#there was also a bit about using the cremated bodies as well which is what nya was gonna say

[unhingedpolycule]

Haiii ! Love what you do and had two questions :

Do you think any of them would cry at the others burial (if they even want that ? Cremation ?)

And do you think one of them would wear glasses once they age a bit more ?

Thank you 🩵

Haiiiii! First of all, thank you for your ask! It made me think and it was a really cool concept to work with! You can find the (long) answer under the cut!

If the body is recovered from the warzone where they died, they would have a small service I think. Not because the other would particularly want or need it, but because the team would more or less insist and it is simply the social convention. It doesn’t really bother them either. That being said… they would not cry. Nikto would probably get pretty gruff, outwardly pretending that their relationship was not as deep as it actually was, so he isn’t too sad. Mostly because people keep giving him condolences. He does not like it, handling Sebastian‘s death is hard enough on its own. Krueger would just get… like very silent in my mind. Not directly pretending that it doesn’t bother him, but he would let his mask slip a bit. Instead of being detached on purpose, he just sits and reminiscence about Nikto and what he is missing right now. His voice, having someone to concentrate on and to care for as to make his life less eventless. He was Nikto’s caretaker and partner for years and he was used to being joint at the hip, always having an interesting and stimulating person around.

Both feel the urge to be alone. Krueger would go missing soon after, probably searching out Blaustein without telling him what is going on. Of course, Blaustein understands that something bad must have happened and he is smart enough to count two and two together. Krueger would find a new PMC, maybe he would even stay with Coalition (Blaustein’s faction) for a bit. But he is a wanderer at heart, so it wouldnt last longer than a year. Nikto was the only thing tying him to a specific faction, so he starts moving again, with regular visits to Hans though. As for Nikto… he would be pursued by Nikodim, who thinks that he is helping. Their relationship might very well break under that pressure, leaving Nikto much worse off, just because his stability and his support system is gone. He eventually rebuilds routine on his own, but before that, he would probably burn himself out in an attempt not to grief too much.

To make it short: Krueger would let himself feel what he feels, accepting it for what it is and seek the support that he might need. Nikto would very much do the opposite and repress in order to continue being functional, even if this ruins a lot of things for him. Both would be incredibly affected. I don’t know if they would actually cry. If they do, it comes over them in the middle of the night without any warning. They want to turn around to hug the other and they find themselves alone. For Krueger, it’s a few tears. Nikto is angry ugly crying, clutching the pillow and staring at nothing.

Krueger keeps Nikto’s last pill bottle in his pack, using it for his own drugs. Nikto keeps Krueger’s net on his bedpost. Both store the other’s gear. Nikto in his room, Krueger with Blaustein, since Hans has a more steady lifestyle.

BUUUUUUUT since Krueger is an unkillable cockroach (derogatory) and Nikto is very capable and has a second pair of eyes attached to a man which would go to length to safe him… they are fine. Very fine. VERY FINE AND HAPPY. (I can’t do mcd unless it’s a “growing old” setting. I am weak.)

As for the glasses: very easy. Nikto is used to taking medication and having to subsidise for things his body is not able to do anymore (mostly because of his mental illness, but I also imagine him to have issues with mild erectile dysfunction/maintaining an erection if he is not actively having sex right in that moment.) so he would wear some cheap old man glasses. He has like three pairs, all various stages of scratched/disrepair.

Krueger on the other hand would not like it. At all. He has lived his life being able to do everything without aid, running into an active warzone without proper protection and coming out mostly unscathed. It would take some time until he could accept glasses properly. Not because of pride or of others seeing him like this, but because he has to admit that he is no longer fully “self-sufficient”. Especially because he has above average eyesight! Nikto would tease him a bit until he notices that Sebastian does not wear his glasses. They might have a gruff, short talk about it after Nikto sees Krueger holding his phone very far away from himself, squinting in annoyance while trying to read his messages. Krueger wears the damn thing after that. At home. Sometimes.

[crossedsabers10s]

hey i was wondering if you have any headcanons or theories on what if enzo had been the one to escape augustine instead of damon? i know enzo probably wouldn't leave damon but what if something happened and he does. idk i just find the idea really interesting that's all.

ah so, someone actually asked me this once and this is what i told them (paraphrased a lil):

To the person who asked me this the first time: thank you this is still one of my fav ideas <3

And to the anon who reminded me this exists: thank you, ily <3

So. The way i figure, Enzo wins the rock paper scissors, but Damon actually gets disappeared earlier. Enzo gets told that he was disposed of--like old equipment or a sharps bin or something--that keeping two vampires was too much a risk or getting too costly. Plus. Like. I'm sure Whitmore knew all of Enzo's baseline stats, maybe he noticed he was improving? (Which. Makes me question how the hell they didn't notice one of their patients was a step away from desiccating in canon but--) But Damon actually got given to someone else doing a different project. And Whitmore throws Enzo Damon's ring as proof, probably in effort to break his spirit.

So Enzo carries out their plan alone--it was more difficult, but he'd been drinking both his and Damon's rations for long enough that he manages. He escapes goes on a very bloody rampage and burns Augustine to the ground. He finds Maggie, or Maggie finds him. They get their love story, at least for a while, bc Maggie doesn't want to turn (or maybe she does and they stay friends? or lovers and friends or--)

Eventually, he wanders into Mystic Falls—because, the thing is, Damon had told him about Katherine. There had been a day or week or long month where he had been sure he’d die in Augustine and he’d made Enzo swear to get her out for him. Told him about the amulet and the comet and the tomb. 

So. Enzo rolls into a town where—well, first, Gale and Sarah are alive and living with Zach—and second, Damon’s brother is there. Enzo watches Stefan stalk Elena for a while—he’s never seen Katherine, but he had heard Damon describe her enough that he absolutely knows Stefan is Being Weird about this—before dropping by the Boarding House, very polite and chatting with Sarah, Gale, and Zach before Stefan walks in and clocks him for a vampire. Enzo keeps on being polite like ‘yes, also a vampire, not here to hurt you, don’t worry about it’ and tells Stefan that his brother is dead. He’d died decades ago. (He does Not show him the ring he keeps on a chain around his neck, right next to the wedding ring, if he ended up married to Maggie. Maybe he should give what’s left of Damon to his brother—since there hadn’t been a body, Enzo’d been told he’d been cremated—but he Does Not Want To. There’s a thought there about how Enzo had been the one to mourn him while Stefan hadn’t even known he was dead.)

Anyyyway. Canon happens with a bit less collateral damage, as Enzo had his emotions on and wasn’t quite as invested in fucking with Stefan as canon!Damon was. He gets the amulet, Emily, with the excuse that it was Damon she made the deal with and Enzo does not have the right to use her amulet as a key, still intervenes, but eventually the Tomb gets unsealed and Enzo discovers that, hey, Katherine was a giant bitch. Who knew? (He makes it a life goal to kill her, after that. Remember that time Katherine /did/ end up trapped in the Tomb? Enzo shows up with a few gallons of gasoline and some smokes and scared the unlife out of her.) 

Canon continues to happen—as Enzo sticks around to try to find Katherine/and then to protect what’s left of Damon’s family once the Originals roll into town. (Lexi is also there, because she isn’t dead. Both of them take turns filling Damon’s original role of protecting Elena/turning Caroline/dealing with Mason so on and so forth. Lexi is the one to get bitten by Tyler, Stefan still sells his soul to Klaus for a cure. He’d just discovered that he lost his brother—and, you know, didn’t even notice—he doesn’t want to be left Alone for the rest of eternity.)

Canon remains mostly on track—a few differences here and there, but Esther still gets re-alived and the Ball still happens. 

So. Uh. Right as the toast is going down—the one that would link all the Original Sibs to each other so their mother could gank ‘em all at once—someone walks in and—uhhhh, well. Enzo drops his drink. 

Because, the thing is. Damon isn’t dead. 

Damon, had, in fact, been sold to yet another mad scientist, this one obsessed with magic. Like, the guy wanted to unlock the secrets of vampirism, but not how their blood heals. He wanted to unravel what makes them. Like reverse engineering Esther’s spell. Maybe even he’d been after/interested in Silas and rightfully liked vampires as the next step down from it. Or he’d even tracked down Silas’ doppelganger bloodline and mistakenly thought it was Damon instead of Stefan due to the blood they share. 

So Damon spent fifty years being put through ritual after ritual, used as ingredients, had his mind, body, and very lifeforce played with like putty. He’s got magic runes and sigils inked and burned into his skin, scars that refuse to heal from magic so dark it makes Expression look like Glinda the Good’s bubble spells, and a whole host of new issues because he’d been alone for fifty years. 

Like. Anxiety, severe depression accompanied by an emotional flatness that often ends in dissociation. (I’ve legit been thinking of this as: In Which the Author Gives Damon Salvatore Anxiety *Evil Cackle*) Plus the magic that’s been dragged out of his soul makes him more prone to like. Just not paying attention to the physical world. He just stares off into space, blank faced and lifeless as any slightly glowing statue.

So. Yeah. After that, Elijah, of all people, finds him. Maybe Evil Magic Scientist died and one of the witches who knew Elijah went, maybe he’d like to hear about this? (As I imagine Elijah was forever looking for some way to break Klaus’ curse/restore Kol’s magic, he just never mentioned it to not get their hopes up, and he just. Kept up the habit even after he thought Klaus yeeted their sibs into the ocean.)

Elijah rescues him, debates killing him out of mercy, but doesn’t. And Damon spends some time recovering on a beach in like France or something. Elijah is the one to break it to him that Katherine is alive and free, that his Augustine friend is too, is living with his brother in Mystic Falls—and like. Damon wants to go there, but also—he’s traumatized, with powers he can barely control, and there’s the nasty thought that he’s been replaced. That Stefan has a new, better brother in Enzo, that Enzo has a new best friend who isn’t broken and moved on with his life when Damon’s been stuck missing him for more decades than he cares to remember, that if Katherine never cared about him at all, what does he have to live for? 

So. Damon walks into the ballroom, skin still tingling from the magic burned into him, a scar curving under his eye from where it had been cut out, spelled, and then put back in, and gives most of the people there a variety of heart attacks when he very casually knocks Elijah’s drink out of his hands, says ‘oops’, and then walks back out. 

…

There should be better music. 

The town’s rebel son coming home after half a century should rate better than a lackluster rendition of Clair de Lune. Like AC/DC. He likes Back in Black. It’s exactly the kind of music his father would have had a heart attack at, which automatically puts it in the running for Best Things About the Twenty First Century. 

Right up there with the clothes—or the lack thereof—the cars, and the sheer magnitude of the internet. 

…

“You’re late,” Elijah says, acting as if Damon walking into the black tie party of the year wearing jeans, a flimsy T-shirt, and motorcycle boots was the plan all along. He doesn’t even have a jacket, putting all the silvery scars and stark black arcane sigils on his arms on display.  

Hell, maybe it was. Elijah is hard to read at the best of times. Let alone right after his long dead mother pries her way out of the afterlife to throw herself a party. He’d been oddly reserved in his correspondence lately, not giving his opinion on the events one way or another. Just another reason for Damon to come to Mystic Falls in person. Elijah going cagey after Damon had grown used to the man being bluntly honest, if somewhat polite about it, had been disquieting. 

And it’s a good thing he had decided to return home at long last—after months of avoiding even the thought—with what he’d learned not even half an hour ago. 

“Sorry,” he says, shallow as any of the myriad of glitzed out people staring at the scene they're making. Somehow, despite all the eyes making his skin prickle, no one is really registering as real quite yet. No one but Elijah. And if he’s deliberately keeping it that way by purposely focusing on the Original, then at least there’s no one else in his head to call him out on it. Right now. That he knows of. “I didn’t want to come.”

He snags a champagne glass off the tray as he walks towards the staircase. The dirt on his boots from where he’d been lurking in the garden and not giving himself a pep talk flakes off into the polished floor. 

He used to be good at this, being the center of attention, going to these things all the time. When he was human and otherwise. 

He can do it now, when there’re actually things of importance on the line, but he’s no longer so at ease in his own skin and the crowd of people is leaving him—

Not nervous. 

Damon doesn’t get nervous. 

Uneasy, maybe. 

Paranoid, definitely. 

…

The entire room watches as champagne drips down the stairs. 

Belatedly, he says, “Oops.”

…

He’d been hanging out on the window to Esther’s spell room while she was with Elena and Finn while in the form of a crow—a nifty power that he actually likes. He actually prefers being crow shaped to human some days—and overheard their whole plan. Including Finn and Esther’s jabs at Elijah. Who he is spectacularly attached to, even if they both prefer to pretend that he isn’t. 

…

“You told me my brother was dead.”

Enzo doesn’t look away from the ghost across the ballroom. Faintly, he says, “I thought he was.”

“You lied to me,” Stefan says, so quietly that he could scarcely be heard over the noise of the room. 

Enzo manages to tear his eyes away Damon’s tense silhouette. It takes a certain amount of willpower to not immediately turn back. He looks at Stefan, whose hands are clenched around an empty champagne glass so tightly it is just as much a miracle as Damon’s appearance that it hasn’t shattered. “I didn’t—I wouldn’t—“ 

All of Enzo’s words abandon him at the soul-deep betrayal Stefan can’t hide. 

They hadn’t gotten along in the beginning, he and Stefan. Not when Enzo had only known him as the man who hadn’t even noticed his brother’s absence. Not when Stefan had only known him as someone who had barged his way into his perfect high school fantasy, bringing bad news and worse intentions as Enzo had done his best to fulfill Damon’s wish to see Katherine free. 

(He’d been almost glad that Damon hadn’t been there to see that godforsaken tomb, to know that the woman he’d died for had skipped merrily away while he’d devoted his life to getting her back.)

… 

“No big deal. I owe you, remember?”

“Damon.” Elijah steps forward. Damon doesn’t flinch as a hand settles into his shoulder and squeezes. Elijah’s eyes are firm as he says, “For this, any debt you think you owe is more than repaid.”

“I don’t think—“

“If anything,” the man continues, “I owe you. You put your life at risk to save my family.” 

And hadn’t that been a delicate way of skirting around the fact that it was family that had put the rest of them in danger. 

“I hung out on a windowsill for five minutes,” Damon protests. 

…

“You,” he says, scarcely an inch away from Damon and staring like he’s two seconds from slicing him open to see what makes him tick, “are not a vampire.”

“News to me,” Damon says lightly, in direct contrast to the blatant way he takes a step away from the Original. That brand of curiosity is one he is more than familiar with and he doesn’t appreciate it. If that step takes him closer to Elijah, then it’s a coincidence. “Should I not be drinking blood, then?”

“Vampires,” it is proclaimed as Kol draws even nearer, “cannot do what you have just done.”

“Have they tried? It’s not that hard,” Damon says, taking another step back. His arm brushes Elijah’s. Who sighs, but takes a single step forwards, extending an arm as he does. 

Damon doesn’t sigh in relief, but he does lose some of the tension he hadn’t realized was in his shoulders. Not all of it. But some. 

Kol frowns down at where Elijah’s finger is touching the center of his chest, stopping him in his tracks. He exhales petulantly, but stops staring at Damon like he wants to weigh his liver. “‘Lijah, your pet turns into a bird. How?”

…

“What have you brought into the house?” Rebekah asks her brother, eyes on Damon. 

…

Damon isn’t a witch or anything, his powers are like. The result of having the magic that made vampires stripped bare, broken down, and amplified. It gives him powers closer to what vampires had in the Vampire Diaries books—though def not as strong as his much older book counterpart. 

This, of course, leads to Kol going on a research spree, because this is the closest he’s come to getting his magic back since it abandoned him. Cue multiple scenes of Damon running tf away while Kol pokes him with a stick. Elijah dumps all of Evil Magic Scientist’s Research on his brother to cut down on the instances of Damon hiding somewhere in the rafters. 

Klaus absolutely tries to use him as an asset, except Elijah is fond of him and Damon can and will find a flock of crows to chill with for a week or two to hide. 

…

“And you thought that what? Taking over my life would be atonement?”

“I—“

“My town, my family, my brother? Leaving me there wasn’t enough, you had to replace me?”

“Da—“

…

Enzo slams him into the wall. Damon falls silent. The placid look on his face can’t disguise the rage, eyes glinting like ice in the light. It’s the most emotion Enzo’s seen from him since— 

It’s the most emotion Enzo’s seen from him since he’d popped back up, miraculously alive and in the company of Elijah, of all people. 

…

“Because the memory of you was all I had left!”

…

So. That. Stefan, who has been feeling guilty over Augustine and everything, is relieved that Damon isn’t dead. Enzo, who has spent. Years of his life loving Damon’s ghost, now has to deal with a walking, (sometimes, not often) talking man who looks through him more than at him. 

 Elena, Bonnie, Caroline, ect. Try to be supportive while also being not as trusting, bc Damon is v obviously on the Originals (Elijah’s) side. Though he won’t hurt them or anything, and, in fact, is more likely to zone out and leave the room, he’s still like an active obstacle to getting rid of the Mikaelsons. And then there’s a whole new subplot that Stefan and Enzo are invested in called Getting Damon Away From the Originals. 

(Damon barely notices this. He’s in Mystic Falls again. It’s weird. Whenever he’s human shaped and not with Elijah and Stefan/Enzo and all the complicated feelings he doesn’t get as a crow arent at home, he basically haunts the Boarding House like a ghost. The human relatives keep giving him food he doesn’t eat and Sarah keeps sending him playlists on the phone/computer he barely knows how to work. She eventually makes him an actual mix tape on a tape recorder he knows how to work called Music My Grandpa Doesn’t Listen To. Gale will show him baby pictures and like. Will occasionally get a very disjointed anecdote from Stefan’s childhood in return. Zach will sit with him in nervous-at-first—on both ends lol—silence and watch TV. Damon absolutely won’t drink something if any of them pour it, esp Zach, they notice this and stop trying.)

Eventually, Katherine rolls into town and tries to start a makeout sesh with Damon to make Stefan jealous. (She makes Enzo jealous instead) and Damon. Uh. bites off her tongue. It’s a thing.

So, there’s a long road of Damon coming back out of his shell, being more present, complete with the occasional backslide and a few instances of him forcing himself to act like he used to to be ‘more normal.’ Enzo stays very patient through all this, helping him recover, respecting his boundaries, and just generally trying to do what Maggie did for him. Stefan does his best too—the more Damon gets more used to everything the wilder he gets, which Stefan both appreciates and does Not lmao. The Originals move on to New Orleans, Damon stays in MF, which both he and Elijah decide is a Good Thing for him, bc he’s more stable/is less codependent these days. Still visits tho. Which. Skews things a lil bit, to have a magic vampire dropping by in NOLA. 

I did end up using some of this in my Feral!Damon series actually, tho the beginning is different, mostly the interactions w his human family

[beardedmrbean]

It’s almost like a washing machine, if you ask Joseph H. Brown. The casket-shaped metal tank sitting in Brown’s crematory in West Baltimore uses hot water, chemicals and a bit of agitation to dissolve human remains, leaving behind only bone.

The practice, formally known as alkaline hydrolysis, was legalized during this year’s General Assembly session. But the state Board of Morticians and Funeral Directors is still writing the regulations that will govern the practice in Maryland, according to its director. There’s a law on the books, but no regulation, creating what may be a legal gray area for performing the procedure.

Brown, who installed his system in April, said he hasconducted water cremation. He believes he’s the first to do so in the state. He charges $5,000 for it, compared to $1,700 for a traditional flame cremation.

“My mother, who is 94-years-old, she says — joking — ‘Why would anybody pay more for alkaline hydrolysis?’” Brown said. “Let me answer that for you: Some people drive a Mercedes and some people drive a Pinto.”

For his part, Brown insists that he’s following the law, which took effect in October. On Thursday, alongside Baltimore City Councilman Mark Conway, he invited journalists to a news conference at the funeral home, located in Mondawmin, south of Druid Hill Park.

“I’m a licensed mortician. I have done thousands of cremations. Now, I’m just doing it a different way,” he said. “Does the Board have a problem with me doing it? Well, they want me to wait for regulation.”

Brown joked that if authorities come to arrest him for doing so, he ought to “make sure I have on a nice suit.” The media coverage might only drive more attention to water cremation, he said.

“The publicity works,” he said.

Erika Malone, executive director of the board, said the regulations have yet to be released and there is no set timeline, but declined to comment further. The Maryland Department of Health, the parent agency for the board, did not immediately provide a comment Friday afternoon.

A growing base of consumers

Brown’s equipment utilizes water, ethanol and alkaline chemicals to decompose a body in about three hours, tilting back and forth to agitate the solution, the way a washing machine cleanses clothes, he said.

Brown said he spent close to $1 million on the water cremation equipment, which also includes a tank where the water’s pH is reduced from 14 to 12.5 before it is released into Baltimore City’s sewer system, and heads to the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant for treatment.

For that, he has received a permit from the city, said Jennifer Combs, spokesman for the city’s Department of Public Works, in an email.

According to the Cremation Association of North America, the leftover water is considered sterile, and contains salts, sugars, amino acids and peptides. There is no tissue or DNA left after the process completes.

After the process, the bone fragments are dried for several days before they can be reduced to an ash-like substance, which could be placed in an urn like other cremated remains. The water cremation process actually produces a higher volume of remains than fire cremation, because less material is lost to the surrounding air, Brown said.

Brown declined to say when his funeral home, a family business that he calls the oldest African American funeral home in Maryland, completed its first water cremation, or how many have been completed, saying he didn’t want to give authorities “ammunition.”

“I’m not doing anything illegal. I’m doing something that is different,” Brown said. “Some people might object to it, but I feel that there is a growing base of consumers that will stand up for me in providing this service to the state of Maryland — and nothing goes out into the air.”

A lower carbon footprint

Brown touted the process as a greener option for death care. For example, during a water cremation, the liquid is heated to about 140 degrees Fahrenheit , cooler than boiling.

During a fire cremation, the temperature reaches more than 1,000 degrees, requiring a great deal of fuel. The Brown funeral home uses propane, which has a lower carbon footprint than other fuels such as natural gas. But for water cremation, the funeral home uses an electric water heater, bypassing the need for fossil fuels altogether.

At least one traditional crematorium proposal, from Vaughn Greene Funeral Services in North Baltimore, has drawn criticism in Baltimore, in part because of neighbors’ concerns about air emissions from incineration.

Conway, who represents the city’s fourth district, proposed a bill in October that would further limit the zoning districts in which crematoriums can be operated.

“Our proposed rezoning is not an opposition to funeral homes or sustainable death care alternatives,” Conway said in a news release. “We are, however, opposed to placing a human waste incinerator within such close proximity to our schools, homes, and families. Aquamation provides an environmentally responsible choice, and today we stand in support of that.”

Some mourners view the water cremation process as gentler on the body, making it more favorable, Brown said.

“Some people prefer water to fire,” Brown said. “Water is so spiritual.”

But not everyone is confident the trend will take hold, the same way that cremation, which was once unpopular, has grown to make up about 60% of the death care industry in the United States.

Jack Mitchell, a past president of the National Funeral Directors Association, said he believes that natural organic reduction, wherein a body is broken down into soil, may take hold instead. The procedure was legalized in Maryland at the same time as alkaline hydrolysis.

“It’s even more environmentally friendly than the alkaline hydrolysis, and it’s not icky,” said Jack Mitchell, who is also president of the Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home in Towson. “People love the notion that the soil that is the end result, that is mother’s remains or grandma’s remains, you can then use it in the garden.”

“When you see those flowers growing you can say, ‘That’s mom,’” Mitchell said.

[amanita-the-spore-druid]

Computer is broken so moving one of my fics to tumblr

Deare Diary

A 2010s AU Post Mortum Fanfic from soda's perspective

Agust 15:

Deare Diary, a cuple weeks ago Darry talked with Pony's school and got us set up with a shrink and she got us to start jornal's after todays visit. Nothing much today, but Pony's been asking about going to the libary recently.

Agust 17:

After Darry left for work me and Pony walked to the libary. I wound up spending 30 minuts arguing with the guy (oh wait pony's not gonna read this). I spent about 30 minuts arguning with the fucker at the desk while trying to set up a card for pony. He mostly just checked out books on computures, which i guess makes sense because im pretty sure he spent all of yesterday just messing with the computure. But weirdly enough, he also got like two books about brains i think? i think one of them was like 'something something nurology'.

Agust 20:

Pony's spent the past few days just reading in his room, i went to check up on him and it looks like he has tons of notebooks full of stuff written down, but he fell asleep at his desk so i just put a blanket over him and left him alone. I invited a couple freind's over for a bit, and it turns Johnny's parents didn't pay for cremation or a coffen, and some of them said hes still at the mortuarry morticen murt the place with the corner man where they preserve the bodies. After they left it was getting close to the end of darry's shift so i made him and pony some sandwhichs. Of course pony refused to eat the bolone, he just fucking took it out. No clue why he's been so Weird about it since he got Back.

Agust 21

Today pony showd me what's he's been working on for the past week. its this weird program that converts code into like words, but does it without needing to like tell it how to say things, it just creates this weird voice. he showed it off by making it sing this old song, aparently some other computure nerds made soemthing lik it and made that same song. think it was called daisy bell. pony's also been asking to start going to church on sunday's again but darry got this new weekend security gaurd job, i hate to break it to the kid.

Agust 22

Darry and Pony got into a fight today. pony had skipped school today, And had apparently one of shepard's boys saw him and called darry immediately. Pony also had one of those notebooks on him, which darry Tried to look through. i told him to just drop it and they both stormed off to there rooms. pony refused to let me in to talk, poor kid. And then I walked in on darry smoking outside.

"You know ponyboy wouldnt like that." I told him,

"Yeah yeah, who gives a shit?" he said, before tossing his smoker on the concret patio and crushin' it.

"Hes been real fussy about smokes since he got ba-" "HE WAS GONE FOR A FUCKING WEEK, HE ACTS SCARED AND DIFFRENT!"

after shouting darry just crumbled against the door. "And he wont tell us what happened..."

Agust 23:

I got up extra early, really early, to be up in time to make him breakfast. he well, sounded confused when he saw me in the kitchen with a plate of pancakes, burnt eggs, and a black cofe coffee (thanks darry:).) He laughed a bit and offered to clean the mess befor he left but I told him id clean it after pony left for school. i decided to cheer the kid up with some french toast, so I walked to a convince store to pick up some cinoman like Mom used to make it.

Now, I have no fucking clue how they recognized me but some fucking soc fucks decided to open their fucking bitchass mouths when they realized I was pony's brother. "Hey Your the brother of that KILLER right?" some blonde said. "My brother's a fuckin' hero, prep school." the girl with him started laughing her pre- pretens- annoying rich girl ass off, "Atleast he stayed in school grease. And that Ponyboy's no he-" now, misses therapist lady, God, and officers if fate have it, I promise I am not a violent man. HOWEVER, she was going to insult my brother.

The cashear turned around the exact second I decked her. Now, he was greaser too, but he also had rent to pay. "Soda, what the hell are you doing?" he asked me, sounded like darry if 'm honest. Meanwhile blondie was yelling at me but got interrupted by the cashear, "Here's a ziplock bag, soda machine has ice, and Sodey-Pop here is going to pay for a bottle of Advil for the lovly lady." he said, "I am?" "You wanna shop here again?

So after that TOTALY FAIR accident, I walked home and made ponyboy some hero's french toast. ever wonder why its called french toast? i mean we put maple syrup on it I don't think the french got that, well maybe the Canadians are french. holy shit french toast is Canadian? anyways, I surprised the kid with french Canadian toast like mom used to make and told him to make sure he goes to school ill be walking with him.

turns out, that shit at the convince store wasn't the only place people were calling pony a killer. Now, Mrs Beth I new what I did was not aproprate but I have no regret. because when that silver spoon lickn daddy's boy called my brother a killed in my face, and spat on pony's, I had no regret or dobt pushing that little fuck against a locker, nd holding my switch to his neck.

agust 25

I know it was a bit, unkempt I think is the word? to scrible an enetery in your office but the cops held my jornal while I spent a day in the cooler. it was, decent I think. refused to take a shit though, that camera wouldve seen. darry didn't say a word while we drove here, so I know he's gonna be pissed. just, be easy on him. first pony gets detention for skippin' after a fight, and now this.

update;

darry didn't say anything to me, just gave me the keys and told me to drive pony home and pick up dinner. Ponyboy went to the bathroom and I over heard you two, sorry.

"Darrel I know your frustrated but theres very little I can do."

"Im not just frustrated! Im pissed off! i want Ponyboy to be able to head to college, and I want to atleast make sure sodapop is comfterbal. I'm asking, is there any of that welfair shit I can apply for? i don't think I can manage two jobs, and afford everything."

"Of course Mr. Curtis, do you want the papers imedatly or should I find a good few for you?"

"Mr Curtis..."

"My mist-"

"No, its fine. just look for a few you think we can apply for. and please, do something about these socs."

That was all I heard before pony was outta the bathroom and we left. we picked up mcdonalds, and I bought a six pack for darry. lite, I didn't want him getting pickled.

agust 26:

after school, darry offered to watch over pony while I 'saw a frend'. I think they were watching ben 10 while darry looked through the papers since he picked pony up. little did they know, I was going back to the school. i asked about job openings and it turns out theres a security gaurd gig with basicly no requirements. i signed up, and asked for a few extra days this weekend so darry didn't worry.

he was excited to say the least, and pony was shocked I wasn't thrown out when I went to apply. Darry quite his weekend job, and we made plans to go to church since I worked a night shift. after that we just had dinner and all went to bed.

agust 27:

darry was excited just to have time alone with pony, and took him to the library to return his books and get some new ones. i even checked out a cookbook so I could make something for the two before I left for work.

...mom and dad would be proud...

after that we just walked around town for a while, and finally went home for dinner. i tried to make fancy pork chops with the frozen ones we had in the back of the freezer. they came out, well it was a month old so no clue what we expected. darry and pony went to bed, I put on my uniform and headed to work. it was weird, seein the high school after dark like that.

it was mostly boring, until I heard something. a loud crash in the new computure lab. i ran over and I think something was stolen, no clue the whole thing was a mess. i signaled the cops and ran after the prick I saw running out of the lab. I didn't catch the fucker, checked the paper and you'd've known that. i was expecting to get yelled at, but turns out I was supposed to call the cops. lucky me.

agust 27:

darry turned on the news while I made everyone breakfast, turns out the mortuary (thanks pony) got broken into as well. and you know what? I'm telling you Beth, it was them fucking socs. Because Dally and Johnny got their FUCKING BODIES CUT UP. its a goddamn disgrace. when we went to church, the preiest was shocked to see us to say the least. pony promised i'd behave and darry asked if he could make a special prayer for dally and johnny, 'course his holyness did like a true gent.

after church we met with two-bit, steve, and their girlfriends at a greaser bar for dinner. we had a moment of silence for dally and johnny, god bless. when we went home darry took a seat on the couch and said he was going to watch a few movies on the black n' white chanel before he goes to sleep. I decided to check on pony and say goodnight, turns out he was taking a shower before bed (fair enough, the joint reeked like a barbeque pit if you know what I mean)

I noticed that the computer, which darry let him move to his bedroom, had one of the box doo-hickies opened up. i walked over to close it, and saw ...

look, don't call me loony? alright? I'm not, fuck I don't even belive me and I don't needa be sent off to booby-land but I swear to God I saw blood and some pink meaty thing twitching in the box. i closed it. and i swear the computre didn't get turned on, but i heard that bing and heard a voice. Johnny's voice. But it had like the weird robot accent like that daisy bell song robot. i left the room, and just went to work.

it wasn't pony. it wasn't pony last night. Pony would never do that to our fellow greasers.

Maybe i am crazy, if it makes you ask ponyboy less questions.

[sonicasura]

Haven't even thought about poachers and the black marked for that matter. But I have to agree on that matter. Akari would not be so nice to them at all.

Neither is Proto for that matter. He might even have dealt with a good deal of them over the 200 years he's been alive. Before and after he meet Hina. Got to wonder if there are stories going around about a humanoid like chimera in the black market that makes him a highly vauled price to get.

Which gives Proto even more reason to write down a certain wish on his will. See when Proto dies, his getting creamated mainly to avoid No 9 the chance to absorb his body. We don't really know if thats really something he can do, though Meireki Daikaiju inside I won't put it past them both.

Hench, Proto wanted his body becoming ash as soon as he died. As he did not want to take any chances. Beside, Proto knows a hell of a lot more about No 9 than most other creations would as one of the reasons for the escape to even succeed was for Proto to get to know his creator well enough to figure out something that would work. Or at least give him a higher chance of not dying.

Which also means he would warn not only his family but also the DF about that theres something lurking inside his creator. He doesn't know what, he never managed to fully find out about that before his escape. But it most certainly makes my old kaiju feel cold terror runinning down his spine each time he thinks or remember that fact.

Especially so in that what-if path where Proto lives long enough to save Isao from becoming No 9's newest addtion. And as you've said before, Proto gives his creator the biggest Fuck You as he possible can on this path.

Speaking of my old kaiju. Proto has some habits that is either bothersome or just plain bad thanks to his kaiju nature. Would like to try and guess some of these habits?

You can thank the first Pacific Rim movie for the black market bit. I still think it's ironic that such a personally underrated movie explored more of the kaiju aspect than the Monsterverse. Akari and Proto definitely wouldn't show much mercy to poachers or the darker side of humanity.

The cremation idea is actually very smart. When it comes to absorption, the brain is a very vital component as it is where all the information is found. Destruction or damage of such an organ will guarantee something is lost.

Plus there's very little to learn from ashes anyway. In fact, cremation is a very standard practice in Japan for various reasons. When it comes to mythology, this is to prevent evil spirits from using or resurrecting the body into a creature of the undead.

I have a feeling one Proto habit is eating things that are gross and inedible to humans. Personally want to hear what you got.

[aesethewitch]

If you'd like to go to the trouble of saying - because I feel like it may be a lot to answer, and I fully understand not feeling like it - after reading your last line in the Cecil Hotel question, I'm very curious about what your opinion is on what the deal is with cemeteries and how they work? Is there something special about them as far as ghost interactions go, if only due to the emotion and energy that the living pour into those locations? Do they have a tendency to hold or attract ghosts? I've never really thought to go searching for ghosts before, because it always felt like my hometown was bursting with them by default and you could just go wherever, but, in hindsight, when I moved away to a much bigger city, the only time I felt like I was living in an active place (which was very on and off and varied, as if perhaps I was in the middle of a ghost highway, and gave me my one and only inexplicably scratched story, and was its whole own thing), I was living across the street from a big, older cemetery. Also, this isn't quite related, but I thought you might enjoy this fun fact: there is a tiny café built out of an old cottage in my hometown, smack in the midst of some cemeteries, which is possibly my favourite place ever, and it's called The Soup Witch. :)

[excitedly rubbing hands together]

So, I've got a whole post planned for down the line about cemeteries and the things I've experienced in them. But! For now, a shortish set of answers to your questions:

Is there something special about them as far as ghost interactions go, if only due to the emotion and energy that the living pour into those locations?

Yes and no! Anywhere people die is liable to have ghosts hanging around, like hospitals, retirement homes, and the like. Cemeteries have ghosts because that's where bodies are. People's spirits are tethered to their physical bodies, some more than others. It's another one of those things that's very individual. And yes, I think that the power of emotion, prayer, and memory supplies quite a bit of energy in cemeteries! That's why old cemeteries are often quiet and calm, and ones that are being used currently tend to have more activity.

I do also think that if you're trying to invoke a particular ghost after they've faded, their grave/burial site or urn (if they were cremated) is a very powerful place to do so.

It's just simpler, safer, cheaper, and easier to run into a ghost at a cemetery than it is to try and get into a place like the Cecil Hotel, pay out the nose for a tour, and then endure some guy's schtick which is intended to scare rather than inform. Plus, cemetery ghosts are usually pretty cool people.

Do they have a tendency to hold or attract ghosts?

Attract? No. I think they're already there by virtue of having been buried. Hold? Well, kinda. [gestures at the above answer] Tethers will do that, y'know?

... it always felt like my hometown was bursting with them by default ...

That's fairly common! Some places feel like they have a ton of spirits hanging around, others feel very empty. I'm not sure, personally, what makes that difference! However, I will say, in a lot of places that feel "full," the culprits aren't usually ghosts. It's more often other kinds of spirits, which can include ghosts.

Also, this isn't quite related, but I thought you might enjoy this fun fact: there is a tiny café built out of an old cottage in my hometown, smack in the midst of some cemeteries, which is possibly my favourite place ever, and it's called The Soup Witch. :)

.......... [adds this to the list of places I want to go someday]

[bisque-firedvampire]

The Tale of a bisque-fired Vampire

My biggest regret in life was not finishing my transition. Which wasn’t my fault, but my chance was cut short. That alone is enough to make a guy vengeful, but do you know what actually reanimated me?

My family took the time and paid the money to separate out my hand bones and skull, had them cleaned and articulated. They actually cremated me, as asked, and portioned out my ashes to be used in both a pound of clay and to make two memorial diamonds. They followed my will to the letter, and I know that they read it all the way through. I know because of the one thing that they didn’t do.

As I watched my service from beyond, tears began to well up in my nonexistent eyes. My parents did not once acknowledge me as their son. My sister never once referred to me as her brother. And not a single one of my friends whom I was out to, nor my partner, were invited to the ceremony.

I had to sit there alone, and take it, even from beyond the grave… The exact same misgendering which had crushed me in life had managed to affect me here too. And that was too much for me.

I really wanted to believe It could’ve been a mistake. I had to believe that they just couldn’t find the right opportunity during the whole thing… but then they only confirmed it by finishing the aforementioned disposal of my old body.

There was a clause in my will, which would have saved them all that time and money, if they had just acknowledged me. But they chose to jump through all those other hoops instead. In picking the equivalent of “draw 25 cards”, they had inadvertently stacked the deck quite nicely for my return.

When they finally left my remains alone in one place I went to work. I tried out my hands first. Moving the bones was like slipping back on a worn out pair of work gloves. Thankfully they were just as articulate as I had specified in my will. With these disembodied hand, I set the respective memorial diamonds in the eye sockets of my skull. It was dazzling to finally see the world without the need for glasses.

Overjoyed that things were going to plan, I set my newly reanimated skull on a high out of the way shelf. From this vantage point I could survey the next step in my plan without worrying about clouding my new eyes. On the table where they stored my remains, I started to pull out and knead the porcelain ash-clay. I took my pound of once-flesh and miraculously stretched it back out into a proper body. One sculpted, not in the image of who I’d once been, but as I had always wished to become. It pained me to have to slice into the beautiful creation in order to embed my cleaver bones in the right places. I just had to remind myself that it would be worth it.

Next, I needed to let my new form dry out a bit before I could finally install myself inside. Thankfully nobody bothered to visit my old art studio once in that span of time. And It took over a week to dry out completely. During that time I couldn’t help but wonder why no one ever came to do anything with my remains…?

Eventually, as the moisture left my new form, I ceased to care about it. Instead I began to focus on a budding new sensation: I felt a sense of self return to me. One that had been absent in life. It was a wonderful experience, but it came packaged with another. As I reveled in the discovery of this feeling, I also felt the fury animating me grow stronger.

It was a necessary fire that began to stoke within my spirit, one that spread to my, as of yet, unfinished vessel. An otherworldly amount of outrage bisque fired me from the inside out as I realized I could’ve had this feeling in life too if mine hadn’t been cut short!

If I had inhabited a traditional corpse, this would have been the point at which I’d have dug myself out of my grave and made plans to pay my family a nightly visit…

Instead, I jerked into a sitting position on the craft table. Not stiffly, like someone else’s Frankenstein monster, but rather in smooth and fluid motion as my own person. Yes, finally as my own person…

It was a novel feeling, and for a moment I contemplated forgiveness. The thought was only a momentary flash against the dark, overwhelming, need to carry out my own personal vengeance.

They didn’t have to provide me with the means to do this… and yet they did it anyway out of stubbornness! Well, two can play at that game… but I don’t think I shall stoop to that level.

With a quirk of my new ceramic lips, I flashed the world with a sharp porcelain smile as a better idea came to mind. In time, I figure, they will come to regret their choices all on their own. Meanwhile, however, I will do the most vengeful thing I can do with this inadvertent gift they’ve handed me. I will go out into the world and live on without them, this time as my truest self.

And if they don’t like it… well, I could still use a glaze firing, and a fresh brilliant red coat of glaze would absolutely complete my new look.

[eolewyn1010]

Dragging Frankenstein - Chapter 20, part 2

Second half of the chapter that is, at least for me, the highlight of the book; we left off at the Creature's confrontation of Victor about destroying the unfinished Distressing Damsel.

And then the slave speech. What even is this. I don’t know what to do with this. The sheer fucking hubris which he has picked up from Victor and now tries (and fails!) to turn against him. Finally, the assumption of his own superiority, declaring himself Victor’s master and, in extension of that, humanity as a whole his destined slaves, proving Victor’s fears right after all.

DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: 14

That’s for his emerging Übermensch mentality.

With the Creature setting himself above Victor, he has completed his Lucifer character arc. Interestingly, he fails to take up where Victor left off; all things considered, now would have been a good time for the Creature himself to start playing God and repair the almost-complete ladymonster using Victor’s notes. He sure is clever enough for that, and he would have some time for it while Victor is out having himself a little angstfest. The fact that he doesn’t even try leads me to the conclusion that the Distressing Damsel was more of a character test for Victor, a plot device for the Creature to escalate the conflict.

On a merrier note, “you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension”? XD Okay? Don’t be condescending then?

Gawd, these guys are terrible. My last shred of sympathy for the Creature has finally vanished, and for once I feel a tiny bit of admiration for Victor’s thought process and taking a moral stance. Fine work, Shelley.

Oh, and the infamous “I shall be with you on your wedding night.” Well, first off – let’s be honest, this sounds like a threat of the sexual kind. DAS GAY: 33

INCEST VIBES: 15

Then, Victor gets one of those, too, bc he actually thinks he’s in a place to threaten the Creature. “closed with him in mortal strife”, eh? DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: 15

And finally, his imagination can’t get him any further than to his wedding night being “the hour I should die”. Not like, y’know, the Creature has promised to make you miserable by destroying all you ever loved. Nah, IT’S ALL ABOUT ME: 23

Back to form. Whew, I was floundering for a second there!

…I have to give him another, because he does think of Elizabeth – in terms of her mourning for him. IT’S ALL ABOUT ME: 24

We reach a point where Victor not only fantasizes of being wretched and alone for the rest of his life, feeling isolated from the rest of humanity, but also falls asleep in the grass. Huh, they really have switched roles.

A letter from the boyfriend who’s missing him dearly! Henry, my sweetie! DAS GAY: 34

Oh, good, he does tidy up the laboratory.

…throw the parts into the sea?? Are you kidding me, you dumbass? Can’t you cremate them decently? Ugh, gross.

“I felt as if I was about the commission of a dreadful crime.” Once again, Victor fails to acknowledge that he has, in fact, committed numerous crimes. And tossing rotting corpse bits into the sea, bits that presumably originated from Christian people who thought their body safe in sacred ground, is at the very least defiling graves. (Also, gross.)

The travel across the Irish Sea is just confusing, tbh, and I only really got it when the text outright said he had reached Ireland.

“As I was in a state of extreme debility” …aren’t you always? You just got lost at sea instead of doing the simpler, and way more thorough, stake burial.

“Fortunately I had money with me.” ??? WHY? Do you always take money with you when you go out to destroy the evidence of your crimes?

Thesaurus syndrome strikes again (at least I had to look up “promontory”, sue me; it’s not my mother tongue), and then, finally, some clear information. And someone who snaps at Victor, and makes him indignant at the bad manners. If Henry weren’t dead, I could find this funny.

Not to forget, his bitchy attitude (“instead of offering me any assistance”, “inhospitably” and so on) gets him one for the I SO PRIVILEGED: 11

Get offa that high horse, will you?

Why does he think they should be friendly to him, anyway? They’re Irish, and for all they know, he might well be an Englishman. Granted, this is about 50 years before the Great Famine, but weren’t the English already getting all over the country and helping themselves to all of the land?

And from here on out, it's all downhill. Okay, factually, it was all downhill since Victor decided to play God, but the next few chapters are mainly dedicated to me hating him with all my heart. I'll try to spice it up with a little bit of character analysis regarding his similarities with the Creature, but there is the one or other capslock tantrum on the horizon. Our protagonist got one golden moment here, then continues to be the literal worst. Charming.

[darkcavewriting]

Day 9 - Funeral

I slept poorly, which was not a surprise to me at all.  There was too much on my mind, with the funeral, all the people, and just not knowing what to expect.  I knew that we were going to be heading over there to where it was being held a couple hours in advance to help with setting up and making sure that things went reasonably well.  I didn’t know who all was going to be helping with the setup.  I knew it was going to be me, and my maternal grandparents and Aunt Sara, but I wasn’t sure who else would be going early and who all would just be going nearer to the time things were supposed to start.  That was something I hadn’t really been around when they were discussing it.  Not that it made a whole lot of difference to me.

I showered, got dressed, headed down and had some coffee and a bagel.  I wanted to keep food light, and the kitchen was packed with people so I wanted to make it as quick and easy as I possibly could for myself.  I wasn’t sure when exactly we were going to be heading out.  Probably fairly soon I imagined.  I headed back to my room, and went looking for my suit, and also for a decent tie.  The suit was easy to find, the tie somewhat less so.  Still, I managed to get both out and on, and by the time we were ready to head out the door I looked pretty good all things considered.  Getting to the funeral home wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t all that far away.  Walking in and seeing big pictures of both my mother and father up at the front hit me, really hard though.  Due to the nature of the accident and the condition of the bodies, they had both been cremated, so it wasn’t open casket or anything like that.  That made it a little easier I guess.  After seeing pictures of the crash and the bodies, I didn’t know if I could handle seeing them in person.  This whole day was going to be difficult as is, that would have just made it dramatically harder on me and likely everyone.

There wasn’t a whole lot for us to do, so it was a good bit of sitting around waiting after we got there.  I didn’t mind that, it was good to be out of the house, it was good to not be around quite so many people too.  Before long, people started arriving, it was still early, but, near enough to the time that things would start.  Everyone who had been at our house had arrived, then it was a mix of my parent’s friends, co-workers, all of the department that my dad worked in at Portland State as well as what appeared to be some of his students.  Eva and her parents arrived, other neighbors of ours.  Before long, it was near standing room only.  Everyone had things to say, about my mother and father, and them as a couple.  I didn’t realize quite how well loved they were, especially my dad at work.  So many students were there who had things to say about him.

I got up and spoke, and struggled through it.  Fighting back tears wasn’t easy, but, I got through it and I felt better afterwards.  I felt relieved having spoken, but, it was still a hard situation for me to be in.  There wasn’t anything easy about it, at all.  

I didn’t know what the post funeral plan was, I don’t think I was ever around when it was discussed.  There wasn’t anywhere at the funeral parlor to do any sort of wake or reception, I didn’t even know if one was planned.

“Grandma, what is the plan after the funeral?” I asked my maternal grandmother.

“We were planning on inviting people over to the house and having something outside in the back,” she said.  “I guess we should have asked if that was alright with you, I’m sorry.”

“No, that is totally fine by me, I just didn’t know what the plan was,” I said.  “Is there food and stuff over there?”

“Yes and no,” she said.  “We were going to grill up burgers and stuff, but we were getting a bit of stuff catered from that cafe up on Woodstock.”

“Sounds good, thank you,” I said.  “Thank you for taking care of so much of all of this today, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You would have been alright, but I am glad we were all here to help, none of this is easy, at all, and it doesn’t get any easier either,” she said.

Damn near everyone came to my parents home after for drinks and some food.  Their house was positively packed, probably the most people that had ever been in it at one time since it was built back in the 1940's.  It had been full this week with just family, and now with an additional 50 plus people, it was overwhelming as can be.  I was happy to see everyone, especially since people were in a better mood now than they were earlier at the funeral, which was nice.  It was good to see smiles on peoples faces and that I was actually able to sit and talk with some of the people whom I had never met, including my mothers old college roommate that for some reason she never mentioned to me.

Apparently once my mother got married she cut off contact with her, and there was never and explanation for why.  This struck me as terribly odd and it really did not make much sense at all since my mother was actually pretty open about friends from college, when she attended Western Washington University.  My grandmother could attest to the face that she was my moms old roommate because she had met her before on multiple occasions.  None of it was adding up, at all.  I couldn't see why my mother would never mention her, especially when she mentioned other friends and had actually had them visit at various times during my life.  I asked Mackenzie, her old roommate, if there was any reason that she thought my mother would have done that.  

“I have no idea, once she got engaged, she never called, and we were very close before that, she got invited and came to my wedding but I never got an invitation to hers,” she said.  “It was all very strange, I never had any clue as to why.”

“Did your husband ever say anything about it?” I asked.

“Not that I remember, and I can't ask him now since he got himself shot in California after he left me for another woman.”

“I didn't know, it seems terribly odd to me, I mean even knowing my mother had her issues, it seems odd she would just cast you out of her life like that,” I said.

“It has honestly bothered me to a certain extent for the last twenty three years, I know that sounds bad, but there was never any sort of indication as to why she did it,” said Mackenzie.  “She was usually so predictable and considerate, I never understood why, or if I did something to upset her, and if so, why would she come to my wedding.”

I had no idea what to say.  I was interested to see if there might be something I could find out as to why it might have been the case, not that I had any idea at all where to look, but it was worth a shot I  guess.  I got her phone number and told her that if for some unknown reason I was able to come up with any sort of conclusion I would let her know.  

She saw my Eastern Washington hat sitting on the edge of the couch and commented about it.  I said that I was going to school there now, just started actually.  She told me she actually lived in the area up in Sandpoint Idaho.  What a small world it is I thought to myself.  It seems like everyone lives in the area around Spokane anymore, not that living there was a bad thing, just a bit odd.  I told her that I might just drop in sometime, to try and figure things out, or get details, or just to visit Sandpoint.

“You are always welcome don't worry, just give me a call, I have a nice little cabin on the lake.”

“Sounds beautiful,” I said.

“It is, you have to come see it,” said Mackenizie.

“I will, soon, I promise.”

She said she had to take off, needed to get on the late flight back to Spokane so she would get home tonight as she had work in the morning.  I gave her a hug and thanked her again for coming.

People were slowly starting to trickle out, it was beginning to get late and people had long drives and or flights to make.  I still had no idea if I was heading back to Cheney tomorrow or not, and it looked like Sara didn’t know either.  I asked her and she said she really didn't want to head back, being in Portland made her miss it terribly, which I could relate to, even though I had only really been gone for two days before we made the trip back.

I asked her about our status for tomorrow, she said it was pretty much entirely up to me, which I was not at fan of.  It really did not bother me one way or the other if we left tomorrow, or if we prolonged our stay in Portland by a day, or two or possibly even three.  I did indeed want to get back to Cheney, see Grace and figure out what in the hell I was going to do about school, but, all of that could indeed wait if needed.  I knew that I would have to make a decision about the school aspect within three days, and the sooner I did it was probably better, which really did not excite me, but it had to be done.

We still needed to sort out the will situation.  It seemed as though after today, everyone would be leaving with the exception of both sets of grandparents.  My aunt and uncle from the UK both had to get back to their respective jobs, as did my mothers siblings as well, with the exception of Sara.  So, once the house cleared out, it would give us a chance to try and sort out what the actual plan was in regards to everything.  I guess we needed to see my parent’s lawyer for the will it appeared.  I didn’t know if anyone had scheduled a meeting for that or not.  Should probably ask one of my grandparents about that, if anyone had done the scheduling it would have been them.

Staying in Portland for an additional day, or more seemed like a must.  There was no way around it.  Was hopeful to sort out some more of the financial situation with my parents, as, I had next to no money myself and trying to find a job immediately in Cheney may not be the easiest thing to do, even if I didn’t take classes this semester.  

I mentioned this sad fact to my grandmother to see what she had to say.  They said that since I essentially inherited everything my parents had, there would be no issue getting me money to live on in Cheney, but for the time being they would set up an account for me with a sizable chunk of cash that I would have access to.  

“We do need to go get everything clarified with the lawyer and your parent’s accountant though,” said my grandmother.  “We scheduled a meeting tomorrow, are you still able to be here in town by then?” 

“At this point, there is no reason to go back to Cheney until everything is sorted out here, so yes I can stay for sure,” I said.

That sounded like a decent idea to me, being broker than hell on a permanent basis was not something I really was looking forward to, and this seemed like a reasonable way to get around it, perhaps I might even be able to replace my aging and falling apart car.  I liked it and all, but I really wish I had something at least somewhat more reliable.  If I wanted to be doing any sort of real travel in it, that could very well prove to be a bit of a challenge, one that I really did not want to have to deal with unless I had to.  I was honestly shocked that the car managed to make it to Cheney in one piece.  The whole situation with that wasn’t something I would likely do soon.  I was generally happy with the car, and until I knew for sure what I was going to be doing this term I likely wouldn’t make any hasty decisions.

I was hoping I would be getting back to Portland soon, but I knew there were still things to be dealt with in here, but at the same time, I knew my grandparents would be helping as best they could.  I knew that I should probably get some of the things I might actually want in Cheney to take back with me.  Mainly a handful of reference books and some other clothing, and a few other odds and ends, including a floor lamp, as the one ceiling light in my dorm room left a lot to be desired at night as it was significantly brighter than what I really wanted.  So it was agreed that Sara and I would load that into the car now so that if we did decide to leave in the morning we would be able to just get on the road and not have to move stuff in the morning.  I had my doubts that we would leave tomorrow but we weren’t sure if we would or not at this point.   

Fitting everything into her car was a piece of cake, not that there was too much to fit honestly.  A couple boxes of books, another box of random crap, and a lamp, not too terribly bad.  Not that my down room was that big in the first place to fit everything in, but not having a roommate sure as hell helped.  I was hoping that I would not get one come spring semester but I was not going to bet on it.  Living with someone would be nice in some aspects but in others I really hoped that I could live alone for the whole school year, and then possibly find an apartment or something along those lines to move into for the summer and the next school year, presumably on my own as well.  Then again, depending on my financial situation I might even be able to buy a small house there and then sell it whenever I left Cheney and actually make a profit on the deal which would even nicer.

There were still a good amount of people milling about when we were done with all that.  Most of the people form the University had gone home, most of what was left was family, neighbors, Eva and her parents, and a few other people who had come down from Washington.  Things were a lot calmer than they were a couple hours ago.  I wasn’t used to that amount of people in the house, on the deck, in the yard, and everything.  It was a bit overwhelming but now it was a lot more manageable.

Once everyone took off, and it was just family, it was so late and we were all so tired that I was wondering if I should just head to bed.  Still wasn’t sure what the plan was for the morning but I was hardly concerned about it at this point.  Whatever was decided on would be fine I presumed.  I wasn’t in a hurry to get back to Cheney.  I wasn’t in a hurry to do anything at all at this point.  I knew I would have to go back to Cheney at some point, that was inevitable, but I wasn’t in any sort of hurry for that at all.  I knew when I got back there that there would be a large list of things I would have to take care of and I was hoping I could put those things off for as long as I possibly could.  

Sara and I were hanging out on the couch, things had been put away, food stuffed into the refrigerator and mostly everyone had already gone to bed.  We were the only ones up that I was aware of, at least down in the common area of the house.  Sara wasn’t looking overly happy.

"You alright?" I asked, You don't looks to thrilled that we are maybe going back tomorrow."

"Eh, I guess I am alright, I just miss Portland, the people, the city, everything, and things aren't terribly happy at home anyways, I have really enjoyed not being there," she said.

"Not happy at home?"  I asked.  "Things not so well between you and Mark?"

"No, not really, I think he might be seeing someone else, when he leaves town for work, I saw some suspicious calls on our phone bill whenever he is gone," she said.

"Have you talked to him about it at all?" I replied.

"No, I'm too afraid to mention it, especially after we have been together for ten years, it feels terrible to think that he could be cheating on me," she said.

"Well at this point confrontation might be your best bet ya know, better to know, than to keep wondering," I said.

"You have a good point with that, but still I really don't know for sure if I even want to know," she said.  “The thought of things ending with him, just, the whole thought of that just makes me feel so damn anxious.”

"If he is doing it though, do you really want to stay with him?" I asked.

"I couldn't make it up there on my own, especially with how little my job pays, and I don't even know anyone else in Spokane to speak of, which is a small issue."

"Well, do you want to move back to Portland or back to Port Angeles?"  I asked.  "There is kinda a house here that will be empty that you could live in if you really wanted to, and I am sure your family in Port Angeles would be supportive if you left him too.

"You would really let me live there?" she asked.

"Better than it sitting empty, and better than you being unhappy in Spokane," I said.  “Would have to make sure the house was really free for me to do with what I wanted and int hat case, I wouldn’t see why not.”

"True, but, what if he isn't cheating?” she asked.

"Well, I would clarify that first before jumping into anything, but once this whole thing here with the houses is settled, just let me know and I sure as hell don't have a problem with it,” I said.

"Thank you so much, it means a lot, I thought I would be stuck out there with him no matter what, and in the job I hate," said Sara.

"Hell, you're family, don't you worry about a thing, alright?" I said.

"I will sure as hell try not to, but it's damn hard not to," she replied.

"I noticed Mark was being kinda distant when I saw you guys with my parents,” I said.

"I know, he used to be a lot more outgoing, I really think he is hiding something, I don't know what but I really think he is hiding something big," she said.

"Well, figure it out and we can go from there, just let me know alright?"

"Will do, now lets get some damn sleep, I'm fucking exhausted,” she said.

We got ready for bed, I was pretty damn tired as well, it had been a stressful few days and I was hoping that eventually it would subside for me. I knew it probably wouldn't with Sara, given her situation with Mark, but all things considered I really hoped that she managed to come through all of it alright.  I really worried about her, being trapped in a shit situation that one did not want to be in was never fun.

I headed back to my air mattress.  I checked my phone, a text from Eva thanking me again for inviting her and letting her know about the funeral and everything.  She also asked if it was possible to see me before she left to go back to Minneapolis.  Not knowing when we were leaving for sure I didn’t know if that would be possible but I told her that I would like to if I could.  I missed her, a ton.

Sleep came fast for me, I really hoped I would not wake up too early, but I had the sinking feeling I would, I did nearly every day I had been here, and I had a feeling that tomorrow morning would be no different.

[thequietmanno1]

Thelreads, MHA 293, Replies Part 1

1) “Oh my god man, now shit’s gonna get real! Even though he’s not gonna be able to do much against Shigaraki. Or Machia. Okay, he’s not exactly the ace that will save everyone, but we’re still glad he’s back, for Chapter 293: Hero-Saturated Society.”-Honestly? (points to the devastation wrought by each individual and the ongoing chaos) I don’t think there’s anyone who can save everybody from this. Not even All Might in his prime can stop multiple S-tier calamities like these erupting simultaneously across the country, and these poor heroes are forced to face them back to back. At this point, it’s trying to contain the damage, not stop it completely, and they need all hands on deck for that. 2) “Also, where are the girls? There’s only the boys here, also is that evil Midoriya next to Shigaraki?”- It seems to be a minor list of all the major fighters still up and running in this battle, so judging by the fact he’s standing next to Tomura I’m gonna assume that’s what Dabi would look like if he wasn’t self-cremated and still had his hair dye in. 3) “Oh yeah, there’s my baby after bringing back the power from my other baby.

Eri takes it and Eri gives it back, her power is unmatched.”- Eri’s power is so game-breaking that it’s actually pretty impressive to me how Horikoshi’s been avoiding making her too much of an OP crutch for the heroes to rely on, mangling themselves without fear of the long-term repercussions with Eri in their corner. 4) “Didn’t you saw the last panel Midoriya? Eri is the reason he’s here. Unless you meant how he knew to come to this specific location, which, being honest, is not that hard to guess, just following the trail of destruction and bodies Machia left”- To be frank, Izuku’s been so preoccupied stopping Tomura and all the little head-games that have been going on between their Quirks that I don’t think he’s fully processed the implications of what Machia’s appearance here means for everything left behind him. Gonna be a nasty shock to add to the growing pile. 5) “FUCK YOU MIRIO WE HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN AGES OF COURSE WE ARE NOSTALGIC ABOUT YOU”- It was even longer with all the weekly releases for us….well, I guess maybe not, what with finishing off the Vigilante alcohol binge for you.

6) “Also, jesus fuck man she told him about the super secret battle plan even though he was no longer a hero student and didn’t even had a quirk anymore, c'mon girl we know that Mirio is trustworthy, but that was reckless!”-She also knows him/worked with him directly as another hero intern under Nighteye’s office before the management change, so it’s like she informed a co-worker she’d known for a long time about the upcoming plan, which adds a little bit to her verification of Miro’s trustworthiness. Besides, in the same vein that having a goal to strive towards can make you push past your limits, knowing there was a big upcoming battle could have pushing Miro more into trying to regain his powers, giving her another reason to tell him. 7) “Well Mirio, hate to break it to you but you’re a bit bigger than a bug or lizard, not to say that there might be other side-effects of rewinding you half a year.

Although considering you’re here fighting I suppose that was not the case”- If there were any, I’d think they’d show up as a long-term deal, and right now, that’s a hypothetical problem they can afford to put aside whilst they focus on the present and distressingly immediate. 8) “AIZAWA GAVE THE NOD OF APPROVAL FOR HIS DAUGHTER TO LET HER POWER LOOSE

ERI SHALL HEAL THEE LIKE JESUS DID”- He’s also the metaphorical brake to her runaway powerhouse of a power, so she needs him nearby anytime she’s thinking of unleashing her Quirk in any degree, even after having better control of the “speed”. 9) “Yeah Mirio, thank you for showing up, we’re extremely happy to see you, but unfortunately you can’t do much to actually take them down. I doubt you could punch them hard enough to make them pass out.”- Miro dumped all his skill points into speed, evasion and defence, leaving him with pretty lacklustre offense against beings a jacked teenager can’t knock out in a single punch – and that’s exactly the kind of monstrous footsoldier AFO’s been honing all these years. 10) “…

Well okay, sure, I guess that the best option would be to call for help, but, who’s gonna come help you now? Everybody is already here!”- Other than his personal skills, Miro’s greatest ability is his awareness of his own shortcomings and limitations, making him a fantastic team player whenever he shows up, knowing when to delegate tasks he can’t handle himself to somebody better qualified and unafraid to show this, unlike other, more prideful heroes who might bluff about it and give a false sense of security. 11) “…

Is that Bakugo? Is Bakugo coming here? Wasn’t he already around? After he almost died that is”- Bakugo is the embodiment of “I didn’t hear no bell”…if only because he blew the bell up before he started fighting. Besides, he has extra motivation to push himself back from the brink of death, what with needing to fulfil his promise to Jeanist to tell him his incredibly serious and well-thought-out hero name the next time they spoke. 12) “fuck it was bakugo.but I swear, I thought he was there on the floor after he got stabbed by Shigaraki back in chapter 286”- He was on the floor, but then he got himself back off the floor, and doesn’t plan to hit it again until the heroes have won…somehow.

13) “Oh thank god Nejire is okay, even though she got half of her body burned like that.”- Proof that Bakugo’s not an outlier, every hero is equally capable of standing back up to continue the fight…and so unfortunately are the villains too.

14) “Also, wait, is Bakugo gonna reveal his hero name? We didn’t heard what it was so far right? In just assumed it would be Bakugo. Or kacchan. God I hope it’s kacchan.”- It’s better!

15) “what”-   Shush you, this is the greatest name he could have picked.

16) “Mirio it wasn’t meant to be funny, Bakugo is just always thinking about murder 24/7”- It might just have been because of his hang-time running out, but Bakugo looks like he face-planted in disappointment after Miro misunderstood the purpose of his name. @thelreads

[nyctoaerah]

𝐃𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐋 𝐈𝐍 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐆𝐔𝐈𝐒𝐄

“𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐋 𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐈��𝐑𝐎𝐑, 𝐇𝐄'𝐒 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑 𝐌𝐄”

╰┈➤𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐎𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐒: You wanted revenge for Suguru, So you joined jujutsu high to gather information. Satoru was your saving grace, an angel, a lifesaver that is always sparing you from the risk of being caught while snooping around various rooms and areas. You would've thought that he's an angel sent from heaven, but not until he becomes unhealthily obsessed with you. Showing you that he was just actually the devil in disguise.

╰┈➤𝐏𝐀𝐈𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: Yandere! Gojo Satoru x Fem! Traitor! Suguru's Adopted Daughter! Reader

╰┈➤𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐆𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: Implied Non-Con, Unhealthy Relationship, Yandere Behaviors, Satoru is an abusive a-hole. Age gaps (Satoru is 28, Reader is 19). Manipulation. Dark Themes. Satoru has mood swings. Violence. Reader is scared of Satoru. Foul language. Victim Blaming. (Ooc)

╰┈➤𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄: I do not support or approve of any of the behaviors and actions depicted in this book. The content is intended solely for entertainment purposes. The main storyline will be introduced in the following chapter, which will delve into the details of how the characters first encountered each other. It might be a bit confusing though. Also, support me on Quotev and Wattpad pls?:) hearts and reblogs are greatly appreciated<3

Masterlist

𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄

HOW MANY DAYS HAS passed since you found yourself in this situation with him again? The passage of time eluded you, as you had stopped keeping track, but it seemed like you had been trapped in this place for months, perhaps even a year. It felt like an eternity since he orchestrated your fake ‘death’ and locked you up in his place.

You’re not weak by any means, in fact, you’re strong, as you were a grade one sorcerer, but when faced with Satoru, you were nothing. No matter how much effort you put into finding a way out or escaping him, it seemed futile.

He was the strongest after all.

Should you attempt to flee, say goodbye to your walking privilege as he would incapacitate you by breaking your legs with.

Any resistance or argument on your part would only result in more severe punishment and degradation at his hands.

You try to use your domain expansion and fight back? He’ll use his domain expansion too and it doesn’t end well on your part.

Even if you dared to confront him and try to reason with his twisted mind, you would find yourself outmaneuvered and manipulated.

Asking others for help was equally fruitless, because what can they do against the strongest sorcerer?

You tried to ask Shoko for help, but unfortunately, she is unable to intervene in the situation. However, she mentioned that there is a person who has the ability to control and Tame Satoru—Suguru. Sadly, the dilemma lies in the fact that Suguru is no longer alive, and it was Satoru Himself who killed Suguru.

Suguru was the only reason why you joined jujutsu high. You wanted to find Suguru’s body, since according to your sisters, Nanako and Mimiko, Suguru’s body wasn't cremated, so you joined jujutsu high to look for suguru’s body, and to also get some information, because vengeance is what you seek.

Gathering information about the school and the sorcerers there was made easier by your loud teacher—Satoru Gojo, who constantly yaps and shares details about literally anything.

Anything but Suguru.

Unfortunately for you though, Satoru ended up finding out that you’re a traitor.

And that’s the main reason why you’re stuck with him.

Satoru’s fingers were lightly pressing against your throat, exerting gentle pressure that caused discomfort yet not crossing the threshold into pain. His touch was brand and it felt like a scorching imprint on your flesh. His fingertips grazed the delicate skin of your throat, tracing the rhythm of your racing pulse. His nose was nestled into the curve where your neck meets your shoulder, his breath hot and oppressive. Unconsciously, your fingers curled in response to his touch as you tried to distance yourself from him—yet, unable to tune him out.

You fought back the rising bile in your throat, swallowing hard to prevent it from rising and vomiting, your every muscle tense with discomfort. 

You squirmed uneasily, unable to escape as his other hand pressed firmly against your tummy, immobilizing you while his grip on your neck intensified, forcing your spine to meld into his chest as you were practically ensnared on his lap. Your jaw clenched, your airway constricting involuntarily, making each breath a struggle.

“S’toru,” You whined in discomfort.

“Relax your throat, baby” he coaxed, loosening his hold slightly. With great effort, you tried to comply, swallowing down a torrent of curses and insults that threatened to escape.

“Don’t vomit on me... ‘m just trying to listen to your pulse, n’ see if you’re healthy or not.” He assured you, a honeyed lie.

But you’re not. You wanted to say.

You’re trying to choke me. You said mentally.

“Come on, relax, pretty girl.”

He drawled, his icy blue eyes narrowing as they pierced through you from beneath his pale lashes.

“No...” You murmured.

“Don’t worry about me.. I’m.. calm.” you feigned, though the erratic thumping of your heart against your ribcage betrayed your facade. His sharp ears likely caught the drumming tempo echoing through the hollow of your neck.

“But you’re not.” He said.

“Hmph. Such a pretty liar, are you? Don't gaslight yourself.” he admonished, a disapproving shake of his head punctuating his words. You ground your teeth in frustration.

“You’re the one gaslighting me here,” you countered, a futile attempt to deflect his observation. Deep down, you knew his accusation rang true—a self-imposed gaslight, for you were only convincing yourself of a false relaxation, when infact, you are beyond calm.

“Tsk, tsk. Liar.” his voice carried a weight of disappointment as his hand migrated from your neck to your jaw, the firm pinch of his forefinger and thumb steering your gaze towards his stare.

“Fine,” you huffed. Each breath felt like hot coals burning in your lungs, and your muscles tightened like steel cables. As you clenched your fists, the skin on your knuckles paled beneath the pressure, your nails digging crescents into your palms.

 “I’m not calm,” you uttered stiffly, almost choking on the words as if they were bitter pills forced out of your mouth. Satoru cocked an eyebrow at your admission. His lips curled into a smirk, a condescending smile.

“I know, babe,” he murmured.

“Then why ask?” You asked sharply, [E/c] eyes narrowed.

“Why would you lie in the first place?” He asks back.

You fell into an uneasy silence, not knowing what to say.

“That’s what i thought.” Satoru scoffs.

You grimaced as his warm breath tickled your skin as he pressed a gentle kiss to your neck, his hand going underneath the fabric of your shirt. A shiver ran down your spine at the touch, a mix of revulsion and fear coiling within you as you fought the urge to swat his hand away.

You were keenly aware of the thin line you were threading, one wrong mood can cause Satoru to get mad. And satoru getting mad was far from the things that you would enjoy.

You don’t want to deal with a pissed satoru.

“Was that hard to admit?” Satoru asked suddenly.

You shook your head, the movement terse and strained, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings.

“Words, baby. Use your words,” he prompted.

“No... it’s not hard to admit,” you forced the words out through gritted teeth as he lets out a mocking laugh.

“Tsk, such a prideful princess,” he teased, his amusement palpable. You fixed your gaze on the ground, unable to meet his eyes, the weight of his hands on your body sending discomfort through your nerves. The struggle to maintain your composure, to resist the urge to push him away, felt like a battle

“But hey, you lied again, didn’t you? It was hard for you to admit that after all.” Satoru says, and you stiffened as you felt his gaze burning into you.

“What do you mean?” You feigned innocence.

“Don’t play dumb, pretty girl.” He glared at you.

That stupid cold stare of his never failed to make the hairs in your skin go up, and you hated it.

The adoring light that once danced in his gaze whenever he’s looking at you had been extinguished, replaced by a frigid darkness. His words and demeanor was now clashed with the vibrancy that once filled his eyes.

You hated it. You loathed it.

Loathed the way he looked at you in such a cold way, loathed the way he would always manipulate you, make you feel bad and blame you for everything.

This wasn’t the satoru that you had fallen for.

“you know, [Name]...When you lie,” he began, his thumb delicately tracing the lush curve of your lips. The urge to sink your teeth into his probing digit churned within you, an impulse that you struggled to suppress.

How did it go south so fast? He wasn’t like this before.

“Even if s’just a seemingly harmless little lie just like the one you just uttered,” he continued, exhaling a sigh heavy with disappointment.

“When you lie, it makes me remember how much of a traitor you are.”

With a sharp press, his thumb breached the barrier of your closed lips, barely grazing the tips of your teeth. A shiver ran down your spine at the invasion as he skillfully maneuvered his thumb into the warm recesses of your mouth, grazing against the tender foliate of your tongue.

“Traitors, don’t deserve mercy y’know?” He mused.

Gritting your teeth, you bit down on the inside of your cheek to suppress the snarl that threatened to escape.

“But lucky for you, i love you, so I’ll be showin’ you mercy.”

“Love?” You repeated incredulously, your words muffled.

He claims to love you, despite the vile deeds he's committed? The audacity of those words sends a surge of rage coursing through your veins. You make a desperate move to chomp down on his finger, but limitless stopped you.

The moment you does so, Satoru laughs.

“See? You Fuckin’ traitor.” He snorts.

“Can’t even trust you for a second, can I?” he drawls, and your insides twist with guilt and terror when you realize what you almost did. 

Shit. You messed up.

“Thought that you’re a good girl by now but looks like you’re still on your rebellious phase, hm?” He taunts.

“I didn’t meant to—” You tried to defend yourself but he interrupted you.

“I’m speaking.” He said firmly, and you shifts, hand twitching.

“But i—”

“I said i’m speaking.” His voice now rose making you flinch.

“If I turn limitless off, you’d take a bite outta me, ‘m sure of that.” he said, shaking his head as he withdraws his now moistened finger from your trembling lips, tainted with your own saliva.

He was right, but you’re not gonna admit that. If he has limitless turned off, you’ll smash his head on the wall.

“I didn’t mean to..” You said, swallowing thickly. But you did meant to do that though.

Satoru rolled his eyes.

“When will you stop lying?”

“Never thought that suguru would raise such a brat, a traitor one and a liar, at that.”

He says wearily, rubbing his temples in exasperation.

“Gosh, such a careless father, letting his poor daughter go.. but hey, i can’t blame him now, can i?” He hums, stroking his chin.

“I mean... He’s the reason why i met my sweet little [Name] after all.”

The mere mention of suguru being careless made the fragile tether of your composure snap.

Suguru was not careless.

You hated it when people talk shit about Suguru.

Your eyes widened with furious intensity, your blood coursing hot with rage as a vein visibly throbbed on your forehead. Anger constricted your throat, making it difficult to even breathe. In a moment of pure instinct, you crossed your fingers together, ready to use your domain expansion.

CRACK!

However, before you could fully comprehend what was happening, he snapped your fingers, twisting it, sending a jolt of pain throughout your body.

“What did i tell you about trying to use your domain expansion again?” His questioning gaze intensified as he firmly grasped your fingers, causing your eyes to widen in shock.

Then another came.

CRACK!

Then a ripping sound echoed through your ears.

You felt a sharp pain as blood started to trickle down from where he had inflicted wounds on your fingers. Your heart sank as you heard the sound of your severed fingers hitting the ground.

A scream was about to escape from your lips until he silenced you with a forceful kiss. His teeth clashed against yours as he firmly gripped your hip, effortlessly flipping you over and pinning you down.  

As he broke away from the kiss, a thin trail of saliva lingered between your mouths, and you felt like you're going to vomit.

“That’s the third time that you’re trying to use your domain expansion on me,” he snarls, seizing both of your wrists with one hand and securing them above your head while straddling you. 

“Haah.. ‘ve forgiven you for the other two times, but it’s getting annoying now. Try to use it once again and I’ll cut both of your hands off, okay?”

“There, there, don’t cry. It’s your own fault anyways.” Satoru comforts you as if he hadn’t just cut your fingers off. He gently licks the tears from your cheeks, savoring them as if they were sweet syrup, causing you to continue sobbing.

“Maybe if you weren’t so feisty and disobedient this wouldn’t happen... Suguru seriously forgot to teach you some manners, didn’t he?”

Shaking his head in disappointment, he lifts your hand to his lips and kisses it, displaying a strange mix of affection and detachment despite the gruesome act he just committed.

Looking down at you, Satoru grins, his eyelashes fluttering shut like those of an angel, looking peaceful.

Looking so innocent despite doing gruesome things.

Just like the Devil In Disguise .

[smokescreenimusprime]

Hi hi! I’ve been reading your smokescreen stuff and I had a thought. Specifically, a thought for a sort of, alternate version of the early crash AU. Smokescreen crashes early, but he crashes in the middle of nowhere and is damaged. He goes into stasis for a while, and when he wakes up the only system he can use is his holoprpjector. (He’s also stuck, buried deep underground in the middle of the Nevada desert, so that’s no fun either)

But he has his holoprpjector, and spends the next several decades just…vibing around Jasper. Then, he meets Jack. And they’re roughly the same age, so they hit it off. (Tho Smokes always has to explain why he doesn’t eat, or drink, or seemingly use the bathroom, and all kinds of other fun excuses to keep Jack off his trail). But then the Kids get involved with Team Prime, and suddenly Smokescreen is being confronted with Cybertronians for the first time in decades (possibly even for the first time in centuries).

And now he just has to figure out how to tell the bots what his deal is. (He doesn’t like being buried and may or may not have developed an intense claustrophobia.)

OOOOOOOOOOOO I REALLY LIKE THAT 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

I hope you don't mind but my brain went kinda insane with this thought and low key came up with a mini fic plan for it so-

just. Smokescreen slowly fitting into the little human society built above him. Going to their schools, working their jobs, living their lives. Maybe the first few times he lives the lives, he isn't perfect. He'll slip up and forget certain details about himself, or he'll be a bit too fast or strong and in such a small town rumors spread quickly

In his first lifetime as a human, Smokescreen kept to himself. He acted the way he always did, but kept to himself and watched from afar to learn more about humanity. He enrolled himself at Jasper High, got a job, bought a small apartment to call his own and did his best to ignore the pointed rumors and whispers from behind his back. For as amazing as humans could be, at times they could be just as cruel as the bots back home

it's a lot of stumbling and learning and making mistakes and he doesn't have any friends, but it's a step up to being alone in the quiet dark of his stasis pod, so he'll take it. He lives through his human's life, working, creating, starting hobbies, and so much more. The freedom to do things just for the sake of doing, of being allowed to pursue any job he chose without legal limitations, of being able to draw and paint and sing without countless rules and segregation preventing him....... it's freeing in a way he didn't know he'd been restricted

his 2nd life went much smoother, with a lot of the Nuances Of Being Human having been figured out. He had some difficulties "faking" his death since driving off into the desert with all his belongings then returning in the same vehicle with the same belongings would raise more rumors than he'd like to deal with, so he ends up packing all his important things and trinkets into boxes, gets a moving company to take them away, "dies" (he just messes with the settings on his holoform and waits for his body to be buried/cremated before dissipating it), moves in a few weeks later with a new identity and has

his 3rd life was actually cut short, which he's endlessly salty about. He managed to make it to his mid 20s, and this time around he wanted to experiment a bit. Specifically, he wanted to try street racing. Human cars were really starting to get interesting, and he wanted in. It had been far too long since he last raced, and while he wasn't going to be the one on the road, being behind the wheel was the next best thing. And he's damn good driver too, one of the best in the circuits around Jasper, and he dominates the local races for years

........but yeah it doesn't go so well in the end. Smokescreen's avatar ends up getting into an accident, one that he'd definitely not be able to get away with survival and ends up having to cut things short. It was a mad scramble in the next few days to get his stuff somewhere safe, and he unfortunately wasn't able to get all of it. It took him almost three months to cool off enough to make another human. It's was..... definitely difficult recognizing so many people with them not recognizing him, but he managed

but then something interesting happens nearing the end of his 4th life

Smokescreen had gotten some new neighbors. That in itself wasn't anything new, he got new neighbors all the time. They were a young couple freshly married and nothing that really garnered extra attention. Smokescreen did end up running into the wife at the grocery store a few times, and that's how he ends up learning her name

June Darby

he sees her around a few more times and they make pleasant conversation. At times, Smokescreen thinks they might even be friends, but he's hesitant to put a label on it It's been so long since he's had a friend, he doesn't want to scare her off

and things are nice. They talk over coffee and walk through the park together, enjoying each other's company. June tells him about her life and Smokescreen tells her about his human one. They have fun, laugh, make jokes, and when June gets pregnant Smokescreen is ecstatic to meet the kid

but then...... then things took a turn for the worst

Smokescreen had never liked Mr.Darby. He had his suspicions, had his gut feelings, but never had anything other than that to go off of. He doesn't even know what about the man made him feel so uneasy, just that something about him, about how June would take every opportunity to get out of the house, about how she always looked so tired in a way medical school couldn't explain.......

everything comes crashing down one night. At midnight he hears yelling outside his house and frantic banging on his door. He's on his feet in an instant, and he's horrified what he sees

June, crying and shaking with a bruise on her cheek and Mr.Darby trying to drag her away

in that moment, Smokescreen forgets he's supposed to be a frail old man and punches him so hard the man's jaw shatters

June spends the night with him. He gently guides her to the guest room and keeps watch all night. Sleep was simply a formality at this point, one he was more than willing to forgo for her safety

it was easy enough to get Mr.Darby to back off. Smokescreen had accumulated quite the fortune over the (technical) generations he's lived on Earth, especially since the food and water bills he paid amounted to almost nothing, and it was more than enough to pay for any legal fees to get the man arrested and evicted. June was of course still very shaken up from the whole ordeal, but Smokescreen doesn't hesitate to let her know she's welcome for as long as she'd like

and then June just kinda...... never ends up moving out. The trial kept her on edge and busy, then she had to get caught up on all the schooling she missed, then Jack was born, and while she always intended to move back it just...... never happened. And it wasn't like this was a bad thing, Smokescreen's home was more enough for the three of them, and neither minded being roommates. It was...... honestly comforting, having someone there

but Smokescreen knows he's running out of time. That he's only going to be able to realistically be around for so long before his age will start to draw attention, and as much as it kills him to abandon June and Jack he doesn't know what to do

so he stats planning for his next life, more than he has for every previous one combined, and for the first time, he decided to tie these two lives together

before, he always avoided any relations at all. It could become suspicious and lead to people poking their noses where they don't belong and asking questions he wasn't prepared to deal with. But….. he couldn't stand the thought of being forced to watch June and Jack from the sidelines. Of them not knowing him in his next

it had been a few years since everything had gone down when Smokescreen finally puts his plan into action. The plan had been to tell June he needed to take care of some “Family Business” he’d thought was taken care of before his time ran out. That he wasn’t sure if he’d be back, he could feel that he was running out of time, but that no matter what he loved June and Jack

Jack was 7 years old when he said goodbye, and that memory would be burnt into his brain for the rest of his life. How Jack clung to his pant leg asking him not to go, how June's eyes got so big and shiny and how her hands would shake. It tore his spark to pieces to see them like that, and it just convinced him further

he left almost everything he had to the two of them. Aside from a small box of his most personal and important things, he left everything else to June in his “will,” including the house and all his money, which she at first tried to reject but Smokescreen was stubborn and insisted

And then he gets in his car with a tank full of gas and drives far off into the desert

it takes 3 weeks before he comes back, and it was the longest 3 weeks of his life. He wanted to rush back, wanted to be with June and Jack again and he was worrying himself sick over what could be happening to them, but he forced himself to wait

In his 5th life, Smokescreen is the most honest with himself he’d ever been since his 1st life. His holoform is what he thinks is comfortable and he makes himself as young as he can get away with (a newly 15 year old) because he wants as much time as possible with the two. His personality is who he truly is without any politeness or experimentation because above everything he wants to be as open and honest as he can with these two. He starts thinking of ways to describe his life, his Cybertronian life, in a way that would fit as a human because he wants them to know him, not a puppet he created

When he shows up in Jasper things…… go as he expected. Driving up in his “old” car definitely got some whispers and June’s suspicion was almost painful, but well within everything he planned. Smokescreen was ready to play the long game for this, anything it took to be a part of their lives again

he claims to be his previous life's great-nephew. That one of his grandparents and his old life used to be siblings, but had a falling out leading to his old life moving to Jasper and cutting all contact. A few weeks ago, Smokescreen had reached out to his "great-uncle" since things with his own parents weren't....... going super great and his grand-uncle was really the only family he felt would be sympathetic. However he over estimated just how much his grand uncle was willing to do for someone he didn't even really know, leading to him recommending Jasper as a place to stay and driving all the way to where he lived to give him his car

he also mentions that his grand uncle had talked about June a lot in the days before he died, and he could tell he really loved her (not in a romantic way). He'd already said his "last goodbyes" weeks ago, and while he did make sure they knew how much he cared...... he still feels like he hadn't said enough

after things slightly calm down after that, Smokescreen then gets ready to leave. After all, he's still technically a stranger to them and he's already accomplished his goal of making contact....... but then June insists he stay the night. After all, he's a 15 year old and she can't in good faith let him sleep in his car when she has a perfectly good bed available

reluctantly he accepts, but makes it clear he's going to make plans to move elsewhere. After all, this is June's home now and he doesn't want to intrude

.......but just like when he first took June in, his moving out never happens. He ends up being enrolled in school, babysits Jack when June's shifts run longer, help prepare food and before he knows it, they've become a family once again

a few years later when June asks if he'd like her to adopt him he nearly cries

from here, my thoughts are a bit more scattered. I have a couple misc ideas which I'm not fully sure how to go about but want to include somehow:

after he graduates this time, Smokescreen ends up working at the library for both a change of pace and some nostalgia, and he's really good at it

when Smokescreen left his 4th life, he gave Jack a little pendant he'd made some years back with Alpha Trion's symbol on it. Sort of a way to remember him by, and Jack rarely takes it off. It's eventually noticed by the Bots which sparks a bit of curiosity about this mysterious old man

Smokey is just as much in the dark about the Autobots as June is, however he'd had suspicions for it longer. Not specifically Cybertronian Interference, but definitely that there was something going on

during the whole MECH Thing, Smokey ends up getting kidnapped in the house. However, things don't go as planned because Smokey isn't at all limited by normal human limitations. Initially they tried drugging him and knocking him out, but he only goes down when they hit him with a high powered taser which ends up REALLY fucking with his holoform which unfortunately gets their attention

the Autobot Base is thankfully just within Smokescreen's range, and he looses his SHIT. Unfortunately they can't free him just yet on account of the whole ass town on top of him, but the fact multiple someones know he's down there...... yeah he starts crying a bit

during the S2 finale, Smokescreen ends up being the one to stay behind in the base since..... well, he couldn't leave anyways. Might as well make sure everyone else can escape

[invisibleanonymousmonsters]

Father of Mine – 1/2

Character: Bruce Wayne x Daughter!Reader

Summary: With the tragic passing of her mother, Y/N learns to the truth of who her father is. 

Word Count: 4,000+

Warnings: Family death, cancer, absent father, cremation 

A/N: The reader is described as tall in this fic. Bruce Wayne is 6′2 and I’m tall, so I’m indulging myself with no apologies. Read it or don’t. 

“Do you want to say anything before we…” the operator asked her.

“No,” Y/N answered quickly.

“Oh, my assistant forgot to give you this,” the operator gave her a shy smile as he handed her a small cardboard box.

She opened it to find all of her mother’s jewelry that had been on her body at the funeral.

“Thank you,” Y/N told him.

“Ready?” The operator asked.

He had been so kind throughout the whole process. It was obvious he was used to people breaking down and being extremely emotional. 

But Y/N had been stoic, almost concerningly so. 

Though he wasn’t one to judge. Everyone grieved differently.

With the pull of a handle, Y/N watched her mother’s body going into the chamber.

“It will be a few hours,” the operator told her.

He meant it will it will take a few hours for her mother’s body to burn to ash. Then they would hand her a tacky vase with her remains.

Y/N just nodded. “I’ll go for a walk.”

As soon as she was outside, Y/N called her mother’s executor.

“Ms. Y/L/N, I was just about to call you.”

“I’m at the crematory,” she told him. “I figured we should discuss the bills that still need to be paid for.”

“Yes, of course. As I mentioned to you before, your mother’s life insurance covers quite a lot of it…” his words died out.

“But it’s still not enough,” Y/N finished for him. “I’ll get the money.”

She wasn’t exactly rich, but she also wasn’t living paycheck to paycheck. But people never realized how much money it cost for loved ones to die. It was honestly ridiculous.

“You might want to consider taking out a loan,” he tried to suggest gently.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Another thing, Ms. Y/L/N. There was an envelope with a name on it. And your mother left instructions on delivering the envelope to them.”

She stopped her pacing. 

“What name is on the envelope?” Y/N asked.

There was a pause.

“Bruce Wayne.”

Y/N’s brow furrowed.

Of course she knew who Bruce Wayne was – everyone in Gotham did, as well as most of the country. He was a billionaire playboy, only making headlines when he was a mess. But every once in awhile his philanthropy would sneak in there. Y/N always assumed those were only to help recover his image and not because he was a good person.

“You still there?” The executor asked.

“Yeah. I’m just a bit confused. But please pass it along to him, if that’s what my mom wanted.”

“I can’t. The instructions specifically say for you to deliver the envelop to him in person.”

“In person?” Y/N groaned in annoyance as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

Why did all of this have to be so god damn complicated?

“Yes. Her instructions are…oddly specific."

“Fine,” she huffed. “I’ll pick up everything from your office before the work day ends.”

——————

Y/N stared at the envelop that she’d tossed on her coffee table as she sipped a rather large glass of red wine.

She was wracking her brain trying to think of a time when her mom mentioned knowing Bruce Wayne. But Y/N would’ve remembered her mom saying his name – even in passing. It’s not a name that one can drop casually.

Y/N pulled up her phone and googled him. But she looked at his history. Yes, he was from Gotham, as was her mom, but so were 10 million other people.

But then Y/N’s scrolling paused when she realized they went to the same high school: Gotham Academy. Not only that, they graduated in the same year.

‘Were they friends?’ Y/N wondered.

But just classmates or friends still didn’t seem to warrant a handwritten letter to be delivered after one’s death.

Y/N didn’t open the envelope.

Her mother’s instructions specifically told her not to. And if she put in that much of an effort to get this done after her death, Y/N wasn’t going to ignore such a request.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t curious.

“Fuck,” Y/N sighed before throwing back the rest of her wine.

——————

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t grant you access to the building without your name being in the system by the company you’re visiting,” the building receptionist told her for the third time.

“I understand. But I called his office 30 fucking times and they refuse to put me through to him or get me an appointment,” Y/N practically growled.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I already called their office to say you were here and they didn’t recognize your name. I can’t let you through to the elevators.”

Y/N’s gaze flickered to the security guard who stood a few feet away. He was eyeing her now that there was clearly an argument going on.

Y/N wanted to roll her eyes. She had a good foot on him – even without her heels on. And he looked like he couldn’t run a 50 yard dash without passing out or vomiting. If he thought he was going to physically stop her, he had another thing coming.

“Listen, I am not some crazy fucking stalker. My mom knew Bruce Wayne and in her will she asked me to deliver this to him,” Y/N’s voice lowered and became disturbingly calm. “I don’t want to be here just as much as you don’t want to have this conversation.”

“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to calm down,” the security guard finally stepped forward.

“Oh, fuck off,” Y/N rolled her eyes at the rent-a-cop.

“Ma’am, I’ll have to ask you to leave,” he continued.

“Call me ma’am one more fucking time…” Y/N growled.

But the security guard was taking a step to her.

“Excuse me. What seems to be the problem here?” A voice suddenly interrupted.

Everyone turned to see a young man – younger than Y/N – glaring at the security guard just as he was about to grab Y/N.

“M-Mr. Drake, we were just escorting this young woman from the premises,” the guard stuttered out.

Everyone at the building knew every member of the Wayne family. But unlike his siblings, Tim Drake was at the office almost every day. As one should be when they’re the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company.

“For what reason?” Tim Drake asked.

“She insists on seeing Mr. Wayne. But she doesn’t have an appointment. For security reasons, I cannot let her through, obviously, unless the company she is visiting has put her into their system and the building’s system,” the receptionist explained nervously.

Y/N frowned as if she was bored of the whole thing.

Tim stepped forward. “May I ask what your business with Bruce Wayne is?”

Now that he was closer, Y/N noticed how exhausted he looked. He was handsome still, of course. But she wondered when he last got a good night’s sleep. He was shorter than her, probably standing at 5’5. And she still believed he was younger than her, which was wild seeing as he was already the CEO and couldn’t be older than 24.

Y/N sighed before she grabbed the envelope from her black leather satchel, and showed that Bruce Wayne’s name was handwritten on it.

“My mother wished me to personally deliver this to him.”

Tim tilted his head slightly. “Why isn’t she doing it?”

“Because she’s dead,” she shot back without emotion.

But Tim’s face became sympathetic. “I’m sorry. I should’ve assumed…”

“It’s fine,” Y/N quickly cut him off before he could continue.

She was so tired of being on the receiving end of people’s sympathy. It didn’t help. And the words stopped holding any meaning to her.

“But I’m sorry. Bruce isn’t in today. And he probably won’t be coming to the office for the rest of the week.”

“Oh,” was all she responded with.

Of course Bruce Wayne didn’t come to work. Why would he?

This was a stupid idea. And now she had made a scene because of it.

“But if you give me your information, I will personally let him know that you are trying to reach him.”

“Really?” Y/N asked in shock.

Tim smiled at her surprise. “Of course.”

“Here’s my card,” she quickly grabbed one from her wallet and then a pen. “All my info is on that.” She wrote something on the back. “And that’s my mom’s name.”

He took it from her and nodded. “What was your mother’s relationship with Bruce?”

Y/N shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve been trying to figure it out. Apparently they graduated in the same high school class. But that’s all I was able to find.”

He nodded.

“Thank you…Mr. Drake. For your help. Really,” she urged.

“Please, it’s just Tim.” Then he glared at the receptionist and security guard. “For you it is, at least.”

“Thank you again,” Y/N felt like saying it 30 more times still wouldn’t be enough.

“You don’t have to thank me. Someone will be in touch. Have a good day, Ms. Y/L/N.”

“Y/N,” she corrected with a smile before she nodded and started backing away.

He smiled at her correction and gave a final nod.

——————

Y/N didn’t expect to hear from anyone for at least a week.

If the Wayne family was one thing, it was busy.

They probably had parties to go to, meetings to attend, private jets taking them around the world whenever they wished.

Why would they ever prioritize a meeting with her, a stranger?

So imagine her surprise when she received a call from an unrecognized number the same day she gave Tim Drake her card.

“Hello?” She answered.

Usually she would let any unknown number go to voicemail.

“Hello,” a British voice answered. “Am I speaking with Ms. Y/F/N Y/L/N?”

“This is she,” Y/N sat up straighter on her couch.

“This is Alfred Pennyworth. I work for Master Wayne and manage all his personal appointments. I was told by Master Tim that you wished to meet with him?”

“Uhhh. Yes. Yes, I do. Is that…is that possible?”

“Would you be able to stop by Wayne Manor on Friday afternoon?”

Y/N already knew she had nothing going on that would stop her from getting this done. But she still paused to pretend to think about it.

“Yes, Friday afternoon should be fine. Are you sure he doesn’t just want me to stop by Wayne Enterprises?”

It felt oddly intimate to stop by Wayne Manor. Wouldn’t they want to meet her in a more secure location like a corporate building with security that already hated her?

“He is quite certain. Should I send a car for you Ms. Y/L/N?”

A car?

Y/N felt even more out of her depth now.

“Oh, no. That won’t be necessary. I’ll be there.”

“I look forward to meeting you, Ms. Y/L/N.”

“Thanks,” she answered before hanging up and realizing that probably wasn’t the proper response to such a polite goodbye.

——————

“I haven’t heard that name since high school,” Bruce had muttered as he stared at the business card for what felt like the thousandth time.

“Yes, and the end of your relationship did not end on the best of terms,” Alfred commented.

Y/M’s/N Y/L/N had been Bruce’s high school sweetheart.

An she had seen the last moments of Bruce’s normal life. 

Upon graduation, Bruce decided to leave Gotham and that’s how his second life was founded. The two of them broke up before the summer after graduation had even ended.

Well, “Breakup” was a strong word.

Bruce stopped answering her calls.

She was his first love and he continued to love her.

But once Bruce realized where his life was going and who he wanted to be, he knew he couldn’t drag her into it. She deserved better.

And Bruce was a coward about relationships then. Maybe he still was.

“I am certain you did a thorough background check on her already,” Alfred commented with a smirk.

Bruce took in a breath before listing off all of her accomplishments. “Y/F/N Y/L/N. Graduated number one in her class at Gotham Academy. She was the star of the track team, breaking the regional record for fastest time in 100m, 200m, and 400m races. Also captain of her soccer team. Attended NYU’s photography program before dropping out after a year. Now she’s a professional photography. Her work’s been featured in Vogue, New York Times, National Geographic…amongst others.”

“Rather an impressive woman,” Alfred said.

Bruce nodded.

“I should get the tea and coffee ready for her arrival.” And with that, Alfred left Bruce in the drawing room.

30 minutes later, the doorbell rang.

Bruce glanced down at his watch: she was right on time.

He heard Alfred saying his pleasantries before he heard the clicking of her heels as she rounded the corner to enter the room he was waiting in.

For being a famous photographer, she could’ve been a runway model with her height and the way she walked into the room, completely owning it. She wore four-inch heels, only adding to her natural tallness. And her bright, red coat only added to her presence.

For a split second, Bruce was convinced that he was looking at an Amazon. Diana immediately flashed into his mind for a split second. Perhaps that was what Y/M’s/N needed help with: to get her daughter to her real people. But how would she have known Bruce Wayne had such connections? Unless she knew Batman’s true identity…

As soon as Y/N spotted him in the room, he rose from his seat.

“Ms. Y/L/N,” Bruce greeted.

He took a step forward and held out his hand.

“You guys really love the formalities.” She said it with a dark evenness, but it was clearly a joke. “Y/N is fine, Mr. Wayne,” she added as she shook his hand.

“In that case, it’s Bruce,” he countered with a soft smirk.

There was something so familiar about her. But Bruce knew they’d never met. 

“Thank you for seeing me. I don’t want to waste anymore of your time,” Y/N quickly got to it. She opened her purse to grab the envelope.

“My mom wanted you to have this. And she wanted to make sure I was the one to give it to you,” Y/N explained as she offered it to him.

Bruce took it carefully, but didn’t open it. “Yes, I heard about her passing. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she said hurriedly, making it obvious to Bruce that she did not want nor need his condolences.

Bruce nodded slowly.

There was a pause.

“Do you know what it says?” He asked her lightly.

She shook her head. “I wasn’t supposed to read it.”

“I see.”

“I should really be going. I have a flight to catch later tonight.” Most people that visited Wayne Manor wished to stay there forever. Or their curiosity got the best of them and their eyes took in every little detail.

But Y/N looked like she’d rather be anywhere else. And she wanted to get out as soon as she possibly could.

“Thank you again for seeing me,” she rushed out.

Without waiting for his answer, Y/N turned and started walking out of the room.

But she only got a few steps before she stopped.

Bruce watched her shoulders tense and her body move as she was clearly taking in deep breath.

Slowly, Y/N turned around to face him.

“Were you friends?”

Bruce gave her a watery smile. “She was my girlfriend in high school.”

Y/N seemed annoyed by that answer. “She never mentioned you. Not once.”

Bruce’s brow furrowed at that and his eyes zoned out as if he was revising the past in his mind. “I’m not entirely surprised. Things didn’t really end well between us.”

She nodded slowly. “Goodbye, Mr. Wayne.”

And Y/N turned and strutted out of the room without looking back.

As soon as Bruce heard her cab drive away, he ripped open the envelope and pulled out a letter.

He barely noticed that Dick had walked into the room. “May I ask…Who was the extremely attractive and tall woman that just walked out?”

But Bruce didn’t hear him as his eyes raced across the letter. His heart sped as he continued reading.

“Bruce?” Dick asked after being ignored. “Is she your next conquest or what?”

It wasn’t until Bruce was done reading the letter for the third time that he finally looked up and acknowledged Dick.

Alfred had also walked into the room, unbeknownst to Bruce.

“You OK?” Dick asked, now concerned with how silent Bruce had become.

“Master Wayne?” Alfred also urged.

“That was…my daughter,” Bruce finally muttered.

Dick blinked before his eyes grew wide in shock.

Alfred seemed less surprised, almost as if he had already put that together.

“Excuse me,” Bruce told them and exited the room.

———

Dick and Alfred must’ve warned the rest of the family not to bother Bruce in the cave. Usually he would’ve been disturbed by now.

Bruce had been at the computer for hours.

Alfred was the first person to come down, carrying a tray with dinner and tea.

The butler wasn’t surprised to find Y/N’s face all over the screens.

If Bruce had left any available information hidden before inviting Y/N to the manor, it was all out there now. Bruce knew everything about Y/F/N Y/L/N that was public knowledge – probably even some things that were not.

“You know, you did not seem all that surprised,” Bruce said to Alfred as he put the tray of food down next to him.

“Seemed rather obvious, didn’t it?”

Bruce quickly turned to look at him. “It did?”

Alfred smirked. “Her eyes,” was all he said.

“The color?”

Alfred shook his head. “As soon as she walked into the manor, they were reading me.” He tilted his head in Bruce’s direction. “Observation. Perception. Attention to detail...That is all you, Master Wayne.”

“The way she held herself,” Alfred continued, "Shoulders held back, head high, walking with purpose. No hesitation.”

“Also me?” Bruce asked.

Alfred simply nodded.  

“I don’t think she liked me very much,” Bruce sighed.

He didn’t know how he felt about that yet.

“A lot of people think you don’t like them when you first meet them,” Alfred countered. “Because I don’t trust them yet.”

Alfred raised his brows and silently ask him, ‘Don’t you see my point?’

Bruce rubbed his face and reached for the tea on the tray, ignoring all the food.

“I don’t know why you’re so entertained by this, Alfred.”

“Yes, I was entertained. I just saw a younger, female version of you, Master Wayne.”

“I abandoned her,” Bruce shot.

“You didn’t know she existed,” Alfred corrected.

“And why do you think that is?”

Alfred’s face dropped a little bit when he noticed the envelope discarded on the far end of Bruce’s desktop.

He looked down at the ground as he asked, “Might I ask what the letter said?”

Bruce glared at the letter as if touching it would burn him.

But after a moment, he grabbed it and quickly handed it to Alfred.

Bruce,

If this letter has finally reached you, it is because I have passed.

I must admit that I wrote this letter mostly in the event that I leave my daughter before she is an adult. But once Y/N turned 18, I decided to still pass this along to you.

There is no easy way to tell you this, so I will get to the point.

The young woman who delivered this letter to you is your daughter, Bruce.

Y/F/N Y/M/N Y/L/N.

When I found out I was pregnant with her, I was only 18. We had just graduated high school. You had started traveling. You called less and less. And you grew more distant – physically and emotionally. Eventually, you stopped answering my calls altogether. I left you a voicemail, only saying that I so desperately needed to talk to you, that I needed you.

But you never called me back.

With no words at all, you made it very clear that you no longer wanted anything to do with me.

But there I was, a teenager who was pregnant with our child.

I would be lying if I said I never considered terminating my pregnancy. I was scared and you broke my heart. All I wanted to do was erase you from my life.

But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Once I decided what my future was going to be, I also decided that I did not want you to have any part in it.

I knew even if you pretended to play the doting father and the committed partner, you would grow tired of us eventually. You would resent me and our child for bringing you down. And you would brush us aside for yourself.

I realized I would rather Y/N have no father at all than one who would only disappoint her over and over again.

To this day, I truly believe I did the right thing for all three of us.

There are not enough words to explain the complicated woman that Y/N grew up to be. But I will try my best. I think I owe you that at least. 

Or maybe you have no interest.

I don’t know how she became so much like you, even when I never so much as showed her a picture of you or uttered your name.

She enjoys being alone – almost to her own detriment. I constantly catch her repressing her feelings, always staying strong for everyone else. It reminds me of you. She’s assertive and confident, never letting anything stand in the way of what she wants. Sometimes I don’t think she’s scared of anything. It worries me, just like it worried me when I thought the same of you.

I truly don’t know what you will do with this information.

But…if you have any desire to form some sort of relationship with her, then you should know this: she will not make it easy for you. She will push you away. And she might even hate you. I raised her to never need a man in her life, and she’ll make sure you know that.

I don’t expect anything from you. I never did.

But I would just like to know there might be someone who will be there for her should she need them.

Goodbye, Bruce.

Alfred slowly handed the letter back to Bruce when he was finished.

“I pushed her away because I knew what I was about to become,” Bruce explained darkly. “And I didn’t want her anywhere near it. She would’ve been in danger.”

“Y/N, as well,” Alfred added.

“But had I known…if I just listened to her–”

“Master Wayne, I thought we had agreed to never linger on the ‘what ifs.’”

That sure silenced Bruce.

“Now, what do you plan on doing, Master Wayne?”

———

Y/N frowned when her phone started vibrating and she recognized the name of her mom’s executor on her phone screen.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Y/L/N, how are you?”

“Fine. How are you?” She was quick, wanting to get this over with. Surely, he had bad news. Another medical bill came in or some other expense that slipped by them.

“Good, good. Just curious…have you placed any payments to our various claims?”

“Uhhh…no. But I’m working on it.”

Y/N hadn’t expected to get a call nagging about paying bills.

“No, no, no. You misunderstand. They’ve all been paid,” the executor explained.

Y/N sat up straighter in her chair. “What? That’s not possible.”

“An anonymous donor. They somehow got record of all your outstanding payments and covered all of them.”

Y/N was stunned to silence.

“Ms. Y/L/N…this is a good thing.”

She blinked and shook her head. “Right. Yes, of course. I just…thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank this guardian angel of yours.”

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

Part 2

Let me know what you think!!!

[shirtlesssammy]

The Winchesters 1x06: Art of Dying

Elk Falls, Kansas

A woman runs through a dark forest. She is being pursued by something but no matter how many times she looks backwards, she doesn’t see it. She does trip though and hurts her ankle. She staggers into the nearest building. A barn with flickering lights. Littlebabyjesusidonothaveitinmewhatishappening

Well, as women are wont to do on this show, she ends up on the ceiling with blood pouring all over the ground beneath her. 

“Hunting has a way of changing a person. After a while, right, wrong, good, evil, they all start to seem the same. And then it makes you start to wonder. Who’s really the monster here –them, or me?” 

Lata takes over the mantle of being the Dean mirror this week. She is meditating (seriously, she’s the Dean mirror this week), but is interrupted by John and Carlos fighting about what their next step is. John’s intensity is enough for both Lata and Carlos to suggest he seek help for his anger. Mary pops up and gets a call from an old friend/quasi-aunt. 

The gang hits the road to find Tracy Gellar, an old friend of Mary’s mom. She’s retired, so it was a shock that she found Darla, an old hunter buddy, in her barn. Apparently there’s a werewolf on the loose. 

They meet up with Tracy and inspect the body. John and Mary discuss getting out of the life. Carlos finds a claw! Lata doesn’t think they’re dealing with a werewolf after all. 

*Hunter Funeral Alert*

After the funeral, the gang sits around trying to find more information on the claw. John ponders if maybe it’s another unicorn monster the Akrida summoned to Lawrence. Mary and Lata point out that even if that’s true and they’re able capture it and use it to lure the Akrida to them, they don’t know how to kill the Akrida. John gets testy. Lata has someone that can help so she and Carlos head out to meet him. On the road, Lata voices her fears that she’s not much of a hunter and she might be a liability for them. 

They get to their destination, which turns out to be a taxidermy shop (well, that’s just the front). Carlos is not impressed, until he sees Lata’s friend, Anton.

Back at the house, Mary and Tracy talk. Mary fills her in on her father, her missing mother, their whole messy marriage. Tracy tells Mary that there’s always going to be a monster. She needs to start “looking out for number one.” Mary asks Tracy if she regrets leaving the life. Nope. 

Anton tries some small talk with Carlos, but our resident disaster bisexual is more of a disaster than usual. He’s all tongue-tied and flustered. And it’s all good because Anton figured out the claw! It’s a soucouyant! A vampire witch! Tracy is overwhelmed by the news. Her last hunt was a soucouyant. 

She and a group of other hunters killed off all but one, but then Mac, another hunter, and that last soucouyant died in a cave-in. Or so she thought. 

Just then the vampire ghost busts through the front door. 

She has fire hands! John uses a fire extinguisher as his weapon of choice, and props, dude. He also takes after the monster before Mary can grab her machete, but she soon catches up to him whaling on the thing. It almost gets the upper hand on him before Mary chops off her arm. The monster darts off into the woods. 

Back at the clubhouse, Carlos stitches John back up while thinking of Anton the whole time. Tracy thinks that the soucouyant is picking off all her hunter buds and now is going after her. 

The stitches are barely tied off in John’s shoulder before he’s bouncing up and ready to kill. Mary needs to take things down a bit. They need to think. Lata thinks there’s some weird things going on with the situation. John bolts out of the room in full dick mode. 

Outside, John angrily hits a punching bag while Mary tries to get him to open up. She brings up the incident with Mars Neto. John brings up Darla’s cremation. He refuses to do the same for Mary, so that means he’s gotta work EXTRA hard and TWICE as emotionally to make sure she survives. Mary calls him on that pile of bull - Millie told her about his tendency to race headlong into danger. 

Lata interrupts - she needs to show them their discovery. At the autopsy table, Lata shows Mary, Carlos, and Tracy the arm. She tells them that the arm was already dead. Like, MEGA dead. The soucouyant was possessed by a g-g-g-ghost! Tracy falls back at the words “vengeful spirit” and we dig to the heart of the matter. Tracy tells them that she and the rest of her now-dead hunting team killed their old partner Mac - and not accidentally.

Tracy fills in the gaps. Mac had a difficult childhood and became a hunter to try to deal with his pain. When hunting didn’t fill the gaps in his soul, he glommed onto dark magic. The pain didn’t go away, but he got more dangerous instead. The soucouyant hunt was the last straw. Mac was violent and paranoid, and the rest of the hunting team decided to take him out. When he went into the cave after the monster, they blew it in with C-4. Tracy insists that they didn’t have a choice. “Violence is always a choice,” Lata interjects. YAAAS. The Scooby gang starts to draw parallels between Mac and John, when Mary realizes something. John isn’t there! 

Cut to John, stalking into Tracy’s barn on his own. (Can’t stop hunting, full of rage.) The soucouyant, or rather, the haunted soucouyant, gets the jump on him. The ghost zips out of the monster and into John. The monster’s body conveniently dissolves into dust. 

The team arrives a LITTLE bit too late. John stands ominously in the barn and when he turns around, ghosty mist swirls in his eyes. Mac uses his ghost mojo to slam shut the barn doors and chuck Carlos across the barn. He smirks at Tracy, hurls Mary out of his way, and then starts to choke Tracy against a barn post. Mary intervenes and they fight. Mary is desperate to avoid hurting John but the Mac-infected John isn’t holding back at all. 

“All I’ve ever known are clenched fists,” Mac muses as he starts to beat Mary down. “There is nothing you can do to me that I haven’t already survived.” Tracy moves in with her shotgun trained on John. Mary pleads for John’s life, but Tracy won’t back down. 

In the end, it’s Lata who makes the fateful move. She throws herself between the shotgun and John. “More violence isn’t the answer. Not when you’ve spent a lifetime with it. When it’s touched everything you ever had.” She confesses that her father was a soldier in the India-Pakistan war (presumably?) and when he came back, he was full of rage and violence - like the war “infected” him. She used to try to hide from him, but eventually she grew angry. She had a deep well of anger but one day she hurt someone. That’s when she chose peace. 

Mac tells Lata that he chose his team, but they gave up on him and betrayed him. Tracy confesses that she was scared. She tells him that she’s sorry. “It’s not too late, Mac,” Lata tells him. “You can still break the cycle.” After a long moment, Mac releases Mary, and then ditches the weapon, and finally, ditches John. Mac leaves, and John collapses (alive but unconscious) onto the barn door. 

Afterward, they load up the still passed-out John in the back of the van. Tracy tells Mary that she’s going to take over Darla’s last werewolf case. It’s her kind of penance. Mary listens to this bleakly and wonders if the lesson is that there is no escape from hunting. “It’s not that you can’t escape the life, Cricket,” Tracy tells her. “You just can’t escape the decisions you make in that life.” Tracy still believes that Mary can leave hunting, and do it the right way (not soaked in regrets). 

At the lab, Carlos sadly moves the soucouyant’s arm to the blast furnace. He’s obsessed with the last thing Anton touched in the lab! Lata’s amused, and Carlos turns her attention on its head. He tells her that he’s proud of what she did. She isn’t a hunter like Mary, John, or himself. She helped Mac instead and that’s (to put words in his mouth) extraordinary. (Me: YES! YES! That’s what I’ve been saying!!!!!! For fifteen seasons!)

Lata rewards that bit of touching attention by pulling out a little card for Carlos. It’s from Anton! OooOOOOoooo! He asks Carlos on a DATE! Carlos and Lata run off to go have a clothing makeover montage (sadly, off camera). 

John wakes up in the Clubhouse. Mary greets him with “Morning, sunshine” which caused a minor Tumblr explosion this week. John brings it back to the serious place. He tells her that he struggled with anger his whole life, and the Neto fight dredged it up in a way he wasn’t prepared to deal with. He’s been using hunting as an excuse - he doesn’t know how to stop it.

Mary tells him that she wants to leave hunting but she won’t do it at John’s expense either. 

Later, John interrupts while Lata is meditating. He thanks her for her intervention and then asks her for help to discover how to live without anger and violence. She tells him that she started with mediation, trying to keep herself in positive mental loops. He asks her for help and she starts to walk him through meditation. I honestly do not know how this fits in with future!John. If the mysterious letter-bearer was from the future, trying to get John involved in the Akrida hunt by getting him involved in the “family business,” then how do these attempts at self-betterment affect future!John (and more importantly, his children)? If canon is…canon…then it’s either amnesia (boring) or a tangled tragedy of lies (interesting, but sad). Yes?

Carlos and Mary burst in, interrupting meditation YET AGAIN. There’s no time for apologies! They haul out the map. They’ve got the Akrida pinned down! They found the radio tower.

__

Quotes Leads to Hate, and Hate Leads to Suffering:

Mellow out, amor

So I embellished for dramatic effect. Are we really gonna act surprised by that now?

She thought all of this was past and now it’s splattered all over her walls

I will not be the person to wrap you in a white cloth, put a knife in your hand, and send you off in a blaze of glory

Violence is always a choice

I’m sorry. Tall, dark, and angry can’t come to the phone right now

Hunting sure knows how to make a gal question her morals

Can a girl get ANY zen around here?

__

 Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

[absolutelybatty]

Okay, rip to anyone who opens the "read more" because I'm gonna just spew my thoughts on this as for now. Train of consciousness below. Oh, also a quick warning, I go on a slight tangent about Sally Face's use of faux native mysticism (something I'm sure my followers know bothers me to no end)

So, the song Hallow feels the most obvious to me, if not incredibly unfortunate. I've not beaten around the bush on how I feel like The Devourers of God and their connection to the in-universe native tribe is questionable at best. I'm in no way trying to be like "wow the game is so racist for this", I just think it's a racist trope in horror that SF fell into the same way many other horror series have. That being said, the cult's ties to the in-universe indigenous beliefs make the lyrics of Hallow very on the nose. "Our hallowed earth gone, Our sacred earth gone" I guess this could also very well be related to the literal destruction of Jim's home world, but that wouldn't really fit with other parts of the song. "Annihilate the faith of our founding fathers" again feels like it loops back around to the faux native mysticism the game fell into. Another song of Sanity's Fall's that I think is super on the nose would be Ritual, but this one has lines I'm struggling to understand the references to if it truly does link to any other parts of the Sally Face lore. The beginning of Ritual throws me off a bit since it says "three bodies burn upon the open fire" which I'm lost on. The only time I can think of there being exactly three bodies in game is when Luke Holmes killed Stacy, Megan, and himself. Megan was drowned, Stacy was slashed, and the father was hanged. According to House Of The Wretched, none of them were cremated, having all been buried in a family plot. The closest mention we get to a burned body is either the burning of Larry's tree house where his body would be if it hadn't vanished, and the charred bones Megan finds in the fire pit in House Of The Wretched.

But the rest of the song makes a lot of sense to me. "We call out to all the deepest shadows" = summoning the plague of shadows "Blood red sky wash clean the filthy vermin" = the flash back we see of Sal after his mother is killed shows the sky as blood red. Because Sal was targeted as a way to "rid the world of the child of the abomination" it makes sense the cult would call this "washing clean the filthy vermin" Then "six feet down under the ground beyond the twisted corpse begin your transition into what we become" sure sounds like it's about Ash and Sal becoming Ash's empowered form since the power was taken from his decomposing corpse which seemed pretty twisted when we see it! Now, this song came out before Sal died so this could indicate it was either part of the prophecy or that the band itself has oracle abilities. As for "Your transition into what we become", I'll point out that Ash's ghost arm moves in a similar just.... bizarre and uncanny way to Kenneth's full body when we see him in the final battle under Phelps Ministry, the biggest change being that his form is distorted by shadow but hers is distorted by lighting.

I'm not done with the Strange Boxes mysteries yet so I don't have all the Sally Face lore out there but I'm wondering if Sanity's Fall has some deeper, in universe connections. Like, obviously it could just be a band that Larry likes but I was looking at the lyrics for some of their songs and some of them (especially Hallow and Ritual) seem to be written from the perspective of the cult itself. Then again, it's not like metal songs are unlikely to have weird occult messaging in them.

[supersapphical]

sooo i'm not sure who first posted about claire x patience but honestly it's been rattling around in my mind ever since so a lil drabble about them would be amazing!! <3

YESSSSS Claire x Patience, let's do it!

This is a liiiiiiitle bit longer than a lil drabble because apparently I have no self control when it comes to rarepairs but please enjoy established relationship Claire/Patience on a hunt (also Missouri is alive and well).

Read on AO3 or under the cut.

“You ready for this?” Claire asks.

Claire’s hand grips Patience’s hand tightly as Patience nods resolutely. Claire’s other hand carries a duffle bag full of supplies.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

Claire leads her in through the backdoor of the house, which had clearly been broken into before. Patience raises an eyebrow.

“What? It’s an abandoned, haunted house,” Claire shrugs. “Who's gonna care if I break a few locks?”

The air inside the house is noticeably chillier than outside but, other than that, it seems like any other building that’s fallen into disuse. Dust covering the surfaces, a bit of a stuffy smell, nothing that overtly indicates a haunting. And yet, as soon as Patience steps inside, she can sense the spirit’s presence. It’s nothing she can feel, hear, smell, taste or touch. It’s simply sure knowledge that invades her brain, sending shivers down her spine for no good reason.

Claire must notice the change in her demeanor because she asks, “Your extra senses already picking something up?”

“Yeah, you’re right, there’s definitely a ghost in here,” Patience says.

“You ready to get to work?”

Patience nods. Claire gives a final squeeze to her hand before letting go so she can get to work setting up a salt circle around Patience.

“Most ghosts don’t tend to be active during the day but just in case,” she says as she dumps salt around her.

“What do you want me to look for, specifically?” Patience asks.

“Anything you can pick up on that might help me see what’s keeping the ghost here.”

“You already torched the remains?”

“Cremated,” Claire grunts as she heaves the last of the salt onto the floor.

“All set?” Patience asks.

Claire pulls two iron crow bars from her bag and hands one to Patience, “As set as we can be.”

Patience takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. She grips the crow bar more as a grounding technique than with any real intention of actually using it. She knew some basic self defense even before taking up the life of a hunter and she’s been taking more in depth hand-to-hand combat lessons with Jody but a deep psychic reading will require all of her focus.

“You should come spar with me sometime, I’ll show you how to actually use that thing,” Claire teases her lightly, indicating the completely unthreatening grip Patience has on the crow bar.

“Quiet,” Patience hushes her but it does give her some encouragement to realize she knew exactly how Claire was gesturing without even opening her eyes. She’s really starting to get good at projecting her consciousness outward.

Or perhaps she’s just gotten too familiar with Claire’s body language.

Patience shakes the very distracting thought of Claire’s body out of her head and tries to center herself again.

“It could be useful, you know, practicing some fighting techniques,” Claire continues.

“You really want me to come beat you again?”

“That wasn’t a fair fight! You cheated,” Claire huffs.

“Anticipating your movements and reacting to them is just what fighting is,” Patiences says calmly, her eyes still closed and breathing even. “That’s not cheating.”

“It is when you’re psychic,” Claire rolls her eyes.

“Do you want me to focus or not? Reading the energy in this room is taking longer than it usually does.”

“Maybe you just have to have some patience,” Claire smirks.

Patience groans, “Your dad jokes are getting worse than Dean’s.”

She says it mostly to shut Claire up and it works because Claire stands there with her mouth gaping open, clearly taken aback.

“You love my dad jokes,” Claire eventually mutters, her arms crossed and an offended look marring her face.

Patience tries to clear her mind again. She’s been honing her gift through lessons with her grandmother, Missouri, who assures her she’s been getting better but focusing her powers still takes her a tremendous amount of energy and concentration. She wishes all visions could come to her as easily as the unprompted ones do. She frequently wonders if she’ll ever be able to access her powers with complete ease, the way her grandma seems to do. Her grandmother tells her (without her ever saying her fears out loud) that it will come with time and practice. Until then, she guesses she just has to struggle through.

With another deep inhale and a slow exhale, she sends her consciousness outward, into the house. Tapping into the house’s strange energy, she follows along in her mind to every corner and cranny, searching out to see if any object in the house has sentimental meaning attached. Sentimental objects always have a different aura.

She startles a little as she bumps up against a strange energy she’s not familiar with. It’s something dark and dangerous. This must be the ghost. It’s strange, to try to connect with the energies of a house and suddenly be connected to a sentient spirit but she supposes it must work differently with dead people. When she connects with the energy of a space, she is feeling out the memories of all that has happened there. What is a ghost but a memory that can speak for itself?

She tries to unobtrusively follow the spirit’s energy, searching for its source in the house. Her consciousness moves through room after room, trying to feel out where this specific energy is strongest.

She’s feeling out a long forgotten upstairs bedroom when suddenly she’s hit with a powerful wave of desperation. Being in this room is torture, being in this room is suffocating her, being in this room is killing her. She tries to quickly retract herself from the room but she can’t, she’s stuck there and she’s being filled with feelings of despair and grief and pain that don’t belong to her.

In the room where her body stands, the atmosphere is changing. The temperature is dropping and a strange wind that seems to come from nowhere is picking up.

“Patience?” Claire asks, lifting up her crowbar so it's ready to swing.

Patience can’t answer. Her voice has been stolen from her. She can’t even nod to let Claire know she’s alright. She can see her own body in the salt circle that Claire had made for her, but everything she is is trapped in the upstairs bedroom.

A shaky apparition appears and Claire swings through it, banishing it but only for a moment before it rematerializes on the other side of the circle. Claire lunges for it, swinging, and banishes it again only for it to appear on the other side of the room.

The room downstairs becomes more and more hostile as Patience tries to escape the bedroom and bring herself back to her own body. Small debris starts circling in the wind as Claire works to keep banishing the apparition every time it appears.

“Patience! Are you alright?”

If Patience had the ability to speak, she’d only scream.

Claire is desperately fending off every attack with her crowbar as the wind picks up, howling louder and louder. Patience knows that Claire is in trouble, she’s a fighter but even she can’t fight off something undead forever. She can hear Claire struggling, fighting as hard as she can to keep up with something that doesn’t even have a living body to tire out. Logically, she knows she needs to move, to help but she’s so outside of her own body, she feels only distantly aware of the danger they both face at this moment.

“PATIENCE!”

Patience hears Claire’s frantic shouting over the sound of the roaring wind but she can’t respond. She can see in her mind’s eye that the wind is wearing away at the careful salt line keeping her safe but she’s too overwhelmed by misery and heartache to move.

Claire is wildly swinging her crowbar at any apparition that appears and Patience is no longer trying to hear she is overcome with the need to be heard. The feeling is strange, it’s such a powerful need that it fills her up until she might burst but it doesn’t feel like a part of her.

She thinks back to the breathing techniques her grandma taught her and tries to bring herself back to her physical body. It’s only doing this that she realizes that this urgent need she is feeling isn’t her own emotion, it’s the ghost’s emotions.

Tears are streaming down her face now as she finally has enough control over herself to quietly whisper to the howling wind, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

She projects these feelings towards the being she can sense in the house, she tries to send them all of her compassion while repeating over and over again, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

She closes her eyes tight and focuses all her empathy towards the tormented spirit. The wind starts to die down, bits and chunks of debris clattering back down to the floor. The air is less chilly now, the energy less hostile. The only sound now is Claire panting for breath, still clutching her crowbar.

“I should bring you on all the ghost hunts,” Claire says breathlessly, eyes continuing to search the room for any hidden threat.

Her eyes wide open now that she’s back in her body, tears are streaming silently down her face and she can’t bring herself to answer. Claire looks over at her in the silence.

“Hey, hey,” Claire says, walking up to her. “It’s okay, we’re both okay.”

Patience gasps in deep as if it's the first breath she’s taken since she connected with the spirit. She’s trying to remember her grandma’s rules. Ground yourself, keep yourself breathing, keep yourself calm, keep yourself aware.

Claire reaches up and gently cradles Patience’s face in her hands, “Patience, are you okay?”

Patience manages to nod this time.

“Good,” Claire says softly, wiping some of Patience’s tears away with her thumbs. “Are you coming back to me?”

Patience is still unable to answer, her own heart several armies worth of battling emotions.

Claire lets her forehead fall against Patience’s. Claire takes deep, slow, deliberate breaths, her hands still tenderly cradling Patience’s face and shuffles closer until the toes of their shoes touch. Patience closes her eyes again but this time, instead of spreading her awareness out further, she narrows it to only the points where Claire is touching her. The warm place where their foreheads rest together, Claire’s hands around her face, Claire’s work boots pressed up against her own soft sneakers.

She follows Claire’s breath, matching her own breathing with it until she feels like she’s entirely back in her own body again.

“What happened here?” Patience breathes out but then almost immediately says, “No, never mind. Don’t tell me. There’s a—”

She steps abruptly away from Claire and Claire’s hands fall down to her sides, looking almost dejected in the way they hang. Patiences looks around the room helplessly, unable to believe that when she first walked in here, it had looked so ordinary to her. Now she sees it for what it really is: a prison.

Patience takes a deep breath and then says, “There’s a loose floorboard upstairs.”

“Something hidden in there?” Claire asks, still eyeing Patience carefully but willing to take the cue that Patience just wants to keep working. “Well, let’s go check it out.”

Claire takes the duffle and easily walks upstairs and to the bedroom. Patience has a much harder time forcing her physical self to cross the threshold of the bedroom but she follows Claire anyway, knowing that there will be no relief for the spirit she felt if they don’t find a way to release it.

Claire gestures to the room and Patience points to the floorboard she knows holds secrets.

“Huh, actually get to use this thing as a crowbar,” Claire says happily, prying up the floorboard with the crowbar.

Patience drops to her knees, reaching into the hole to find that the floorboard holds dozens of letters, yellowed with age.

“What happened here?” Patience asks again.

“Are you sure you really want to know?”

Patience nods.

“Daughter of a family that lived here in the early sixties, she committed suicide.”

Patience takes this information in. It feels right but also…not.

“The story goes that she went insane so the family had to keep her locked up,” Claire continues. “They kept her locked in this room so she wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”

“No, that’s not right,” Patience says and she’s not even sure where the words come from, only that she’s sure they’re true.

“That’s what all the neighbors said,” Claire says. “But most of it was just rumors, I think.”

“She loved someone and her parents didn’t approve,” Patience says, her fingers lightly tracing the letters. “They locked her away so she couldn’t run away with him. These are the only things she had with her, to give her hope.”

A breeze stirs in the room and Claire is on high alert again, tightly gripping her crowbar but Patience doesn’t feel any threat in the spirit’s action, only affirmation.

“We don’t have to burn all of them, do we?” Patience asks.

Claire’s silence speaks volumes. Patience gathers the letter to herself, holding them close, her thumbs running gently along the worn in folds.

Holding the letters tenderly, Patience quietly says to them, “You must have loved him so much. It’s not fair that you have to stay here.”

Claire bows her head, hands clasped together in front of her so tightly that Patience can see bright red splotches contrasting with too pale points where the blood hasn’t been allowed to flow to her fingers properly.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you. It isn’t right and it isn’t fair. It’s also not right for you to be trapped here even after death, so it’s time to say goodbye now,” Patience says to the letters and the house and anyone else who may be listening.

Placing them carefully on the floor, Patience looks up to Claire expectantly. Claire reaches into the duffle bag by her feet and digs out the salt and matches.

“Do you want to…?” Claire asks, offering her the materials.

“I’ll do the salt,” Patience says. She takes it from Claire and carefully spreads grains of salt on to each letter, making sure the salt passes over all the folds and creases, before gently setting them down on the floor again.

“Ready?” Claire asks.

“Ready,” Patience says quietly.

Claire strikes a match and it sounds startlingly loud in the quiet of the room. The flame burns bright and illuminates Claire’s fair face in an almost ethereal glow as she bends down to let the fire catch on the letters.

They watch in silence as the letters are reduced to ashes.

“Come on, let's get out of here,” Claire says, offering Patience her hand. Patience grabs Claire’s hand and uses it to sling Claire’s arm around herself, nestling close to Claire and snaking her own arm around Claire’s waist. It’s a little awkward, Claire a little unbalanced because of the heavy duffle in her other hand but Patience needs the reassurance, the warm body pressed to her side as confirmation that Claire is still right here with her, very much alive and reachable.

“You’re getting really good at that stuff,” Claire says.

“Yeah,” Patience says, fiddling a little with the zipper on Claire’s jacket because it’s the only thing within her reach to fiddle with.

They walk back to the car in silence, still glued to each other. Patience dreads the moment when they’ll have to separate to get into the car, even if it will be the briefest of moments before they can touch each other again.

Claire throws the duffle in the trunk while still attached to Patience but then they walk to their separate sides of the car, Claire to the driver’s seat and Patience to the passenger’s seat. After they’re settled, Patience reaches out a hand and Claire’s is there to meet her. There’s a heaviness hanging over the car as they both sit silent and still.

“Do you regret coming out here, doing all this with us?” Claire asks her suddenly.

She says the word us but Patience hears what she’s really asking. Do you regret being with me?

“No,” Patience says firmly. “It’s hard sometimes. A lot of the time, but there’s no place I’d rather be.”

Claire smiles at her and starts the car.

“Me, either,” Claire says and she throws the car into drive and points it towards home.