#that i just don’t think ive had enough time to ruminate on yet to be able to tackle them properly

[ecowgirl]

ahhhhh!

[css1992]

Guilty Pleasure

[Porn AU]

Summary: Peter and Beck used to be a power couple in the porn industry, but after Beck dumps him, Peter is forced to start over. With no money, no family and nowhere to go, he doesn’t have much choice other than to keep doing porn, so he joins Just4Fans to get back on his feet and then one day he gets a very generous tip from someone under the username of YKWIM.

All the warnings listed on Part I apply. 

Read on AO3

Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V /  Part VI /  Part VII /  Part VIII  / Part IX / Part X /  Part XI / Epilogue

-x-

Almost three months into his new life, Peter was finally able to establish a routine that worked for him. He woke up around nine in the morning, tried to get some sort of exercise done, usually yoga or a jog around the block, then he had breakfast by himself, because both Ned and MJ had class or work before he was even up. After that, he made sure to post something on Just4fans, so people could see it throughout the day, and answered private messages and comments from the night before. Lastly, he headed to his newly created Twitter account to promote the new content and to interact with people there as well – it was a great way to get new subscribers.

That usually took up most of his morning, then he went downstairs to Ned and MJ’s apartment for lunch. He usually ate with at least one of them, except for Mondays and Wednesdays, when neither was home, but even then he ate at their place since he didn’t own any kitchen appliances yet – it was on the priority list, but not that high up, he liked having an excuse to visit his friends every day.

Later, he headed back upstairs and, depending on the day, he would take new pictures and videos or edit the ones he took the day before. Finally, at night, he posted more content on his Just4fans and chatted with his subscribers until it was time for bed.

In the last week of April, on one of his morning jogs, he noticed that just a few blocks away from his building there was a charity called the Bright Future Foundation. He thought the name sounded familiar, but try as he may, he couldn’t remember where he had heard of them. It was only after running past it a few times that it clicked – Mr. Harrington, his science teacher, told Peter to look it up.

The Bright Future Foundation helped kids who aged out of foster care get their lives together. They offered support in the form of scholarships and grants, academic and personal mentoring, and help with internships and employment readiness skills. That was what their website said, as Peter vaguely remembered from his high school years, when he still planned on going to college.

He went inside one day, not really sure why, and when the front desk lady asked how she could help him he just stood there for a few minutes, silent and nervous. She asked if he wanted to learn about their programs, but he shook his head, sticking his hands in his pockets. The woman waited patiently, a motherly smile on her face, until Peter asked if they needed any help.

And that was how volunteering at BFF became a part of his new routine – every Thursday from nine to five, starting in the first week of May. Since it was just a few blocks away from his place, he could walk there instead of taking the subway.

He liked his new routine, it was tiring but it didn’t leave a lot of time for overthinking or ruminating on the past. He never felt lonely because Ned and MJ were always around and he actually made a few friends among his subscribers, which was nice.

For the first time in a while, Peter was feeling happy. And it wasn’t an elaborate, fragile sort of happiness, where things needed to be in perfect place for the feeling to be felt, no. It was the simplest kind of happiness: he had friends, a job, a place to crash and everything was fine. Nothing was perfect, but it was fine.

A few days after he sent Tony the lingerie pictures, he decided to send him the video. He was a little insecure about it, it was 13 minutes long after editing and Peter had really lost it for a minute there, one could clearly tell. He was gone for most of the video, a moaning mess, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, begging for something – someone – that wasn’t even there. It either looked ridiculous or fucking hot depending on the person watching, and even though he was pretty sure Tony would not think it was ridiculous, he still worried just a little, but he sent it anyway. It was still early in the day when he did, some time around noon, and he didn’t expect him to answer any time soon, so went on with his day.

Tony messaged him around 2AM, as usual, but there was no text, just three videos in the chat. In the first one, it looked like he was wearing a suit, he could see the dress pants pulled down and the white shirt pulled up as Tony jacked off for thirty seconds before he came all over his hand. It looked like he was in a bathroom stall, sitting on a toilet, and Peter bit his lower lip, wondering if he was at work when the video was taken.

The second video was similar to the first, but it looked like he was in a garage or something like that – probably the workshop he always talked about –, Peter could see a black shirt bunched up around his waist and sweatpants around his thighs.

Last but not least there was a video of him completely naked, lying in bed, and the video was shot from Tony’s point of view, like he was holding his cell phone close to his face, looking down, instead of propping it up in front of him like he usually did.

They were all incredible and delicious and got Peter rock hard in a second. The boy got comfortable on the bed, lay on his back, took off his pajama bottoms and sighed when his cock sprung free, shivering a little when the chilly night air touched his heated skin. He planted his feet on the mattress and spread his legs, but didn’t do more than that yet.

“That good?” He messaged Tony, cheekily, and the older man started typing right away.

“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my whole entire life and I’m 48, so yeah. That good.”

Hm, forty-eight. So Peter wasn’t wrong in his assumption. He bit his lower lip, a rush of excitement running through his veins. Tony was so much older, almost thirty years his senior. Peter supposed he must be really experienced. He wondered if he usually hooked up with younger men or if in real life he only dated women – it wouldn’t be a shock – but most of all, he wondered what he looked like. Maybe he dyed his hair, but if he didn’t, it was probably mostly gray and fuck Peter if he didn’t have a thing for that.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it. You broke me. I was in the middle of a meeting when you sent that video, I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom to watch it. What have you done to me, witch?” Peter wanted to laugh, but it got stuck in the back of his throat with a moan when he slid a hand to his lower abdomen and his cock stood to attention.

“I don’t know about that, but your videos sure got me horny as fuck.” He rolled his hips a little, humping the air, and finally gave in to himself, holding his cock in one hand and the cellphone in the other.

“Is that so?” He could almost hear his voice through the phone – soft, but powerful. He always imagined Tony would sound like that if they ever talked face to face.

“Yes, daddy” And that would always be his default answer to anything he might ask with that voice. He closed his eyes for a second, quickening the pace of his strokes just a little, when his phone beeped again.

“Are you touching yourself right now?”

“Yes, daddy” Peter shivered, imagining Tony’s reaction to that revelation.

“Can I hear you, baby boy?”

He didn’t even hesitate, he started recording a voice message and moaned into the phone, thrusting his hips against his fist as he quietly begged for Tony’s cock, his fingers, his mouth, anything, he just wanted the man to be there taking care of him, making him cum, that was all he wanted, and he wanted it so badly.

He came in just a few seconds and hit send on the voice message before he could overthink it. As he lay there, breathless, staring at the ceiling and trying to gather his strength, he fantasized about Tony listening to it. He smiled to himself, like an idiot, then his cellphone beeped, bringing him back to reality.

“You’re gonna drive me mad, you know that? I’m actually going insane and it’s all your fault. Also, my dick is gonna fall off and that’s on you, too.” Peter had the presence of mind to laugh at the message, but it took him a few seconds to gather enough energy to write back to him.

“That’s a serious accusation, Tony, I’m gonna need all the evidence I can get, so every time you touch yourself thinking of me, make sure to send me proof, ok?”

“Oh, you don’t know what you just got yourself into.” Again, Peter could only laugh, because judging by the amount of videos Tony sent him that day, he really was in for a treat.

Days later, on Friday, Peter got up early to go for his usual jog around the block. He was a little tired from the day before, still adjusting to his new routine at BFF – it was his third week there and they were starting to realize that Peter was a quick learner and very eager to help, so they took advantage of that, which was fine with him, he was thrilled to be able to help somehow.

So after a quick, half-assed jog around the block, he went back home, showered and decided to take the rest of the pictures Tony asked for. The man was still going nuts over the video, he wouldn’t stop talking about it and every day there was a video of him finishing himself off in their chat and Peter could hear his own voice in the background, screaming Tony’s name.

It was both embarrassing as fuck and hot as hell, so the younger man also spent a lot of those last few days in the shower trying to cool down, but Tony was not making it easier.

As much fun as that was, he was curious to see how Tony would react to the new pictures. He realized that would be the first time the older man would see him with clothes on, which sounded ridiculous, but it was true. He didn’t have many pictures on Instagram, but most of them were selfies and there were just a few where it was possible to see maybe a hint of a shirt, but that was it.

So he took the outfit he and MJ picked out and winced, remembering how much it cost, but at least he picked out clothes he might wear some day – if he had a meeting with the queen of England, for example. He put on the light gray suit by Hugo Boss, with a pink shirt with big, white dots by Levi’s Vintage underneath, black dress shoes by Brunello Cucinelli and a Gucci watch he was able to find on sale for half the original price. The whole outfit was worth around five thousand dollars, and was definitely the most money he had ever spent on – well, anything.

He checked himself in the mirror and snorted a little, he sure looked like a spoiled brat, which was probably what Tony meant by “expensive and beautiful”, so that was fine. He styled his hair so it looked effortlessly tousled, but not too much, and set his camera to take the pictures by the living room window.

He took a few pictures on the windowsill, some other leaning against the glass with his hands in his pockets, a few others looking out the window. He posed on his armchair, too, which was the only piece of furniture he had in his living room at the moment and he wished he had a decent dining table so he could pose like he was on a date with the camera, but he supposed those would do.

Once he was satisfied with what he got, he took off the clothes, put them away and went downstairs to have lunch with Ned and MJ. For the first time since he moved in with them, they both had Friday afternoon off, so they spent it together, eating junk food, watching bad TV series and playing really old tabletop games Ned had brought with him when he moved from his parents’ house.  

In between a game of Monopoly and Scrabble, Peter pulled his phone out to check his messages, and was surprised to find one from Tony, sent just a few minutes earlier. He checked the time and noticed he must still be at work, so he opened it, assuming it couldn’t be anything too sexual.

“Hey, are you feeling better today? Just checking in.”

Peter frowned for a second, but a quick look at their earlier messages reminded him that he was feeling a little under the weather the day before and he’d told Tony that before he went to bed.

“Hi, Tony! I’m all better now, thanks for asking. I guess it was just allergies or something.”

He didn’t expect Tony to answer right away, but as soon as his message was sent, he started typing.  

“That’s good to hear, but you need to be a little more careful with your health, kitten. Just yesterday you said you had an apple for lunch. At 4PM.”

“You’re one to talk.” Peter snorted. They always berated each other for poor eating habits. Peter was a 20 year-old bachelor living by himself and sharing meals with his equally young and dumb friends, so pizza was on the menu more often than not; Tony was a forty-eight year-old businessman with too little time to care. “Did you even eat today?”

“Don’t try to turn this around, this isn’t about me.” Peter rolled his eyes and smiled to himself. “Did you do anything fun today?”

“I took some pictures for you, it was quite fun.” He knew the mention of new pictures would get him interested in a minute.

“Don’t play with my heart, kid. When can I see them?”

“I don’t know...” He teased just a little, because he knew Tony wasn’t above begging and it was fun to watch.

“Don’t be mean to daddy, come on. He’s always so good to you.” Peter smiled, because, yeah. He was.

“I’ll send them tonight, I promise.” He decided, since they would have more time to talk then, if he sent the pictures earlier, Tony would still be at work and Peter would still be at his friends’.

“Good boy.”

“You know I am.”

“What are you smiling about? Who are you talking to?” Ned looked suspiciously at him, so he quickly put the phone down and shook his head with a nervous smile.

“Just a subscriber with a bad one-liner.”

MJ looked at him like she knew a secret, but Ned just shrugged and finished setting up the game.  They ended up calling it a draw and ordering pizza afterwards, but Peter went back home early because both Ned and MJ had work the next morning.

Once he got upstairs, he went to edit Tony’s pictures and since it was still a little early to send them, he decided to check his twitter DMs. He didn’t read them very often, he already had his plate full with JustForFans, but every once in a while he checked them and answered as many as he could. Most of the messages were dick pics anyway, he just ignored those. Some others were people being nosy and asking way too personal questions, or worse, asking about Beck. He learned how to talk his way around those, but one message in particular stood out and really got to him.  

“I’m so glad you’re doing okay, honey! The way Beck is with his new boy now makes me wonder if he ever even loved you. He sure moved on quickly. You’re better off without him anyway, I always liked you better.”

That sort of comment wasn’t exactly unusual, but that second part caught him a little off guard. Makes me wonder if he ever even loved you. It just – why would she say that?  The way Beck is with his new boy. What way, exactly? What could he possibly be doing that made that person assume Beck never even loved him? People thought they were perfect together, they said it all the time, so much so that Peter himself was almost convinced of it for most of their relationship, so why in the hell would anyone think he loved this other guy more? To the point of assuming he didn’t even love Peter in the first place?

He was a masochist, he decided, as he opened Instagram. And not even the good kind of masochist, because there wasn’t any pleasure involved in what he was about to do, just pain. He unblocked Beck’s profiled and fucking looked. He didn’t know what he expected to find, but just looking at the first picture was enough to make him realize it was a terrible fucking idea. It was a black and white picture of him and the new guy cuddling in bed, kissing with soft smiles on their faces, captioned: “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Peter closed the app quickly, he didn’t need to see that. It meant nothing.

That picture meant nothing. That caption meant nothing. Because Beck was a fucking liar, a fucking actor, a fucking illusionist, a fucking – artist. He painted beautiful pictures, he weaved beautiful words, but none of that meant anything. Because it never meant anything when it was Peter in his arms, so why would–

Fuck, he should be over him, so fucking over him. But he really wasn’t, he would go back to that toxic environment if Beck snapped his fingers and that was scary to know. It was fucking terrifying to realize he was one text away from crawling back to him, even after all the humiliation, even after Beck just fucking up and left him with nothing – nothing –  he would still go right back to his arms. He still wanted to go right back to his arms.

It made him feel pathetic and weak because he knew that what they had was toxic and abusive. And he had known that for a while, way before they split up. Deep in his soul, he knew he was living a nightmare, day after day, over and over again, but he couldn’t fucking leave. He thought Beck was all he had. He promised him forever. He promised he would always be there for him. He was all Peter had in life, and he had lost so fucking much over the years, he couldn’t afford to lose anybody else.

But he did, didn’t he? He lost Beck. He was in someone else’s arms right that second, professing his undying, fake love.

Peter took a deep breath and held it a few seconds, then exhaled slowly.

He didn’t lose anything, he was set free. He was free and he had a record to break – it had been three days since he last cried about that asshole and he didn’t plan to ruin it.

He closed Instagram and went to his Just4Fans. He posted a few pictures from a phoshoot he did earlier that week that made him feel sexy and confident, which was the opposite of how he felt at that moment, but he was going to fake it until he made it.

In a few minutes, he got lots of comments and private messages with compliments, but somehow none of them was enough to fill the empty spot Beck left when he dumped him.

Well, none except for one.

“Were you planning on giving an old man a heart attack today? ‘Cause that’s how you give an old man a heart attack.” The silly message got a smile out of him, and that was a lot considering how broken he felt.

“Lol. It wasn’t in my plans, no, but now I’m worried. Is the old man okay?” He joked, and immediately got an answer in his inbox.

“He’s waiting for you to keep your promise. Says he refuses to die before he sees some pictures of you? Do you happen to know anything about that?” Peter chuckled.

“Oh, yeah, I think I know what he’s talking about. Hold on a sec.”

He selected his ten favorite pictures with the date outfit and sent them to Tony, feeling butterflies in his stomach for reasons he couldn’t explain. He lay in bed for several minutes, staring at his phone, waiting for an answer, but the older man didn’t say anything, even though Peter could see he was still online. He started to get a little anxious, worried that he had messed up somehow, so he messaged him again.

“Well? Have I finally rendered the old man speechless?”

Almost at the same time as he sent his message, Tony replied:

“I need to see you.”

Peter’s heart almost jumped out of his mouth when he read those words, eyes widening in shock. I need to see you. He read it a few more times to make sure it meant what he thought it meant. It couldn’t possibly – Tony wouldn’t want to meet him. That would be absurd. He was – well, Peter wasn’t sure, but he sounded important most of the time, he was definitely very rich, very hardworking and he seemed like a really nice guy. So really, why would he want to meet Peter. That made absolutely no sense, obviously he meant something different than that, he just didn’t quite know what–

“Please,” said the next message, just a few seconds later.

Peter bit his lower lip, feeling his face grow warmer. Just for the hell of it, he thought – what if Tony did mean he wanted to meet him? What then? Peter couldn’t say yes, that would be insane. He didn’t even know the man, all he knew were little things about his daily life, he didn’t know his last name, if he had a family, if he was married, if he was a psychopath – he didn’t even know what he looked like!

Still, he fantasized about saying yes. But that was just a fantasy. He couldn’t do it, that would be crazy.

Right?

“You won’t regret it, I’ll treat you right.”

Well, fuck. He had to go straight for his Achilles’s heel, huh.

Peter kept staring at the bright screen of his phone, breathing slowly to try to contain his wild heart that seemed adamant to burst out of his chest cavity in the next few minutes. He didn’t know what to say. No, his brain supplied, like it was obvious, because it was, right? He couldn’t say yes, yes was not a viable answer. He had to say no, it was only a matter of how he would say it without hurting the older man’s ego.

But.

Why exactly did he have to say no? He knew there were ate least 99 good answers to that question, but he couldn’t think of one, so–

“How do I know you’re not a serial killer?” Peter asked, even though he wasn’t really worried about that, it was the last thing on his mind, to be honest.

“You’ll know.” He said, plain and simple, and not helpful at all. And still, no flight response whatsoever from Peter’s brain. His stupid mind couldn’t seem to understand that that was clearly a terrible idea.“We’ll meet in a restaurant, the best in New York, and nothing else has to happen, I promise. We’ll have a nice dinner and that’s it. I just need to see you in person.”

That sounded reasonable, didn’t it? A public place, lots of eyes on them. If Tony turned out to be a creep, he could just leave. At the very worst, he’d be disappointed and lose a very generous subscriber; at the very best, he’d get a good meal out of it and who knew what else. It sounded reasonable. So it was probably reasonable.

Right?

“Can I wear this outfit?” He asked, because, well, that was all he had to wear to New York City’s best restaurant – whatever that was.

“You must, baby.” He answered quickly, and Peter smiled to himself. “So I’ll take that as a yes, then?”

He typed a quick yes, but didn’t send it right away. He gave his brain a few seconds to come up with reasons to say no, because he knew there were good reasons for that, but he really, honestly, just wanted to say–  

“Yes.”

“Perfect.” He replied right away, as if he had been staring at the phone, waiting for his answer. “I’ll set a time and place and let you know. You won’t regret it, Peter.”

Peter loved all the pet names Tony gave him, they were all sweet and funny, but when he called him by his actual name, it just hit different. It felt good. Like he wasn’t just a pretty picture in a porn app, an expensive hobby, but a person. It was hard for him to remember that, sometimes.

Some other times, it felt good to forget.

[fox-steward]

hi. i hope you don't mind me asking this but i need some advice.

i was born female, and ive always been a tomboy, sometimes in the most stereotypical way. i was also a little lesbian who didn't know it yet. but after my younger sibling came out to me as trans, i started second guessing everything about myself.

for the sake of my sibling, who im closer to than anyone in my life, i learned about what theyre going through to support them and ended up getting taken in myself. i consumed all the yaoi and gay fanfiction they did, i read up on all the identities that were within the trans umbrella and eventually i started to think i wasnt a girl at all, but my infact a feminine transboy.

i never was able to transition on account of my family but the growing inner hate i felt for myself made me want to because deep down I knew that no matterr what i said or believed, id never be the cis gay boys i, essentially, fetishised and craved to be. it made me miserable, but i wanted to be accepted so badly that i stuck with it. but then i fou d your blog and others like it, and reading through it, whole reevaluating myself made me realise how misguided my mindset was.

despite realising that me being a tomboy is perfectly fine, i cant help but cling to that idea of being a boy, even though i have no idea what it means to "be a boy" or "feel like a boy". all i know is what the media portrays boys, feminine boys and gay boys to be like, and i clung to that idea for so long that i believed it to be my identity.

i just wanted to ask, if i can, how can i get over this mindset? i feel terrible because my younger sibling still identifies as trans without a shadow of a doubt, and my questioning of myself makes me feel awful, but i also feel bad because... i dont know who i am really now. how can i just be me again?

sorry this is long. any advice would be very very much appreciated.

it sounds like you’ve been through it, anon. whew! i just wanna acknowledge what a mindfuck you’ve been through, and it’s normal to feel no so great.

i actually think you’re grieving, strange as that sounds, but hear me out. being female is not easy, being a masculine woman comes with its own set of challenges, and imagining yourself as a “gay transboy” was an escape from all that. you could imagine a future for yourself where you grew up to be a gay man, not a gay woman. it’s worth noting relationships between men are the only sexual/romantic pairing that isn’t party to misogyny within the relationship itself.

it’s intoxicating to imagine we could have that ourselves, huh? it happened to me too, and i’m not even actually attracted to males at all, i was really just seduced by the idea of a relationship of equals.

but this. is. a. fantasy. one we as female people can never achieve.

so you’re grieving the vision you had for your future. your grief doesn’t care that the thing you promised yourself is impossible.

you’re undergoing another shift in the way you see yourself, the way you imagine yourself moving through the world. that’s hard, anon. being a tomboy, while absolutely lovely and perfectly fine, can be really difficult in our misogynistic society. it’s like that dworkin quote i’m about to butcher—something something absolutely excruciating to be fully aware of the misogyny all around us. you get the gist. and she’s right, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it.

so idk, i don’t have any specific advice, but i do know a lot about grief. with grief, you gotta accept you’re gonna feel shitty for a while and absolve yourself of the responsibility of ~fEeLiNg HaPpY~ for now. i’m being flippant because happiness is a mirage anyway. we get pricks of joy, moments of brightness or laughter, flow and contentment, enjoyment, pleasure, and these fill in between other moments of discomfort or monotony or tedium or malaise or or or. and if we’re lucky we are aware when the good stuff is happening, so that we can pause and say, gee this is nice. and if you get enough of then and you’re aware enough as they’re happening, perhaps you can tie it up in a bow of hindsight and call it contentment.

tangent, sorry. practically, keep yourself busy and tire yourself the fuck out, tbh. when my wife left, i started just going and doing things, anything i didn’t actively NOT want to do. dancing, concerts, art class, bike ride, walk a friends dog, cooking class, sit in a field and listen to music.

just do anything. i know it’s hard during covid, but it isn’t so much WHAT you do but THAT you do. take the field example—you have to travel there (that kills time!) and maybe you walk or bike (that is physical activity) then you do the thing you planned to do (takes more time) and you have to travel home (more time and activity) then you have completed something you set out to do (an achievement/free endorphins).

i also took up running when she left (tire myself the fuck out) and that changed so much for me. with grief, rumination and sleeplessness plagued me; running took both those out of the equation. so my sleep improved, i got stronger and my cardiovascular fitness improved, i ate better, i got to see myself improve and achieve goals, got to build an identity separate from who i was in my marriage. so i cannot recommend running enough.

and as for identity, finding out “who you are”—identity is a trap. don’t cement yourself to any one thing because everything changes. don’t define yourself by externalities, just be open and curious about your inner life, your qualities (which are also able to change btw) and start to strengthen the ones you like, like training a muscle. i practice (literally practice) kindness and discipline, which are important qualities for how i see myself. i also practice at compassion and i like how these things make me feel and how i show up in the world when i’m practicing at them. what qualities will you train in yourself?

you’re not defined in relation to your sibling, btw, and they aren’t defined in relation to you. you can question transness while still loving them.

you’re gonna be just fine, anon. you have plenty of time. grieve the future you can’t have, even though it’s truly for the best, and cultivate a person in yourself you’re excited to be. good luck.

[relaxxattack]

I had plans today but am going to have to cancel so got any knife trick updates or just general rambling about characters you wanna share? --slip

aw im sorry about your plans

and EEEE yes a little!

i finished chapter one a bit ago and had to put the project on the back-burner as i put my full-time focus into my finals. ran so far is fun to write, but i feel i’m not properly making him mean enough (although ig he hasn’t really interacted with too many people so that makes sense)

i haven’t written jackie yet (he’s not in chapter one) but i’m excited to. also the break is giving me a chance to ruminate over my plot map and add things that weren’t there before, for fun, so that’s cool

i’ve also been thinking about what wilbur said about worldbuilding, so i might flesh out the subbin empire a little more before i start writing in it.

anyway so far i think there will be seven chapters, maybe eight if one is too long and i have to split it. it’s going to be a pretty fun mystery with twists and turns as jackie and ran try to solve it, and ran also tries to kill jackie (lmao). there’s also going to be at least one (1) fancy party scene because we all need that in our lives

also i should be getting my second ao3 today :]

work on knifetrick will probably resume next week after my finals (or earlier depending on everything)

and i probably won’t post any of it until ive got a few chapters under my belt, just because i want to be able to grow into the story and change things around, and also so that i don’t put pressure on myself for updates ^^

so it’ll be a few more weeks before knifetrick sees the light, i’d estimate. but im very excited!

[heartofsnark]

This Is Love (Chapter Twelve): Evil Comes In Disguise

Notes: This one is shorter than others but it felt like it took me so much longer, I blame Cyberpunk 2077 for stealing my one braincell for a while. Also, I have a tendency that the longer it takes me to write something, the more insecure I feel about it, so I ended up cutting this chapter a bit shorter than I originally intended. But I think it works and I hope you enjoy!~

Word Count: 8686

Chapter Warnings: Talk of physical assault, hospitals, POV switches, Joseph visions, me trying to write police investigations/interrogations to minimal success and struggling to write Jerome for the first time properly. 

For chapter one and the warnings about this fic’s overarching themes, please click here!

For the previous chapter; click here!

And the clock ticks and ticks and ticks and ticks. Every second feels like an eternity. Every moment of silence seeming to stretch on for hours. Her nerves fray with each one, worry blooming like a flower in her chest. The tension palpable as the three deputies and Sheriff wait to hear what will become of the town pastor. Dahlia’s mouth starts running before she can stop it; to distract herself or her distraught friends, she doesn’t know. 

“How long have you all known Pastor Jerome?” 

“Oh, Jerome’s been in Hope for…fifteen years or so,” Whitehorse tells her, thinking a minute over the exact timeline. 

“He took over the Falls End church when I was thirteen,” Hudson adds, “so yeah, fifteen years.” 

“Wow,” Dahlia can’t help but exclaim, astounded by just how long they’ve all known the pastor, he’s been with the county for more than half of Hudson and Pratt’s lives. 

“St-,” Pratt swallows his words then starts again, stuttering, “still remember my mom making me give my first confession to him…I was terrified I was gonna go to hell, get kicked out of church, break my mom’s heart.” 

“What did you do?” 

“His mom caught him looking at porno mags,” Hudson rats him out, laughing. Whitehorse cracking a smile and Dahlia snickering. 

“I was eleven, shut up,” he tries to defend himself through his own laughter, “yeah, Jerome thought it was funny too, told me everything was okay and then it was.” 

Rook can just imagine it, Pratt as a kid, terrified that god’s going to smote him for looking at a tit. There’s a bittersweet quality to the four smiling and laughing at the memory; the anxiety and fear still looming but it’s a little easier to breathe. The weight crushing down on them is a little lighter than it was before. 

“If he makes it out of this, we need to go back to church,” Hudson tells Pratt after a beat of silence. 

“We do, don’t we?” 

“Officers?” A man in a doctor’s coat calls out to them, the same one who stitched her head back together before. 

“Is he okay?” 

“We stabilized him; we got the bleeding under control and it looks like we won’t have to transfer him after all, he should be fine to recover here. We’re still monitoring him, but things are looking up.” 

There’s a sigh of relief; maybe just from Whitehorse, maybe from all of them. She can’t even tell. Things are looking up, Jerome is likely to live and none of them will lose someone who clearly means so much to them. 

“What exactly is it that happened, doctor?” 

“Someone out in the valley called 911; the heard scratching at the door and when they looked he was collapsed on their front step. That’s all we know at this point, but as I told you, this was clearly an assault. The bruises, the bleeding, it all matches with brute force assault and with the severity we do believe it was multiple people who attacked him.” 

“Who the fuck would wanna hurt Jerome?” Hudson asks, more to herself than anyone else. 

“You’re all free to stay in his room, so you can question him when he wakes up, but I don’t know how reliable his memory will be with what he’s been through.” 

“Thank you, doctor.” 

 The four go into the hospital room and Dahlia clenches her jaw when she sees him. Bruises mottle and color the friendly face she’s seen around the county; a myriad of red and purples across him. One eye swollen, stitches and bandages in places where the skin broke. They were trying to kill him; that’s all Dahlia can think. This was an attempted murder, his body is hidden under a hospital gown and blankets, but she can see from his arms that the damage extends over his body. A IV gives him a steady drip of fluids to keep him stable, a heart and oxygen monitor letting the staff know he’s staying that way. 

“Jesus fuck…” Pratt whispers under his breath. 

Hospital coffee and more stories of the pastor pass the time as the four settle in; the time Jerome comforted an emotional fourteen year old Hudson when she spilled communion grape juice on her white dress. Whitehorse talks about how often he’s visited the church to talk with Jerome. 

Hours pass of the four talking, Dahlia downing five or more paper cups of coffee across the time. And then a cough sound rings out, a shift of fabric, the pastor slowly waking up. Whitehorse calls out for the nurses; the deputies shifting in their seats as he comes to. 

The nurses flood in, checking on Jerome’s vitals, ensuring he can comfortably sit up in his bed. He’s an older man, not as old as Whitehorse, but probably as old as Jacob or Joseph. Mid to late forties. With short dark textured hair and a dark beard.

“What the hell happened?” Whitehorse asks when the nurses are done checking on the Pastor. 

“John Seed,” The pastor begins, and Dahlia clenches her jaw, “he and members of Eden’s Gate kidnapped me, he tried to force a confession from me and when I didn’t comply; they beat me and left me in the woods. I tried to get help the best way I knew how, but I passed out before I could speak to anyone.” 

Dahlia doesn’t have time to think, to ruminate on what this means, what might be going on; Whitehorse telling her to grab the evidence collection kit he brought in. There’s not much to be collected, but their best bet of getting any conclusive evidence is swabbing Jerome’s fingernails. There’s nothing to get fingerprints off of, no weapon, no duct tape, no bindings. No bodily fluids exchanged, thankfully for Jerome’s sake. But, if he fought back, grabbed at his attackers, there’s a chance the blood under his fingernails could belong to them. That he managed to gouge their skin deep enough to leave a trace. 

“Sorry, this might hurt a bit,” Dahlia gives a gentle warning when she sees the broken and bloodied state of his nails, gently swabbing blood from under them, making sure to collect from each finger before dropping it into a vile. 

“I think I’ll make it,” he manages to say, a slightly dry laugh, his voice deep and resonant.

“I know you will, but still don’t wanna add to it.” 

“Jerome, you said John Seed, did you recognize anyone else?” 

“Lonny, Theodore, and Patrick were the only ones I know I saw…The way John talked he was doing it because of Joseph, that he ordered it… Eden’s Gate is getting worse every day.” 

“Don’t worry, Jerome, we’re gonna do everything we can, Hudson, take the sample back to the station to see if we can match it to anything already in our database.  Pratt, Rook, want you to start pulling the peggies in for questioning and getting DNA. Start with Lonny Stevenson, Theodore Rossi, and Patrick Michaelson. No arrests, not yet, just questioning. We’ll handle the Seeds later, alright?” 

“Understood.” 

There’s a heavy tension in the cruiser as Pratt and Dahlia climb into it. Jerome is alive,  there’s a weight to what he’s told them and to their duty to get justice for him. Pratt’s knuckles are white as he grips the steering wheel, jaw clenched, and shoulders wrought with tension. Pastor Jerome has been an important figure in his life. She can’t imagine how hard this must be for him. She thinks of how much worse she might feel if it were Lloyd or Whitehorse in that hospital bed, someone she were close to. Dahlia squeezes Pratt’s shoulder as they drive, hoping her empathy shows through the touch. Even as strangers, her stomach is in knots, though it may be because of her…connection to the accused. 

Despite their constant encroachment on boundaries, stepping on the line but never quite over it, Dahlia had maintained her hope that the Seeds and their flock were good at their core. That’s why she turned Cassie into their hands, but everyday there’s something new. And this is the worst yet. If they’ve truly done this, if they’re ordering full out assaults on people, that does a lot more than just cross the line. 

One of their three main suspects, outside of the two youngest Seed brothers, works at the Green-Busch Fertilizer Plant, an Eden’s Gate owned business. And for possibly the first time since she began working in Hope County, Dahlia is the one leading the charge as they get out of the cruiser, Pratt not trusting his own voice. 

“Patrick Michaelson,” she calls out and a man steps out, “we need to have a word with you down at the station.” 

He’s generic by Eden’s Gate standards, too long hair and a scraggly beard. His arms are covered, so she can’t check for scratches or bruises along them. 

“I in any trouble, deputies?” 

“Just need to ask some questions; Theodore Rossi or Lonny Stevenson here? We need a word with them as well.” 

“No, but I could ring ‘em for you?” 

“We’ll chat first, then you can call them from the station, alright?” 

“Whatever you say, officers.” 

The last thing she wants is for them to have a chance to put together a story and alibi before they start questioning them. They allow Patrick into the back of the cruiser, he seems to be maintaining his cool. And the tension in the car only strengthens as they take him back to the station. Dahlia watches him in the mirror along the way, waiting for some sign of anything to peek through, for a sleeve to ride up and to see scratches from Jerome’s nails, something. But nothing of the sort happens. 

Dahlia has never actually had to interrogate or question anyone, she realizes once they’re at the station and having Patrick take a seat. She doubts he’ll give them much information. If he’s innocent, he won’t have anything of interest to tell. If he’s guilty, he won’t want to tell them much of anything. Getting a DNA sample is what’s going to be the most important thing, if they get some conclusive evidence, something that links one of the Eden’s Gate members to Jerome’s assault the rest will come much easier. 

“Coffee?” She offers, as she pours black coffee into three paper cups.

Patrick murmurs a small thanks before he drinks from the cup before they start asking him questions. Hours pass of trying to ask the same questions in slightly different ways or tones. Dahlia trying to stay friendlier in her tone while Pratt is terser, due to his personal connection. But getting more than a ‘I was at home, last night,’ is like trying to get blood from a turnip. He refuses to give a DNA sample as well. 

“We about done here?” Patrick asks with a hint of annoyance in his voice. 

“Fine,” Pratt grumbles, “I’ll walk you out and you can ring Lonny and Theodore for us.” 

Dahlia taps her fingers against the table as the two men walk out, breathing a sigh of relief when Patrick leaves his coffee cup. It takes a few minutes and then Pratt comes back, he collapses into his chair and groans, she can feel the stress radiating off of him. 

“Well, that was a waste of fucking time,” he grumbles. 

“How you figure?” 

“How you figure anything else?’ He looks at her incredulously, like she’s grown a second head and breathed fire. 

“Left his cup,” Dahlia pokes at the little Styrofoam cup, “our property, we wanna swab it for DNA, our business and don’t need anyone’s consent for it.” 

“I’ll run it down to evidence, you brew another pot for the next two.” 

“On it.” 

Pratt runs that down, the cup bagged and labeled with Patrick’s name, she’s sure. Lonny and Theodore aren’t far behind. And their questioning goes much the same. They don’t give particularly direct answers and refuse to give DNA samples. Theodore avoids talking as much as he can, mostly opting to glare at the deputies after his first insistence that he has no idea why he’s here and has no obligation or desire to talk. But, he does at some point break his sourpuss expression to take a drink of coffee. Lonny is cockier, more aggressive, making snide comments but he drinks coffee at some point too; so that’s all that matters.

By the end of it all, three cups are sent down to evidence to be swabbed for DNA to be tested against the DNA found under Jerome’s fingernails. If it’s from any of them, they’ll know by hopefully the end of the day. Evidence based cases are rare around here, so the forensic team stated they can fast track it, hopefully

Pratt and Dahlia rest in the bullpen office, Hudson joining them. There’s a somber air to the entire office. Hudson’s leg bounces with nervous or angry energy, Dahlia isn’t sure which. Meanwhile, Pratt is wringing his hands until the skin rubs raw. Their worry is palpable as they wait for either more information or direction. The oppressive silence has started to weigh on Dahlia’s shoulders, she’s tapping her fingers against a table. 

“You know,” Dahlia says after too long, “you guys can go see Jerome if you want, I’ll call if any info comes in.” 

She knows they’re worried about him and want to be there to check on him. There’s no reason for them to sit here and suffer when she can just let them know when the analysis comes in. 

“We’re not gonna leave you to man the station by yourself,” Pratt dismisses her out of hand, as if the idea that she can be left alone is ridiculous. 

“I think I can manage for an evening, anything happens, I know how to reach you all.” 

“I’m going,” Hudson declares, “I trust Rook and I’m driving myself crazy here.” 

“Thank you, Hudson…” Dahlia says with soft smile, Hudson actually trusts her and isn’t acting like she’s a child. 

“You coming?” Hudson asks Pratt, looking at him expectantly. 

“I’m not leaving Rook here alone.” 

“I’m an adult, you know that, right?” 

“If Eden’s Gate was willing to attack Jerome, who knows what else they’ll do. And you’re already on their radar, were before this.” 

“What, you think they’re gonna storm the station?” 

“Who knows anymore.” 

“I don’t have time to listen to you two bicker, I’m leaving,” Hudson tells them before walking out of the station. 

Dahlia chews her lip once she’s left with Pratt. This is already a stressful day and not the time to let her wounded ego guide her behavior. But it is wounded. She’s not a child, young sure, but not a child and by no means incapable. Pratt has been coddling her and trying to limit what she does since the beginning of her job, she thought it was lessening, but… Does Pratt seriously not think she’s competent enough to be left alone for a few hours? Is she that unreliable? Incapable? Does he think that little of her? 

She doesn’t lend a voice to these insecurities or anger; not the time or place. 

“Don’t pout,” Pratt says after a few minutes.

“I’m not.” 

“You are, I can physically see you pouting.” 

“Even if I was, it’s not important.” 

“Seriously, Rook? You wanna be a brat right now?” 

“Seriously, Pratt? You wanna be a patronizing dick right now!?” Her voice is harsher than she intended. 

“Deputies?” A voice calls out, one of the workers in their piddly little forensic department poking their head into the open office. 

“Yeah?” 

“We got a match for the DNA found under Jerome’s fingernails.” 

“Who’s our guy?” 

“Patrick’s matched, we couldn’t find any traces of Lonny or Theodore’s.”

“I’ll call Whitehorse,” Pratt says before getting out his cellphone, “figure out what we’re doing next.” 

Dahlia only nods, not trusting herself after her outburst. Her fingers still tap tapping against a desk as Pratt speaks to the sheriff. She can only hear Pratt’s side of the conversation as he explains what they were just told and agrees to whatever Whitehorse is telling him, before he hangs up. 

“So, what’s our next move?” Dahlia asks, voice cracking more than she’d like. 

“Arresting Patrick and questioning the Seeds. He wants a lighter touch with John and Joseph, his words, not mine.” 

“Lighter touch meaning…?” 

“They can be questioned together if they want, given a day and the chance to come in on their own terms. Whitehorse doesn’t want us ruffling their feathers unless we get something conclusive on them.’ 

“I’ll never get why he wants to walk on eggshells around them.” 

“Because they’re nuts and got a good hundred or more people who’ll fight for them.” 

Dahlia shrugs, she gets that, she guesses. But its still hard for her to wrap her head around that the men she’s met could order an assault on someone else. A part of her is still holding onto the hope that Patrick just acted on his own, that John and Joseph had no idea. But, Jerome says John was there. And John’s not exactly a face he could confuse with someone else… 

“C’mon, let's go get Patrick.” 

He’s at his house at this late hour, knocking in the door of his little farmhouse. Patrick answers the door, face souring the moment he sees the officer. His lips are sealed, not speaking a word to the deputies as they read him his rights and bring him into the station. He refuses to speak for a long while, even as they book him and try to ask him a few more questions. 

“I wanna call my lawyer.” Is all he says after an entirely too long drag of silence. 

“John, your lawyer?” Pratt asks. 

“What of it?’ 

“We need to have a chat with him too,” Dahlia informs him, “so we’ll be happy to call him for you.” 

“Fine.” 

Dahlia stretches out her back as her and Pratt leave the interrogation room, this day has been her longest yet, but they seem to be getting somewhere. She looks over to Pratt. 

“Want me to call up John or you wanna do the honor?” 

“I will, they like you too much.” 

“Have zero idea what you mean by that, but alright.” 

Pratt grabs the station phone and rings up John’s number. Dahlia chews her fingernails as she waits, biting away at them and chipping her nail polish in the process. When she runs out of nail that goes past her fingertips, she chews at the skin. Mind racing as Pratt talks to John, she feels like her thoughts and feelings are tearing into two directions. What she wants to be true and what evidence supports. The older deputy hangs up the phone and Dahlia looks up at Pratt expectantly. 

“John says him and Joseph can be here in a few hours, chances are Jacob will be with them.” 

“What makes you say that?” 

“Anytime either of them have been questioned, Jacob’s there, just to look mean I guess.” 

She nods, thinking of what she read so far in the Book of Joseph, of the abuse in the Seed family. It doesn’t shock her at all that Jacob has a protective streak, that he wouldn’t want his younger brother’s far out of sight. She does find herself wondering why Faith isn’t following alongside her siblings as well. Her fellow deputies didn’t seem to know much of her at all, Hudson not even knowing what she looks like. Hell, the youngest sister hasn’t even been mentioned yet in the Book of Joseph. Though given the hefty age difference, perhaps she wasn’t born yet during the memory Joseph chose to open it with? 

Dahlia takes a seat while they wait for the Seed brothers, graciously accepting the cup of coffee that Pratt offers her. Her leg taps as she drinks at it, listening to the clock tick away as she waits for the Seeds. Her fellow deputy sits next to her and she can tell the day has been wearing on him. She doesn’t know why, what it is that pushes the impulse forward, but she thumps her head onto his shoulder. A soft form of contact, comfort, whether it’s an offering to him or a selfish desire of her own, she isn’t sure. 

But Pratt responds by leaning his head towards her, over top of her own. His hair tickling at her skin and his scruff scratching at her skin. She can’t help but smile and press in a little closer, just appreciating his presence in this quiet moment after such a drawn-out day. 

“Shit!” 

Pratt’s sudden yell jolts Dahlia awake, her skull knocking against his. She blinks sleep from her eyes, when did she even drift off? How long was she sleeping against his shoulder? Her hands and the bottom of her jeans are wet; the cup of coffee and it’s contents now on the floor as well as her shoes. 

“Fuck,” she curses under her breath, she must have dropped it when she fell asleep, “sorry.” 

Dahlia goes and gathers up paper towels, cleaning up the mess. She didn’t even realize she was that tired. 

“Don’t sweat it, shit has been crazy around here lately, I nearly dozed off myself.” 

“You telling me this ain’t typical.” 

“God, no, county’s usually more boring than watching paint dry. Lately, feels like county’s gone nuts.” 

“Eh,  I prefer the crazy, keeps things interesting at least.”

“Deputies,” the on shift desk worker pops their head into the room, “the Seed brothers are here.” 

“We’ll be there in a second.” 

Dahlia finishes cleaning up the mess and sighs, that weight back on her shoulders. It’s way past their usual shift hours and the day as a whole has been a lot. But they may finally be getting to the root of what happened. They’re getting some justice for Jerome, Patrick is a damn near guaranteed arrest. They just need to get to the bottom of John and Joseph’s involvement. She took this job to help people and that’s what she’s doing, Jerome has a right to feel safe in this county and as much as she hopes the Seeds are good, if they’re hurting others, it needs to be shut down and now. 

Mess cleaned; Dahlia and Pratt go out to the waiting room to greet the Seeds. John and Joseph look relatively cleaned up. Though John always looks some version of prim and proper. She’s positive she’s never seen the youngest sibling in a shirt that wasn’t a collard button up and she’s certainly never seen his hair in any state other than slicked back. His shirt of choice today is purple, no vest or trench coat, just the buttons left undone to show the sin marked across his chest and the sleeves rolled up to show the tattoos across his forearms. 

Joseph is wearing a shirt which is an accomplishment for him, a stiff white button up done up to his throat and a black blazer over it, nearly overkill in the heat of August. Perhaps he only wears clothing in extremes, either half naked or completely covered. His greasy dark hair is pulled back as usual and despite the late hour, his yellow aviators are on. 

And then there’s Jacob, black tee and jeans with his typical camo shirt tied around his waist. Dog tags, key, and rabbit’s foot hanging from a chain around his neck as they always do. 

They’re superficial observations, what the brothers wear, but she can’t help but take in the stark contrasts of the brothers. Joseph trying to look more put together and less crazy, John in that same state but every day, and Jacob genuinely not seeming to give any sort of a fuck. 

“Deputies,” John is the one to greet them, grinning and Dahlia folds her hands behind her back, trying to still her body and straighten her back to present a confident front. 

“John,” Pratt returns the acknowledgement with a nod, “I-“

“It seems you have one of our flock members contained on the bas-“  John cuts off Pratt. 

“We actually would rather speak with you and Joseph before we discuss that case,” Dahlia cuts the youngest brother off in turn, not letting him dominate the conversation or set the tone for this. 

“Is that so?” 

“Yes, I assume, you’re both comfortable with answering some questions for us?” She cocks her head to the side, trying to stay nonthreatening, not that her five feet of being could ever be threatening. 

“Of course, that would be no problem at all,” Joseph is the one to speak next, giving her a smile, eyes soft despite the circumstances. 

“Actually,” Pratt cuts in, a twitch in his jaw, “I’ll be asking those questions alone.” 

“You’ll what?” Dahlia levels a glare at her partner, ready to throw him through a window, but unable to do so. He’s pushing it, he keeps pushing it. 

“I think it’ll be best if I conduct the interrogation alone.” 

“Oh, do you?” 

“You girls need a minute, or can we get this shitshow on the road,” Jacob says, the deep rasp of his voice cutting through the spat. And she doesn’t miss the clench in Pratt’s jaw at the emasculating choice of words. 

“Come on back; sorry for the trouble,” Dahlia says, a tight lipped smile as she leads the Seed brothers to the interrogation room. She’ll deal with Pratt and his overprotective bullshit later. It’s a quick walk down the hall and she politely opens the doors for them, she thinks she sees Jacob rolling his eyes. 

“Go ahead and take a seat, we’ll be just a moment,” Dahlia tells them, giving a small nod when Joseph thanks her. She lets the door shut behind the Seeds and turns her gaze back on Pratt. 

“Rook-”

“What the actual fuck, Pratt?” She keeps her voice low, but her tone is terse, how could he try to strong arm her out of the interrogation. 

“Look, you’ve spent a lot of time with them, regardless of if you’ve wanted too or not. They’re fixated on you and you’re just too close to them to be interrogating them.” 

“You’ve known them longer than me! You’ve known them for years! This is a rural county, it’d take me longer to meet all the cows here than it would the people!” 

She wants to wring his neck, he’s entirely too protective of her and for no real reason. More now than ever she realizes she made the right call not telling anyone about the mute “angel” Eden’s Gate member who swung on her or the vandalism of her trailer. Pratt already barely wants to let her handle ticketing people and now he doesn’t want her interrogating suspects. It’s ridiculous. She’s a grown adult woman, she needs to be allowed to do her fucking job. 

Dahlia is done listening to this nonsense, she decides, and makes a beeline back to the interrogation room. Pratt isn’t going to stop her from doing her damn job. She opens the door, her coworker trailing behind her, as she steps into the interrogation room.

The Seed brothers are sat at the table. Jacob’s legs open wide, sat relaxed in his chair, completely disinterested by most appearances but he still watches the deputies from the corner of his eye. She’s reminded of a predator lulling prey into a false sense of security before it strikes. 

Joseph sits between his elder and younger sibling. His elbows on the table, hands politely folded, not a hint of anxiety in him either. Seemingly calm, but his gaze is intense on the young deputy as she enters, never straying away from her.  He never looks over at Pratt, the other deputy’s warning that they’re fixated on her ring through her mind. 

John is sitting back in his chair and his gaze is just as intense, but there’s more manic energy behind it. In him in general. Perhaps he’d look calmer, more serene like his brothers, if not for the constant bouncing of his leg, the movement starting to  shake the rickety table. 

“Sorry about that,” Dahlia starts before Pratt can find a way to force her out of the room, “would either of you like any coffee or anything before we chat?” 

“No, thank you. We’ve done this song and dance before, deputy, you can’t sneak dna off of us,” John dismisses her off with a sneer. 

“Okay then, no coffee, understood,” she rescinds her off  as she sits down at the table across from them, Pratt sitting next to her. 

“Look, let's cut the bullshit,” Pratt speaks up, “a person was attacked, beaten badly. We got evidence, won’t say what, that connects one of your church members to the attack. And its being alleged that he did so on Joseph’s order with John supervising the whole thing, and...you’re just hear for window dressing I guess.”  He gives a dismissive look to Jacob at that last part, no doubt his attempt to give a little revenge jab for his comment earlier. 

“Why I’m here ain’t any of your concern, princess.” Jacob says, voice low and the threat within it not subtle. 

“Okay…” Dahlia cuts in with a clap of her hands when she sees the way Jacob and Pratt are glaring at each other, this is an interrogation not a pissing contest, the last thing they need is Pratt trying to fight Jacob and getting his ass kicked, “this is already going off the rails, good job everyone. Now, while his wording was...abrupt, uh that is the reality of the situation. There are some heavy accusations being levied at you two, so we were hoping to ask you a few questions.” 

“This is absolutely ridiculous,” John responds, rolling his eyes, “these are completely baseless accusations.”

“We do have evidence linking one of the men, a member of your church, to the assault. Our witness and survivor is credible. At this point we have no reason to believe they’d lie about what occurred.” 

“They persecute us the same as they did the prophets before us, the faithful handed over to courts and councils, sheep sent out amongst wolves,” Joseph speaks sudden, voice intense as he stares into Dahlia’s eyes, a chill rolls up her spine, a tension pulling in her shoulders that she can’t quite shake. 

“Seriously,” Pratt scoffs and for the first time Joseph’s eyes leave Dahlia, harsher and colder at the older officer, “you really think this is about your church, that someone would make this shit up just to get at you, think they beat the shit out of themselves too just to spite you?” 

“Of course not,” John speaks next and she can’t help but notice the jolt in his body language, “I’ve yet to speak to our flock member you’ve find evidence of. But even if he’s done what he’s accused of, surely, you can’t expect us to be held responsible for the actions of every member of our church. We have hundreds of followers, you cannot reasonably expect us to be accountable for any of them who may stray from our ways.” 

“The witness specified you were there, John. Not just accountable, but physically present for assault.” 

“And there’s no evidence of that, you said so yourself, and as I’ve told you before, there are many in this county who aren’t above taking any chance to sully mine and my family’s name. Who’s to say, they didn’t see their assault as an opportunity to bring down our entire church.” 

“May I ask where you were last night?” 

“Had dinner with my family, as I always do, and stayed in for the night. Rather boring, I’m afraid.” 

“Anyone who can confirm this story?” Pratt asks and Dahlia tries not to roll her eyes; his family would be the ones who can confirm it and ...they’re mostly here and biased. 

“My brothers who are sitting right here, my sister if you feel the need to ruin her night as well.” 

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” 

“Then are we done here?” 

“This isn’t a formal arrest or detainment,” they don’t have anywhere near the evidence or that, “so,  you’re free to leave if you so please. Though, there’s still the issue of Patrick who requested counsel with you.” 

The brothers have made it clear they want to leave and that the deputies won’t be prying any more information from them. So, Dahlia escorts them out. 

“You two can go on home,” John tells his brothers, “I’ll call someone to get me once I’ve sorted this out.” 

“We couldn’t possibly leave you behind, we’ll wait,” Joseph squeezes John’s shoulder than looks to Dahlia, “assuming that would be okay.” 

“Of course, don’t expect you to ditch your brother.” 

“It is tempting sometimes,” Jacob mumbles under his breath, a smirk pulling at his lips when John glares at him. Rook has to press her hand to her mouth to avoid laughing at the brotherly teasing. 

“Jacob…” Joseph gently chides. 

“Regardless, you two are welcome to sit out in the waiting room, there's a vending machine if you need anything or if you’re not interested in that I’m sure Nancy can get you set up with coffee or food from our break room.” 

“Thank you, deputy.” 

“I’ll be out, shortly,” John says the final word pointedly as his brothers go to the waiting room, then turns to the deputies, “which room is my client in?” 

“Room 103, I’ll be right in, go on and get settled,” Pratt tells him and John leaves down to the room where Patrick is being held. Dahlia holds her tongue until the youngest Seed brother is out of hearing range. 

“Think we can get anything else out of them?” 

“Fuck no, he’s going to tell Patrick to keep his mouth shut, insist that there’s another explanation. Like getting blood from a turnip, we’re just going to have to deal with what we have. DNA should be enough to convict Patrick, as for the rest, we’ll have to see if Whitehorse feels we got enough to do a full investigation. But, we don’t have much.” 

“The evidence against Patrick might be enough to subpoena Joseph’s sermons, get warrants to search the church and houses?” 

“Maybe,fuck,” Pratt rubs a hand down his face, he looks exhausted and she’s sure she’s not much better, “what time is it?” 

“Nearly four in the morning.” 

“Fucks sake, okay, their foul mood makes a bit more sense.” 

“Yeah, I can take care of the talk with John and Patrick, like you said won’t be getting much from them, so you can head home or check on Jerome.” 

“No, no, absolutely not. I’ll take care of this, you go home and get some sleep.” 

“Pratt-” 

“Rook, you were the one passing out on top of me. Go home and sleep.” 

“I-” 

“Please, for once in your life, just listen to me.” 

“Okay, just this once,” she bows her head, feeling like a scolded child, “but we do need to have a serious conversation about you babying me, you know that right?” 

“I don’t baby you.” 

She blinks and widens her eyes, has he heard a single word he’s said to her all day. Refusing to let her stay at the station alone, not wanting her to call John, and not even wanting her to be involved in the interrogation. And that today alone, she can’t count the amount of times he’s told her not to be the one to issue tickets, to stay in the car during calls. She knows they’ve lost an officer in the line of duty. And she knows she’s a lot younger than Pratt or Hudson. But this is her job as much as it is theirs. 

“Okay,” Pratt scratches at the back of his neck at the incredulous look, then gently puts his hands on Dahlia’s shoulders, “serious conversations can wait until we’ve both slept, alright?” 

“Fine, I’ll go home and crash, get yourself some sleep when you finish up here, okay?” 

“Okay, will do.” 

He drops his hands from her shoulders and gives a small pat to her arm as she turns to leave. As much as she’d rather Pratt be the one going home to get some much needed sleep, she can’t say she won’t be thankful for a chance to crash. 

“And Rook,” Pratt calls out before she can get through to the waiting room, she turns to look at him, “stay away from the Seeds, please.” 

“Don’t push it.” She rolls her eyes, overprotective ass, she pushes through the doors to the waiting room. 

Dahlia gives a friendly nod of acknowledgement to Joseph and Jacob as she moves past them, looking towards Nancy. 

“I’m gonna go home and crash for the night, any news comes in, don’t hesitate to call me, alright?”  She explains to dispatch, not fully trusting Pratt to let her know if it’s up to him, throwing on her leather jacket and already searching for her pack of cigarettes. She’ll catch a smoke break before she rides home, her nerves needing the nicotine fix. 

“Alright, dear. Drive safe.” 

Dahlia waves a quick bye to both Nancy and the Seed brothers before she leaves the building. The air is cold, temperatures drop quick at night out here,  a start contrast to the hot muggy days. A dark sky hangs above her except where stars breach the abyss. Goosebumps prickle up along her neck where the air hits, she put a cigarette between her lips and lights it, breathing nicotine deep into her lungs. She tilts her head back, blowing smoke from her mouth, white billowing around her. 

“Deputy,” Joseph’s voice calls out and chills run along her spine, “you know, smoking is really a terrible habit.” 

“We all got our vices,” she says, shrugging her shoulders, making sure to blow the smoke away from Joseph. 

“That is true, I know that better than most…” 

She nods when he trails off a bit, his church seems to focus a lot on sins and vices, overcoming them she assumes. Sins marked across the skin of so many of its members. Silence falls across the two, for once Joseph breaking eye contact, a rare moment for him. 

“Is there something you wanted…? Can’t imagine you’d rather wait out here in the cold.”

“Yes, actually, I think there’s a lot we need to discuss. Faith told me you have concerns about your friend, Cassandra.” 

“Cassie, yeah,” she corrects, not sure why it bugs her so much to hear them using Cassie’s full name. 

“Yes, John always was wishing to speak with you regarding the orchard and… I’d hate for this… incident to color your opinion of me and my family.”

“I understand and I’d love to talk all this out with you, but-” 

“It’s four in the morning.” 

“Yeah, sorry,” she frowns, feeling bad about it, “its been a rough day and I just am ready to crash, I’m sure you must be exhausted too.” 

“Of course, I understand, which is why I’d like to invite you to have dinner with me and my family.” 

“Uh, what?” 

Dahlia blinks and coughs on cigarette smoke, taken aback by the sudden invitation. He’s here for an investigation, she just interrogated him, and he’s concerned with inviting her to dinner to… preserve some sort of good image? While a formal investigation isn’t opened on him or John yet, needing warrants and authority to do anything more, but one is right around the corner. 

“We try to have dinner as a family, my brothers, sister, and I, as often as possible. A luxury we couldn’t indulge in for so much of our lives, I think it’d be a wonderful opportunity for us all to speak and for you to know my family separate from church or police interrogations. So, would you like to join us for dinner tomorrow night?” 

“Uh…” 

This could be her only chance to talk to him about Cassie before a formal investigation is launched and it becomes a conflict. 

But it could already be a conflict, since they are hopefully not far away from launching that investigating. 

But, she could use it as a chance to probe around, see if she can unearth anymore evidence in the Jerome case. 

But, anything procured without a warrant wouldn’t be admittable, so the most she could do is see it and then know what to go back for once they secure a warrant. 

But, even just getting a chance to ask questions without the environment of an interrogation room, might get some truths out. As well a chance to ask about some of the other strange things going on in the county. From roadblocks to the issue of the weird “angel” that assaulted her. 

But, they could be dangerous, if they do have anything to do with Jerome’s injuries… 

But, she’s not weak and it’s not like she's looking to antagonize them. She can ask her questions and be polite. 

But, Pratt would kill her. He literally warned her to stay away from the Seed family five fucking seconds ago. 

“Sure, I’d love to,” she tells him, ultimately unable to say no to his earnest little smile. 

“That’s wonderful, our dinners are at John’s ranch house, I’m not sure I have anything to write the number down on…” 

“I can use the memo app on my phone, what is it?” 

“Oh.” He seems taken aback for a moment when she gets out her phone, but recovers to prattle off the address, Dahlia typing it in. 

“Did I get it right?” She asks, moving to stand closer to Joseph’s side, so he can see the phone screen.

“Uh, yes, that’s,” he reaches out to touch her phone and accidentally closes the memo app, pulling his hand away like it burned him, “oh.” 

Dahlia can’t help but laugh, watching the older man fumble to deal with tech. He’s older, sure, but he’s not pushing his sixties or anything. He ducks his head and she can see a very subtle flush of red flare up his cheekbones. Its the most human he’s ever seemed to her, just an older man who hates phones, embarrassed that he has no idea how to use one. 

“Don’t worry,  it saved,” she explains, pulling it back up. 

“Yes, that’s correct.” 

“Alright, see you and your family tomorrow.” 

She tucks her phone back in her pocket and waves bye again, getting on her motorcycle. Dahlia slides her helmet on and starts the journey back home, mind racing and heart heavy with the events of the day. 

Joseph sits in the passenger side of the truck, Jacob driving and John sitting in the back, as they leave the police station. It's late, nearly early enough for him to be waking up. John made a grave mistake, trying to punish Pastor Jerome for leading people astray, away from Eden. A noble intention, but he did it out of wrath and anger, letting someone else’s sin fuel his own. His impulses placed them back in the sight line of the police. They can recover from this easily enough, as frustrating as it is. The bigger issue is once again working to reign John in and working to change the junior deputy’s view of them. 

The Lamb plays a vital role in the collapse, she was chosen to be the one who brings about the end, how exactly she will do so remains to be seen. But, he’d rather she do it alongside them stepping into New Eden by their side after she helped cleanse the world, rather than doing so in spite of them with no understanding of the gift she was given. 

“What the hell were you thinking?”  Jacob scolds their younger brother, always protective of the project and them being found out by law enforcement, he’s more than a little irate about John’s mistake. 

“Jacob…” Joseph still chides him for cursing, a nasty habit his eldest brother struggles most to break. If Joseph’s being completely honest, he’s not certain Jacob is trying to break it all. 

“Pastor Jerome is a fraud, he is leading people astray and spreading lies about The Project, he had to be taught a lesson.” 

“Who cares? His people abandoned him for us, John. He can talk all he wants, no ones fuckin’ listening.” 

“Oh, so suddenly you’re above corporal punishment, are you going soft on me, Jacob? Do you allow your soldiers to say whatever they please, reward them for their insolence?” 

“Jerome’s not a soldier and unlike you, when I teach outsiders a lesson, I’m not dumb enough to let them walk away from it.” 

“Brothers, stop,” Joseph speaks over them, not yelling, but his tone stern enough to end their incessant arguing, he makes eye contact with his youngest brother through the rearview mirror “Jacob is right, John.” 

“But Joseph-” 

“You endangered The Project, our mission, our family; for the sake of satisfying your own wrath. You put all of us at risk and for what? So, you could indulge in your sins?” 

“He was spreading lies, telling people you were dangerous-” 

“And that made you angry, it made you wrathful. And so you lashed out to make yourself feel better, instead of speaking to me, instead of seeking out the word and confronting the sin inside of yourself, you sought to quell your anger through violence.” 

“I’m sorry, Joseph.” 

“I know. Righteous anger and swift justice has its place. There will be times to cut off the hands that wrong us, but this was not one of them.” 

“I understand… I already spoke with our flock members in the station, they’ll dispose of the evidence and secure Patrick’s freedom. Without it, the investigation will end and he won’t be punished for my mistakes.” 

“I knew you’d take care of it in the end,” he tells him, watching the relief flood John with the smallest amount of praise after being scolded, “I invited the junior deputy to dinner.” 

Jacob slams on the brakes on a thankfully deserted back road, causing Joseph to jerk against the seatbelt and John to slam his face against the seat in front of him. John yells out from the sudden impact and Joseph turns to look at his eldest brother in confusion. 

“God damn it, Jacob!” 

“John!” Joseph scolds when his baby brother takes the lords name in vain, he can see a bruise forming on John’s forehead already. 

“He tried to kill me!” 

“Am I the only one who understands that we’re criminals?!” 

“In the eyes of man, perhaps, but in the eye of -” 

“Eyes of man are the ones that matter, right now, Joseph! You’re inviting a fuckin’ cop into our lives, into John’s house. A cop who just interrogated us less than a fucking hour ago and you want to feed her for her trouble.” 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were scared, brother. Jacob Seed, scared of a little girl.” 

“Well, its a damn good thing you know better, or that shiner would be the least of your problems, brother,” Jacob nearly spits the word brother, glaring daggers at John. 

“Jacob,” Joseph gets his older brother’s attention, Jacob has always been the strongest willed, has always asserted his opinions even if he’d do anything for the family, “are you doubting me?” 

“No, of course not, I just don’t understand why you’re doing this?” 

“We have cops within our flock, Jacob.”

“Yes, converted cops who benefit us. This deputy can’t walk into a church without puking her guts up, she’s a problem waiting to happen.” 

“She has been making a problem out of herself, trying to keep me from purchasing the orchard, enabling the greed of this county.” 

“Look, I know it can be difficult to understand, you’ve not heard what I’ve heard. The Voice hasn’t spoken to you, as it has to me, my decisions are not without reason. Reasons that will be revealed in time, the junior deputy is important, bringing her into our flock is a priority. Understood?” 

“Of course, understood, Father,” John concedes, using Joseph’s formal title. Joseph looks to his eldest brother, who’s scarred jaw is still clenched tight. 

“Understood?” He repeats himself, he knows Jacob wouldn’t go against him, but his willful nature… something Joseph was envious of in childhood now leads to the occasional butting of heads. 

“Understood.” 

Jacob starts the car back up, driving Joseph and John back to their homes. John to his ranch house and Joseph up to his church, where he has a cot in the back of it. The sun is starting to come up when Jacob drops him off at the church compound, before driving back to Saint Francis. 

Eyelids heavy with exhaustion, Joseph is quick to return to his quarters, a headache starting to creep up along his temples. He changes for bed, then kneels before his bed, bowing his head for prayer and folding his hands together. Hands pressed together tightly, his rosary pressing into his skin. 

And he prays. 

He prays for John to find his way, to battle his sin and win the fight. 

He prays for Jacob to one day fully let go and accept the word. 

He prays for Faith not to stray from the path. 

He prays for his flock and family, he prays for their faith not to wane, he prays for them to be strong enough to weather the collapse, he prays for the persecution of his family to end, and he prays that he can save more souls; specifically the junior deputy. That he can find a way to reach her heart, help her see her gift, and learn the importance of her role before it’s too late. 

Then a sharp pain shoots from his temple across the rest of his head, like lightning shooting through his skull. The darkness of his closed eyes fades away into a new world, a vision of New Eden, a paradise he’s been shown and promised so many times he knows the sight of it by heart. The bright blooming pink flowers and modest homemade homes of a commune, a return to nature, to innocence. 

His family and flock there, older versions of themselves, dressed in more rustic handmade clothes. Less clear and less certain than last time. But he sees John, Jacob, and Faith with children clinging and playing around them. And he can’t explain the feeling, that they’re all his children but his siblings as well. 

The five year old boy with a head of dark curls and blue eyes that looks so much like Joseph as a child, the boy who called him papa. 

A girl around three with bright ginger hair, a face covered in freckles. She grins and blinks, sun in her eyes. She reminds him so much of Jacob, head held high with a crown of red. 

Maybe a year younger, another girl has straight dark brown hair and big wide blue eyes. Eyes that remind him so entirely of the young baby brother he cooed at as a child. 

The oldest of them, clings to an older Faith’s skirt. A young boy of ten maybe tweleve, so much older than the smaller children. Hair dark as pitch, olive skin, and green eyes setting him apart. He looks different from the others, perhaps his family tie not one forged by blood. 

His family, those he has now and those he will gain, the family he will be gifted. But, there’s something missing…. Pieces of the puzzle not yet in place. 

Weak clumsy fingers grab onto his bed as his vision subsides, the reality of the world he’s still in returning to him. His head pounds and throbs, agony radiating throughout it, as the collapse draws closer his visions are getting more and more frequent. He can only hope as he falls into bed that he’s keeping himself and his family on the right path to find paradise.

[notaparty-trick]

All Those Senseless Scars - Chapter 3

By @notaparty-trick​ for @asyouleft​

@friendly-neighborhood-exchange​

Rating: T

Relationships: Tony Stark & Peter Parker, May Parker & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, May Parker, Pepper Potts, Michelle Jones, Ned Leeds

Summary: There is a rule to the way Peter lives now. He didn’t know it at first, but he learnt it.

It’s simple.

To earn what he needs to survive, he has to make sacrifices. 

--- 

Peter Parker's life is derailed when he's kidnapped and kept in a white-tiled room with nothing: no windows, no cameras, no food, no water, no phone, nobody else. Only his own thoughts keep him from losing his mind. If he asks for anything, he must take punishment. Tony Stark will stop at nothing to bring him home.

Archive Of Our Own link here

  “What would you like?”

Peter tried not to cry. “Blanket.” 

He’d warred back and forth all night, worrying himself to pieces over the possibility of a little extra warmth. Asking for it felt like admitting nobody would come to rescue him. But his fingers and toes were blue.

“Please don’t hurt me,” he found himself begging as he was thrust onto the floor on his stomach, jarring his misshapen hand. Though he knew it was utterly useless, the words spilled forth from a well of fear in his mind without filter. “I didn’t do anything, I just wanna go home. Please.”

At the first smack of the whip against his back, the breath was driven from his lungs.

Peter gasped in a shuddering breath, writhing at the unbearable burning sensation that immediately enveloped him. 

The second had him moaning in agony.

The third, fourth, fifth, had him pleading.

“Stop, please, don’t touch me,” he sobbed. “I - I don’t want the blanket.”

The sixth followed all the same.

Peter remembered the History class where he’d seen on the page of his textbook the image of ‘Whipped Peter’, the awful scarring across his back, like something had eaten into him.

He cried at the irony of that name.

His skin broke at the tenth lash. He screamed.

---

“God, oh, God, oh - shit!”

“May, don’t take his hand. He’ll crush it.”

“C’mon, baby boy. You’re strong. You got this.”

“Hurts,” Peter hiccups, bracing himself for the agony of the wound cleaning substance against his ruined back.

“I know, kid. Just a little while longer.”

A team of nurses has him on his side, hospital gown untied to reach the web of welts at his back, restraining him so his reflexive flinches don’t worsen his injuries. His heart pounds. 

“O- oh, crap,” he falters, pulling at the burns on his face as he screws it up instinctually. The shower he’d been assisted in taking just hours ago has been made superfluous by the sweat that’s breaking out all over him, brought on partly by the sheer torture of the procedure and partly by recollections of being held down and made to cry out in pain in his box.

“Deep breaths,” Tony reminds him softly from where he and May are crouched right beside him, inches away but forbidden from touching him until his wounds are cleaned and re-dressed. 

Peter obliges, pushing out a rasping breath. His vision is too blurry to make out Mister Stark’s expression. 

The burn arrives again, too quickly, too overwhelmingly, and he jerks against the hands keeping him in place. “No, sto’, too much!”

“We’re very nearly finished, Peter--”

Mister Stark rises from his seat in an instant. “He told you to stop.”

The pain recedes, leaving a residual sting, and a few shuffling footsteps sound behind Peter. He drags his face across the mattress of his bed, hoping to scrub away the tear tracks there but mostly just increasing the throbbing in his nose.

Then a calloused hand is in his hair, a softer one gracing a thumb over his forearm, and he sags in relief.

“You’re okay, Pete, you’re okay,” comes Tony’s low murmur, but he’s not.

“Th’nk you,” he breathes all the same.

“Nobody does anything without your consent, okay?” There again is the fierce yet uneven tone that Peter can’t decipher while the phantom lash of the whip still rings with harsh clarity in the back of his mind.

“’m good now. Jus’… get it over with.”

“You can keep taking a break.”

“No, I gotta do i’.”

Almost the moment the comforting hands leave him, the pain ramps up again, albeit only for a few seconds before a clean dressing is applied.

Peter knows what comes next.

A plastic tub held in a stand is wheeled to a stop beside the burned side of his face, lukewarm water tossing a washcloth back and forth inside. The nurse who had positioned it wrings out the cloth a little, steadies a gloved hand on an unharmed section of his head, and gingerly presses the wet cloth to the dressing just as Peter lets out a forcefully measured exhale.

He feels his flesh melting.

No. He shuts out the memory with gritted teeth.

This isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is after the dressing has been soaked enough that it peels off, when the cream is washed off and replaced. 

Peter had stupidly presumed that the moment he staggered through the door of the Compound would be the moment his pain would end.

This time, he can’t even move his face, although every nerve in his body begs him to turn away from the razor blades of the washcloth against his raw skin.

“Mff!” he cries instead, his empty hand fisting in the sheets.

“Good job,” he hears May coaxing over his outbursts. “You’re doing amazing, baby.”

The truth is far from her reassurances. He’s whimpering like an idiot. Pain is a thousand times harder to cope with now, and with a superhero side gig like his, it scares him to contemplate how much harder it might become now.

If he ever heals enough to get out of bed, that is.

As the new dressing is being prepared, a morbid part of him speaks. “I w’nna see my face.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tony’s head fall forward into his hands. “Kiddo.”

“Show me,” he insists with all the shaky determination he can muster.

Both May and Mister Stark’s heads remained bowed as Tony taps a few times on his phone to enable the camera app and angles it towards Peter’s face.

Peter’s horrifying, ravaged, broken face.

He hadn’t even noticed that a patch of his hair had been singed off by the blowtorch and a further area shaved to a blunt stubble to bare the flayed brown edges of half-healed scalds. Like a disease that’s taken over his features, scraps of angry red, fragile pink and near-white mark the skin of his chin all the way up past his forehead. The dark pools of his eyes only point out more severely the bright, unnatural colours that ring them. Flecks of blood stand out at the palest areas.

Unable to articulate the gaping well of dismay that tears into him at the sight of himself, Peter lets out a sound between an exhale and a sob.

“You look just fine,” May rushes to tell him.

“Plus, you have super healing, remember? It’ll clear up real fast.”

At Mister Stark’s remark, Peter meets the eye of the man he gained the scars to see, simply staring at him. Tony’s face drops its false veneer of encouragement.

He doesn’t blame Mister Stark, not at all. He had no idea. But the more primal part of him, the part that boils over with rage, with shame, with despair, wants desperately to blame someone.

His disfigurement is the price of his freedom. It’s not fair. Not one other person in the room with him now has had to pay for the return of their own autonomy.

Except…?

The hot, stinging trail of a liquid down his cheek startles him out of his rumination. “S’mthin’ on my face.”

“Hey, he’s - yeah.” Mister Stark frowns even more deeply as a nurse dabs at Peter’s face with gauze. “It just comes out? That’s alright?”

“Wha'?”

“You’re bleeding a little, kid.”

“It’s nothing out of the ordinary,” the nurse assures them.

Peter feels nauseous.

When the medical team finally leaves him alone, he trades trembling exhaustion for the murky arms of sleep, passing out in a mess of IV lines and broken limbs and sweat.

May is the first to sit back in her chair with a vehement, “Shit.”

Tony realises he’s forgotten to breathe again in the way he seems to regularly forget basic human functions at the moment. Dragging in a pained breath, he shakes out his twitching hands and echoes, “Shit.”

Above their weary heads whine artificial squares of light. Tony blinks against their harshness, the white behind his eyelids recalling a light with the harshness of the sun against the kid’s cheekbone.

“When I became Peter’s guardian,” begins May quietly, “I knew he had a number of health conditions. I knew there would be hospital visits, examinations - I knew I’d have to see him suffer. But I never - I had no idea. Never this . This was never a thought, this… why do you think they did it?”

“It was because of me, I think,” grits Tony, eyes fixed on the floor.

“Tony - what?”

“When I - God.” The words are razor-edged, nauseating, painful to force out. “They brought him out to me, and then they - he looked like he knew what was coming. That’s when they burnt him.”

Curling into herself, May presses the back of her hand to her mouth. “Fuck.”

“He said - he told us he took punishment, right? And then they’d let him have things? Food, water, a blanket--”

“You,” May finishes for him, sombre.

Tony screws his hand into a fist and brings it down jarringly on his knee. “I was such an idiot. Just waltzed on in there - no plan - no backup - no thought of what they might do to the kid.”

May’s expression begins to change then, morphing into a look she’s seen directed at Peter countless times, the look reserved for flareups of self-sacrificial complexes. “Tony, you--”

“I couldn’t have known, sure. But I could’ve. That’s the thing.” 

These thoughts have plagued him from the moment he declared the kid missing. 

A pail of filthy water, his face jerked forward to meet it. Yinsen’s face inches from a glowing lump of coal. Sweat rising from his temples as he was screwed into a hulking metal suit that could have been his salvation or his downfall. And most of all, hand-trembling, muscle-knotting, mind-melting terror. Terror that the kid has lived with for twenty-one days. 

“I’ve been through it, May. I know what they do, the twisted way they think, and I could have thought about his safety for a second instead of barging in there at the cost of--” he jerks a shoulder in Peter’s direction, his beaten, gauze-swathed body collapsed heavily atop his mattress. 

“You barged in because you were desperate,” May counters with fiery sincerity, tearing her gaze from the kid to search for Tony’s eyes. “Because you love him. You had a chance to get him out and you couldn’t pass it up.”

Tony gestures to Peter again, failing to paper over the breaks in his voice as he says, “That isn’t love.”

“But you didn’t do that to him.”

“It sure feels like I did.”

Both of them are aware of the sudden shift in the tone of their conversation; with a hardening of her face that Tony has seen a less intimidating version of on Peter’s face, she flattens her tone and pins him with her gaze. Tony doesn’t dare to interrupt the point she begins to make. “Okay, I can’t - it’s time to cut the bullshit, Tony. I will not have you wallowing right now. I cannot handle it while my kid is still like this.”

Almost unbidden, her gaze strays again to Peter - Tony wonders if she’s worrying about the same things he is. Will he ever heal completely?

“We are going to be strong for him, okay?” she continues as if she’d never faltered. “Forget about the things we could have done or changed. You’ll forget about the way you came to get him, forget about passing out on him. I’ll forget that I let my sixteen-year-old child beat up criminals and didn’t consider that one day somebody with a grudge might choose to act on it.”

“There’s no way that was your--”

“That’s easy to think when it’s not you. And it’s not the point.” 

May is filled with a grief-stricken, worn-down kind of wisdom just then. It flows from fidgeting fingers and lashes clumped together by old tears; it grips Tony and doesn’t let him forget the words being spoken to him. 

“The point is that our kid is in a bad way, and we’re gonna be his pillars of strength. He is not going to worry one bit about how we’re feeling for once in his life. We’re gonna co-parent the shit out of this awful situation, and all three of us are gonna come out the other end, so help me God. I would prefer not to have to drag you behind me too.”

For a moment, Tony simply sits in stunned silence, marvelling at the fortitude of May Parker.

“How are you like this?” he says eventually, speaking his mind. “Why can’t I emulate your - what would Peter call it? Boss-ass parenting?”  

“Because - and I’m just making an observation here - you flail around with your emotions and don’t know what the hell to do with them.” 

The dry remark is punctuated by a laugh. 

Abruptly, the intense sincerity of moments before gives way to Tony’ favourite coping mechanism: joking uselessly about anything and everything that comes his way. The levity eases the hearts of them both.

Raising his eyebrows, he sits back in the hard hospital chair and replies, “That’s bold of you to say.”

“So you acknowledge that I’m right.”

“Well, my own dad was more of an advocate for not having any emotions, so I feel like I’m doing alright.”

May just offers him an affirmative smile.

---

“Sure you aren’t better off in the chair?”

“I’m fine, mom,” retorts Peter good-naturedly. “Besides, if I get tired, you can carry me back.”

There’s the sassy kid Tony loves.

Still, it’s not easy to watch said kid wobbling at a snail’s pace out of his room in the MedBay, his walking stick the only thing keeping from splattering across the floor.

“C’mon, bud, you’re killing me. At least lean on me.”

“No. I’d rather look like a grandpa than an invalid.”

Tony ends up dawdling uselessly behind the kid as he makes his determined, sluggish way towards the elevator.

It’s difficult to look at the kid and simply see Peter Parker anymore, searching past the arm casts and stitches and dressings and hospital gown and - although Tony hates to admit that it fazes him - the patchwork of burns across his face. He loves his kid to bits, no matter how messed up his face is. It’s the knowledge that, even unintentionally, Peter has them because of him, that makes him falter every time he lifts his eyes to meet the kid’s.

But scars be damned, the look on his face when they make it outside and the sun falls across him is unbeatable.

Ever the motormouth, the kid is silent for once, a sigh purging itself from his chest instead as he squints into the dappled light. It eases just a few of the million knots pulling at Tony’s own sternum.

“How are you feeling, kiddo?” he eventually works up the courage to ask.

“Pretty boss, actually, for not keeling over yet. Didn’t think I’d make it all the way here.”

“I actually meant…”

“Oh. Right.” Instantly, a little of the childlike joy withdraws from Peter’ demeanour, and Tony kicks himself.

There’s another long stretch of comfortable silence while the kid, still gazing out at the open grassland, collects his thoughts, mouth opening and closing minutely. Tony has learned to allow space for this grace period rather than interrupt the kid as he so often used to do, finding that when he let Peter talk in his own time, work past his stammering, he’d come out with some really surprising stuff. Profound. Intelligent. Sweet.

“I guess I’ve felt worse. But, uh, I’ve felt better. It’s just… the world is still here, but it feels like it should have… changed.”

It’s a vague statement, but Tony understands. Staggering out of the shattered remains of his suit, finding the Afghanistan desert around him as undulating and brutally hot as ever, he found himself baffled that the landscape hadn’t undergone the same trauma as him. The rest of the world was no worse for wear while he’d been torn to shreds. He’d felt that the desert itself was mocking him.

“And that’s what I’m scared of most, I think. Everyone’s - you know, they’re just going about their lives like normal and I have another thing weighing me down. Most people don’t freak out when they’re asked, like, a normal question. But it’s questions that get me. That’s all they said to me. They’d ask me what I wanted, and if I agreed to have anything… that was it.

“They wanted - they were trying to make me break, I think. So either I’d… I don’t know, drive myself crazy in there, or refuse everything else they offered me until I… maybe. I don’t know. And I’d forget there were people outside who wanted me with them.”

Tony smiles solemnly.

“I never forgot. I didn’t wanna let go. But it’s like - it was almost easier in there.”

There’s a lifetime of suffering etched into the look that Peter fixes Tony with then, tinged with something that might just be guilt.

“I know that sounds… weird--”

“Not weird at all. I felt that too.”

“You - what?” It takes a few moments, but the knowledge he hadn’t thought to turn over in his mind presents itself to him eventually and he gapes. “Mister Stark. Oh my God. You didn’t - I didn’t think about - you too?”

“Come to me with all your kidnapping queries,” Tony jokes flatly. Peter just widens his eyes.

The ensuing pause is tense. It’s broken by the appearance of a car near the entryway where they stand and a flinch at Tony’s side.

“What are they doing here?” the kid breathes, stricken.

Tony peers over at the opening car doors. “Who?”

He recognizes the kid’s friends, although he likes to pretend he doesn’t.

“It’s just Ted and Emma,” he says deliberately, but it doesn’t draw a laugh or even an acknowledgement from Peter, who appears frozen in place. “What, did you guys fall out over Snapchat? I thought they were nice.”

Swallowing fiercely, Peter turns on his heel and makes a swaying break for the doors.

“Kid!” Although at first he expects to have to run after him, Tony finds the kid is still so slow on his feet that he hardly has to move to address him. There’s no way he’ll even be through the foyer by the time his friends have reached - and after all he’d said about the people he loves getting him through his time in captivity, Tony had assumed he’d be a lot more excited to reunite with them.

It’s when Peter clumsily brings his cast-clad forearm up to cover his face that Tony makes sense of his reaction.

“They’re gonna see me, Mister Stark,” pleads the kid, hints of swollen red protruding from behind his wavering arm.

Although it twists at Tony’s heart to see the kid in such a vulnerable state and encourage him to remain in it, a more earnest chemical that sparks in his veins compels him to stand firm. “Yeah, they are, and it’s gonna be fine.”

“Peter!” comes an enthused shout from the approaching figures.

Stilling in indecision, Peter fixes his eyes on his walking stick, his white-knuckled grip on the handle. Tony simply waits for him to make a choice.

Ned makes it for him, sprinting over like lightning but halting abruptly a few feet in front of the kid, who eyes him with a face tautened by fear.

Tony sees Ned take in Peter’s appearance from top to toe. 

MJ joins him then, her deadpan veneer crumbling into horror-struck vulnerability as she beholds the brokenness of the once-mighty boy before her.

Peter ducks his head, hiding his expression behind a curtain of half-shaved hair. “I know,” he croaks.

There’s no reply for a long time. Then, as if he physically can’t contain his outburst any longer, Ned blurts, “ OhmyGodImissedyousomuchI’msogladyou’renotdead.”

Jerking his head back towards his friend a little, Peter lets out a bark of laughter that he surprises himself with.

Tears rapidly filling his eyes, Ned says, “Can I hug you?”

Peter opens his broken arm gingerly. “Don’t cry, dude,” he replies as Ned approaches with overly-hesitant steps, “Gonna make me cry, and when I cry it’s all over.”

The moment of embrace is heralded by a shared damp inhale from them both. Ned settles his arms softly around Peter, who sinks into the embrace, unable to raise his arms to reciprocate but making up for it by burying his face in the shoulder of his friend.

“Spider-Man trouble?” Ned questions him.

Faintly, Tony hears the kid mumble, “Sort of. It was just… they took me. Some bad guys.”

“You could have just told us, you dumbnut,” chips in Michelle, a telltale falter in the undertone of her own words, and goes to join the hug, looping her slender arms around both Peter and Ned. 

Tony can’t help but smile at the sight. The kid does have good friends.

“Didn’t want you to freak out,” mutters Peter. 

Ned pulls away a little with a frown. “We were freaked out enough,” he insists fervently, “We could take it.”

“He was freaked out to the max,” MJ adds, her trademark smirk ghosting her face for a moment. “I was cool about it.”

The kid isn’t comforted, however; Tony catches the gossamer-like glint of a tear racing down the unharmed side of his face. “It’s not just - I’m, I’m all screwed up now.”

“You’re fine. You’re still Peter.” 

Michelle draws him back into the hug, three sets of teenage arms interlinking, comforting one another, all plagued by suffering yet lifting one another up. A string of shaky sniffing noise emanates from where Tony can only guess Peter’s head is nuzzled, but it doesn’t worry him. In fact, he’s comforted by them. He knows the kid, can pick apart the different ways he releases emotion, and these tears signify relief.

It’s almost a minute before the group embrace is broken. Peter raises his head, face paler than when it had disappeared, and says, “Sorry - uh, guys, I gotta sit down.” Tony is baffled to find he’ll let Ned and MJ wrap their arms around him and help him back towards the doors although he’d been so adamant that Tony wasn’t permitted to do the same.

It leaves him idling by the entrance as they retreat, forgotten by the trio of single-track teenage minds heading towards Peter’s hospital room, but he finds himself remarkably unbothered. In fact, his heart is set at rest to such an extent at the sight of the three of them that he waits to follow them back to the MedBay, instead wandering a few steps further from the entrance of the Compound and inhaling the dewy scent of the day.

He’s just glad to see Peter healing.

---

The walking stick is only in active use for roughly a week before the kid’s back and ribs are well on their way to healing and he’s progressed to solid foods, beginning to gain the weight he’d dropped while captive. Usually, his healing might work at a faster rate, but malnutrition got him good. The freaky super-healing of old days resetting bones and staunching minor wounds after the kid’s patrols is only just now making a re-appearance, now the hollowness of Peter’s face is filling with colour again, now wiry muscle is re-threading itself along limbs that had looked fragile enough to snap with bare hands, now there is a hint of a spark punctuating his irises.

Tony, on the other hand, feels like he’s coming out of all this the worse for wear. The damn kid is going to give him a medical condition one day, he’s convinced. If he hasn’t already.

Recovery isn’t linear, it’s a hot mess. Tony knows this well. 

Peter cries in his assisted shower, then laughs uncontrollably for a straight minute at a meme MJ sent him while Tony is still drying his hair. He makes requests with distrust, then disquiet, then false confidence. He lets in visitors at last, lighting up from the inside out as he reunites with Pepper and Happy and Rhodey and hobbles out to the SI team that had helped find him to ramble out profuse thanks, then physically wilting when he returns to his room. His casts are sawed off. His hair begins to grow back. He eats his first meal. He cries at dinner. He has a nightmare. He begs to return to school, then begs not to the next morning. He stops writing halfway through a sheet of catchup Physics questions and stands at the Compound’s balcony blankly until Tony fetches him down. He remains blank and unresponsive for three days and nights before bursting back to life in a fit of tremors and tears and panic, then sags back in the arms of Tony and May and sleeps for a solid sixteen hours.

Now, he lies atop a jumble of cushions on the roof of the Compound, Tony at his side, and watches darkness bleed into the sky’s canopy.

Silence pervaded their walk towards the spot, and it pervades now. The gradual brightening of the crescent moon tells more for the moment than Tony’s words could, setting the tips of Peter’s eyelashes alight, spilling a pale wash of light across the fields that fold out from the two of them as if made by their hands.

It’s Peter who breaks the silence. “What’s gonna happen next?”

“What do you want to happen?”

“I don’t… I’m not sure, I guess.” Folding his arms tightly around himself so the ragged old fleece he’s wearing bunches upwards to warm his neck, Peter turns on his side a little, his eyes flickering upwards to meet Tony’s. “Everything was so simple when it was just me and my box. It sucked, but I knew what would happen. And before then, there was no reason to - to think about my life. It just happened. Now, I’m… scared. That if I don’t get it right I’m gonna stay like this, all screwed up, forever.”

The way in which Tony's face screws up at his declaration is overwhelmingly fond. “Peter, everyone's screwed up. Especially superheroes. We volunteer to deal with the blood and guts of the world, there's gotta be something wrong with us."

The kid lets out an abrupt giggle.

"But - you know what? No matter what, no matter how screwed up you feel, nothing's gonna stop you from being my kid. Nothing in the world - no, the universe.”

The truth having been dispensed, Tony sets back his shoulders against the cushions and notes the outlines of clouds dissipating into the captivating gloom of the night. While the kid makes no audible response, his stillness speaks.

“And if you don’t know what you wanna do, May and I can help you out. We’re in your corner.” A deprecating smile breaks out across his face. “I remember leaving Afghanistan, flying back to a world full of people waiting to see Tony Stark’s next move. They needed me to make a plan, crack a joke, do something.”

“What did you do first?”

“I asked for a cheeseburger,” he huffs.

Peter lets out a peal of laughter. It’s carefree in the way Tony only hoped it might return to when he saw the kid beaten and exhausted on the floor of the Compound’s entryway. “Must’ve tasted pretty awesome,” he says with a shrug.

“No, kid, it sucked.”

Peter swivels to study him.

“It sucked so bad that it brought me back to reality.”

“And… what was reality like?”

“In 2008? Reality kind of sucked too.” He pushes away thoughts of Obadiah’s leering face. They’re of no use to him now. “But - it’s crazy, because I think it took the kidnapping for me to figure that out. Not that I’m glad it happened. But… silver lining, I suppose.”

“Yeah,” is all Peter says, the furrow in his brow revealing that he’s deep in thought. Tony waits for him, pressing absentmindedly at his left temple where a low-grade headache buzzes. The night air, the peace of the moment, are helping to ease it.  

Eventually, Peter blinks harshly and says, “I think I wanna start patrolling again soon.”

“You do?”

Tony will admit that his blood chills at the admission. It’s the simple fear of a repeat of everything they’re still working to overcome.

“As much as it kind of terrifies me… yeah, I do. I, it’s - helping people, it’s my thing.” Peter smiles at Tony, the burnt side of his face still struggling to sustain the lifting of his mouth but conveying the earnest hope of the expression nonetheless. “It’s what makes my reality good. I mean, it’s - it’s hard, and it hurts, and I see people who are at their worst and people who know no better than lashing out, but I also--” 

The kid sobers in an instant.

“Did I ever tell you about the guy I met?” he asks quietly. “At the, uh, at the Queensboro Bridge?”

Tony shakes his head.

“He was standing right on the edge and he - yeah. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to do something. I just - swung by and sat a little way away. He swore something awful at me at first, and I… I was so close to just getting up and leaving. I was sure he wanted me to - to leave, I mean - but I didn’t. Maybe two hours later, he just, he just turned around, walked away from the edge, and got back down onto the sidewalk. He let me walk him home. He didn’t jump. Because I was there. And that was just - you know, wow. I always think about that, that one time someone kept living because I was there to help them. I’m not giving up the chance to do that again, a million times if I can. It’s… it’s my responsibility, I guess, and it also just so happens that I love doing it. It’s my real superpower.” He nods at that, a small, tight, affirming motion. Spreading his arms so they hover above him, oversized against the distant backdrop of the stars, he raises his voice: “So, like, why should bad guys be able to get in the way of it? Screw that.”

“Screw that,” echoes Tony, at a loss for further comment. 

He won’t be keeping Peter away from patrolling any time soon. Not when the kid has a sermon like that to back him up.

A chill runs through him at the rippling of a current of breeze along the length of the roof; it jolts a bittersweet memory into his mind. 

“I wasn’t alone in Afghanistan, did you know that?”

“No.”

“I woke up to a man in the cave with me. His name was Yinsen. He…”

“Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark?”

As easily as Tony forgets on some days, on others he remembers so deeply that he can still smell the dust and smoke and sweat and fear in that cave.

“With his last words, he told me not to waste my life. He was my Spider-Man.” He throws out a grin, returned instantly by the kid, who has his cheek pillowed on an arm to watch him. “And look at me now, right? If it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here today. Definitely wouldn’t be worrying my ass off about you all the live-long day.”

Tony sticks a hand out of his own bulky sweater and ruffles the kid’s hair, anticipating the kid’s swerve and messing with the curls until they’re irredeemably rumpled. Peter lets his lower lip protrude; Tony just laughs at him.

“So… you’re not wasting your life?” hesitates the kid, shuffling a little closer. There’s a more profound meaning behind the question, one that tugs at Tony’s heartstrings in a million different ways.

He fixes Peter with a level gaze. “Not one second of it.”

As if his words have put his mind at rest, the kid flops onto his back, exhaling in a sigh. He doesn’t bother to fix his hair, leaving it tufting away from his head in countless haphazard cowlicks.

The ensuing inhale Tony hears issue from the kid’s throat holds a new, darker note.

“Mister Stark, what happened to the Oscorp guys?”

“You don’t need to worry about them,” Tony asserts firmly.

“Mister Stark.”

“I made sure they’d never think about taking you again.”

Peter rolls away to the side at that: just a little, but enough to let Tony know that his words have unsettled him. He’d done it for the kid, as much as he knew that it wouldn’t be received positively. Perhaps he’d really done it for himself, then. His own peace of mind, certainly, and relief from the pressure of fury behind his ribs.

All he can think now, however, is that he can’t lose the atmosphere he and the kid have cultivated here, the peace, the honesty.

Turning himself to angle his body towards the kid, he begins, “You know, Pete, I - I really want you to know that you can call me. Any time. None of the crap I pulled before you took down Toomes. I’ll be your Spider-Man. If that sounds… good.”

As hesitant as he’d been, Peter’s furtive smile shows he appreciates the sentiment. He sniffs away the dampness of the evening and says, “That sounds really good.”

“When you get back out there, it’s gonna be tough, I can guarantee. Tough as anything. Nobody can really know what you went through. But I’ll be there, and--”

“I get it, Mister Stark.” The kid’s nose scrunches then in that unique, wonky way of his when he’s amused.

“What did I say about interrupting when I’m being nice?” Tony retorts, affecting offense.

Peter pays the words little heed, instead shifting until he’s tucked against Tony’s side and shyly nudging his head into the nook between his shoulder and neck.

At first, Tony’s stunned into stillness. He and Peter have never been very physically intimate in the past although Tony knows the kid derives a lot of comfort from it: he’s placed hands on his shoulders, squeezed once in a while, steered him one way or another with a hand at his back, even tucked strands of hair away from his eyes once or twice, but the hug barrier has rarely been broken. When he puts his hands on Peter, thoughts of flying fists and broken glass overtake his motor functions, drawing him away.

Perhaps it’s these years of wrestling back and forth that make the simplicity of Peter’s current closeness so breathtaking.

“Thank you,” breathes Peter.

The words encompass a thousand instances of gratefulness. He always forgets the way the kid can do that with a single sentence of thanks.

Tony slowly lets his arm curl around the kid’s shoulders. Far above them, a star pierces the blanket of the night with increased potency.

Caring his throat, he hums, wondering how to bring up the strange thought that’s crossed his mind. “Actually, I also wanted to… a couple of days ago, I found this - you know what, forget it. I said nothing.”

“That’s mean!” Tilting his head so he’s gazing up at Tony from just beneath his chin, he pleads, “Tell me what it is.”

“It’s stupid and sappy--”

“I love stupid and sappy. Please, Mister Stark.”

And there arrive the wide baby browns Tony can’t resist.

“Damn puppy eyes,” he mutters, fishing in the pocket of his pants for his phone.

“They still work?”

Frowning, Tony looks away from the glow of the phone display to find a startling amount of uncertainty in Peter’s demeanour.

“What are you talking about, Pete?” he exclaims, letting his genuine disbelief temper his tone. Before the memories can flood in, he lifts his free hand and brushes it gently across the kid’s patchwork cheek. “‘Course they still work. As long as your head is on your neck, you’ll be able to sway me.”

There’s a faint smile from Peter, but it’s not convincing enough for Tony. He continues: “You look great, by the way.”

The kid ducks his head, huffing out a nervous laugh. 

“Still Peter Parker. Still adorable.”

“I’m not adorable,” argues the kid weakly, casting about, “I’m…”

Tony raises an eyebrow. “You're adorable.”

“Okay,” Peter concedes with little reluctance.

Scrolling through his music app until he finds what he was looking for, Tony blows out a breath, feeling nerves unexpectedly rearing their head.

“It’s a song?”

“Yeah. I heard it first while you were out there. Made me think of you. Well, get ready for the sap.”

He presses play.

A soft guitar melody begins the song, slow strumming patterns flooding the rooftop and settling peace across both the figures lying there.

Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick and think of you

Turning in circles, confusion is nothing new

Flashback to warm nights

Almost left behind

Suitcase of memories

Time after...

Peter’s knee settles against Tony’s as he winds himself further around him. The warmth at Tony’s side is elating and calming all at once; he wonders why he was so scared to do this before.

Sometimes you picture me, I’m walking too far ahead

You’re calling to me, I can’t hear what you’ve said

And you say go slow

I fall behind

The second hand unwinds…

An alien but wholly welcome silence descends upon his mind, halting the constant whirring and worrying. Watching Peter’s eyes slide shut on his shoulder, he imagines the kid is experiencing the same thing. There’s a small, confidential smile curling across his face; it’s a thank you of its own.

If you’re lost, you can look and you will find me

Time after time

If you fall, I will catch you, I’ll be waiting

Time after time

Peter’s head bobs in a way that somehow communicates that he understands why Tony connected to these lyrics. They say what he can’t.

Tony is filled with overwhelming affection, so all-encompassing it spills from his chest and fills the Compound, the surrounding forest, the sky itself, for the small boy at his side who has grown an unfathomable amount since the day he first set eyes on a kid in a onesie running around Queens.

---

One month later

Standing before the long mirror in the corner of his bedroom, Peter studies himself and the bundle of bright red-and-blue fabric he holds.

The suit appears innocuous bunched up in his newly-healed hands that way, but it holds more power than he'd before been aware of: in the eyes of some, the power to condemn him. The power to regard him as a test subject.

It had happened out of nowhere , his danger sense knocking him off guard with a sudden blare that pricked viciously at the back of his neck. Then--

BANG

The gunshot sent him scrambling the length of the block to reach the source, slipping and almost crashing to the ground with the misplaced momentum of a haphazardly slung string of webbing. Sprinting the last few steps, he rounded the street corner and came across a woman with a gun to her head, flanked by a gang of four masked people.

"Spider-Man! Help, get me out of here--"

"Shut up!" thundered the gang member who had her pulled against his chest. "And you--" he tilted his pistol momentarily in Peter's direction "--put your fucking hands up! Don't try anything!"

As much time as Peter spent rescuing small animals from the perils of New York City traffic and halting the occasional robbery, he wasn't unfamiliar with the city's more ugly crimes. This was a textbook mugging. In fact, it felt almost... too familiar.

Peter raised his hands for the moment, although he had no intention of keeping them there. The gun was his primary concern, however, and until he had a guarantee he'd be able to keep it a good distance away from the scared lady's brains he was eager to play it safe.

His hurried strategization proved in vain, as did the quip half-formed on his tongue, when a sharp sting in the side of his neck compelled him to turn sharply to the side.

Nothing.

Groping at his neck, he closed his hand around a needle.

The drug hit him instantly, knocking his sense of balance and clouding his vision so severely he hadn't a hope of getting to the hostage.

Or was she even a hostage? Had any of it been real?

"Woah, what the hell," he remarked with alarmingly numb lips. The ground rose up to meet him in the way it always does in movies: the screen fades to black, the music halts - but his senses remained dulled to a blurry grey.

Shedding his t-shirt, Peter clears his throat in a preparatory gesture before twisting around to see the half-healed welts across his back. The angry red swelling that had once ringed each mark has softened to a slightly heightened pink which rings long white lines, forty of them still there but receding.

They're kind of cool, he thinks abruptly. They show that he's still around. That he is strong.

He shucks off his pants then steps into the suit with a deep breath.

Then came the hands, what felt like dozens of them to Peter's wandering mind, gripping, running up and down his suit, searching for something.

He was in deep shit; although he was nowhere near coherent enough to fight off the invaders with his lead-heavy limbs, he knew that for sure. These guys had him in their lap - literally. The possibilities of what might happen to Peter ran through his mind in quick, delirious procession, so vividly reasonable that they brought bile to the back of his throat.

He let out a quiet groan, the only act of protestation he could muster. It only drew a laugh from the hands. 

"They hit him hard, didn't they?"

"Not hard enough." It was the voice of the woman he'd rushed to save just moments ago. "Supposed to knock him out."

"Just hit him with another. It can't kill him, right?"

"Got a smaller chance than what's gonna happen once we get him to Norman."

Another furtive, ugly laugh.

A whizzing noise alerted him to the decompression of his suit. 

"Fucking finally."

He was pulled back and forth, limp as a ragdoll, as the million hands worked his suit off him, his last shred of protection slipping off his immobile legs and leaving him in his boxers.

"Oh, Christ. He's... young."

"Still Spider-Man. We do our job."

Tapping the spider emblem on his chest, Peter watches as the fabric rushes inwards to meet his skin, as he transforms from boy to superhero.

Though he'd managed to hide the lash marks by changing in corners after gym class, there was nothing he could do to conceal the fading burns on his face.

Peter greets the shining, reddened skin there with a mixture of solemnity and strange fondness. He no longer needs dressings, just time, and acceptance of his new appearance. His hair will grow out again. The marks will fade further and further until they're a part of him.

The hands seized him again and dragged him back down the street he'd entered so quickly, so blindly. His sluggish heart begun a weak chorus of hammering. Torn between utter panic and complete lethargy, his body rebelling against his screaming danger sense, he found to his dismay that the drugs began to win. A screech of tires; he was lifted onto a metal floor.

Oh, God, he remembers thinking vaguely. Mister Stark had better come for me.

The ensuing cacophony of voices was too multitudinous for him to pick out. The second needle in his neck, however, was keenly picked up by his pleading, aching danger sense. The awareness of the fact that a second dose of drugs was about to enter his bloodstream did nothing to prevent his vision fading to black, noise halting. End scene.

He passes out among the million hands and wakes up to white tiles.

Brushing gloved hands habitually through the errant locks of hair lying across his forehead, he watches himself one last time, tries to connect the dots between the suit Mister Stark had re-made for him, the invisible stitching, the black arrow-lines dividing bold red and blue, the graceful shape of the suit around him culminating at his neck in a neat seam, and the scarred skin that grows from that seam and forms the face of Peter Parker, Spider-Man.

"Peter Parker," he repeats under his breath, "Spider-Man."

He'll admit that the murky flashes of the past that mar his mind now scare him a little. Although he hadn't known it the first time he'd stepped into this suit, he makes himself both strong and vulnerable when he's in it. His heart hadn't stopped beating in his box, but it had come close, whether from thirst or hunger or pain or blood loss or sheer loneliness; and yet now it beats a tattoo against his tender ribs as if making up for any doubts of its fervour, beating and beating and beating.

But there's more than one reason why he's donned the suit today.

Peter slips the mask over his head and vaults over the windowsill, emerging into the brilliantly warm light of the golden hour that lays in delicate streaks across the patchwork of rooftops that make up the puzzle of Queens. He's warmed from the inside out by the light. Shooting a web, taking a leap, he swings, revelling in the cool wind, the airy momentum of his movement.

The glass doors of the Compound cast blinding, enchanting reflections of the sinking sun, but if Peter squints he can make out a familiar form waiting for him in the entry.

Letting go of his web line, he twists backwards in the air, arcing into a backflip just for the hell of it, before dropping to his feet outside the doors.

The first thing he notices is Tony's smile. It's an indulgent thing, packed so full of fondness that Peter feels the excess settling in his own expression, and lit up by the golden light.

Spreading his arms, Peter nods at himself, making a beckoning motion as if encouraging praise from a cheering crowd, then turns on the spot so Mister Stark can see every inch of the suit and know that Peter's decision to wear it again is very deliberate. Through the glass, there's a silent laugh from his mentor. Peter hasn't seen him so unapologetically happy since the day he was taken.

Dropping the goofy act, he pulls off his mask and watches the face across the glass brighten further still. Peter unconsciously brings up a hand to his old burns, a flicker of a reflection showing him the ragged skin for a moment before being swallowed up by the vast glory of the sun. Tony just quirks the corners of his mouth, the affection in his eyes unwavering.

Peter steps through the glass door, throwing out a blade of refracted light that pierces nothing but the safe haven of nature around him, and meets him inside.

[lit--bitch]

Current-Reads (20/04/2020 - 26/04/2020) 🍓🐢

(Disclosure: I don’t know anybody I’ve been currently reading this week. 😊)

Adding the preface again here: every Sunday without fail I throw up the freshest literature and photography I’ve read over the week, sometimes it’s a book, sometimes it’s a piece I saw in a magazine or an online zine, sometimes it’s something I saw on social media, etc. Sometimes I add ‘RECOMMEND’ next to a few of the titles, but that’s not to say I don’t recommend all of them, I just love some pieces more than others. Not everything will be everybody’s cup of tea, yanno, c’est la vie. And any titles that you see in bold are hyperlinked so if you click or tap them they’ll direct you straight to the source… or shopping basket. 

This week I’m gonna throw in a red herring and tell you about something I’ve been watching as well as what I’ve been reading, because I think it’s really cool and definitely appropriate for the age we’re living in at the moment. 

So I’ve been reading: Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Diaries 1964—1980) which was edited by her son, David. I also read an interview on Granta from March between Rachel Long and Morgan Parker. I’ve also tucked into a couple pieces on Fence, Lexi Welch’s ‘Astroturf’ and Anthony Michael Morena’s ‘The Whale’. I also saw Cecelia Knapp’s poem in Bath Magg Issue Three (but the whole issue is an absolute smacker, it’s great). Last but not least, I’m up to episode 5 of a brand new thing called The Midnight Gospel. It is crazy good. And it’s on Netflix right now. 

***

Cecilia Knapp, ‘I Used To Eat KFC Zingers Without Hating Myself’, Bath Magg Issue #3: I really loved the whole of Issue Three, I guess I was quite struck by this particular poem for its “staccato-ness”. This poem is buttered with present-day references. But they’re not necessarily about creating a familiar environment. Rather the object of familiarity is found within the assemblage of places, snacks and thoughts, all of which compound the grief ‘I’ is experiencing. The ‘I’ ruminates on life’s banality and their personal insecurities in living banality: ‘I need a thigh gap. I use emojis / to avoid conflict. Worry I’m a gentrifier. Watch docs about murdered women’. The vapidity is funny. The pain is not. The insecurities deepen. Your body, your life, continues the ache of day-to-day routine, and finds no resolution in the things which may or may not stand to comfort oneself when ravaged by loss. The poem feels quite loose, and disinterested. It’s a sore poem, but its array of references make it colourful. It sort of reminded me of Édouard Levé’s work a little bit? But if Édouard Levé had been a pop culture fanatic chewing HubbaBubba bubblegum on the London Overground.  Bath Magg is a pretty exciting new magazine, (been around just under a year I think?) and they’ve published a lot of great writers, many of whom are emerging and I’ve spotted some quite established peple in there too. Kudos to their rubber ducky logo. It’s run by Mariah Whelan and Joe Carrick-Varty. 

In Conversation with Morgan Parker and Rachel Long, Granta Magazine: I deeply love Morgan Parker’s work, she’s, in my opinion, the master of titles. I can’t think of anybody who titles their work as well as Morgan Parker does. And I love the depth of honesty and charisma in this interview. Like yeah, it appears to be a generic Q/A but, it genuinely feels like a conversation, and it’s welcoming and unpretentious. Rachel Long asks some penetrating questions, and Morgan’s answers are so detailed and self-aware. Most of the discussion revolves around the action of writing poetry in general and where does that impulse arise from, but they do discuss Morgan’s latest collection Magical Negro which came out February last year. It’s a narrative on black womanhood, on micro-aggressions and reoccuring violence, it’s about breaking down white perceptions of blackness, and dissolving those projections. What I love about Morgan Parker is she’s tackling this fucking idiot thing where (mostly) white people think she’s attempting to represent all black women in her writing, which is, by Morgan’s own admission, impossible. Her work is a duty to herself, to the background she’s lived and lives, and to unpack that discourse in her own way. And if it resonates, then great! I felt all this was inherent in the interview and only adds to my respect for her, and to Rachel for being such an attentive interviewer. BTW Rachel Long has a debut collection coming out this July, My Darling from the Lions.

Anthony Michael Morena, ‘The Whale’, Fence Portal (Streaming) (RECOMMEND): I can’t tell you how much I adored this beautiful mass of whale and word. It’s an essay which references the American Natural History Museum’s Blue Whale model. The writing is thick with feeling and fat with concern. It blends monologue, memoir. It’s non-fiction and documentary. It’s elusive, enigmatic, fragmented. It’s like broken biscuits and blubber. To me it felt like a note on the offences of climate change, the emotional response and grief as we bystand erosion and corrosion, the loss of life, and the urge to merge something back together as it dissolves and fragments before our eyes. It’s as personal as it is public. A gorgeous and complex piece.

Susan Sontag’s As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh (Diaries 1964—1980) (RECOMMEND): I felt so afflicted reading Susan Sontag’s diaries, because y’know, it’s the equivalent of invading an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb. Like, leave people alone. At the same like, this woman. These diaries are still shaping me, and each section leaves you with the weirdest aftertaste. Her personality permeates through every detail, every line-break, every reference and articulation of feeling. You learn so much, you gain so much from her perceptions and observations. How do I contain Susan Sontag? How do I describe these diaries? Not at all. Just buy it. 

Lexi Welch’s ‘Astroturf’, Fence Portal (Streaming) (RECOMMEND): My eyes locked onto this piece and just didn’t really stop reading. Lexi’s voice is enamouring and hypnotic. It’s so violent too. You’re lunged into friction burns and sports injuries, time and progression, the tensions between collectivity and individuality, family and sexuality, or as Fence put it, ‘lesbian eros’. This piece felt acidic. At times you can’t tell if the ‘I’ is indifferent or hurting to the point of numbness. It straddles so many different thematics, and breaks down a lot of conventions pertaining to the “ideal experience” of family relationships and team work. The resolution seems to be that in spite of people, our collectivity is defined by our collective solitude. This essay kicked me around a football field. It takes a good few repeated reads to appreciate its kaleidoscopic shifting, but it’s definitely one of my favourites.

The Midnight Gospel, from Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell, Netflix: (RECOMMEND) So the other day my friend Ben linked this to me and I had seen the trailer ages back and thought “Oh yeah I really wanna watch that”, but just forgot. After his reminder, I started watching it and ever since I’ve been saying to loads of other friends “Have you watched ‘The Midnight Gospel’ on Netflix?” because I’m d y i n g  to talk about it with everybody. 

I literally can’t categorise this “TV show” to you. It’s like if animation had a baby with a philosophy podcast and then put that baby onto an IV drip of psychedelics. It’s this swarm of different stimuli which you kind have to zone in on and absorb individually and yet somehow collectively. 

So like, “Clancy” is a spacecaster who sets up “spacecasts” (podcasts) with creatures from other simulated worlds and he interviews them. But when Clancy transports himself into these worlds, it’s not like they’re sat down on some cream sofa with two glasses of water like it’s animated Oprah. No, his interviewees are like in the middle of fighting off a zombie apocalypse or meditating on a mountain or trying to find and save their lost lover. And Clancy just joins them on the journey and interviews them about their “specialism”. These are real people that are being interviewed like, the first episode is with Dr. Drew Pinker. And when you’re watching it, you think that the animation is totally separate to the conversation exchange the characters are having, but that’s not true. They have intersections, they have meaning. It only becomes obvious that it has meaning right at the end of each episode, but if you lock on you’ll see it’s all relevant throughout. 

One of my friends was like “Oh I might stick that on tonight and have a joint” and I was like, don’t fucking get high when you’re watching this because it’s already intense enough as it is, like you know that Pendleton Ward and Duncan Trussell have felt some real shit to create this absolute rare jewel. In my opinion, you don’t need cannabis to appreciate these discussions. But if you wanna do it, then hey it’s a “free country”. And it’s not as though there’s a serious, central core plot like there is with Rick & Morty, I mean there is a kind of overarching plot but it’s not always integral. Like ultimately we’re invested in Clancy’s story but also all the stories of all the other people that come his way. There’s multiple plots, there’s multiple dimensions and ways of seeing. It’s a programme which delivers on multiplicity, which manifests itself in everything and everyone we see and know and touch and hear, etc, etc. 

This production articulates some of the revelations that psychedelics can give you. Psychedelics don’t make you see the world literally like these animations do, but the sensations of the animation are reminiscent of an acid trip’s oscillating moods and sensitivities. It’s really cool, and it’s very poignant, and it’s my new favourite show to watch. And what’s so great about it is that, it requires multiple watches in order to really absorb everything in its entirety, so it’s a series you can just keep going back to even after you’ve seen them all. It’s re-watchable. Just fundamental goodness all round. Best way to indulge in it is with ice cream. 🍨

***

So that’s it for this week, next Friday’s review is Annie Ernaux’s A Girl’s Story translated by Alison L. Strayer, published with Fitzcarraldo Editions. 

Stay safe and well as always, my little caramels. 💁🏽

[butyouvealwaysbeenthecaretaker]

one thing I'm interested in at the moment is how many trauma-like responses I'm working through, and why they are all different

My protest stress feels most like the classic diagnosis - suddenly feeling like I'm still in a particular moment of time, and feeling permanently a little unsafe, because I could be pulled back into that "reality" at any moment. It's very cinematic, almost, like exactly how you would depict "a flashback" in a film.

and then ive got the sort of, pervasive social shame stuff - whether it's abuse, disability, or queerness, it's all fairly similar. Distorted thoughts and negative thought spirals, extremely psychological, the type of thing one probably could overcome with positive thinking with enough time and hope. That's not to say it's easy to deal with, more that it feels very explicable, and like I understand the kind of tools one would use to work through it. These are overwhelmingly the ones which stand between me and a good day. They're also the ones which bring on the nightmares.

then I've got the post-attempt stuff, which is the most bizzare of the lot. It's not psychological at all. I don't have memories or thoughts or feelings. I just have a physical response, one which happens regardless of what else I'm thinking about or doing. But it's a very dramatic, very real physical response, and it's kinda incredible to me that a thing like that can just happen of its own accord. I don't have things which feel like "a flashback" the same way the protest stuff does, and I don't have any negative thoughts or feelings or ruminating. My body is just like "fuck! Panic!"; most recently, I was able to verbalise a completely different thing I was stressed about. It was real stress, a real problem I was worrying about, but simultaneously when I look at when that panic started, and the characteristics it had, I'm like - I wasn't really reacting to this stressor, I was reacting to a trigger earlier in the day.

so ive got a lot of curiosity about how...any one of these might be vaguely described as some kind of "trauma response", but yet they are all so different. I'm curious about why there isn't one, universal response, and what the different kinds of responses could indicate. Also, my brain is basically a Swiss cheese now; I feel very "distant" from the normal human experience, far enough that I'm never going to quite get back. And quite alone, too, being around people who haven't been defined by this kind of response. They are very strange, very certain, or uncertain within the normal human range of doubt. Not like, experiencing life as pervasively unreal and unsafe, and prone to collapse at any moment.

[keeroo92]

Savior, Bloodstain, Hellfire, Shadow Ch1

So for anyone who isn’t on AO3, here’s chapter one of my DMC5 fic. Will post the other chapters soon.

May 16th, 8:13 pm

Your gloved hands desperately press against your patient’s split flesh, his blood oozing between your fingers as your colleagues prepare the surgery room. The poor man is awake, terrified tears streaking his face as he stares into your eyes, praying you’ll save him.

“It’s alright, you’re going to be okay, we’re going to take care of you,” you tell him, forcing your agonized mind to project calmness and reassurance in your tone. It seems to work, his eyes blinking and the fearful furrow of his brows easing slightly.

 Come on, is that room ready yet? He doesn’t have much time left after losing this much blood.

The linoleum floor beneath your feet, normally stark white and freshly bleached, is covered in blood, your feet only able to stay stable due to your anti-slip shoes. The red puddle has been growing for ten minutes as you urgently hold this man’s life in your trembling hands. Most nights aren’t like this, most nights the worst you have to deal with is an idiot who wasn’t paying attention and touched a hot stove, or maybe if things got really crazy someone would come in with a broken bone.

Rarely do you hold someone’s life in your hands. It never gets easier, or less stressful.

The man’s eyes close, his head lolling back on the gurney and your heart jumps, knowing how important it is to stay conscious at this point.

“Sir, no, you have to stay awake! Come on, wake up!” your petrified voice says, the sound almost foreign to your ears. He doesn’t stir, and your panicked thoughts drop into cold realization as the steady drip of his blood on the floor slows.

 He’s not going to make it. Goddamnit!

“Someone get me some O negative, now!” you scream desperately. One of your fellow nurses dashes over with a bag, the fluid red and angry looking as she rushes to get an IV prepared. She checks the man’s pulse, searching for a vein to tap and lets out a long sigh, her eyes meeting yours in a shared moment of sadness as the look on her face tells you everything you need to know.

The man beneath your hands is dead.

You pull your shaking hands away from the gash in his chest, caused by a car crash on the nearby interstate, a chunk of metal having sliced deep into his right pectoral. Your eyes fill with tears at your failure as you shakily walk to a nearby hazardous waste bin to strip your bloody gloves off.

There’s no other urgent need for you so you walk away to take a moment to breathe, coming to terms with your inability to save the man you had assured would be alright. You sit on the curb outside as your tears fall, chest heaving in a silent sob.

 It’s never enough, I’m never good enough… I need to get better, get faster, stronger… Have to be able to save the next one like him.

After a long moment whose length you couldn’t tell, you hear the sound of a siren approaching. Another ambulance, racing in with another person needing help. You stand, shoving your pain away to focus on the now, on the next patient whom you may actually be able to help.

________________

The rest of your shift passes with little incident; blessedly no other patients die that night. You strip off your soiled scrubs in the locker room, ruminating once more on all your failures. The faces of every single patient you’d been unable to save passes through your mind and you grit your teeth, forcing yourself to never forget a single one. Your heart clenches as the man from mere hours before passes in your mind’s eye, his face frozen in a look of strange peace. Reassured by your words that turned out to be a lie.

“Y/N, you okay?” a voice beside you asks gently. You turn to face the speaker, another nurse coming off shift. You can’t recall her name, never having bothered to learn it. Her perky blond ponytail swings as she tilts her head to look at you, blue eyes showing her concern and you clench your jaw angrily.

“I’m fine,” you grind out finally, and she frowns more deeply at your clearly not fine tone.

“You did everything you could for him, you know. Not everyone can be saved, you can’t blame yourself or it’ll destroy you,” she murmurs quietly. You give her a tight nod, slamming your locker closed and stepping away from her with a heavy heart. You hear her sigh behind you, but she wisely doesn’t follow you.

The walk home is usually a time of quiet reflection for you, a chance to review all you’d done in the hours at the ER and tallying the lives saved against the lives lost, the scales never seeming to tip to the side of life enough for you to be satisfied. Tonight, you can’t seem to remember a single person you helped today, the guilt over the single death too heavy to bear.

 If only I’d gotten him a transfusion from the start. If only the surgery room had been ready. If only, if only, if only…

You sigh to yourself as you look forward to the bottle of whiskey waiting for you in your tiny apartment; knowing you have the next day off, you plan to drink until you can’t think anymore. A tradition whenever someone dies in your arms, something to indulge in to avoid the solitude of your lonely apartment, not even a cat waiting for your return.

You turn the corner to your street still lost in thought as a deep rumble sounds from near the end of your block. You raise your eyes from where they’d been locked on the sidewalk to see the strangest sight imaginable.

 What… the… fuck…?

A massive structure rises from downtown, black and imposing. You follow its form, looking for the top but unable to find it; its far too tall. The structure wasn’t here when you left for work, and construction couldn’t possibly have erected such an imposing thing in the scant time since then. Its origin couldn’t possibly be natural.

 So… where did it come from then?

Another rumble breaks your confused thoughts as you watch a tentacle burst through the asphalt ahead. Your baffled mind struggles to process the sight as the cruelly sharp tip darts down to embed itself in the stomach of another pedestrian, a scream of pain following its sickening squelch as it strikes home.

Bile rises in your throat as you instinctively move, rushing forward even as your mind screams at you to run away. The hideous tentacle pulls back, the impaled woman falling to the ground bonelessly as it rises again to search for its next target. A surge of adrenaline gushes through you, and you manage to dodge the spike as you reach forward to pull the woman out of its range. Her blood leaves a streak of crimson on the sidewalk behind but you manage to get her to safety.

Only then do you look down, taking stock of the damage.

Her face is already frozen in death, a look of utter terror and bewilderment marring her plain features forever. You shudder, adding her face to the ever-growing ledger of death in your mind. You stand slowly, wiping her blood on your jeans and turning away. The street is crowded now, more and more people coming outside to see what all the noise is from.

 This is bad. They’re all going to die if they stay here.

“Hey! Everybody! You can’t stand around and watch, you’ll die! Come on, let’s go!” you shout, a few heads turning to listen but far too many ignoring your warning. You march up to a young woman tugging a child along by the hand, their faces more curious than scared. You reach out to tap her shoulder and she glances back at you as you speak.

“Lady, you’re gonna get yourself and your kid killed! Look, see those tentacles? I just saw one stab someone to death with just one stroke. You have to leave, now!”

She pauses, her eyes shifting to see the tentacle you indicated. Her curiosity turns to fear as she takes in its sharp point, and she nods gratefully at you as she turns around, dragging her child along to safety.

You repeat your dire warning to over a dozen more bystanders, only a third of them taking you seriously and running away. You shove your tiredness down, your long workday making your steps drag slightly as you press on, determined to save as many as you can.

You watch in horror as another few tentacles sprout from the ground, impaling a few unlucky souls and raising their bodies like trophies to the sky. More bile rises in your throat as you hear their wails of pain and confusion. You keep moving forward, still shouting warnings to anyone who’ll listen, and you barely step aside in time as another tentacle rumbles out of the pavement a mere three feet from where you stand, its cruel tip gleaming in the streetlights. You stumble slightly, leaning against the brickwork of an apartment building to keep yourself from falling to the ground.

Your exhaustion tugs at you fiercely, and your eyes flutter closed against your will as the tentacle takes aim at you. All thought ceases in your mind as death approaches.

With your eyes closed, you don't see the dark-haired man sprinting at you. You don't see him drop a hand-carved silver cane and slide on his hip towards you as if he’s stealing third base for the Yankees. You don't hear his low grunt as he pushes his arm out, rising to his feet just in front of you. You don't see the intricate pattern on his arm lighten, or the panther explode into existence mere feet in front of you, killing the tentacle with a single swipe of its lethally sharp claws almost as quickly as it had appeared.

Instead, what you next perceive is a warm hand on your side, pushing you to the right. You open your fear-dilated eyes, shocked that you’re still alive, and immediately catch your breath.

The man who stands before you wears a look of concern on his ridiculously, unfairly handsome features. You focus in on him, perhaps to avoid thinking about what else is going on around you. His intense gaze catches your attention first, irises the shade of muted emeralds, glinting with every flash of light. Dark eyelashes frame his long stare, thick eyebrows only adding to the expressiveness of his piercing gaze. A prominent nose flows from his browline above his full, pink lips, currently parted as he breathes before you heavily. Beautifully intricate tattoos cover his body, partially concealed by his clothing but clearly visible on his long, toned arms. The black of the ink on his skin only serves to contrast his alabaster skin tone. His hair is as dark and shiny as obsidian, barely brushing the collar of his black leather vest. Even amidst the terror and chaos you’re struck by his looks. He stands out in this neighborhood, where everyone looks like models for a Sears catalogue.

"You must move, you cannot stay here!" the beautiful stranger declares urgently with a voice like velvet. Goddamnit, could he be any more attractive? You try to take a step but discover you can't find the strength, your exhaustion overwhelming you at last. He pauses, seeming to study your expression and huffs.

"Fine, I'll help you then," he says, and suddenly you are against him. You blush scarlet as he picks you up, carrying you in his lean arms towards a nearby van. The motion shakes you out of your worn-out stupor enough to be embarrassed by your helplessness.

"I - I'm sorry, I think I can walk now," you say shakily.

He nods, gently placing your legs on solid ground. He turns to survey the area, presumably to check for more tentacles and seeing several more. You take a moment to do the same, searching for nearby people you can warn and finding a pair. You shout the now familiar warning as you see the panther fighting, shapeshifting periodically into new shapes full of sharp edges and harsh points. Your mind struggles to comprehend how this is possible, trying fruitlessly to make sense of all the outlandish sights you’ve seen in the last ten minutes.

 What the fuck is going on?

The stranger grabs your hand, dragging you towards the van once more, and you try to focus on the vehicle to avoid thinking about how many of your neighbors are now dead. It’s an odd contraption, clearly customized with a neon sign on the side which reads “Devil May Cry” and a laughably false phone number listed beneath it. Its grey and white paint is coated in dust and what looks like blood, not all of it dry. On his way to the van, the stranger only pauses to lean over and pick up an ornate silver cane, flicking it to his side in a clearly practiced motion. You find yourself once again unable to comprehend what happens next as a cloud of black shards leaves his tattooed arm, drifting to the air nearby and forming a magnificent blue bird, the strangest you’ve ever seen with a three-pronged beak and purple legs that seem far too large for its body.

The bird laughs and dives at the nearest tentacle, slashing it with its talons. You hear the outlandish creature curse as the tentacle tries to stab it as it attacks.

The back door of the van suddenly crashes open, drawing your attention as a white-haired man leans out. He was young, around your age if you had to guess. An absolutely huge sword is strapped to his back, and he waves you forward with an oversized pistol in hand.

"Hurry, we gotta go NOW, V!" he shouts. He hurriedly stows the pistol and reaches out to help you inside, the dark-haired man not far behind you. To your surprise, the panther also jumps into the van. The second you’re all inside, the van takes off at a speed that’s nearly as terrifying as almost being impaled by mysterious tentacles, accelerating faster than you imagined a vehicle of its size could manage. Outside the van, you catch a glimpse of the strange bird you saw moments ago, flapping hard to keep up with the racing vehicle.

"Hold on, folks!" a feminine voice with a southern drawl yells from the driver’s seat. You grab onto the nearest solid object, an odd countertop hidden in the corner and hold on for dear life as the van dashes through the city, to somewhere (you hoped) very, VERY far away. ________________ V

V looks over at the young civilian he'd just rescued, wondering how long it would be before you are calm enough to think clearly. Your hands are shaking, eyes wide and dilated. As he watches, your jaw clenches and your hands steady. You close your eyes, let out a breath and turn your face to him as the van speeds past the crowds of terrified residents, various pieces of kitchen equipment and power tools clanging at every pothole Nico hits.

"Thank you for saving me. I... I think I would be dead if not for you," you whisper softly. Your eyes are still fearful, but you seem coherent enough. He takes a moment to gaze at you, taking in your appearance. You have hair the color of blood, dark red and rich. It falls just past your shoulders in layers. Your hazel eyes seem to change color as he looks at you, from brown to green with flecks of gold. You have gentle features; a kind face. He feels an odd sensation in his stomach as he recalls your words.

"And the maiden soon forgot her fear. Are you alright? Perhaps you ought to sit down," he responds gently and waves a hand at the worn couch under the window.

You nod and cautiously make your way to it, keeping your knees bent to attempt to compensate for the Nico’s wild movements. As you move, V studies you more closely. He’s curious - most civilians didn’t exhibit this level of stoic acceptance after first encountering the demonic roots, not to mention the fact that you had been actively trying to warn others and urge them to run. Your quick calmness was... intriguing. He couldn't tell if you had any demonic blood, but he could tell you weren't unfamiliar with fear. No one who could calm themselves that quickly was new to the feeling, he knew.

"My name is V, that's Nero, and Nico is driving. Griffon is outside and her name is Shadow. What shall we call you?" he asks, crossing his arms and leaning against the van wall casually and gesturing to each named being as he introduces them, Griffon and Shadow returning to him as the vehicle gets farther away from danger. Your eyes widen as the black shards sink into his skin.

You look away, quick to look elsewhere as your cheeks flush slightly, he notices. Perhaps she’s embarrassed about needing to be saved?

"My name is Y/N. Nice to meet you all,” you respond finally. “Umm, do you know what those... tentacle things were? Where did they come from?"

V smirks. This might take a while to explain. ________________

 Demons.

 Demons are real.

 Demons are real and attacking my home.

"Holy shit," you say, eyes wide, looking back and forth between the two men. "So, wait, how do you kill them? Why are they here? How can we stop them from killing people?"

Nero laughs, but not in a mean way. He seems genuinely amused as he sits down on your right, leaning back against the couch cushion casually.

"Slow down, Y/N! Slow down. They aren't too hard to kill, at least the lower powered ones. Pretty much anything that would kill a human can kill a demon; guns, swords, punches, you get the idea. Don't really know why they're here, but V might. He's the one that hired us to deal with it, after all."

V smirks, his full lips twisting in a way that make your eyes flick to them for a heartbeat too long. You scold yourself; this isn't the time for that!

"They are here because of Urizen. The Demon King, as he calls himself. For now, we should find somewhere to rest, gather resources. As for you, Y/N, forgive me but you don't seem like you're quite up to fighting demons. We can take you to the edge of the city, but from there you must make your own way to safety."

You pause, considering his words. He isn't wrong; you have no combat experience and have no idea how to be helpful in a fight. Not to mention you’re completely terrified, as well as you conceal it.

 This is insanity. These people are mad, fighting those things. We should all just run, go somewhere else and leave this city as far behind as possible.

Yet even to think of abandoning the people still in the city feels... wrong. You don't want to run from this, especially not with this feeling, like you were magnetized to this group. You can’t just walk away when so many people are dying, you have to balance the scales!

 I’m going to get myself killed. What am I thinking, I can’t help people if I’m dead! But.. there’s so many people here. They’re all going to die too.

You take a deep breath before speaking, brutally shoving your fear to the farthest corner of your mind and focusing on what you can do in this moment to help this small group.

"It's true, I'm not really a fighter. I’m a nurse, and I've been studying surgical procedures in preparation for medical school. I can help you if anyone were to be injured. As much as I'd like to not have to face those things ever again, it wouldn't be right if I left. I wouldn't feel right," you say uneasily, hoping the group doesn't judge you too harshly for your previous terror.

V raises an eyebrow at that, then glances at Nero. “The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest,” he recites simply. Nero shrugs, and for the first time you get a good look at his right arm. You gasp as you see the haphazard bandages covering a stump, blood stains showing in a deep rust shade, a recent amputation that clearly hasn’t been taken care of properly.

"At the very least let me dress that! You'll get an infection or sepsis; it could kill you!"

V snorts, to your surprise. "You mean he would be... dead weight?" he says, obviously amused. His intense emerald eyes flick to yours as if sharing an intimate joke, and you smile at him hesitantly.

Nero goes red, muttering to himself for a moment about someone named Dante, then nods at you sullenly. Clearly V’s words have hit a sore spot.

"Fine, when we stop you can take a look," he grumbles. He shoots a glare at V, then shuffles off to sit in the front with Nico, leaving you alone with the onyx haired man. You can hear them talking for a while but can't tell what they’re saying. You turn back to V, mind still whirling with questions.

His long fingers pull a thin book from within his leather vest, clearly preparing to read. You swallow your questions for now, not wanting to interrupt the strange man’s reading.

 I need to rest; I can barely keep my eyes open. The adrenaline must be fading.

You lean back into the couch, reassured that with this group you can sleep in safety, close your eyes and drift off into oblivion. ________________

You dream of the past, of course. Your mind never blesses you with pleasant dreams anymore, always seeking to understand, to learn more from memories that your waking mind knew would bring only pain. Memory is the enemy of peace, after all.

The familiar sounds are there, as always. The crack of glass breaking and the high-pitched screams of your friend, the unmistakable sound of her gasping breaths.

Then the visuals. Blood on the floor. Shadows dancing like a sick ballet on the wall of the warehouse. Dead eyes staring up at you as a warning. The flash of light on gleaming steel as --- ________________

You awake with a jolt as Nico slams the brakes, causing you to slide unceremoniously into V. He had sat down at some point next to you. With lightning reflexes, his arm shoots out and holds you close as the rattling van mercifully slides to a full stop, keeping you from falling to the floor. You can feel him breathing under you, smell his scent of leather and lavender. The combined sensory input is... intoxicating. You try to pull away, but he holds you for a split second before letting go. You blush furiously, sure that he’s teasing you. You can't bear to look at him so you miss the look of regret he gives you, and don't see him lick his lips before speaking.

"Are you alright, Y/N?" he inquires softly, his tone almost a growl.

You internally curse his voice for having such a pleasant sound before responding.

"Yeah, thanks for the help... again."

V chuckles under his breath, then returns to his reading. Sitting so close to him, you catch a glimpse inside the pages to see a flowing script and beautifully colored illustrations. Forgetting your embarrassment and the lingering fear from the nightmare, you ask what he’s reading.

"Poetry. Would you like to hear some?" he responds, his voice like warm honey.

The thought of his voice reciting poetry sends your mind spinning. Nope, no way, nuh uh, you’ve already made enough of an ass out of yourself, so you just hold your horses there, girl. There’re bigger things to be worried about anyway, like DEMONS!

"Sure,” your rebellious mouth states.

 Goddamit. Stupid mouth.

He smiles, gaze returning to the pages as he chooses a piece to read.

“I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem, In England’s green and pleasant land,” he recites, his voice melodious and perfectly timed.

“Beautiful,” you whisper, the words rolling in your mind as you digest them, finding meaning in the short excerpt as a low hum of recognition passes through you. “Is that… William Blake?”

V nods, seemingly taken aback.

“That part, it sounds like he’s telling us not to give up the fight until our goal is realized, whether its physical or mental. Seems appropriate, considering…” you gesture vaguely toward the window and V looks at you oddly, as if you’ve surprised him.

“You enjoy poetry?” he asks you.

You feel your cheeks tinting as he studies you intently as you reply, “I enjoy all forms of the written word. Literature is a gift from past generations, and we should never waste it.”

The outer corners of his lips twitch, smiling for a fraction of an instant. If you had blinked you would have missed it. He seems pleased by your response and you smile at him shyly, shifting your weight awkwardly.

“I couldn’t agree more, much to our companions dismay. They are of a different mindset,” he replies thoughtfully.

“What’s your favorite poem, V?” you probe him, enjoying the chance to talk with someone who shared your enjoyment of words.

“I’ve come to enjoy The Book of Thel a great deal, are you familiar?”

It rings a bell but you can’t seem to remember any details of the work.

“I read it many years ago, though I can’t remember any of it now,” you respond.

“Allow me, then; Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away: Then we shall seek thee but not find; ah Thel is like to thee. I pass away, yet I complain, and no one hears my voice.”

You sit in silence, letting the words sink in. V’s soothing voice adds a layer of complexity to them, sounding quite sad and mournful as he recites.

Luckily for you, Nero chooses that exact moment to trudge over to you with a small red box labeled "first aid". He sighs, seeming to have resigned himself to your treatment. As if it isn't in his best interest anyway, you think sarcastically.

"Let's get this over with, Y/N," he grunts. V stands, gives you a nod and walks away a few feet to continue his reading and you focus your mind on the task at hand, pushing the memory of his voice away. ________________

V

V watches you gently remove the bandages from Nero's arm, trying to figure out his reaction to your words. None of the others he had become familiar with enjoyed poetry, several rolling their eyes the first few times he quoted a line in conversation until they became accustomed and ignored it entirely. He felt his heart warm slightly by the shared enjoyment, a distraction from his mission. A pleasant distraction, but a distraction nonetheless. He must remain focused - he doesn't have time for any fellowships or pleasant conversations.

Yet still, he finds himself watching you redress Nero's arm, wondering what your touch feels like. Perhaps that was it? Perhaps he simply wanted to be touched, to feel connected? That would explain most of his reactions to you so far.

Enough of this, he tells himself. Focus. Too much is at stake.

He mentally shakes himself and returns his gaze to the words on the painted pages before him, forcing himself to pay attention and read the now familiar text.

     I am in you, and you in me. Mutual in divine love.  

V sighs. How unhelpful. He glances back at you and Nero, seeing you smile at something he said. Laughing. He wonders what that feels like as well, to share mirth in such a way with another person.

A memory plays in his mind, of many years ago. It was a simple one, a trifle really. He was playing with Dante in the backyard, not long before... before. The two of them were laughing together over a fort they had built out of sticks, the structure haphazard and childish. Their mother was nearby, keeping a careful eye on them as they played in the yard.

He smiles softly at the thought, wondering if Dante has any fond memories of them as children. Somehow he doubts it.

Again with the distractions. Enough is enough. V looks out the window, easily spotting the already massive tree in the center of town. The sight helps him focus, helps him remember his priorities. ________________

After removing the old bandages, you take a moment to examine the wound. It’s in bad shape, looking as if Nero had initially seen a doctor but later popped the stitches in at least three places, leaving open wounds to fester and bleed freely. There’s already a slight infection, but nothing too serious if he let you take care of it and doesn’t do anything stupid.

“How long ago did this happen, Nero?” you ask, estimating it to be two weeks.

“It was April 30th, so sixteen days ago,” he informs you as he watches you examine him.

“Ah, alright then. Considering what's going on, I won't even bother telling you to take it easy. It should heal fully in about two to six more weeks, until then you need to change the bandage at least once a day, if not more,” you explain to the willful young man.

You dig through the poorly organized first aid kit, finding an unopened bottle of antiseptic and several rolls of bandages. Some gauze patches lie on the bottom.

 Perfect, now all I need is a towel or a bowl.

You look to your left and right, eventually finding a small cup that would work well enough. You carefully angle Nero’s arm over the cup and get the antiseptic ready.

“This will hurt a bit, Nero,” you warn him. He nods, ready, and you slowly pour the fluid over his injury and let it drip into the waiting cup below. He grunts but doesn’t pull away. Once the drips have slowed enough, you lay a gauze patch over his half-healed stitches, using one hand to hold it in place as your other reaches to grasp the bandage roll. You use your teeth to get the first portion open, proceeding to gently but firmly wrap up Nero’s arm. You use the scissors from the kit to cut the end and secure it with a satisfied smile.

“All set,” you tell him.

Nero carefully moves his arm, testing the bandages' flexibility. You knew he would, he seems the type to never hold still if he can help it. You’ve seen many people like him come through the emergency room, struggling to hold still as you treat whatever they came in for even as their lack of stillness worsened their condition.

"Feels good, Y/N! Thanks! You are handy!" He jumps up, throwing a few experimental punches, bobbing and weaving like he’s in a boxing match with Muhammad Ali himself. You laugh as he feigns dodging a blow, his antics allowing you to forget the horrors of what you’ve witnessed for an all-too-brief moment.

"Hey hey hey, not in the van! Take it outside, jerkwad!" Nico exclaims hurriedly, coming out from her perch in the drivers seat. She pushes Nero towards the door, forcing him outside and slams the door behind him.

“Sheesh, what an ass…” she mutters under her breath, but you can tell she says it with affection. She looks like she’d be happiest on a construction site or in a garage. A multitude of tools are strapped to her shorts and you can see oil on her arms, along with tattoos that seem to revolve around guns and skulls. She pulls out a cigarette, lighting it as she leans over to you.

“Hi, I’m Nico. Welcome to the Devil May Cry-mobile, I’m your resident genius gunsmith and artist extraordinaire. You joinin’ the team? Would be nice to have another lady along for the ride!”

Your eyes look to V, thoughts debating your options again.

 What about my life? What about going back to school, learning to be a trauma surgeon? Can I really justify putting that on hold, maybe even abandoning it entirely to help these people?

 …How can I not?

V smirks knowingly but nods before following Nero outside, waving his hand through a cloud of Nico’s expelled cigarette smoke as he passes.

“I guess I am,” you say to her, smiling and doing your best to ignore the panic in your mind at the thought of staying in an area full of... demons. The thought of their existence brings a surreal feeling to your mind and you wonder if this entire day has been a dream. A new nightmare shaped to ensure you pay it the attention it demands.

“Awesome! You wouldn’t happen to know how to cook, would’ja? Nero’s hopeless and V’s somehow worse, and my cooking skills don’t extend beyond cereal and mac and cheese,” she asks with a smile on her face.

You find her smile infectious, and you feel your own lips stretching into a grin as well as you respond, “I’m no master chef, but I get by alright.”

She claps your back in a friendly manner, taking a pull from her cigarette. The tang of nicotine fills the air as she exhales, the enclosed space holding the smoke captive. You ignore the scent, used to it after years of exposure.

“All right! Well, we’re probably gonna stay here for the night, kitchen’s in that corner if you’re hungry. The guys generally sleep outside but I think you could squeeze in here with me for now. Sound good?”

You nod, grateful for her easy acceptance of you even as your mind still struggles to control your overwhelming fear. You find yourself warming to her quickly, despite a history of not getting along well with other women. Glancing at the kitchen, you spot the cereal she mentioned sitting atop a stovetop. There are a few cupboards but not much else. You hope you can gather some basic food staples in the morning, but for now the call of hunger is weaker than the call of rest. You yawn, almost cracking your jaw in the process.

“Here, I’ll get ya a pillow and another blanket, bout ready to crash myself!” Nico says. She opens another cupboard, pulling out a small but fluffy looking pillow and a fleece blanket. She hands them to you, puts out her cigarette in an ashtray nearby and gives you a salute before climbing a tiny ladder to what you assume is a hidden bed.

“Goodnight, Nico. Thanks,” you say through another yawn. You hear a soft click and the van goes dark.

“No problem, new girl. Night!”

[sightofsea]

this is rly dumb and there is the HUGE chance im going to regret this but ok

basically when i was 15 i wrote an approx. 200k OC doctor who fanfiction featuring a kind of half self insert/half attempt to subvert mary sue comapnion stereotypes named jenna quigley. and ive been thinking about it more lately like the general storyline bc like. idk. n i figured i should write it out.

i should mention this is all 11th doctor era bc i was a huge fan at that time, and it takes place between that time he leaves amy n rory to when he does his farewell tour bc i wanted to try n add some canonical irony that ill get to later

so basically its all narrated from jenna pov as kind of stories she’s telling to the tardis database via recording. why, we don’t know yet. she;s. ok so in the plot she was from our universe n was an AVID fan of the show which like tacky i know but whatever. she starts out 15 and in basically my house and neighborhood (this fic started from a constant daydream i would have of going on adventures w the doctor bc i was a nerdy 15 yo so like. sue me) and there have been a disturbing amount of disappearances in the surrounding area that local police are stuck on. so everyones kinda afraid to go out into their own homes and at one point, jenna is doing something out in her backyard and actually witnesses one of the abductions, but is surprised to see the kidnapper looks like the silence, aka the television show shes been watching. she thinks shes going bonkers. her family leave her alone for the day to go to a thing for one of her siblings and she’s just kind of ruminating on this event when--lo and behold, an officer arrives at her door.

and jenna, she’s very skeptical about this guy. like, given recent events she doesnt trust her own eyes. and the guy is...off. like his badge n credentials, if she concentrates, looks like something else for a flash of a second, and for some reason the figure of him is kind of hazy whenever jenna tries to look directly at him. he is shown to have a quirky, friendly demeanor n jenna figures well, i gotta tell someone about what ive seen, so she invites him in. they have a brief chat n its obvious to the reader that this guy is someone VERY familiar (mostly due to my bad writing at the time) and jenna begins to explain what she saw and how its like this one show she watches, and this guy suddenly becomes very very interested in this before realizing he’s got it all pieced together and asks for jenna’s help in navigating the area to find what is, ultimately, a silence space ship.

jenna agrees and over time realizes this guy is most definitely connected to something in the whoniverse and originally believes he might be a time agent bc that seems more likely given their number as they travel to the ship. its also revealed that the officer has brought jenna along bc the key thing about what she saw is that she actually remembers the silence and can see past perception filters due to the qualities of alternate universe, slightly alternate brain chemistry and so on. its not exactly perfect--she can’t get through perception filters rly, especially good ones--but its enough to know something is wrong n remember certain things others from the dw universe might not be able to like the actual silence aliens themselves.

anyway they make their way to the ship, which has come through a massive tear in reality that the officer came through. in the fic lore i guess tears are seen as usually benign things meant to leak ideas of universes into other universes as a kind of waste disposal system, and as a side effect create inspiration in those who are close to them. this tear, though, became too big, kind of like a leaky pipe, and actual material was able to get through by keeping a frequency from both ends of the tear as a kind of safety rope. and to maintain their energy as a stranded ship the silence have been using humans as batteries. i put a lot of thought into this, i know.

SO once theyre in the ship the “”officer”” (we know who he is by now lets just face it) and jenna are captured n separated. jenna is held hostage and it is revealed she is a part of a second half of the “silence will fall when the question is asked” prophecy which goes “the unexpected shall follow the guided task” (i loved rhymes) which is further revealed to the be the following: change the timeline and destroy the doctor. and jenna, being jenna, is like “listen u guys i dont even know the guy so uh failed step one i guess”. she’s saved by the “”officer”” in the nick of time through work of faulty electrical work (like? i know its for style but the silence have all those lights on the floor n it is VERY dangerous) so the whole ship is blacked out n she hears the differently pitched speech patterns (”why do u sound all different” “they took my equipment nevermind lets go”) and after doing some work to reverse the frequency and basically make the ship implode back into its original universe they run back to jenna’s home in the dark, seeing as she was out for quite a bit. her family is conveniently not home yet n decided to hang out with some friends. and when she gets back n is finally in the light SURPRISE!!! turns out the officer was the doctor all along in disguise from the silence using a perception filter. 15 year old me was a literary genius.

n u might think hannah this is rly long is it done now and of course it isnt!! that was just the intro!! after the initial shock jenna kind of parses what era the doctor is from, which is pre-silencio but after finding out about it n in that 200 yr stretch that was never rly shown. and jenna’s like, a whole season ahead of him basically and knows all this stuff and is trying to engage with this guy she’s a huge fan of without like accidentally spilling the beans on his future. she sits him down to explain the whole tv show thing n lets him watch an episode while she goes to her room to pack like clothes n her laptop because its not every day the doctor just flies in and she’s 15 so shes like hellz yeah im gonna be a COMPANION not even THINKING of the consequences in terms of the multiverse, the prophecy and her family (she does leave a note but its self centered n kinda lame tbh just like be back whenever). afterwards she walks the doctor back to the tardis and is like so where we gonna go n the doctor looks at her like jenna you are a literal child im not taking you anywhere and jenna though some MASTERY of writing that was basically hey look over there! and doing it anyway sneaks into the tardis when the doctor isnt looking n becomes his stowaway.

for the next few weeks she just kind of chills in the tardis with this fear that the doctor will immediately bring her back home so might as well have fun and kinda sneaks around him and keeps couch hopping from room to room. the tardis does not like her one bit due to the whole different universe funky energies thing (and this was pre-clara and i really wanted to see a companion the tardis didnt like so) and has multiple conversations with it via the interface hologram which meant i could write cameos for classic companions and write the tardis as a character bc i was a nerd.

SO after weeks of casually avoiding the doctor eventually she gets caught by him and hes not happy about it so shes like well ok then send me home n then she gets the real kicker which is the tears all mended up. after the material was put back in place it went back to being benign n too small for anything to travel between. so jenna basically stuck in this foreign universe with a very slim chance of returning back to her old life and her family and friends and she mistakes the doctors anger at the situation for anger at her so shes like basically im all alone here oh god n has a crisis n has a dramatic run off into the bowels of the tardis hallways

eventually the doctor finds her and they bond over being kind of the last of their kind in a way and he takes a kind of fatherly role and is like well youre already here and im miserable on my own so why dont we two birds one stone it n just go on adventures for the time being and takes a kind of fatherly platonic role with jenna bc i was sick of seeing companions hook up with the doctor and was confused as to why they wanted to hook up with him (spoiler alert: huge lesbian)

so they set off on their adventures. the first one was about the doctor and jenna accidentally boarding a ship of genetically engineered soldiers called evos being shipped off to a galactic war and finding out some of them had rebelled and had been camping out in the ships underbelly. they had no mouths but were able to communicate via sign language n empath touch powers of transferable memories. the captain was a bitch who didnt see the evos as living things n eventually in a stand off either offered them a chance for the other, still podded evos to live and for them all to live a horrible life or have the podded evos be ejected into space in return for them to have a chance to fight for their freedom. the choice ended up coming down to jenna, somehow, i think, and she chose freedom and cost the lives of like 200 evos but were able to get the ones they were able to save (about, like, 100 i think) to safety and create their own civilization away from harm on a distant planet and their success and triumph to live their own lives i guess canceled out the fact that jenna played a part in the deaths of 200 beings. it was. i dont even know 

the next “episode” after a brief interlude of less impactful adventures and discussing mortality was a sherlock crossover episode that im too embarrassed to go into detail about but did reveal jenna’s newly formed abandonment issues due to her stranded in a strange universe situation and the fact she had a self harm problem that, surprise, mirrored mine. her n the doctor went on some more adventures over the next few months that were mentioned in passing. it should be noted that this first “act” i guess takes place over a solid year

the next episode featured river song bc i was gay for her without knowing it and i had just learned about easter island in history class and i decided to expand on one of the adventures said in passing during the series to kind of root my fic in canon bc i was a smarmy bitch. it involved being perceived as gods and the silence and using the flesh as a means of luring villagers to be used as human batteries and also putting a percetion filter on the ship so what was actually a crater was perceived to be a mountain. through this episode we saw the doctor again facing his own mortality, river sitting jenna down after a series of events pieced together her abandonment issues n harm problem n being like you cant rely on the doctor for this alone trust me i know its fun but when it starts ending it wont be. jenna gets kidnapped again by the silence n is reproduced as flesh to try and steer the doctor n river away from saving the day but overcomes that impulse and eventually pulls herself out of it and helps save things.

this episode also imports an important plot device of misplacement, which i shouldve put in earlier if im honest. the basic idea of it, within the fic lore, was that the universe, multiverse, whatever had to compensate for temporal displacement all the time when choices were made, but when big things that would alter history happened--like a giant supposed mountain blowing up 200 years after it had already blew up--it had a fail safe to transport the object causing the harm to the exact place but in a different time where the event would have less of a temporal impact. theres also an important note here where the doctor doesnt recall jenna being with him on their first adventure together. both are setting up the larger plot.

after the deal with the kidnapping and the flesh and all their adventures the doctor becomes kind of protective of jenna because i mean the dude also has abandonment issues like lets be real. so he kind of tones down the danger in fear of jenna dying or getting hurt. i mean, its been a year and theyve kind of become these friends who snark at each other like a family would and its nice that jenna has this person she can trust because she watched the show and like, knows him and knows his tells and calls him out on his bullshit before he can even get started and feels a kind of responsibility for due to the prophecy she was given and the doctor has someone to talk to and someone he also doesnt have to hide from really because she already knows almost everything. theyve been equally protective of each other--jenna keeping the doctor in the dark about the prophecy about her and keeping mum on the fact that she knows he isnt going to die, and the doctor worrying about jenna’s safety and trying not to screw her up like he has past companions to kind of try to atone for his past mistakes and make it up to this girl whose life he kind of unintentionally ruined. ok honestly idk why im getting in depth but i spent. years on this fic you dont understand

so. after a while jenna just kind of calls the doctor out like come on lets at least go somewhere fun and end up spending christmas eve in new york in the forties and befriend this newly single mother and jenna fakes a REALLY BAD accent to get across that her n the doctor are related n poor to gain sympathy. they do all the things she wants like times square and macy’s, where surprise! she sees amy n rory n their son and just kind of like. guides them away from the doctor like guys. this aint ur guy. and it would fuck EVERYTHING up also hi i know your guys’s entire life story, cute kid, etc. they give jenna some advice dealing w the doctor and she tells them that she’ll try her best to make sure he doesnt like, go self hating n all that bullshit n they part ways. her n the doctor meet up again and throughout this whole first part jenna’s been noticing people following her? with like, these weird orange-y eyes. and she thinks like fuck ok this’ll ruin the adventure, maybe theyll leave but they end up starting to go after her and reveal themselves to be a species called the visicheck

after escaping and dumpster diving because the visicheck hunt based on scent, jenna and the doctor start heading towards the single mother’s place for refuge (she had seen their situation n offered a place to spend christmas eve) and on the cab ride over the doctor explains that the visicheck r these ancestors of the family of blood, and basically are lifeless specks that latch onto living things and possess them until they burn them out and move onto the next one. they consume what is the basic energy a thing needs to exist and be alive, and for different species there’s different levels. lets say a dw universe human is ur basic ten on the scale. because of different circumstances in different universes, jenna is basically a 120 on the scale. like, these things could possess her body and use it for centuries to wreck havoc with the kind of energy she holds. and jenna, thinking about the prophecy of changing the timeline and also not wanting to basically be the living dead is like yeah ok fuck this is bad. 

they find some brief refuge in the single mothers apartment for a time and enjoy a lovely christmas eve dinner but eventually the visicheck catch up to them. the doctor escorts the single mother n her kid into a cab to get as far away as possible while jenna is just supposed to keep holed up in the apartment, but things arent so easy and they end up breaking in. she’s able to hit them over the head with a pan n kind of stave them off for a bit and heads for the roof, but is eventually backed into a circle. knowing the visichek can’t possess something that is dead and not wanting to potentially endanger the universe just to keep her life jenna jumps off the building in a dramatic fashion that i wrote to play with the carol of the bells because i thought it was cool, and you know what? it was. it really was.

and so jenna dies

at least for a bit

she wakes up in the tardis, rly confused because like, she died. like she knows she did. and the doctors not speaking n acting all broody and she finally gets the story out of him that after she died (posted as an anonymous person in the newspaper, i should note, and put in an unnamed grave to keep the whole “written in stone” thing in line) he kind of. went off on his own for a bit before rly hating himself for letting jenna die right in front of him and went back to catch and save her before she landed, therefore altering the events as it happened. and jenna is...not happy about this. like, one bit. because, in a twist of fate, because she is both living and dead the universe must compensate by going to misplacement, but jenna can’t fully complete the misplacement “”process”” i guess until she is in the exact location she is misplaced from, only different time and all, and in this case she’s in the tardis which almost always has its shields up, so she can’t even complete that bit. so, as explained, the universe will start the process over whenever the tardis decides to fly off again, and send jenna to a different time within the tardis’s general vicinity.

basically, she’s gonna be stuck hopping around the doctor’s timeline. like, all of it, until she finally meets up with the right doctor who knows her n has been past this point. which could take years for her. and, mind you, the task she was “assigned” in the prophecy was to change the timeline, and as a result destroy the doctor. so this is basically jenna’s worst nightmare, and she finally spills the beans about the prophecy in a fit of anger before trying to say goodbye and being whisked off

and this is where the angst stuff happens

basically, for the next year or so (when i rewrite in my head its two years, makes more sense) jenna is thrown around one end of the universe to the other, trying to stay out of the way of the doctor’s events while also trying to, you know, survive and eat and drink and sleep. she’s basically a homeless vagabond for most of it, and her abandonment issues and self harming kind of escalate. she begins leading a really lonely life, and grows this kind of love/hate relationship with the doctor where she really hopes to see him again but also grows bitter against him for putting him in this situation. she visits companions before their time with the doctor, like donna, by accident and stumbles through meeting them and trying to just keep going. in her loneliness she starts talking to a version of the doctor in her head, which starts taking more and more of a form to her before its a fully grown kind of hallucination she’s created out of loneliness (which was kind of based off of me being a lonely kid and having pretend conversations with characters to simulate human connection which is. sad. i know. really sad. its a lot). 

for a time jenna is stuck with the doctor and martha during the months leading up to human nature/the family of blood, and inadvertently meets martha and gets a job at the school as a fellow maid through helping martha drag the doctor to the place. she figures its the only stability she’ll have for a while and since she was never shown in the show it isnt rly affecting the most important bits of the timeline, and resolves to stay as far away from john smith as she can and just live out her life until the events of the episodes start happening and she’ll vamoose. she adopts an accent to blend in and when she has free time finds the stashed away tardis, which initially does not recognize jenna as a companion until finding archived recordings from the future bc duh its a time machine, which brings the whole pov thing full circle, and interacts with the interface to get answers about her growing questions about the silence and her situation and learns about a device called the cage, which has been alluded to in previous “episodes” only by name, as a great machine created by the silence that is meant to basically make it so that anything inside of it would be erased for existence, past present and future, using energy form the cracks in the universe. this was still at a point in the actual series where we knew nothing so i just kind of went buckwild.

anyways

jenna ends up having to interact with the tenth doctor as john smith once, and kind of aims all of her bitterness towards her future self at him and realizes that isnt fair, apologizes, and has a cathartic moment of finally moving past a grudge with the wrong version of the doctor. eventually the events of the episodes start happening and she vamooses before getting sent off to god knows where again, yippee

eventually through the next year jenna kind of begins to rly lose hope. like, it’s been a year already, she doesn’t know if she can keep living like this. so she makes a deal with herself to wait out until the end of this second year of time travelling vagabonding before she decides to off herself to save herself and the universe the trouble. 

she keeps going through the motions and actually stumbles upon a future, post-silencio doctor, with rory and amy in tow, and in a fit of like oh my god relief she kind of runs up to him and is like i found you, finally, holy shit n the doctor looks at her like im sorry but i dont...know you? like i genuinely dont know who you are. you might have ur timelines all switched up. and jenna knows this isnt true and freaks out and kind of just is like, theres like fifteen days until the deadline, all hope is lost, gonna just completely self destruct n cuts her hair and stops eating, but on the day of the actual deadline she keeps stalling as she zaps from place to place before finally deciding to end how it should end by jumping off a building n she has this heartfelt convo with this imaginary figure thats kept her company all this time

so she makes the journey up this apartment building in this basically abandoned future...chicago, i think? yeah. and you know, is about to do when whaddaya know, a familiar voice is calling out for her. she thinks its just the hallucination but eventually realizes that its actually the doctor, one that knows her, and they have this really heartfelt hug before she punches him square in the face

after the fact is a lot of secret keeping on jenna’s side. she doesnt want to be a burden and just kind of wants things to eventually get back to normal after a period of just resting finally and lies about her time being thrown around the doctors timeline, telling him it was only a few months instead of two years, and hiding the evidence of her self harm and other forms of self destruction to try and get things back to the way they were. the doctor can see through jenna’s bullshit though and over a month of just kind of chilling in the tardis and getting better she eventually tells him and after being pulled into an adventure with alien bees and a prison break and characters very much based off of the captor brothers from homestuck they kind of find their original rhythm

the next adventure was the one where i stopped writing mostly bc the plot absolutely sucked. it was a beach adventure episode, involving aliens and aliens who were mermaids and being stranded on a remote island. also, at the time i was going through a sexuality crisis and decided jenna was gonna go through it too and made her realize she was gay for one of the alien mermaids and totally made out with her. you can see how the plot was failing a bit, and the only thing i dont regret is the whole mermaid makeout thing really. 

the rest of the series from that point on was supposed to go something like this: jenna has to go back to her old high school, except in the dw universe, and finds out she actually doesn’t exist in this universe??? which is weird. the doctor plays teacher and they live in the prop attic of the school investigating a counselor that literally feeds off of emotions until the students are a husk and die. there was going to be a filler where the doctor and jenna start the doctors farewell tour (it is revealed when they finally find each other at the end of the timeline jumping debacle that the doctor has like two years left until silencio happens, with like a hundred years passing between new york n finding jenna) and the doctors mortality is discussed and jenna begins to wonder what happens to her since she isnt at the event or anything going forward, and begins to worry about the prophecy again.

the finale of jenna’s adventures was supposed to go like this: they end up tackling the silence again, only with the help of the cage, after jenna notices the doctor beginning to forget more and more things about her. they get captured and the silence plan to place the doctor in the cage and eradicate him from existence so that the question to be asked never existed to begin with. i hadnt figured out how yet, but basically jenna would finally click everything together and realize it was her destiny to do this, and even had a better chance since it eradicated her from this universe, and she still had a life in another one and could maybe start over and appreciate her family and friends a bit more, and would pull a switcheroo so that she would be put in the cage and slowly eradicated from existence. from that point the silence ship would kind of go haywire from the power being used by the cage and jenna would drag the incapicitated doctor back to the tardis and saying she has to go record something real quick, and then we dont hear from her again.

last scene would be of the doctor, years and years into the future, during one of his alone periods, sifting through the tardis database and happening upon the archived recording files and listening to them, not remembering exactly but living through these events with a person that was there but also never there to begin with, and the last recording being an actual face recording of jenna saying you know, she doesnt regret a minute of it, go out there and have a nice life and dont feel bad for her before saying goodbye and zapping out of existence.

last “scene” i guess would be a fifteen year old jenna, rather than the 18-19 year old we’ve come to know, waking up the day it all started and realizing she accidentally napped through the whole day when her parents wake her up. it seems apparent she doesn’t remember a thing, but her parents say something offhand that wouldve been a prolific line and she has a sense of deja vu and hints towards her someday maybe remembering but also having a chance to live a life without the trauma of her life lead in the other universe

+

so uh yeah. idk why i decided to write all of this. actually i do i have an essay i have to write but. idk this fic was a huge part of my life for like. a good amount of time and despite its tackiness im actually very proud of it and just wanted to share its story without having anyone ever have the link to it and read it because despite my careful planning i did narrate like a superwholock for most of it and it was REALLY annoyin. but this fic and the character of jenna actually helped me work through a lot of my own bullshit and im still kind of in love with it. and in the years to come actually m*ffat fucking used these plot points like the tardis hating the companion n the doctor forgetting about a companion like years after i wrote this shit but i think i wrapped up the cracks in the universe n silence thing pretty fucking well so uh. petition for fifteen year old me to rewrite the last half of season 6 i guess. anyway its 2 in the morning and i just wrote honest to god a full 5,000 words about my doctor who oc fanfiction so uh. yeah. fuck.

[flappyfluellen]

So I read the Merry Wives of Windsor

...and I have a lot of thoughts!!

To tell the truth, I got into this play because of Hugh Evans. And my theater friends.

Basically what happened was—I was surfing the Shakespeare internet when suddenly I came across a page on how Shakespeare writes accents. There was one on Welsh accents, which intrigued me. After all, Fluellen is quite possibly my favorite character in Shakespeare, and I’m pretty interested in Welsh culture, thanks to him. However, I was under the impression that Fluellen and Glendower (and that one random Welsh soldier dude from Richard II) were the only Welsh people in Shakespeare. Turns out I was wrong—Sir Hugh Evans is a Welsh parson from Merry Wives. And, then to my utter astonishment, it turns out he has more lines than Fluellen or Glendower!

So of course I was very interested in finding out just who this Evans guy was. Originally I didn’t plan on reading the entire play—just looking through a couple summaries, maybe. However, the factor that fully convinced me was that some of my theater friends (who were in Henry V with me) were currently in a production of Merry Wives. I had a good conversation with them about it, as well as talking with some of my other Shakespeare-obsessed friends (shoutout to @tragicdanishlesbians !), and decided—this play sounds interesting; I’m gonna read it, why the hell not.

…Anyway, all that goes to show that I read the play (in three days actually), and quite thoroughly enjoyed it.

I feel like I should primarily address Evans, since he got me into this whole thing. He’s great. Arguably extraneous, but eh, I love him. He gets mocked for his accent and Welsh-ness a couple times, though, which is… unfortunate. Lots of references to stereotypically Welsh things, like cheese or flannels. Especially cheese. (also, perhaps he and Fluellen could be brothers?) My favorite scene of his is certainly the one where he’s quizzing William on Latin verb conjugations and Nell Quickly entirely misinterprets it… that was pretty hilarious. And he sings to himself when he’s scared?! Aww.

Also the best line in the entire play: “Heavens defend me from that Welsh fairy, lest he transform me to a piece of cheese!”

I feel like I’ve spent way too much time discussing Evans. He is in no way the most important character in the play. Here, let me speak to some of the others.

Mistess Ford & Page? The badass women Windsor deserves. 10/10 love these women. They take no shit from Falstaff nor their husbands, and are pretty much the driving forces of the play. Honestly, what more can I say? And Ford’s line about them is pretty great: "I think, if your husbands were dead, you two would marry.”

Even the play is named after them—they are the Merry Wives: "We'll leave a proof, by that which we will do, / Wives may be merry, and yet honest too: / We do not act that often jest and laugh; / 'Tis old, but true, still swine eat all the draff."

However, in all honesty, I think that Ford is the most interesting character in the play. At the beginning, he’s just kind of your standard jealous husband. It’s all fun and games. But then Falstaff calls him a cuckold about five times in one speech, and suddenly this happens…

"Would any man have thought this? See the hell of having a false woman! My bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at … Terms! names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils' additions, the names of fiends: but cuckold! Wittol! —Cuckold! the devil himself hath not such a name. … I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese … than my wife with herself; then she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises…"

This soliloquy of Ford’s really struck me because it’s so intense. He’s essentially saying that being called a cuckold is worse than being called a devil: I would certainly liken it to some of Othello’s or Leontes’ speeches. Though of course, Ford is different from Othello or Leontes (or Claudio from Much Ado) because he actually has pretty good reason to suggest his wife is unfaithful. And yet… he’s actually a lot more humane about it? Yes, he has this intense speech (which really speaks to his anxieties)—but he doesn’t slander or kill *cough* Othello *cough* his wife. And he apologizes to her afterwards. Which is great!

Of course, since Merry Wives is a comedy, it doesn’t explore these darker themes as much as a play like Othello or Winter’s Tale would. However, I would still argue that there are elements of darkness in the play. One is the theme of cuckoldry. Another is the treatment of Falstaff.

For the most part, Falstaff’s humiliation is hilarious. He deserves a lot of it. The whole laundry-basket thing is fantastic. But… it seems to me that they almost go too far? “We cannot misuse him enough,” says Mistress Page. The last scene is pretty great, in my opinion, but still—they burn him with candles! I’m not sure how I feel about that! It seems to parallel the treatment of Malvolio in Twelfth Night, almost...

Some more thoughts!

Poor Quickly, working for all those different people. Also, she’s not as badass in this play as she was in Henry IV—but, well.

I wonder when this play is set, in regards to Henry IV? The only mention of characters in H4 looks to be this offhand line of Page’s regarding Fenton: "The gentleman is of no having: he kept company with the wild prince and Poins; he is of too high a region; he knows too much."

I find it kind of hilarious that Slender and Caius ended up accidentally marrying boys.

Re. Caius… wtf dude?? He is a little Too Obsessed with Anne Page. And then when he hears that Evans encouraged Slender to woo Anne, all of a sudden he’s like I WILL KILL YOU EVANS and it’s actually really intense and disturbing. Dude. Chill. Please. Evans deserves 0% of this and tbh neither does Anne nor Simple.

I don’t really understand how Caius and Evans got revenge on the Host…? Did that ever happen? Was it connected to that random horse-stealing incident? idk.

Re. the whole subplot with Anne Page and her suitors—I’m glad she got to marry who she wanted in the end! That was really great.

There was so much horn imagery… obviously relating to cuckoldry, but still interesting.

Most of the play is in prose! It was interesting to note the rare places where they switch to verse (most notably, when talking about magic, Herne the hunter, etc)

Bottom line? Merry Wives is a fun play. It is in no way as deep as some of Shakespeare’s other comedies—but hey, it’s a comedy. It’s fun. It’s got a good story. Lots of laughs. And even some little hints at a darker nature. Not for people unfamiliar with Shakespeare—but for those who are, I would recommend it!

[motleymoose]

The Devil’s Backbone

Challenge: @sdavid09 ’s Tale Teller’s Winter Writing Challenge 2016

Prompt: Farm/Country AU & The Devil’s Backbone by the Civil Wars

Characters: Jody Mills x Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester x Donna Hanscum; mentions of Bobby Singer x Jody Mills, Garth Fitzgerald IV, Charlie Bradbury, Ellen and Jo Harvelle, Rufus Turner, OFC (Jax, Ben, Marlene)

Words: ~3,210

Warnings: Language, fluffy angst

Summary: Life had a way of providing Jody Mills with lemons, but she had always been too broke to make lemonade. Yet sometimes there are mistakes one can’t afford not to make.

A/N: I loved writing this. It just came out on its own. No beta, so all mistakes are my own. Feedback is appreciated! <3

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Farming is a thankless job.

From sunup to sundown, Jody Mills worked. There wasn’t a day that went by when something didn’t break down or escape. If a day did happen to pass by with nothing springing a leak or tearing down a fence, Jody would find herself sitting at the local bar early on in the evening, enjoying a watery beer and rambunctious company.

Those days were few and far between.

And, damn, did she need a beer.

Driving in the last staple, Jody straightened up, stretching out her stiff back and sore shoulders. “Fuuuck me,” she groaned, gazing back at her handiwork. Fixing fence wasn’t something she enjoyed, but at least it would keep the cows in, if even for a short time. Tucking the hammer under her arm, she shook off a glove, letting it fall into the fresh snow, and pulled out her phone. It was late, judging by how fast the sun was disappearing on the horizon, but not late enough for her to pack up and head inside to the warmth.

Sighing, Jody pulled her glove back on, grabbed the bucket of staples and tools, and trudged back toward the four-wheeler. The cows were starting to gather up around the cattle guard, mooing plaintively. She knew it was a long shot, but she fiercely hoped the tractor would start despite the cold. If not, she knew she’d be out way past dark finishing up chores.

I’m getting too damn old for this, she grumbled internally as she revved the ATV and bounced across the frozen pasture, a tally of the next day’s work already forming in her mind. …………… “You really need to hire somebody, girl.” Donna handed Jody the corkscrew as she dug into the dishwasher for wine glasses. “You’re going kill yourself trying to run everything on your own.”

Popping the cork, Jody filled the glasses with Pinot Noir, handing one back to Donna. “I’ve been running it by myself since Bobby died. The only thing that’s changed is I’m getting older.”

Donna took a long sip of wine before biting into a chocolate chip cookie. “Yeah, well, everything else is getting older, too. You’ve spent half your time just trying to keep that old farm house from falling down around your ears!” She flicked crumbs off of her chest as they moved into the living room.

A fire was lit in the stove, and between the warmth and the wine, Jody could feel her defenses relaxing. She plopped into a recliner and pulled a brightly colored quilt over her lap. Donna’s dog Jude got up from the rug in front of the stove and climbed into her lap. Scratching Jude behind the ears, Jody sighed heavily. “Okay, fine. Let’s say I do need to hire someone.” She paused, ruminating. “I can’t pay much of anything, and I don’t have time to train them how to run a tractor or do anything else farm-related.”

Stretching her legs out on the couch, Donna nodded. “That knocks out teenagers and anyone from the city.” She took another drink of wine, her brow furrowed. “Maybe someone retired? I think Marlene was wanting to get Rufus out of the house. And Ellen was saying she was going stir-crazy being cooped up with Jo over the holiday break. Surely one of them could help?”

Jody shook her head as she talked around a mouthful of cookie. “Couldn’t pay either one of them enough. Besides, Ellen’s got the bar now, and Rufus just had his shoulder replaced.”

Rolling her eyes, Donna got up from the couch and went into the kitchen, returning with the bottle of wine and the plate of cookies. “You’re just too damn stubborn.” She topped off Jody’s glass and emptied the rest of the bottle into her own.

Jude’s head shot up when the backdoor banged open. “We’re home!”

A tall, handsomely scruffy man trundled in with a toddler asleep on his shoulder and another trying desperately to push past him.

“C'mon, Dad! I’m freezing!” the boy whined as he ducked under Dean’s arm and dashed into the living room. He launched himself at Donna, giggling as she blew a raspberry on his neck.

“Boots off the couch, Jax,” Dean admonished quietly as he shifted the sleeping Ben in order to kick off his boots. The wiry preschooler grumbled under his breath as he stomped back to the door to take off his winter gear. Dean arched an eyebrow, giving Donna a knowing look. She tightened her lips in an effort to suppress a grin. Rolling his eyes, Dean padded across the living room and shooed Jax ahead of him. They disappeared down the hall, Jax trying to wheedle a later bedtime out of his dad, and Dean barely holding back his laughter as his eldest son continued to come up with excuses. Donna watched them go before turning back to Jody.

“His brother’s back in town,” she whispered, keeping an eye on the boys’ bedroom door. “Got laid off at Boeing. Dean didn’t even know he was in the area until Garth told him.” Donna glanced back down the hallway, taking another swallow of wine. “Sam - he hasn’t been in a good place in a while. Ever since Jess left…” She looked back over her shoulder and beamed. “Hey, toots.”

Dean returned, dressed in a t-shirt and joggers, and dropped onto the couch next to Donna. He snagged the glass from her hand and finished off what little that remained. “Hey yourself. Need a refill?” He gave her a cocky grin, barely dodging a pillow as he pushed off the couch and shuffled into the kitchen for another bottle.

“Something a little sweeter, please!” she called after him before reaching for another cookie.

Jody watched her friends as they teased one another, a pang of emptiness sharp in her chest. Bobby had been gone for almost six years, but she still missed him. Memories of the way his eyes twinkled when he smiled, how warm and comfortable and engulfing his hugs were, the scratchy roughness of his beard on her neck… It was too much to bare. Attempting to hide the tears that were welling up in her eyes, Jody buried her face in Jude’s dense fur, hoping Donna wouldn’t notice.

Luckily, Donna was a little too good at drinking wine, and also too distracted with finding someone to work for Jody. “Hey hey hey, wait. That’s it!” she exclaimed, taking the newly filled glass from Dean and curling up against him when he sat down again.

“What’s it?” Dean quirked an eyebrow, glancing between the two women.

Donna slapped him playfully on the chest, sloshing a little bit of moscato on the blanket. “Sam! If he hasn’t found anything yet, that is.”

Dean’s face turned dark for a moment as he gulped his drink. “What exactly are we talking about?”

Shifting Jude back to her lap, Jody explained, “Donna thinks I need a hand on the farm. Which I do, I guess. I can’t quite keep up with everything like I use to.”

Shaking his head, Dean set his mug down on the coffee table and leaned forward, causing Donna to slip sideways behind him. “Listen, Sam… he’s a good kid. S'been rough since Jess left. He’s - he’s probably not the most reliable at the moment.”

Donna had pulled herself up out of the cushions and was squeezing his shoulder. “Maybe working out there would help him clear his mind.”

Snorting derisively, Dean leaned back into the couch, propping his feet on the coffee table. “He’s broken, babe. Ain’t nothing going to clear his head until he pulls it out of his ass.”

Looking up at the clock above the wood stove, Jody stretched and gently dislodged the sleeping pooch. “Listen, you guys talk it over.” She stood, ambling over to the pile of boots by the door, finding her own. “If you think he’s a good fit, you’ve got my number. I gotta get going; Charlie said she be in early to take steers to the sale barn.”

Donna got up and tripped over to Jody, giving her a big drunken hug. “I’ll call you tomorrow, love.” She pulled back, a goofy grin spread across her face.

Dean appeared beside her, looping an arm around Donna’s shoulder. “C'mon, you lush. Let Jody get going.”

Smiling, Jody bid farewell, and crunched across the frozen ground toward her rusted truck. It was always fun getting together with her old high school bestie, but sometimes Jody wished Donna wasn’t so persuasive. Shaking her head in defeat, Jody turned her high beams onto the deserted blacktop, taking her time to wend her way home. ……………… Three days had passed without seeing hide nor hair of Donna, but Jody wasn’t worried. Her friend was good at making drunken promises that wouldn’t come to fruition right away. She expected probably in the next month or so Donna would finally remember and send Sam out to work.

She mulled the pros and cons of hiring help as she climbed the windmill tower to tighten the brake. She was so caught up in her own thoughts that she didn’t hear the large diesel dually pull up underneath her perch. It wasn’t until the tall, muscular driver slammed the door that she looked down. Waving, the stranger shoved his hands into the pockets of his Carhartt, shrugging his shoulders up to his ears to keep the biting wind at bay. Intrigued, Jody began her descent, carefully choosing her foot- and handholds on the slippery steel. She was still six feet off the ground when her boot hit a particularly icy rung, sending her feet out from under her.

“Watch it!” a deep voice growled as strong arms impeded her fall.

Surprised, Jody gaped up at the giant of a man holding her awkwardly in midair. The stranger blushed, setting her down on her feet. “Umm, thanks,” she murmured, straightening her ratted hoodie over her frayed overalls. “That could have ended badly.”

Nodding, the man stuck out an ungloved hand. “Good thing I was here then.” He beamed mischievously. “I’m Sam Winchester, Dean’s brother. He said you had some work that needed done?”

Eying him for a moment, Jody accepted his handshake. “Yeah, shit’s breaking faster than I can fix it.” She paused, wondering what the hell Donna was getting her into. “Do you know how to run a tractor?”

Sam’s eyes lit up, and his smile widened. “Lady, I was born on a tractor.”

“Good.” She smirked back at him as she motioned toward the house. “We just shipped steers off to the sale barn, so the herd’s a little smaller. Won’t need as much hay to put out.” She began walking toward the four wheeler, picking up supplies as she went. “You wanna follow me, I’ll show you where everything’s at.”

“Alright.” Sam headed back for his truck - and damn, was that a nice truck - waiting patiently for Jody to get ahead of him. …………………… The wintery months came and went like a screaming banshee, with little to no break from the howling winds and freezing temperatures. Already halfway through March, calves were starting to hit the ground, and Jody was thanking her lucky stars for giving her help like Sam.

Both Donna and Dean were utterly surprised that Sam had even stuck around past December.

Of course, they couldn’t know the real reason he had stuck around for so long. Jody knew all the shit she’d get from her friends if they found out she and Sam were sharing a bunk.

She had a good thing going, and she wanted to keep it that way for as long as she could without any outside input.

The work and the weather were good for driving any thought other than the task at hand completely from his mind. They were getting on good, and Jody could even feel a connection forming between the two of them, something she hadn’t felt since Bobby.

It was well past lunchtime when they finished with the grinding. A heavy cloud of dust and hay floated lazily around the tractors as Jody shut down the bale processor and climbed into the cab to kill the ancient Case. She signaled for Sam to head up to the house while she finished checking over the equipment. Satisfied, she followed him up the drive on foot. As he pulled around the back of the machine shed, Jody kicked off her boots in the pump house and headed into the main house to make them some lunch. she hadn’t even gotten out of her coveralls when a knock came at the door.

“Hey, Cas. What can I do for you?” Jody greeted the Deputy Sheriff, inviting him into the spotless mud room.

Castiel removed his sunglasses, smiling at Jody as he dragged his shoes along the boot scraper before entering. “Afternoon, Jody. Just getting in?” he asked, noting her halfway unzipped winter gear.

Looking down quickly, Jody shrugged. “Storm’s suppose to be in later this evening. Thought we’d better get shit down before it got here.” She led him into the kitchen, pulling out luncheon meat and cheeses from the fridge. “Sandwich?”

Shaking his head, Castiel drew out a barstool, taking a seat across from Jody’s busywork. “I heard you hired on Dean Winchester’s little brother.” It wasn’t a question.

Slowly, Jody spread mustard on a slice of bread, choosing her words carefully. “I needed the help. I’m not as young as I use to be, Cas.”

Humming knowingly, Cas shifted slightly on the stool, fidgeting with his sunglasses. “I know, Jode. It’s just… We got a warrant in. For Sam.” Castiel watched Jody like a hawk as she stacked meat onto half of the sandwich. “He’s a fugitive, Jody. I need to take him in.”

Ignoring Castiel, Jody finished making her meal and pulled a plate from a cabinet. She placed the sandwich squarely in the middle of the chipped dinnerware, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and joined her old partner at the bar. “I don’t care what he did, Cas. I can’t just let you come in here saying you need to arrest him.”

Sitting silently for a moment, Cas pushed back the stool and placed the sunglasses on top of his head. “Listen, the Sheriff’s been gunning for Sam for a long time now. A personal vendetta, I reckon.” He turned back around to face Jody, his eyes pleading with her. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Keep safe, Jody.” He walked out the door, pulling it shut behind him.

Jody stared at the space Cas had occupied for a moment, the cogs turning violently in her head. She had known that Sam had been in and out of trouble since his wife had run off on him, but she didn’t know that he was putting himself in jeopardy of going back to jail.

Finishing her sandwich, Jody threw a couple more together for Sam and headed back out, making a beeline for the machine shed. If she knew anything, it was that she didn’t need this shit, not when she had finally gotten her life back together after Bobby’s passing. It scared her to death, but she knew she was going to have to confront Sam. And, no matter the outcome, she wouldn’t allow her feelings for the youngest Winchester to blur her judgement. ………………. Sam was squatting underneath the faded green Deere, cutting twine from around the front axel. “Be out in a minute!” he hollered, a ball of shredded red twine flying out from behind the tire.

Jody picked up the wad and tossed it into the bucket near the wall. She laid the paper bag full of sandwiches on the oily workbench and fished the cold beer from the pocket of her coveralls. Leaning up against the large back tire of the tractor, Jody waited patiently for Sam to come out. She didn’t have to wait long.

“Hey, you.” Sam’s eyes twinkled as he straightened up and strode over to her. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her to him, kissing her forehead gently. “What did you bring?” He pulled back, a smile still spread across his face. Seeing the troubled furrow on her brow, Sam faltered. “Everything okay?”

Sidestepping the tractor and Sam, Jody went back to the work bench, fiddling with the sack lunch she had brought out. “Cas stopped by…” she trailed off, swallowing back the sorrow and the anger welling up in her throat.

“What did he want?” His voice was shot with steel, eyes hardening as he approached her.

“You didn’t tell me you were on the run.” The tension was almost palpable; she couldn’t control the hurt in her voice any longer.

Cursing, Sam slammed a fist into the workbench, startling a mouse from behind a toolbox. He watched as the little varmint scampered through the gap between the door and the frame. “What did you tell him?”

Numbly, Jody laid out the sandwiches, cracking open the beer with the stationary bottle opener screwed into the side of the table. “I told him to leave,” she said simply.

Exhaling sharply, Sam hung his head, scrubbing at the back of his neck with a greasy hand. “Listen, Jody-”

“No, you listen. I took you in,” she snapped, drawing herself up to her full height. “I’ve risked everything having you here. Hell, I even invited you into my bed, Sam! The least you could do was tell me you had a warrant.”

Shame faced, Sam leaned back onto the bench, eyes glued to a spot on the floor in front of him. “I-I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Jody. I thought I’d be safe here for a little while, that the whole thing would blow over.” He gazed back up at her, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble. I’ll finish up chores before I go.”

Jody stared at him, stunned. “Go?” she repeated, her voice small and weak in her ears. “That’s not what I’m saying, Sam-”

Sam shook his head. “No, it’s better if I leave. They can’t do anything to you if I’m not here.”

“But Sam…”

“No buts.” He finished off the last of his beer, folding the paper bag neatly into a smaller rectangle. “I need to finish up feeding the bulls.” Avoiding her eyes, he walked toward the wicket gate, pausing before he opened it. “I won’t forget what you’ve done for me.” With that, he exited, leaving only the bitter March wind in his place.

“I love you, Sam Winchester,” she muttered, pulling the door closed behind her as she watched him unhook the Case from the processor. In her heart, she knew he had to leave, but she didn’t like it. Maybe one day he’d be able to stop running.

And just maybe she’d be there, waiting for him.

[wallythayer]

COMING CLEAN: How to Heal Your Birth Story

Right before my son turned 1, I met an old friend for coffee. It had been a while since we had seen each other, and in catching up, she inquired about the birth of our second child. As I told her our story, I began to cry. Even though nearly a year had passed, my feelings around his entrance into this world were still raw and complicated.

It had been difficult to name the emotions tied to the experience. Each time I’ve told our story over the past year, a new door has been opened to anger, fear, guilt, loss, and shame. All the love I have for my son couldn’t erase my questioning of the healthcare system, my faith, and my body. How do you reconcile an event that brings both happiness and doubt?

“Births are not either traumatic or not,” writes Maureen Campion, MS, LP, in Heal Your Birth Story. “Many women have beautiful births in which there was one moment when they were faced with an overwhelming sense of unexpected loss of power. That moment, a week after the birth, may simply resolve itself, or it may become an obsessive sore spot that begins to take over the best parts of the story. . . . Trauma occurs in moments.”

Campion, a Twin Cities–based psychologist, writes in a compassionate and understanding voice, and details the various avenues of emotions tied to psychological birth trauma and unresolved negativity around a woman’s birth story. In her book, she shares her own tale and others’ essays, and offers exercises to aid in healing.

Indeed, the spectrum of feelings and the event itself varies so widely and uniquely. My first birth with my daughter was glorious: My vision and hopes realized in an active and speedy labor and water birth.

When I became pregnant two years later, I was certain a second pregnancy would run a similar course to my first. I hired my same amazing doula, but signed up with a larger group of nurse midwives, as my former group disbanded. There were some concerns along the way as I met with the different midwives, a practice of roughly 20 women, but with my doula and husband by my side when the time came, I knew I’d have my key support team in place in case anything went amiss.

Then about two weeks before his due date, my waters broke. Since my first birth was just shy of eight hours, my care team had several discussions about this birth also being fast, maybe even half the time. So we set out for the hospital.

But even as we prepared to go, I noticed something strange: no regular and steady contractions. Really, nothing.

Once I was admitted to the hospital, it was noted quickly that my risk for infection would increase after 12 hours of the waters breaking so we needed to consider medical intervention. I thanked the nurse for the information, but I was worried: Several conversations with the midwives were about my goal to have a nonmedicated vaginal birth, ideally in water. Instead of me trusting them as their patient, I was now vigilant and cautious of their care.

With my husband and doula, I walked outside on the trails and throughout the hospital corridors. I tried repeating the same patterns as my first birth: swaying on a stability ball, different positioning, relaxing in the tub.

Lunch came and little had changed. More walking, lunges, step-ups, squatting, and walking. So much walking.

Near dinnertime, the conversation with a second midwife returned to interventions, and we agreed to try the prostaglandin pill Cervidil, which works to soften the cervix and thus spur contractions, later that night if nothing had changed. While they were ready to take action, I was still hoping for nature to lead. “I don’t have anywhere to go,” I noted. I went for another walk, and took another bath.

That evening, the charge nurse pushed to give me an IV without full explanation, saying that it “wasn’t up for a discussion,” and I grew frustrated. It’s in my nature as a health journalist to know the facts and rationale. (She later explained when prompted for more detail that his heart rate was high, and the thinking was that I was dehydrated and needed fluids, which did indeed work to bring down his heart rate.) As she inserted the IV, tears streamed down my face, and through my anger, I told her, “I don’t want my birth to feel like my brain surgery.”

“You will find raw spots in your story around something that was said to you or a procedure that went wrong or the way you were treated,” Campion writes. “For you, this was a sacred, amazing, powerful experience. For some of them it was just a work day and maybe a crappy one at that.”

With the shift change to a wonderful new midwife and nurse the next day, I was ready to move forward. We walked again, I squatted and lunged; we tried Spinning Babies; reiki, massage, acupressure, acupuncture, and warm baths. 

After 38 hours from when my waters broke, my contractions began to be stronger, steady, and more predictable. Now on my fifth midwife and fourth nurse after another shift change, I re-explained my birth preferences again: Let my body do the work, release any worry, and please avoid causing alarm. My goal is a water birth.

The midwife nodded and seemed to understand, but I quickly started to see that the fetal heartbeat monitor would decide the course of this birth. Since I had been put on Cervidil, the machine was their guide instead of me as the patient, and the monitor seemed in control of my and my baby’s destiny. They discussed the numbers even as my vocalization changed from what my husband described as “Zen monk” to “lead singer of a heavy metal band.” They watched the numbers as my contractions became longer and closer together, but no mention of the tub being prepared — they wouldn’t even answer my husband when he asked several times if it was ready for me. I felt my water-birth dream dissolve with each passing hour, and my spirit crushed every time the midwife stopped by my room. I felt increasingly invisible and unheard.

When Pitocin was suggested to augment labor, I decide to take a bath. Partly to stall, but also because I knew what was happening, and that no further talk of intervention would be needed. The nurses discussed my numbers and whether the baby’s heart rate met the criteria for a water birth with the ob-gyn on the floor, and I kept focused on labor, now moving into transition. From the bathroom, I climbed onto the bed as the charge nurse pulled the emergency cord for help, and within seconds, our baby boy was born at 12:30 a.m.

I was relieved, but as soon as he wasn’t placed in my arms, I quickly became concerned — he was blue and not breathing. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and there was a tight knot in it. The nurses cheered at me, trying to distract me from the emergency cart in the corner, but I heard the NICU nurse counting aloud marking the time until his first breath. A minute, nearly two, and then shrieks from this little man. To this day, I still hear the counting, and see the panic on the nurse’s face and the fear on my husband’s.

He weighed just over 5½ pounds. Because he had tied a knot in the umbilical cord (most likely loose until birth when it tightened), my care team thought, he didn’t get as much nourishment to grow bigger. My placenta was small, too. Guilt quickly came over me as I thought back to my prenatal appointments where they cautioned me about how much weight to gain — did I not gain enough weight? Even the NICU nurse commented, rather inappropriately, “This baby has no fat on him! You’re going to have to supplement.” I hadn’t even had a chance to breastfeed my baby yet.

After such a tedious labor, his sudden entrance was jarring. As the sun rose, I held him and nursed him all while ruminating: Did I do something wrong? Is he going to be OK? What just happened?

In the following months, I met with mom’s groups, tried bring-your-baby yoga classes, and thought that those feelings of regret and shame would disappear. When I told my birth story to one woman, she said, “Well, all that matters is that he’s here and healthy” — as if the resulting child should just wash away the haunting memories and emotions.

For a while, I was able to muster through: Just push my feelings deep down or ignore them and eventually they’d disappear, right? Moms are often given this message: Suck it up; be the rock; it’s not about you anymore. But how are moms supposed to function as healthy adults and fully heal emotionally and physically from childbirth if they are not supported in addressing emotional distress? With birth trauma linked to postpartum mood disorders, Campion notes, not resolving these feelings can be potentially dangerous for some women.

Today, I feel like myself again. I’ve made peace with his birth, and realized my own strength in the process — a courage that was emblazoned in my DNA from my late grandma Marie and my mother Karen. I’ve moved through the emotions while journaling, reading Campion’s book and attending her birth-trauma workshop, and doing private therapy sessions. I’ve channeled other sources of resiliency, and rediscovered a deeper spiritual connection and purpose that’s refueled me.

“A strong sense of healing is knowing that your birth story is complete and that it no longer impacts your daily life,” Campion writes. “At some point, it just gets to be what happened; it becomes your past.” She notes ways to connect to other mothers and organized advocacy groups, if that feels like the right next step.

There comes a time to turn the corner. Pregnancy, birth, and motherhood have taught me so much about how good and bad live together simultaneously; my lens has shifted to see the beauty and fragility of life — and how it will change. The right amount of space, love, and support can make all the difference.

Get the full story at https://experiencelife.com/article/coming-clean-how-to-heal-your-birth-story/

[dmmowers]

Hearing voices in a gated community

Hearing voices in a gated community A sermon for Trinity Episcopal Church, Baraboo, Wis. IV Easter | May 7, 2017 | Year A Acts 2:42-47 | Psalm 23 | I Peter 2:19-25 | John 10:1-10

I.

Can you hear the voice of Jesus calling?

One would think that religious people have an inside track at recognizing the voice of Jesus. After all, we're the ones who meet to hear the Word of God and receive the Eucharist every week. We're the ones who study the Bible, who read the words of God and try to implement them in our lives. Not so fast, says our gospel story this morning. We pick up the thread of John's gospel just after a story we heard about six weeks ago where Jesus heals a blind man on the Sabbath. The serious religious people of Jesus' day, the Pharisees, hear that Jesus did work on the Sabbath, and then they hear that the people are in an uproar because this formerly blind man could now see. 

Now the Pharisees took Scripture seriously, and they knew how serious the Sabbath was: it was part of what made the people of Israel different from other people. Israel was the people God had chosen in his covenant with Abraham, and it was important that they kept themselves holy as God's special people. The Sabbath was part of how that worked. So when the blind man claimed that Jesus was a prophet, they threw him out of the temple. The Pharisees knew that he had been born blind because he was a sinner: he had pre-existing conditions. 

After the Pharisees threw him out, Jesus found the blind man and told him who he was. The blind man believed in him, and Jesus said, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind." The man who had formerly been blind was clearly who Jesus meant by "those who do not see may see." So who were those who see who would become blind? The Pharisees The ones who clearly saw the truth about who Israel was, the ones who clearly saw who was a prophet and who was not, the ones who clearly saw how God was at work in their world.

Chapter 10, and our reading this morning, starts just after this story. There weren't chapter numbers in the Bible for 1000 years after Jesus, so when Jesus says, "Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit," that comes right after Jesus says that he came so that the blind would see and so that the seeing would become blind.  A sheepfold was an enclosure that herders would put their sheep in at the end of the night; sometimes it was a cave or other geographic feature. Other times, if it was in a village, it might have been a pen with a low wall in a pasture. The sheepfold would be gated at one end, and Jesus says that the shepherd would enter the sheepfold by the gate. The gatekeeper would know the shepherd and open the gate for him. So the shepherd enters by the gate, but the ones who don't come in by the gate were thieves and robbers. Who are the thieves and robbers? The Pharisees. The shepherd, on the other hand, is Jesus. He knows his sheep by name, and he leads them out. The sheep follow him, but they run from the voice of the stranger.

The sheep don't follow the voices of the serious religious people. They don't follow the ones who are earnest about the Bible and about Israel's identity. They run from them. But Jesus knows their name and calls them, and they follow.

II. 

So on first glance, this sounds like a pretty harmless Sunday School-type story. Great, Jesus is the shepherd of the sheep. We hear Jesus' voice and he knows our name; let's break out a chorus of Jesus loves me. 

But I think there's more here. We live in a culture of outrage, a culture of frenzied activity. It is no small thing to hear and recognize anyone's voice if you're staring constantly at your smartphone, and if you're like me, you are constantly tempted to stare at your smartphone. It is no small thing to be able to recognize someone's voice if you're going from kids' choir concerts to Bible study to a work meeting to a dinner with friends before you collapse into your bed only to do it again the next day. It's pretty hard to hear someone's voice if the only thing you can hear in your house is the blaring voice of Sean Hannity. Or Rachel Maddow. Or, if you're like me and you followed the debate around the American Health Care Act in Congress this week, you know it's pretty hard to hear anyone's voice when you can instantly broadcast your opinions to the world on Twitter. There's no need to think deeply, to fact check, or to ruminate when you can channel your outrage instantly into 140 characters.

In case you're worried, you should know that I rarely comment on matters of public policy from the pulpit or in any other public venue. I am not a political scientist; you do not come to church to hear the preacher talk politics. Politics is complex. Christian people often agree on a particular goal, like how our society provides quality, affordable health care for everybody, but we don't agree at all on what policies will get us to that goal.  I'm not called to tell you how to get our policy right. But in the midst of outraged voices telling us to be angry on the left and on the right, in the midst of Christian leaders sounding more like Republicans or Democrats than like Christians, I want to clarify what the church teaches about political goals. When we think about public policy, we must always take into account people who are down and out, like the man formerly born blind. When we think about a political issue, the question is not, "Will this make my taxes go up?" or "Will this make me have less money?" but rather, "Will this make life more bearable for the poorest people? Will it give stability and safety to the person who is alone, to the person who is vulnerable, to the person who is suffering?" That is what the voice of Jesus is calling us to do. I am convinced that the voice of Jesus is neither Democrat nor Republican, and I am convinced that the church's mission can't be reduced to getting our politics right.

Events in Washington or Madison can sometimes distract us from the other ways that churches are called to engage and serve with our communities. In my travels around Baraboo to learn our community, I recently met Pastor Bill Harris of People Helping People. Their headquarters is just a block over on Broadway, and they serve the most down and out men in our community, helping them with housing, drug treatment, and training them as auto detailers, a profession which has enormous unmet demand, so that they can eventually have meaningful work that supports them and their families. It's too easy to get upset about a talking head in Washington and completely miss that these desperately needy, broken men are our neighbors. That is why I'm so grateful for People Helping People and for Pastor Bill: grateful, yes, that these hopeless people are told that they matter to God and that they can get out of the situations they are in but grateful also that People Helping People is a constant reminder to us of the depth of need in Baraboo and the work that God has put in front of us to do here. People Helping People is the concrete way that these men are made to hear the voice of Jesus calling them by name. That is what the mission of the church looks like, and for it to carry on, it means that God's people can't get distracted or disheartened from following the voice of Jesus into the pasture. Even though important issues are often in play in politics, we cannot surrender the mission of the church to politicians or reduce it to the ballot box. There are too many people who need to hear Jesus saying their name here in Baraboo today.

III. 

Jesus calls us as a shepherd whose voice cuts through all the noise and division of our culture. He tells his disciples that his sheep hear his voice, and that he leads them out of the sheepfold into pastures. 

When Jesus told them the story of the sheepfold and the shepherd, his disciples didn't understand what he was saying. So he told them another story. This time, instead of being the shepherd, he's the gate of the sheepfold. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. But everyone else, everyone who came before the gate or who came by a different way than the gate are thieves and bandits, and the only thing that the thief is there to do is to steal, kill and destroy. But the gate is there so that people will have life, and have it abundantly. 

What people miss about passages like this in John's gospel is that Jesus is making a promise here. Many people hear Jesus use phrases like, "I am the gate" and they hear Jesus saying that he's excluding people, that he's making a statement about other religions. But remember the story that came just before this passage: the story of the man born blind. We aren't in the middle of a conversation about which religions get you to heaven when you die. The man born blind has been thrown out by the serious religious and yet Jesus promises that he will be saved, that he will be led, that he will be at home in the pasture because Jesus, not the Pharisees, is the shepherd of the sheep. That is a promise. That is a promise that Jesus will be in relationship with us forever. Nothing will get in the way of Jesus being faithful to his relationship with us. No decision we make, no destructive thing we do, no circumstance that happens to us will ever end the loving relationship that Jesus has with each one of us. 

That is a promise for everyone who calls on the name of Jesus - for everyone who's ever been afraid of our own death or someone else's, for everyone who's ever gotten pushed out of a church because you joined the wrong club or voted for the wrong guy, for everyone who messed up their lives and felt like they weren't good enough to be in relationship with Jesus anymore. For all of these people and all of us, Jesus is the gate of the sheepfold. As we read Scripture, pray, hear sermons and serve the poor, we hear the voice of Jesus, the voice that cuts through distractions and swirling voices, that cuts through our poverty or our mistakes, calling to us, loving us. It turned out that the Pharisees missed all of this. For all of their certainty that they had the Scripture right, for all of their care about the Sabbath and for the identity of Israel, they could not see that the overarching principles of Scripture lead to mercy for people like the man who had been born blind. 

IV.

Against the backdrop of our fractured political situation, Jesus' voice calls to all the sheep, and they know his voice. They know his voice if they are Republicans, they know his voice if they are Democrats. It turns out that knowing the voice of Jesus doesn't have much to do with what set of public policies we like better than another. It turns out that what matters is whether we hear the voice of Jesus calling to us. Jesus calls to us so that we can have an abundant life; not a life of outrage, not a life where relationships end over political squabbling, but a life of abundance. A life where we enjoy deep friendships with other people who know how broken we are and love us anyway. 

This kind of abundant life comes from welcoming all of the sheep that are called by the Lord's voice. I'm so proud of the way that people here at Trinity make people feel welcome when they visit our church. At our Rector's Roundtables so many of you said that the reason you stayed at Trinity when you first visited was that people made you feel like you were at home, and for those of you visiting this morning, I trust that we will give you a warm welcome here this morning. And yet, some people are easier to welcome than others. It's easier to welcome a young family who look like nice people than it is to welcome an unkempt homeless person. It's easier to welcome people who carry on a nice conversation than it is to welcome people who are socially awkward or rude or graceless. And yet, Jesus calls the church, and this church, to be a place for all of those who are called by his name, not just the people that are easy to welcome. If we are called by the voice of Jesus, we are welcome here. Maybe we're a widow or widower, maybe we don't have a dime to our names. Maybe we're alienated from a family member or we're addicted or we're sick. The church of this good shepherd is for us. 

The voice of Jesus welcomes us. The voice of Jesus cuts through all of the distractions, through all of our busyness, through all of our outrage, to call us. As we hear it, we follow him out of the sheepfold: out of this service, out of this church, into the pasture where Jesus will leave the 99 sheep to go find the one sheep that is lost, into the pasture where we just might be the audible voice Jesus uses to call to people who need him. We just might find that our voices, proclaiming Jesus' welcome and love, become the voice of Jesus calling. The promise of that calling is for them, and for us, abundant life. 

Amen.

[fntstory-blog]

Jaws of Neptune (pt IV)

 In which a change of course is decided. | chapter I | pt i | pt ii | pt iii

When Haru woke again, the ship felt different. It was calm, the ceaseless, violent rocking having eased to more gentle, familiar, motions. A gentle pressure could be felt about one hand and when his eyes adjusted to the light filtering into the cabin he found himself looking up into Owen’s face. A careworn, tired smile was on the captain’s face, though a grim light shone in his blue eyes. His uniform had the distinct look of having been lived in for several days; stubble covered his jaw.

The light coming into the cabin was strange; not the warm light of the sun, but a cool silver more intense than that of the moon. A gentle wind stirred, too, bringing with it the scent of spices and an undernote of something strange and metallic.

A grin broke across Haru’s face at the sight of Owen. Blinking sleepily, he flexed his hand beneath Owen’s, as if assuring himself that this were real. “How long have I been asleep?” He asked, voice cracking slightly. He ran the tip of his tongue gingerly over lips gone dry.

Owen brushed aside the hair from Haru’s face, revealing a blackened eye, bruised cheekbones and split lips. “Not quite two days. Doctor’s orders and all.”

Haru shifted and moved, wanting to sit up. The act required the help of a steady hand and, slowly, it was done, sleep-stiff and sore muscles groaning in protest alongside battered ribs. He could feel bandages wrapped about his middle, no doubt to aid in their mending. He looked about the cabin as best he could, one eye was now swollen mostly shut, taking note of the changed light and calmed pitch of the ship. “Are we free of the storm?” He asked, his voice stronger. “Is the ship unharmed?”

Owen nodded silently, keeping to himself the loss of lives, the damage done to the ship in the storm. There would be time enough for that later. What concerned him, in this moment, was the damage done to Haru, what had been lost in his attack.

“I’m sorry, love,” he said softly, one hand coming to rest against Haru’s bruised cheek. “I should have seen the signs, I should have done more … You’re suffering for my failures. Pierce is right, damn him, I’m not fit to be a captain, not yet …”

Placing one hand over Owen’s, Haru pressed it lightly and looked him in the eye. “This is not your fault. The fault lies solely with that man, Barrows. He orchestrated this mad plot, he acted upon it and he convinced others to join him. You cannot look into men’s hearts and know what lies there.”

Something of that Rokugani haughtiness crept into his tone and expression as he considered Pierce and his words. He dropped his hand to his lap, Owen’s slipped away, too. “Who is Pierce to say that to you? You have seen your crew from a foreign shore, across a sea said not to exist. You traveled across the worst my homeland has to offer, battling demons and monsters, so as to secure your people safe passage home. I may owe this man some small thanks for acting as guard, but he oversteps his boundaries to say so much to his superior and captain.” Voice and expression softening, Haru reached out for Owen’s hand, taking it and interlacing their fingers.

“You are the finest man I know, Owen Hayes, and I would not have come with you on this voyage if I did not believe you would see us both safely delivered …”

“Pierce and Captain Kerrigan, you remember, the first captain, were close friends. The Marines have never accepted me as master of the ship, though they’ve obeyed my orders. It’s no secret that Captain Kerrigan disapproved of my leaving to escort you through the Shadowlands and Pierce refused to send any of the Marines to assist.”

Haru did remember the Ivory Maiden’s first captain, the hospitality he showed, his eagerness to leave Rokugan and return to Avalon. He did not know that the man did not want his lieutenant traveling or that they might have had more men to accompany them on their dangerous mission. This soured his opinion further on the Marine; lives had been lost in their search for the magic compass that was currently seeing them to Avalon. If they had been allowed more soldiers, more fighters … To him it sounded as though Pierce were a petty coward.

Owen continued, eyes downcast now, focused on the sight of their joined hands. “It’s just that …” He sighed softly. “There’s so much to know about the running of a ship that goes beyond canvas and rope and timber. I know how to have her dance on the waves, that comes as second nature, but the crew …” He trailed off, brow knitting in troublesome thought; the Ivory Maiden’s façade of harmony was cracking, badly. He didn’t linger overly long on this, though, there had been time enough to ruminate on his various failures as captain while Haru slept and begun to heal.

“Can you rise?” He asked. “I’d like to show you something.”

Haru nodded, though truth be told he wasn’t entirely sure. It was not an easy thing, but with the support of Owen’s hands and arms he was able to get to his feet. He stood, shakily, for a moment, breathing rapidly and shallowly as he waited for the pain in his ribs to subside. All over, he felt sore; every movement taking long seconds as beaten limbs slowly recalled their function. Once the pain faded to something more bearable, he stood straighter, hands leaving Owen’s arm to smooth his hair and shirt. He thought of the frightful picture he presented, Crane-bred vanity rearing its elegent head even now.

Owen opened the latches on the cabin’s lone window, the view that of the deck and slivers of sea and sky. More of the strange silver light came in as well as the scent of sea salt and unfamiliar spices. Clear to the horizon, the Maiden seemed to be sailing on a sea of melted silver. The cries and answers of officers and sailors could be heard, the work to be done on a ship never-ending no matter where she found herself.

“Now watch. Mr. Beckett!” Owen called from the window. The young officer shouted a command and the crack of a musket rifle shattered the still air, splashing into the sky, causing ripples all the way to the horizon. He shook his head in wonder. “I’ll never get used to that. It’s both wonderful and terrible at the same moment.”

Head and shoulders poking out of the window, Haru peered around at their strange, new surroundings, eyes widening - or, rather, his one unblackened eye - at the shooting display. He had seen many strange things in his relatively short time, but this was by far the strangest. And yet, there was a certain beauty to it all; it made him think of his gods and their homes in heavenly, celestial realms.

“It’s beautiful …! Will the compass guide us through this? Is this what you passed through before landing in Rokugan?” Though he spoke to Hayes, his eyes remained on the strange silvery spectacle of sky and sea.

“Marco gave us directions. We tack here until we reach the Jaws of Neptune, wherever that is,” Hayes remarked, watching as the ripples from the bullet slowly faded from the sky, leaving it silver and still and impossible to measure. “Aye. And It’s no less disconcerting seeing it a second time …”

The name ‘Jaws of Neptune’ jogged something in Haru’s memory, something the Fate Witch had said in their meeting. There had been a warning, something to do with broken teeth … He couldn’t recall it percisely presently, though given all that had happened it was a small wonder he could recall it at all. No doubt a full night’s sleep would clear the remaining cobwebs from his Dance-addled mind and leave him thinking, and remembering, more clearly.

Owen left the window open and returned to the chair he had been sitting in, perching on seat’s edge. “Haru,” he began after some silent moments, “I think that I’ve been approaching your stay on the Ivory Maiden in the wrong way. You walked through lands populated with demons to help us get home, and I’ve no right to ask you to give anything more if you don’t wish it to be so.” He glanced up to Haru with a questioning lift to his brows. “I had the notion … Would you like to learn some of this?” He swept a hand around the air, gesturing to the beloved ship. “I’ll warn you, it won’t be easy work, and you’d have to listen to Mr. Beckett’s orders …”

Hayes’ words tore Haru’s attention away from the window, at long last, and he turned to face the captain, curiosity on his battered face. The offer wasn’t an unattractive one; whiling away the hours in a room was only desirable when the room was connected to a home and full of entertaining distractions. The fires of revolution had taken away home and possessions from him and while his cabin was comfortable, he did not look forward to spending an entire voyage within its sparse walls. Then again, he did not want to be underfoot and in the way, impeding the daily work required for smooth sailing …

A hand raised to briefly touch the scars at one shoulder, a lingering memento from his journey through the Shadowlands. A moment’s consideration was all he needed before he nodded in agreement. “I can’t hide away forever or be secreted away below decks at the first sign of danger, Owen,” he began, gently. “I would be honored to learn how your ship is run. Beckett-san, despite his youth, is someone I hold in high esteem; I would gladly take orders and instruction from him.”

There was a twofold reason to accept the proposition; being amongst the men might go a long way to dispel the view they held of the Rokugani as an other. If he were there, on the deck, learning the skills that kept the ship afloat, showed that he cared just as much as they did about the vessel’s well-being, they might accept him as one of their own. And that, more than anything else, would put an end to treacherous plots borne of base superstition.

“Very well, then, Mr. Haru.” Owen smiled in a lopsided way, his spirits lifting considerably with their conversation. It was heartening to see Haru recovering and acting much as his old self; the road to full recovery would be a long one, but these first steps were encouraging. He was glad, too, that his thoughts had been to readily accepted. In his mind, having Haru as part of the crew would give *him* peace of mind as it would put his lover under the direct supervision of his most trusted lieutenant. Beckett would work him like all the others, but he would also keep him safe.

“You’ll be the first Rokugani sailor in Her Majesty’s Navy. I’m certain that Mr. Beckett will be quite enthused to have you in his merciless thrall,” he drawled, standing to step to a large trunk braced against a sidewall. “Let’s acquaint you with what will be your new uniform, then …”

“You make Beckett-san sound like a cruel, ruthless tyrant,” Haru said with a small smile. “I refuse to believe it! He’s never been anything but kind and respectful to me.”

“Mr. Beckett *is* a ruthless tyrant, I’ll have you know. He acts as my red right hand, after all,” Owen countered dryly, pulling out a standard set of sailor’s clothes. This consisted of a loose-necked shirt, striped rough-knit canvas pants, and a wide brown belt with a scarred buckle. These were laid out on the bed along with a small-ish pouch to be used as a purse.

“There’s one other thing I would ask,” Haru continued, refusing to believe a word coming from Owen’s wryly turned lips, “The man, Lannigan-san, he saved my life. I would like to properly thank him for that. Seeing that I have nothing to give him, I would like to invite him for dinner, or tea or …” He sighed, one hand raking through still-mussed snow-white tresses. “I do not know the proper protocol for this, Owen, but I owe him something, some show of courtesy and respect …”

Owen considered this as he set the sailor’s clothes on the bed. “I couldn’t invite Lannigan to our table without murmurings among the men, but I have an idea that will work all the better, I think. I’m sure Lord Berek could, and would, under the guise of his interest in conversing with you.”

“If Berek-sama could arrange the thing, I would be most grateful. If it would not be pushing the point, perhaps the doctor should be invited as well? I owe him a debt of gratitude as well …”

“I’ll make it a point to wake Lord Berek from his … slumber,” Hayes said with a slight roll of the eye. “As for Doctor MacMorgan …” He paused, closing the shutters of the window to once again afford them some semblance of privacy. “He and the Noble Lord don’t quite see eye to eye on any point. The last dinner that they took together, MacMorgan ended up with wine soaking his shirt, and Berek had to dodge a thrown carving fork. I have declined to mix their company ever since.”

Haru frowned slightly, annoyed that his plans for an all-encompassing show of thanks had been thwarted. “I’ll speak to the doctor personally, then. No doubt I’ll be afforded the chance in coming days. I hope Berek-sama and Lannigan-san are able to … comport themselves in a better fashion.” Thrown wine and utensils were incredibly unseemly and he struggled to make sense of how a dinner had gone so wrong; even the uncouth Crab and strange Unicorn clans knew better than to act so savagely.

“Jeremiah Berek has a strange viewpoint on what he terms ‘the common man,’” Owen explained, resettling in his chair. “Honestly, between you and I, it’s a tad insulting. He says that noblemen are all the evil and good that man can do, while the common man is a terrier; some are bold, while others are spineless and worth nothing.” He shook his head. “I tend to disagree and so does the good doctor. In any event, I doubt he and Thomas will find much to quarrel about. Thomas is a good man; he knows his place.”

“His point of view is remarkably more … generous than the one I grew up with. At least he allows that non-nobles are capable of boldness, heroism; in Rokugan, those who are not samurai are classified in two castes: heimin, half-people, and hinin, non-people, which says … Well, it says quite a bit, doesn’t it? It’s very easy to look down and imagine yourself bigger and better than others when you claim the top of the social mountain …”

Owen considered this, head tilted thoughtfully to one side. He seemed to see Haru through new eyes, though the subtle shift in his expression was difficult to place. “It must be difficult, such a change in cultures, ideas, even the very way we take our tea …” His tone was full of wonder; his focus had so narrowly been on securing Haru’s passage and delivering 600 some odd souls back to Avalon that he had managed to miss something so obvious. Not that he was oblivious to the differences in their cultures, or that the transition wouldn’t be easy, but that was always somewhere in his mind as a later problem; something to address and tackle once they were safely back in Avalon.

“It is my hope to strike a balance, replacing old things with new while holding onto what is most important. I cannot, and will not, give up everything all at once, but there are things worth letting go of. Old prejudices, for one … Blood-stained kimono for another,” he added ruefully, finally examining what were to be his new garments.

“Well?” Owen asked, glancing from cot to Haru. “What do you think?”

Haru wondered who they might have belonged to before they passed into his possession; surely spare sets of clothing weren’t routinely kept, lying around. Fingers ran over one shirt sleeve, feeling the courseness of the fabric. “I think … I think I did not realize I would be leaving so much of myself behind so soon.” Voice and expression had grown pensive with these words.

Owen held out a hand towards Haru, which was taken and gently squeezed. “The sea takes from us all, piece by piece,” he said softly. “But I’ll remember the pieces that may drift away, if you’ll do the same for me.”