#the one chance he ever got to escape this cycle of brutality came with an expiration date built in by consequence of his past atrocities

[aphel1on]

not sure how to phrase this but something i have been ruminating on recently is that xue yang is strangely fragile. obviously he is also incredibly resilient. he survived, and continues to survive, impossible things. he has a million barriers between himself and the world, but none of this actually matters when it comes to what he feels. everything is personal to him. everything pierces straight through all that armor and goes right to his battered heart, the heart that no one else believes he has. that even he is not fully cognizant of. the world strikes and strikes and strikes and so he strikes and strikes and strikes back, even (especially) when the wound is something other people would not think worthy of retribution.

xue yang would never realize this- would be outraged at the concept of it- but the way everything, everything is something to rally a defense against is in itself a form of fragility. he does not know how to let go of things, or let them pass him by. passivity is death. so he is ruthlessly cruel and violent. he projects himself as a lunatic untouchable by anything you might possibly do to him, and on some level he even believes this. but in actuality he is one raw emotional wound. he never learned to separate himself from his emotions, much less process them. the volatility is not so much insanity as it is the constant lashing out of an animal in a trap, and the trap is the world, and the trap is himself, and he is never going to get out. and like so much else, this pain is just part of the background radiation of his life. it hardly registers. to be able to register the hurt, you would have to be able to register a time in which you were not hurt.

i feel like it is a fragility that could blossom into such tenderness, given exactly the right set of circumstances. how at the very first touch of softness in his life he fell into a domesticity from which he never recovered. how much was there, still, to be salvaged from the cruelty. on some level i am always thinking about the little apple bunnies. about the meal for daozhang and the straw in a-qing's bed.

it was too little, too late. it shattered like glass when the world intruded back in. but the tenderness was there. no one, least of all xue yang, knows what might have happened had it been unearthed in him any sooner.

[kingsonne-zedecks]

Beware of Riverseed

Wei Shi Lindon had wanted to defy Fate, reach for the heights of the Sacred Arts and escape the weakness of his past. Classic Xianxia hopes and dreams. Though honestly? Looking at his memories, it really felt like he actually had this whole main character thing going on—a visit from the Heavens and a fantastic quest to save his homeland and everything. Too bad miss 90’s anime space-age magical girl had been completely right about how likely he was to die on this path. 

I came-to in the middle of dear old Wei getting his ass beat by some stereotypical pissed off and jumped up initiate. Let me tell you, that was horse shit. Wei was kind of an idiot for not going to ground the moment he’d pissed the dude off. Like, how many times did he have to get warned before he was going to take things seriously?

Luckily another disciple was kind enough to haul my twitching body back to the Medicine Hall, talking the whole time about how he had planned to take Wei to get his fancy spiritual elixirs himself to make sure something like this didn’t happen as if he wasn’t actually just miffed that someone else had gotten to my stuff first.

It only really hit me that I was in magical china land while I was moaning in pain in the infirmary. Apparently one of the kicks had hit poor Wei hard enough, and in just the right way to stop his heart and kill him. And there, curled up on the ground, I got shoved in. At least I got his memories, and the knowledge on how to actually cycle the medicine that I’d been given.

That and enough context to hide to stupid wooden badge around my neck. I mean—come on—the dude was literally walking around with a neon sign saying “please beat me up, I can’t defend myself and no one will care if you hurt me.” I was ditching the thing the moment I got a chance.

Maybe that wasn’t a very kind way to think about the guy whose body I was living in—but I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable given that not only had I landed in the middle of a sect and a valley whose definition of honor was so out of whack that it would make Merriam Webster weep, but I’d landed in the body of literally the weakest guy around in a world with no goddamned mortals!

Everyone cultivated here! Everyone! My first instinct was to run as far away from any Xianxia tropes as physically possible, but even the trees and the insects in this Valley could end me with half a thought. Let alone all the bridges that grouchy had been burning in his rush to get out of this place. Working in the archives was a perfectly fine fate! I’d have ran home and jumped on that in a heartbeat if Wei hadn’t pissed off the Patriarch and his grandson in his hurry to get here. 

I wouldn’t have even had to have stuck around long enough to get crushed by the giant monster. A couple of decades to hit Iron and then out before the mountains fell down. I don’t know why the idea hadn’t occurred to Wei, he could have taken his wife and kids and run and called it good. That’s not true, I knew why he hadn't thought of it—protagonist syndrome—and look where it had gotten him. Look where it had gotten me. 

My insides twisted and I couldn’t tell if it was the situation I was stuck in or the absolutely brutal healing pill. If there was one thing Wei’s residual instincts and I agreed on at this point, it was that we weren’t sticking around long enough to cycle this thing the slow way. I was getting out of here and throwing myself at sword girls feet. Hopefully she’d keep me alive long enough to find some bolthole on the outside. Somewhere that no one had ever heard of Wei Shi Lindon the Unsouled.

[bangtan-madi]

All Of Our Lifetimes — Intro: Crimson Fountain

Pairing — Taehyung x Reader

Tags — boyfriend!Taehyung, husband!Taehyung reincarnation au, lovers to strangers and to lovers again, established relationship, implied soulmate au

Genre — fluff, angst, crime (ish)

Word Count — 2.8k

Summary — Does love ever truly end, or does it simply take another form in a new life? The cycle is like clockwork: your lives end and you’re reborn again. You’ve lived it over and over. Each cycle, one of you loses your memories and is tragically unaware until the other finds and awakens their lover. After all these eons, all these lifetimes, is it possible to find each other again—even when neither of you awakens with your memories? 

Part — 0 / 10

Warnings — murder, death, lots of blood, the intro is pretty much the darkest of the entire series so if you make it through this you should be good

A/N — So I know my WIP List says this series wouldn’t start going up until late April, but I had a spark of inspo way earlier than I thought. I wrote it and loved it, so the intro is going up before the outline is even done! Just to get you a ‘lil taste of what’s to come ;)

— Next

With a grip of steel, Taehyung drags you through the darkened spaces of the museum. Footsteps echo through the adjacent hallways, and your heart pounds irregularly to the beat. Like war-drums announcing the start of a battle, your ears pulse with hot and heavy blood. You should be petrified, you should be a terrified mess, but all your mind focuses on is the carnage lying at the feet of Winged Victory.

She’s dead, you think to yourself. Your breath burns inside your lungs, like thick steam, as you both tear past the dimly lit corridors on your desperate way towards the exit. You talked to the woman ten minutes ago, and now she’s dead.

Taehyung glances over his shoulder, dark brown eyes showing surprising calm and control. The way he pulls you close to him, the way he shelters you as you run for your lives, it’s not out of fear. Or, at least, not entirely. His movements are calculated, precise, and methodical. Even in the chaos, he is in control.

And then it hits you: this isn’t the first time either of you has run for your lives. Pieces of your lifetimes come back, trickling in like raindrops down a window. It's taken you this long to find each other, to win each other over, to get back what time has taken. The last thing you want to do is lose it all over again. 

Taehyung pulls you with him, taking cover behind a wide column. Before you have a chance to ask why you've stopped, Taehyung puts a slender finger to his lips. His mocha eyes shift to you in a warning manner. 

Don’t make a sound. Not one. 

You can see the words both in his gesture and glance. Shutting your mouth, you nod once. 

Your hand tightens around his as another set of footsteps thunders down the hall, breaking into the open space. Though moving quickly, they move with purpose and passion. The man—no, the murderer—you saw standing over the artist's body still searches for you both. 

“I know you’re here, Kim!” A gruff voice with a foreign lilt fills the void. “You aren’t doing yourself any favors by running. I think you know that.”

Your eyes shut tightly as your breath catches in your throat. The murderer’s voice reverberates across the marble floors and granite pillars, hitting your ears like a shockwave. The terrifying truth is that this man’s identity is a mystery, as is why he killed the artist or why he wants to hurt Taehyung. 

You remember the woman's name clearly: Emilia Popescu. She was a friend of Taehyung's. Whatever the reason for her brutal demise, you can’t fathom it. A day that started with the love of your life in a city you now call home has ended with the grisly image of a corpse, one that will forever be burned in your mind.

He killed Emilia. And now he’s coming for you.

Taehyung brings your attention back to him as he peers around the room. His eyes move from one exit to the next. From where you're crouched behind the pillar, there aren’t many options for escape. The rear is the best option, the museum's Van Gogh Hall from where you came; however, running in that direction would put your backs to the murderer, giving him a perfect target. The only other way out is a large doorway to the right. It leads to a long hallway, which connects to the building's emergency exit. Again, going that way might as well be suicide; you’d have to run right in front of the mad-man.

The room is quiet now. Only the hefty footsteps beyond your hiding spot remain. Not even the museum's usual occupants remain; in the wee hours of a Sunday evening, the patrons and employees have long since left. It’s the day before the Vernal Equinox, 1995. The only people supposed to be inside at this hour were Emilia, Taehyung, and you.

Taehyung taps a finger on the back of your hand. When you turn his way, he gestures with a jerk of his chin to the wall behind you. At first, you don’t see what he wants to show you. It’s only when you look closer that you see it. Along the walls are portraits, but it’s not the pictures that your lover is interested in: it’s the glassy surface covering them. If you focus, the glass acts as a reflection, and from here, you can easily make out the man stalking you. 

The murderer moves from one side of the room to the other, avoiding the ferns that line the spherical fountain’s edge. Though his movements are cautious, you doubt that they’re that way because of you and Taehyung. This murderer isn’t someone that fears anything. He did not hesitate to kill Emilia, and he won’t hesitate in doing the same to you. You doubt he’s even a man at all, only a beast playing with his prey, feeding on your terror.

He is a wolf enjoying the hunt.

Your brunet companion leans down to your level, his hand gripping your shoulder. His resolute expression gives you a smidge of hope that you might just survive this night. However, that calm lasts only a second. You whimper softly at the sound of a collision behind. The murderer crashes something into a nearby column. While you're grateful that it wasn’t yours, every noise he makes, even his footsteps, brings you closer to panic. Every sound is like a punch in the stomach. He wants you to know how close he is to killing you both. 

The column takes another hit, and the ceiling overhead trembles. While most of the museum is made of concrete and brick, with some expensive granite and marble thrown in, this particular ceiling is entirely made of glass. It reveals a beautiful night sky, one that might make you stop in wonder on another night. The panels shimmer, coming all to close to shattering. Whatever this man is doing to the column, he’s breaking the structural integrity of the room. Anything more than another hit or two could send you all into a thunderstorm of glass shards.

“I will bury us all, Kim!” the murderer shouts. Another hit, and then another. The glass starts to scream and crack. “You know I will!”

Taehyung's grip on your shoulder tightens, and his lips close in on your ear. His next words, though a whisper, are sure and strong. “When I tell you to run, go for the exit behind us. Don’t look back, sweetheart. Don’t stop until you get to the street. Wait for me there, but stay out of sight.”

“What are you going to do?”

Taehyung's hand moves towards his hip, gripping something metallic and sleek under his coat. His wedding bang glints in the dim light, and you realize he's armed.

“I’m going to make sure he doesn’t follow us,” he replies with a growl. “I’ll lead him away. Do as I say, and we’ll be just fine. I’ll find you.”

Before he leaves, you grip his hand and make him turn back towards you. “And what if you don’t?”

His features stiffen, almost as if his face is made of stone. He pulls the weapon from his pants and holds it skillfully. “Then go to the police. Tell them what happened.” To break the intensity, he flashes a quick, boxy smile. “But don’t worry. I’ll be there."

Your grip on his wrist tightens, and your voice quivers. "I just got you back, Tae. I just found you, after all these years. I—Please, don't make me lose you again."

Taehyung's brown eyes soften, and he leans down to rest his forehead against yours. His dark curls hang in front of his eyes, but you know they're locked only on you. The connection you feel with him goes far beyond words or looks or touches. 

What you have together crosses lifetimes.

"We prepared for this," he murmurs, hot breath dusting your teary cheeks. "We knew this was coming. I don't regret a single moment I spent with you, [Y/n], and I'm sorry I fought you all these months. I should have believed you when you told me what we were. You found me. You saved me. Now let me save you."

"I don't want you to save me," you cry over the sound of the glass shaking above your heads. "I just want you safe—!"

Taehyung shuts you up with a fiery kiss, forcing his mouth against yours with a near brutal intensity. Your hands move through his hair, the force of his lips forcing your back against the column. A tug on your lower lip, a slide of a tongue across the same, a whisper of, "I love you more every lifetime."

It ends far faster than it should, nearly as swiftly as it begins. Taehyung pulls away and shoves you in the direction of the escape while jumping out to shield you. He turns to look over his shoulder, ensuring that your shaky legs are in fact moving.

"Go!”

Before you can protest the terrible idea again, Taehyung turns back towards the murderer and fires multiple rounds. In the reflection of the portraits, you see his attention shift immediately to your husband. Taehyung moves speedily, eyes locked on his target. He continues to fire, forcing the mad-man to take shelter behind the fountain. As he ducks for cover, Taehyung changes out the used cartridge for a full one.

The murderer fires again, and Taehyung dodges the blasts with relative ease. As he rolls out of the line of fire, he lets another set of shots rain towards him. One of them grazes the mad-man's shoulder, but he doesn’t make a sound or expression of pain. He twists out of the way, throwing himself onto the ground to dodge. When he stands again, bullets erupt from his gun. 

Taehyung attempts to run, but as he ducks out of the way, one of the bullets punctures his left shoulder. With an agonizing shriek, his right hand cradles his wound.

With a sudden burst of bravery, you start to move from your hiding place, wanting desperately to help him. When your husband sees you, he thrusts his hand up to stop you. 

“Go!” he mouths. The murderer fires several rounds up into the sky. The glass ceiling shatters, and thousands of tiny shards start to rain. 

When you don’t move immediately, Taehyung screams the word as forcefully as he can: “Run!”

The next ten seconds are a blur, stretched out into what feels like several minutes. Taehyung turns his weapon back to the murderer, but he dodges the first two rounds your husband lets off. His swift feet take him out of the line of fire. As he moves, he charges Taehyung, swinging a handful of glass shards in the Korean's direction. They make an impact, creating several gashes across the exposed skin on Taehyung's face, arms, and hands. 

Flinching in pain, Taehyung fires another pair of rounds as he stumbles back into the fountain. He lands on his hands and knees, crimson blood trickling into the water. 

In the split second between the two shots, the murderer takes aim. One of the bullets lands on the murderer's shoulder, while the other cuts straight into his neck. Blood pours profusely from his wounds, causing him to falter and his armed hand to lower.

You take that opportunity and make a mad dash for your lover. He's injured and vulnerable. If you were to do as he said, to leave him alone to fight off this intruder, he will die. There's not a doubt in your mind. 

As you grab Taehyung's arm and begin pulling him to his feet, your lover's terrified eyes flicker up to yours.

You see the brown irises darken before you hear the shot. Taehyung's gun falls to the ground with a clank, hitting the edge of the fountain before scuttling away. His breath catches, and blood pours from the wound in his chest. 

He tumbles over. You break from your stunned stupor and lunge to catch him. Both of you collapse into the fountain, water soaking your clothing. You cradle him close, arms around his shoulders. He stares up at you, those same brown eyes both wide and terrified. His chest spasms erratically as breath and blood fight to fill his lungs.

Tears burn your eyes as you clutch him closer, pressing your hands over the wound in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. 

“No! No, hold on, Tae!” You start speaking to him in his native tongue, hoping that, somehow, this will be the magic spell that heals him.

Another shot rings through the halls, this one coming mere seconds after the last. The metal tears through your abdomen, causing you to fall on your side beside Taehyung. Your head crashes against the rim of the fountain.

"[Y—Y/n]!" Taehyung chokes, blood pouring from his torso and mouth.

The murderer hesitantly lifts himself off the floor, cradling his injuries with care. Crimson covers his entire body, and from his swaying movements, you can tell he's lost a lot of it. The mask he's worn the entire time is partially falling apart, revealing the heavyset eyes of a hunter. 

He's barely able to stumble forward and point his weapon at the two of you, intending to finish you off.

"Time to die, you unnatural things."

Though fuzzy and confused, you reach for the weapon Taehyung dropped in the scuffle. You aim and pull the trigger with ease, praying to god that at least one of your last three bullets hits a vital region.

One misses. One hits his ribcage. One tears through his hand, blasting the gun to pieces and tearing several of his fingers off. 

The murderer lets out an ear-piercing scream and falls back, trembling legs taking him towards the exit. Sirens blare in the distance. The police are closing in. The last thought you spare him is one of vengeance, of a hopeful capture, of justice served.

The gun falls from your fingers, returning to the water where you retrieved it. You fight against the urge to close your eyes, still dazed from the knock to the head. Turning to the side, you see Taehyung scooting over towards you. His uninjured arm is dragging his body the meter's distance between you.

Reaching out, your hand grasps his. You bring each other closer to the other as blood pours from your wounds and further infuses the water with a garnet hue. Taehyung's fingers are cold and shaky, just as yours are pale. All you can do is loop your fingers around his, making one small connection as the whole world falls apart around you.

Taehyung moves his hand to your head. With a small smile, he brushes your messy, damp hair from your eyes. They close on their own accord, and you lean into his hand. You feel the ghost of death sneaking up on you once again, and from the way Taehyung's breath is slowing and the amount of blood filling the water, you know it won't be long now. It seems like you'd just found each other again, after all these years of him not remembering. It was your curse to find him and make him remember, and now you're going to lose him all over again.

Whatever happens after this, you've found each other again. If that's the only good thing that survives today, you're okay with that.

You bring your forehead against his, the last breaths of this lifetime slipping into your lungs. Forcing your eyes to open once more, you offer a semblance of a smile to the childlike fear you see on your husband's face.

"Come—Come find me," you sputter, voice barely above a whisper. "It’s your turn. In the next one: meet me there."

Taehyung nods once, barely moving his head. The miracle that you prayed for, the one you begged for, never happens. Taehyung chokes on his own blood for another few seconds, and his hands clasp yours tightly. In that moment, there is no way to tell who is more petrified: him or you.

Taehyung opens his mouth slightly, as if trying to say something, but he can’t find the words. A heart-wrenching, soul-crushing moment passes. His chocolate eyes fog over. His chest stops heaving. His slender hand falls from yours.

If you had enough life left in you, you would have whimpered and cried and screamed. Instead, you allow your eyes to close on this life, your final breath escaping with those same words.

A request. An order. A promise.

"Find me." 

[thebiblesalesman]

A Knowing Grin: Relationships in What You Left Behind, the New Overwatch Short Story

Baptiste & Mauga

Nguyen & Sainclair

Overwatch & Talon

The Middle East Scenario

Baptiste & Mauga

Baptiste and Mauga moved in tandem, with the practiced ease of soldiers used to fighting together. It had been years, but it came back quickly, as natural as breathing.

“I missed you, you know,” Mauga called over the roar of gunfire. He was enjoying every moment of the battle, relishing the adrenaline. Baptiste could feel that same rush in his veins, too. “All those years you were on the run, and we could have been doing this instead. Don’t tell me you didn’t miss it, too.”

Had he? More than he was willing to admit. He’d spent so many years running, and this felt right—not being part of Talon, but having a place where he belonged, with a dependable team at his back. That was what he’d found when he joined the Caribbean Coalition, and later with Mauga and their squad. Taking care of people centered him, made him feel whole.

Baptiste and Mauga are two people who exist on the same wavelength, uniquely capable of reading how each other are feeling. Their friendship does not require niceties because it is fundamentally about sensitivity. Baptiste was seeking a sense of belonging, and Mauga is the life raft he happened to cling to. Mauga is isolated even among killers for various reasons, but quickly discovered he could refuge all of himself in Baptiste- both his friendly, charismatic exterior, and his colder but more genuine thoughts. Baptiste sees straight through him, and that turns out to be something he appreciates.

Baptiste, along with Sombra and Mercy, is an orphan of war. Throughout his life he has sought a place to take shelter and find meaning in dependable people around him. You can actually compare him to Ashe, who retains her blood relatives and appears blissfully unaffected by the Crisis, but who did not receive the satisfaction of a well-connected family and ultimately invented her own. But unlike Ashe, Baptiste did not have a wealth of opportunities. Overwatch—an organization he dreamed about as a child—never even came to his home country of Haiti. In that organization’s absence, the islands of the Caribbean formed their own Coalition, and he took root there.

He proved an elite medic and prime special ops material. But all things end, the Crisis included, and his service. Baptiste was faced with the threat of no longer belonging, and sought an organization that could make use of his skills. Talon was “a well-paying mercenary group that took on security missions that were sanctioned by official organizations or corporations”. Once inducted, he made fast friends with another recruit, Mauga. Specifically, Mauga “pulled Baptiste into his orbit”, fulfilling that fundamental need in Baptiste to have someone to serve and care for.

“Watch your back,” he shouted instead, taking down a mercenary who’d been about to shoot Mauga.

“That’s your job!” Mauga laughed. His gun tore a path through the guards swarming the top of the staircase, and they ducked for cover. He was in his element, wild and unleashed. He’d been like this on their missions, a hurricane of a man.

With you at my back, we can do anything, he’d told Baptiste once. You’re the best medic in Talon. You keep me alive, and I’ll protect you. No one stands a chance.

Baptiste and the others in their Talon unit—Doubleday, Mazzei, and Pacanowsky —operated as troopers, the same as many other ex-military agents from around the world. Mauga took the role of Heavy Assault, described as follows in the Venice Memorandum: “Believed to be the products of extensive genetic engineering, these elite troopers employ an extremely powerful exoskeleton and stimulants to increase their combat effectiveness.” While violence is a path Mauga chose, it is worth keeping in mind that his brutality is further fueled by engineering, or drugs, or both.

For a time, Baptiste was content with Talon, even as his missions grew increasingly questionable. Four years ago, two years after Talon’s newest leadership figure was jailed by Overwatch, Baptiste realized that his “security missions” were perpetuating the cycle of suffering, that he was creating more Baptistes by his own hand. His closeness with Mauga proved a selfish thing, one of the many comforts Talon offered in exchange for his soul. He fled from the Monte Cristi battlefield, but Mauga proved as attuned to him as ever, and was the first to find him in his escape.

“Cuerva told us that those missions were on the level,” Baptiste said weakly. He’d known the truth, even then. But he hadn’t wanted to believe it. And from the look on Mauga’s face, he knew that, too.

“Of course he did. And of course they weren’t. But who cares? We’re in too deep, Baptiste.” For a moment, all his bravado dropped away. It was just the two of them, no audience, standing beside the water. When he spoke, it was quiet. “There are no good people. Not you, not me. All we can do is have fun while we’ve got the chance.”

And Mauga challenged Baptiste’s narrative of his life. He highlighted two other missions, Makati and Singapore, that had been just as heinous. According to Mauga, Baptiste knew it was wrong the whole time. It was just that in Monte Cristi he encountered something personal—saw a ghost—and that his flight from Talon was just another self-indulgent act. Mauga ultimately let Baptiste go, but he also did not go with him. Baptiste, likewise, never thought to offer that possibility to Mauga.

Unlike Baptiste, who grew up dreaming about a world that could be and an Overwatch that never came to save him, Mauga has made his judgement of the world and the people in it. It makes sense for him to have no interest in deserting: the entire world is as awful as Talon in his eyes, but Talon is where he has the most fun wading through it. But he retains a weakness for Baptiste, his own personal mind-reader, and ultimately he becomes one of the ghosts that Baptiste leaves behind.

Flash-forward four years and Baptiste is consumed by the nightmare of his choice, which has left him without a home or a family. He travels from place to place, trying to outrun the invitations Talon constantly sends after him. It’s not as simple as fearing for his life. Talon prefers his talent, not his blood. His old captain, Cuerva, describes the potential capture of him in the most idyllic sense:

If all goes well, everything will be settled and we’ll be on our way home by tonight. Hopefully Baptiste will be among us, playing cards and drinking rum, instead of lying in a shallow island grave. [Cuerva Strike Team Log]

The threat for Baptiste is playing cards and drinking rum with his fellow soldiers is something he would prefer to running and hiding too. But given it was the behavior of his squadmates and Cuerva that led him to flee Monte Cristi, he has no trouble dispatching all of them when they come to call.

It’s Mauga who becomes the problem. Mauga, his perfect foil, comes hunting Baptiste in Port-de-Paix, stalking out Baptiste’s habitual safety net, inserting himself in Baptiste’s old home—offering himself and Talon as a replacement. Mauga does not do this at the whimsy of some higher-up, but for his own attachment to Baptiste. He comes offering the horror of constant killing, and the chance to belong again.

Even the mission Mauga shuttles Baptiste into is tailored to play on his desire to find purpose in serving others. Mauga’s manipulations are expert, a send-up to the fact that he only plays the role of a brute, and that in truth he is sly and dangerous—unfortunately this too is a trait Baptiste likes about him. Theirs is a friendship compounded by years of fighting beside each other, and as Baptiste embarks on the Port-de-Paix mission, he finds himself coming back to Mauga’s style “as natural as breathing”.

The mission itself seems to be dancing to Mauga’s tune too. Baptiste finally meets a member of Overwatch, and he is man invested in causing suffering to his own city, a man who gave up his comrades for gold. Mauga uses this man to test Baptiste, to get him to break his final code: that he will not kill an unarmed combatant.

But for a second time, Baptiste and Mauga cannot find agreement. Thus when Mauga comes again after Baptiste’s escape, all he offers is death. Just as Baptiste was never able to completely relinquish the comforts of friendship to do what is right, Mauga refuses to relinquish the comfort of Talon for friendship. The two of them are divorced from the larger conflicts of Talon and Overwatch or omnics and humans except as collateral victims, and in Mauga’s case this has produced a demon who is smiling at you as he kills you.

Mauga stood in the full-length window, scanning the canopy of trees. All of the glass panes were blown out, shattered by the bullets from his massive guns. “Baptiste,” he called. “Buddy, I just want to talk.”

The story’s dramatic showpiece of Baptiste and Mauga’s connection sees Baptiste working Mauga out of a battle-lust using nothing but his voice. There are a couple important features to this scene: 1) that Baptiste only gets to Mauga to behave like a friendly human being for a moment, that Mauga smiles, then kills a helpless man anyway, 2) that from the very start Mauga understands Baptiste’s thoughts too.

Mauga spends a lot of his time smiling like he does to Baptiste in the scene, either acting a role, or confident he has worked out everything Baptiste will do. When Baptiste does not behave to his expectations, he goes straight to violence, as it’s the only other skill he has. Their relationship has all the hallmarks of being toxic, but What You Left Behind is seeking a degree of understanding, trying to explain why Baptiste would return to someone who is no good for him, and why he nearly recalls to a life of brutality despite being a “good person”. And in the end, almost the only distinction between Mauga the Berserker and Baptiste the Healer is that somewhere inside Baptiste a shred of hope remains.

Baptiste stood, and Mauga stood with him. “Whatever you’re worrying about, don’t. Get in, get it done, and get paid,” Mauga said, only loud enough for Baptiste to hear. He hefted his pair of machine guns, each as tall as a full-grown man, like they weighed nothing. The coolant tanks on his back gleamed in the scant light. He raised his voice, letting it carry across the dropship. “Now, who’s ready to have some fun?”

Nguyen & Sainclair

“You see what I’m up against, Baptiste? I got him a hat, but he won’t wear it.”

Nguyen looked at the panama hat on the bar top like it was the filthiest thing he’d ever seen. There was a pink sunburned stripe across his nose.

For your reference if you are unfamiliar with Nguyen’s name pronunciation:

At first Talon Senior Analyst Trung Le Nguyen exists to provide an example of a personality that is absolutely repellent to Baptiste, whereas Mauga is an inescapable attraction. Nguyen does not like Baptiste very much either, but there is one other lesson to take from this story: despite Baptiste’s inability to appreciate Nguyen as a person, they are able to work together without issue. Baptiste sees Nguyen as dependable, which makes sense given that Nguyen provided his unit with analysis through all their missions. Nguyen is also more flexible than he may seem, agreeing to meet with Baptiste at Mauga’s insistence despite his own reservations.

Mauga is not as vested in disliking Nguyen as Baptiste. In fact he constantly seems to be trying to rope Nguyen in as he does with most people, but it does not work with Nguyen because Nguyen is impervious to charisma. Despite Mauga and Nguyen not really getting each other like Mauga and Baptiste do, they are also content to work with each other. Mauga and Nguyen also happen to be the only named members of Baptiste’s old unit who are still alive.

We don’t enjoy as deep a look into Nguyen in this story as we do with Mauga, but let’s take a peek at some words and phrases used to describe him from Baptiste’s point of view:

clinical and cold

cold as frostbite

cool, expressionless eyes

[Nguyen’s] voice cut through the air like a knife. Mauga sighed. “Sweet as always.”

From anyone else, the gesture would be courteous. From Nguyen, it felt like a threat.

Nguyen is an easy read as a clinical workaholic, not inclined to emotion, making him a good foil to Mauga’s impulsive brutality. He notably wears the same adequately professional attire, impeccably laundered, day after day. His detachment from excess is strange in Talon, an organization where many of the day-to-day troops are getting their first taste of luxury and end up feasting on it.

But his professionalism cracks toward the end of the story, after he learns that their target Vernand Sainclair has betrayed and murdered Talon forces—the same kinds of grunts as Baptiste and Mauga—stationed at his mansion for his protection, and Vernand further tries to shoot Mauga after promising he is loyal (the bullets ricochet harmlessly off Mauga’s shield and break some windows).

Nguyen stalked forward, Mauga covering him with the shield. “You sent us into a trap. You murdered the forces we stationed here for your protection,” he snarled. Nguyen yanked the gun from Sainclair’s grasp and slammed it onto the desk. “I even set up an appointment. And yet you continue to inconvenience us. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t put a bullet through your head right now.”

Unlike Mauga, Nguyen appears to display his emotions raw and honestly...it’s just that his most common emotion is disappointment, followed closely by irritation. His anger here probably comes from a variety of sources, but one of the strangest aspects of the story is that Nguyen is on the ground at all. He is an analyst, and despite his John Wick-caliber pistol work, it is not clear why he felt the need to personally handle Sainclair. Nguyen ran analysis for Baptiste’s unit and also for Cuerva’s attempted recovery mission, but it’s not apparent that he has any particular affection for Baptiste...or anyone really. When Baptiste attempts escape, Nguyen’s professional response rules over all others:

There was a gunshot, and pain tore through his left arm. He almost lost his grip on Sainclair. He didn’t have to look to know who had fired that shot, and that he was lucky to have survived.

It is unlikely that Nguyen is any sort of hero candidate at this point, but he is a well-realized accessory to the story and its themes. Everything in What You Left Behind comes in matched pairs—Mauga and Baptiste, Baptiste’s childhood friend Dr. Roseline Mondésir and Dr. Angela Ziegler, Nguyen and Sainclair. But whereas most of these pairs harmonize with each other, exuding similar personalities or goals, Nguyen flatly rejects his counterpart at every turn. Vernand Sainclair is a man of excess, an analyst like Nguyen, but he abhors field work, betrays casually to feed his own self-interest, and like so many members of Talon, he originally worked for Overwatch.

Overwatch & Talon

“You were Overwatch?” Baptiste said, stunned. He’d never met one before. All the dreams he’d had as a teenager, the recruitment poster he hung above his bed at the orphanage, the secret hope that somehow, someday, Overwatch would come in and make everything better. And now one of his childhood heroes stood before him, a man willing to throttle his country to turn a profit and betray his organization to spare his own life.

“I was never in the field. I was just a handler, like you.” Sainclair nodded at Nguyen. “Overwatch always took me for granted. That organization was poisoned from the very start, and the longer I was there, the more I could see that it was slowly rotting from the inside out.”

When the Retribution mission came out, people were quick to note the similarities between the elite Talon units and existing Overwatch agents. The Heavy Assault has a rocket-powered charge just like Reinhardt, the Assassin blinks from perch to perch like Tracer, the Sniper appears in a puff of wraithform smoke. Most fingers ended up pointing at Moira, whose hero profile states:

After Overwatch was disbanded, O'Deorain was forced to turn to unconventional sources of funding. This time, she was invited to join the scientific collective that had founded the city of Oasis. Yet some have whispered that the shadowy Talon organization had already been supporting her for years, aiding her experiments in exchange for utilizing the results for their own purposes. [Hero Profile: Moira]

But What You Left Behind tells us is that the fall of Overwatch and rise of Talon was inevitable, and not the fault of one single betrayer or leak. Towards the end of its life, Overwatch ceased to look like the promise on its recruiting posters—or if you prefer Sainclair’s outlook, Overwatch was never the same as the idea of Overwatch. This also goes back to Mauga’s philosophy: there are no good people anywhere, so even if something like Overwatch was founded with good intentions, the people inside it would eventually fail its honorable mission.

Blackwatch enjoys an especially close connection with Talon. We learn in the story that Talon HQ is in Rome, which is also where the Blackwatch facility was located until it was destroyed by a Talon bombing eight years ago. The Blackwatch Commander and his attending geneticist both became Talon council members, the top sniper in Talon is the widow of a Blackwatch agent, and as we previously saw in Train Hopper many Blackwatch grunts happily became Talon grunts.

But Overwatch also created Talon operatives whenever it failed to reach out enough, such as in Haiti. And Nguyen’s reflective examination of the Recall dossiers at the end of the story also suggests that some existing agents or some who have yet to officially respond may actually be traitors lying in wait.

The mirror of Overwatch and Talon is not as simple as saying “Actually Overwatch is really the evil one!!!111″ Talon is a bunch of terrorists and profiteers. In fact this story tells us that Talon has the exact same issue Overwatch did: it has leaders like Doomfist invested in powerful ideals and visions of the world, but the rank-and-file like Baptiste and Mauga end up engaging in the same petty ravaging that armies have since the beginning of time. The Council is never sharing their entire hand with the grunts either, trusting that their lofty ideals will be accomplished on the backs of handsome mercenary payments.

At this point maybe it’s easy to throw up our hands and say “okay, everything is bad, so why care about any of it?” That’s the exact conclusion Mauga reached. But Baptiste thinks differently. After forcibly escaping Mauga’s clutches at the end of the story, he reviews the Overwatch dossiers and recognizes Dr. Angela Ziegler. They met in their travels because of one shared idea: that they wanted to help communities in need, without violence. Baptiste goes on to recognize how Mercy is very like the local clinic doctor in Port-de-Paix, and very unlike her glossy image on the Overwatch recruitment posters. It is because of his personal connection and personally witnessed strength that he reaches out to her, and not because of an ideal or a formless dream.

I think what the story is trying to get at here is that any organization, regardless of name or mission, is only as good as the people in it. There isn’t good and evil, Overwatch and Talon—there are individuals, and all of them have relationships just as complicated as the one between Baptiste and Mauga.

The Middle East Scenario

Baptiste tapped the glowing dot marking her last known position on the map. He’d thought that Overwatch was dead, but maybe it wasn’t. If Talon was coming for Dr. Ziegler, then she had a right to know. He’d need help tracking her down, but luckily, he knew just who to ask.

Baptiste opened an encrypted app on his phone, entered the password, and hit the call button on the bottom of the screen. It only rang twice before a familiar voice came through the speaker. “Hey, mijo. It’s been a while.”

“Hey, Sombra,” he said, looking at Dr. Ziegler’s profile. “Can you do me a favor?”

Time to gossip about god programs again, yippee!!!

A couple things about this section: 1) It’s going to be more speculative than the others by necessity, so feel free to ignore it!, 2) Ultimately I don’t know what the plot is here...just admitting that up front. I do make a guess though!

So recent Overwatch media has a pattern of introducing a tease at the end. The Blizzardworld map trailer showed Winston, Tracer, Bastion, and Torbjörn chilling in a living room at the end. Reunion ended with Echo. Storm Rising ended by introducing some omnic no one has ever seen before. And What You Left Behind ends by introducing Baptiste’s friendship with Sombra and indicating that he is shipping off to find Mercy with her help. Some of these teases contribute to what I am going to call the “Middle East Scenario”, where a lot of plot threads seem to be orbiting around the Middle East and Mercy, with the potential for converging.

First let’s look at what individuals are actively pursuing Mercy:

Ana & Soldier 76 - Soldier has a documented aversion to Mercy in Bastet, but in the follow-up animation Bastet Rises, Ana ends up hauling his useless carcass all the way to Mercy’s doorstep. Bastet tells us that Ana for some reason knows where Mercy is, and Soldier’s wounds in Bastet (from an attack by Reaper in Old Soldiers—still with me?) are not healing correctly, necessitating a slightly more advanced medical approach than Ana’s field stitching. I guess you could argue the canonicity of Bastet Rises, but it was commissioned by Blizzard and I’m pretty sure that Genjicat in the final shot is the only wink-wink.

Baptiste - Of course What You Left Behind ends with Baptiste seeking Mercy out to warn her of Talon’s interest in her and the other former agents. He’s checking for a physical location, so he probably intends to meet her in person. The only complication here is timing: Baptiste’s story takes place three days after the Recall, the events of Bastet take place around the same time as Reflections (where you can see Ana and Soldier moping together at Christmas), so whatever Baptiste is doing he’s either taking a really scenic route to Mercy or he actually meets her separately from Ana and Soldier meeting her. Reflections also shows us that Mercy is still chilling in a tent somewhere, so if anybody has met with her they have yet to disrupt her post-Overwatch routine of traveling from one humanitarian mission to another.

Reaper - In a general sense Reaper operates as Talon’s executioner and would be seeking Mercy for that reason. Baptiste seems to think Talon is a very present threat at the end of the story, though he may not know Reaper personally. There is a second reason Reaper may show up at Mercy’s house, which is his pursuit of Ana and Soldier. Soldier specifically worries about staying in one place too long because of Reaper in Bastet.

Sombra - Likely to be in touch with the good doctor, at least virtually, due to Baptiste calling in a favor. Baptiste and Sombra met while they were both working at Talon, per the Developer Q&A.

Next we should consider what other forces are operating regionally or who otherwise might get pulled into Mercy’s orbit:

Pharah & Helix Security - From Bastet we know Ana has written a letter to Pharah, but Pharah has yet to respond. Soldier speculates that Ana will request Pharah to manage some artifacts at the Necropolis, and encourages her to contact Pharah again. If Pharah does seek out Ana, the trail will inevitably lead her to Mercy. Helix Security, the private military Pharah works for, is also active in the post-Recall timeline. The Anubis god program broke out of a Helix facility, and so did Doomfist, quite effortlessly. Despite this there is nothing currently indicating Helix is a Talon puppet. Talon has an interest in their properties but has been unable to access them freely. Reaper notes that Helix is unaware of the true value of what they are guarding. It’s hard to imagine Helix being unaware of the importance of keeping Doomfist imprisoned, which along with Sombra’s involvement suggests Talon’s interest is in a software asset—Anubis, or something like it.

Helix Security should have upgraded the Anubis facility after we took it over a few years back. And now the worst has happened—or it’s about to. The Anubis A.I.—one of the “god programs” Overwatch quarantined after the Omnic Crisis—broke its containment at 2300 hours.  

Anubis - Pharah and her team destroyed Anubis in Mission Statement. Ten years before that, Overwatch quarantined Anubis for the first time. Overwatch’s intervention led Egypt into a state of famine and ruin, which suggests very strongly that Anubis was originally some sort of post-Crisis A.I. infrastructure initiative. In fact the first panel of Old Soldiers shows some graffiti on a wall that reads “A.I. is our right”. It seems that whatever Overwatch did, they not only goofed it up hard, but that their intervention was not necessarily desired in the first place. A further incident occurs in Cairo three years after Overwatch’s Anubis intervention, while the humanitarian crisis is in full swing, but no details are given—it’s a background headline in the Uprising comic. By the time Mission Statement comes to pass, the Anubis A.I. was badly malfunctioning and its containment facility lacked the necessary security upgrades to handle it (remember Reaper’s comment about Helix not knowing what they are guarding...). We don’t know what Anubis was like when Overwatch originally intervened in its operation, but we do know that the humanitarian crisis sparked by that intervention was of special concern to both Mercy and Ana. Even with all this information, I feel like there is a catalyst missing. After all, Anubis is dead, and Talon has not been successful in getting whatever it is they want out of Helix Security’s protection. But Storm Rising may have offered the missing piece...

We learn that Doomfist is in collusion with whoever that mysterious omnic gentleman was. […] No, he’s not a part of Talon. […] Even though we’re in the past here, we’re learning about something that’s coming up, that’s unfolding… We know there’s going to be a minor detour because Doomfist has to spend a few years in jail because he’s going to get captured shortly after this. But then, the plan will unfold. [Jeff Kaplan]

Storm Rising Mystery Omnic - There are multiple reasons to believe this omnic is a member of Null Sector, but the remaining weirdness to his appearance is that he meets Doomfist in Egypt. Why would either Null Sector or Doomfist be in Egypt? The only clue we have is Jeff’s comment, that the two of them had a plan to execute six years ago, but it got put on hold after Doomfist was jailed. The possibility exists that this plan requires access to a powerful infrastructure A.I. like Anubis, and what we see in Old Soldiers is that Talon is trying to get access to property guarded by Helix Security... It would be interesting if Overwatch’s apparent mistake in Egypt came back to haunt them ten years later. There’s a lot of ghosts in this game.

Moira & Oasis - A lot of these orbiting issues are centralized in Egypt, but Mercy’s position on the map in Recall is closer to Iraq. We know she isn’t precisely in Oasis because Oasis is hardly the site of a humanitarian crisis, but it’s not unfathomable that she would know people working there. That includes the Minister of Genetics, Moira, who is also on the Talon council, and who also gets regular visits from Reaper to further treat his condition. If, say, Soldier 76 showed up on Mercy’s doorstep with a stubborn wound caused by Reaper, the temptation might be there to reach out to Moira to help treat him. One of the weirdest unresolved plot threads in Overwatch is also potentially connected to Oasis—Dr. Hamid Faisal, whose excavations at Petra and Ayutthaya make use of Oasis-style drones. Faisal works for an unknown benefactor, and also has work at Ilios, a site from which Talon has been attempting to steal artifacts. As revealed in Bastet, Ana also knows Faisal and has a favorable opinion of his work.  

Genji - Genji, you say? Well at the time of Reflections we know Genji is aware of Mercy’s location since he is writing her a physical letter that presumably is addressed and mailed and not just delivered by a dragon Fed-Ex. He and Zenyatta appear to be chilling in Nepal (geddit), but there is nothing saying Genji isn’t going to walk over for a visit sometime. Wouldn’t it be just fun if he happened to arrive at the same time as all this other stuff was going down? Zenyatta could come too and enter directly into the middle of this big vengeful Old Soldiers plot and save some lives! What? No? Okay, back to my corner then.

In speculative conclusion: another animated short ala Infiltration, introducing a new hero (MO?) while simultaneously advancing the plot? There are a lot of moving pieces here though, and a lot of characters to render in an 8-10 min runtime. Bear in mind that Mission Statement was originally supposed to be an animated short and was cancelled for similar reasons. So there might be some additional media interventions building up to some showpiece cinematic.

But know that I will always consume and digest to a paste more short stories and comics Blizz, you can count on me!

References

What You Left Behind [short story]

Cuerva Strike Team - Log Recovered [blog post]

Venice Memorandum Declassification [blog post]

Baptiste Developer Q&A [forums discussion]

Baptiste [hero profile]

Baptiste [origin story]

Mercy [hero profile]

Moira [hero profile]

Sombra [hero profile]

Storm Rising [voicelines/cinematics]

Storm Rising [Creator Residency stream] (Jeff Kaplan/OhNickel/Fareeha -  2019.4.16)

Bastet [short story]

Bastet Rises [animation] (by Dillongoo, commissioned by Blizzard Entertainment)

Train Hopper [comic]

Mission Statement [comic]

Old Soldiers [comic]

Reflections [comic]

Masquerade [comic]

Uprising [comic]

Retribution [comic]

Recall [cinematic]

[blueyesandleatherjacket]

The Fallen, 10/17

Volume: 1.

Number of parts: 10/17.

Pairings: Nine x Rose.

A/N: Tagging @thebookster on her demand.

“We've all fallen, but at the same time we're not broken. There is the hint that we are going to get up again.” - Amy Lee.

CHAPTER 10:

Maxence was running along a never-ending corridor. No, it wasn’t a corridor. It looked more like a tunnel dug in the raw stone of the earth. The ground was inequal. He was tripping with every step. He never stopped. Running was keeping him alive. How he had ended up here, he had no idea. He had to run, run for his life. If he fell, if he slowed down, what he was running from would catch him and it would be over for him. Death was waiting for him if he didn’t run. This tunnel was dark. He couldn’t see a thing. He couldn’t the end of it. For how much time had he be running? His heart was pounding to the rhythm of his steps; his lungs were on fire; his feet hurt and a stitch was ripping his side apart. Fear was giving him wings. The landing was brutal. His bare feet got caught in the root of a tree that was coming out of the ground. There was no way he could not fall this time. All of his weight was transferred to his shoulder when it hit the ground. There was a pop and a flash of pain. His body rolled on the harsh earth. His head bumped against something metallic. For a moment, he was so stunned that he couldn’t do anything for a couple minutes. His ears were ringing; his head was throbbing. He would have a large bump on his forehead and a bruise twice its size. His shoulder certainly was dislocated. Yet, he couldn’t stay here. Panic was anchored in his heart and was urging him to move. His hand clutched the metallic tube his head had bumped into. He made a guess of what it could be by feeling. A ladder. It was a ladder. He pushed himself up on his feet, climbed on the first rung. The ascent was long and difficult. His hand was barely responding and making it almost impossible to climb the ladder. It felt like forever and suddenly, his hand hit a plain and hard surface. He pushed it. What was a hatch moved. A faint light sneaked in the tiny opening. He completely pushed the heavy metal plate away and dragged himself out of the damaged asphalt. Breathless. The threat was still in his mind. He was aware he had to move. His body had reached its limits and it needed time to recover from the long run he had just done. He touched his head and looked at his fingers. They were covered with blood. He must have a cut on his head from hitting the metallic ladder. He would be in pain if he wasn’t so charged with adrenaline. An adrenaline that was fading away. His body was shutting down. It needed rest. It wasn’t the moment. He had to jerk out of this condition, to fight the darkness. Nothing was responding anymore. It was a battle he lost. A drop hit his forehead. He blinked. A couple of other drops hit his face. It was raining. Just a little. It was still night. He was still in that street. He pulled himself together, cried out and grabbed his shoulder with a hand. His fingers crisped on the skin. The pain was vivid, breath-taking. Beside that, his arm was completely listless, numb. Worrying. He had to move, to find someone. He had to find help. With all the difficulties of the world, he scrambled to his feet, reeled dangerously and he walked. The sun was rising behind the heavy layer of dark grey clouds. People were waking up. Many of them came across his path but no one gave him a minute of attention. He was just another tramp walking down the streets. He had no idea of where he was going. He was just walking aimlessly. On his third day of wandering, he collapsed in a gutter full of water. He was numb from the cold. It had kept raining in the last few days and London was drowning under the waters of both the sky and the Thames. The little boy was struggling against the strong hold of his father. Furious, the man had grabbed him hard by the flesh of his neck. So hard that his nails were like claws digging in his skin. He carried him through the house like this. The boy was crying and yelling but nothing could bring pity to this man. Not even the loud cries of the son he was frightening. The only thing he had asked for was a bath. When he was alone with his mummy, she was giving him a bath, and they were having fun with his toys. But being alone with his father was a whole different story. He had asked for a bath. He was gonna have a bath. However, this wasn’t one he was gonna enjoy. The water was barely warm when he was plunged into it. His father had grabbed him by his shirt and was now pressing on his head to keep it underwater. He eventually released it. The boy gasped, breathed deeply, taking as much oxygen as possible. His father was already plunging his head back underwater and no matter how hard he was struggling, there was no way he could escape this torture. He was growing tired and holding on was harder and harder. His lungs burnt and his limbs were heavy. And suddenly, the relief. Two warm and strong hands pulled him out of the water. His waterlogged clothes were dripping heavily on the ground and he was badly trembling. “Are you insane?” a woman’s voice screamed. “He’s not even two! He wanted his daddy to give him a bath. Not to drown him!” A door slammed. The woman tightly wrapped a towel around the little boy. She knelt down and finally he could see her face. His mummy, Joanne, had come to his rescue. The face was carved in his memory when he woke up coughing his lungs out. A complete stranger who was as soaked as he was had dragged him out of the gutter and resuscitated him before he drowned in the dirty water like many other poor souls. He didn’t take the time to look at that person. He just gathered his tall skinny body the best he could and ran. They could have saved him only to inflict him more pain. Maybe they were part of the threat purportedly following him. Plus, he knew where he had to go now. He had a safe place, a safe person to go to and each of his steps were accompanied by this thought, by this face he desperately needed to see. The house was there, standing fiercely in the pouring rain and striking wind. It hadn’t changed at all. Or maybe did it look duller than usual. It could be the weather giving him that perception of things. Or it could be his mental state. But he was so relieved and happy to have found his way home that it didn’t matter. He knocked once, twice. Perhaps did he frankly hit the door repeatedly with the palm of his hand. The result was the same. He got an answer. A woman with brown hair that was going on a greyish white – more than he recalled – opened the door. She looked straight at him, observed him from head to toes, from toes to head as if he was a random stranger in a distressed outfit, a random stranger she yet would have recognised anywhere despite the rags, skinniness, long hair and beard. “Mom,” he croaked. “I finally made it back home.” Exhaustion only allowed him this short interaction with the woman who brought him to life and saved it many times after that. He collapsed in his arms. Fear had left him. He was saved. He was protected. He was home.

x

Tegan Spitz entered the small kitchen of the family house and let himself fall on the chair facing his mother’s. The poor woman looked more tired and sad than ever. The last two years had been hard on her and she seemed to have considerably aged in this period. Not that it was a surprise. Her only blood-related son had gone missing without a trace two years ago and all her efforts to find him – police, private detectives, flyers, interviews, calls for witnesses – had all been vain. No one had seen her son – only a man looking just like him who was popping up here and there across the world. She had fallen into a cycle of depression and guilt to have been unable to protect him. And she had been clinging to the hope that Maxence would come back one day. Tegan was Maxence’s young brother, only by a couple months. Contrarily to him, Tegan had been adopted by Joanne when he was seven. All thanks to Maxence. The two of them had met in school. Tegan was the victim of a constant bullying. One day, Maxence had witnessed his bullies beating the shit out of him and ran straight to the fight. Alone against four kids, he stood no chance but that didn’t stop him. He was punished for that, by his teacher and by his mother. He always said that it was worth it. The two of them had become inseparable and for his seventh birthday, Maxence had asked Joanne a particular gift: he wanted her to adopt the orphan who had become his best friend, his brother. Joanne had made sure it really was what he wanted and on his seventh birthday Joanne started the process of adopting him. It took many months to pass all the tests and interviews and get all the papers but on the Christmas of the same year, Tegan Smith the orphan became Tegan Spitz the loving son and brother. And their home became a safe place for foster kids. “It’s really him?” Joanne knew that it was her son lying on the couch in the living-room but her judgement was clouded by the strong hope that he was back. Nevertheless, Tegan rubbed his tired face and acquiesced. There was no doubt. The man on the couch looked like a stranger but he was his brother. Maxence had come back home after over two years of absence. Tegan was the first person Joanne had called. Maxence had always been indecisive about what he wanted to do as a job but Tegan had the dream of working in the field medicine. He wanted to be a doctor. This thought had been haunting him all of his life and he had achieved his dream: he was a G.P. and he was really appreciated by his patients. Maxence had followed him on this path and had completed the first years of studies before banishing into thin air. He was going for the psychiatric field. He was more interested in the human psychology than in their physical troubles. He was brilliant at that and would have been an amazing therapist if he hadn’t gone missing. “How is he?” “Not great, I’m afraid,” Tegan sighed. “On the physical area, it’s not brilliant. Lost a lot of weight; has an incredible collection of bruises, cuts and scratches too. All recent. A dislocated shoulder that had started to heal. His feet are seriously infected. It’s a miracle he was even able to walk back home.” “He said nothing. When I bathed him. He didn’t cry or make a sound. He was in pain and he kept silent.” “Mom…” hesitated her son. “Wherever he was, someone had hurt him, badly. You probably saw the scars.” “Yes, I did.” Maxence had a small long healed scar behind each ear. Each temple wore the marks of recent burns. The rest of his body was marked by countless other tiny scars. Her boy must have gone through Hell. No wonder why he was so relieved to be back home where he knew he would find safety and protection. “I put his shoulder back in place and immobilised it. I cleaned and bandaged his feet. Can’t do much more. Keep him warm and in bed. I’ll come and change the bandages every day. Feed him, comfort him. Maybe he’ll speak when he’ll feel better.” “He hasn’t spoken to you either?” “He replies to my questions. Short answers. He strained to remember his own name, but perfectly knows our names and what we are to him. Can’t tell the year we’re in and seems to have no idea of where he was or what has happened to him. He’ll need a therapy. He only demands after you.” Requesting her presence was an euphemism. As soon as she was back by his side, he refused to let her go, even for a second. He was taking her hands and placing them on his face, leaning in her touch. He was craving her comforting and warm touch and the sound of her voice. She was being careful not to hurt him, left him only to prepare some soup to feed him and came back immediately. She used a camp bed to lie down beside him. None of them slept much that night. Joanne took care of him, Maxence was afraid that all of this could be just a dream. Afraid that the monsters hunting him down might still be around to get to him…

To be continued...

The Fallen © | 2019 | Tous droits réservés.

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[clownbeep]

This is gonna be kinda brutal. But I want to put it into writing

Big vent/whats been going on

Hah... I guess this is like my life story or some shit...

Trigger warning ahead.. Depression and a bit of gore/suicide talk so if you are sensitive to that please, for your own sake and mental state you might not want to continue.

For those who dont want to hear a pretty dark vent, I understand.

And those who are just scrolling by feel free to scroll past. I just personally want to get this out.

If you have dealt with emotional neglect/abuse and need to know it isnt in your head this might be the post.

By writing this it feels like hopefully someone else will read this and realise certain things are NOT healthy.

If you are questioning if you are being emotionally neglected/abused (im speaking in a parental sense but even romantically or sexually) im not someone to give you answers, but the fact you are questioning it raises some red flags. In a healthy relationship you dont wonder those things.

Sorry for the long prelude but heres what I wanted to say

.

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Ever since I was young, ive had bad ADHD, manic bipolar/depression, and sensory issues.

I was diagnosed around 13 I believe. My family (I didnt realise it then) always showed pity. Like I was some wild animal that couldnt be tamed and there was nothing they could do. Id do and say stupid attention seeking things just to try and get a shred of empathy.

My family didnt care.

When I was in the hospital for a suicide attempt regaurding pills and my liver had a chance of failing.. None of my family members cried over me. But a family friend. Someone not. Even. Related. Wept over me.

My family didnt care.

I cant say they never cared. They give me food water and luxuries like internet and a phone. For that I am grateful.

But in many other ways they have hurt me faar more than helped.

Once I got out of a short term stay in an inpatient mental facility I desperately needed contact with anyone who would care for me.

I have a younger sister, quite young probably around 7 at the time. She was a close friend of mine for that time. Id hang out with her so often to fill the gap in love it felt my family didnt give. One day I walked into the dining room and overheard my mother and father talking to my little sister. They told her to keep away because I wasnt "stable" because I was "dangerous" and could give her bad Ideas. And with one single action my only friend at the time and way to find happiness was taken away.

My family did not care.

When I stay in bed every day for months on end not knowing which day ill snap and end it all.... I get called lazy.

My family did not care

When I beg for medication to make me a functional human being they brush me off for years on end. Im losing my grip. I can barely remember things that have happened last week because I try so hard to forget everything its my automatic response to everything.

When I cant get to sleep because all of the memories come flooding back and im hit by wave after wave of horrific memories and the feeling if worthlessness... When I cant watch any videos or read posts about families because it brings on unwanted memories and emotions....

Is it me being dramatic then?

When you hear your family openly mocking and laughing about how stupid and dramatic and fake trans people are... How weird and unnatural and mentally insane these people are not knowing they are the very reason grsm and trans suicides are so high...

Am I a liar now? Am I insane?

When I tried to talk to them about my mental health issues. They took my only way of contact and made me feel like it was my own fault.

My family didnt care.

When I was nearly passed out shaking in a bathtub covered in wounds and blood all over... They showed pity, then lectured me for an hour for not telling them or for being impulsive and basically cleaned my wounds and sent me into my room.

My family didnt care.

Yes. I do agree, they cleaned my wounds, the physical side of showing care. However emotionally they were not there.

When my father drinks so heavilly every day he is home from work that he forgets half the things he tells you and can barely function.. They lecture my older sister for having a glass of wine (legal age)

They did not care.

My sister (23) tried for so many years to cling to what little attention she would get by getting good grades and going to college... She realised that it changed nothing about how my family felt toward her.... She snapped.

My family did not care.

She starves herself for a disease she does not have, she uses religion as an exuse to be one of the biggest christian extremists I personally know. Half the days she doesnt eat... Other days she burns book and gets rid of items for being demonic.

My lovely sister used to be kind and quite normal. However she couldnt find comfort in what little live her family gave. Starved for care she turned to religion to un unhealthy degree. Finding any way to keep her mind busy. Now I worry she will end up in the hospital for weighing so little.

My family did not care.

My oldest sister (27) Is married to a continuously cheating husband who she keeps letting back into her life. She was raised with a failing marrige and doesnt seem to see when she should call it quits.

Not to mention her husband has touched someone legally under the age of concent. Did she report him to the authorities? No.

All of these horrific things stemming from bad parenting. Unhealthy relationships and neglect.

Neglect emotionally can cause just as bad things as physical neglect. They are both horrifically dangerous in different ways.

These are the only big things I can remember... Basically age 15 and below are a complete blur to me and I cant remember much of it without thinking for a looong time. Even then I cant remember a lot of it... I feel like ive lost my whole damn childhood. And it hurts more than if they had just hit me or physically harmed me.

Im not underplaying physically harm. But in my personaly opinion I would rather my family have beaten me badly because at least then id have an easier way to prove to people how severe the abuse was. You can see bruises and confirm broken bones... But years of feeling completely useless and being shut off from most of the world other than the internet... It fucks you up in a way I dont think can be healed.

I dont know if I can ever love myself or... Remember things. Its terrifying to think Ill post this and a few weeks later probably not even rememner unless its brought up. Or meeting people and having conversations... And they are just... Gone.

Gone.

I suppose the biggest reason im writing this is well... In the future I dont want to forget in some ways.. I want like to be 100× as awesome knowing itll start as soon as im out of here..

If I dont have anything to compare it too then what is the point?

Ive layed out basically most of what I remember

A large amount of time I look around and nothing registers... Everything is familiar but I cant remember anything for a moment or two.. I feel like my memory is slipping so fast and im terrified.. I cant do anything to stop it and I cant make my mood be stable without the medication my family cant be bothered to get ...

I suppose this is a bit of a vent. I know its kind of everywhere and unorganized..

If im honest.. Tumblr is the only place where people have given me a home I wish I had..

I came out as trans here... Everyone was so damn supportive.. I didnt say anything but I cried hard and the kindness.. It was amazing.. It was such a jarring difference to how I feel when I say anything in real life.

Ive met friends here and ive had some much fun here. If youve stuck around this far thank you so much.. If you didnt I dont blame you.

I just wanted to share what has been flashing in my head these past few days.. It hurts a lot and ive even considered suicide recently..

Im trying hard. As hard as I can.. I have no escape though.

I cannot leave home. I cannot escape. Im not being dramatic.

I

CANT

LEAVE

And its terrifying because I know without medication or at least being somewhere AWAY from family.... I feel like im going to break soon.

I dont want to do anything stupid.. But some days I cant think straight and do things that harm myself and its not good. Its not okay. Im aware that I need help but I have no idea where to go/turn.. I have no ID or drivers liscence.. I have no transportation to and from a job to get money so I can leave... I live in the middle of nowhere.... I just..

I dont want to lose touch. I dont want to do anything bad.. I want to be functional.. I want to do more than eat and sleep my life away because I have nothing else to do..

Im so damn sick and tired of this all.. And at times I really do feel like there is only one way out.

Its always there and I just feel like one of these days im gonna be pushed over the edge and not be thinking clearly enough to stop it.

Im thinking semi clearly right now which is my im posting this.. Because im afraid and alone.

I have nowhere to go irl I have no friends Irl i just have tumblr and media and thats it. I dont expect anyone to be able to help I just wanted to write this so anyone knows what happens if I leave media..

If I tell my family my issues they will blow me off again for the 11th time or so (not exaggerated)

And if I do something to get sent to the hospital and get the help I need the cycle will continue with them being pissed and me getting sent home in a month or less anly for my family relationships to get worse..

Im spiraling fuether and further and I cant keep up the facade of being fine. I need help. And i have no way to get it. Ive just been suffering for years...

Sitting around and doing nothing but using your phone or drawing or whatever sound fun in theory... But if thats all youve been able to do for years with little to no real life social contact its gonna mess with your head... I dont want to be a shut in... I just

I dont know what to do.

Im sorry for rambling. I will most likely delete this later feeling embarrassed I posted this...

Im just tired..

[7r0773r]

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

I was leaving the South To fling myself into the unknown. . . . I was taking a part of the South  To transplant in alien soil, To see if it could grow differently, If it could drink of new and cool rains, Bend in strange winds, Respond to the warmth of other suns And, perhaps, to bloom.                            —RICHARD WRIGHT

***

Across the South, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929, according to the 1933 book The Tragedy of Lynching, for such alleged crimes as “stealing hogs, horse-stealing, poisoning mules, jumping labor contract, suspected of killing cattle, boastful remarks” or “trying to act like a white person.” Sixty-six were killed after being accused of “insult to a white person.” One was killed for stealing seventy-five cents. (p.39)

***

Throughout the South, the conventional rules of the road did not apply when a colored motorist was behind the wheel. If he reached an intersection first, he had to let the white motorist go ahead of him. He could not pass a white motorist on the road no matter how slowly the white motorist was going and had to take extreme caution to avoid an accident because he would likely be blamed no matter who was at fault. In everyday interactions, a black person could not contradict a white person or speak unless spoken to first. A black person could not be the first to offer to shake a white person’s hand. A handshake could occur only if a white person so gestured, leaving many people having never shaken hands with a person of the other race. The consequences for the slightest misstep were swift and brutal. Two whites beat a black tenant farmer in Louise, Mississippi, in 1948, wrote the historian James C. Cobb, because the man “asked for a receipt after paying his water bill.”

It was against the law for a colored person and a white person to play checkers together in Birmingham. White and colored gamblers had to place their bets at separate windows and sit in separate aisles at racetracks in Arkansas. At saloons in Atlanta, the bars were segregated; Whites drank on stools at one end of the bar and blacks on stools at the other end, until the city outlawed even that, resulting in white-only and colored-only saloons. There were white parking spaces and colored parking spaces in the town square in Calhoun City, Mississippi. In one North Carolina courthouse, there was a white Bible and a black Bible to swear to tell the truth on. (pp. 44-45)

***

[In 1861] Florida heartily joined a new country whose cornerstone, according to the Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, was “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” This new government, Stephens declared, “is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” (pp. 58-59)

***

But the masses did not pour out of the South until they had something to go to. They got their chance when the North began courting them, hard and in secret, in the face of southern hostility, during the labor crisis of World War I. Word had spread like wildfire that the North was finally “opening up.” (p. 161)

***

When the people kept leaving, the South resorted to coercion and interception worthy of the Soviet Union, which was forming at the same time across the Atlantic. Those trying to leave were  rendered fugitives by definition and could not be certain they would be able to make it out. In Brookhaven, Mississippi, authorities stopped a train with fifty colored migrants on it and sidetracked it for three days. In Albany, Georgia, the police tore up the tickets of colored passengers as they stood waiting to board, dashing their hopes of escape. A minister in South Carolina, having seen his parishioners off, was arrested at the station on the charge of helping colored people get out. In Savannah, Georgia, the police arrested every colored person at the station regardless of where he or she was going. In Summit, Mississippi, authorities simply closed the ticket office and did not let northbound trains stop for the colored people waiting to get on. (p. 163)

***

Fewer than one out of five sharecroppers ever saw a profit at the end of the year. Of the few who got anything, their pay came to between $30 and $150 in the 1930s for a year of hard toil in the field, according to a leading Yale anthropologist of the era, or between nine and forty-eight cents a day. The remaining eighty percent either broke even, meaning they got nothing, or stayed in debt, which meant they were as bound to the planter as a slave was to his master. (p. 167)

***

Yet the hardened and peculiar institution of Jim Crow made the Great Migration different from ordinary human migrations. In their desperation to escape what might be considered a man-made pestilence, southern blacks challenged some scholarly assumptions about human migration. One theory had it that, due to human pragmatism and inertia, migrating people tend to “go no further from their homes in search of work than is absolutely necessary,” [British historian E. G.] Ravenstein observed.

“The bulk of migrants prefers a short journey to a long one,” he wrote. “The more enterprising long-journey migrants are the exceptions and not the rule.” Southern blacks were the exception. They traveled deep into far-flung regions of their own country and in some cases clear across the continent. Thus the Great Migration had more in common with the vast movements of refugees from famine, war, and genocide in other parts of the world, where oppressed people, whether fleeing twenty-first-century Darfur or nineteenth-century Ireland, go great distances, journey across rivers, deserts, and oceans or as far as it takes to reach safety with the hope that life will be better wherever they land. (p. 179)

***

Against nearly every assumption about the Migration, the 1965 census study found that the migrants of the 1950s—particularly those who came from towns and cities, as had George Starling and Robert Foster—had more education than even the northern white population they joined. (p. 262)

***

Overall, however, what was becoming clear was that, north or south, wherever colored labor was introduced, a rivalrous sense of unease and insecurity washed over the working-class people who were already there, an unease that was economically not without merit but rose to near hysteria when race and xenophobia were added to preexisting fears. The reality was that Jim Crow filtered through the economy, north and south, and pressed down on poor and working-class people of all races. The southern caste system that held down the wages of colored people also undercut the earning power of the whites around them, who could not command higher pay as long as colored people were forced to accept subsistence wages. (p. 317)

***

[George Starling] and his co-worker barely noticed that everyone else at the bar happened to be white as they regaled each other with stories from riding the rails. When it was time to go, they paid their tab and put their glasses down.

The bartender had said very little to them the whole time they were there. Now the bartender calmly picked up their glasses, and instead of loading them into a tray to be washed, he took them and smashed them under the counter. The sound of glass breaking on concrete startled George and his co-worker, even though this wasn’t the first time this had happened to them, just not at this bar, and it attracted the attention of other patrons. 

“They do it right in front of us,” George said. “That’s the way they let us know they didn’t want us in there. As fast as you drink out of a glass and set it down, they break it.”

There were not colored or white signs in New York. That was the unnerving and tricky part of making your way through a place that looked free. You never knew when perfect strangers would remind you that, as far as they were concerned, you weren’t equal and might never be. (pp. 340-41)

***

“Even in the North, refugees were not always safe,” wrote Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy in the 1945 book Anyplace but Here. “One hard-working migrant was astonished when a detective from Atlanta approached him and informed him that he was wanted back home for ‘spitting on the sidewalk.’”(p. 367)

***

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the decline in property values and neighborhood prestige was a by-product of the fear and tension itself, sociologists found. The decline often began, they noted, in barely perceptible ways, before the first colored buyer moved in.

The instability of a white neighborhood under pressure from the very possibility of integration put the neighborhood into a kind of real estate purgatory. It set off a downward cycle of anticipation, in which worried whites no longer bought homes in white neighborhoods that might one day attract colored residents even if none lived there at the time. Rents and purchase prices were dropped “in a futile attempt to attract white residents,” as Hirsch put it. With prices falling and the neighborhood’s future uncertain, lenders refused to grant mortgages or made them more difficult to obtain. Panicked whites sold at low prices to salvage what equity they had left, giving the homeowners who remained little incentive to invest any further to keep up or improve their properties.

Thus many white neighborhoods began declining before colored residents even arrived, Hirsch noted. There emerged a perfect storm of nervous owners, falling prices, vacancies unfillable with white tenants or buyers, and a market of colored buyers who may not have been able to afford the neighborhood at first but now could with prices within their reach. The arrival of colored home buyers was often the final verdict on a neighborhood’s falling property value rather than the cause of it. (pp. 376-77)

***

[Martin Luther] King was running headlong into what the sociologist Gunnar Myrdal called the Northern Paradox. In the North, Myrdal wrote, “almost everybody is against discrimination in general, but, at the same time, almost everybody practices discrimination in his own personal affairs”—that is, by not allowing blacks into unions or clubhouses, certain jobs, and white neighborhoods, indeed, avoiding social interaction overall.

“It is the culmination of all these personal discriminations,” he continued, “which creates the color bar in the North, and, for the Negro, causes unusually severe unemployment, crowded housing conditions, crime and vice. About this social process, the ordinary white Northerner keeps sublimely ignorant and unconcerned.” (p. 387)

[girlforlorn]

taissa farmiga + cis female + she/her.┊ ❛ ━ hey, is it just me or do you hear “goodbye mr. a” by the hoosiers playing in the distance ? oh, that’s just melanie “molly” watson, a twenty-three year old assistant research scientist working with the sector of humanity. according to my sources, i heard she can be neutral good and is meticulous, but also desperate. that’s probably why they remind everyone of a thrift shop cardigan two sizes too big, cooking shoplifted hot dogs over a burning garbage can, & a light at the end of the tunnel bright enough to damage your eyes. anyway, make sure to keep an eye out, the doves are more powerful with them on their side ! ( nina, 21, est, she/her )

howdy everybody! my name’s nina and i’ve been thirsting to join this rp ever since lis reblogged one of the first pre-opening promos onto my dashboard! this is my very depressed and shy child molly, who is going to be quietly watching and taking notes as your mutant muses scream in the experimentation lab. 🤠

BIOGRAPHY !

Melanie Watson was born to a very poor and very dysfunctional family, in a rural town in Sapphire state, where supervillains knew there was plenty of land to set up a base secluded from Crystalline. The majority of the population’s tax dollars went not to the school systems, but to reparations on the destruction caused by the supervillains hiding out on the outskirts of the town, the local mutants with no control over their abilities, and the hot-shot superhero who made monthly rounds to the town to bust villain operations. 

While raising their daughters in a town with the lowest life expectancy in the state, the Watsons always did what they could to make sure Molly and her twin sister, Valerie, would have a way out. So they pushed their kids to work toward scholarships, and when Molly was revealed to be a particularly bright student, they cut critical corners to help pay her tuition to a private school one town over, in their only chance to give her an education that could compete with kids from more affluent neighborhoods in Sapphire.

Economic strain from paying for schooling caused the kind of stress that would send the twins’ parents to an early grave--- two deadly strokes within one year of each other--- but by the time they passed away, Molly had earned her scholarship to Staurolite College, and Valerie insisted that she didn’t let all of their parents’ sacrifices go to waste. They shipped off to Crystalline together, and saved money on Molly’s boarding by renting a cheap apartment above a rowdy pub in the Jade District.

Things went well for most of Molly’s schooling, with grief over the loss of their parents quelled by a change in scenery and a sense that they had a bright future ahead of them. Molly majored in biophysics with a minor in engineering, and worked a year-round part-time job shelving books at Crystalline Library, while picking up an additional jobs waitressing during the summers. When she started to feel more comfortable, she’d abandoned most of her anti-mutant politics in favor of keeping her head down and staying out of trouble.

--

Tragedy struck again shortly before Molly’s graduation, when a superhero’s pursuit of a villain escalated to a destructive brawl across rooftops in the Jade District, and the hero’s desperate outburst of power led to the complete decimation of Molly and Valerie’s apartment, with a hungover and housebound Valerie being fatally crushed in the rubble.

An uninsured Molly was left without a home, without a family, and without a purpose in life; powerless and hopeless. The end of the school year meant that she couldn’t even couch surf in her friends’ dorms for long, and after exhausting her savings and local resources in under a month, she was left on the streets in a near-catatonically traumatized state. 

--

After months passed with no response to his emails, a former professor of biophysics looked into whatever happened to the student of his who lost her apartment days before receiving her diploma, and he spread the harrowing results of his investigation to his colleagues. Word of Molly’s story eventually piqued the interest of politicians looking for anecdotes about the devastating downsides of letting mutants walk the streets of Crystalline, and it wasn’t long before Molly Watson became a person of major interest for the movement. 

With Autumn creeping in, cold nights and shivering skin shook Molly out of her depressed stupor, and the pressure to escape her situation started to weigh on her. So when she was tracked down by a scientist with the Sector of Humanity who had done extensive research into her history, she didn’t have enough endurance or dignity in her to turn down his proposition. In exchange for her to share her story with their journalists and make a few public appearances, he offered her his guest room, a guiding hand to get her education back on track, and an opportunity for her to work as an assistant research scientist in the Sector’s labs while she earned her Master’s degree at Staurolite.

While the gesture seemed nothing short of charitable and empathetic to a girl who fell through the cracks, more wisely cynical eyes would immediately realize that she was recruited to the doves for PR purposes. Her story was easily exploitable for anti-mutant hit pieces (a pretty, white, bookish, doe-eyed and angelic orphan who worked so hard to pull herself up by her bootstraps and pursue the American Dream™, only to have her future #RIPPED #AWAY by these ReCkLEsS mONsTErS!!!), and she already had a small grassroots following in the news cycles from other working-class non-mutant people who could relate to the plight of living at the mercy of superheroes, who made insurance unattainable and had no accountability behind their anonymity.

Though she is exceptionally bright, and a fast learner in STEM fields, the doves didn’t recruit a 22-year-old because she was the most qualified candidate for the position, but because the philanthropic act of “rescuing” fallen angel and giving her a cinderella story would be good for their image; it softened their reputation among skeptical humanists who thought their organization was too focused on tearing down the mutants and not concerned with uplifting the common people. She’s being used in marketing to bring in a younger generation of Doves, and they’re making sure her name and face is becoming more public than any allegedly brutal scientists on board, who may have some controversial scandals under their belts.

PERSONALITY !

Molly before she became an only child, a.k.a. Molly for her first four years in Crystalline, as a student at Staurolite and a part-time page at the Crystalline Public Library:

Molly was a sweet girl-next-door type, with a quaint small town charm that made her shy in a big city. A studious mom friend and perfectionist. She was used to being the voice of reason to keep her wild child of a sister from doing anything too dangerous, and that carried over into her friendships.

Because of her bashful nature, the strange and dry sense of humor that comes out when she gets comfortable ends to catch new friends off guard. She’s had a few people in her life that she’s been close enough to to playfully bicker with, and she holds her own in a way you wouldn’t expect. She has a taste for weird kitsch and earnestly terrible movies and pulp fiction, and always tried to make it to the Uptown Cinema’s weird midnight screenings of Ed Wood movies.

Always aspired to be a librarian, but never thought it was an ambitious enough career path when she expected she would have to make enough money to support her whole family and all of their massive debts. She’s always gravitated to working part-time jobs at libraries to make some extra cash, and used to shelve books at Crystaline Public Library for four years while she was an undergrad. She has a big affinity for genre-bro fiction; authors like Bradbury, Salinger, Faulker, Gaiman, Pratchett, Palahniuk, Alan Moore, and especially Vonnegut. Veered into more pretentious russian authors for the sake of conversational fluency when she hung around literature majors, but she’s always preferred her boyish fiction.

She never had a car, and always tried to save money on public transportation by riding her longboard to get from place to place whenever possible. More interested in the utility of skating than the #Thrasher culture. Came off as a bit of a spectacle when she was shredding across the city in a turtleneck dress and stockings.

Molly among the monsters, a.k.a. Molly as a Dove:

After she lost her home, an already timid Molly had completely retreated into herself, and the girl who could a least smile and laugh and go out to parties seemed to abandoned any range of emotion beyond numb absence and melancholic despair--- and that's the narrative the Doves try to push, to both the public and to Molly, erasing any history of wholesome hijinks or moments of genuine joy and solace she may have had while travelling in the same circle as plucky street urchin and jokester magician Jett Hawkins.

Since finding shelter and making her way back into academia, she’s at least made the appearance of coming back out of her shell. 

While her mental health is recovering from the toll that the streets’ harsh physical conditions were taking on her, she may not be healing properly. A mind left vulnerable and weathered is, of course, the easiest to mold and manipulate. And as her surface levels personality traits of calm smiles and composure come back, there’s something fundamentally different about her at her core.

Molly always had political leanings toward a preference for regulation of superheroes, and agreed with some canvasing her more radical sister did for government-enforced superpower blocking medication, but she never got too involved, for fear of getting on the bad side of gods walking among tiny mortals. 

With a lack of research into the fringe opposition to the Doves, she was too naive to truly understand what she was getting into in this organization, and it was easy for her to let her guard down when the scientists who saved her life were subtly priming her for the human rights atrocities she was about to witness in the labs.

Now, there is still a part of her core humanity and nuturing personality that may have survived her roughest days, and it still screams out in moral objection to what she's seen done to the mutants, but the survival instinct she developed knows that she's locked in with the Doves, and it knows that she doesn't exactly have anywhere else to go, and especially wouldn't be able to make it anywhere else if her betrayal of the anti-mutant scientific community gets her blacklisted from future job opportunities in Crystalline, or compromises her ability to finish her Master's degree.

She considers herself trapped in enabling inhumanity and doesn't have the emotional fortitude or stability to take a stand, still disturbed at heart, still waiting on a moment to exhale and truly mourn her sister. She holds it together on a surface level, and lets her shyness come off as icy silence, but anyone who can pay close enough attention might notice that she's the only scientist in the lab who flinches or has to subtly avert her eyes when one of the "test subjects" is being electrocuted. Fortunately for her, most of them seem to distracted by unimaginable agony to notice the wallflower in the back of the room.

WANTED CONNECTIONS!

THE SCIENTIST WHO TOOK HER IN TO HIS/HER/THEIR HOUSE!!!!!! I might send in an official wanted connection for this, but the gist is someone who's very tied to the anti-mutant cause and sees Molly either as a genuinely sympathetic victim of the mutants, or as a very useful prop to use to political pathos (possibly both!). This would be her closest contact in life, since they saved her from the darkest moment in her life, and she probably sees them as a surrogate family while her brain tries to cope with the realization that she has no biological kin left.

People who may have encountered her while she was bouncing between shelters or sleeping in playground tunnels. At the time, she was basically catatonic from the trauma, and probably easy prey for the thieves and the cretins lurking the streets. There’s definitely room for someone who picked up on that and either exploited it or tried to help her out. (The only condition is that it’s important that she wasn’t assisted by anyone who would actually help her get a permanent shelter, since it’s crucial to her story that she was a vagrant at the time that the Doves found her.)

People! Who! Knew! Valerie! Maybe Val’s former coworkers? Someone who traveled in the same anti-mutant activist circles as her? I haven’t decided what she did for a living yet, but I can tell you that she worked at least two jobs and was the more wild and outgoing of the twins, and definitely hung out in harder party scenes, so this could be any connection to Val, from a short-lived fling, to a best friend, to a coworker would work. I’m thinking Val might have worked at the dive bar below their apartment? 

And speaking of that dive bar, someone who used to frequent that pub in the run-down Jade district and might recognize Molly or Valerie from there would be cool, too! Maybe someone who got into a fight on the street in front of the place that Molly had to break up to get back inside, or even someone who got her to stop and smoke a cigarette outside the pub with them after a particularly stressful day.

CLASSMATES!!! CURRENT (Staurolite grad students) OR FORMER (undergrad Staurolute students)! Or just people in her age group who would hang around the same places the college students would chill at, like the bowling alley or The Neon Room. I think most characters went to Crystalline University while Molly went to Staurolite College, but maybe there’s an area between Staurolite and Crystal U where students from both campuses used to coalesce for housing and hanging out. People she used to tutor! People who used to drag her out of her shell and bring her to parties! People she used to stay in with to drink tea and study together! People who helped her rural ass assimilate to city life; and the flipside: people she would drag out of the city to go pumpkin picking every autumn!

She’s very inexperienced in the field of romance, so I can picture her having maybe one serious romantic relationship in her life, that she probably still thinks about a lot. So maybe someone who dated her a few years ago? Any gender ~

A N Y T H I N G there’s such a range of unique characters in this group, i feel like i can’t even begin to touch on all the possibilities in one WC section, so just shoot me a message and i’ll write up a list of ideas for your character to be connected to Molly, either through history together or a future plot!

[rareandbeautifulthing]

A Night for Truth

So I’ve never posted my fic here. I usually just post on Ao3 as lostintheverse. But I’ve decided to figure out how to do this so here we go. 

This is a WIP: a first-person, alternating POV retelling of Chapters 33, 36, an 39 of The Raven King. #trc #the raven cycle #pynch

Read on Ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/20306803/chapters/48141343

Chapter 33

RONAN

I go looking for Adam because he went hunting for aluminum foil a while ago and never came back, and I’m a little fascinated by this. Probably because I’m fascinated by everything Adam does. 

He’s sitting on my bed. Normally my room is off-limits, both here and at Monmouth Manufacturing, but it’s never been to Adam. We never talked about it. It was just a thing that we both knew. 

He’s staring at that silly car I dreamed up when I was a kid. The one that plays a tune. He’s so absorbed in whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t know I’m here. So I watch him. 

Watching Adam when he doesn’t know I’m watching has become one of the things that defines me. He has no idea.

Or I don’t know...maybe he does. Lately, every time I’m watching him, he’ll lift his eyes and meet mine. Or I’ll glance over at him in that way I’ve done since the first time he appeared in my life, and he’s already watching me. Either way, it makes my heart rate pick up, my breaths come short. His beauty haunts me. 

And not just his physical beauty, though that would be enough. His features are so delicate, his face chiseled. His hands are works of art. But no, it’s not his physical beauty that makes me feel like I’m falling into a well full of light. It’s what’s inside him. His fierce determination, his unwavering brilliance, his kindness, his stubborn resistance to pity. 

No, it’s not even that. It’s something deeper and indefinable. It’s just him. His Adam-ness. That’s what brings me to my knees. 

I lean against the doorframe and watch him and wait for him to look up and meet my eyes, but it doesn’t happen, and that makes this moment different. So I rap my fingers on the door, because I don’t want to startle him, and then I go sit next to him. His closeness makes me giddy, as always. 

I reach out my hand for the car, and when he places it gently there his fingertips brush my palm the tiniest bit, sending shivers up my arm as though the touch was electric. I look at the car, remembering the day I awoke with it. How excited I was. I was eight years old, and it was my dream-toy (literally). Even then I was fascinated by cars. They were complex and simple, all at once. Powerful, but breakable. Lovely, but cold. 

I can feel his eyes on me. He’s watching me just like I’ve watched him so many countless times, and suddenly I know it’s time. I’ve been harboring this secret for so long, holding it so close to my chest that no one could possibly guess the truth. But he has guessed. I know this. He knows I know it. He knows I love him, and he’s sitting on my bed, watching me look at this thing I made, and I feel like it’s now or never.

My heart is pounding in my ears. I’m trembling because I know what I’m about to do is going to change everything, I’m just not sure how. But if there’s one thing the past year has taught me, it’s that everything changes anyway. I may as well take the risk and see what it brings, because I think - maybe - it could bring a miracle more glorious than anything I’ve ever dreamed. There’s something in the way he looks at me these days that feels like a mirror.

Or it could bring about my utter destruction. But destruction is inevitable, so it’s nothing to fear.

And anyway, I can’t take this anymore. I’ve kept my secret too long. There are many painful things I could endure forever, but loving Adam in silence is not one of them.

So I exhale, slowly, and I place the car on the bedside table, and I kiss him.

It’s the first time I’ve ever kissed anyone, at least like this, and it’s undoing me. His lips are softer than I dared imagine. Softer, and warmer, and...responsive. He’s kissing me back. 

Holy shit. He’s fucking kissing me back.

I pull back for a second - or, rather, I hesitate. It’s not pulling back, exactly; it’s more like taking a breath, allowing a moment of space for him to process, to decide how he wants to proceed. This is a turning point for us, and I’m not going to rush him into it, whatever the outcome may be. But that moment of pause is all it is - a moment - and then we’re kissing again. It’s not that I kiss him again, or that he kisses me. We just kiss. Together. 

This is the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced. 

And I need to stop it. I’m a breath away from pushing him on his back and slipping my hands into his hair and my tongue into his mouth, and that’s not what I’m trying to do. Not right now. Because I need to give him space. Because this - whatever this is - it’s going to change everything, and it can’t be done quickly, or lightly. There’s a heaviness to this, as if it’s the most important moment of my life. And I think it might be. 

So I pull back, but I keep my eyes closed for a minute and just relive it again and again, and I pray when I open my eyes he’s not staring at me in anger, or hurt, or confusion.

I open my eyes. 

He’s staring at me in wonder.

I don’t know what he’s thinking, but his gaze feels...good. So I stand without looking away from him, and he doesn’t look away from me, either, and I know he knows how much weight this moment holds. 

And then I find my voice and say, “I’m gonna go downstairs,” and then I leave him sitting on my bed. I feel his gaze on me as I walk out of the room. Not once has he looked away.

ADAM

I saw that coming for miles. And I didn’t do a thing to stop it.

Just like that rainstorm that day when I was a kid. I literally watched it roll in. I watched the sheet of rain approaching, and I just stood there waiting for it, waiting to get drenched. Just like I’ve been standing here watching Ronan, and understanding that he wanted me, for...weeks? Months? How long? I don’t even know. It wasn’t conscious. But it was real, nonetheless. I mean, I could tell he was into me. I didn’t understand it, because how could anyone as breathtaking as Ronan Lynch want me? It made me feel good, to be honest, because I didn’t feel worthy of his feelings. But I could see them there anyway. He didn’t care that I didn’t feel worthy. He was just being Ronan.

And I knew if I didn’t do something, say something, drop a hint to put him off, he’d kiss me. I didn’t know it-know it, in my brain. But I knew it in my heart. In my body. 

I didn’t try to stop it because...why? That’s what I need to figure out. Ronan just left. He just kissed me, and I kissed him back, and then he stood up and left the room and I need to figure out why I kissed him back. Because I know Ronan is not someone to play around with. I know he puts up that front because he is so incredibly, deeply sensitive, and there’s no way I’d ever hurt him. I love him too much. He’s my brother.

Is that what it is, though? Brotherly love? Because that kiss ignited things inside me that I hadn’t known were there. Very un-brotherly things. 

 I need to talk to Gansey. 

Chapter 36

And so first chance I get, I do. And he’s blustering about not hurting Ronan, and good God Gansey, do you think that’s even a possibility on the table? I would never hurt Ronan. 

Gansey can be a first-class dumbass sometimes.

That’s not what I’m asking. That’s not what I’m asking. 

“I’m not going to mess with his head,” I say, and I’m unable to keep the irritation out of my voice. “Why do you think I’m even talking to you?” I’m talking to Gansey because everything is about to change, and he’s part of that everything, and I guess I just need to know he’s okay with it. Or maybe I need him to tell me I’m not crazy. I start to tell him I don’t know how I feel, but I stop. Because this is a night for truth, and it’s not true that I don’t know how I feel. I know. God, I know. 

I know it in every corner of my body. In every thought in my head. In every wave of emotion. I know that when Ronan kissed me, and I kissed him back - when we kissed, together - everything in the world finally made sense. I mean, good lord. He’s Ronan Lynch. He’s a dream come true. (The irony of that assertion doesn’t escape me.) He’s gorgeous and brilliant and rich and brave and tough and terrifying, he’s intimidating and creative and brutal and gentle and thoughtful and generous. He exudes sex, which is a little weird because I’m 99% sure he’d never kissed anyone until a few minutes ago, when he kissed me. The man has got to be a virgin. But he still manages to exude sex, and fire, and passion, and danger, and tenderness, and loyalty, and safety. He’s a walking contradiction. He would give anything for the people he loves (me included), and yet he won’t hesitate to kick someone’s ass if they piss him off. Not us, though. Not the people he’s chosen. He would die before he hurt me, or Gansey, or Noah, or Blue. He would die before he let us be hurt.

I mean, really, he’s the ultimate badass. And for some unfathomable reason, he wants me. 

And I want him back. More than anything in my life, I want him. I think he’s handed me the keys to him, to Ronan, to his heart and his mind and his body, and I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to just take them and give him my own keys in exchange.

Gansey knows this. Because he’s a first-class dumbass, but he’s also incredibly wise, and he knows his friends. He knows us. 

I thought, when I went to talk to Gansey, that he could shoot me down. He could tell me I don’t love Ronan, that I just want to be loved myself, that I’m not worthy, that I’m an object of pity rather than of desire. And I think I would’ve believed him, because I’m not like him or Ronan or even Blue. They all believe they’re worthy of love. And I know, on an intellectual level, that I am, too, but it’s hard to internalize it after everything. I mean, until I met Gansey and Ronan and Noah (not that I remember meeting Noah, of course), I was completely alone in the world. I mean, completely, utterly, unarguably alone. My own parents resented my existence, for God’s sake.

It’s hard to feel worthy of love. It’s hard to feel worthy of Gansey’s and Blue’s and Noah’s and Ronan’s friendship. It’s next to impossible to feel worthy of being wanted, especially by the beautiful badass that is Ronan Lynch.

It’s not Gansey who could shoot me down. It’s myself. And in this span of a few minutes of conversation, that becomes crystal clear. So when all Gansey says is that it’s about being honest with myself, it feels like the ultimate affirmation. I just figured it all out; everything clicked into place, and then Gansey basically told me to trust myself. If kings are truly meant to inspire, to empower, to strengthen...Gansey is truly a king. 

And now I just want him to leave and take our pretty friend with him so I can be alone with Ronan so we can get on with our future. 

[comics-mostly]

WHY I found IT to be underwhelming!

written 09/18/2017

In the last two weeks I’ve heard such amazing things about the new IT film. Articles on my favorite sites such as Cinemablend and IGN have adorned the film with a solid A rating, and as of right now it’s sitting at an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. Not only do the critics seem to love it, but practically everyone I know whose watched the movie has had nothing but good things to say about it. So, a few days ago, I decided to go watch the film myself and - as the title of this article states - I found it to be rather underwhelming.

I’ll start by saying that I have no backstory when it comes to the film. Not only have I not seen the original film or mini series, I also never read the novel. I actually didn’t even see a trailer for this movie before watching it. The only prior knowledge I had regarding this film were the numerous memes regarding what might entice people to speak to the clown in the gutter - ranging from an offer of free food to paying off their student debt - but aside from that I had no real knowledge of the IT franchise.

I also want to say that I didn’t think the film was bad - in fact, to an extent, I can understand why people might think that it was a good film. It had plenty of creepy/scary moments - some of which literally had me damn-near jumping out of my seat. Not only that, but the dialogue from the characters was phenomenal. I wasn’t a thirteen year old in the eighties - nor was I born, for that matter - but, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia for the days of my youth, wherein me and my own “Losers Club” would ride around on our bikes getting ourselves in all kinds of trouble. Granted, we never had to stave off a murderous clown spirit, but, you know, we did other stuff.

Anyway, the film does a lot of things really well, but the particular issue I have with it stems from one defining moment that happens near the beginning. However, before I get into that, I’ll go ahead and say.. SPOILER ALERT! If, by chance, you haven’t seen the film yet, I would hold off reading this until you’ve done that. So, for those of you who have seen it - or just don’t care one way or another - let’s get into IT. (See what I did there?)

So, my issue with the film starts from the initial scene. It wasn’t that I had an issue with the death of Georgie; I wasn’t bothered by the fact that he was so young, or that the nature of his death was particularly graphic. It wasn’t the death itself so much as it was the manner of it and what it meant for the rest of the film. His death was our introduction to the films’ antagonist; it was this act that signified Pennywise was a very real, very dangerous threat.. but sadly, Pennywise never manages to reach that level of terror again.

I mean, he viciously attacked Georgie within minutes of meeting him. There was no toying with him or trying to frighten him - in fact, he tried to put Georgie at ease initially by presenting himself as a friendly (albeit odd) clown. It was only after he got the young boy to trust him that he attacked him - devouring most of Georgie’s arm with ghastly, razor sharp teeth. It only worsened as we watched Georgie try to crawl away in a desperate attempt to find safety, only to have Pennywise snatch and drag him into the sewer, leaving only a faint traces of blood, which quickly mixed with the rain water and drained into the sewers.

Now think about it.. when does Pennywise ever reach that level of savagery again? It doesn’t, and that’s my problem with the film. Yes, we hear about all the people he’s killed via Ben’s research and through the different posters plastered around the town of children that have gone missing; and yes, we even get an instance where he attacks Bowers’ flame-thrower wielding sidekick, Patrick - but even that death is showed off screen. Aside from Georgie’s murder, there is no other instance wherein we see Pennywise eviscerate his prey with that same level of cruelty.

In fact, I would say the film’s exposition only served to frustrate me all the more because it showed me what Pennywise could be. During one of his cycles he’s went so far as to trigger an explosion that killed eighty-eight children at once. That’s the Pennywise I wanted to see - one that is a legitimate threat. It’s what we're told throughout the film, and it’s even what we see in the opening act - however we never get to see it again, and it’s extremely frustrating.

I remember watching the climax of the film - the moment they first entered the Neibolt home - thinking that this was the moment that one of them would either die or be irrevocably damaged in some way. However when Eddie was attacked by Pennywise and managed to escape with just a broken arm, it dawned on me that none of these children would be going through anything all that traumatic; they surely weren’t going to die. They might get bruised and battered - but not a single one of them was going to be killed or suffer some sort of life altering trauma (physical or otherwise), and, as a result, it made the stakes significantly lower because, to me, Pennywise stopped being a legitimate threat and instead became a nuisance that they would eventually take care of.

With the film starting off the way that it does, it led me to believe that it would be much darker, but that’s not what I got. I’m not saying I was crossing my fingers hoping they’d all die, but I legitimately figured some wouldn’t make it to the end credits. Instead of the kids being brutalized by the creature, I watched Pennywise, the dancing clown, get owned by a group of thirteen year old kids. I’m not upset that the film chose to focus on the uplifting story of children triumphing over their fears and defeating their enemy - I am upset that IT introduces Pennywise in one way, but then never portray the character in that way again.

I honestly would have thought that Pennywise would have gotten stronger with each child it consumed, but instead it turns out the creature is very much human in the regard that, the more it eats, the lazier it gets. I mean, in the end Pennywise just ends up using Bowers as a puppet to “kill them all.” What happened to the clown that blew up a factory to take eighty eight souls at once? I guess he got the itis.

All in all, IT isn’t a bad movie - it just did a very bad job at setting my expectations. But, perhaps the director created this with the thought that audiences would already be familiar with the property to some extent. Yes, it’s a reboot, and watching the previous installments should not be a requirement, but I imagine a lot of the people who have seen this movie have also seen the versions of IT that came before this iteration as well.

Not only that, but, in the end credits, I learned that this is the first chapter in a two part story. So, perhaps the second film will raise the stakes to some extent. Perhaps the damage that was done in this film will be properly displayed in the next. Upon reading some articles it seems as though it will take place during Pennywise’s next cycle - twenty-seven years later - so that could be rather interesting to watch. Having watched the first, I imagine I’ll watch the next to see how it all turns out. (Fingers crossed for Ben and Bev)

Anyway, feel free to leave comments telling me what you thought of the film. Did you think Pennywise wasn’t frightening enough? Did you think he was perfect? What are your thoughts on the film as a whole? Let me know and feel free to check out more of my work on my blog.

[wordcollector]

A Year In Books: The 2016 Bookworm Awards

I’d like to blame the lateness of this post on something dramatic, like aliens or politics or a terrible computer virus. But the truth is that I’ve had this written since the turn of the year and haven’t had the motivation to type it up.  Despite the tardiness of this post, I’d still like to share with you my final round-up on the books I read last year.  There were quite a few, and I have a lot of opinions, so stick with me!

2016 was a pretty good year for me. I participated in my first 10k, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation proposal, and I found out I was going to become an aunt- to twins! Aside from those things, though, my year was pretty uneventful, which was a blessing in disguise as it gave me plenty of time to read.  

I keep track of my yearly reading on Goodreads (jbfinch89; let’s be friends!), and based on my number there, I spent a large portion of this year with my nose stuck in a book.  I guess I really am a funny girl and all that.  

In 2015, I read 132 books. My goal for this past year started at 100, which I surpassed, so I upped it to 150. I passed that goal, too, but I wasn’t sure just how ambitious I wanted to be after that, so that's where my goal stayed.

When all was said and done, I had read 178 books (Goodreads says 174, but that’s because I still haven't managed to find a good way to record rereads on Goodreads).  These 178 books came from a number of different genres, ranging from classics to sci-fi to Christian fiction to memoirs for a total of over 63,000 pages.

I should probably be glad I didn't end up with more paper cuts.

Here's a more detailed breakdown of my reading this year:

Books Read: 178

New Series Started: 14

Old Series Finished: 5

Series Binge Read: 4

Fiction vs. Nonfiction: 156 (88%) vs. 22 (12%)

Authors Read: 133

Rereads: 9

So probably no one but me that cares about these stats, but I like the numbers.

It looks like I started a lot of new series that are going to require more space on my bookshelves in the future, but I also made the executive decision to let myself not finish a series.  I hate leaving things unfinished, so I normally would have kept up with a series as long as I didn’t completely hate the first book, but this year, I realized that I have neither the time nor the room to keep that up forever.  There are too many books out there that I want to read to stick with ones that I don’t like.  I even let myself sell the first books in these series, mostly because I needed the space, but also to avoid the temptation to keep reading the series out of guilt.  Like I said, too many books to feel bad.

And there really are a tone of books out there to read; just look at my Goodreads ‘To-Read’ shelf.  But I put a pretty good dent in my eternal TBR pile last year, and through the good and the bad, I found myself laughing, frowning, crying, and cringing.  Some books were okay, some were disappointing, and some definitely knocked my socks off.  Or they would have if I didn’t hate wearing socks so much.

But I digress.  My reading last year had its ups and downs, but some books had way more ups and others more downs.  Which are which?  It took some work to decide, but I finally managed to narrow down the best of the best, the cream of the crop, and the ones at the tippy top.  And so, I present to you the 2016 Bookworm Awards, brought to you once again by the brains behind the Literary Laboratory.

Favorite New Authors: Carrie Firestone and Sarah Porter

These two ladies couldn’t have written more different stories, but they were alike in that neither of them was like anything I’d read before.  Carrie’s book was brutally honest and unexpectedly rude, but it was also heartbreaking and hopeful.  Sarah wrote a story full of magic and danger with a plucky heroine who was unafraid of doing what needed to be done.  To create such fascinating and unique characters and such strangely wonderful situations takes some writers countless tries, but these ladies managed in some of their earliest novels.  Brava to both of them!

Favorite New to Me Authors: Erin Morgenstern and Amie Kaufman/Jay Kristoff

I have no idea why I held off on reading the releases from these three.  The Night Circus blew me away; it was whimsical and mysterious and dangerous and romantic, and if I could live in Le Cirque des Reves, I would.  The Night Circus has fantastically complex characters, but it’s really the world they create that makes this book so great.  It’s easily one of my all-time favorites.  And both Illuminae and Gemina kept me glued to the pages long after I should’ve gone to bed, gotten back to work, or headed out to run errands.  I couldn’t put either of these books down!  The format of these stories is one-of-a-kind, and the stories themselves are heart-stopping and action-packed.  There were so many plot twists that I didn’t see coming, and I was rooting so hard for the main characters, who were all flawed but skilled, broken but determined, lost yet relentless.  I can’t wait for the next book in this series.

Best Beginning of a Series: Illumine (The Illuminae Files #1) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

As I just mentioned, The Illuminae Files is one of my favorite series of 2016.  Illuminae easily surpassed anything I could’ve expected and had me flying through the pages to see what happened next.  The story started off with chaos and never let up, and I loved following Kady, Ezra, and the rest of the survivors of Kerenza as they tried to escape the people who had blown up their home.  I really liked Kady in particular.  She was smart, skilled, and snarky, and her willingness to put herself in harm’s way to save those she cared about was undeniably admirable. There were so many twists and turns in her quest for safety, and every time I thought I had things pegged, I was proven wrong.  Illuminae was an explosive—literally—debut for this award-winning duo, and it quickly earned both authors a place on my TBR pile for their individual books.

Best Ending to a Series: The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) by Maggie Stiefvater, Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows #2) by Leigh Bardugo, Ignite Me (Shatter Me #3) by Tahereh Mafi

In every book series, characters change and grow as they face new situations and new challenges.  These three series, though, had more character growth than most.  The writing in these series allowed the characters to naturally respond to the changes in their lives, both good and bad, and end up somewhere better than I ever could’ve guessed when I began each series. Each story also had plenty of action, danger, and romance to wrap up the adventures, and the endings managed to be foregone yet still surprising, which, to me, is always a sign that the author has really put work into the finale rather than just giving readers what they want. Not everyone got their happy ending, but everyone got a proper ending, with hints of more stories in the future.  I can only hope.

Best Short Story Collection: Stars Above (The Lunar Chronicles) by Marissa Meyer

The Lunar Chronicles is one of my all-time favorite series, and this collection of extra stories about the main characters was everything I’d hoped for and more.  The stories provided looks at the pasts of some of the characters, helping show how they became the people I came to know and love, while the final story provided a new adventure for the four couples as they started their lives after the war.  Something Old, Something New made me smile so much and made my heart swell with happiness for these characters, and I can’t thank Marissa enough for another chance to peek back into the world of The Lunar Chronicles.

Most Disappointing Book: Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco

Ugh, I really wanted to like this book.  The cover was beautiful, and the premise of a young woman training to become a forensic pathologist and finding herself on the path of an infamous serial killer sounded great.  But this book fell prey to the dangers of insta-love, ridiculous decisions by an intelligent character, and a villain reveal that didn’t make sense.  There was very little stalking of Bloody Jack as the title had promised, and to make it worse, the characters were pretty flat, largely predictable, and fairly uninteresting.  This is one series I won’t be continuing.

Favorite Classic: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I wrote a whole review on this book last February because it managed to do what few books have done and catch me truly by surprise.  The first part of this book makes you think it’s going to be a typical gothic romance with grand, sweeping settings, beautiful but troubled characters, and a dark secret.  And this book is that.  But then the dark secret is revealed, and it was something I never would’ve guessed. It had me flipping back to reread scenes in a new light and kept me glued to the book until I’d reached the end. This book is a classic for a reason, and I highly recommend it for anyone who’s a fan of a good mystery.

Favorite Non-fiction Read: Ghost Soldiers by Hampton Sides

This book had my emotions all over the place.  The topic—the Bataan death march and the Cabanatuan Camp—is one that isn’t widely discussed, but it really should be, as it’s a true story of the best and worst of mankind.  I couldn’t believe the optimism, the hope, and the perseverance of the human spirit in such horrific conditions, and it gave me a new respect for the men who endured such cruelty.  Ghost Soldiers is truly a heartbreaking yet inspiring story and certainly one I’ll never forget.

Favorite Reread: The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater

The Raven Cycle is one of my favorite series anyway, and while I love the other three books, The Dream Thieves just feels like a beast of a different sort.  I’d forgotten how much I loved to hate Kravinsky, not to mention how legitimately crazy that dude was, but I loved how he messed with the Raven boys and how he antagonized Ronan in particular.  This book focused more on Ronan and his abilities as the Greywaren, and it felt less like a mystical mystery and more like a reckless, headfirst race into danger and bad decisions than the rest of the quartet.  I was quite pleased to hear that the Ronan-centered series Maggie is working on will be more like The Dream Thieves, because goodness knows I need more of this lovable thug of a boy in my life.

Favorite Retelling: Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter

I was only vaguely familiar with the original tale of Vasilisa and her magical doll—thanks, random folklore podcast!—and so I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this book.  I ended up being pleasantly surprised!  The setting of the story was a mix of the familiar and the absurd, the characters were magical and strange, and the story itself was, well, also strange, but also a bit heartbreaking and a bit inspiring.  Vassa was such a strong character, and I loved that she managed to save others by being kind; she didn’t require any special powers, other than what Erg provided, to defeat Baba Yaga, which is unusual for most YA books today.  And since I wasn’t really sure how the original tale ended, I couldn’t guess how things were going to turn out for Vassa. This is the way modern retellings should be done.

Favorite Contemporary Read: The Loose Ends List by Carrie Firestone

This book wasn’t anything like I expected, and that was a good thing.  I expected an interesting story about a girl whose grandmother was dying.  What I got was an open, honest, yet rude, funny, and heartbreaking look at death, letting go, and the love of family.  I loved Maddie and her reactions to all the crazy things that happened on the cruise, and I loved getting to see the sweet relationship between her and her grandmother. I also loved getting to meet all the other Wishwellians and their families and seeing how all their views of life and death changed as the cruise went on.  The cover of this book, although quite cute, doesn’t really do this book justice as it covers such a heavy topic and really makes you consider what you’re doing that makes life worth living.

Scariest Book: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Most people know Gillian Flynn through her novel Gone Girl, but I’ve only read her other novels, and Dark Places is easily my favorite.  This book was more suspenseful than scary, but it was frightening to uncover the true events of the fateful night that the family of the main character, Libby, was killed.  Libby herself was a rather unlikable character, but she’d suffered so much that I still cared about her story.  It was interesting to have the POV jumps and the flashbacks to unfold the story and create tension from a number of different angles, and the truth of the murders was actually much more complex and scary than I’d imagined. This book was rather depressing and dark, but it’s worth it to see how Libby changes as she learns more about her family and their deaths.  

Funniest Books: Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick, The Only Pirate at the Party by Lindsey Stirling, and You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) by Felicia Day

My sense of humor is a bit drier and a bit darker than most, but these three ladies all managed to make me laugh numerous times.  Not at them, of course, more at the various situations they’ve found themselves in over the years and the ridiculous ways they reacted to them.  (They were laughing, too, so I didn’t feel bad.)  It was nice to see that even famous people have awkward moments, whether it’s suffering from foot-in-mouth syndrome or acting like a total fangirl in fronts of someone (else) famous.  Aside from being funny, these memoirs showed the dedication and determination of these women to their crafts, and I loved that they were open about both the ups and downs in their lives.  It makes me admire them all the more for their willingness to share their mistakes and their hard times and to then remind everyone that it’s okay to ask for help, that there are people out there who love you and want to see you happy. And I feel like these three ladies really show that the bad times don’t last forever and that sometimes laughter really is the best medicine.

Most Unexpected Books: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

I know I’ve already talked about both of these a bit, but I want to reiterate that both of these books threw in a huge twist that I absolutely did not see coming. That happens quite rarely for me, and the fact that it happened twice in one year makes me think I’m either losing my awesome literary foresight or authors are getting better at being surprising. Well, Rebecca is far from new, so maybe I’ve just been reading better books. Regardless, even though I’ve told you there are big twists, you should really read these books to find out what they are.  I promise you you won’t be disappointed.

Cover Lust: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) by Maggie Stiefvater, and The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry

I will freely admit that I’m guilty of occasionally judging a book by its cover, and these books would’ve definitely piqued my interest even if I’d known nothing about them.  The covers of these three books are all very different, but they fit their individuals stories so well, managing to portray all the magic inside with a single picture.  A cover picture is worth a thousand words, after all.

These say,

“Aren’t

I

pretty?”

(The answer is yes, yes you are.)

Most Surprising Villain: Tamlin from A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses #2) by Sarah J. Maas

In A Court of Thorns and Roses, I liked Tamlin. He wasn’t perfect, and his unwillingness to stand up to Amarantha to help Feyre irked me, but overall, I thought he was a good match for Feyre, and I was glad they ended up together.  Then I got to A Court of Mist and Fury, and all those happy feelings for Tamlin went right out the window.  Part of me initially wanted to forgive his actions—he was finally free after so many years, and he was clearly still recovering—but the moment he locked Feyre in the house was the moment I lost all sympathy for him.  It’s one thing to want to protect someone you love, but it’s another thing entirely to force them to do what you want because you think you know what’s best for them.  And then that ending!  Yeah, Tamlin jumped to the top of my naughty list.  I loved that Maas was able to flip the tables on Tamlin’s character and show how people can change for the better or for the worse.  I kind of liked Tamlin’s road to villainy, in part because it was so unexpected but also because it made room for Rhysand, which I certainly didn’t mind!

Top Five Couples: 

Blue and Gansey from The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4) by Maggie Stiefvater

Feyre and Rhysand from A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses #2) by Sarah J. Maas

Celia and Marco from The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Kaz and Inej from Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows #2) by Leigh Bardugo

Juliette and Warner from Ignite Me (Shatter Me #3) by Tahereh Mafi

You know how some couples have problems with lying or trusting one another or disapproving families?  These couples make those couples look lame by comparison.  These five couples were forced to deal with magic, murder, kidnapping, corrupt rulers and governments, major anxiety issues, their own death—you know, simple stuff—and managed to come out even stronger.  These guys and gals are all strong and fierce on their own, but together, they prove they can do absolutely anything they set their minds to. Definitely relationship goals, expect maybe with less bloodshed.

And that’s the end!

This was really a whirlwind year for me in terms of reading; I found a number of books that made it onto my all-time favorites list, and I found some others that convinced me to branch out in regards to what genres and topics I’m willing to explore.

So how did those discoveries work out in relation to my reading goals from last year? Well, I met—and surpassed—my initial goal of 100 books.  I did manage to read more classics, although I still have plenty to go.  And I read at least one non-fiction book each month, and most months, I read more than one.  I rediscovered that real life can be just as dramatic and violent and romantic and mysterious as fiction, something that I tend to forget as I’m off exploring all the fictional worlds I can find.  Therefore, one of this year’s reading goals is based on my enjoyment of all the nonfiction stories I read last year; yes, once again, I have my reading goals along with my more general resolutions.  This year, my goals are to:

1)    Read only nonfiction books for an entire month

2)    Read at least 160 books

3)    Read more classics…again

I’m quite confident that I can successfully meet all these goals—goodness knows I have enough books on my shelves to do so.  I’m also quite confident that I’ll once again find some new favorites and some interesting historical events to study up on. There’s a whole year’s worth of reading to explore, and I can’t to see where these stories take me.

I better go get started…

[junker-town]

The Great Blaireau

Nothing will stop a former cycling champion from tasting glory one last time.

The one time I raced Cristophe Blaireau was at La Petite Lame de Scie, a punchy and brutal little bicycle race over three sharp climbs near Andorra. The course profile quite literally looked like a saw blade. La Lame was a big deal for small-time riders like me.

Why Blaireau showed up, I still can’t say. I’m not even sure how he found it. Our little race should have been far beneath him, even if the champion had begun to slow down by that point. He had crashed on the cobbles in the Ardennes the month before, and cracked on the final stage of a weeklong race in Switzerland before that.

He could draw a crowd, that’s for sure. There were no barriers and little security at races in those days, nothing to stop fans from running up and chatting up riders. Being mobbed by fans wasn’t a concern at our level — what fans? — but Blaireau drew people like a magnet. It was impressive to see how patient and charming he seemed with everyone he met. He was easy to spot — not that he was bigger than any of us, or particularly handsome, but he knew how to wear what he had: a thick, virile head of brown hair, dull blue eyes and a serious, thinking brow and chin.

He had an ability to be exactly charming enough, and it struck me that he might not have a lot of friends. I watched him give a young fan a quip and a nod, then dispose of him with a smile that was at once friendly but clear that the kid should go. He seemed like the type of person who no one would think to make plans with, like he belonged to another existence occupied only by him. But if anyone asked, you would certainly say he was a good bloke.

Then there was the thing he ate. A masseuse handed him a little parcel of deli wrap. Blaireau unwrapped it, and in his hand was a little gray, shimmery blop. It looked like a piece of head cheese gone bad, or like a slug in a raincoat. It was nothing I recognized. He inhaled the whole piece in one swallow and then chuckled to himself, perhaps remembering something.

He turned and looked up at the mountain, and I did, too.

The first climb of La Lame was long and not overly steep. A breakaway of seven riders got out almost immediately and the peloton let them. There are few favors in cycling, but some riders are beneath concern.

The breakaway is a ritual that has always existed in cycling, when the old and stubborn, the young and scorned, and anyone truly desperate for recognition zooms out ahead in a vain, self-deceiving attempt to win. The peloton double checks that no one of significance is in the break and lets them go to enjoy a few dozen kilometers at the head of the race. Meanwhile, those of us with an actual chance to win would hang back to ration our energy intelligently, knowing we would chase them down eventually.

I don’t mean to sound full of myself — I was no Blaireau. But at that time I had proven myself to be a game puncheur, one of those riders who lived for the single-day races when I didn’t have to think about the next day. I was small and nimble, and I adored profiles like La Lame. Those long, steep, winding roads were made for the sudden attacks and gamesmanship for which I was known.

I said earlier that riders didn’t work together then like they do today, but I did have one ally. Benjamin Bordet was my opposite and equal. We came up in the sport at the same time, doing the same races, and after so much time on the road together we wordlessly and seamlessly slipped into a symbiotic relationship.

He was sickly to look at, but his long gaunt legs encased twin diesel pistons that could pump at a steady, metered pace. He rarely attacked or responded well when a rider tried to leave him behind, but he was good at breaking the will of those who tried to keep up with his infernal consistency. He had low awareness for the dynamics of the stage or those around him. He channeled all of his focus into his pedal strokes, measuring their timing with carpenter precision.

Our unspoken agreement was he would let me ride in his slipstream for maybe three-quarters of a long climb, conserving my legs. He wouldn’t mind, because on that last quarter I would be his protector. The tops of climbs were where riders attacked the most, hoping to take the crest and use the descent to distance themselves. When the accelerations came, I would repay him by letting him stick to my wheel while I tried to close down the competition, or create distance for ourselves.

Depending on the stage profile, he might have the better day, or I might. One was as good as the other, and there was no question we were better together. La Lame suited us equally — he liked the length of the climbs, and I liked their brutality.

But that first climb was hard for both of us. After the breakaway got far out ahead, Blaireau took command of the front of the peloton at a pace that none of us anticipated. It’s hard to imagine that even his regular competitors would have been comfortable. It seemed obvious that he was out to prove a point — that whatever the reason he was racing with our kind, we needed to be made an example.

The day’s obvious stragglers fell back more quickly than usual — those who were hoping to use the race as a tuneup for one of the longer stage races in a few weeks, or whose legs clearly weren’t going to agree with them that day. Bordet and I were maybe six riders back from Blaireau, and every time I looked behind me, the pack behind would be thinner, from a few dozen riders to maybe 14 or so, strung out in a long line that seemed ready to snap in several places.

Blaireau never looked back. If he was punishing us, it didn’t show. He sat on the front third of his saddle, over his handlebars, each downstroke like a stab at the earth. It wasn’t personal; Blaireau intended to subjugate the road and we were collateral in the fight.

Just before the summit he broke off the front of the peloton and ascended, going up and over the top, then out of sight. I was as stupefied as anyone, but this was my time, too. I took off, making sure Bordet saw my wheel, and together we easily overtook the riders ahead of us to become the new head of the peloton — there seemed to be little appetite for the chase.

The descent curved wide left before cutting back right. I finally glimpsed Blaireau again maybe 30 meters away, taking that right hand. He was descending fast, his body in the same coiled position it had been when he had broken free of us, and his neck still stiff, aiming his head dead straight.

From that angle I finally caught a glimpse of his eyes. They were the size of dinner plates. No, bigger. Like bike tires, and black like them too. Fixated, only seeing God knows what.

The descent went by quickly. I had trouble remembering to help poor Bordet as I hung over my handlebars and Ieaned into the curves, my knees nearly scraping the ground.

Bordet was with me by the start of the second climb, but barely. His long frame made him top heavy on a bike and an awkward descender. As he went to pedal by me and take his turn as shepherd, he gave me a glance that said what the hell has gotten into you.

I stayed right next to him.

“His eyes, Benjamin.”

“His what?” He hadn’t seen.

“His eyes. Blaireau. He’s not well.”

“He’s climbing like a bloody goat. What do you mean he’s not well.”

“His eyes, Benjamin. We have to catch him.”

He searched me. This was not our accord. And I knew the danger of pulling him out of his rhythm — his style of racing only worked if nothing broke his singular focus, and I was threatening that. Bordet was one of the few riders I would ever call a true friend, but no agreement was ironclad on the road.

“You can take my wheel,” I said. “I’ll get him, I don’t care if my legs fall off. But I need you with me.”

The second climb was hardest of the race — about 30 kilometers long, and alternating steep and steeper sections of climbing to the top. Midway through, the tree line stopped, so that if you looked up, you could see the road and every miserable point along your near future. It was for that moment that La Lame was designed. Every rider who got to that point had to ask and answer for themselves if they were willing to sacrifice what was necessary to win.

I rode like a possessed man to get there, and Bordet stayed faithfully close as we distanced what was probably a now-scattered peloton. I can’t recall the forest portion of the climb. My only desire was to go fast, and that superseded the fatigue I should have been feeling. I didn’t even have the frame of mind to note that I was probably in the form of my life. And Bordet stayed quiet — whether he noted my form, too, or was simply measuring pedal strokes, I can’t say.

When we broke the tree line I saw Blaireau again, closer than I thought, but also changed. His back bowed out so that the nubs of his spine were prominent through his kit. His teeth showed and they were gnashing. He wasn’t sitting on his saddle any more, and I’m not sure that he could. He seemed bigger.

And I knew we could catch him. I knew if we maintained this head-down, breakneck effort, we could catch the great Blaireau. I don’t know what motivated me. At first I think it was to see what had happened to him, but somewhere along the way it became to conquer. I could catch him. And then what? Behind me, Bordet measured pedal strokes.

Coming out of the trees, it was as if we had ascended to the moon — the hillsides were rock and gray dirt. The wind whipped and wrapped around me. I felt buoyant and blissfully alone. Blaireau’s figure grew in my vision. I was close enough to study his form. It was loose, and surprisingly unsure of itself. He threw excess motion into his knees and elbows. But Blaireau would launch off his pedals, like he wanted to leap off his bike. I thought he could escape orbit at any moment, and I would go too if I was within his gravity.

I drew closer, maybe a few hundred meters now, and the summit came into view, too. The possibility of catching Blaireau became real, phased into form in front of my eyes. As I dwelled on this, I didn’t see Blaireau become the beast. I looked up and his kit was in tatters. He may have been eight feet, nine feet, 10 feet tall, and he was no longer stiff-necked and focused, but rather lashing his head against the wind and the mountain.

He seemed to animate the environment. The wind began to sting and kick dust in our faces as the beast grew madder and madder. His skin was sallow and pale, his sleek haunches high in the air, sinew threatening to erupt through his skin. His hands enveloped his drop bars, and with each pedal stroke his body seemed to grow again, Blaireau surging in height and his skin tightening and his veins bulging from his calves like coiled worms struggling for air.

I pulled closer still. It didn’t occur to me to slow down. I wanted to be closer, to lift off with this creature, to feel what it might be feeling. The wind against us, I only faintly heard my name behind me. I turned my head, Bordet was red-faced, evidently screaming for some time. When I turned back Blaireau was looking at us. We were nearly on his wheel. His eyes were black planets. His mouth a not-quite grin, he opened wide and I could see that he had gritted his teeth into jagged little mountains.

I stared into death, and yet I resented myself for wanting to hide, for wanting to fall back with the shrieking man struggling at my wheel instead of riding right into Blaireau’s noiseless maw.

I missed a slight right bend and clipped a metal guardrail, spilling over the side of the mountain and tumbling 20 feet over the rocks. I looked myself up and down — not a scratch. I swear to you, not a scratch. I scrambled as fast as I could back up the rocks to the road.

And then I saw Bordet, seemingly frozen to his rhythm, ride right up to the teeth of Blaireau. I saw Blaireau, now larger and unholier than anything I have ever known, in a motion that felt both mechanical and decadent, lean over my friend and chomp him, snap him, and swallow him whole like a lizard might.

Blaireau disappeared over the crest once more. My bike was flat on the ground, undamaged. I looked back and a handful of riders were just emerging from the tree line far below — they’d seen nothing.

I grabbed my bike, and in my adrenaline, sped off past the empty bicycle by the side of the road that used to be occupied by Bordet. I didn’t think to mourn; it seemed imperative to continue. As I overcame the climb, I saw Blaireau’s sinister figure bombing down into the valley, and farther ahead but falling back were two riders who had taken part in the day’s breakaway.

I’d forgotten about the break. They should have cracked on the second climb so that they would be easily overtaken at the start of the final climb to the finish, but Blaireau was bearing down on them, and reached them as the trees returned to the landscape. I rode as fast as I could, and when I reached the forest I nearly ran over the body of one of the riders. He was a kid, one of those fresh-faced, plucky, dime-a-dozen rouleurs who hadn’t yet learned what his place in the peloton was supposed to be. The other rider and his bicycle were nowhere to be seen.

The second half of the descent was dark, the branches and leaves blotting out the sun. All around me I thought I saw the detritus of dead bodies. A fading yellow leaf might have also been a scrap of torn kit. The shimmer of a creek through the bushes could have been a set of eyes still open, gaping, and possibly viewing the world for the last time.

I had to catch Blaireau. It would be too late for the breakaway, and I’d made peace with that. But at the finish line were dozens, if not hundreds, of people waiting to greet the champion who would be met by a monster grown hungry. Between us and the finish were a series of turns that had been engineered into a sheer cliff a long time ago. Those spectators wouldn’t see us until the moment we arrived. No one would be able to prepare for the beast.

The final climb to the summit finish was long like the second, but not as maniacally steep. It broke the tree line with about three kilometers to the finish, and as I emerged I found that I had nearly caught Blaireau again. I could only assume that he had taken time disposing of the riders — I’d seen none of them, only his last victim, an old-hand named Thomas Chapanelle who had nothing better to do late in his career than ride breakaways until his heart felt like bursting. Blaireau swiped Chapanelle with one hand while riding, sucking him up feet first like a Twizzler.

Blaireau and I were the head of the race. I didn’t know how to stop him, but perhaps with some element of surprise I could knock him over and warn the people at the finish. I was sprinting now — there were under two kilometers to go, and I needed his wheel. As I approached, his figure filled my view. I don’t know how he stayed on his bicycle, he might have been two stories tall, every fibrous muscle bulbous and visible and working in his back, every inch of him as determined as I was.

The one kilometer banner approached. The finish was behind a sharp left bend. As I took his wheel I felt a wave of fatigue crash down on me at once — all the strain I had somehow denied myself that day, accumulated. I was suddenly aware of who I was and what I was facing. Where had I been until then?

Under and past the banner. The meters falling by. Blaireau didn’t notice me. 500 meters to go. There was no choice.

I put in another hard dig and pulled astride the beast’s left side. I kicked his back wheel towards the ledge. He felt the nudge. I kicked again. He turned his head and loomed his face over me. I kicked again, and I thought I might disappear into the void of his eyes. I saw him lift a massive hand to swipe at me. The final bend approached. I’d be dead before the line.

I kicked again, but the beast wouldn’t give. I did, and as I fell I barely escaped his grasp, his fingernail knifing me down the right side of my body.

I laid on the road on my back, struggling to breathe. I turned my head and Blaireau had stopped and stood in full height, staring back to me, heaving, barely hidden from the finish line by that final bend. If he wanted to kill me, he could have. He could have swallowed me as easily as he swallowed Bordet. He could have manipulated me like a toy. But he got back on his bicycle and disappeared once more.

I put myself back together just enough to get on my bike. To what end, I don’t know. The smart thing would have been to turn around and maybe warn the straggling peloton far behind me. But I was 200 meters from the finish, and I heard the crowd. I heard screams and a roar, and if no other part of me wanted to see this to the end, my legs did.

The sound overwhelmed me as I came around the rock wall. I was encased in noise and color — my vision was going. It felt like thousands, not hundreds, lined the final stretch of road. I thought I saw spots of blood over the crowd and they looked like pretty polka-dots; entrails strewn about in triptych patterns.

I stopped at the line. Blaireau towered above the scene, a Boschian figure, presiding over a happy slaughter. I saw people huddled around him, giving themselves to be devoured like chicken wings. I saw his winsome smile. As I collapsed, I thought to scream.

I awoke in a hospital bed. A perfectly lovely nurse greeted me.

“Hello, how are you?”

Evidently I was fine — alive. She told me that she had heard all about the race, that it sounded pretty eventful. I tried to speak, which she anticipated, and she told me to relax, that I was okay, that I would be okay. That not only had I survived the race — “what a nasty little cut you got on that crash over the guardrail” — but that everyone was talking about what a performance I gave. The bravery, the daring, the sheer determination and grit I showed to go toe-to-toe with the great Blaireau.

She said that Blaireau had been impressed, too. He sent flowers and a note, which the nurse read aloud:

“‘Thank you for bringing out the best in me. I only hope I returned the favor. Votre ami, CB.”

The nurse smiled, and said he seemed like a good bloke.

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