" your godfather then concluded and you read quietly Mark's face, which changed into an annoyed frown.

The session begun with a few asks/replies that you took note of diligently, yet you quickly got disturbed by an intrusive voice murmuring in your head so many harsh things that became crucial, at least for you. It froze you into your seat, however you were burning with frustration.

Indeed, while Woodam was busy trying to ask him some accurate questions, Mark was literally not putting any effort in the session, keeping every single bit of his true self deep inside, when he should be giving in return for things to progress. When he wrote yes, he meant no, and the reverse. At every assumption Woodam made, he shrugged it off while thinking how right it was and how bad that upset him ; at every proposition Woodam offered, he wrote he'd think about it when deep inside he was already convinced that he wouldn't even give it a try.

In your eyes, what Mark couldn't bear, was the fact that your godfather was seeing a little bit more through him at each session when he didn't want anyone to know, inducing him to close his ears and laugh it off every time Woodam would point out what he had been thinking deep inside. Meanwhile, his voice kept on flooding into your eardrums, filling them to the fullest, with his real pain, his suffering, his self-curses that should have pained you too ; but damn, their roleplay pissed you off so much you couldn't think straight or listen to your kind heart anymore.

Two years had passed since the accident and he still thought he could trick your godfather? Speaking of the latter, why hadn't he broken this dead-point situation already? What ridiculous duet were you witnessing right now? Why was Woodam being way too cautious around Mark when he obviously knew he was faking to be an honest and mysterious man on the outside, making them turning round and round endlessly?

If you could understand the fact that Mark was "traumatized" and would naturally refuse the help from anyone, you couldn't stand him choosing to lie again and again instead of simply having the guts of telling he didn't want it and hated it. However, it went on, this laughable masquerade that did nothing but irritate you more and more as the two men seemed satisfied to be playing the hypocrites.

*What does she want, looking at me like that?*

"Can I ask a question?" you suddenly spoke up after having blocked a scoff, looking straight into Mark's pupils that eyed your figure, and the quick light of surprise that passed through them helped you gain confidence.

"Do you mind?" Woodam asked him without questioning your attempt, his trust in you limitless.

Mark shook his head from the left to the right and with that, you stood up from your seat, your legs surprisingly trembling but still guiding you to lean against the windows behind the desks. You felt thrilled at yourself for being that bold, however it was nothing compared to the flames of anger flaring your guts.

"Could you tell me, would your friends and family describe you as a good or a bad liar?" you asked precisely, on your way to a provocation that would hopefully earn at least a grunt from him.

*What the hell is this question?*

Woodam eyed you curiously, while Mark, the second he saw the proud smirk on your face, lost his composure he had worked on up till now so that people couldn't decipher when he was lying.

"Good liar, I guess, they used to call me poker face" he briefly wrote on his paper, his brows furrowing as he waited for your reply, and Woodam voiced the answer to you.

Weirdly though, Mark's heart started to beat a bit louder and his hands turned moist, as if you actually were putting some kind of pressure on him. He had tried his best not to pay attention to you during the whole session, or else his mind would've lost it from the countless "Who is she?" he would've asked himself. But right now, he wished he had accommodated himself to your presence a little bit more, as the more he was watching you, comfortably leaned back with your arms crossed and your chin up in defiance, the more he felt some powerful aura coming from you, with your eyes clearly lightened by something dangerously passionate, and giving him some chills he had failed to feel since quite a long time. You had such a presence even when your mouth was shut, and unexpectedly, his own turned dry as he started to anticipate what your point could be.

"Oh is it true? Because I wouldn't, truthfully. You're such a bad liar, Mr. Tuan, sorry if you're disappointed" you half joked, stepping to your chair to put both of your hands on its back. "I've met you only a few minutes ago, and I already can tell that you keep on lying. You know, we're only doing our job, and our job, is to help you. And from what I see, either you don't want to be helped at all, either you're scared of being helped. But let me tell you one thing : if you keep on saying the reverse of what's on your mind whenever you step in here, it's not necessary to come at all, we won't go anywhere. I can tell you're lying, Dr. Hwang can also tell you're lying, still you're thinking we're not aware of it? So what is it that you want from us? What's the purpose of all of this?"

Before you even knew it, words had flooded from your burning lips, the annoyance clear in your tone that you still kept as firm as possible so that he would get how serious you were about the issue. You couldn't help anyone who wasn't willing to get helped, that was a matter of fact, even if you hardly could admit it on a daily basis as you still were learning how to let go. But hearing too much of Mark Tuan for non-stopping 30 minutes and getting to know more than your godfather would ever reach even after two years because of his seemingly lack of guts to confront the boy, had made you greedy to be the one to wake him up.

Mark opened his mouth for a short time as if he had been about to protest but he quickly closed it, his lips forming a thin line, yet you caught the beginning of an eye-roll his pupils had been willing to do. Was he pissed at you right now? Was he offended? You'd be glad he could be if that ensured your words had an impact, yet, surprisingly, nothing came to your ears this time. Because, your raw ranting had somehow rang a bell inside of him and if, usually, he could quickly go over the truths Dr. Hwang pointed out about him, yours were resounding into his mind right now, making it turn blank.

However, the backfire of your boldness manifested itself quicker than what you would have thought, since now that the heavy words you had rummaged in your head had come out, the unexpected trance you had been in and that had given you the confidence to talk disappeared as soon as it had bloomed.

"E-Excuse me for a second" you suddenly said, and you rushed to the exit under two pair of eyes that watched you curiously.

Once you reached the empty waiting room, you collapsed on the first chair you saw before letting a long sigh escape your lips as you grasped your hair to get yourself straight. Mark's voice in your head became a distant humming, letting instantly place to a headache you hadn't really acknowledged as you had been too submerged by your frustration, but it was as if your thoughts were finally getting in order. What had you just said?! Mark wasn't the only one who would be lying in front of you later when you'll be seating right behind this desk, so why had you taken it to heart immediately?

"Y/N? What's wrong with you?" Woodam unexpectedly spoke up a few moments later, his tone calm. "Mark's gone now, you can come back."

You lifted your head up to see he was standing in the door frame, his eyes full of worry while yours became veiled by a deep red filter the second they landed on him.

"What's wrong is that I've heard every single thing inside his head, and that he just keeps on lying to you! And you? Why don't you say anything? You know he's lying but still you're not doing anything? I've been quite disgusted by your merry-go-round! If he doesn't want to be helped that badly, why waste your time, both of you? You know we can't do anything for someone that doesn't want to be helped at first!"

Y/N, BREATHE!

"Y/N, you know really well that a lot of patients express their disagreement to get helped because something's blocking them, right?" Woodam answered and some guilt dressed your pupils up, then when he suddenly smiled, you felt your tensed hands on your skull finally relax. "I'm not able to force him to open up to me, still I don't want to give up on him. It's our job Y/N, it's to still reach out to them whenever they need it, whatever time it takes, and even when they can't or won't express it. Mark came today, and even if it was because of Jackson, I had the feeling he was going to come back anyway."

A wave of self-deception crashed against your whole body as Woodam's wise words made you realize how wrong you had been to flare up in the first place. Whatever your reasons had been, as good as they had sounded, you needed to canalize your greed to be helpful that had made you implode like a bomb.

What had disturbed you was one thing : Mark had chosen to stop talking, and he was choosing to lie. No blocking, no post-traumatic syndrome you could treat with the methods they taught you, simply a choice. What he was doing, only him could undo it just by the power of his own will. What could you do against it? Once again, you had felt so powerless, and you hated it ; surely that had been the reason why you got overwhelmed to begin with. You were 23, still you had acted like when you used to be so affected whenever you couldn't decipher a way to help someone as fast as you wished. Bravo.

"I'm going home, I want to reflect back on myself because right now, I'm doubting my capacity to do this job, at all. It seems like I can't be as patient and understanding as you" you mumbled, tears prickling at the corner of your eyelids, and without letting your godfather reassure you as he always did, you walked to the cabinet, grasped your things with a mechanical but strong hand and within a minute, you were outside the building.

To be continued...

A/N : I’m actively working on Part 2 right now, I hope you’ll like me to post it! Let me know? Thanks for ever reading my work, once again!

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