#someone's traumas are not erased like this

[ass-fuehrerin]

The Line

Hwang In-ho/Seong Gi-hun

Word count: 3.4k

Summary: Gi-hun’s mind is a patchwork of missing time, blank spaces where memories should be. His life is simple — work, drink, exist — until nightmares start clawing their way into his waking hours, and the man at his side stops feeling like an anchor and starts feeling like a trap.

There was a before. There will be an after. The only question — where to draw

the line?

CW: post-Gi-hun’s second Game (with implied ending); psychological trauma (amnesia, PTSD-related dissociation, hallucinations, paranoia); physical trauma; complex emotional entanglement & gaslighting.

✐ᝰ

Gi-hun remembers nothing. As in nothing at all. Not a single fragment of that goddamn notorious incident and almost not a single one of the past several years has survived in his memory. It's as if someone took a scalpel to his mind and cut them out, leaving only the phantom pain of something missing. Something important.

He, along with several others poor desperate bastards, was kidnapped by collectors due to their gambling debts, and forced into some sort of slave labor in an isolated facility, enduring physical and psychological torture until he managed to escape.

At least that’s the story he was told — the supposed cause of his severe memory loss, leaving him with only fragmented recollections of the past.

“Dissociative amnesia,” the doctor had called it. A defense mechanism. The mind, in its desperate bid for survival, buries the unspeakable so deeply that it might as well never have existed. “PTSD.” Gi-hun’s mind simply decided the past was a wound not worth carrying.

So he didn’t carry it. Simple like that.

Instead, he built a life. Brick by brick. Well, at least he tried. He tried to wake up, get dressed, work, eat, drink, and kill his free time that was dragging like a chewing gum (so, more like survive it). Usually together with a man he knew (or thought he did), but didn’t remember meeting.

Young-il.

Their relationship didn’t fit into a neat little box — didn’t come with a label Gi-hun could slap on and say, "Yeah, that’s what this is." It felt old, like something that existed long before he even became aware of it. It felt odd, as if they’d been connected, but he didn’t really know how.

It was complicated.

When he woke up in a hospital bed — blank, erased, empty — it was Young-il sitting beside him and filling in the gaps, helping him piece together the puzzle. The one who told him they used to work and gamble together. Three of them — including Jung-bae. The explanation made sense. It didn’t feel… right though. And yet right enough that Gi-hun didn't question it. Maybe that is what bothers him. How easily he accepted that.

But maybe it wasn’t that difficult due to their common language — loneliness.

Gi-hun had lost his mother and never mustered the courage to insert himself into his daughter's life. Young-il had told him to go — offered to pay for the trip, even — but Seong refused. Money didn’t fix things like that. It was enough that Young-il had gotten him a job at the same vague company — or something like that (to be honest Gi-hun didn’t know a thing about it) — where he himself worked as a manager. Some low-level work, driving deliveries, moving packages, sometimes people, never asking questions.

There were no friends either. Sang-woo was still buried somewhere in America, his only contact — at least, Gi-hun thought so, though he didn’t remember it well — being a single wire transfer, hush money, sent to his mother, as if trying to buy back his absence. Jung-bae had vanished after his divorce — for reasons Gi-hun never managed to figure out. That left no one.

Just Young-il.

Young-il didn’t have anyone either. His wife had died in childbirth. He once mentioned a half-brother somewhere, but it was a passing remark, long lost in the haze of soju. He never brought it up again, and Gi-hun never asked.

Despite the glaring differences in their social standing, they spent a ridiculous amount of time together. Drinking in dingy pojangmacha stalls, playing endless rounds of janggi (Young-il taught him the rules, and over time, Gi-hun even started winning occasionally), or just sitting in silence for hours — either meaningful or empty, he wasn’t sure.

Talking, though — that was rare.

There was a subtle tension between them. It wasn’t spoken, but it was always there, lingering in the space between their words, between the clinking of bottles and the shuffle of their feet on cracked concrete.

It should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. No, that wasn’t the right word to describe that.

It was something else.

Their “twoness” was quite strange, and Gi-hun could never brush off that disturbing feeling, no matter how used to it he had grown.

Every conversation, every glance, every shared game left a strange, crawling itch under his skin. Like something half-remembered, like a dream that was slipping through his fingers just as he was about to wake up.

Like an answer trying to claw its way to the surface, only to be shoved back down before it could breathe. Gi-hun didn’t know what the answer was. What question was he even trying to answer? He only knew that when he looked at Young-il for too long, he wanted to scream.

Or hit him.

Especially after waking up in a cold sweat from yet another shitty dream.

A nightmare too vivid to be a nightmare.

The same setting, over and over — a surreal maze of pastel walls and twisting staircases, like a playground built in hell. Masked garish-pink figures. A cocktail of terror and a faceless green mass. The gut-wrenching horror of a game where survival had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with luck.

And always, always, that one figure dressed in black. A shadow at the edge of every nightmare, the sight of which filled Gi-hun with something primal — dread, rage, betrayal, and a searing loss he could not name.

The figure bled into reality. Hallucinations. Another PTSD-gift. A distorted, mechanical voice that whispered in his ears. And also blackouts — minutes, hours, sometimes whole days gone.

Young-il knew.

It seemed like he knew him better than Gi-hun knew himself.

He was the one who dragged him to therapy. Psychiatry, to be specific ("You'll need meds," he had said, too sure, too knowing). Gi-hun went. But after the first session resulted in the worst blackout ever spitting Seong out into reality after God knows how many hours, with his fists still in Young-il’s shirt and a bruise blooming on the man’s cheek, Gi-hun started rationing his appointments — just enough to get a prescription and leave.

The doctor said all this was normal.

Young-il said all this was normal.

Gi-hun knew all this was anything but.

Yet, he swallowed the pills. Drowned himself in alcohol. Ignored the sick, festering contradiction that clawed at his ribs whenever Young-il was near — because he couldn’t tell if this man was keeping him afloat or dragging him under.

Young-il’s presence became a constant pull on Gi-hun’s thoughts, a weight he couldn’t shake off. It was not even that Young-il was a bad person, or that he’d done anything that should set off alarm bells. Nothing like that — quite the opposite. Sometimes when Seong managed to shake off the tenacious claws of dark feelings, he found comfort in spending time with him.

Besides, when he woke up from his nightmares — breathless, shaking, throat raw — the name that burned on his cracked lips wasn’t Young-il.

For absolutely no fucking reason it was In-ho.

The only In-ho he even remotely knew was the owner of the nearest pojangmacha to his house. And this decrepit old man — the kindest soul ever to walk the earth — was far from the concept of a menace.

But sometimes — when Gi-hun’s vision blurred and the hallucinations took hold, he saw the black mask slip over Young-il’s face.

To cherry-top this pile of shit — sometimes that was exactly when he wanted to kill him.

Sometimes.

"Sometimes" had a way of turning into "too often."

His mind was a damn mess.

Gi-hun feared himself — his fractured self, his unpredictable outbursts — but he feared for Young-il even more. He brought it up only once, and he could bet he saw it: the way Young-il’s sharp features grew even sharper, which made something in Gi-hun want to recoil.

He never mentioned it again.

Instead, Gi-hun kept taking the pills. He kept drinking. He kept ignoring the way Young-il looked at him — curious, sharp, like he was peeling Gi-hun apart, layer by layer, like a frog.

Seong couldn’t pinpoint when he began to sense the shift in his own perception of… huh… them? — from what seemed like just two people passing time together to something deeply unnatural, something fucked up.

But it was exactly in that very way Young-il watched him sometimes. Like he was waiting for something. Like he was checking whether Gi-hun remembered anything. Whether it was all coming back.

There was a contradiction in everything between them — an undercurrent of trust that felt like a lie. Gi-hun didn’t know if it was something Young-il was hiding, or if it was something about him that he couldn't understand. But the more time they spent together, the more it felt like a trap he’d walked into without realizing it.

Young-il didn’t seem to mind. His calmness, the ease with which he existed in Gi-hun’s life, was something both comforting and suffocating at once. Gi-hun felt as though he was being swallowed whole, piece by piece, and still, he couldn’t help but want to trust that man. Even when that trust made no sense at all.

The distance between them was narrowing. Every small talk, every joke, every half-smile from Young-il started to feel too loaded, too meaningful. A kind of slow drowning that Gi-hun couldn’t fight, even as he started to wonder on rare occasions if he even wanted to.

There were moments when their bodies and hands brushed against each other, just barely, subtly, like an accident. But with too much intention in it and too much awareness. As if Young-il was pushing the boundaries. Gi-hun told himself it was nothing. It was just the alcohol. The late hours, the heat of the games, and fruitless conversations. But when he looked at Young-il, he saw the flicker of something odd in his eyes — something he couldn’t even begin to understand.

A question, a challenge.

Gi-hun didn’t know if he was ready to answer it. He wasn’t even sure it wasn’t just his imagination. Another hallucination among many.

He refused to think about it altogether.

And still, somewhere in between those “sometimes” and his pathetic attempts to exist their meetings grew more frequent, their time together stretched longer as did their exchanged glances and accidental touches over shared games and meals — kimchi jjigae, banchan, steaming bowls of rice.

Gi-hun didn't even think he could embrace it, watching everything as if from the sidelines, as if it were happening to someone else.

And still, one night, in the quiet of his apartment, beneath the gentle rustle of cherry blossoms in the April breeze flowing through the open window, their fingers brushed against each other on the floor once more — and for the first time, intertwined — twisting their lives even tighter into an already intricate, tangled knot of red threads.

He refused to acknowledge it.

And still, the moment he clutched Young-il’s hand tighter he felt a jolt of electricity, a shock piercing his chest that he couldn’t ignore.

Gi-hun wasn’t sure if he was holding on to Young-il’s hand because he wanted to or because he was scared of what would happen if he let go. And still, —

at that very moment, he drew a line — separating the foggy “before” from the clear “after.”

To early though.

The line was still to be drawn in two months. The happiest two months in Gi-hun’s recent memory.

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Young-il’s nearly week-long business trips had long since become a mundane routine for Gi-hun. What hadn’t was Young-il showing up in a horrifying state — head bloodied, stomach riddled with a bullet — after returning from one of them.

To Gi-hun’s own astonishment, he neither screamed in a panic nor froze in shock. Instead, something in him clicked into place. Without a moment’s hesitation, running purely on instinct, he loaded Young-il into the company car and drove him straight to the private hospital — the same one where Young-il had once sent him for psychiatric care.

In the small, dimly lit waiting room, no one so much as acknowledged Gi-hun’s presence. Doctors and nurses flitted past without a glance, as if the rigid figure on the couch — frozen like a wooden idol — were merely part of the furniture. No one asked questions. No one inquired what had happened (not that Gi-hun himself had any answers), who he had brought in, or why.

His emotions, dulled by the sheer force of stress, barely registered. And yet… something gnawed at him. An elusive, intangible detail. His hand clenched the black leather armrest so tightly that his knuckles blanched, but the buzzing, persistent thought refused to fade.

Something’s wrong.

Hours of empty waiting bled into each other before a nurse finally approached with a polite nod, inviting Gi-hun into the private recovery room. Whoever they thought he was, Seong didn’t know. But they let him in without hesitation, granting him unmonitored access to an unconscious Young-il. The nurse gave a brief report — he would need some time to recover from the surgery — but assured him that the patient’s life was not in danger.

Gi-hun sank into the small chair opposite the hospital bed.

Young-il’s breath was slow and even, deep in anesthesia-induced sleep. For once, Gi-hun saw him truly relaxed. The man was always composed, as if every muscle in his body, down to the cellular level, operated under strict control. But now, his face was strangely serene. Gi-hun let his gaze linger.

Almost absentmindedly, his hand reached out, wrapping around Young-il’s — warm, solid, real. A genuine, fleeting (more like unconscious even) smile disrupted the grim tension on his face. His eyes drifted, following the tangled web of wires looping over the bed and pooling onto the floor, before flicking back up to Young-il’s peaceful features.

Something’s wrong.

The thought stabbed through his skull with razor-sharp clarity. But why?

His gaze flickered downward again, drawn toward something at the edge of his vision — something his mind had registered before he had.

A patient file. Hanging just beside the headboard.

He wasn’t even sure why he was looking at it. He didn’t even mean to. And yet his eyes found the name printed across the top, and —

Nothing.

What the..?

For a second, absolutely nothing happened. Just the quiet hum of the hospital lights, the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. His brain refused to process what he had just seen.

Then, the world tilted.

Not physically — no, the floor remained where it was, the chair still solid beneath him — but his sense of it shifted, like a sudden, nauseating drop on a rollercoaster. A slow, creeping wrongness sank into his bones, spreading from the base of his skull to the tips of his fingers. The air thickened. He tried to swallow but found his throat dry.

His fingers twitched. He reached for the clipboard. But the movement felt distant, like his own hands weren’t really his. Like he was operating a puppet on invisible strings.

This isn’t real.

His pulse hammered in his ears as he forced himself to look again, eyes scanning the printed letters, trying to make sense of them.

Wrong.

The name was wrong.

But that wasn’t possible, was it?

His grip on the clipboard tightened, a cold sweat prickling at the back of his neck. He should know this. He should remember why this was wrong.

He shook his head. No. No, this isn’t right.

His breath stuttered — short, uneven gasps — but he forced himself to sit still. Forced his fingers to loosen around the clipboard, forced his mind to obey.

The doctor said this could happen. Hallucinations. Memory distortion. His brain was just playing tricks on him. That was all this was. He had grown used to it, hadn’t he?

He gripped the armrest again. Pressed down until his knuckles go white. Focus. Ground yourself. Breathe.

But his lungs wouldn’t work. His eyes kept dragging him back to that name, over and over, until the letters weren’t letters anymore, just shapes carved into his skull.

The answer was right there, dangling just out of reach, like something seen through fogged glass —

And then, without warning, the glass shattered.

And this time he didn’t plunge into some sort of a blackout or a fever dream. It wasn’t some twisted game of his mind.

Game.

A rush of images — too fast, too chaotic, too real — slammed into him like a truck.

Blood. The scent thick in the air. The taste of copper on his tongue. A voice — his own? Someone else’s? — screaming.

Concrete. Cold beneath his knees. A sharp, searing pain tearing through his body.

A number. White. Painted. Flickering in the darkness behind his eyelids.

His breath hitched. His vision blurred at the edges. His entire body seized.

The hospital room flickered, shimmering like a heat mirage, bending at the edges.

His ears ring — no, not ring, scream, a piercing high-pitched wail that swallows every other sound. The nausea comes next, curling in his gut, thick and relentless. The air is syrupy, clinging to his lungs like tar. His stomach twists. His pulse is wrong, pounding too fast, too hard. His throat spasms.

The taste of metal floods his mouth. Copper. Blood.

A voice. Distant. Mechanical at first. And then — human, painfully familiar —

“Player 456.”

No.

White. Black. No — Red. Blue. Floor flooded with corpses. A bright shiny room. Twisting, suffocating. Hands grasping at empty air.

A staircase. A scream. A gunshot. Another one. Not here. But inside his head, cracking through his skull like a fucking lightning strike. Too loud. Too real.

The scent of sweat and fear. The rough fabric of a black coat beneath his fingertips.

And then —

he wasn’t in the hospital anymore. He was —

No. No, no, no.

His stomach lurched. The room was wrong. The air was wrong. He was wrong.

He wrenched himself back into the present with a violent jolt, his body convulsing with the effort. His head snapped up, eyes wide and wild, chest rising and falling in sharp, erratic gasps.

“Young-il” hadn’t moved.

Nothing in the room had changed.

Except for Gi-hun.

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Hwang wakes an hour later.

His senses return to him in pieces, sharpening one by one like a blade being drawn from its sheath. Awareness seeps in, cold and mechanical. The first thing he registers is that he isn’t alone.

The second is who is with him.

Gi-hun.

And something is very, very wrong.

He isn’t just sitting there. He isn’t waiting.

He is staring.

Hwang should speak. Move. Do something.

But his hands won’t unclench from the sheets. And for the first time in years, his pulse stutters — with something dangerously close to fear. Seriously?

Dark eyes, too wide, pupils blown wide open in the dim glow of the hospital monitors. Not with confusion, not with worry, but with something else. Something raw. Something dangerous.

Hwang hates (sometimes to an extreme degree) that the gaps in Seong’s memory — minutes, hours, or even days of lost time — are his own routine by now. They are threads woven into the tangled web of his life, and he knows each one intimately.

He knows Gi-hun.

Three years have passed since Gi-hun’s last games.

Three years since a blank spot carved itself into his memory of them — and everything they entailed. The fleeting, fragmented return of those memories, surfacing in unprocessed bursts of aggression, is a passage Hwang has memorized cover to cover.

He’s studied Gi-hun like a well-worn book, returning to its pages time and again, willingly — almost religiously. A book meant to be owned, displayed neatly on the shelf of his personal library, within reach whenever he pleases.

To Hwang’s vague irritation, what began as a mere ”scientific” interest has degenerated into something painful, like an ingrown toenail he refuses to remove, for no reason at all. Or rather, for a reason he refuses to even put into words.

So, wehether he wants it or not, he knows Gi-hun.

And yet —

Something in that book has changed.

A new passage. Or, the old one, crossed out?

He knows Gi-hun.

He knows the way his body moves, the way his face twitches when he’s trying to hold something back.

This is different. This isn’t just confusion. It isn’t frustration or a hollow aggression. It’s understanding. A sharp, jagged awareness flickers behind Gi-hun’s eyes.

Hwang swallows. So that's how it is. So many years, and that’s how… — well, how stupid.

Awareness.

In his gaze.

In his posture.

In his voice.

Hwang blinks once. Twice. No surprise. No confusion. Just a quiet, detached acknowledgment. This was inevitable. But why the hell… why the hell was he so… disappointed? Upset? Really?

Silence. Thick. Suffocating.

Gi-hun breathes in. Then out. Slow. Deliberate.

Like he’s tasting the words before saying them.

Like he wants “Young-il” to feel it — deep in his ribs, where the knife Gi-hun pulled out of himself twists the hardest.

He tilts his head, eyes dark and steady: “What was the line? ‘Young-il. Just like my number.’ Yeah… —

A pause. A breath. “Young-il's” face barely shifts, but Gi-hun sees it anyway. The moment he registers the change.

A heartbeat too long.

Hell of a joke,

In-ho.”

[improperfrog]

Spoilers ahead

Astarion is not evil, you just don’t understand him or what trauma can do to people. 

I can’t even begin to comprehend the level of trauma this man has. People can get severely traumatized by one bad event in their life, now imagine 200 years of them. 200 years of pure shit.

People who were abused sometimes become abusers - then they feel like they’re finally the ones in control and in the position of power in this dynamic, no longer the powerless victim. They feel like they regained their power by becoming an abuser. 

People can become abusers because they don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like. They may believe relationships are built on domination and not mutual respect. That there’s always a hierarchy - someone always holds power and they’ll do anything not to be the victim again.

People who were abused will sometimes feel better when someone else suffers abuse - then they’re finally not the ones on the receiving end of it. Finally they get a break. They may fear that if they interfere, the abuse will turn back at them, so they’ll comply, even abuse others themselves, not to make that happen. Standing up for others always ends up with severe punishment from your abuser.

People who were abused and weren’t helped can feel resentment and envy towards those who were helped. They’ll feel angry that when they needed to be saved so badly, nobody saved them. They were all alone, while all those other people had a helping hand reach out to them. They might not want to help. Helping other victims can also be a trigger that reminds them of what they have gone through.

Astarion doesn’t want to ascend for fun, he wants to ascend, because he has this false idea that when he does, he will finally be safe. That this will ensure nobody will ever be able to hurt him again. But that won’t be the case. He may feel strong and he may actually physically be strong, but that won’t erase the mental destruction he’d faced. He does this because he’s terrified. In his head, he still will be that until he processes his trauma and comes out of it healthier.

Ascending him emphasized some of his traits - this is why he will try his best to turn you into the spawn, or won’t let you break up with him or become an equal vampire - he will use his power to stay in control in your relationship, so he will never be the weak one again, nor can he be abandoned again, nor can you turn on him*. That only shows that ascending didn’t help his mind, it only helped his body. 

Astarion can become ‘evil’ if he lets his trauma win, but he’s not evil yet. The time frame of the game is far too short for him to process his hurt (especially since he doesn’t get to sit around and think - the group is in constant action, traveling and fighting, doom lingering over their heads - hardly a good environment for therapy. He’s in constant survival mode*.), and expecting him to simply become a nice, helpful teddy bear quickly is unfair and unrealistic. Let’s not perpetuate the ‘perfect victim’ standards on traumatized people. They’re not perfect and after what they’ve faced, they should be expected to be.

*An example of that fear is shown when we meet the hunter that’s after him, and Astarion says that we should kill every hunter we come across, except maybe Wyll. It’s framed in a joking manner, but it’s actually rooted in fear. He does fear Wyll (and presumably others) could turn on him. He confirms so when you romance him and he says his plan was to make you develop feelings for him, so that you don’t turn on him. 

[olderthannetfic]

The pigheaded approach to religious abuse that the trauma comes only from the religious aspect of the abuse is also stupid.

Yes the religion was used as a tool of abuse. Yes it was the tool that also shaped your abusers. But religion isn't like a unique tool of abuse and power.

Doesn't mean religious trauma isn't valid, but that personal trauma can't be universally applied when the religion is so huge and with so many niches.

There's a reason why with Christianity in this case, there are so many cult like sects of the larger denominations. People who want power take a something like Christianity, then shape it into a tool that fits their need to they can use and abuse their followers, and said abuse then trickles down. Mega churches are one example. Those scamming pastors who demand you pay them to fulfil miracles or other bullshit. The religion is the cleaver, but it's still the butcher that holds the cleaver who did the killing.

Yes even some of the older roads of Christianity has that problem. But again, the cleaver and the butcher. Parts of the religion are misrepresented, changed and even erased to keep said power, and make sure the cleaver is ever sharp. The question is just if the people in power are going to use the cleaver to hurt.

Yes you can have your issues with religion as a whole, but I honestly feel like too many people are so insanely focused on the religion, they almost forget that the abusers chose to be abusers. Even if someone was a victim of abuse, you have choices to make.

Being religious or non-religious has nothing to do with being a good person. If that was the case, then there wouldn't be abuse from places with different values, people who have no religious beliefs, etc. Even if we isolate Christianity and Islam and try to point at them as the bad players, then different religions shouldn't have abusers because the Christianity and Islam are the problem. But that's not the case.

The truth is probably closer to something like, if religion didn't exist, abusers and power hungry assholes would just find a different way to cause the same kind of trauma, just without the label "religion", and it'd just continue because it changed faces.

By the end I lost steam, because I noticed what a huge fucking topic this is and I'm woefully unequipped to even unravel not just hundreds, but thousand of years of religious and other cultural impact on humans.

--

Nerds are perfectly capable of starting cults based on turning into LOTR characters or channeling Final Fantasy ones or whatthefuckever.

I think a lot of the people I grew up with would do well to look at what state Buddhism is like vs. California hippie meditation seminars and at how many self help weekend away places are also mega scary cults before they wail about how Christianity/Islam qua Christianity/Islam are the issue.

[supercorpkid]

I Should Hate You

Supergirl. Baby Danvers Reader. Kara Danvers. Alex Danvers. Lena Luthor. Lex Luthor.

Word Count: 3260.

Notes: heavy on angst and PTSD trauma. Ending coming soon.

Being Alex and Kara’s little sister was never a bad thing. If anything, it made life easier. You had two built-in protectors, two people who made the world feel safer just by existing. No one would bother you at school, and your mom never had to worry about you.

That is, until Lex Luthor came into the picture.

Because now, he knows. He knows. Not just who Kara is, secret identity and all. But also what she cares about, who she loves, the lines she would cross to protect the ones important to her.

And now, you do too—more intimately than you ever wanted to.

Lex didn’t just figure out Supergirl’s identity; he figured out yours. He knows your face, your name, the exact pitch of your voice when you’re begging not to die. He knows how easy it is to take you, how powerless you are against men like him. And worst of all, he knows something you can’t unlearn either—just how breakable you are, how easy it is to snap your psyche like a twig.

And that’s the difference, isn’t it? Alex has her training, her weapons, and alien tech to help. Kara has more than a dozen powers to choose from. And you? You have nothing. No armor, no defenses, nothing to stop someone like him from reaching out and plucking you off the street whenever he wants. And now that he’s done it once, what’s stopping him from doing it again?

Nothing.

And that terrifies you.

Kara keeps saying you were never really in danger. That she never would have let him hurt you. That she had it under control. But control means nothing when you remember the way the cold air clung to your skin in that cell, how every second stretched into eternity as you waited, helpless, for whatever came next. It doesn’t erase the way your body locked up when you heard footsteps approaching, the way your breath came too fast, too shallow, because you knew—you knew—you were just a means to an end. Not a person. Just a way to get to her.

And now? Now the nightmares won’t stop.

You dream of steel cuffs biting into your wrists, of walls pressing in too tight, of guns’ barrels freezing up the back of your neck, of Lex’s voice curling around your name like he owns it. And it’s not just when you sleep. Sometimes you’re in the middle of a conversation, or walking down the street, or trying to be normal again—only for your brain to snap back, to drag you under, to make you feel like you’re still there.

But the worst part isn’t the fear. It isn’t even the exhaustion of pretending you’re fine.

It’s the anger.

It sits heavy in your chest, impossible to shake. Because if Kara weren’t Supergirl, none of this would have happened. If she were just your sister—just Kara—Lex would have no reason to know your name. No reason to take you. No reason to remind you just how small you are.

Of course, you’d never say that out loud. How do you tell Supergirl that you wish, just for a second, she wasn’t the mighty powerful being she has no choice but to be?

And then there’s Lena.

You know it’s not fair. You know it. She’s not her brother. She’s not responsible for what he’s done, for what he knows, for the way your hands still tremble when you reach for a glass of water. She didn’t take you. She didn’t look you in the eye and smirk like you were already broken.

But she still has his name.

And maybe that shouldn’t matter, but right now, it does. Because every time you see her, every time she so much as says your name in that soft, careful way she does, it’s his voice you hear in the back of your mind. It’s his face you remember. It’s the shadow of him curling around her, reminding you that if you were just a little more like Alex, a little more like Kara, if you weren’t so easy to take, maybe this wouldn’t have happened at all.

And so, you flinch at the sight of her. Not obviously, but enough that she notices; that her brow furrows just slightly when you pull your hand back too quickly, when you shift a little farther away. And she doesn’t say anything, of course. She just watches.

And that might be the worst part. Because you can feel the questions in her silence, the ‘I didn’t do anything’ just barely biting back at her tongue. And she’s right. She didn’t. But her last name did.

And right now, you are having a really hard time separating the two.

It starts small. You tell yourself it’s just one more day of staying home. Just one more day where you don’t have to face the world, where you don’t have to pretend that everything’s normal. But after a while, ‘just one more day’ turns into a week. Then two.

The hardest part is how everything starts to feel too much. The thought of walking out that door, of seeing people, of hearing sirens in the distance or feeling the weight of a stranger’s gaze—it’s all so loud, so sharp, it’s like the world has become a minefield. One wrong step and it’ll all come crashing down again.

You quit work. You stop answering texts. You skip class, then tell yourself you’ll catch up later, but you never do. You become a shadow, existing only within the walls of your apartment, where it feels safe, even if it’s not.

It’s strange. You’ve always been independent, always handled things on your own, but this? This is different. This is too much.

You don’t even realize how bad it’s gotten until you hear your own voice on the phone with Eliza. You’ve called her every day for the past two weeks, something you’ve never done before. Which triggers her 'mom intuition’ for sure. She keeps asking if you need anything, if you’re okay. And you lie every time. But she knows you too well. She can hear it in your voice, feel the cracks forming beneath the surface. Your mom knows you're just the ghost of her daughter.

The silence in the apartment is thick, suffocating, and you’ve been letting it surround you for days. The TV hums softly, but you’re not really watching—your mind is too far gone, trapped in its own spiraling thoughts.

Then, the door creaks.

The sound slices through the quiet, jarring and sharp like a knife. You stiffen, your heart leaping into your throat, and before you can even register who it is, you spring to your feet. It’s a knee-jerk reaction—instinct, the kind you don’t even question. Your breath catches in your chest, and for a split second, you're frozen. Every nerve on edge, every muscle tense, as if the world is suddenly closing in.

When you finally focus, your eyes meet Alex’s. She’s standing there, the same steady presence you’ve always known, face full of concern.

“Whoa, hey, hey—” Alex starts, but you can’t stop the tremor in your hands, the pulse hammering in your chest like it’s trying to tear you apart.

You’re already backing away, your mind screaming at you to put as much distance as possible between yourself and the door. You barely register her words as they blur together, and all you can think about is getting away from the noise, the danger.

“Y/N, it’s just me. Alex.” She raises her hands up, defensively. "Just your big sister, checking in on you.” Her voice cuts through the spiral, sharp and grounding. 

You drag in a few shallow breaths, struggling to steady your mind, telling yourself that it’s okay, you're safe for now.

“Shit, Alex! Just knock next time. I don’t fucking have x-ray vision.”

Alex's brow furrows at your choice of words. She scans your messy apartment quickly, but it’s you she turns back to, her gaze sharp and focused on your face.

“You okay? You look like you haven’t slept or left the house in days.”

Sleeping isn’t the problem. In fact, you’ve been falling asleep easily enough. It’s staying asleep that’s the issue, with nightmares clawing at you every time you drift too far into sleep.

“I’m fine,” you say, a little too quickly. You know she’s overanalyzing every little movement, every tiny shift, so you need this conversation to be over fast. “Why are you here?”

Alex tosses her keys onto the kitchen table, then takes a cautious step forward. “You’ve stopped answering everyone’s texts, and you’ve been calling mom every day.”

“Oh, so I can’t call my own mother now?”

“You can…” she says softly, but there’s a quiet concern in her voice. “But you usually don’t do that every single day. She’s a little worried.”

“Gotcha. I’ll only call her every other month,” you exhale, annoyed, as you move back toward the couch. Alex lets out a frustrated sigh and follows, stepping closer.

“I thought I’d find you at work, but your boss said you quit.”

“Sorry if I don’t want to work in a coffee shop forever. I’ve got savings. I’ll find a better job in time.”

Alex doesn’t respond right away, but you can feel her eyes on you—heavy, searching. Doing what she does best, investigating. She takes another step closer. 

“Y/N, this isn’t about work or mom,” Alex says after a beat. There’s a hint of frustration in her tone, but it’s not aimed at you. It’s at the situation. “You just went through something traumatic, and now you’re hiding away in your corner of the world. Do you honestly think we’re all that stupid, that we don’t see what’s going on?”

You’re pretty sure she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be completely helpless and hopeless, at the mercy of someone like Lex. Doesn’t know the rage you feel at your own sister for allowing it to happen. Doesn’t have the faintest idea of how every bit of your once-best-friend now reminds you of the worst thing that ever happened to you.

“God, I hate when you do that. I hate when you walk in here all high and mighty.” You roll your eyes, every word coming out so bitter it makes yourself flinch. “You can either believe me when I say I’m fine, or don’t. I don’t care. But don’t just barge in here like you know better than me what I’m feeling, okay?”

Alex’s face tightens, but she doesn’t back off—she never does. Her eyes flicker between you and the apartment, as if she’s trying to read something deeper, something unsaid.

“Peaches,” She starts again, her voice quieter, and the use of the nickname shows just how well she knows how to handle you, to break through the walls you've put up. “I don’t mean to treat you like a kid, but this isn’t you. This… this isn’t how you’ve ever been. And I’m worried, okay?” Her voice wavers slightly, and though the frustration is still there, it’s now mixed with something softer, something that aches. “We all are.”

But you? You’re just getting more frustrated by the second. “Okay, fine. What can I do to make this conversation end and get you to leave me alone?”

Alex considers for a moment, just long enough to make you antsy, before she says, her voice surprisingly calm:

“Movie night.”

“Movie night?” You repeat, incredulous. You can’t help it—you feel a little ridiculous, but if going to a movie night is what it takes to get Alex off your back, you’ll do it. “That’s it? That’s the deal?”

You make sure, because nothing with your sisters is ever as simple as it seems. And this feels oddly easy.

“Yep. Come to movie night tomorrow, and I’ll see how ‘fine’ you are. Then you’re off the hook. I’ll even call mom and tell her not to worry about you…”

“And you’ll leave me alone too?”

“100%.”

“Okay, then. Deal.” You exhale, giving in with a resigned sigh. “See you tomorrow at movie night.”

You can’t believe you agreed to this. Sure, at the time it sounded like the only possible solution. You had to get Alex out of your apartment before she started sniffing the old pizza slices and your fears. She's too good at both. But now, as you stand in front of Kara's door, you can’t believe this is actually happening. You’re about to show up here and pretend that everything is fine for at least the duration of a whole movie. How on Earth are you going to pull this off?

The soft thrum of your pulse beats in your ears, drowning out the world for a moment. You stare at the door, heart twisting in that familiar, anxious knot. If you just turn around now, slip away into the night, you could avoid all of this. Avoid them. 

If you could just… 

The door creaks open, Kara is standing there in her usual flannel and sweatpants, looking as if she just stepped out of a pile of laundry. Her smile is wide, brimming with that annoyingly kind energy—the kind that could melt the hardest of hearts. And that’s exactly what makes this so damn complicated.

“You made it!” she says, her voice ringing as if everything is fine and normal and not at all like you’re about to implode just by standing here in front of her.

You cross your arms over your chest, already feeling a little defensive. “Yeah, well, I’m here, aren’t I?” You try to sound nonchalant, but your voice cracks at the end, betraying the nervousness roiling beneath the surface.

Alex steps into view behind Kara, arms crossed, like she’s been watching you since the second you knocked. She raises a brow, her gaze narrowing slightly, scanning you for any cracks. And, of course, she’s the first to speak up, because she always has to poke the damn bear.

“You good?” she asks, her tone a little too honest. Too knowing.

You force a tight smile. “Fabulous.”

Kara nods, stepping aside to let you in, that ever-present sweetness in her eyes, too soft for you to handle at the moment. There’s something about the way Kara moves—so gentle and eager—reaching out for the simplest of hugs, that makes you hurry inside to avoid her touch.

As you look around, Lena’s there, curled up on the couch, her presence like a quiet storm you didn't see coming. Her hair falls loosely around her face, and her expression is so open, so raw—a clear vision of innocence. So tender it nearly hurts. And, for a moment, you forget about the weight of the world. You almost forget who she is. Almost.

She is a Luthor. Her brother probably has eyes on her at all times. He's probably watching right now, already plotting how to take you all down in one strike. Hell, every second near Supergirl and Lena Luthor is another second closer to a cell, to having a gun pointed to your head.

"I thought we'd go with something light, so I picked a comedy. What do you think?" Kara says, grinning like she’s been waiting all day for this. And knowing your sister, she probably was.

You nod, trying to fight back the sense of danger creeping in. Everything is fine. You just have to pretend. Pretend that nothing matters but this movie. Pretend that Lena isn't sitting across from you, that Supergirl isn't here in her pajamas offering you a big bowl of popcorn.

You take a seat on the far side of the couch, keeping a careful distance from Lena, as if the space will somehow protect you from whatever may happen if her brother shows up. She doesn’t say anything, just watches you from thick eyelashes and green-eyed gaze, and it takes everything you have not to crumble under it.

Kara is already settling in, practically buzzing next to you. Her hands moving to adjust the throw pillows like this is the most normal, casual thing in the world. 

“I’m so glad you could make it! I missed you so much these past few weeks, Peaches.” Kara says, her voice soft and warm, like she’s trying to make this feel safe. Like she doesn’t notice the way you’re pulling inward, trying not to let your breath shake.

You force a smile, something that doesn’t reach your eyes. “Yeah, well, I did make a promise.”

The movie starts, but you can’t concentrate. You should be watching, should be laughing like Kara and Alex are, but every sound seems too loud, too sharp. Your pulse drums in your ears, and the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall is like a countdown. 104 minutes of this. Come on, you can do it.

But then—then the first gunshot in the movie rings out.

It’s too real. Too close to home.

Your chest seizes, and for a split second, everything blurs. The room disappears, the movie fades, and you’re back in that cold, dark place. The silence presses in around you, thick, suffocating. The same kind of silence that used to follow every threat. Every decision he made. The sound of your own breath in that small, damp space, the taste of metal on your tongue.

Your hand tightens on the edge of the couch, nails digging into the fabric, the tension pulling you taut. Your breath comes in short bursts, like it’s too much to take in. The sound of the movie becomes a distant echo, muted, fading out as the walls of that cell close in on you.

You don’t hear Kara's voice calling your name. You don’t see Alex’s concerned expression. All you hear is your pulse ringing in your ears; all you see is the shadow of Lex, looming over you, wrapping around you.

And then you feel it—a soft hand, barely brushing your arm, and it shouldn’t feel like this, not like fear. But it does. So you jerk back, hard, your breath catching after a shriek leaves your mouth unbidden. It’s an instinct. A reflex. A warning.

The room goes completely still.

All eyes are on you.

Kara’s face is filled with panic, her lips parted like she’s about to say something but doesn’t know what. Alex’s jaw tightens, her eyes scanning you like she’s trying to figure out how to make it better. But it’s Lena—Lena who doesn’t move. Lena who just watches, her hand still hovering in the air like it’s caught between reaching for you again or pulling back.

You can’t breathe. Your chest is tight, too tight, like the walls are closing in again. And Lena’s eyes—those quiet, searching eyes—are burning into you, and you can’t look at her. Not now. Not with everything you’re carrying.

“Are you okay?” Kara’s voice is soft now, gentle, like she’s scared of shattering something fragile.

You don’t trust anything, anyone. You don’t even trust your own voice at the moment. 

“I just... need some air,” you manage, barely louder than a whisper.

You don’t look at any of them as you stand, pushing the blanket off your lap and stumbling toward the door. You need to get out. You need to breathe. You've been holding your breath ever since you walked in this room.

You need to go. Where? Anywhere! Home! No—Midvale! Farther! Just go. Keep going. Somewhere Lex can’t find you. Your sisters won’t find you. No one. No one shall find you.

[serpentide]

i know that i've already said that my main verse here will be the more general one for the sake of crossovers, but i'm thinking about serpent's canon route and ending in the original game and honestly ? while i do understand the kind of message that it wants to convey ( to serpent, especially ) i think that it does not serve a healthy purpose in the slightest. telling serpent that she can and will be happy one day in spite of everything that she has gone through is indeed valid, but telling her that in order to be happy then she must learn to love others + learn how to be loved by others is not what she needs, in my opinion. even in the canon dialogue during her ending, we see the chief asking others to tell serpent that they like / care about her just so she will stop causing problems to others.

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT WHAT SERPENT NEEDS. as someone who is prone to obsessing over things ( it was her obsession with the abstract concept of happiness that has caused all of this mess in the first place, after all ) , telling her that she can finally be happy if others love her is just going to further twist and distort the way she looks at things + the way she perceives herself + the way she approaches others when it comes to interpersonal relationships. of course, serpent can experience true happiness through another's person love BUT NOT LIKE THIS, not with others just telling her what she wants to hear so she won't cause problems to them.

i believe that in order to be truly happy, serpent must heal first. her obsession with ambrosia and with "forgetting all the bad memories" directly stems from the fact that her life has been nothing more than a long string of horrors, one interwoven with the other, and she wishes she could forget about those too even if she never outwardly says so. this is why she offers the drug to others, not because she wants to just wound them or earn money through it, but because she empathizes in a twisted way with other people's agonies and traumas [ ... ] because even if the ambrosia had no effect on her, then maybe it will have effect on someone else.

serpent does not need second - hand affection to be happy. serpent needs to heal, because only once she's capable of looking at the world through her own eyes and no longer through the grotesque lenses of her traumas, she will finally be able to find not only her little place in the world but also someone to share that place ( and thus her newfound happiness ) with.

[starry-bi-sky]

my martha knight au in a nutshell:

Danny/Martha: see up here?

Danny/Martha: *taps skull*

Danny/Martha: intense psychological damage

-----------

Danny/Martha: *upon finding out she's pregnant*

Danny/Martha: oh my god i cant be a mom, I'm fifteen and homeless--

Danny/Martha: im going to be a terrible mother--

Danny/Martha: i live in a cAR--

Danny/Martha: what if the baby inherits my powers? Oh no--

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

Danny/Martha post giving birth: i've only had Bruce for a minute and a half but if anything were to happen to him i won't even need to fuse with Vlad, I'm razing this goddamn planet to the ground myself

Danny, to Baby Bruce: you are the last remaining thread of my sanity. I'm going to give you the world :)

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

Danny/Martha prior to getting pregnant: Fuck it, if everything in my life has led to this moment, i'm allowed to make one stupid decision. I'm getting drunk and getting laid

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

Danny/Martha while Bruce was a toddler: i swear to fucking god i am going to kill the next person who talks to me--

Bruce: hi mommy!! i brought you something!!!

Danny/Martha, immediately flipping on a dime: hi baby!! what do you have?

Bruce, a weird child like his mother: a spider :)

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

Danny/Martha, talking to Falcone after he made an unsavory comment at her and Bruce: If you ever come near me or my son again, I will dig up your shithead father's corpse and make you eat his skin.

Danny/Martha: do you understand me

Falcone:... crystal, ma'am

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

Danny/Martha new in Gotham: *getting mugged*

Danny/Martha: *grabs man's arm*

Danny/Martha: I AM GOING TO BREAK YOU IN HALF LIKE A TWIG, FUCK BOY, DO YOU HEAR THE WORDS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH--

(she then proceeds to terrorize Gotham's night life for the next extended period of time, mostly unintentionally)

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

Danny/Martha: Danny Fenton?? No. you must be mistaken, my name is Martha Knight.

Danny/Martha: this here is my littlest knight, Bruce.

Danny/Martha: I made him all by myself :]

[ohrackham]

what was the point of lila thinking home was a feeling she didn't deserve and could never earn until she found diego. what was the point of them finding deep, meaningful love in each other. what was the point of lila opening her heart and confessing that all she really wanted was a family with him.

what was the point of developing diego and lila over two seasons, creating such a beautiful, chaotic bond, just to destroy it for no reason.

[forever-and-whats-left]

Why do people always write fics about Christine and Erik marrying, yet never have him take her last name. LET HIM HAVE A NAME YOU COWARDS! LET CHRISTINE HAVE A FAMILY AGAIN!

[yunmeng-jiang]

that man does NOT think of wei wuxian as his gege

[calpalsworld]

Give him an AAC device and an electric wheelchair NOW!!!

[anarchne]

i wish i could remove the word “adopt” from kept peoples’ vernacular lol

[fantasticgothicpeachsludge]

Actually crazy that Scott “telepaths number one favorite guy to traumatize” Summers’ main two love interests are some of the most powerful telepaths in the fucking world

[smartzelda]

Sometimes you have to wonder if someone really is a villain fan or if they'd just rather twist their entire situation and backstory in their heads so that the villain seems like a completely misguided poor poor meow meow victim who they can fix into an unequivocally good person

[bumblingbabooshka]

Ok. Get closer why don’t you.

[beautifel]

seems like my heart does nothing but break lately

[mydr3aminvi0let]

i wear a lot of skirts and pink and whatnot as my style has developed with me & my personality but when one of those age regression girlies latch onto me....i do not like that