#there are extenuating circumstances outside of all of their control but at the same time some stuff WAS in their control but now they

[swaps55]

Hi! I was rereading Fugue, and I was wondering if I could ask you a question. I think you’ve said before that Kaidan’s grief after Alchera was a dark thing and that the 2 years after changed him for good. If the opposite had happened - Sam was the one who survived Alchera instead of Kaidan - what would his reaction or grief be like? How would he have changed - into a colder, Saren-like figure (until a resurrected Kaidan shows up again someday like 2 years later because it would be too horrible otherwise D:)?

You can ALWAYS ask a question! Thank you for this one.

Fugue is ultimately a story about grief - the process of surviving it and healing from it. Kaidan is such a fantastic character to tackle it with, because I think his disposition lends itself so well to that arc. I didn't want it to be a story about suffering and pain, even though those things are an inextricable part of it. At its core, Fugue is centered around hope - grief is something you can come back from. You may not be the same person. Your life may not be what you imagined, but you're still here, and what you've built out of the ashes has meaning.

In Fugue, I wanted Kaidan to have the chance to rebuild himself and discover who he is outside of Shepard's shadow. I thought that was important for a character whose identity is so entwined with a person who is larger than life in so many ways.

It's a very different story if you switch their places. Now, we'll get a glimpse of what losing Kaidan does to Sam in the next story, which will be titled Mezzo and follows the events of ME2. But there are so many extenuating circumstances. Sam's been resurrected. Kaidan isn't dead, just estranged. Sam's got a lot of trauma to process and manage while being stripped of the tools he needs to manage them, and while he doesn't handle it well, it's hard to blame him.

But what if it were Sam who survived Alchera? What does that look like?

Sam, I think, is ultimately less emotionally resilient than Kaidan is. He thinks he can out-stubborn a brick wall. He is more detached by nature. When he's hurt, he shuts down emotionally and lashes out at the people who care about him. Kaidan does a lot to draw out his empathy and willingness to connect, because those things don't come naturally to him. He has to work at them. So in losing Kaidan, I think he loses those things, too.

I imagine that after Alchera, Sam would work himself to the bone, and make the Alliance and being a Spectre his entire world, because that's something he has control over. He'd regress back to where he was at the start of Cantata - an impressive soldier, but aloof and distant with no real investment in the things he does outside of, "there is a problem and I see the solution." Sam himself would hide behind Commander Shepard, the persona.

He'd hurt. He'd hurt, and with no way to make it stop, he'd want to make everyone else hurt, too. So you mix that detachment with cruelty born out of anger and hurt, and yeah, you've got a pretty good recipe for Sam becoming someone like Saren.

Anderson would try to pull him out of it, but Sam wouldn't tell him what he really lost, which would make that...hard. Because Anderson wouldn't understand what he's truly dealing with. And Anderson, despite all the positive influence he has on Sam, has never been good at reaching him when he's in a dark place.

So I think his best hope for putting the pieces back together is Liara, who understands him in unique ways even Kaidan doesn't. But Liara, too, struggles sometimes to separate Sam from Commander Shepard, because her fear of the reapers means she needs Commander Shepard. I think it would be hard for her to be what he needs. She would try - I just don't know if she would succeed.

So while Kaidan heals over the course of two years, I don't think Sam would. Kaidan may not have moved on by the time they see each other on Horizon, but he is moving forward. Sam, on the other hand, is just running in the direction that lets him keep moving, without caring what direction it is.

This also takes a lot of the complexity and conflict out of Horizon. Part of why Kaidan handles it badly is the unfairness of it. He spent two years clawing his way out of a hole, remaking himself from the ground up, re-defining who he is, and it's for nothing. Sam came back. He didn't have to do any of it. That takes some time to come to terms with and move past. But Sam? When you're drowning, you don't ask questions if someone throws you a lifeline. You just take it.

I think it's really fascinating that Kaidan, as the person with the better coping mechanisms, the stronger support network, and greater emotional stability makes for a much more complex and rewarding story than Sam's version of it would be.

Fugue is a look at how to find strength in yourself, which is something Kaidan needs to learn how to do. Sam has always been his source of strength, and without him, Kaidan has to look inward to find it. Whereas Sam has always tried to take on life alone, and learned how to find strength in others largely due to Kaidan's influence. So if you take him away, you put Sam back to square one. Alchera makes Kaidan in ways it would break Sam.

[spnorwhatever]

The Bone Trilogy by apokteino... much to think about

[thinkingisadangerouspastime]

what do you think about people saying aang and katara wouldn't work because katara has abandonment issues and aang first instinct is always to run away / flee? (you don't need to answer if you dont want to ofc)

I’ve been pondering over this ask for a few weeks now (I think it’s been a few weeks? Time is a lie and I’m bad at answering asks in order lmao) and honestly, anon? I don’t think it’s worth it for any of us to acknowledge this particular rhetoric regarding Kataang’s relationship. Why? Because it’s a perfect example of a bad faith argument. People who offer up this as “evidence” that Aang and Katara wouldn’t work romantically do not care that what they are saying is untrue. Thus, they are not seeking to find compromise or common ground, and you shouldn’t feel bothered to entertain them.

Like, let’s be real. Aang runs away a grand total of… twice in the show? Once technically prior to the present storyline itself? Correct me if I’m wrong in my counting, of course! But I cannot think of any time Aang runs away that a) happens outside of Book 1, b) he doesn’t accept the consequences of and/or impose unnecessary guilt on himself, c) is in regard to his relationship with Katara. To my knowledge, Aang ran away:

Pre-canon, fearing separation from Gyatso because of his status as the Avatar (provided in a flashback in “The Storm”)

From the fisherman’s criticism that is ultimately linked to the same issue as above (which makes sense, because this instance also occurs in “The Storm”)

I suppose a case could be made that Aang was “running away” post-DoBS when he temporarily delays getting a firebending teacher, but like. Extenuating circumstances (he blames himself for the mission’s failure and for their friends’ capture, not to mention he’s back at an empty Air Temple - intense mixed feelings, you know?). Also, it’s not like he “runs away” once Zuko becomes his teacher, and in fact Aang both very eagerly accompanies him to the Sun Warrior “ruins” and is the one to originally allude to why Zuko’s firebending is off in the first place (“Maybe your firebending comes from rage and you just don’t have enough anger to fuel it the way you used to”). So I find it hard to categorize this instance as “running away” when arguably it falls more in line with hey, Aang was stressed and guilty and re-encountering memories of his people, so it’s not exactly a surprise he needed a moment to himself.

Furthermore: I also do not count Aang “running away” in the Book 3 premiere because to me, it’s pretty clear Aang was actually running towards his responsibilities as the Avatar there both out of obligation and to grapple with what he deems his own failure (running towards his responsibilities too soon, as it happens, hence why he reunites with his friends after the fact). I also don’t count his “running away” in the series finale with the Lion Turtle because he was a) clearly in some kind of trance jfc and b) again, he was trying to face his responsibilities as the Avatar. Literally the opposite of running away and also entirely out of his control because yk. Spirit World powers, lol.

So Aang ran away twice, thrice if one is feeling really harsh. Even taking into consideration the latter two examples (that again are really not him running away), it’s clear that none of his motives are ever related to Katara. It’s always about his being the Avatar. Fearing his duties, accepting his duties, facing his duties, etc. etc. So trying to overlay that theme with his and Katara’s affections for each other seems pretty nonsensical, lol. And besides - a major part of Aang’s arc is him reconciling that he is both the Avatar and the last airbender. His transition from running away to running towards (to kind of meeting in the middle) these parts of himself is demonstrative of his growth as a character. Like,, sorry Aang has solid and nuanced development??

In other words, there is no canon basis to the idea that Aang’s “first instinct” is always to run away. Yes, he runs away a couple times, but it’s never related to Katara and is only a significant struggle for him in the early days of Book 1. Thus, when people try to use it as “evidence” against Kataang, it’s a clear red flag that they don’t care about taking canon at its own merit. They simply prefer fanon. To each their own, ofc! But again - watch out for the bad faith argument. Ain’t worth your time.

Regarding Katara’s “abandonment issues”: I don’t think it’s untrue to say that Katara struggles with people leaving her, and she definitely struggles with Aang’s brief disappearance in the Book 3 premiere (also related to how her father had to leave during the war). But Aang proves time and time again that he always comes back to her. To name a few: they reunite at the end of “The Awakening.” Aang returned to her after the Siege of the North (Koizilla, lol). Aang came to find her in CoD. Aang found and helped in her “The Painted Lady.” When Aang disappears during the series finale, Katara trusts - even though she is understandably anxious - that he will return to defeat Ozai and that he will succeed (“Aang won’t lose. He’s gonna come back”). So it’s clear Katara doesn’t see Aang as a “flight risk,” lmao - why should the fandom? Once again, it all returns to the notion of bad faith. People who adamantly believe in the rhetoric you present, anon, do not care about canon, which in itself is totally fine, but it is oftentimes important to distinguish between canon and fanon. If someone outright refuses to do that - major red flag.

In sum: this argument is 99% of the time not worth engaging because it is a blatant misinterpretation of canon. We all have better things to do! (Like prepping for Kataang Week, am I right?)

[moon-light-jukebox]

see? - [Reid x Reader] - Chapter 4

masterlist

previous chapter // series index

Summary: Spencer’s entire world has shifted, but before he can dwell on any of it, he and the rest of the team must race against the clock to find the unsubs newest victim.  

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Category: Angst (for now)

Word Count: 3.7k for Chapter 4 

Content Warning: Normal Criminal Minds stuff. Mentions of drug addiction. Angst

A/n: This chapter is the last planned one from Spencer’s POV. This is sort of another cliffhanger...but I’ll try to have chapter 5 out as soon as I can. Thank you for reading!

-- The Price We Pay --

(Spencer’s POV)

The most terrible moments in my life never happened slowly. I couldn’t be sure if that’s because of how my brain processed them or that’s just how they happened.

My hours with Tobias seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. My father all but ran out of my life. The light left Maeve’s eyes in a fraction of a second.

This was different.

I heard Hotch's question; I saw the pain ripple across his face when Garcia gave a muffled reply.

“Penelope,” he said, his voice sounding hollow. “I know you know where she is. I think she’s…she’s in danger, Penelope. Please.”

Hotch doesn't say please. Hotch doesn't beg. I knew that, of course, I knew that. I had known the man for over 10 years now.

That is why his behavior didn't make sense.

Looking back, I think this moment happened so slowly because my brain refused to process the gravity of this moment. It was trying to protect me.

Why would Hotch ask about Y/n right now? I knew Garcia must have helped her go into hiding…but why were we talking about it now?

Despite my brain lagging, my body knew something was wrong. My lungs seized. I heard Rossi say something. His voice was coming from the right…but I couldn't hear him. It's like I was underwater; everything was muffled.

My body was going into shock, but I couldn’t understand why.

“Reid. Reid.” I felt a hand on my shoulder, gripping tightly, trying to anchor me to the moment. “Spencer, come on, kid. Focus.”

He never calls me Spencer, I thought, turning my head to the left to meet the wide brown eyes of my friend. “Derek? What…You’re still driving back.”

“We were a block away.” He turned me more towards him, his left hand coming up to grip the back of my neck, applying just enough pressure to make me focus. “I know this is hard, Kid. But we need you.”

Realistically it had only been minutes since Hotch picked up his phone, but it had felt like hours. And everyone in this room had already pieced together a puzzle I was still struggling to see.

I blinked. Then I blinked again. “Y/n doesn’t have a family." When I turned my gaze to Hotch, I saw my unit chief, my boss, my friend tense for a second before he lifted his head, meeting my gaze head-on. "You…You created the Nightingale system after Haley died. It's emergency family relocation. She's…she wasn't close enough with any of her family to use it."

All of the pieces of the puzzle were there, right there in front of me, but I couldn't snap them together.

Hotch didn't say anything for a moment; he just looked at me. Then he lowered the phone from his ear, clicking a button before the sound of clicking keys filled the room. "You're on speaker, Garcia."

"Sir?" she questioned, her voice nasally and thick with congestion. But even though that, just that one word was dripping with sadness and unease.

"You need to hurry, Penelope. We think the unsub may already have her."

She gave a choked sob before the clicking of her computer keys got faster.

But this doesn’t make sense. “The unsub only takes pregnant women,” I rasped. “He’s…he’s after…but he’s not after any pregnant women…he’s after…”

My mind seemed to wake up with that thought, adrenaline finally running through my system and becoming useful.

Pregnancy, on average, lasts for 280 days. Our unsub wanted heavily pregnant women…he wanted women that were about to go into labor.

Images of the night I was outside her apartment flashed in my mind. The only night I had ever had with her…279 days ago.

The thought of her being with someone else pained me, but I grasped onto the idea with both hands, holding on tightly.

“She’s not…she doesn’t fit the victimology. She….she wouldn't be far enough along. Not unless…" My words hung in the air, my tongue-tied in my mouth, refusing to finish them.

Because if the unsub had her…she would have been pregnant when she left.

My world was slowly shifting into focus at the same moment I felt JJ’s hand on my upper arm.

“Spence,” JJ whispered.

“Did you know?” I choked out. “Did all of you know?”

Morgan clicked his tongue against his teeth before he shook his head. “Nah, kid. I didn’t know.”

But my eyes weren't on either of the people at my sides; my eyes were across the room. My eyes were locked on the man I had always trusted with my life. The man who was the best father I had ever known.

“No one knew besides Garcia and myself,” he said firmly. “I ordered her not to tell anyone else. If you have any issues, you can take them up with me.”

“If I have any issues?” I hissed, my teeth snapping together. It wasn’t until I felt wetness on my cheeks that I realized I was crying. “You…She’s pregnant.”

All of the tension seemed to leave his face, leaving him looking as battered as I felt. “We’ll do this later, Spencer.”

He never called me Spencer. “Is…is the baby…mine?” I had to ask, but everyone in the room already knew.

The man I thought was my friend nodded. “Yes.”

“Hotch!” JJ shrieked. “What were you thinking?! What was Y/n thinking?!”

Any emotion in his eyes hardened at her tone, his shoulders squared. The familiar coldness I saw when he faced down monsters and madmen took over his face. He didn’t look like my friend, like the man I had always admired. He wasn’t Hotch, he wasn’t Aaron; he was Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner. And he was giving that look…to me.

“I did this because she asked me to. She showed up at my house in the middle of the fucking night because of a fight she had with you. She was…She is like family to me, and she was terrified. Because she went to tell the man she loved that she was pregnant, and he was cruel to her. He said he wished she was dead."

I didn’t flinch under his words; I knew what I had done.

“How could she trust you after that? She didn’t even know you had a problem, Reid.”

My addiction was always the elephant in the room. It didn't matter that I had struggled with it for the better part of 10 years; the team still refused to speak about it out loud.

Until now.

“You should have told me,” was all I could say.

Hotch didn’t budge. “You should have been a man worth telling.”

I flinched then; it was like he shot me. I think it would have hurt less if he had shot me.

Rossi stepped forward, placing a hand on our unit chief’s shoulder. “We don’t have time for this. If he does have our girl, we have to find her. We have to find…them.”

“Garcia,” Hotch barked out.

"I've got it! Her address is 20 Royal Oak Road. But I don't know if she'll be there. I hacked into her computer, and she had…she had a doctor's appointment scheduled for tonight."

I wanted to ask why she would have a doctors’ appointment scheduled for tonight…but I knew why. “Who is her doctor?”

“Reid,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry-“

“Who is her doctor, Garcia?”

“His name is Dr. Johnson. He’s affiliated with St. Mercy’s hospital.”

Hotch grabbed his jacket, already heading for the door. “Rossi, you and Kate go to the abduction site. See if they have any sort of surveillance, witnesses. Anything. JJ, you’re with me at her home. Morgan, I need you to get to the hospital. Spencer-“  

I didn’t hear what he told me. I was already out the door.

--

I had climbed into Morgan’s SUV without thought, settling in my seat a moment before he jumped behind the wheel.

My friend didn’t say anything while we made the 5-minute drive to St. Mercy’s hospital. He said nothing while we both ran inside the hospital’s entrance. The first time he spoke was to the nursing staff, flashing his badge and asking them to pull Dr. Johnson away from whatever patient he was with.

I’m not sure what Derek said, I’m not sure how he was able to convey to them how urgent the matter was, but the doctor was in front of us moments later. He was an older man with thinning white hair and tanned weathered skin.

“Sir, I’m SSA Derek Morgan, this is Dr. Spencer Reid. We’re with the FBI, and we’d like to ask you a few questions about one of your patients.”

“I’m afraid I can’t talk about any of my patients without-“

“I understand that sir, but these are extenuating circumstances. We believe she may be in danger. You heard about the murder in Eugene yesterday?”

All color drained from the man’s face. “You think the person who did that has one of my patients?”

“Yes, we do,” Derek said firmly. He was always so good at this part. He could talk his way into everything. I couldn’t help but wonder what that must be like. “She’s very heavily pregnant, possibly…possibly with a boy.”

“I have several patients that are in their last trimester but…” he trailed off, shifting uncomfortably.

“We have reason to believe that Y/n Y/l/n might be in danger. Her records indicate she had an appointment here with you tonight.”

Dr. Johnson frowned. “I don’t have a patient by that name. I…” he trailed off, his gaze shifting over to me. “I have a Y/n Reid.”

Ever since my confrontation with Hotch, I had been existing in a detached state. Maybe it was my mind’s way of keeping me safe. But hearing her name… “She goes by Reid?” The corners of my lips twitched involuntarily despite the pain radiating from my chest. Of course, she did. It would be the last name I would ever look for.

“I’m afraid I really can’t give out any more information –“

“How far along is she?” I interrupted.

“I’m sorry, I can’t-“

Every single bit of calm and control I had inside of me seem to snap all at once. I took a step forward, my hands balled into fists at my sides. “Listen,” I seethed, my voice like iron. “Not only am I a federal agent, but I am also the fucking father. I want to know when she’s due!”

Dr. Johnson was quite a bit shorter than I was; and while I had never felt like a particularly intimidating person, he seemed to shrink back under my focus. "She's…she's set to be induced tomorrow morning. I have my patients come in the night before. I wanted…I wanted her to be induced earlier but…" He adjusted the glasses on his nose. "She's just so stubborn. She thought she'd go into labor on her own. But I can’t let her go over 42 weeks. She’ll be 41 weeks and 6 days tomorrow. But she never checked in for the appointment.”

“Son of a bitch,” Morgan breathed, pulling his phone out of his pocket and typing rapidly.

“Do…do you know the sex of the baby?” I asked, still trying to hold on to a hope that we were wrong; somehow, despite all of the evidence, we had all been so wrong about this.

“I do. She…Ms. Reid doesn’t know. She wanted it to be a surprise.” He looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Do you…do you want to know?”

“NO, he doesn’t.” I turned to look at Morgan, my eyes struggling to focus. “You’ll find out in the delivery room, kid. We’re going to find her. We’re going to find them.”

It seemed like a ridiculous thing to stress, but it brought me some small sort of comfort while my friend led me out of the hospital to the SUV.

--

Morgan had called Hotch to confirm what we all already knew. Y/n had disappeared to Bend, Oregon, and she was in the final days of her pregnancy. Rossi and Kate found a car registered to Y/n Reid abandoned in a grocery store parking lot. There was an infant car seat and two bags in the back seat. One bag contained baby items…the other were the sorts of things a mother might need in the hospital.

We were all to meet Hotch and JJ at Y/n's apartment, and Hotch had asked that I come along in the hopes that I would see something everyone else had missed.

Because I had known her better than anyone.

“Kid,” Morgan said softly, breaking the silence inside the car. “We’ll find her…we’ll find them.”

I found myself nodding in agreement automatically. It felt like the right sort of reaction to have. My friend was worried about me, and sometimes you just do things because it’s better for the other person.

I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s how Y/n felt that night. The night she left.

"Her phone is still on," I found myself saying. Morgan didn't respond, but I saw him glance over at me out of the corner of his eye. "The same phone she had before she left. I don't know why she never disconnected it. Sometimes…" I broke off, emotion suddenly clogging my throat, threatening to strangle me. "Sometimes, I call it just to hear her voice. I know she won't pick up. But the…the message is still her voice. I always leave a message. I don't know if she ever checks them. But I always leave one…just…just in case." My hand came up to wipe angrily at my cheeks, embarrassed both by my confession and the emotions I couldn't seem to hold in.

“She’ll hear the messages, Reid.”

I gave him another automatic nod.

It turns out Y/n didn’t live too far from the police station. Her home was in an apartment complex on the south end of town, on the third floor. I couldn’t the number of steps from the elevator to her blue front door. Twenty-three.

The instant I stepped inside, it felt wrong; everything felt wrong. The living room was basic and utilitarian. Impersonal. Nothing like Y/n. She was the sort of person who always felt like home.

This didn’t feel like anybody’s home.

I followed Morgan through the house, taking note of how clean and orderly everything was. Y/n had never been messy, but her apartment at home was filled to the brim with objects and things that made her smile.

"There are no pictures on the walls, nothing personal,” Morgan noted, giving voice to my own thoughts. “Hotch?” he called.

“We’re in here,” his voice replied, leading us down a small hallway.

On the right side of the hallway, there was another door that had been thrown open, and we found the other member of my team standing inside.

The room was painted a pale grey with white curtains hanging across the only window. There was a small, darker grey crib against the biggest wall and a rocking chair in the corner.

Something about the sight of that rocking chair was a punch to the stomach because I could see her in it so clearly. Her eyes soft while she moved the chair back and forth, holding a tiny bundle in her arms.

How long had I wanted to be a father? How many times had I dreamed of starting a family with Y/n…only to lose it all now?

“Spence,” JJ said, stepping towards me.

I couldn't look at her; I ignored her because I couldn’t do anything else. “The doctor said she didn’t know the gender of the baby. But I don’t think she would have painted the room pink or blue. She was never that sort of person.”

My eyes ran over the rest of the room. There was a small chest of drawers against another wall with some sort of platform on top of it. A changing table, I thought absentmindedly. There were pictures of stars hung on the walls, small boxes of diapers stacked neatly in the closet.

By the time I made my way over to the rocking chair, I could barely see anything. My torture by Tobias had cost me so much already; my addiction had robbed so much from me. But now I was standing in my child's nursery, and I was having trouble remembering any pain that had ever felt worse than this.

There was a small table beside the chair with a small lamp placed in the middle, but my eyes were fixed on the book pearched on the edge of the table. My fingers wrapped around the spine of the book, lifting it with shaking hands. The cover was white with a tiny bunny rabbit on the corner.  

“Kid,” I heard Morgan say softly from behind me.

I couldn’t stop myself from flipping open the book, even though I knew it would bring me nothing but pain.

'The Story of You' was written on the first page in swirling script, right above a sonogram picture. My eyes moved over the outline of a face that I knew I would love for the rest of my life,;my fingers moved over the glossy paper, tracing the outline of my child's features.

A strangled sound left my throat when I read the words underneath the photo, my eyes squeezing tight.

“Spencer?” Rossi asked, coming up to my side. “What is it?”

I couldn’t open my eyes, but I tried to clear my throat, willing myself to speak. “The doctor said she didn’t know the baby’s sex…but…but I think she did anyway.”

Because underneath the photo, I saw her familiar handwriting.

Knowing the name of a child that wasn't even born yet wouldn't help me find her; it wasn't relevant to the case, but I couldn't move past it.

“Isaac Benjamin Reid.”

I couldn’t be sure how long the silence lasted before Rossi asked if that name had any significance to y/n.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said softly. “It’s…it has significance to me. Isaac Asimov is my father’s favorite author. I hadn’t read any of his works since my dad left…but one day on the jet, Y/n got me talking about it. The next day I found a copy of I, Robot on my desk at work. She didn’t say anything, but I knew it was her.”

It was always her.

“And Benjamin?” Hotch prodded.  

I let out a heavy exhale. “Ben Walker is my NA sponsor. He has been for over 8 years.” It wasn’t lost on me that none of my team knew about Ben. I never talked about that part of my life; I hadn’t even told Y/n he was my sponsor. I had no idea how she knew about him, but there was no doubt in my mind that’s why she’s selected this name.

“This doesn’t make sense,” JJ muttered, causing me to finally look up at her. “I’m sorry, but none of this makes sense. You said that she didn’t know the baby’s sex.”

"That's what the doctor said," I clarified before closing the book softly. "I guess she just had a feeling."

My friend nodded. “Of course. But how did the unsub know? Garcia has been digging for over an hour. Y/n was…she was hiding, Reid. She worked from home. She doesn’t have a social media presence. Garcia can’t even find any indication that she has friends.”

“So, how did the unsub find her?” Hotch finished. “How did the unsub know she existed? Let alone that she was pregnant with a boy.”

Kate stepped into the room, her eyes moving over everything. "Alright. We need to revisit each victim. Then we need to determine if he came here for y/n or if he just found her. If she's over 40 weeks, I'm sure it's obvious that she's pregnant."

JJ moved to the window and pulled back the curtains, her eyes moving over the street. “But how did he know it was a boy? How did he know any of the victims were pregnant with boys?”

The ringing of Hotch’s phone cut through the air. “Go ahead, Garcia.”

“Sir, I’ve been trying to hack not the security systems of the buildings around the supermarket. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I’m trying to find any vehicle that seems evil.”

“Did you find anything?”

"Kevin and I have been running license plates against the state of Oregon's DMV. There's a bank two blocks away from the grocery store. Their security footage captured a black sedan driving by about 15 minutes after Y/n's debit card was used at the grocery store."

Rossi spoke next. “Is there any reason to suspect that car?”

“The plates belong to a different car, a red Volvo. It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got.”

Hotch nodded. “It’s our best lead. Can you track the car through traffic cameras?”

“Doing it now, sir.”

We all started moving towards the door before Hotch gave another order. "Send us the most recent locations, then every single location afterward as soon as you get it. We'll split up and try to canvas the area. Y/n could go into labor at any moment. He couldn't have gone far."

Hotch didn't bother telling me to stay behind this time, but I felt his eyes on me when I got into one of the SUVs. Maybe it was guilt, maybe it was his knowledge that I wouldn't listen to him anyway.

It didn’t matter.

Morgan set off at a breakneck speed, his door barely closing before we started moving. His posture was tense, and his eyes were moving over the landscape rapidly.

“She’s gonna be okay, Spencer.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “You don’t know that Derek.”

“Yes, I do,” he said firmly. “She’s not just a pregnant woman. She’s a profiler. She’s one of the best profilers I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how this son of a bitch found her, but Garcia created her background. There is no fucking way he knew who she is. He doesn’t know he took an FBI agent.”

The thought should have brought me comfort, but it didn't. It just tore an even bigger hole in my chest. Y/n had left because of me. She had gone into hiding because she was afraid of me. She had a new identity that had potentially made her vulnerable…made my son vulnerable because of me.

Morgan was right; we had to find her.

Because I didn’t think I would be able to survive her paying for my mistakes.

------

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let me know if you’d like to be added to any of my tag lists. 

[dragonrajafanfiction]

The Crane Team: Let’s Do Lunch

Despite her long night, Yoko was back at it in the morning, working with the legal staff she’d hired herself and getting court dates scheduled, gathering documentation of alibis, extenuating circumstances and more importantly, unfair legal practices that would hopefully not only get the jailed Devil Clan members freed, but also their records completely expunged.

Her lunch time was late, it was going on nearly 2 pm, but she noticed that Ryuusei, her over enthusiastic suitor was not going to lunch. When she finally did leave the office on break, Ryuusei jumped up and hurried after her. “I’ll go with you!”

She laughed. “I knew you were going to do that…”

“And you let me starve myself on purpose!” The ponytailed Ryuusei Ryoma was about her age and had her same energy. “I’ll pay for you.”

“I haven’t even agreed to let you eat with me. There’s no paying, I’m just going down to the cafeteria here.”

“At least take a walk outside!”

Yoko glanced at him. “No, right now it’s too windy.”

Her refusal to go out had nothing to do with the wind and everything to do with the Hydra snipers on the rooftops. Three of those men were Suns of Amaterasu, one of them was a Cassell student planted by Zero to keep an eye on things. The wise thing was to avoid going outside at lunch.

It reminded her too much of her time with Caesar, Chu Zihang and Lu Mingfei when they had to be holed up in the Takamagahara in Japan. This place was much bigger of course.

The cafeteria was more of a high end restaurant with waiters and staff. While there was a buffet it was just as luxurious, filled with steaming trays of the catch of the day, fresh salads and decadent desserts.

She picked up a plate.

“The buffet? Really? Don’t want to get something to order?”

“No…” She went through the line. And only picked out dishes that other Hydra members were picking. There was no telling if they might try to poison her food.

Ryuusei followed her to sit down. “You’re really persistent, but that doesn’t earn any points from me. It just means that you don’t listen and you don’t really care how I feel.” She said.

Ryuusei sighed. “I really do like you…”

“The men who really like me tend to end up dead.” She looks at him in the face. All the warmth leaves her eyes.

Ryuusei’s frown deepens. 

“It’s enough to be seen with you like this… so let’s make it a meeting. What do you think of reunification?”

Ryuusei rests his chin in his hand sulkily. “I guess… it’s alright. I really don’t care one way or another, but if it means peace and I can live my life, I’m all for it.”

“I understand.” Yoko breaks open a large crab claw. “I’ve seen many former Devil Clan members cope with their lives this way. So long as the world is chaotic and dangerous, it’s best to care for only small parts of it and simplify the rest so it can be easily compartmentalized and ignored as irrelevant. You just say… something has nothing to do with you.”

“Is that a bad thing? If I can’t control it, why care about it?” He leaned back, taking a bite of a peace of sushi.

“The reaction is not bad… it’s not the world you need to control, it’s your own mind set. Even though you’re here and you want to get close to me, you’re still stuck in a short sighted fatalism.” Her eyes swirl with painful thoughts and memories. “The man I loved the most was stuck too… but in his last moments he broke free of that. He was a Ghost. Like me. He could only live a certain number of years. He lived as long as he could under the radar, but eventually he was caught. But before he was, I told him to fight for his life. For his future. He’d lost everything at that point, but even then, he imagined a future he could fight for. But the only way to fight for it was to live.”

“But he didn’t survive.” Yoko felt the lump grow in her throat and she sighed. “The future he fought for wasn’t reality. One could say it couldn’t have been. But while he was fighting for it was real. In that moment, the world we dreamed of was real. He died in that moment. But that hope… it burned so bright when he was alive.”

She blinked rapidly and then wiped at her face with a gloved hand. “He made that future real by fighting for it. Not by actually getting it. I will never ever forget him. He was so amazing… beyond anyone I’ve ever...”

She coughed to relieve her sorrow. “Ryuusei, that’s what you’re up against. You have to have the audacity to have true hope in the face of hopelessness. You need to dream of the future and rush towards it. Until then? You’ll never have my interest.”

[filmhistorymptv1145]

Examine the ways in which films deal with social, political, cultural, and economic issues, both in direct and indirect ways. What is the political impact of cinema on audiences around the world and how do we see it? Should filmmakers directly engage with these kinds of issues or do so subtly? Discuss any of the films we have watched so far from this perspective, and draw upon other examples if necessary.

Social commentary exists in many forms. We read it in books and hear it in music of every genre. It does not discriminate, covering every issue from politics to economics. As film grew into its own medium, it became a new platform for artists to utilize in portraying their visions of the world. Whether they be whimsical and over the top, or down to earth and stunningly realistic, movies grew to become one of the largest entertainment industries. Directors and screenwriters, whether inspired by or displeased with their surroundings, came to use film as a method of sharing their thoughts and emotions. Be it through direct or indirect means, they would criticize politicians and governments to historic and current world events. Certain countries were more limited than others in controlling the content of films, pushing creators to become even more crafty and thoughtful when conveying their opinions on screen.

With the Motion Picture Production Code in full effect in the US, film makers who wanted to touch upon political issues in American society had to do so in a very subtle way. Take Force of Evil, for instance. On the outside, it reads like a classic gangster movie that was commonly seen in the 1940’s. However, it is deeply critical of the money and power-hungry American underbelly of society, digging into the Capitalism that has overtaken the country even in these earlier years. Irony is found in the two main characters, a pair of brothers. Joe is a lawyer who runs dirty deals with gang members, using his education and career to further their unsavory deeds. His brother Leo believes that his own line of work is earnest and respectable, when in reality it is not. Leo runs a ‘bank’ for the small number rackets that exist in New York City, mainly centered around bets that are placed on horse races. Leo strongly feels that he is not as morally corrupted as his brother, despite being in charge of an illegal business.

The mise-an-scene of the film is what really drives home the underlying critique of money and its corrupting force. Joe takes Leo’s former secretary Doris for a walk on Wall Street, taking her through a church cemetery. The church building is completely dwarfed by the towering buildings of Wall Street’s capitalist businesses. The implied message here is that money is the new God, that the hold it has over people is nearly as strong as religion.

For Polonsky, who was put on the blacklist by HUACC for his leftist ideals, this message is as true to him as it gets. In Polonsky’s eyes, people no longer feared God as much as they did losing money in capitalist America. Considering what the entire world had just lost three years prior in World War Two, it is almost insulting to showcase people like Joe and his associates on screen. Money grubbing is not what America wanted its people to think they had fought and died for, just the opposite. Justice and morality is what America wants people to think it stands for, not capitalism and the desire to supersede the people in their lives. Force of Evil is astoundingly subtle and simultaneously gritty, holding true to the film noir standard of the times.

At the end of the film, when Leo is killed by Joe’s nefarious associates, Joe goes to retrieve his brother’s body. Stairwells are used as a metaphor for an internal moral struggle. In a voiceover, Joe laments ‘I just kept going down and down. It felt like I was going to the bottom of the world.’ The decrepit area beneath the bridge is the exact opposite of the organized, shining city above. Finding his brother’s body is Joe’s moral rock bottom, both literally and metaphorically. It is a slap in the face for Joe, stripping away all of the justifications he has held for his less than moral behavior and actions.

Polonsky cuts to Doris as Joe says, ‘He is dead,’ juxtaposing the image of a living woman with the realization that his brother Leo is gone. It is jarring, but it also suggests a dual motivation rising within Joe. Inspired by Doris’ love and Leo’s death, Joe turns to make his way back up the enormous staircase. This finale leaves the viewers with some hope that Joe can possibly redeem himself after his selfish actions, but will it be as quickly as he ran down the stairs towards his brother’s corpse?

One wouldn’t think that in 1950’s America, a bold film would tackle such a hot social issue: equal rights for African Americans. Especially with the Motion Picture Production Code still in full effect. Typically, when reflecting on movies from that decade, our minds are filled with images of romantic melodramas, as well as musicals and other bright, cheery content. The Defiant Ones not only tackled the issue of racism in America, but it also set the standard for the ‘buddy’ films that are commonplace today. Two escaped convicts are chained together at the wrist, one white and one African American. The film goes back and forth between Johnny and Cullen’s escapades whilst on the run, and the officers who have been assigned to track them down and take them back to prison. The tone of the film is established in the first few minutes, when one of the officers refers to Cullen as the n-word. Later on in the movie, when Johnny and Cullen are apprehended by a group of townspeople after attempting to rob their general store, they start stringing up two nooses. Johnny is mortified, looking around at the townsfolk with terror in his eyes. ‘You can’t lynch me, I’m a white man!’ he pleads. The message is clear: lynching is something white people do to black people.

Not only does the movie look at the harsh reality of life for African Americans at the time, but the relationship that develops between Johnny and Cullen is in itself socially and politically charged. Over the course of the movie, the two convicts go from being at odds with one another to developing a close friendship. Not even Johnny’s mistake to trust the woman they holed up with can break their bond. Johnny leaves the woman behind to rescue Cullen from the dangerous swamps. At the film’s end, Cullen is cradling Johnny, who is wounded from a gunshot to the chest. They are collapsed on the grass together, sharing a cigarette while Cullen sings and the police detective approaches to apprehend them.

Not only has Johnny moved past his racist ideals, but one could also say that their positioning at the end of the film is borderline sexual. The way Cullen holds Johnny is almost as if it is in a lover’s embrace. Cullen’s portrayal in the film is especially bold, since he was portrayed to be well-spoken, intelligent and overall good. A far cry from films like Birth of a Nation where African Americans are put in the most negative light possible, portrayed as thieves and rapists while the Ku Klux Klan members are seen as heroic and noble. The Defiant Ones, supported by Sidney Poitier’s phenomenal acting, gave rise to a much more positive role for African American actors to portray on screen. Though the ‘righteous Black man’ did end up becoming a trope in Hollywood for many years, it was still a positive step in the right direction for civil rights.

Outside of the US, films were not constricted by strict standards of morality and content. They were much freer to openly criticize the societal norms and political atmospheres that were in place at the time of their creation. Hiroshima Mon Amour is a French made film that touches on the devastation of the nuclear bomb drops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While the movie itself seems to be mainly centered around a couple who cannot be together due to extenuating circumstances and their own inner demons, it is also direct commentary on how Japan remembered the bombings, and how different it is from the perspective of the rest of the world.

The first ten minutes of the film are composed of an almost poetry-like sequence of shots of Hiroshima before and after the bombs paired together with the two main character’s voice overs. The characters, a French woman, and a Japanese man, are in bed together in a loving embrace. The opening shot features ash falling onto their naked bodies, which we can infer mimics the death ash that fell onto Hiroshima after the atomic bomb’s detonation. This frame cross fades into nearly the same image of the naked couple, but the ash is gone from their bedroom.

The woman is stating that she knows all about what happened in Hiroshima, from having seen the newsreels that aired after the bombs had been dropped. The man argues that she has no idea what really happened. She states that in the newsreels she viewed, bugs were already crawling up through the debris and dirt on the second day and that flowers were growing all over Hiroshima just a few days after the bomb had been dropped. This voiceover is paired with the footage of a young boy being treated for burns and lesions on his skin, the exact opposite of new life springing forth from the ashes. The obvious pain that the boy is enduring is starkly contrasted to how the French woman describes all the different kinds of flowers that began blooming after the bombs had been dropped.

The Hiroshima that exists in the French woman’s mind is completely different from the Japanese man’s. This speaks to the overall theme of the movie, that collective and individual memories, as well as one’s identity can be corrupted. That the human brain is not a perfect organ and at times, it can even be our worst enemy. The French woman protests that she has seen Hiroshima. She had been to its museums, she knew how it had been over ten-thousand degrees in Peace Square at the time of detonation, and she had seen the films that had been made about the devastation. Her partner states over and over during this intro sequence that, ‘You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing.’ Her experience of the disaster when compared to his is hollow, a clever way of illustrating how two people can think of the same event so differently.

Even if the trend of filmmaking has changed, shifting from film noir and melodrama to the blockbuster and action movies, social commentary still persists throughout the media. As the world around us changes and moves forward (be it for better or worse), so does the real-life content that directors and screenwriters are inspired by. Seeing politically and socially charged movies, whether they are extremely subtle or right up in your face, helps us both cope with world events and immortalize what occurred. As if to say, ‘We were here. We saw what took place. This is how we remember it.’

[everydayeveryday]

Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“When you’re late a lot, you learn how to make up for lost time.”

“I’m scared that I will never do anything of value with my life.”

“It’s very easy to rationalize what you’re doing when you don’t know the faces and the names of the people you might hurt. It’s very easy to choose yourself over someone else when it’s an abstract.”

“He still, all these years later, shines brighter to me than other people. Even after I got over him, I was never able to extinguish the fire completely, as if it’s a pilot light that will remain small and controlled but very much alive.”

“Life is long and full of an infinite number of decisions. I have to think that the small ones don’t matter, that I’ll end up where I need to end up no matter what I do. My fate will find me.”

“I remember what it feels like to truly love someone. For the right reasons. In the right way.”

“It is the teenage feelings that are the most intoxicating, the ones that have the power to render you helpless.”

“I did. I loved you so much it sometimes burned in my chest.”

“From experience, I can tell you that if you go around trying to figure out what’s fair in life or whether you deserve something or not, that’s a rabbit hole that is hard to climb out of.”

“It seems so simple, written out in order. For a moment, as I look at it, I think, Is that all? And then I realize that simple and easy aren’t the same thing.”

“But I suppose just because something is hard to understand, that doesn’t make it any less true.”

“the more I remember, the more it grabs hold.”

“I know that he’s telling the truth. But the fact of the matter is that I worry that I’ll believe him too much, that I’ll become too easily swayed into believing what I want to believe about him. I don’t want to do what I would have done before. I don’t want to believe what a person says and ignore what he does. I don’t want to see only what I want to see.”

“Sometimes I don’t realize how weighed down I am by my own worries until they are gone”

“But I’m trying to make new decisions so that they lead me to better places.”

“I may have gotten a bit infatuated with the idea that he and I have something romantic left between us, but I can see now that we don’t. I will probably always love him on some level, always hold a spot for him in my heart. But dating again, being together, that would be moving backward, wouldn’t it?”

“We can’t say what we would do in other circumstances. We can only know what we will do with the ones we face.”

“That’s your problem. You’re trying too hard to find the perfect answer when an answer will do.”

“You don’t need to find the perfect thing all the time. Just find one that works, and go with it”

“Because that is truly all I want in this world. I want to try to do something myself, knowing that when I have nothing left, someone will take me the rest of the way.

He turns me around to face the right direction, and he stands behind me. “Go for it,” he says. “I got you.”

“And part of loving someone, part of being the recipient of trust, is telling the truth even when it’s awful.”

“If there is only one person for everyone, what happens when soul mates can’t make it work?”

“If you can’t make it work, you aren’t soul mates,” she tells me.”

“I don’t know, I’m starting to think maybe you just pick a place and stay there. You pick a career and do it. You pick a person and commit to him.”

“I think as long as you’re happy and you’re doing something good with your life, it really doesn’t matter whether you went out and found the perfect thing or you chose what you knew you could make work for you.”

“But sometimes you can’t help but show the things you feel. Sometimes, despite how hard you try to fight your feelings, they show up in the glassiness of your eyes, the downward turn of your lips, the shakiness of your voice, and the lump in your throat. “We’re friends,” I say.”

“I suppose it would follow that if you and I come to a place we can’t get past, then we aren’t meant to be. Right? Then we aren’t right for each other. I mean, I think I have to believe that life will work out the way it needs to. If everything that happens in the world is just a result of chance and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, that’s just too chaotic for me to handle. I’d have to go around questioning every decision I’ve ever made, every decision I will ever make. If our fate is determined with every step we take . . . it’s too exhausting. I’d prefer to believe that things happen as they are meant to happen.”

“But I wonder how different my world would be if any of those things had happened. You can’t change just one part, can you? When you sit there and wish things had happened differently, you can’t just wish away the bad stuff. You have to think about all the good stuff you might lose, too. Better just to stay in the now and focus on what you can do better in the future.”

“Well, you never know what you’re ready for until you have to face it,”

“I don’t think meeting the love of your life gives you carte blanche to ruin everything in your path. There are a lot of people out there who find the person they believe they are supposed to be with, and it doesn’t work out because they have other things they have to do, and instead of being a liar and running from their responsibilities, they act like adults and do the right thing.”

“It doesn’t matter if we don’t mean to do the things we do. It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn’t even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences.

We have to face those consequences head-on, for better or worse. We don’t get to erase them just by saying we didn’t mean to. Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices. I’m starting to think that when we don’t own them, we don’t own ourselves.”

“That love makes you do crazy things, that sometimes you have to do things that seem wrong from the outside but you know are right”

“You can only forgive yourself for the mistakes you made in the past once you know you’ll never make them again.”

“And I’m learning not to read too much into good things. I’m learning just to appreciate the good while you have it in your sights. Not to worry so much about what it all means and what will happen next.”

“I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them. In time. The future is so incredibly unpredictable that trying to plan for it is like studying for a test you’ll never take.”

“That’s what you do when you want something. You don’t look for reasons why it won’t work. You look for reasons why it will.”

“Timing seems like an excuse. Extenuating circumstances is an excuse. If you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren’t neat and clean. They’re ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. That’s what I think. I think if you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances; you don’t hide behind them.”

“As a man who has been trying to run into you for months, let me assure you how rare it is that two specific people’s paths will cross.”

“Everything that is possible happens. That means that when you flip a quarter, it doesn’t come down heads or tails. It comes up heads and tails. Every time you flip a coin and it comes up heads, you are merely in the universe where the coin came up heads. There is another version of you out there, created the second the quarter flipped, who saw it come up tails. This is happening every second of every day. The world is splitting further and further into an infinite number of parallel universes where everything that could happen is happening. This is completely plausible, by the way. It’s a legitimate interpretation of quantum mechanics. It’s entirely possible that every time we make a decision, there is a version of us out there somewhere who made a different choice. An infinite number of versions of ourselves are living out the consequences of every single possibility in our lives. What I’m getting at here is that I know there may be universes out there where I made different choices that led me somewhere else, led me to someone else.” He looks at Gabby. “And my heart breaks for every single version of me that didn’t end up with you.”

[lovenotereminders]

Coping mechanisms for anxiety for when therapy isn’t an option

I’ll slap a big caveat on this and point out that I’m not a therapist or a medical professional, so take all of this with a pinch of salt and make sure to do your own research - I’m just passing along things I’ve read/heard from others, and things that have worked for me.

I of course always recommend seeking medical help if you’re able to. Anxiety is an illness, and should be treated just like any other. But these are things that could help people to cope if you can’t afford therapy, or are on a long waiting list to see a therapist, or any other reason that might prevent you from going. 

Even if therapy isn’t an option, it’s worth looking into seeing if going to speak to your GP is. For example, if your doctor has a record that you’ve been having these difficulties, it can be easier to get support in things like getting a sick note or extenuating circumstances or additional accommodations if you need something like that for school/work etc. You could also potentially access medication even if therapy isn’t an option, which may be more affordable/accessible. There are a bunch of really effective anti-anxiety meds out there that are worth looking into - people talk about mental health meds as if they dope you up and make you into a zombie, but that’s usually not the case with a lot of the newer medications out there, and there are loads of different options you can try if you feel one type of medicine doesn’t agree with your body, or your side-effects aren’t worth it. 

Attempt to keep track of your triggers. There are a lot of really great mood tracking apps (I use Daylio personally) that you can use to identify how you’ve been feeling on a particular day, and what you did. Being mindful of what you’re doing and how it’s making you feel, and examining if you can identify a cause of your anxiety spikes can be really helpful in the long run, because it helps you identify behaviours that make your anxiety better or worse, and allows you to change the way you act and avoid any triggers you identify. Similarly, you can also identify coping mechanisms you’ve tried, and examine whether they’re healthy or unhealthy, and how effective they are.

I know this is really cliché, but some super accessible things that a lot of people do to cope with anxiety are things like mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and breathing exercises. Stuff like full-body mind scans and progressive muscle relaxation are really easy to do, and there are dozens of apps and youtube videos and stuff out there that can guide you through exercises that you can use if you’re feeling particularly paranoid. They can also help to calm your physical symptoms and interrupt thought spirals. Of course they don’t work for everyone, and they aren’t a cure, but they can be a really helpful coping mechanism.

If you’re not able to access therapy in person, there are still a lot of resources you can use. If cost is a factor, there are a lot of lower-cost online therapy options, as well as free support services like online counselling (i.e. 7cupsoftea) and anxiety helplines/hotlines that allow you to speak to an adviser over the phone or via instant messenger, which might be helpful if you find yourself particularly panicky and need someone to talk you down.  As well as that, there are a lot of online resources to help you cope longer term. Mental health charity websites can often be a good place to start looking to research potential treatment options and coping mechanisms.

If you’re a student at a school or university, see if your institution has a counsellor, or any sort of mental health support accessible through that institution. If you’re employed at a large-ish firm, there may be resources you can access through your company, like through HR. 

A lot of CBT worksheets are available online for you to work through by yourself - even if you don’t have a therapist to go through them with, you can still do those exercises. If you google something like ‘CBT anxiety workbook’ or ‘CBT anxiety exercises’ you should come up with a ton of resources that you can flick through and see if you can identify any that you think might be helpful. Examples of some of these exercises:

Stuff like making a table to record details of your anxiety spikes can be really helpful (these usually involve details such as: when it happened, what was happening at the time, why you think it happened, how bad was your anxiety on a scale of 1 to 10, what actions did you take to try and calm those feelings, how effective were those actions, how bad was your anxiety on the same scale after taking those actions) in terms of identifying patterns in your behaviour, and what helps and what makes it worse. The physical act of writing everything down makes you more aware of and more likely to examine your own thought processes and behavioural patterns, and also allows you to identify patterns you may not have seen before. 

Another CBT exercise I’ve read about that can help with feelings of anxiety in the moment is a likelihood exercise - asking yourself what your anxiety/paranoia thinks will happen, estimating how many times you’ve thought that would happen, thinking about how many times it’s actually happened in reality, and comparing that, can help you rationalise those fears.

Other techniques include:

Doing some sort of vigorous activity to clear the anxious energy from your body - short periods of exercise, house/yard work like vacuuming, turning up some loud music and having a dance, etc. 

Making a list of soothing activities (i.e. having a hot drink, taking a shower, washing your face, wrapping yourself up in a blanket, etc.) and picking one when you’re feeling shaky to help self-soothe

Trying to get some mental distance from your worries by finding something else to focus on to interrupt those spirals - try and make it something productive and/or enjoyable. Doing something productive, even if it’s really simple like gathering up dirty laundry, gives you a task to focus on and can help you feel like you’ve accomplished something.

Setting aside daily ‘worry clearing time,’ in which you write down the things you’re worried about. If these worries arise outside of that time, try to tell yourself ‘I’ll worry about that later, but not now.’

In combination with the above, you can make an action plan of what you would do if any of your worries happen, so you feel more secure and prepared.

Some people find it helpful when they’re identifying their worries because they can them see the ones that they have no control over, or that aren’t actually that big a deal, and decide to set them aside and prioritise other things.

Try not to avoid your anxiety, or the things you don’t want to do because of it. Acknowledging it as something that you’re experiencing but that is separate from yourself - a external entity or force inside your head, can be helpful. When you start to feel anxious, some people actually address their anxiety and talk to it like it’s a person - this can help to separate it from your own personality and help you forgive yourself for being symptomatic.

Research unhealthy coping mechanisms so you can identify them. Things like over-reassurance (asking for a bit of reassurance from a friend/family member/partner is fine, but if you’re doing it all the time or need to repeat themselves because you don’t believe them at first), stress eating, avoidance, and substance use are some common ones, for instance.

Again, I stress that I’m not a doctor, and this is not a substitute for medical care, but it may be of some assistance if you’re not able to get that medical care yet. 

If anyone has any other tips, drop them in the replies! 

[luimnigh]

So, recently rewatched The Lost Fable through reactions, and it got me thinking. When Jinn says the pool "created a being of infinite life with the desire for pure destruction" was that her being poetic about the very human rage in Salem's heart was she actually fundamentally corrupted, though with enough humanity left over to love Oz and her kids until that fell apart.

That’s a very good question, and it’s one that ties into questions of the nature of the Grimm. 

We’re told in the World of Remnant shorts that Grimm only attack people, and the creations of people. Any fighting with animals is strictly territorial. 

But in the Tale of Two Brothers that Qrow tells us, the Grimm were created to destroy everything. All of Creation. 

And in the Lost Fable, we don’t see any Grimm outside of the God of Darkness’ little patch of land until after the first world dies. And those Grimm... don’t attack Salem. 

It says “Men knew what monstrosities emerged from it’s dark pools of annihilation”, but the one skeleton we see outside of the area has a sword run through it’s chest. They were killed by another person. 

The Grimm only attack the God of Light once they’ve been arguing and look like they’re about to come to blows. 

After Humanity is wiped out the first time, the Grimm move into area of human occupation, and it’s after Humanity returns do we see Grimm attacks on people for (chronologically) the first time. 

So, the question is twofold: why do they only start attack Humanity after the first fall? And why do they only attack people?

The easy answer seems to be Salem. She has the ability to command Grimm, if not one that works at range without a Seer present. 

However, despite her “desire for endless destruction”, Salem doesn’t join them. She holes herself away in a cottage for hundreds of years. 

And we see Salem defend a village from the Grimm later in The Lost Fable. If she was the one to turn the Grimm on Humanity, then why keep the Grimm attacking humanity after they choose to rule over it?

We also have no evidence that the God of Darkness even knows Humanity is back. Jinn says she was created by the God of Light, not both. 

So there’s a question of why the change in behaviour. Because they seem content not to destroy in the first world, but not in the second.

Personally? I’m drawn to the fact that we’ve never seen a Grimm attack Ozpin. Even during the Fall of Beacon, he’s able to stand still and not be touched by the Grimm rampaging around Beacon. Now, we’ve seen them attack Oscar, but only when Oscar was in control.

Humanity was supposedly made by the Gods together, but if the God of Darkness had no hand in Humanity 2.0 and the Faunus, that would explain some things, like why humanity is “only a fraction of what it once was”, why they have no magic (which was specifically a gift from the God of Darkness) and why some humans are born with powers of the God of Light (Silver Eyed Warriors). 

This doesn’t mean humanity is incapable of Destruction, by the way. The God of Darkness says outright that both have the same powers, so the God of Light could imbue them with the power of Destruction himself. 

So, the Grimm sees Human and Faunus, sees their creations, and sees creations of the God of Light alone.

And if you remember from the Tale of Two Brothers, the time when the Grimm destroyed everything was when all of creation was the work of the God of Light. 

To bring it back to Salem, what she initially proposes that turns Ozma against her is destroying Humanity 2.0 and Faunus, to replace them with their recreation of Humanity 1.0, i.e. their children. 

So yeah, I definitely think the Grimm Pool and her Grimmification was an element in her corruption. But at the same time, with what we propose, she doesn’t have that urge towards Ozpin, but fights him all the same. And she’s able to both keep away and work with People 2.0, despite her “desire for destruction”.

Like with all things, there’s not just one thing to be blamed for Salem’s actions. Do I believe her Grimmification makes her desire destruction? Yes. But it’s a desire she is capable of suppressing, she is still capable of stopping herself. It’s not a compulsion, not a geas, not something that controls her actions unless she lets it.

While there are extenuating circumstances, Salem’s evil is still her choice.

[likestoimagine16]

One of the things I hate most about Izuku’s treatment in the BNHA narrative is this insistence that he’s in the wrong for not relying on others (adults) more.

Because it’s a legitimate issue, that Izuku takes on too much responsibility and needs to trust others more. But like, why would he?

Just by the sheer number of ways that adults have failed him, both in the past and at UA, he has no reason to trust them

Literally, one of his formative moments was when he was four and a doctor told him to give up on his life’s dream

He then spent over ten years being mercilessly bullied while adults either did nothing or actively enabled this behavior 

He was full witness to Bakugou nearly suffocating to death while surrounded by adult heroes who barely even tried to help him 

then he was scolded for ‘taking unnecessary risks’ despite the fact that their inaction literally made it necessary for him to do something if Bakugou was going to have a chance to survive

Afterward, he started training with All Might, and like. I love the man, but his first instinct for Izuku faceplanting in the dirt was to demand to know if he was slacking off

This one is a bit of an outlier since it’s not Izuku actively being let down by an adult’s carelessness or inaction, but he also had front row seats to Aizawa getting his face bashed in on like, the first week of school. Aizawa might not have done anything wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that Izuku’s seeing, first hand and painfully, that adults can’t always take care of things

You also have the sports festival, where Izuku manages to break himself again and Recovery Girl says that she’s not going to keep healing him. Which is it’s own medical fiasco, but like. The intent may have been to tell Izuku that he can’t keep breaking himself, but I’m pretty sure that Izuku, with his trust in adults and his own self-esteem basically shattered under years of abuse, would have heard something closer to ‘If you keep on bothering me with your shortcomings, I’m going to stop helping you’

There’s the whole thing with Stain - you know, where all the adults were (understandably) busy, so he went off to find Iida on his own. And found him and Native about to be murdered. And sent out a mass text for help, which netted him exactly one teenaged classmate who was any help for the fight. 

Also after he and two of his teenaged classmates managed to take down the serial killer, Izuku promptly got snatched out of an entire crowd of heroes.

I’m going to repeat that: Izuku was bodily snatched out of an entire crowd of heroes, and the one who ended up saving him was the tied up, formerly unconscious serial killer. And yes, I know that Gran Torino at least was making a solid effort to do something, but you know what? Izuku doesn’t. Regardless of what he believes the heroes might or might not have done, what he knows is that he would have been at the mercy of the Noumu if it weren’t for the serial killer who tried to murder one of his best friends.

The thing with the police is a little anomalous because aside from the inherent stupidity of a law that doesn’t make exceptions for self-defense or the defense of others, the adults didn’t actually do anything wrong. Unfortunately, part of that included punishing three heroes for losing track of their interns, which then implies to Izuku that he can very easily get adults in trouble for his actions if they’re even remotely involved with him

Just... the entire final exam fiasco, starting with the fact that the adults in his life made the damned call to pair him with Bakugou, continuing with the fact that none of them did anything with the recorded proof that Bakugou punched him in the literal face without justifiable reason, and ending with the fact that they and the narrative itself seem to think that Izuku is (partially) at fault for Bakugou’s atrocious behavior. 

spoiler alert he isn't, but telling Izuku otherwise is a great way to make him feel responsible for other things that also aren’t his fault

it’s also a great way to make him feel like he needs to address these issues independently, because that’s literally what the teachers made him do

The summer training fiasco is another one where like, the adults didn’t do anything wrong, but just by the nature of the situation Izuku had to take care of a lot of things without adult help. Also, considering the flak Aizawa got for authorizing them for quirk use in self-defense, Izuku gets yet more proof of how involving adults in his life can get them unfairly punished for his actions

Kamino is another weird one, because on one hand, you have the adult heroes making a serious and concerted effort to save Bakugou to the best of their abilities, but you also have the fact that five kids recklessly went out to help how they could without adult supervision, and they were ultimately the ones who saved him and helped to protect the fragile state of society

Also there’s Aizawa telling them that, if it weren’t for societal upheaval, they all would have been expelled for saving their classmate

this one is kind of messy, because Aizawa’s not entirely wrong, but I don’t think he’s really right either. Like, yes they were reckless and kind of flirting dangerously with the law, but they also went in with very clear intentions to put themselves in as little danger as possible, and they made a big enough impact that you can’t really disregard the role they played in stopping All for One - literally, the only reason All Might could finish that fight was because they made the opportunity for him to do so

also its another incident that tells Izuku that involving other people, no matter how tangentially, in his plans puts them at serious risk of being punished because of his actions

Okay, like... as much as I love Izuku’s and Bakugou’s fight after the provisional license exam, I kind of hate it too - specifically because Izuku gets punished again for the fact that Bakugou would have punched his face in if he didn’t try to fight back.

this one is more on the narrative, though, because of the specific way that the fight was framed - namely that hori specifically chose to have patrol robots keeping track of things, but apparently didn’t decide to give them microphones to pick up on sensitive conversations. Such as, you know, the fact that Izuku literally tried to de-escalate the fight before and after Bakugou literally launched himself towards Izuku’s face

it's still frustrating regardless, just because the adults should know better. There hasn’t been a single time in the entirety of the series where Izuku has fought Bakugou without being actively threatened, but for some reason, they still think that Izuku is equally responsible for this BS.

Nighteye. Like, he’s a good guy, but he did absolutely atrociously by Izuku. He didn’t even know Izuku, but just assumed that he was unworthy of OfA because he wasn’t Mirio and didn’t have perfect control of this quirk after an entire six months - I’m just saying, that’s really not the kind of adult that would inspire me to trust others

RockLock, in a similar vein, kind of just automatically assumes the worst of Izuku and the other interns by virtue of them being not-adults. And like, we know that it was because of his concern for these children, but like... Izuku doesn’t know that. He mostly knows that RockLock was criticizing him for ‘letting Eri go’ despite the fact that he specifically went against his sempai’s orders to try and keep her safe immediately. 

Okay, part of the entire reason for this monster post is the thing with the school festival, where Izuku once again decides to tackle the problem on his own and gets scolded by the teachers. It’s one of those things where I get where it’s coming from, but at the same time, no?? Like, what did you expect him to do? He already knew about the ultimatum, that any disturbance considered to be a threat would cause the entire festival to be shut down, and he wanted to keep it open for the sake of a tiny, abused little girl. He’s not being reckless for no reason here, and he has a very limited window to work with. This is literally the only thing Eri has shown any sort of desire for, outside of seeing Izuku and Mirio, but none of the adults even acknowledge that Izuku was fighting for this. It’s just yet another scolding for not trusting adults when, even outside of the circumstances that made it difficult to ask, Izuku has very little reason to trust adults.

Look, the narrative isn’t wrong about the fact that Izuku needs to trust others more, and to share responsibility with others - it’s just that it focuses so much on this one particular issue that it ignores all the extenuating circumstances that have directly contributed to Izuku’s problems. Instead of acknowledging the fact that basically all of society has beaten this mistrust into Izuku from a young age, the narrative frames the entire thing as a problem with Izuku’s character.

It’s not. It’s a survival instinct, born from repeated trauma, that tells Izuku that it’s a waste of time and energy to depend on others for help with his problems. 

And sure, part of it is probably influenced by Izuku’s innate character, but if the adults want to see any change in this behavior, then they need stop telling him to trust adults and think more about why he wouldn’t

But like, the narrative doesn’t bother. Why would they?

[kennedycatherine]

things may be shitty but sometimes I'm shittier

I’m overheard retelling half a joke my friends have heard 30 times over. One of the greats in my rotating stock of five. 

“Wait, what’s this about?” Asks someones boyfriend and I lean on an elbow, angle myself toward him with a grin.

“It’s actually a really funny story.”

His girlfriend rolls her eyes, “it’s not funny.”

My eyebrows go up, in, “I think it’s funny?”

“Kennedy,” she begins and looks at me with even eyes, “it makes people uncomfortable.”

She says it like a mother warning her toddler not to pull his pants off in front of the dinner guests, not again. And I feel a lot like he might;

Defiant - it is a funny story, I’ve done the math on which details can stay in, which have to go out, I know where to pause for a laugh or a sigh. He’d probably like it. 

Ashamed - it probably isn’t funny to everyone, perhaps my math was just enough to keep people engaged, the pauses great for a sympathy laugh. He probably wouldn’t like it.

“Another time,” he whispers with a soft, consoling smile and I silently curse his girlfriend. 

Fuck you, Kierstan, you don’t know the first thing about comedic timing.

The story in question is about the time I found my sister cold and unconscious. I thought she was dead. The punchline about my being in a pink velour costume when the EMT’s arrived and the bit about the stolen laffy taffy, oh and her not being dead - fully worth the undeniable emotional lows. 

Believe me when I say that in some circles, it’s a funny story. There are branches of comedy, Netflix specials, peoples entire careers and livelihoods that are rooted in dark comedy - there is a vast market for illuminating and lightening the horrifying. Also trust me when I say I know how deeply unfunny it is to watch someone you love overdose. 

The story is funny now. A few years ago it wasn’t. It was a nearly unspeakable thing. An experience that happened and it wasn’t funny. 

But life goes on. 

You have no choice. 

Around the time of the pink velour tracksuit and the laffy taffy, I found myself laughing uncontrollably at my desk. I’d just left the job I’d gone to college for and found myself in the pit of broken dreams - an 8 to 5 desk job. The absolute thrill of it all - somedays you might file, somedays you might answer a few more calls than usual. Somedays your boss might ask you to bend over and pick up his pencil while you wear the skirt it was gently (but firmly) implied was mandatory. Mandatory only in the sense that no one could tell you that you couldn’t wear pants but they sure were more forgiving of car naps running 15 minutes over if they could glimpse a knee. 

And boy, did I need the car naps. 

It’s funny because I thought I was doing great. Really, for awhile I thought I was the best I’d ever been. I was laughing pretty much all the time, at everything. I’d never found the world more funny. By all accounts, I was having a great time.

So imagine my surprise when one day I found my eyes full, my face damp and my car hurdling down the highway past the exit to my work. When I did arrive, this time with pants, therefor low forgiveness - I was asked to my boss’ office for a closed door meeting.

Why was I late?

Somehow telling my boss that I wasn’t exactly sure the reason but my brain was telling me I should just keep driving, maybe to the next town, maybe for hours, maybe until the border, didn’t really seem like an option. “I think I have the flu.”

Despite all the things I didn’t know, I did know I didn’t have the flu. I found myself laid out in my doctors office anyway.

When he finally threw the door open, all white coated and anxious, just like I like em’ - I sat up. We made a sort of frenzied eye contact and he asked me what was wrong. 

“I think I might be, like, totally fucking losing it.” 

I left with a plan and antidepressants.

It all sounds kind of simple and quaint.

But it wasn’t.

Stopping to consider if you’re a danger to yourself or anyone else so your doctor can qualify if you need counselling, pills, maybe a psychiatric hold isn’t charming. Those first few weeks of pills, even though you’ve been told and you know you’ll feel worse for awhile, they’re simply awful. This isn’t some beautiful woman on HBO popping a white pill with her chardonnay, suddenly noticing a pink bloom on her neglected cactus. This is ugly and painful before it’s anything else.

And slowly it did become “anything else” … most of the time. 

Depression isn’t a joke. But it is a static way of being that loses it’s edge. 

It softens. Like a shitty haircut, you come to expect the blunt, harsh edges. Your body adjusts to the sight of it. It’s still kind of scary to look at but you know what to expect.

Life goes on.

It’s just not precious anymore. 

I could barely say I’d been diagnosed. I only told the people who were close enough to see the new medication was wearing me out. Now it’s an introductory fact, “Hi, Kennedy Catherine, daughter, lover, lesbian, writer, major depressive disorder.” 

I felt for a long time like it was all behind me. The worst was over! Family, outside of some trick hearts, healthy. Depression, diagnosed, plans made, helpful medications on standby. Experiencing another dark episode seemed dull,  ya know? Just a tad fucking redundant. Been there, done it, bored by it. 

Then: March 2020. 

There was a period of limbo. I still had a job, I just couldn’t be there or do it until things got better - hardy har. I packed up my truck and settled into my families cabin for five or six weeks. It was fine, I was fine, I thought. One day I went out for a walk and awhile later watched my sister rumble through a long stretch of prairie toward me on an ATV. My phone was dead and I’d be gone, oh, three hours longer than expected?

“What happened?”

I just kind of… lost track of time? Lost my sense of direction? I don’t know, I thought. I was here but I sort of went away from myself for a second. When I sunk into the bath later with achy muscles and a blister, I felt nervous.

Now, I haven’t scared myself in years. My depression isn’t so severe that I feel unsafe with myself. Anything I did or have done to effectively terrify myself, I shed by the time I was 20. Because that can happen, you can do that. You can change coping mechanisms and learn real, healthy ways to parent yourself. The mood instability that came later, the dark times, I still felt mostly fortified. I felt like I could figure it out, like I still had access to myself to do the figuring out. 

But I could feel myself slipping away this time. 

I was talking fast about something or another when I finally said to my mom, “I think I might need help.” I wasn’t sure exactly what I meant because I didn’t really know how to help myself and I wasn’t really sure what was wrong. 

And that in and of itself is a problem. I didn’t know what was wrong? 

I was out of the job that got me out of bed Monday to Friday for three and a half years, I left the house that had become my comfort cathedral, I hadn’t seen any of my closest friends in months, I was living with my sister and my mother who I hadn’t spent longer than a handful of days with in like five years. There was global fear and uncertainty and the risk of contracting a virus that could or could not kill you but I didn’t know… what was wrong? Well that’s just deeply moronic. 

Sometimes when you need help, or when I need help, that does come in the form of professional counselling or medications or an anonymous support group. Sometimes, it’s just circumstantial and circumstances can change.

I went home.

And in a few weeks, when I’d more or less returned to myself, I could clearly see the hills and valleys my mind had just wandered. I felt strength again, a sense of renewal and excitement about my imminent return to work and society.

Then I actually lost my job.

I know, redundant. I’m tired of myself too. But bullshit is cyclical, that’s just a fact. 

And if there is one thing I’ll give myself credit for, it’s my ability to immediately concoct a backup plan in the face of a threat. Moments after I was officially terminated, texts and emails went out. The idea of not knowing where my next paycheque would come from and how much it would be, having lost the place I strolled into everyday with a sense of purpose and not knowing when and where I’d have that again was simply not an option.

My head went down, I narrowed focus and the efforts resulted in… enough. I’m living. Which wasn’t and isn’t the hope for life. Unstable stagnancy is deeply uncomfortable.

So, generally speaking, things are not great. 

I lost my humbly secure job. A place I comfortably could’ve lived and died if I’d prioritized everything other than work and my sort of crippling ambition. This effectively led me down the path of questioning every decision I’ve made past the age of 16. First and foremost, choosing radio. An industry that was at it’s peak in the 1930’s and on the decline ever since was perhaps not the most lucrative or secure of career choices. 

My romantic life developed far enough to remind me that often times I am a crusty, avoidant crustacean human and suddenly all those popular tweets about my deep emotional inabilities and intimacy issues seemed, well, not that funny.

I decided I probably shouldn’t drink. I don’t have a drinking problem but I do have a problem with drinking. Namely, waking with no memory, my legs shaking and my stomach clenched so tightly I could sense my body wanted to flee - itself, mostly. And let’s not forget the part where I get fighty and mean.  

When shit hit the fan and then shot off the blades into the face of life in my early twenties, it wasn’t my fault. To be clear, mental health is a no fault area. I was always predisposed to depression, mental illness is genetic. I had no control over that. But there were plenty of variables, extenuating circumstances if you will, that I also had no control over but sure as fuck could and did blame other people for.

This is not the same thing. 

This is a moment where it is necessary to discern illness from circumstance and living from coping. 

Like I said, bullshit is cyclical. And it this point, it’s pretty much just my own bullshit on repeat, forever and ever amen. At twenty or twenty three, when the circumstances weren’t my fault, it also felt like my reactions weren’t my fault. I was floundering, I didn’t know better. I learned some hard lessons about how I cope and handle things. I learned that I didn’t really like the person I was when I was figuring out how to survive myself and life. 

I was unkind, a lot. 

I hated the way that felt, I hated the way it affected my relationships and decided to learn from it.

Except, I didn’t learn. I said, great, noted. Dashed a nice little ~fini!~ at the end of that chapter, closed er’ on up and bypassed the bookshelf for the dusty box in the corner labelled, “garage sale.” Because surely no one would need to read that again! 

And then a few weeks ago when I had a breakthrough in counselling, I dug that chapter back up and allowed myself a few days of surprise. Bitch, you been done knew the WHOLE time. This isn’t news, this isn’t shocking. This is the part of you that developed somewhere along the way and it didn’t work and you didn’t like it but! But. It was comfortable. So you gave it a few years and then when things fell out of control again, let it settle back in all warm and snuggly.

You know what they say. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I guess I need to financially prioritize a CBT therapist. 

So here I am, again. 

Only this time feels deeply, deeply different. Because it’s not the first. 

I sat down with a friend to tell her how I was feeling. How much I felt like I needed and wanted to change my default settings. 

I need a factory restore. 

“I think you’re being hard on yourself.”

No, no, I have grace for myself! I actually have a lot of understanding. I’m parenting myself through this which includes showing myself love while I also discipline.

“I just feel like maybe you were doing the best you knew how.”

Well, I mean, sure? Sometimes? But there were moments where I knew I was saying or doing the wrong thing, where I was even challenged by someone else but I wasn’t challenging myself, you know?

“Well maybe that’s just who you are?”

Right… but this is also who I am? And we do actually have a say in that, you know? Like how I evolved from throwing toddler tantrums on the grocery store floor? I could actually just keep doing that, no one is stopping me, but I don’t.

“I think you’re being self deprecating and that is not healthy.” 

Since when is self identifying a problem self deprecation? 

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

… but change is hard? 

I appreciate that people want to protect me from myself or from bad feeling or whatever they perceive that all to be. More often than not, I think they, we, you, I, we’re all just trying to protect ourselves. But it’s not helpful. Pretending that everything is fine and that we’re fine and adopting an overarching, “I am perfect as I am, namas-fucking-te” mantra isn’t actually helpful.

What’s the harm in me saying I have been shitty? That I have acted poorly? That I have neglected to be better when there was clearly a different option? That I wasn’t honestly showing myself to people when I could’ve or allowing them space in me?

That it’s… not nice? That just like the joke about my sister not being dead, it’s not comfortable to listen to? It’s true and it is compassionate to view yourself as a whole, to know yourself and think I actually do like myself and this life enough to want to be better.

Just like what is coined the unfortunate evening of Velour and Ambulances or the depression diagnosis or life being turned on it’s head by a plague sent from hell, once it was deeply painful and then it wasn’t. None of this is precious. Being a shitty person sometimes isn’t a rare affliction. You’ve been shitty before, you’ll do it again, I’ll do it again, hey, you might even be shitty right now! Isn’t that something? 

Things are not great right now. They’ve been not great tens of times before. Only this time it isn’t taking me 2 to 4 years to talk and laugh about it. Because this is a muscle, the shit muscle and it’s exercised. It’s buff. 

And you know what? Things could be worse. They could even get worse now! I’m hoping they don’t but they certainly could, and in the thick of it, we’ll always have that glimmering possibility to hold onto. 

[icanthelpbut-love-you]

a snowfall kind of love

Malec discord secret santa fic featuring the prompts “snowed in, hot drinks, and tipsy cuddling” for @hanukkahmagnus. Happy Hanukkah!!!

read on ao3

Alec stifles a giggle as he frantically tries to fit the key into the lock, feeling Magnus shiver and huddle as close as possible against the snowstorm raging around them.

Growling through chattering teeth, he fumbles when the ice on the door causes the key to slip.

“Lillith, Alec it’s cold out here! Can we hurry up and get inside – preferably before rather than after we both get frostbite?”

Any other time Alec would point out that as a warlock and a shadowhunter it would be difficult for either of them to actually get frostbite given the whole accerlerated healing situation (even without considering runes or magic). But it’s almost impossible to even see the lock a few inches in front of his face through the swirling snow and Alec needs all his concentration to try and wrestle the key into submission so they can get inside rather than take that chance.

So he settles for a distracted “I’m trying,” chuckling when Magnus presses closer and mutters under his breath about the cold and incompetent shadowhunters.

He does, however, startle as Magnus slides his freezing hands around Alec’s waist to emphasise just how cold he is, but manages to recover and finally fit the key into the lock. A teasing admonishment dies on Alec’s lips as they tumble inside. It takes both of their strength to close the door against the wind outside, but it finally concedes with a flurry of snow. The howling wind outside cuts off to a muted roar. They collapse against the door and Alec can feel Magnus shaking with laughter, even as they both shiver.

He has to admit, this isn’t how he expected their evening to go. It’s the last day of their mission – if you can even call it that when it essentially amounted to Magnus helping out an old warlock friend with a spell that’s slightly above their power level, with Alec tagging along because the spell is tangentially clave business (the official reason) and because Magnus wanted his company (the more accurate unofficial reason) – so the last few hours were supposed to just be some finishing touches and socialising. But the spell had, as ancient, translated-through-several-language spells are liable to do, become unexpectedly complicated when they tried to complete those finishing touches. Which meant they fell behind schedule just long enough for he and Magnus to get caught up in a sudden snowstorm on the way back to their lodgings.

Laughter abating, he turns to Magnus and is sent into a fresh fit of giggles. The warlock is covered from head to toe in snow, and Alec is sure he’s in no better condition himself, but even more amusingly his normally-perfect mowhawk is in complete disarray from the wind. And – Alec reaches out and runs his hand through Magnus’ hair to confirm, ignoring the disgruntled huff he gets in response – is frozen stiff, crackling against his fingers.

“Why didn’t we just portal?” Alec asks, still gasping for breath slightly. Even for a trained shadowhunter, their cabin is a fair distance from the quarters where Magnus’ warlock friend lives. Especially when he’d been expecting a leisurely stroll through the gorgeous snowy mountains.

“And ruin the fun?” Magnus quips back, “We couldn’t possibly.”

Alec fixes him with a disbelieving look and stares pointedly at the floor where the snow coating their clothes is starting to melt into a puddle around them.

Magnus remains unabashed, but his tone does become a little more serious as he continues.

“Old warlock formalities. I can’t portal on another warlock’s land without permission, even if they are an old friend – the wards wouldn’t allow it,” he explains.

“C’mon Magnus don’t act like I don’t know exactly how powerful you are. You could circumvent the wards in seconds.”

“You flatter me, Alexander,” Magnus chuckles and Alec rolls his eyes.

“It’s not flattery if it’s true.”

And it is. He’s seen Magnus perform feats of magic he can barely comprehend and he’s well aware of the incredible power running through the warlock’s veins (a little too aware at times but that’s definitely not the point).

Yet when he says as much Magnus gets slightly shifty-eyed – as he always seems to when Alec compliments him on things that really should be obvious.

“Maybe so,” Magnus concedes with a shrug, after a brief pause, “But it would be an unforgivable breach of etiquette and deeply insulting to our host. I can only imagine the fallout if I made a show of the fact I could dismantle their wards for anything other than incredibly extenuating circumstances – I’d never be invited anywhere again!”

Alec has to admit he can’t argue with that; the importance of respect (or at least the illusion of it) between different factions and an understanding of the careful etiquette required to maintain it is one of the few things that translates directly between shadowhunter and warlock culture. The melodramatic way Magnus explains it still has him stifling a fond eye-roll though.

Looking out window as it rattles in the wind, Alec considers the snow still swirling outside before turning to his husband. He feels a grin creep onto his face as Magnus eyes him quizzically.

“Looks like we won’t be able to make it home this evening like we planned,” he says slyly.

Magnus mock pouts, and Alec can only smile wider at the glint of mischief in the warlock’s brown eyes.

“Such a shame,” Magnus says, taking a purposeful step closer until they’re pressed flush against each other, “The two of us, stuck in this quaint cabin in the middle of the mountains,” he inclines he head in invitation, breath puffing against Alec’s cheek in the scant space left between them and voice dropping to a low whisper, “Alone until the storm passes.”

Alec gladly obliges, pressing their lips together in a chaste kiss. He breaks away just as it starts to turn heated, dodging Magnus’ attempt to dive back in as soon as they part and grinning at the disappointed noise Magnus makes.

“I really like the way you think,” he murmurs, “But I should probably call Izzy and let her know that we’re stuck. Rather than just disappearing for the evening.”

The unimpressed look on Magnus’ face says he doesn’t see why, but he obligingly fishes the phone from Alec’s back pocket where his hand has wandered and passes it over.

(If asked, Magnus would firmly maintain that he showed commendable self-control in only copping a brief feel. Alec refuses to acknowledge either that or that frankly unbecoming squeak that escaped him.)

Izzy picks up after the first ring, clearly worried considering he’s calling her on what should be a routine mission. Concern quickly turns to scepticism, though, when Alec explains the situation. He gets as far as relaying Magnus’ spiel about the politics of portalling through a fellow warlock’s wards before she interrupts.

“I’m pretty sure being caught in a freak snowstorm counts as extenuating circumstances hermano,” she says dryly.

There’s a moment resounding silence where Alec is left floundering for a plausible reason why they can’t just send a fire message explaining the situation and get permission for a portal. Then Magnus cuts in.

“That would be a good point if I wasn’t utterly drained from this evening. All those complications in the spellwork – completely exhausting,” he explains smoothly, “I doubt I’ve got enough magic to create a portal if I tried.”

Izzy’s responding eyeroll is almost audible but she doesn’t call either of them on their bullshit. Alec is hit with wave of gratitude – he and Magnus have barely had any alone time since the wedding (perks of being high ranking leaders of their respective people) and several hours uninterrupted in the middle of nowhere sounds like heaven.

Unfortunately, Izzy knows this too if her suggestive parting encouragement to “have fun” is any indication. Alec doesn’t even need to look to know that Magnus is composing something even more suggestive to say back.

“Goodbye Izzy,” he groans and hangs up before Magnus can respond, all previous gratitude towards his sister dispelled at the prospect of having to listen to her trade innuendos with his husband.

He’s barely turned his phone off before Magnus snaps his fingers to summon a blanket and light the fire, alighting on the couch before flicking the blankets back to make space. He shoots an expectant and distinctly cat-got-the cream look at Alec who promptly bursts out laughing 

“Magic depletion?” he asks increduosly.

“Oh yes,” Magnus confirms as Alec slides in next to him obligingly and snuggles up under the blanket, sighing at the warmth of his husband pressed up against him. Magnus promptly sends up another shower of sparks as he summons a steaming mug – heaped with cream and complete with actual sticks of cinnamon – for each of them, “And I think cuddling in front of the fire with the man I love is exactly what I need to recover.”

Alec presses closer with a shake of his head, still chuckling as he raises the mug to his lips.

“Well, far be it from me to deny you something so vital to your recovery,” he teases, taking a sip.

And almost doing a spectacular spit-take.

“By the Angel Magnus, how much alcohol did you put in this?”

“Just enough,” is the smug reply he gets, “Does wonders to warm you up.”

Alec raises an eyebrow in response, but the effect is definitely ruined as he takes another long sip. He tangles their legs together, rucking up Magnus’ shirt to trace patterns on his torso. Magnus shivers, though Alec’s not sure whether from the sensation or just because his hands are cold

“You know what else is good for warming you up?” he asks.

Magnus grins.

“Why don’t you enlighten me.”

“Body heat,” Alec murmurs, skimming his hands down Magnus’ ribs to emphasise his point.

He’s barely finished talking before Magnus is putting his mug to the side and shucking off his shirt, encouraging Alec to to the same with a murmured, “Can’t argue with that.”

When they’re settled again, hands gently roaming over bare skin – not with any intention but rather to just touch – Alec reaches for his cup again, relishing the warmth. His hands still feel like they’re made of ice but the hot drink and Magnus’ heated skin is definitely helping. Draining the rest, he tries not to wince at the way the alcohol has settled at the bottom of the mug making it somehow even stronger.

He catches the fond smile on Magnus’ face but before he has a chance to ask, Magnus is swiping a finger across Alec’s upper lip. He draws back and Alec has just enough time to process that some of the (frankly ridiculous amount) of cream from the cocoa must have got caught there. 

Then Magnus sucks his finger into his mouth, licking it clean a way that crosses the border into indecent, and Alec’s brain short circuits. 

A thought strikes him (once he’s regained the ability to think, albiet a little less clear than before) as he watches Magnus finish off his own mug with a smug wink before refilling them both. Tilting his head up from where it’s settled on Magnus’ shoulder, Alec steals a thorough kiss.

Magnus’ free hand immediately comes up to cradle Alec’s face and Alec parts his lips to deepen the kiss. Hauling Magnus closer until Magnus is practically sitting on his lap, Alec groans at the heady combination of chocolate and whiskey he can taste on Magnus’ tongue.

Eventually he manages to pull himself away and is gratified – always is, no matter how many times they do this – when he’s greeted by brilliant gold as he meets Magnus’ gaze.

“Just as I suspected,” Alec says, managing to keep a very serious demeanour until Magnus looks at him – still somewhat dazed – with such pure confusion that Alec can’t help but give in, “Tastes much better that way.”

Magnus narrows his eyes.

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I mix you a drink,” he says wryly and Alec snickers. It’s hard to tell, he thinks, whether the giddy boldness he’s feeling is because of the spiked cocoa when this is how Magnus has always made him feel anyway.

However, it quickly becomes clear that at least some of it is definitely from the cocoa, which is starting to settle over him in a pleasant fog. It’s the most content he’s felt in quite a while; curled up against his husband who’s shifting to pull the blanket more comfortably over them, with no responsibilities until at least tomorrow morning, and so, so warm despite how frozen he felt when they first sat down. Though he’d never hear the end of it if he said anything, Magnus definitely has a point about the cocoa’s warming properties.

Manuavering so his head is in Alec’s lap, Magnus makes a soft noise of approval as Alec automatically moves to run his hands through his husband’s hair. Within seconds Magnus is dozing.

Evidently there was also some truth to Magnus’ claim of magical exhaustion, as much as he was using it as an excuse, Alec muses as he toys with his sleeping husband’s hair. It wouldn’t be surprising given Magnus’ well-documented tendency to use jokes and flippancy to mask any and all vulnerability. Thinking about it now, Magnus hasn’t done anything more complicated than a summoning spell since they got back to the cabin, even though Alec can call to mind several other times where Magnus would normally resort to magic out of pure impatience.

The realisation drives home to Alec, not for the first time, how much they’ve both changed in the time they’ve known each other. When they first met, there’s no doubt that Magnus would have insisted he was fine and stayed awake well into the night to prove it. Raziel knows Alec spent their first few months visibly terrified, but in hindsight Magnus was just as bad. The only difference was he knew how to hide it. Now the Alec knows what to look for, there were so many things that screamed out how worried Magnus was that Alec would think less of him for any show of vulnerability.

It’s humbling that Alec is the one Magnus lets down his guard around now. Because it’s one thing to know someone will watch your back, but another thing – a completely different level of trust – to properly relax around them.

And Magnus is completely relaxed. Alec can feel the familiar presence of Magnus’ magic flowing just below his skin, reaching out as it always does when they touch. But it’s mellow. Sleeping, for lack of a better word. For someone like Magnus, who’s always on high alert and whose magic rests even less than he does, that’s almost a miracle.

Stirring slightly, Magnus (or at least his magic) seems to register that Alec is still awake, and with a gentle glow from Magnus’ fingertips the lights dim and the fire dies down to a pile of smouldering embers. Only then does it hit Alec how exhausted he is too. The combination of whiskey and the fading adrenaline from the day’s excitement is as potent as any sleeping draught Magnus could have brewed in his apothecary.

Lulled by the rhythmic up and down of Magnus’ breathing and the repetition of his hand still carding through Magnus’ hair, Alec catches himself dozing. The last thought he registers before he drifts off, wrapped up in the blanket and Magnus’ arms, is that they should definitely work out how to arrange another snowstorm next time they want some time to themselves.

[thecleverdame]

East of Nowhere - Year One

Sam x Reader

Series Masterlist

Summary:  You and Sam are strangers trapped in a desolate mountain town where you live alone, isolated from the outside world, for five years.

Warnings: language, violence, smut, talk of past trauma

Words: 10k

Beta:  ilikaicalie  

This story is complete (44k) and available now on Patreon for a pledge of 2.50. >>CLICK HERE<<

-

YEAR ONE

Day One

The day is turning to night and the fireplace is your tiny sun for the evening, casting long shadows over the rug. The flames curl and sway, flicking this way and that, crackling as they burn the dry wood.

The sun is setting as you sit across from Sam in the empty lobby of the hotel. His knee keeps bouncing as he runs a hand over his mouth. He’s searching for the next step. You’ve spent the whole afternoon wandering aimlessly around this little town and have yet to find a working phone or another person.

“My brother will have realized something is wrong by now,” Sam offers, turning his hand palm up. “He’ll be looking for a way to find me or at least get in touch. He’s good at it, we’ll be ok.”

You get the distinct sense he’s trying to convince himself as much as you.

“That’s great.” You’re apprehensive. “But, this is some real Twilight Zone level shit. If we can’t even find another human being, what makes you think he’ll even know where to start?”

“This is kinda what we do,” Sam’s eyebrows draw together, “We deal with things that are, ah, supernatural in nature.”

“Oh.” You nod agreeably. He awaits a response but you don’t really have one. You’ve always kind of believed in ghosts and now you’ve been transported to a ghost town in parts unknown; almost anything seems plausible. “So, what do we do?”

“Well, I think we need to hunker down for the night.” As if on cue, his stomach makes a gurgling sound.  “Are you hungry?”

“I’m starving.” You’ve been too focused on current events to let your aching tummy control you, but now that he mentions it, you are starving.

“We have to go back the grocery store anyway. We need to get all the salt we can find, we’ll grab something to eat while we’re there.” Sam stands.

“Then what?” You hesitate before rising from your seat.

“We lock ourselves in a room and wait until morning. I don’t know what’s out there in the dark, but we’re not gonna wait around to find out.”

The two of you race across the darkening street just as the sun sets beyond the horizon in a blaze of ominous glory.  

“Hurry up.” Sam impatiently ushers you through the unlocked glass doors of Tolliver’s Family Market. You scurry inside, staring  at Sam as he pulls the doors shut behind you. “We gotta be quick. I’ll get the salt, you get food.”

“Why do we need salt?” you hiss.

“I’ll explain it to you once we get back to the room.”

“Okay.” You don’t have the energy to be your normal obstinate, inquisitive self.

Every item in the store has been carefully placed on the shelves, each piece of inventory fully stocked and seemly allocated with care. You look around for a basket or bag and end up pulling a small canvas backpack off the wall.

Food first. That’s what Sam told you to do. You’re not normally one to take orders, but these are extenuating circumstances. You dash down the aisles until you find what you’re looking for, stuffing a couple of boxes of granola bars, some jerky and two apples into the pack. You make your way to the cooler and grab two bottles of water. From there, it’s onto toiletries. Spying the travel section, you collect tiny bottles of shampoo, toothpaste, and deodorant.  Finally, you come to the last row, finding neatly hung novelty t-shirts, sweatpants, and socks. You grab two of each, guessing Sam’s size, before dropping to your knees to stuff it in the bag.

“You ready?” Sam barrels around the corner, effectively scaring the shit out of you.

“Jesus Christ, give a girl some warning,” you pant, heart galloping in your chest. “I think I got everything.”

“Great.” He offers you a hand but doesn’t let go once you stand, instead he hauls you back to the hotel.

“Slow down a little,” you plead, jogging to keep up with him.

He doesn’t, just grips your hand tighter and as you scurry behind.

You scramble up the stairs and proceed to run smack into his back. He’s completely stopped in the hallway, looking from one room to the other.

“Be careful.” He throws you a critical glare. “In here, this room has two beds.”

You follow Sam inside, breathing a sigh of relief when he closes and bolts the door. Hovering on the edge of a bed you watch as he wedges a chair under the handle. He moves fast like he’s secured a room a million times before. He checks the lock on each window, before pulling the curtain shut.

“Help me with this part,” he beckons to you, after inspecting the bathroom. He takes out a box of table salt and hands it to you. “We’re going to make one long, unbroken line of salt around the perimeter of the room.”

“Why?” To say you're skeptical would be an understatement.

Sam takes a deep breath. “Can we talk and pour at the same time, please? What I’m about to say is going to sound crazy.”

“After today, nothing seems crazy to me.” You take the salt and begin to lay a thick line from the frame of the door, following the line of the wall.

“Okay, well, all this - I mean the town and us ending up here - it might be a demon. They can’t cross salt lines.” Sam glances over his shoulder to gage your reaction.

You stop for a moment, pursing your lips in thought. “You’re right, that is fucking crazy.”

“Look,” Sam scoffs, “you wanted to know and I’m telling you. I don’t have time to ease you into this. Demons are real, so is a lot of other stuff that would give you nightmares. The sooner you accept it, the sooner we can work on getting out of here.”

“Jeez.” You move closer to him, having worked your way around the room. “I’m doing the damn salt thing, aren’t I?”

“Sorry, it’s just, something like this happened to me before. It was a long time ago, but it didn’t end well.”

“When you say didn’t end well you mean…”

“People died.”

“So, you woke up in an abandoned town and demons were trying to kill people?”

“That’s the gist of it, but it was different. It doesn’t feel the same; that was a ghost town, literally. This place is fucking Pleasantville.”

“So...maybe not demons?”

Sam side-eyes you suspiciously, trying to determine if you’re making fun of him, but you’re not. You’re too tired, emotionally and physically, for that.

He makes his way around the room, checking the salt lines and gives a nod of approval. “Looks good.”

You dump the contents of your backpack onto your bed and tear open the box of granola bars, tossing one to Sam. You’re well aware that since you woke up in this place, you’ve been running on pure adrenaline. Once the initial shock wears off, you’re afraid you might have a breakdown.

There’s silence while you both eat, simultaneously lost in your own thoughts. You tell yourself you’re going to find a way out of this, that you have a whole life that doesn’t suddenly just disappear. Jack, your boyfriend, will realize something is really wrong. He’ll call your dad and they’ll have people searching for you by tomorrow.

Yeah, you’re going to be fine.

“Assuming we make it through the night, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” you ask, ripping open another fruit and nut bar.

Sam takes a long gulp of his water and looks from the covered window to you. “We get out of here. We find a car or a bike or we walk, but we get the hell out of dodge.”

“That sounds good to me.” You accept that he knows way more about this than you do. You may not be a hundred percent on board with the whole demon theory, but you’re astute enough to know there’s something otherworldly at play.

“You can try to get some sleep if you want. I’m gonna stay up, keep watch for a while and make sure everything is copacetic.” Sam moves to the other bed, stacking two pillows behind his back.

“You think it’s safe for me to take shower?” you ask. “We’ve been running around all day, I feel disgusting.”

“Sure, you should probably leave the door open.” You raise your eyebrows and Sam rolls his eyes at your reaction. “Not all the way, but just don’t latch it.”

“I won’t lock you out, scouts honor.” You hold up two fingers and a tired smile flashes across his face.

You’re thankful that this mystery town has hot water as you step under the showerhead and pop open a small bottle of shampoo. This has, hands down, been the strangest, scariest day of your life. There’s a part of you that’s thinking you’re going to wake up at any moment. This all seems like the plot of a Lifetime movie; trapped in a ghost town with a long-haired, well-toned, ghostbuster. Your tired feet and creeping headache assure you that this is definitely not a dream. How or why it’s happening you’re unsure, but at least you have Sam.

At least you're not alone.

You towel dry your hair and brush your teeth in the steamy bathroom before slipping on the sweats you took from Tolliver’s. Combing your fingers through your wet hair you pad back into the bedroom. “It’s your turn if you-”

You stopped mid-sentence to find that Sam’s asleep. His mouth is hanging open as his body lists to one side. You toy with the idea of waking him up, but it seems like if something really wants in, it’s gonna happen one way or another. You turn off the overhead light and crawl into the scratchy sheets.

Just as you’re beginning to think that you should stay up and take his watch, your eyelids fall heavy and you follow Sam into a dark, dreamless slumber.

Day Two

“Hey.” You feel a hand on your shoulder, shaking you awake.

This is typical Jack, trying to get you up for a run at some ungodly hour on a Saturday morning. You’re not interested.

“Jack, stop.” You push the heavy arm away, twisting in the sheets.

“Uh, it’s not Jack. Come on, Y/N, we have to get going.” Sam pulls the covers off your body and a rush of cool air forces your eyes to flutter open.

You get one look at Sam sitting the edge of the bed and you rub your hands over your face. “I was hoping yesterday was a dream,” you mutter as he hands you a small cup of stale hotel coffee.

“Sorry, we’re still here in the middle of it. Get dressed and we’ll try to get the hell out of here, huh?” Sam’s ready to go, he must have woken up a while ago. You have a sip of the coffee, it’s no Starbucks but it does the job.

“Yes, please.” You roll out of bed and make quick work of dressing. You pull on yesterday’s jeans and light sweater you arrived in. When you emerge from the bathroom, Sam is ready and waiting with the small backpack slung over his shoulder.

-

There’s a beat-up old Chevy Caprice back in the garage behind the bakery.  Sam hotwires it, clenching his fists in joy when the engine rumbles to life. You’re suddenly nervous and sweaty, fidgeting as Sam pulls onto the main street, heading towards the signs reading: Thanks for visiting Shadow Hill. Come back and see us again soon!

You drive down the road, the car sputtering as you head out of town, venturing down a narrow paved road lined with tall, thick pine trees. Sam glances at you out of the corner of his eye.

“What’s wrong? This is good right?” You shift, looking to him.

“Yeah, it just, it seems too easy.” He comments hesitantly, looking in the rearview.

“We shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” You sit back in your seat, looking up over the trees to the looming mountain face that seems to be on all sides.

As if on cue, the all too familiar main street comes into view in front of you and Sam slows to a crawl. You’re both quiet as you creep past the sign that reads: Welcome to Shadow Hill. We hope you make your home with us!

“Sam.” You breathe, reaching for his arm and scooting closer to him. “We just came from here. I mean, we didn’t even make a loop. We’re coming back in the same way we left.”

“It looks that way,” he confirms looking in every direction as if expecting an answer to drop from the heavens.

“It’s not possible. How is this possible?” For the first time in your life, you don’t have anything else to say. Your heart starts to beat fast in your chest, that sweat you felt earlier now pouring from your forehead.

“It shouldn’t be possible, but it’s happening here, wherever we are.” Sam shifts the car into park and looks to you. “Hey, don’t freak out on me, we’re gonna figure this out. You ready to walk?”

“Yes, let’s go.” You follow him out of the driver’s side door and immediately begin power walking away from the sign, heading back out of town. Sam’s walk turns into a jog. You don’t complain as you trot behind him, happy to put some distance between you and mother fucking Shadow Hill.

It’s not even fifteen minutes later before the welcome sign appears again. The moment you see it you start to panic, truly fearful for the first time.

“Am I dreaming? What the fuck is happening?” Your breath starts to stutter, your whole body turns clammy and you feel the world spin as your legs give out, sinking toward the ground.

“Hey, hey, hey. I got you.” You feel Sam’s hand under your armpits as he catches you, lowering you down, crouching beside you. “There’s a reason this is happening and we just have to find out what it is. We’re going to get out of here, I promise.”

“You can’t promise me that. You don’t know what’s going on. We’re trapped here, I mean really trapped. Oh my God, my parents must be so worried right now.” You lay back on the asphalt, reaching out to either side as if it might ground you. There’s a fizzing in your brain, making you lightheaded. “I’m scared.”

Sam’s scared, too. He is scared out of his mind and starting to worry that this is more than a demonic prank. This place isn’t cursed, warded or guarded, it’s a completely self-contained reality, like a life-sized snow globe.

“No matter what happens, we’re here together. We’re going to take care of each other.” Sam grabs your shoulder, forcing you to pay attention. You let him pull you up into a sitting position. “You and me till the wheels fall off. Got it?”

“Yeah.” You nod, leaning forward, resting your head on his shoulder. You’d put money on the fact that he’s done this whole calm a girl down thing before, because he’s damn good at it.

After you’ve pulled yourself together, you make the short walk back into town. This time you’re in no hurry so you saunter, equally defeated, side by side.

“We should stop into the grocery store again, pick up a few more things,” he suggests as you approach Tolliver’s.

You shrug and meander behind him into the store. “I’m going to get some Power Bars or something. I can’t do any more granola and raisin.”

You grab a bag of chips from the end cap and pop open the bag, crunching as you walk. If you’re the only people here, might as well make your own rules. When you get to the aisle where you shopped yesterday, you freeze, doing a double take. “Sam!”

He’s skidding around the corner in two seconds, chest heaving and ready for a fight. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at this.” You point to the shelf. Sam stands beside you, tilting his head.

“What am I looking at?” He whispers.

“These boxes. Yesterday, I took two of that kind and one of the raspberry. Now, they’re stocked again, like I never removed anything.”

“Huh,” Sam trails off into his own thought, walking away from you. You follow him to the condiment section.

“The same thing with the salt, I must have taken five or six boxes and now it’s fully stocked.”

“This is good, right? Someone must’ve been here.” You’re only hopeful for a moment. The grimace on Sam’s face makes you feel sick. “You think someone’s fucking with us?”

“I don’t know. I think if we do have company, they’re doing more than playing a joke. Let’s check something else.”

Sam runs out of the store and toward the Pines Hotel. You sprint behind him, following blinding at this point.

When Sam pushes open the door to the room you shared the night before, the beds are freshly made, sheets pulled taught over the mattress. Even the trash you threw in the bin has vanished.

“What the hell…” you gawk, leaning on the door jam.

“This isn’t good.” Sam motions for you to come inside, locking the door behind you. “Why would anyone make the beds?”

--

Shadow Hill resets itself every day, at different times. This is an undeniable fact you come to understand after many sleepless nights of surveillance.

Crouching behind a potted plant, you clamp a hand over your mouth as you watch the magic happen.  In the blink of an eye, every trash is empty, dirty plates magically appear clean back in the cupboard, and fresh food restocks in each business, restaurant, and home.

It’s old sorcery, something powerful that even Sam has trouble wrapping his head around.

Day Thirteen

“So, what are you going to make with all this stuff?” You look down at the list he carefully wrote out as you pull four wires out of a plastic tube labeled ‘2N 3904 NPN transistors’.

“We’re gonna make an EMF detector.” Sam’s disembodied voice explains from several aisles over. “They can detect electro-”

You cut him off before he can finish. You’re not a rube. “I know what an EMF detector is. I've watched more episodes of Ghost Adventures than I care to admit to.”

“Good, you get the basic idea. We need to know what we’re dealing with and we don’t have gear, so we’re gonna make our own.”

“And you can just do that? Make one of these things?” You add a coil of magnetic wire to your basket and bring it to Sam where’s he’s sitting at the counter. His tools are neatly laid out, he’s done this before.

“Every hardware store has the stuff to make one, you just have to know some basics. We’ll be out of here in no time.” He plugs in a soldering iron as you pull over a rickety stool from the cash register.

“You always make your own stuff?”

“We used to have to make everything ourselves. Ghost hunting is more fashionable these days, we get a lot of tech from Amazon, believe it or not.” Sam offers you a grin and gets down to work, attaching thin wires to a circuit board.

“And this is what you and your brother do - full time. Hunt ghosts and monsters?”

“Pretty much,” he shrugs.

“I’m going out a limb here, but I’m guessing there’s not big money in ghostbusting. How do you support yourselves?”

“We have a few unconventional methods,” Sam presses his tongue between his lips in concentration as he squints at the circuits and begins soldering. “By unconventional, I mean illegal.”

“I suppose you gotta do what you gotta do.” Chuckling you spin on the stool, legs dangling.

“What do you do?” Sam looks up, realizing for the first time that he really knows very little about you. With everything that’s been happening, small talk hasn’t been high on the list of priorities.

“I’m a high school science teacher, physics or chemistry, depending on the semester. ”

“No shit.” Sam laughs. There’s a look of genuine surprise on his face.

“What? I don’t look sciencey enough?” You gesture to yourself dramatically.

“No, you’re just younger and way more attractive than any teacher I ever had in school,” Sam comments, glancing up to catch your reaction.

You blush and so does he.

“I do have a high attendance rate,” you smirk.

“Did you always wanna be a teacher?”

“Hell no. I don’t even like kids that much,” you laugh. “I’m a botanist at heart. It’s all about the plants for this geek. My dream is to work in a museum. When I was a kid, I wanted to work in the botany department at the Smithsonian. But, life happens and you end up grading papers and handing out hall passes.”

“I was gonna be a lawyer, but that was over a decade ago. Now, I live in an underground bunker with my brother and perpetrate credit card fraud. Life’s funny that way.” Sam tucks his hair behind his ear, gesturing for you to pass him the batteries.

He switches a button and a little red light comes on. You clasp your hands together, genuinely dazzled. “Very impressive work.”

“Thanks.” Sam looks happy with himself. “Let’s see what we can find.”

You spend the better part of two days investigating every inch of each building, house, and shrub.

But there’s nothing.

Either Sam’s EMF skills are a little rusty or there’s nothing in Shadow Hill giving off ghostly vibes. It throws Sam for a loop, there’s a couple days where you can see that this turn has shaken him to the core, but he doesn’t wallow for long. And before you know it, you’re a sidekick in this real life mystery.

Day Twenty-Nine

Sam tries everything from witchcraft to Ouija boards, even a few things that you think he might just be making up.

He’s busy grinding herbs, reading from a ritual he wrote out for himself the night before. It’s taken the better part of four weeks. He’s drawn out, in painstaking detail, a design that you’ve been tasked with copying onto the floor. You drag the chalk slowly, connecting the final symbol and sit back on your heels.

“Tell me again what we’re doing?” You haven’t forgotten, but you need to hear him say it again.

“We’ve been over this a hundred times,” Sam sighs, brushing off his hands. “This is the most powerful summoning spell I know.”

“And we’re summoning...an angel?” You try to hide your disbelief.

“Yes.” Sam watches a skeptical look wash over your face. “Look, I know this sounds insane, but if we can send up a message, maybe Cas will be able to hear us.”

“Cas being an angel, that you’re friends with?” Sam raises his eyebrows in confirmation. You’re making an effort to believe him, you really are, but angels? It sounds too crazy. But then again, being trapped here would have sounded crazy to you a month ago. “Sorry, no more doubt. I’m all in, put me where you need me, Sam.”

“Over here.” He points to the ground. You move to the other side of the circle, watching as Sam lights the herbs on fire in the small, stone bowl. He pulls a knife out of his pocket and to your horror slices up his hand, dripping blood into the bowl.

He recites a series of phrases in Latin and the ground begins to rattle like an earthquake tremor. Sam reaches for you, pulling you beside him in anticipation of unknown events and then, suddenly, everything goes silent.

“Is that it?” You peak out of one eye, tucked under Sam’s arm.

“Yup.” He’s breathing heavy, trying to hold back an all too familiar look of disappointment.

“Did it work?” You question, as he wipes his bloody palm on his jeans.

“We’ll find out.”

Three Months

The Shadow Hill Library and Information Archive is a red brick, Victorian-looking building sitting self-important at the top of a hill. Sam pushes open the heavy swinging door and wanders into a room with a tiled chessboard floor and about fifty shelves fanning out from a central reception area.

You hate the library - the boring, mind numbing, lifeless library. You’ve spent too many hours in this fucking library, you want to pull your hair out every time Sam suggests going back.

There is row after row of neatly lined up books with their spines facing outward, colour coded with dots, the fiction section is arranged in alphabetical order. You meander past the young adult and children's sections with low shelves and floor cushions, to approach the more adult area with towering shelves rising high to the ceiling. The area Sam is looking for is unmarked, but surrounded by comfortable leather arm chairs and tables for quiet study. At first the muffled stillness of the place makes it hard to concentrate but you get used to it.

You’re lying on the long wood table, staring up at the ornate ceiling, sprawled out between musty books and the unorganized sea of Sam’s notes. If you’ve learned one thing over the past three months, it’s that he’s a machine when it comes to research.

Before meeting him, you considered yourself to be fairly intellectual. You wrote a couple of impressive research papers in college and enjoy a good book here and there. But Sam - Sam takes it to a whole new level. He has a laser focus that’s all-consuming.

Sam’s eyes shift to you, he’s been sneaking undetected glances for a while now. Your shirt is riding up and there’s a strip of exposed skin across your lower stomach that’s been distracting him for an hour. He thinks you probably feel as soft as you look; he even has a whole scenario in the back his mind about what it would feel like to touch you there for the first time.

You shimmy, pushing a notebook out of the way and he fakes enthrallment, turning an unread page.

This place is starting to give you cabin fever. It doesn’t help that he won’t let you out of his sight, it’s been close quarters for way too long. Every little thing he does is starting annoy you. You’d give anything to pee with the door shut all the way.

“I can’t do this.” Raising your arms straight over your chest, you clap your hands together.

“You aren’t actually doing anything.” His attention flickers up from his book. “I thought you were taking a nap.”

“Sorry, I can’t sit here all day and stay focused. All the mumbo jumbo in these books is running together. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

“Well, first off you, you’re not sitting. You're lying down. Second, we’re looking for anything related to this place and how we got here. There’s gotta be something, an old wives tale or a bedtime story. We just haven’t found it yet.”

“I am really trying to pull my weight here, but I’m done for today. If I read another word, my brain is going to melt.”

“You haven’t even picked up a book,” Sam snips.

“And I’m not about to. I want to get out of here as bad you do, but I can’t function all cooped up like this. I’m dying here Sam, I’m withering away.” You dramatically, place the back of your hand to your forehead.

Sam rolls his eyes playfully, giving in. “Yeah okay, I could use a break.” He dog ears the page and closes the book. “Wanna take a walk?”

“Yes, God yes.” You roll up enthusiastically, swinging your legs to the ground. “Bet you can’t catch me.”

And you’re off.

Sam grins as you bounce down the steep stairs of the library, eager to be outside in the sun. His eyes settle on your ass, then up to the curve of your hips. His mind wanders for a moment before he pulls it back out of the gutter.

Shadow Hill may be a prison, but it’s a beautiful one.

He follows you, watching you head toward the small park at the center of town. It’s amazing to him that you manage to stay so upbeat despite everything that’s happened. You just wake up morning after morning with a smile on your face, roll up your sleeves, and dig right in. You told him once, months ago, ‘You can be a victim of the situation or you can get to the bottom of it and figure shit out. I’ve never been a victim.’

Sam’s glad that it’s you who ended up here with him, even if you drive him crazy.

It’s mid October. When you two first arrived here, the trees were clothed in green until just a few days ago, then all of a sudden there was a riot of colour. It was as if the season jumped into the park instead of fading in as it usually would and all was that more magnificent for doing so. Upon the soft mud are the acorns - from green to pale brown. The night air is getting colder every evening and soon the days will follow, winter is on it’s way.

Sam smiles as you turn to him, waving for him to join you at the swing set. “I’m too big for this thing, Y/N,” he laughs, trotting over to you.

“I know, but I need someone to push me.” You tease, kicking off the ground, swinging backward. Sam gives you a mighty push and you swing high, making your stomach flutter. A laugh of genuine amusement escapes your lips and he chuckles with you.

“Hold on, the last thing we need is you falling and breaking an arm.”

“I know what I’m doing! I used to be a playground professional back in elementary school.” You pump your legs, trying to go higher. This is what you needed, just a moment to forget about these fucked up circumstances. You both need a little levity.

“Let’s eat at the pub tonight, they have all the stuff for burgers. I’ll cook.”

“It’s a deal.” Sam smiles wide, going in for another push.

Six Months

“So, you’re telling me that werewolves, freaking real-life-howl-at-the-moon, claw-and-fangs, I’ll-eat-your-heart-out, werewolves really exist?”  You raise an eyebrow, gesturing wildly with your beer.

You’re wrapped in a heavy blanket, sitting in a lawn chair on the roof of Anderson’s Toy shop, the tallest building in town.

This has become your new favorite place after Sam pulled you up here one night to see if there was better view of the town’s perimeter. He sure as hell found it. It’s getting colder but the view is worth it. Besides, after a few beers the chill fades away.

“Yup, one hundred percent real.” Sam’s face falls a little as he peels at the label on his bottle. Being alone with one person for this long brings out a brutal honesty in each other. “A long time ago I met girl, a woman, She was a werewolf and didn’t even know it. She was a good person and I-I had to fucking shoot her. It was awful.”

You watch him shift in his chair, readjusting his hips. You’re getting to know Sam’s body language pretty well. “You slept with her, huh?”

“I really liked her.” Sam avoids the question, shooting you a nod of his head. His eyes tick in your direction. “That was hard situation. One the of the worst. I’ve had to do a lot of shit I didn’t want to.”

“What about vampires?” You continue on for his sake, moving away from the murder of former lovers.  

“Oh yeah, lots of them.” He muses.

“Thirty Days of Night or Edward Cullen vampires?”

“Definitely not Twilight. There’s nothing romantic about them...but they’re not all bad, like anything else I suppose,” he shrugs, shaking hair out of his face.

“This is unbelievable. Vampires are real and Sam Winchester knows who Edward Cullen is.” He glares at you, raising the bottle to his lips.

“I could tell you stories about some of the things Dean and I hunted that would blow your mind. Djinn, shapeshifters, witches….dragons.” He points at you for added effect, clearly enjoying the look on your face.

“Shut up, dragons?” You shake your head as he affirms his statement. “You’re shitting me.”

“I swear,” he chuckles placing a hand symbolically over his heart.

“So, it’s just you and your brother, hunting dragons and banging bar chicks, huh? Sounds like an 80’s movie.”

“I never said anything about bar chicks,” Sam smiles taking a swig of his beer. “It’s a lot of time on the road, shitty motels, bad pizza, heartburn. It’s isolating. You don’t really get the chance to have relationships or friends. But it’s the family business.”

“If it doesn't make you happy, then why do you do it?”

“Because someone has to.” He shrugs. “I tried to quit, more than once, actually. It took me several tries to realize that people die either way. If someone died because I wasn’t there to help, I couldn’t live with that. I have to try.”

You sigh, looking at him with a gentle affection which makes him rolls his eyes. “I didn’t say anything,” you wave your hands in mock defeat.

“You were about to.” He corrects you, grabbing another beer and twisting the cap off.

“Sam, you’re just...a good guy, a really good guy.” The light is fading now with the sun setting, but you can see the blush flourish in his cheeks.

Sam has the kind of face that stops women in their tracks. You guess he must get used to that, the sudden pause in a person's natural expression when they look his way, followed by overcompensating with a nonchalant gaze and a weak smile. It doesn't help that he’s so modest with it; you imagine it made the girls fall for him all the more. Despite all the opportunities that undoubtedly came his way, you get the distinct impression that he’s a man who prizes the subtle details of a person and thoughtful conversation above lipstick and high-heels.

He’s handsome alright, but inside he’s also beautiful.

“Tell me about Jack,” Sam interjects, with a self-satisfied smirk. He knows it’s a topic that gets a rise out of you. There’s something slowly simmering between you and Sam, something neither of you are ready to acknowledge. “Jack, the high school drama teacher...”

“You just love to say that don’t you?” You swat at his arm while shifting in your chair to face him. “Jack is….up front, what you see is what you get. He’s kind and he thinks about other people. He’s a really handsome guy and a great teacher, he cares about the kids. He’s cheesy, he wrote me a poem for our six month anniversary.”

“A renaissance man,” he wiggles his eyebrows.

“I hate poetry,” you admit, laughing to yourself. “But, he was so damn proud of that God-awful poem that I had it framed.” You pause for a minute, recalling the moment. “Jack is a thoughtful guy, but he never took the time to really know me.” You hesitate, your thoughts morphing. “Sam, if I ask you a question, will you be totally honest with me?”

“Of course.” He sets down his bottle, face falling serious.

“Do you think we’re going to get out of here?”

Sam’s brow furrows as his fidgets. Every other time you’ve brought up the topic, he’s replied with a self-assured answer, but now he’s faltering. He sucks in a breath as if he’s getting ready to pull off the band aid, “I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” you mutter, tipping back your drink. “What do you think your brother’s doing right now?”

“Honestly?” Sam rubs the back of his neck. “Either he’s losing his mind trying to find me or he’s given up.” His voice grows quiet.

“I used to go to my parents’ house every Sunday for dinner. I babysat my niece, took her to soccer practice twice a week. It’s been half a year, by this time, us not being there is their new normal. Someone else does all the shit we used to do. I worry that maybe we’ll end up being just a memory.” You kick at the empty glass bottle near your feet.

Sam reaches over, his hand covering yours. He doesn’t say anything because honestly, there’s nothing to say. So, you sit in silence, hand in hand, as the moon rises over the horizon.

Eight Months

It’s at this moment, after the better of a year, that you go over the deep end. You jumped right into this real life mystery with Sam and held your own emotions at bay for the sake of keeping your own sanity, but now that facade is crumbling. You’ve made no progress and the once bright hope of getting out of this place seems less and less certain everyday.

You wake up early. Sam is still sleeping, belly down and open mouthed on the other bed. He’s snoring gently, somewhere deep and seemingly peaceful. You quietly dress, forgoing pants but finding a thick sweater and pair of his clean socks. Sneaking out of the room, you pad down to the lobby, where the ever-present roaring fire is crackling with life as snow falls outside.

The front bay window looking out onto main street reveals the likeness of an unfinished painting; so much of the canvas still perfectly white, as if waiting for the artists hand to return. The morning light struggles through the murky clouds and is losing the battle. The wind howls, piling snow in drifts, glazing the pane with ice-white dust.

Blustery winter mornings like this remind you of your dad and reading books in front of your grandmother’s fireplace. You wonder if you’ll ever see him again, ever hold his hand or hear him call you babygirl.

You have your full breakdown when you realize that you can’t remember Jack’s face. You have a vague idea of what he looks like, but you just can’t fill in the details anymore. They’ve become a silhouette, almost as if they walked out of a photograph and only left behind a black outline. There is an ache that comes and goes, always returning in quiet moments like this. You settle into the armchair closest to the fire, tucking your feet under you.

Your heart breaks. You grieve.

Eyes dripping with tears, your walls, the walls that hold you up and make you strong, simply collapse. Brick by brick, they fall in salty drops fall from your chin, drenching your shirt. Perhaps these tears will help wash the memories out. You press your head into your hands sobbing, crying out as your chest trembles and heaves with raw, painful emotion.

You cry for your mother and father who you know will have gone out of their minds looking for you. Family has always come first, they know you’d never just pick up and disappear by choice. After this long, they will only assume one thing, you’re dead. There’s no other reason for you to vanish without a trace.

Then there’s Jack. You’d been dating a little less than year, but the relationship progressed fast. You’re thirty and he’s a bit a older, old enough to not want to waste any more time. He was so serious about you, perhaps a little more than you wanted. You’re pretty sure he was going to propose and you’re fairly sure that you would have said yes. That was then, and then seems like a lifetime ago.

Now, all these thoughts rip at your insides as you grieve for a life that’s certainly moving on without you.

You don’t hear Sam come down the stairs until he startles you by placing a hand on your leg while dropping down to his knees in front of you. You blink with heavy tears trapped in your lashes. He’s still half asleep, his eyes heavy, hair wild and mussed. His mouth twists in displeasure at your pain.

He doesn't say anything, he just grabs your elbows, pulls you forward, wrapping two strong arms around you. It’s been so long since someone touched you like this. The feeling of his embrace combined with the comforting smell of a man hits you like a narcotic. You melt into him, pressing your nose into his neck while tears continue to fall. You weep, hands clutching at his shirt.

Sam holds you in silence until your despair recedes and your breathing is even and hot at the skin of his neck. His hand are moving in long, slow trails up and down your spine. You feel his touch moving from your back to your side, stroking as his palms catch at the hem of your sweater. His finger accidentally slips under, a simple mistake, just a quick touch of skin on skin that awakens something deeper.

Your breasts are crushed into his chest where you feel his pounding heartbeat. Taking a deep breath you inhale his scent. Your hand slides up his arm and shoulder, stopping to caress the base of his neck before combing your fingers into his hair, sliding over his scalp.

Sam draws a quick breath, pulling his head back just far enough to look up at you. Your raw eyes don’t leave his. He’s so close, you lean forward, your nose pressing into his, lips just a shy moment from connection.

One of his big hands moves from your side, cupping your face as his thumb trails along your jawline, then up, hooking your bottom lip under his finger. You lean in to kiss him and he moves back in tandem, sitting back on his haunches.

“We can’t,” he mutters, closing his eyes momentarily as if he’s trying to reset himself.

You wipe your hands through your hair then over your face, instantly embarrassed. The silly idea that he might want you the way you want him seems ludicrous.

“I’m going to take a shower,” you quip, scampering out of your chair and up the stairs.

“Y/N…” you hear Sam call after you, but you don’t stop.

You bound into the room, stripping quickly before stepping under the shower, where you sit down in the bottom of the tub under an unrelenting stream of hot water. You think about Sam and the way his hands felt on you. Your stomach twists in guilt as you remember how badly you wanted Sam to kiss you, to hold you and...well let’s just say you’ve thought about Sam doing a wide variety of things to you.

You don’t know it, but you’ll look back on this as the moment you let go of the life that came before and move forward, here with Sam.

-

Sam has dreams about you. Well, actually they’re nightmares.

He dreams you’re gone.

It’s always the same, he wakes up with his heart pounding in  his chest, desperate to make sure you’re still there.

In these dreams Sam blinks awake in the dark of a bedroom, reaching for you out of habit. In his version of events, you should be in the bed next to him, sleeping peacefully with your sleep warm cheek pressed into the edge of his pillow, but you’re not. His hands fall on cold sheets.

This is when the panic starts.

He searches what should be the usual places, the bathroom, the lobby, the cafe across the street, but you’re nowhere to be found. He runs from building to building, calling your name. It’s dark and he doesn’t have a flashlight, so he stumbles and trips through the night as the desperation builds.

He finds himself on Miller’s Path, a bike trail that leads out of town, twisting deep in the thick, pine woods. Following the trail under the moonlight, his eyes adjust so that he can run faster...he knows this is the way you came. He can feel you.

He tumbles into a clearing and there you are. You turn to him, as your thin white nightgown billows in the winds, wrapping tight around your body. There’s a ball of white light growing in the air just above your head.

“What’s happening?” Sam asks, his eyes wide. “You shouldn’t be out here, not without me.”

“I’m sorry Sam,” your face falls, “but I’m leaving. They said I can go home, but I have to do it now.”

“But…” Sam stutters. “But, what about me? Can I come with you?”

You shake your head adamantly as if you’re explaining yourself to a child. “No, you have to stay. Only one of us can go and it’s me.”

A surge of confusion and fear rises in Sam, his chest feels too tight and he can’t breathe. He fights back the tears threatening to spill. This can’t be happening, you wouldn’t leave him. “If you go...I’ll be alone.”

“Yes, for a very long time, maybe forever,” you confirm, matter-of-factly.

“Y/N, please don’t leave me here.” He moves toward you and you step back in tandem, closer to the orb.

“I have to go, people are waiting for me.” You reach out toward the light and look back at him.

“Don’t.” He pleads, his arm outstretched. “Stay with me.”

“Why would I?” You shrug emotionless, turning from him and walking into the light.

There’s a blinding flash and when Sam blinks you’re gone and he’s alone in the clearing, in the town, in this place.

Eleven Months, One Week

You’re lying on your back with Sam beside you, sprawled out in the middle of the main street on a scratchy wool blanket. You squint through a handheld telescope, just two crazy kids in the middle of the road, stargazing and drinking scotch from the bottle.

“I think that’s a planet.” You hand him the lense, pointing to the general area of the sky that’s housing a large, orange light.

“Where?” Sam’s mouth falls open as he searches for your spot.

“To the right,” you reach over and push his wrist in the right direction. You’re careful to only touch his sleeve.

There’s been no skin-on-skin contact for a couple of months now, except for when you nearly fell down the steps at the hotel. Sam caught you by your forearm, nearly hissing. He’d shaken his hand as if you’d burned him - you don’t talk about those things. In fact, Sam goes out of his way to avoid acknowledging any of the feelings between you.

“I see it, I don’t think that’s a planet though. Probably just space junk.” He side eyes you, teasing and waiting to see if you’ll take the bait. He drops his shoulders and gives you an ‘I told you so’ face. “We should get some astronomy books from the library, see if we’re even looking at real stars.”

“You don’t think they’re real?” This kind of thought never occurs to you. You’ve reached a certain level of acceptance for this brave new world.

“I don’t know, it’s possible.” Sam sits up on his elbows, taking a swig from the bottle. His tolerance level puts yours to shame, but tonight he’s drunk. He makes a sour face and swallows. Shaking his head, he turns to look down at you, “I wanna ask you a question.”

“I don’t know if I like the sound of this,” you’re only half teasing. “It’s just you and me Winchester. I’m an open book.”

“This scar…” Sam reaches out and runs his fingers over the light scar just under your collarbone. You flinch from the contact, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Touching, or lack thereof is an unspoken rule ever since the almost kiss that created a steady, constant tension. “You rub it when you’re tired. How’d you get it?”

A line appears between your brows as you grimace. He’s delving into uncomfortable territory. He pulls his hand away and right on cue, your fingers replace his. “I, um…”

“You don’t have to tell me.” Sam drops his head bashfully and starts to stand. “It’s none of my business.”

“Sam, sit the fuck down.” You sigh, grabbing his elbow, pulling him back to the ground. He falls unceremoniously beside you with an oompf. “The short version is I dated a guy a while ago, Alex. I thought he was great but I was painfully wrong. We were together for a couple of years but we just...grew apart. I broke up with him and he didn’t take it very well. Actually, that’s being too generous, he went batshit crazy. After a whole series of crazy stalker shit, he broke into my apartment and tried to kill me. This scar is where he stabbed me.”

“Jesus,” Sam mutters, wiping a hand over his face in distress.

“One of the things you don’t know about me, Sam Winchester, is that you’re sitting next to the Willcome County Take Back The Night women’s self defense instructor. I might not be Chuck Norris, but I still broke his nose and kicked him hard enough in the nuts that he had to have surgery.”

Sam winces, involuntarily scrunching up his nose. “Good. You should’ve done more than that.”

“You might be right.” You agree. “It messed me up for a long time. It took the better part a decade to trust anyone like that again.”

“I woulda killed him.” Sam surprises you with that one, he doesn’t even try to hide the disgust in his voice. “I’ll never let anything like that happen to you.”

You roll onto your side, propping your head on a hand. You’ve known him long enough now to understand that Sam needs to protect people, it’s part of his DNA. “I know you wouldn’t.”

“You better.” When he’s been drinking he’s bossy, he likes to have the last word.

“Your turn. I want to ask you about something.” You scoot back up to get a better view of his face.

Sam gulps and looks down at you. “Okay.”

“Sometimes you talk in your sleep. You call out to people. It’s mostly Dean, but sometimes there are other names.”

“Who?” Sam looks back up at the stars, clenching his jaw.

“Sometimes Jess...and every once in a while Amelia.” His upper lip twitches as those names rattle out of your mouth.

“Oh.” Sam shifts onto his side, mirroring your position. “Really?”

“Yeah. Amelia not as much, but when you do say her name it doesn’t sound like it’s a good dream. I wonder about you, about Sam the guy, instead of Sam the hunter.” When he doesn’t answer, you give him an out, “you don’t have to tell me.”

“Y/N, sit the fuck down.” He repeats your earlier words with a sad smile. Despite the heaviness of the topic, he’s thoroughly enjoying the roll reversal. He never misses a chance to poke fun. “They were two very different people.”

Sam pauses and you think he’s struggling for words. In reality he’s wrestling with the idea that he’s had these feelings for three women in his life and he’s about to tell you about the other two.

“I met Jess in college and she was it for me. The moment I saw her, I knew I wanted to be with her. She was smart and beautiful, she saw so much good in me. She believed I could do or be anything and she taught me how to believe in myself. She called me out on my shit. She was a force of nature. In a different world, we would have gotten married and had a couple of kids.”

“What happened?”

“She died.” Sam purses his lips, studying the palm of his hand. “It was brutal, really violent, something no one should ever have to go through. She died because of me, ‘cause she was with me. It took me a long time to forgive myself for that. If I’m honest I don’t know if I ever really have.”

“God, Sam, I’m sorry.” You want to wrap your arms around him, hold him the way he did for you. But you can’t, not yet.

“And Amelia, she was...Dean was gone when I met her. I just wanted to be with someone, to make a connection. I forced something I should have left alone but in the end I left because it was the right thing to do. She wasn’t mixed up in any of this shit. Once you know about this world, you can’t opt out.”

“Did you love her?” You’re feeling bold tonight, but he’s offering answers to questions that have been burning a hole in your brain for months now.  

“Yeah, I did.” Sam responds without hesitation, making eye contact with you and never looking away.

“So, what about now? Is there a woman waiting for you back home?”

“Now-” Sam shakes off the sentimentality as he grins at you, tipping back the bottle. He’s done talking and you’re not about to push further. “Now I have you. It’s safe to say at this point I’ve spent more time with you than any other women in my past, including my mom.”

“You know you’re right. I’m just now fully realizing what a lucky guy you are. I am wonderful company.” You take the bottle from him and take a sip, face souring when the burn hits your throat. “I mean, I smell good, I’m hilarious, I can cook, I can put up with the mess you leave in the bathroom every morning.”

“You’re a real gift.” Sam chides. He pats his thighs and looks around as if there could possibly be some new distraction. Nothing is ever new in Shadow Hill. “I’m done for. I have to go to bed before I end up spending the night out here.”

You follow his lead, standing and collecting the blanket.

As you wander back to the hotel, Sam wraps an arm around your shoulder. There’s been more physical contact tonight than you’ve had in months. There’s such a comfort in this closeness, that you lean into his side, soaking up as much as you can.

“What would I do with you?” He chimes, his arm dropping from your shoulder to your waist. He gives you a squeeze and your heart picks up a few beats.

“Crash and burn.”

His whole body tenses up, his arm going limp as he moves away. “Let’s go to bed. I need to sleep.”

One Year

“What’s going on?” At Sam’s request you’ve covered your eyes as he leads you by the hand across mainstreet. The bells rings as he opens the door of Anthony's Italian Cafe.

“You’ll find out, don’t peek. Be careful here, there’s a step.” He guides you through the maze of chair and tables.

“Don’t let me trip.”

“I won’t. Okay, you can take look now.” Sam taps your wrist and you open your eyes.

There’s a table set up by the kitchen, a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers in the center, flanked by dishes filled with wonderful looking foods. “What’s all this?”

“It’s our anniversary. One year in Shadow Hill.” Sam grins hesitantly, trying to gage your reaction. “I figured it could be a sad, dramatic thing or we could celebrate the fact that we made it this far.”

“Sam.” You drag out his name, digesting his words. A year. It’s been a whole year.

“Too much?” He offers when you don’t say anything else.

“No, not at all. It’s exactly what we need.” You let him pull out your chair for you and take a seat. “This is where you’ve been all day?”

“I have to warn you, I’m not the best cook, but I think we have my version of all your favorites here. Mussels, lasagna, caesar salad and garlic bread.” He proudly shows off his spread as you uncork the wine.

“This is very impressive and incredibly thoughtful.” You raise your glass, clinking it to his before taking the inaugural sip. Before the night is done, the two of you will finish three bottles and half a pan of lasagna, despite the taste.

You eat Sam’s bland Italian cooking and tell him how much you like it. By the time you get to dessert, two pieces of cheesecake he liberated from the Sweet Shop, you’re fairly drunk and thoroughly enjoying yourself. Sam’s telling you a story about Dean trying to do laundry that has you in stitches, laughing with honest amusement as he chuckles right along with you.

“I hope I get to meet Dean someday. I’d like to see the man behind these stories. I feel like you’re exaggerating.”

“Trust me, if anything, I’m downplaying it. If we ever get home, he’s the first person I’ll introduce you to.” Sam’s smile fades as he plays with the stem of his wine glass. “I’ve been thinking. I’m not giving up on finding a way out of here. I never will. But we can’t stop living either. I feel more and more like we’re treading water, in a perpetual state of limbo.”

“I know. Our lives remind me a goldfish I had when I was a kid,” you admit. If you’re honest you gave up on any chance of going home a long time ago. “What does that mean for you, to start living? Please tell me it means we can finally move out of the hotel and into one of the houses?”

“We can definitely do that.” Sam chews at his lip, before shifting his eyes to you. “I don’t know why it was the two of us that ended up here. I don’t know if there’s some grand plan or this is just random chaos. The one thing I do know is us. I have...certain feelings for you...and I think you feel the same way...” He looks to you, hoping for a confirmation.

“I do.” You answer softly, setting your glass down as he continues. There’s a nervous pressure pushing at your chest.

“It scares me. It’s just the two of us here and that makes this a tricky situation. If we fuck up what we have, if we try for something more and it doesn’t work out, we're stuck with each whether we like it or not.” Sam finishes his wine and pours himself another glass, avoiding your stare.

“That’s true.” You sit back in your seat trying to deduce where this is going to end up.

“It’s important that you know tonight, this dinner, wasn’t some grand romantic gesture. Tonight was about us as friends, Y/N. I haven’t...” he pauses as his voices shifts up an octave. “I haven’t ever had the chance to just be, to just talk to someone without hiding part of who I am or what I do. You accept every insane thing I tell you. I don’t know if it’s this place or if we’d have this connection outside of Shadow, but I’m thankful for this time with you.”

His voice trails off and you reach across the table, grabbing his forearm, squeezing. “It’s not just Shadow Hill, Sam. No matter what happens, we’re going to take care of each other.” You speak back to him the words he told you that second day, when you were crumbling and terrified. “Whether we’re here or back in the real world, we don’t change. It’s you and me.”

“‘Till the wheels come off.” He finishes.

-

This story is complete (44k) and available now on Patreon for a pledge of 2.50. >>CLICK HERE<<

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[holy-honeybees]

Snowdrift

AO3

Rating: T+ (for swearing)

Summary: Three friends and  their dog get lost in a snowstorm while investigating the paranormal. Amidst swirling flurries of white, some lose their way and get lost in their memories, others lose sight of their friends and loved ones, and an unforgiving winter quickly fills in the footprints one would follow to get back home.

A/N: I started this back in November but sadly never finished the work. I was thinking of holding off till it started to snow again, but figured now was as good a time as any to try and finish this.The title is taken from Snail's House song "[snowdrift]" which you can check out here! Also, just in case, this chapter does feature a panic attack, though not what I would consider to be a graphic one.

Next Chapter

Chapter One 

It was late December and the Nebraska landscape was quiet in a way that only winter brings. The flat plains that stretched to either side of the roadway were barren and frozen, though the month had yet to see any snowfall. The somber atmosphere was interrupted by the steady rumble of a boxy, yellow van rolling along the empty country highway, heading north. Inside the car, music played, punctuated by soft snoring and the occasional thump of a dog’s tail that wagged in its sleep, the driver tunelessly humming along and tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, one metal and the other flesh and bone. As for conversation, it was silent, though not for lack of conscious company. Arthur Kingsmen stole a glance out of the corner of his eye at the specter he shared the front seat with, the ghost staring absentmindedly out of the window at the passing landscape. If it weren’t for the fact that they had tried—and in his own case, succeeded—to kill each other a little over a year ago, Arthur might have called it a companionable silence. As it was, the lack of conversation since Vivi had crawled into the back of the van for a nap was making him nervous. He glanced at Lewis once again before turning back to the roadway with a small sigh, rubbing tiredly at his eyes with his right hand. Things had gotten better between them. Things had been getting better for all of them. The sight alone of Mystery didn’t leave Arthur shaking, plastered to the opposite side of the van. Vivi was getting her memory back steadily, despite the occasional lapse they stumbled across. Lewis…well, Lewis wasn’t trying to kill him anymore. The purple specter didn’t even glare at him anymore. Forgiveness had been achieved despite the niggling doubts at the back of Arthur’s mind that whispered he didn’t deserve it. They had gone from enemies, to strangers, to almost-friends. They had relearned to occupy the same space, even chatting sociably on occasion without Vivi or Mystery playing mediator. It was progress, slow progress maybe, but Arthur wasn’t sure if there was any precedence for how long it might take to repair your friendship with the spirit of your once best friend. If he was being honest, he was happy just to have the chance. Vivi had wanted to celebrate their progress with a new case, one that required road tripping, though Arthur suspected that her decision was partially fueled by her exuberance and impatience at seeing them be friends again. It must have been hard for her to get her memories back at a point in time where everything had changed so much, Arthur mused, once again rubbing at his eyes as he tried to rein in his thoughts. His mind tended to wander when he was tired, and Arthur Kingsmen, certified insomniac, was always tired.

He glanced at Lewis once again, before exchanging the heat blasting out the van’s vents for cold air, shivering despite his vest being zipped up over the long-sleeved white shirt he’d swapped for his usual tee. Arthur knew Lewis would be unbothered, unable to feel the temperature change, and Vivi, bundled in the back of the van in heavy blankets and cuddled up to a fluffy dog, wasn’t likely to notice. He needed to stay awake and the chilly air would help. His coffee thermos had long since run dry, as had the conversation, and after six long hours of driving on only two hours of sleep, anything stimulating would be a welcome change. He had to stay awake, he had to keep driving, he had to be usefu—he had to stay awake. His discordant humming choked off and his fingers tightened around the wheel, ceasing their increasingly frenzied tapping. He glanced at the van’s clock, trying to calculate how much longer it would be before they could pull over in a town to rest, before giving up on the math when he realized he had no idea how far away the next stop was. His mind circled back to the silence, and he warred with himself about conversation topics, his mind buzzing with a dozen unsatisfactory attempts to break the silence. He wondered if it was his fault things were so quiet now. Had he done something wrong, said something wrong? Should he apologize, just in case? Would it be weird to start speaking again now? Would Lewis be annoyed? Arthur felt the irrational need to say something, anything begin to bubble up in his chest as his mind began to spiral out of control, taking apart the last quiet hour like an engine to see if he could figure out the trouble. He had to come up with a conversation topic soon or he would inevitably blurt out the first thing that came to mind or else launch into a long-winded babble about mechanics, robotics, or—god forbid—van maintenance. He could feel the pressure building in his chest, climbing up his throat, and did his best to weld his mouth firmly shut against any awkward attempts at small talk he might make. Then Lewis sat up abruptly, causing Arthur to jolt in his seat, a strangled noise escaping through his clamped-shut lips. Lewis was staring intently in his direction. The dire need to fill the silence was becoming too much to contend with as Arthur opened his mouth to launch into what he hoped wouldn’t be some diatribe about how the number of lug nuts didn’t necessarily equate high performance for a car, just take race cars for example—

Splat!

Arthur startled at the small sound of something hitting the windshield, whipping his head around to Lewis when he heard a soft utterance emit from his skull.

“Look.” Lewis had hunched forward in his seat, crowding his large frame into the windshield of the van, looking upwards with a dreamy expression. Arthur would be ceaselessly frustrated trying to figure out the logistics of how a skull could so effortlessly emote had the expression on the specter’s face not been so soft, so human and alive, leaving a bittersweet feeling to grow in Arthur’s chest.

“It’s snowing,” Lewis said. Arthur blinked as he comprehended the words, before likewise craning forwards in his seat and turning his face skywards. Thick, fluffy white flakes were drifting down from the pale grey sky, making a lazy descent to the world below. He gazed at the beginnings of the flurry with childlike wonder, a small smile slipping onto his face without his notice. He’d seen snow before of course, experienced it in person too, though the opportunity to do so in Tempo, Texas, hadn’t presented itself. Arthur remembered being young, before he’d come to live with his Uncle Lance, his father had tried to show him how to have a snowball fight during a winter they’d spent in Colorado. He never quite got the form right, the snow turning into powder or wet misshapen lumps between his mittens, as opposed to the seemingly perfect spheres his father made. When it came to throwing snowballs, his weak, noodle-like arms weren’t able to muster up much force, while his dad had let loose like canon fire. Arthur had taken one of the frozen projectiles to the face and immediately started crying. He still remembered his father’s large, apologetic smile as he’d laughed and ruffled his hair before he’d taken him to a local diner for hot chocolate, tears quickly forgotten by the child. It was a good memory, and he found his eyes misting over as he once again wished things could go back to the way they were before. As much as he loved his Uncle Lance, as happy as he was to have Lewis back, even in his present condition, he still wished he could turn back the clock.

“Hey, eyes on the road,” Lewis chuckled in the seat beside him, shaking Arthur free of the memory he’d been caught in. The mechanic quickly scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeves, hoping his spectral passenger hadn’t noticed. He returned his attention to the pavement ahead of him, just in time to see a pale figure standing in the road only a few feet from the front of the speeding van.

“Shit!” Arthur exclaimed, slamming his foot down on the brake, the tires screeching in protest at the sudden deceleration until the van came to a stop ten feet further down the pavement. He sat there breathing heavily in his seat, Lewis clinging to the side of the van as if he still had a life to fear for. In the back, the dog muttered choice words under his breath at the rude awakening and Vivi mumbled as she slowly became alert.

“Arthur, what the—” Lewis began from the front seat, irritation creeping into his tone. But Arthur had already thrown the driver’s side door wide open and was scrambling outside, uncaring to hear the rest of Lewis’s expletive. He stumbled along the roadway searching for the figure he had seen just moments before, hoping he wouldn’t see them lying unmoving in the middle of the road but expecting it nonetheless. His surroundings were as empty as they had been over the last few hours though.

“Shit. Shit, shit…” Arthur cursed under his breath. He’d just run somebody over, most likely killing them since he’d been strictly adhering to the fifty-five mile per hour speed limit, and this time there was nobody to blame but himself. No extenuating circumstances, no green spirits possessing him, just him and—

“Arthur, what’s going on?” Lewis spoke up suddenly from behind him, causing the shorter man to startle. 

“Th-there was somebody in the road,” Arthur responded, swallowing thickly. They had made so much progress and all of it was going to be undone because he was a murderer again. Lewis merely regarded him quietly, his look appraising. Arthur squirmed under the scrutiny.

“I-I tried to stop, but by the time I saw them there was no…there was no way…” Arthur said, an all-consuming sick-feeling opening up like a pit in his stomach as he trailed off weakly, “We need to find their…body…so we can, y-y’know…”

“Arthur,” Lewis was looking at him with a concerned expression, his head shaking slightly as he slowly said, “there wasn’t anybody in the road.”

“W-what?” Arthur said dumbly, his mouth suddenly dry, “B-but I saw…” He trailed off as he heard the telltale click of dog claws on pavement as Mystery joined them. 

“Arthur,” the disguised kitsune said calmly, “If there was anything in this vicinity that you could have struck with the van, I would have sensed it.” The dog quirked an eyebrow at him as he made to interrupt. 

“And even if you don’t find yourself able to rely on the incredible mystic abilities of a 600-year-old kitsune, my nose would detect it even without the aid of magic. There’s no one out here but us.” 

“O-Oh,” Arthur said, his shoulders slumped as he released a shaky breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, too quickly taking another, and another to refill his lungs. Two feet clad in thick blue socks entered his field of vision as he stared down at the asphalt, the fourth and final member of their group finally roused and joining where they’d gathered on the road. If Vivi had said anything upon her arrival though, it was lost to the ringing in his ears accompanied by the pounding of his heart. He massaged his sternum absently. 

“Oh,” he repeated numbly, followed by a high-pitched stressed sound that could have been mistaken for a giggle if not for the utter lack of mirth in the noise. Panic set upon him in full force then, his breath hitching as he rode out the panic attack like a wave, the fit of hyperventilation ebbing away after a few minutes, awareness of his surroundings creeping back in.

“You okay, Artie?” Vivi asked, her voice still sleepy, but her eyes sharp and focused on him, brimming with worry.

“I’m okay,” he said, almost automatically, before taking another moment to catch his breath, “Just…relieved. I-Is it bad that I feel like I’m getting better at having panic attacks?” 

“I don’t like the thought of you having that much practice at it,” Vivi mumbled, pressing in close to her friend’s side and wrapping him up in the blanket she’d dragged out with her. Arthur hummed noncommittally, grateful for the shared warmth. He felt a hand on his chin, gently tilting his head back.

“Have you been sleeping?” Lewis inquired, peering closely at Arthur’s face, though the mechanic suspected that the deep shadows and bags under his eyes didn’t require that close of an inspection to be seen.

“I know I saw something,” Arthur said half-heartedly, avoiding the question the specter had posed to him. He had been so certain he’d seen something in the road, but his friends’ reassurances were weakening his conviction. 

“Maybe I am a little tired,” he admitted sheepishly, hands once again coming up to scrub at his eyes.

“How about you let Lewis drive for a little while?” Vivi suggested, already tugging Arthur towards the back of the van, the mechanic easily lead away despite the protests he voiced. Vivi ushered him through the rear doors, depositing him on top of the sleeping bag she’d used earlier and quickly burying him under a pile of blankets.

“Just for a little while,” Arthur said tiredly, his eyelids already beginning to droop, “And no…no changing the van into…whatever it was you did to that monster truck.” He thought he heard Lewis huff a laugh as he burrowed further into the blankets, still warm from Vivi’s nap. He listened as she and Lewis climbed into the front of the van, Mystery’s legs scrambling briefly to gain purchase on the seat, a quiet conversation starting between the ghost and the girl in hushed tones undoubtedly for his own benefit. Arthur sighed as he relaxed further into the warm environment. He’d rest, just for a little while, just enough so that his eyes were clear and focused and didn’t conjure imaginary obstacles in the road.

Just a little while…

Arthur dozed off within minutes, lulled to sleep by Lewis’s voice as it rumbled through the specter’s chest and the familiar scent of blueberry shampoo on the pillow he’d borrowed.

In the distance, a single, silent figure stood, with pale skin and white hair. The snow swirled around her, the spitting snowflakes quickly worked up into a flurry, landing on her nose and blue lips, undisturbed by her lack of breath or body heat. Had one of the Mystery Skulls looked in the rearview mirror of the van, they might have caught a glimpse of her as she faded from view, blending into the wintry landscape, scentless and shapeless as the snow that fell from the sky.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I'm like half way through Ghost in the Shell so maybe this gets addressed, but there is a pretty good argument that the act of being a voluntary controller counts as treason esp if it happened after war was formally declared.

I do not quite address it, outside of the mentions of the ex-hosts not legally counting as prisoners of war, but within the world of Eleutherophobia neither the U.S. nor the Yeerk Empire formally declares war on the other.  I made that decision mostly because:

The Yeerk Empire has no more reason to call the Earth conflict a war than European-Americans had to call Manifest Destiny (AKA the Native American land theft and mass-murder) a war

The U.S. has a nasty habit of pretending it’s not at war (in Korea, in Afghanistan, in the Persian Gulf) when it’s convenient for them not to be at war

There isn’t really time for much open conflict between any Earth forces and any Yeerk Empire forces, given that there are at most 2 - 3 skirmishes and one single battle between non-morphing forces and yeerks before the war ends

The overwhelming majority of Earth forces genuinely don’t know what’s going on until it’s already too late to intervene

No war = no prisoners of war = no need to pay out billions of dollars in benefits to zombies who are probably faking and/or voluntary anyway

Anywhoo, the semi-backward benefit to all that is that the voluntary hosts can’t be charged with treason, because that would involve acknowledging the Yeerk Empire as an enemy of the United States and there simply isn’t time or paperwork to back up that assertion.  There’s also the interesting reality that most people cannot be convicted of most crimes (in theory) unless a prosecutor can prove that this one individual committed a particular crime and no one else could have possibly done it, AKA innocent until proven guilty.  Therefore, it would be difficult to (for instance) charge Taylor with murder if there was an argument to be made that either Taylor or Sub-Visser Fifty-One committed the murder in question.  It could happen, but Taylor’s lawyer could easily argue that Taylor didn’t actually have much of a choice in the situation due to extenuating circumstances, and could probably even get away with it to the point where the prosecutor wouldn’t be able to stick either murder or accessory-to-murder to Taylor beyond reasonable doubt.

The other concern is that the line between “voluntary” and “involuntary” is fuzzy at best, and subject to change at the whims of the yeerk.  Most of the “voluntary” hosts we see (Chapman, Mr. Tidwell, AU-Tobias, Taylor) have in reality been coerced into becoming controllers by various life circumstances, to the point where they most certainly did not give their fully informed consent to have an alien use their bodies to commit crimes.  Again, I just don’t think that the assertion of “you knowingly and deliberately helped enemies of the U.S.” would hold up in a court of law.

...all of which are arguments that, I imagine, the Animorphs and their allies used behind the scenes to argue against post-war revenge.  They know that it’s horrifically unfair to allow so many people to get away with such horrific crimes — and that is, in many ways, the core of the conflict I’m covering in Ghost in the Shell — but they also know that the only thing worse than failing to charge any of the hosts would be a mass attempt to ferret out the guilty hosts.  The Animorphs win by promising the yeerks (even the combatants) and the taxxons (even the voluntary hosts) the chance to live free in peace after the war.  My headcanon is that they keep to that promise, and that they extend that same courtesy to the human hosts, even the ones who don’t necessarily deserve it.  It’s not a perfect solution, and it’s not really a good answer.  But this is also a series with no perfect solutions and no good answers, and I wanted to reflect that in my own fan fiction.

[meetmeatthewhaleskull]

Hi! I've been accepted to COA, and as I'm trying to decide between attending COA or another college (Western Washington University to be specific), I'd like to make sure that wherever I go, I'm challenged and engaged in rigorous classes. Since COA isn't a super well know college, how do I know that the coursework will be as rigorous as other more well known universities?

Hey there, thanks for your question. Here’s what a few current community members have to say: 

“As someone who transferred from a more well known liberal arts college, I would say COA is extremely rigorous but in a different way. At my first college (which has a reputation for being one of the most rigorous colleges in the country), I was assigned literally hundreds of pages of reading for each class each week -- more work than one could realistically do, so I learned how to skim and skate across the surface of lots of things. I rarely (if ever) met with professors outside of class, and I ultimately began to feel like I had proved I was able to succeed in a demanding academic environment but I wasn't really learning in a deep way, or engaging meaningfully with the material. There just wasn't a lot of heart to what I was doing. When I transferred to COA, I found a refreshing counterpoint: professors wanted to know me as a person, and because of this they pushed me in ways that would take my learning and my understanding to the next level. I found myself pushed to challenge my assumptions, to be a much more critical thinker and reader, and to engage with the material in a richer and more nuanced way. At least one professor here says COA is like a ‘graduate school for undergraduates’ because of the high level of rigor and engagement, and also because of the incredible opportunities there are for research and independent projects.The terms at COA are short and intense, the work load is heavy but do-able (if you stay focused), and professors will have high expectations - but they're also passionate and they love what they teach, so the classroom environment is both paradigm-shifting and also a lot of fun.” 

“I think one of the coolest things about COA is how much control you have over your academic path, including rigor. There's definitely classes that are more rigorous than others, although of course how you experience a class depends on your background and your learning style. One thing I would emphasize is that COA classes very much tend to operate on a system of "you get out what you put in." There are opportunities in every class to go above and beyond, to build relationships with faculty, and to explore curriculum more deeply and more broadly by connecting to it other aspects of your life and academics. COA academics are definitely what you make of them.”

"I, too, worried that COA -- with its small size and out-of-the-box thinking -- might not challenge me as much as other larger institutions with more traditional degree programs. However, I'm here to tell you worry not (or maybe you should still worry) because COA is the most rigorous academic environment that I've ever encountered, and I've heard many classmates express the same. In a lot of programs out there, you'll exhaust yourself memorizing material. You'll have to memorize some things at COA but the focus is on you using it and incorporating those ideas into your assignments. Classes are smaller at COA, so you and your professors get to know you and your work -- much harder to sail under the radar with mediocre work when they've seen your best work. We all have ‘off days,’ and COA faculty are extremely understanding and accommodating if you're struggling with extenuating circumstances. But most of the time at COA, instructors want you to truly engage and get excited by the material, and to work passionately and honestly. You'll never just check boxes in a rubric at COA -- you'll do way more than that."

 A graduate school for undergraduates. That pretty much sums it up. Speaking of graduate schools, within five years of graduation, more than 60% of our alumnx pursue graduate studies. Most frequently attended graduate schools include: American University, Boston University, College of the Atlantic, Columbia University, Cornell University, Duke University, Harvard University, Northeastern University, Tufts, University of British Columbia, University of California, University of Copenhagen, University of Maine, University of Southern Maine, Yale School of Forestry. 

I hope this helps! Good luck in your decision!