#there will be ups and downs in recovery

[prismaticpichu]

Sometimes, when I wanna beat myself up for having a stretch of crappy days, I remember that progress isn’t linear, and that’s okay 💖

Brought to you by: Pichu having a stretch of crappy days lmao

[machinerot]

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (XXIII)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

🖤Chapter navigation can be found here🖤 Click to browse previous updates.

💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts 💚 (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)

Where we last left off... J'onn broke the news that Danny thinks he's going to be forced into combat in exchange for his medical care. Everyone disliked that™.

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

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COME GET YOUR NEW ART HERE 💥🍳!!💥 IT'S FIBERCRAFT!!Shoutout to @rainbowbeansprout for crocheting a fic accurate injured ghost Danny!! That's outstanding!!

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So, Wally broke all of the bones in his legs yesterday.

Which is…not ideal. Still. He’s pretty used to it at this point, though, and he’s already mostly healed.

It’s just that. Well.

…The rest of healing is kind of…time-consuming.

So Wally’s in basketball shorts and a mask and a t-shirt he’d started using as pajamas when he was in college and he’s on the med floor of the Watchtower, and yet another physical therapist is helping him bend his leg back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, because he’d tripped in the middle of the Speedforce and busted everything hip-down.

So. (Back, and forth. Back, and forth. Back…) This sucks.

“Do we have to do this every time?” Wally asks, as if there isn’t a team of medical professionals kept on hand to deal with Superpower-wrought Super Medical Problems.

“Do you have to shatter your legs every time?” the PT asks back wryly, which, hey! The pressure pressing up against his bare foot is an additional stressor to the sass. “Bend this more for me, Flash. You can do it.”

Wally grumbles, and pretends the angle his leg is bending at doesn’t make him wince. Wow is he going to have to build his flexibility back up again.

The physical therapy room looks just like any other gym, basically; a lot of squishy mats in playful colors, a lot of grippy tape; a LOT of wipeable vinyl surfaces that can be sanitized at a moment’s notice. It smells kind of weird and plasticky and kind of like alcohol cleaner.

It’s not his favorite room in the Watchtower, but, eh. It could be way worse. What’s unusual is the whirrr of the door opening and closing in one of the private care rooms for another patient, since, you know...HIPAA and all that. Wally assumes. Or is it costume confidentiality once you leave Earth's atmosphere...?

Usually everyone knows who’s stopping in for PE through the sheer power of the Justice League gossip groupchats. (There’s at least nine. Wally’s in four of them. He aspires to be in two more by April.) There hasn’t been a big fight that requires long-term medical care in a while, and there’s no one Wally can think of who’d need this kind of recovery.

Something’s buzzing at the outside of his awareness, though. It sounds kind of…

Wally perks up. “Hey, the alien kid’s here!”

The PT holding Wally up at the waist hums. Her name is Cindy, and judging from their previous conversations, she thinks that Wally is the dumbest man alive. “There’s a million of those, Flash. Which one?”

“The one who bit Superman,” Wally adds.

Judging by the face Cindy makes, this clarifies nothing.

“Most recently,” Wally stresses, carefully not wincing as his leg gets stretched out again, only to be pulled back into position as tightly as before. “OW. Cindy, you’re killing me.”

Cindy makes a strangled noise. She asks: “What, again?” which is how Wally remembers that he got torn back out of the time stream not all that long ago, and it may be a big gauche to joke about your own death with the people who care about it.

Whoops. Wally winces. “…Nevermind?”

The other PTs make various fussy and annoyed noises, but the alien kid is wheeled onto the other side of the medical floor’s only gym. (The actual training floors are on another level. Wally wishes he was there. Alone.)

(Without four PTs clinging to his legs at all times.)

Wally waves. It’s a nice enough gesture, and now that the alien-phantasm-turned-flesh-and-blood-boy is more physically embodied than he used to be, the boy even deigns to carefully wave back.

The kid’s PTs—Wally thinks at least one of them is from the team that supervises Bart and his super-powered-leg-problems—end up encouraging the alien kid’s chair round to the soft mats where the kid can lay down. He ends up in the exact same position Wally is—horizontal on the floor, legs forcibly pinwheeled by enthusiastic but firm PTs.

Wally can physically feel the kid’s astonishment and discontentment buzzing in the air as he figures out what’s being done to him. Wally can’t help but laugh.

The kid angles his head towards the speedster. His face still looks—well, it looks…bad. It looks bad, unhealed and still threatening to weep neon green body fluids; there’s a wet, living crack running up and down his face that makes eye contact kind of hard. His hands are all spidery—this kid can probably hold and grip things, but the previous breakage have left his hands a little too easy to splay, a little too oddly-angled. He’s too thin to keep himself fully upright for long. When he looks at you, his eyes shake like a poorly lined-up television signal.

Martian Manhunter had said that he’d once looked like a healthy, happy human child. His current form is a reflection of the injuries he’d experienced since.

...What a thing for a kid to go through. Wally wouldn’t wish this sort of injury on anyone.

“­Alright, up you go,” the PT above him—Rhys, Wally remembers at the very last second—orders, and Wally is prompted to let the man help him back upright. “Over to the bars for you. You think your legs are up to bearing that kind of weight as you try out walking?”

“…Sure,” Wally lies to Rhys. It’ll be fine. Probably. By the time he gets over there, his legs might have already speed-healed by then. “Hand me the—?”

“Yeah, yeah, here’s the crutches. Don’t destroy yourself trying to make this happen, okay?”

So Wally gets set up at the glorified playground equipment in his least restrictive gym clothes, one long iron bar under one arm, and one long iron bar under the other. Two full-size physical therapists spot him as the speedster completes the most strenuous task available to him at the moment: walking across a very short distance without putting his full weight on his legs.

Wally puts one shaking leg in front of the other. The steps are slow. The urge to zoom to the end of the little bowling lane he’s stuck in—and therefore shatter his legs under the speedforce, again—is irresistibly temping.

Healing sucks. And Wally’s even got the longer end of the stick.

In the end, Wally sticks the landing. He is unreasonably sweaty. He is miserable. But he makes it to the end. Every one of the witnessing PTs applauds as if this is a great success. It’s literally not. It’s the inevitable result of pushing himself too far for the third time this year.

A question buzzes through the air, fluffing through Wally’s hair and the little fine hairs up and down his body. It’s nothing but inquisitive—whatareyoudoing whatareyoudoing?

Wally lets the PT maneuver a chair underneath him. It gives him enough breathing room to turn his upper torso, and he ends up catching the eye of the little alien kid in the corner. He’s sat on a yoga ball, two members of his medical team and one of the kids’ PTs trying to get his attention back to his exercises.

“Hey,” Wally realizes suddenly. “Your casts are gone!”

The kids’ legs are actually bare, which Wally’s never seen before. They’re twiggy, sure, stretched taut over a bone frame, and discolored and pale, but they’re legs. Wally hadn’t even known the alien had possessed legs until he’d formed a physical body months and months ago.

“Dude, that’s great!”

Happy/smug/proud vibrates through the room, making Wally’s teeth buzz. The kid smiles through a half-split lip, and bounces on the yoga ball ever so slightly.

“Good,” the kid says, surprising Wally, his PTs, and the kid’s usual medical team. He was talking already?! He thought J’onn had said—

“Hurt?” the boy asks, concern/concern flooding through the air. Oh. Right. He’s probably here for his busted legs; it would make sense that by virtue of the setting, Wally would be injured too.

And, sure, Wally busted his legs, but he at least heals with all the swiftness of the speedforce. “Meh.” Wally waves off the question. “I’m fine. It’ll be quick for me; some rehab and some lunch and a few days off, and I’ll be in shipshape.”

Wait. Wally’s eyes scrunches up. Is using wordplay appropriate with this kid…?

“Pain?” the kid asks, and turned his attention to the closest member of his medical team. “He pain?”

The medical professional sighs, which finally clues Wally in that the man is no longer masked. Hey, the kid is out of medical isolation! “The Flash has his own medication, thankfully. His doctors know what to do.”

The kid frowns. He doesn’t get it. He looks at Wally, and he looks at the staffer, who shrugs. “It’s the usual indicator word he uses for pain medication. He’s wondering if you’re hurt enough to need some.”

Wally hums. On one hand, it’s sweet that the alien kid is worried about him. It’s a huge step upwards from the alien who spent all his time hiding in abandoned meeting rooms and occasionally biting Superheroes.

On the other hand, the kid doesn’t just look worried that Wally might not be getting care; he looks scared.

Something happened to this kid. Something he can't shake off.

Wally breathes in, and breathes out.

—And breathes in sharply when Cindy starts wiggling his feet. She doesn’t respond at all to his glare, because she is a professional, and he is not a big baby of a superhero.

Mean.

“I’m fine,” Wally finally responds, trying to alleviate the kid’s concerns through sheer vibes-telepathy alone. Who knows if it’s working, but it makes Wally feel better about trying at the very least. “I’ve got my own team to fix me up, and they do a good job of taking care of me. Even if they’re bullying me at my most vulnerable.”

“Anything for you, boss,” Cindy volleys back cheerfully. “Gimme your other leg.”

The tension in the air slowly dissipates. The kid doesn’t stop shooting occasional looks at the unadorned, half-out-of-uniform Flash, but he does let Bart’s little PT team get to working on stretching out his previously-bound now-physical legs and getting him upright—if only for a few seconds at a time, balanced precariously by humans who actually touch his back and arms and hips and legs.

Wally’s session wraps up before the kid’s does. He’s not in any rush. He gets onto the walking crutches Rhys leaves out for his temporary use and lopes over to watch, occasionally hooting and applauding when the kid pulls off something no one’d been sure he could do.

The double handed high-five Wally offers him at the end is punctuated with shaky eye contact, two working hands, and a green-threaded beaming grin.

*

Diana cheerfully digs into her kebab lunch, plastic cutlery pushed to their maximum limit before threatening to break under her prodigious strength. “You know, Batman,” she starts, beaming, “My charge gave me his name the other day.”

Bruce sets down his muenster-ham-and-whole-wheat sandwich mid-bite. “I’ll need to hear everything,” he says immediately, to which Diana tuts.

“Oh, Batman, I could never break his trust like that,” she says, sweet as anything. She finesses a bite of lamb from the skewer and takes a neat bite.

“…Wonder Woman,” Batman says.

“Hm?”

“Diana.”

“Is there something you needed, Bruce?” Diana asks, pleased with herself. There genuinely is very little that could be done with a vague description of a now-altered human form and a first name alone; besides, she genuinely does feel that hearing the boy’s name come from others’ lips would be upsetting for him. Danny offered his name to Diana alone, and so it shall remain until hers alone he offers it to others.

Still, she is not above bragging.

“I need information.” Bruce’s face underneath his mask is stone.

Diana dips a second chunk of lamb into a little container of tzatziki sauce. “Well, then,” she points out, “Shouldn’t you spend some time building rapport with my charge, then?”

The feared Batman of Gotham, father of a half-dozen highly trained heroes, bristles like a wet cat. The demeanor is almost comical. He knows what he looks like to non-Gothamite children. He knows his suit will make this fight for common familiarity an uphill battle.

Diana smugly works through her lunch and ignores Bruce’s silent brooding as he does the same.

[alxor-of-hellsite]

Just because you can stand up, doesn’t mean you should. If standing up right now will make everything worse & what you need to do is rest, then rest.

[whumporama]

Something soft

Whumpee finally getting their own apartment.

After everyone has left and their stuff is unpacked, they just stand in the middle of the living room for a while, looking around a smiling.

Finally they have their own place. They can go where they want. There is nobody to tell them what to do... or what not to do. What they're not ready for. They finally have all control back over their life.

They flop down on the couch, hugging a pillow to their chest as a bubbly happy feeling builds in their chest.

They can take of themselves again. They'll prove it.

[pixlokita]

Me: -has intense therapy session-

Me: -exhausted afterwards- maybe a nap will fix me

Me: -wakes up more exhausted and trying not to throw up- -also can’t talk again-

Me: haha… yeah yeah … yeah.

[serenityquest]

[butwhatifidothis]

You seem to be really bitter that people listen to Captain Flash, which is not a good look for you.

So a thing that a lot of people reading Bleach don't really understand about Momo's character is that she isn't just this crazy obsessed super stalker of Aizen. She was just someone who had admired the image he specifically made to be admired, and he had went out of his way to make sure she specifically would view him as infallible because he saw her as a tool. Same with Gin and Izuru, and it's adjacent to the reason Aizen made sure Renji went to the 11th division (because he wasn't as easy to manipulate and Aizen thought sending him to the 11th would get him killed). Aizen went on to use Momo's admiration for him to make her act as a decoy for Toshiro, who was one of the few people catching on that something more was happening regarding Central 46's orders and was the one to directly confirm their deaths. But even with her raising her blade against her childhood friend, Momo was still horrified from the knowledge that some part of her was willing to hurt someone she values so deeply, and she profusely apologizes to Toshiro - which he handwaves away because he knew that she wasn't of right mind when she attacked him and had already forgiven her. That doesn't mean that Aizen's manipulations of her were erased, though - she still believes the image he had set up was real, even after he stabbed her for her "uselessness," and she begs Toshiro to save Captain Aizen. Even with all of this however, being given time to let her body and mind recover let her gather up the courage and drive to fight Aizen, even with her still habitually referring to him as her captain. And her battle prowess and worthiness of the seat of lieutenant is proven when she nearly single-handedly forces three lieutenant-level Arrancars to Resurreccion by performing high-level Kido right under their noses - while she is taken out by Ayon soon after, her capabilities as someone who had only recently recovered are nothing to sneeze at. And although Tite Kubo has done little with her directly since, Momo has been given more connections over both timeskips - particularly with her new captain Shinji - that allowed her to move one from the traumas Aizen inflicted onto her, and her journey is really moving if you pay attention to what happening with her. It's what makes her my favorite Bleach character along with Toshiro, even if no one makes any merch of her rip

[doodlesdreaming]

Bobby can dance. That much is obvious. When he is in a good mood, he can really bust a move.

But he never slowed dance before. Not until Drifter led him into a slow waltz at that haunted castle of Dracula's. It was clearly a tactic to not anger the dead spirits roaming what was clearly once an impressive ballroom.

But halfway across the room, the two got lost in the moment. Dancing beneath the pale moonlight to music that echoed a past once filled with peace.

The ghosts of couples and noblemen, watched them dance and remembered. Remembered a time that was so long ago now. And yet, it feels like it was just yesterday....

[karliahs]

two silly thoughts from me still thinking too much about UA teaching logistics:

1. I think given all might's time limit at the beginning of the series, they really can't have given him a homeroom class to look after - but I do think it would be very funny if nedzu did it anyway. yeah I know you're just here for OFA purposes and that you can only be in hero form for like 3 hours per day, but you do have to spend like 15 minutes of that looking after 20 random wide-eyed business course kids. no slackers allowed

2. each year presumably has the same class structure as what we see for class a's year - 2 hero classes and 1 of each of the others - [ETA: oops no they don't, it's apparently 2 hero classes and THREE of each of the others??? consider this now a non-canon-compliant joke:] but it seems at least vaguely plausible that the additional hero class is a more recent addition brought on either by hero commission pressure to churn out more heroes per year, or - funnier option - as a counterbalance for the fact that aizawa is expelling like 50% of the hero course anyway, so you have to start out with a bigger pool

[shallowseeker]

I don't feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

[fatal-blow]

as i get better it becomes increasingly apparent that moving around is supposed to feel good, not something you have to fight tooth and nail to force your body to do

[ableism]

Night time posting hours 🕺 I’ve decided to transition out of 12 step recovery at this point which is an odd thing but I’ve accepted that I’m never going to believe that G-d is responsible for the way my life has changed this year. I’m 10 months out of active addiction and I have everything I have ever desired. I seriously want for nothing, and I can’t attribute that to a Higher Power when that work was done by compassionate peers, my personal support network, and Me. I have problems in my life that can’t be prayed on; faith can’t repair my trauma and mental illness. I can only see myself living in the problem if I keep pursuing 12 step at this juncture. If anything I’ve come to believe in the sublime and fantastic good of humanity. I believe in social work, harm reduction, and peer counseling. But I don’t believe in G-d in a way that fits the description in 12 step. There’s amazing people in those individual communities, I know this first hand, but abuse and harmful conduct is rampant and intentionally ignored. I’ve started getting into SMART recovery which is science and therapeutically based, and soon I’ll be able to start counseling for survivors of sexual assault 🦢 These are tangible things. I need to hold my free will precious to me and keep believing in the infinite holy light that shines through and touches the world through humanity. G-d is other people, nature, love, and another good day sober. I’ll be grateful for what NA did for me, but it can’t take me where I want to go

[aria-ashryver]

so apparently im getting visibly healthier bc one of my nurses literally didn't recognise me at first today lmao

[tj-crochets]

Do you have a particular organization you work with for providing disaster relief?

At the moment, no. My dad and several of my neighbors have been helping out with various local groups, but so far my donations have been things like clothes I had on hand that happened to be the size my neighbor's coworker, who lost their house in a flood, needed, or stuff like that The baby blankets are going to a different neighbor's kid's school, who is arranging donations for...I think it's a particular city but I am not sure how to reveal what city without giving away where I live more precisely than I really want to? I live close enough to the flooding that I don't really need to work with an organization, because everyone in my neighborhood is at max two degrees of separation from someone who lost everything in the floods. I can give things, including baby blankets, directly to the families affected. I mean, that said, I am giving them to my neighbors to distribute, but that's because I can't drive and a lot of the places donations are going you can't drive to at the moment anyway. One of my neighbors is organizing people with ATVs to go take food, water, fuel, and other necessities up to some of the communities that currently have no road access I got very, very lucky with where I live and the infrastructure that happened to be in place*. There was severe flooding less than ten minutes away from where I live in more than one direction, but where I live made it and enough of the roads are intact to be able to get out. Some routes are more circuitous than they used to be, but it's still possible

*by happened to be in place I mean in my particular neighborhood and the work my dad has had done in our yard, not the rest, I know a lot of people over a lot of years made the infrastructure of the larger area

[killemwithkawaii]

Emotional hangovers are so fucking stupid.

"Oh, you went out and had an especially good time in a highly stimulating environment for a few hours? Nice going, you just cashed in 3 days worth of dopamine. Get Meh, jackass."