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maybedefinitely404 · 4 years ago

Text

For You Became My Lighthouse (Part 2)

Genre: hurt/comfort

Pairing: romantic Prinxiety

Content: argument, crying, a decent dose of awkward but it gets resolved!

Word count: 4.1k

Comment: This is the fourth time I’ve tried to post this--- Part 1 HERE!

Roman, is everything alright?

-Logan

Roman ran a hand through his hair at the message, checking the time at the top of the screen. It was late, far too late, so it was safe to assume that Logan had heard about the spat from Virgil. He should have been home by now. It was just… impossible to convince himself to actually leave the rehearsal studio. He had a younger acting class tomorrow and was perfecting his lesson plan- even though he already knew it was perfect, and his director had already approved it. Just, anything to keep him from going home.

He’d been a dick. Such was obvious; from the second his finger had hit send, he regretted approximately everything in his life that had led to this moment. That day had been particularly bad, overrun with rehearsals he was either taking part in or directing, and gearing up for tech week of a large production. Who knew trying to block a scene with a flurry of pre-teens could take so much out of you? Rinse and repeat the cycle with two more classes to teach back to back and an achingly long dance rehearsal, add in a desperate and fruitless search for a replacement lead in his upcoming directorial debut, and you’d have what Roman would categorize as a “shit show of a day”.

All he wanted to do at the end of it was spend some time with his boyfriend, without having to talk about his day, so he’d suggested the most basic date his fried brain could conjur. Then his work desk was unceremoniously reacquainted with his forehead as he smacked it into the wood, letting out a groan that bordered on a yell. Luckily, minutes ago everyone had abandoned the theatre, and he’d been trusted with the keys to lock up from a stagehand. He just had a couple more things to do, and then he could drive home.

Getting a reply of denial from Virgil was nothing new. In fact, he’d been warned in the transition from reluctant acquaintanceship to inevitable friendship, that he tended to veto ideas if they were sudden, or too daunting, or if he was just feeling shitty. It was something that Roman never considered a deal breaker, and he’d slowly come to much rather enjoy a night of cuddling and watching television than going out anyways. Call it ‘getting old’, call it ‘Virgil’s homebody ways creeping into his psyche’. So usually, getting his plans rejected was no big deal.

Except for today, when he was well and past his limit of frustration, and things not going to plan. He’d typed out and sent the snarky reply far before he’d thought it out whatsoever, and ranted out complaints that hadn’t ever crossed his mind before, which he immediately regretted. In a moment of shame so great it caused physical nausea, he tossed his phone into one of his desk drawers and slammed it shut.

It buzzed once, twice, and then went silent.

Until, of course, it began to go berserk an indecipherable amount of time later, and Roman couldn’t ignore it. Seeing Logan’s text, along with about a million missed calls from him and Patton, broke the fragile sense of calm he’d tried to achieve while working.

He didn’t want to go home and face his consequences. Childish, yes. Well deserved, also yes, but he was afraid of Virgil’s inevitable anger. If this led to a breakup, a fight that wasn’t recoverable, he’d never forgive himself.

And now…

Roman, is everything alright?

-Logan

I can see you’ve read my text message.

-Logan

I’m at work.

You’re inconceivably moronic. Get home. Now.

-Logan

Roman sighed heavily through his nose, clenching his jaw. He began typing out another snarky response- because apparently he never learned- when another text came through.

Virgil was in significant distress last I spoke to him and he has stopped answering me and Patton. Go. Home.

-Logan

Please. If not for my sake, then for Virgil’s.

-Logan

Fuck.

Roman barely had the sense to lock the doors of the building in his rush, throwing the spare key back in through the mail slot and booking it to his car. He sent some sort of confirmation that he was going and tossed the phone to his back seat. Virgil hated when he used it while driving.

It was only on the drive back, on unusually empty roads, did he realize it was well past nine. He hadn’t even noticed the time passing by.

Most of the lights in the apartment complex were still on when he pulled into the car park, but their window visible on this side showed only darkness. He wasn’t used to entering a dark apartment.

Their flat was silent, the living room only illuminated by the oven clock and the dim city lights from the balcony. He toed off his shoes as silently as he could, wincing when he kicked their shoe rack, and decided he’d risk turning on the light. When he finally found the switch and flicked it on, he couldn’t help his gasp.

The room had once been a pristine display, he could tell. A white table cloth adorned their usually bare dining room table and a half burned candle stood as its centrepiece. He approached it in a daze, cautiously resting a hand on the plate of ravioli nearest to him. Cold. Long cold; the pasta was starting to get crusty.

He picked up the two plates, intent on throwing out the food. It definitely wasn’t safe to eat anymore, and he didn’t feel like warding off an attack of ants in the morning. One of the towels hanging off the oven handle was drenched in what looked like marinara sauce, and it looked like there was some more spilled in the crack between the stove and the counter. That would be fun to clean.

Both hands full, he opened the cupboard containing the garbage bin with a socked foot, and promptly froze.

Part of him cringed at the clang the dropped plates made on the counter, but the louder part of him was just repeating a mantra of ‘holy shit, holy shit, holy shit’ and it was considerably out-screaming the other. Hands now shaking, Roman picked up the small box from the sink edge, ignoring the dried, crunchy texture of more tomato sauce on the outside, and opened it.

It took every ounce of strength for Roman not to collapse to his knees, guilt instantly crushing the air from his lungs, a thousand times heavier than it had been before. An elaborate dinner, a ring… there had been a plan. That’s why Virgil had rejected his offer to go out.

And he’d been such a dick to him.

Speaking of which, where was he?

Roman closed the box and set it back where it had been. Their bedroom door was slightly ajar, and the most obvious place Virgil would be, so he padded over and creaked it open just a bit more. The light from the hallway cast a beam onto the bed, illuminating first a mess of hastily thrown clothes; his button up shirt he only used for fancy occasions on top of the pile.

Virgil’s huddled form was easy to make out, curled away from the door, his only movement being the steady rise and fall of the blanket as he breathed. Figaro lifted his head from where he was settled in the crook of Virgil’s knees and gave Roman an indifferent mrow.

He couldn’t get into bed with him. There was no scenario where that was the right move. It wasn’t the right time to talk about what had happened, not so late and when they were both riding high on emotions and tiredness, so accidentally waking Virgil was not the way to go. And even if he was sneaky enough to not wake him… a part of him just felt it was wrong. Not when he didn’t know Virgil’s stance on him at the moment.

Or his stance on the relationship.

Well, couch it was. He acknowledged the crumpled weighted blanket and sound blocking headphones- clear aftermath of a bad panic attack- with a quiet curse. Somehow that pit in his stomach got even bigger, making him nauseous as his shame took a physical form.

He could only pray that they would come back from this.

Roman’s sleep was fitful, to say the least. At best, he drifted into a state of half-consciousness, where his thoughts could be somewhat quieted down, but the discomfort of the couch and the heavy weight in his heart were still palpable. Inevitably, one of their neighbors would make a noise or the building would make a settling creak or a distant dog would bark, and the state would be broken, leaving Roman wide awake and wracked with guilt once more. He’d never noticed how loud the world was until he wanted nothing more than for the noise to stop.

The sun was just peaking into the window when their bedroom door widened and Roman flew up, using the back of the couch to steady his sudden sitting position. When their eyes met from across the room, Virgil in his pajamas and face hidden in shadow, a tenseness settled over the room that neither had experienced in their relationship thus far. Virgil froze in the doorway, wavering slightly. It didn’t appear he wanted to be the one to break the silence.

Roman stood slowly, as though not to spook him.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” Virgil whispered with a sniff, and even in that one word Roman could hear the scratchiness of his voice. “I just...uhm,” He cleared his throat, “I just wanted to get some water. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I was already awake. No… no worries.”

Virgil looked down to his feet. “When did you come back?”

“I think just before ten.”

“‘Kay.”

For an all too long moment, both of them seemed to find interest in every part of the room that wasn’t the other’s eyes. It wasn’t until Roman looked towards the kitchen in his awkwardness did he process what Virgil had come out for.

“I’ll, um…” He pointed weakly to the kitchen and finally convinced his feet to move, filling up a glass from the sink while making a conscious effort to not look at the dishes or wasted food from the evening before. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop the way his gaze drifted towards the box sitting next to the tap, and judging by Virgil’s sharp inhale, the look hadn’t been subtle.

He took the glass back to the other, watching him take it with an uncomfortable, “Thanks.”

Virgil downed the glass in one go, his shaking hands almost causing him to spill. He barely had time to take a breath before Roman had zipped the empty glass back onto the counter.

“Do you want more?” He asked, already refilling the glass.

“No, I’m… it’s okay.”

Roman placed the full glass on the counter quietly and the two were swallowed by heavy silence once again. The clock ticked impossibly loud as they stood, fidgeting, wanting this moment to be over but not wanting to be the one to start it.

Virgil took a shuddering breath and wrung his hands together.

Roman stared resolutely at a single water drop making its way down the glass.

This was his fault. He’d started it. It seemed only right that he break the tension that almost suffocated him, so even as his mind screamed for him to shut up and every muscle in his body turned to liquid, he opened his mouth to speak.

“Virgil, I-”

“I’m sorry.”

That effectively stopped Roman in his tracks. All night, he’d crafted a collection of apologies, from eloquent monologues to stumbling pleas for forgiveness, but in not one of his countless scenarios had Virgil apologized.

“I know… I know I can be a lot to handle, I know, I swear. And I was more outgoing when we first met, because I thought I had something to prove and it always exhausted me and I hated it but then we became… I don’t know, official? And closer and… and more comfortable and I didn’t think I had to do that anymore, I didn’t have to keep pushing myself so far!”

“V, stop-”

“The panic attacks and the anxiety and all that shit are a lot for other people and I know that but I didn’t know it was too much for you, I didn’t know you were tired of that and I can be better, I swear, I swear I can go back to how I was in the beginning, just please don’t leave.”

Virgil let out a choked sob and Roman couldn’t stop himself from rushing forward, intent on holding his stupid, stupid boyfriend until he realized this was in no way his fault, only for Virgil to back up before he could do so.

“I’m- I’m not trying to guilt you, I’m sorry, I just, I love you, and I can be better, I can, just give me a chance, please-”

“Virgil, baby, come here.”

This time when he reached forward, Virgil allowed himself to be pulled into his boyfriend’s chest, basically collapsing against him as soon as Roman’s arms tightened around him. The dam broke moments later and Virgil finally let go of his own hands to grab the back of Roman’s shirt with a sense of urgency.

“Please don’t leave, I’m so sorry,” he begged raspily into Roman’s shoulder.

“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

Roman hung onto him almost as tightly in return, rocking them back and forth, finally allowing himself to cry. He shoved his face into Virgil’s hair, peppering small kisses and apologies to the crown of his head in between sobs.

Virgil whined when Roman finally pulled away, but he didn’t go far, cradling his boyfriend’s face in his hands and wiping his tacky cheeks with his thumbs.

“Virgil, I cannot apologize enough for yesterday.”

“What are-” he hiccuped, “What are you talking about? It was my fault.”

“No, no, no no no no no,” Roman whispered, fighting that damn lump in his throat once more. “I had a spectacularly shitty day, and I took it out on you. I was leagues out of line. It wasn’t fair to you and I’m so, so unbelievably sorry.”

As if the strings were cut on a marionette, all the tenseness dissolved from Virgil’s shoulders and he slumped forward, bumping his head weakly into Roman’s chest. “Can we sit down?”

“Yeah, of course.” Roman clumsily led him to the couch and sat on the adjacent cushion, assuming that if Virgil wanted to talk, he’d want his own space. His assumption was incorrect, however, judging by how Virgil crossed the space almost instantly and buried himself in Roman’s side like a koala. He shifted them both until he was laying on his back, Virgil splayed across him .

“I thought you’d be more upset with me,” He muttered, freeing his hand to run it through Virgil’s hair. His fingers raked through his own tears trapped in the locks and he grimaced.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling right now,” responded Virgil, accompanied by a shuddering breath, “I just need to know that you’re really here. And I need you.”

They were quiet for a moment, watching the sun begin to peek through their window, until Virgil spoke again sardonically.

“If this is a dream, I’m gonna be so pissed.”

Roman snorted despite himself and felt Virgil’s responding half-laugh from where he was tucked against him.

“I agree. I thought I’d fucked up for good this time.”

A disgruntled meow made Roman crane his neck over the couch, watching Figaro stretch languidly in their bedroom doorway. The cat sidled over to his food bowl and sat pointedly next to it. Feed me.

“Later, Figaro,” Roman groaned, all too comfortable with Virgil as his blanket. A small part of him was worried that if he moved them at all, the spell would be broken, and they’d lose whatever peace they’d settled into.

Well, that wouldn’t do at all, not by Figaro’s standards. The cat gave an upset mewl and trotted over to the couch, leaping up with grace and batting Virgil’s legs. It was that pettish action that made Roman realize that Virgil had turned stone still on his lap. Figaro changed his approach to headbutting at his arm in a clear attempt to get pets, but Virgil’s hand stayed still by their sides.

“What’s going through your head?” Roman murmured.

“That stuff you said, about me… not contributing to the relationship…” Virgil croaked, and Roman stilled, “What can I do to-… to fix that? Because I wanna fix it.”

“Baby, no,” Roman whispered, that shame-nausea returning, “I-” He groaned, dropping his head onto the arm of the couch behind him, “I was being an asshole. I didn’t mean that.”

Virgil didn’t budge, still deliberately ignoring Figaro’s futile begging for attention. “Then where did it come from?”

He took a breath deep enough that Virgil rose and fell with his chest, and Roman was struck with the profound urge to pull him closer and never let him go. But that would likely make him feel trapped, and that wasn’t productive. “You remember when I dragged you to that improv show my students put on last year?”

“You introduced me as your boyfriend and we found out the class had placed bets on whether you were gay or not. I don’t know how it wasn’t obvious.”

Roman gasped in mock offense. “Maybe they just were trying not to stereotype!”

“Your phone case is a rainbow-”

“Anyways!” He interrupted, resuming his gentle threading through Virgil’s hair, who snorted but otherwise gave in to the affection. “Remember what happened after?”

“Mmhm.”

It had been a fantastic show, and Roman had been exceedingly proud of his little students, especially since it was his first time ever teaching a class. After the night, when the betting chaos had settled and everyone quickly adopted Virgil as theirs now, they’d pleaded to play a few more improv games before the theatre closed. Seeing as it was their last class, hence the performance in the first place, Roman had acquiesced. But neither of the men had expected for the gang of pre-teens to latch onto Virgil and beg him to play too, despite him having zero theatre experience.

“Remember what they said?”

“They tried to pack all your lectures into five minutes of information.”

“I don’t lecture, I dazzle.”

“They thought you were straight.”

“Only some, and that’s not the point!”

Virgil finally lifted his head, pulling his hands up so he could lay his chin on top of them. He smiled weakly. “Then what is the point?”

“The most important rule of improv is to keep the scene going. No matter what nonsense you have to pull out, just never leave a scene flat.”

There was a quiet moment while the other processed that before, once again, that layer of hurt reappeared on his face. He pushed himself off Roman’s chest in preparation to get up. “So… you’re saying you saw that argument as another scene you had to keep up.”

“No, shit, that came out wrong,” Roman insisted, and Virgil paused suspiciously, “I’m saying, that in a moment of panic, I fell back on bullshitting my way through it! That’s literally what I do for a living!”

The distrust gave way to resignment and Virgil chewed on his cheek, turning his attention to the window. He sat all the way up on Roman’s legs, leaning back on his shins. “How do I know you’re not bullshitting me right now?” He said.

“Because,” Roman followed him up, careful not to move his legs and dislodge his boyfriend, “You know I like when the bed is made, and even though you hate making it, you always do when I’m out of the house before you.”

Virgil looked down at his thumb.

“Because you let me choose the music in the car.”

“... you don’t like loud music,” He muttered, picking at the skin around his cuticle.

“You adjust your work schedule to come to every single one of my shows.”

He shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Yeah, but you hate working mornings. You let me rant about all my theatre stuff, even if you don’t get any of it.”

“I’m learning.” A faint smile was breaking through.

“You tell me when there’s spinach in my teeth, or my hair is messy, or if I’m acting like an asshole.”

“Well, that’s easy enough.”

Roman reciprocated the smile at that, taking Virgil’s hands in his own to stop the attack at his nail. “I’ve been watching you better yourself for years, even if it’s been really, really hard.”

“What does that have to do with us?” Virgil asked with a small blush, switching his fidgeting tactic to fiddling with Roman’s fingers.

“Every time you do something that betters yourself, you help us, Virgil.” He leaned forward slowly, giving Virgil the time to move away if he wanted to, and rested their foreheads together. “Yesterday, I fucked up. Badly. You said you were anxious and I still acted like a dick. I kinda thought you’d hate me.”

“I could never hate you,” Virgil whispered, seemingly before he had a chance to process it, because his blush multiplied tenfold. Roman grinned.

“Aw, is someone feeling sappy?”

“Shut up, jackass,” He retorted, bonking their heads together ever so gently.

“I’m so sorry, Virgil,” Roman said after their giggles and blushes had faded, “It won’t happen again, I swear.”

In lieu of answering, Virgil closed the already scant distance between their lips, and despite Roman using all of his self control to not sigh into it, he found himself doing so anyways. All the tension bled out of his shoulders at once as Virgil pulled away, pressing one more peck to the tip of his nose, and then leaning back with a small smile.

“So… that means we’re good?”

“We’re good.”

“Thank god,” Roman groaned, flopping back and dropping his arm over his eyes dramatically. He heard Virgil’s quiet snicker before he resumed his job as a blanket. Except this time, instead of nuzzling his head into Roman’s neck, he could feel the distinct edge of a chin digging into his sternum.

The hand lifted from his eyes to see Virgil staring at him, that goofy little smirk on his face.

“What?”

“I love you, idiot.”

Well, now they were wearing matching goofy little smirks.

“I love you too.”

That seemed to satiate him, because he gave a little nod and laid his head more comfortably on the other’s chest. He could have left the conversation there, content to just let them lay there in peace until the world fell away- or Figaro grew more insistent on being fed- but Roman just couldn’t banish the one persistent thought in the back of his mind.

“Were you actually going to propose?” He blurted.

Virgil tensed for a moment, and then gave a resigned sigh. “...Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Roman furrowed his eyebrows, desperately hoping he sounded casual, though his heart was pounding far too loudly to not be heard, “I would have said yes. If you did.”

“Oh?” Virgil lifted his head. “You’re blushing, Princey.” He could hear the smug grin.

“Nooo…” Roman whined. His arm draped once more over his eyes in a weak attempt to hide the redness, but he drew it away only moments later when Virgil didn’t retort.

The man was staring at him with an odd mix of disappointment and amusement, huffing out a breath as he watched Roman’s eyes.

“This wasn’t how I was planning to propose,” He sighed, “It was supposed to be all perfect, and romantic, and stuff. And the surprise is ruined now.”

“I’m sorry,” whispered Roman, continuing before Virgil could cut him off, “If it’s any consolation, I think a proposal in our pajamas, on the couch, would be very us.”

“You’re not in pajamas.”

“I slept in these clothes, they count as pajamas.”

Virgil snickered. Roman counted five breaths as the other’s face melted from a smile to anxiously knit brows, worrying his lip between his teeth as he looked down at him. It took another three for him to speak.

“So…uh... will you…?”

Roman’s face split into a grin, “Yes, Virgil. Obviously.”

Virgil’s expression morphed to match his and he swooped down to kiss him again, though they barely could with how much they were smiling. They both devolved into giggles, happy to just stay wrapped in each other’s arms, until Virgil broke away with a gasp.

“Let me grab the ring!”

“Ring can wait,” Roman argued, tightening his grip around his waist to keep him in place, “I want cuddles.”

And so they did.

Taglist:

@max-is-tired

@private-snippers

@joylessnightsky

@marshymoop

@larkiaquail

@noemiescuriosity

@mycatshuman

@cirishere

@vpow

@ray-does-stuff

@sirprplsnail

#lywrites #sanderssides #sanderssidesfanfiction #prinxiety #romantic prinxiety #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #virgil sanders #roman sanders

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fayofthefandoms · 3 years ago

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Hi, Fay! I just wanted to tell you that I finished reading South Park Confidential a few weeks ago and I loved it! The original fic is really well written but you managed to not only keep up the quality of the writing, but to transition from the original author's style to yours. And it's soooo smooth!

I really enjoyed the direction you took the story to and the way you kept fleshing out the characters over the course of so many chapters. I particularly enjoyed the way you portrayed Tweek and Craig, they felt very real and their relationship develops in such a natural way and it's so friggin' cute!

And also a big "holy shit, that was amazing" to the political/social commentary you weaved into the narrative. The whole Clyde arc is just... I don't know, I just love it. It's powerful! I often see stories (and not just fanfiction, I'm talking about published work) that try to explain or reflect on certain political/social themes using plot and characters, but the two feel compartmentalized, like water and oil. I think you did a pretty good job at creating a story that uses both elements in each other's favour.

Oh, and I laughed a lot too! Those Stan-Kyle dialogues had me giggling sometimes at two o'clock in the morning.

Sorry for the long ask and I hope to see more of your writing!

(ask is is in reference to this fic)

Ahh thank you so much for your message! I am so happy to hear that you enjoyed it :D

The original South Park Confidential was actually what got me into the fandom in the first place! I had watched a few seasons of SP on Netflix and thought "Huh, I wonder if there's any fanfiction of this stuff? Just kidding! ...Unless? 😏" And so I logged onto ao3 dot com, searched "south park" and clicked one of the first options that came up. I was so fixated on trying to figure out how the author might have planned on ending it, that I ended up laying out all my thoughts, and then went "Huh, this is actually solid enough for a fic of my own." The transition between Deephurting's fic to mine was quite chaotic from my perspective, involving a lot of fiddling with plots and plans, and tearing apart the original fic for every clue I could find. So I am glad to hear that it felt smooth from a reader's perspective! (-u-;)

I didn't have a whole lot to go off of with Tweek and Craig's relationship, as they hadn't had as much focus as Stan and Kyle in the original work. I knew I wanted to do a recovery arc for Tweek, and so much of Craig's character was developed with that idea in mind (that's where details like his previous job as a security guard in a psych ward sprang from). But of course I wanted to be really careful not to fall into the unfortunate trope of "and then they banged and his mental illness was cured forever 😌." I think what helped achieve that sense of realism was the fact that I didn't limit each characters' main conflict to be purely contained within their romantic relationship, which a lot of romance stories often do. Because real life is messy and complicated! I think the best kinds of relationships are those which help us make sense of the chaos.

Writing overt political comment in fiction can certainly be a tough balancing act! It's so easy to wind up coming across as preachy or patronising. To be honest, I think my biggest advantage when writing SPC was that I was largely only posing questions to the audience... because I didn't actually have the answers. That fic is a very interesting record of an author's philosophically consequentialist crisis, lmao. In many ways, Clyde's character epitomises this, but he also works in tandem with the deliberately two-dimensional Cartman as a reflection of the ACAB movement. I could go further into these creative decisions, but this answer is already getting quite long, and I'm aware you didn't actually ask how or why I wrote it how I did, haha ;)

The Stan + Kyle banter was a very fun part of the fic to write! A lot of it flowed very naturally because when you have two characters with differing goals who are still on the same side, their conflict winds up manifesting in little quips and jabs, instead of full blown arguments (most of the time...)

Thank you again for the ask, and do not apologise for the length, as I always love to hear people's thoughts! I have a habit of writing loooong responses anyway, aha. And I have many more fics on the way, so look forward to those I guess :)

#south park #WIP: South Park Confidential

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hellzyeahwebwieldingreviews · 4 years ago

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Untold Tales of Spider-Man 15: The Stalking of John Doe – by Adam-Troy Castro

A pretty good story but...

“In Manhattan, stormy nights are crazy nights.” Dr. Gwendolyn Harris is “working the second half of a fifteen-hour shift at the Emergency Psychiatric Unit of the Midtown Hospital and she’d seen more business in the past three hours than she’d expected to see all day.” The cops bring in a number of crazies including “the ranting little man who’d attempted to smuggle a gun into a Rick Jones concert, in what was an apparent attempt to become the next Mark David Chapman.” (You may recall that Rick Jones, former companion to the Hulk, Captain America, and Captain Marvel, was, at one point, a big deal rock star. If you don’t recall, Adam-Troy certainly does. Mark David Chapman, of course, is the man who killed John Lennon.) Shortly before nine PM, Bill The Security Guard motions Gwen over and tells her, “Cops just called. They’re bringing in another John Doe. One they say they don’t recommend placing in the general ward.” He elaborates, “he’s totally out of his head, strong as a moose, and…it took more than a dozen cops working tag-teams to wrestle him into a pair of straitjackets.”The police bring in the John Doe, “a wiry Caucasian male in his twenties, with short-cropped brown hair and eyes that could have been inviting were they not crazed…wearing nothing but a sodden pair of blue tights,” and it takes five of them to contain him.

Suddenly, the John Doe goes berserk, yelling, “He’s after me, he’ll track me down, it’s what he does, it’s what he knows, he’ll find my trail and get me,” and the cops are about to lose control of him when Gwen steps in to calm her patient down. The John Doe looks at her and calls her “Gwendy,” which takes Gwen by surprise. However, when he says, “You can’t be Gwendy. The Goblin killed Gwendy. I saw him kill Gwendy,” she knows he isn’t referring to her. Finally “John” tells her, “the Hunter, that dart he shot me with, it’s some kind of rare psychoactive snake venom derivative, making all the nightmares come back, I’m f-fighting it but…I can’t seem to focus my thoughts…is it really you, Gwendy? Please tell me it’s really you.” Gwen lies, saying, “It’s me,” and the John Doe kisses her wrist and begins to cry.After “John” is strapped on a bed in a “padded isolation cell,” police Sergeant Monaghan tells Gwen that her patient was rambling on about “lizards, vultures, tarantulas, pumas, cobras, rhinos, black cats, octopuses.”

He reports that the “psycho came out of that alley stripped to the waist, wired like all the crackheads you ever saw, screaming about the monsters. Attacked a whole bunch of folks lined up at the Cineplex, calling ‘em murderers and villains, tossing ‘em side to side like it was bowling night or something. Even jumped a poor far guy, calling him the Kingpin. When Stanley and I showed up, he almost tore us to pieces.” Stanley, one of the other cops, disagrees, saying, “He’s hallucinating, sure, and from the way he goes on, he sees enemies everywhere he looks, but even with his strength, even in a state of panic, he’s managed to resist doing anybody any serious harm…For what it’s worth, I think he’s telling the truth. I think he was dosed with something.”

The cops leave and Gwen prepares to examine her patient but she asks Gordy and Flack, two beefy security guards, to stand by.She finds John Doe muttering about Mary Jane, monsters, Felicia and the Hunter.” “[T]here was something about the way John Doe presented it, something about the conviction behind his words, that hit all three of them (Gwen, Gordy, Flack) at the base of the spine.” “John” again recognizes Dr. Harris as “Gwendy” and she tells him she needs to take a blood sample. “I wouldn’t even be in this mess if not for my blood!” he says, “That spider, messing up my life – take it all, why don’t you?...Call Morbius and have yourselves a kegger!” She takes the blood and his vital signs. He starts to tell her his name but changes his mind. When Flack tells him he’s safe from the Hunter, “John” laughs, “You don’t know what he is. He’s coming. And you won’t even slow him down.” Gwen takes the blood sample to Willie the lab tech to be analyzed for “alcohol, crack, PCP, all the other usual psychoactive agents – and one other thing. Snake venom.”As the night goes on, the weather gets nastier with destructive winds and flooding. Gwen is overwhelmed by psych cases entering the emergency room even as “the cops were besieged by screwball reports of a half-man, half-lion spotted on the rooftops.”

At last she gets the lab report on “John’s” blood. Negative for everything except snake venom. But also, Willie adds, “positive for another factor, that had screwed up all the tests until he compensated for it; a factor that was like nothing else he’d ever seen.” The blood is also “superoxygenated.” Gwen returns to the padded cell and finds “John” sitting up on the bed, having gotten out of his restraints. Instinctively, she enters without Gordy and Flack. She finds “John” more coherent but still crazed. He recognizes that she isn’t his Gwendy but also rambles on about the hunter, revealing that he was jumped and dosed and then fled to an alley where he removed his mask. Howling, “Oh, my God! My face! My face! You can see my face!” he covers it with his hands. Gwen tells him, “I don’t care who you are…I don’t care what you look like. I just want to help you.” Realizing, “the Hunter’s coming,” “John” gets up and opens the locked reinforced door “with one annoyed tug,” taking a “fairly large piece of wall” with it. He runs smack into Gordy and Flack but they are unable to stop him. Unexpectedly, however, “John” turns rather than flees, and “made an odd gesture with both hands: hands out, middle two fingers of each curled inward to tap the palm…He seemed genuinely astonished when nothing happened.”

This allows Gordy and Flack to tackle him. A third orderly joins them. “John” is still on the verge of getting away when Gwen yells “Stop!” and he does. Again warning her that “the Hunter’s coming,” he faints.This time, they restrain “John” with every device that they have. Gordy and Flack stand guard duty outside. Gwen worries that “John” may be speaking the truth. She knows, “if it weren’t possible to get reasonable people to believe the rantings of the insane, then a fair percentage of cult leaders and politicians would have been out of work.” But even knowing that, “she couldn’t stop thinking about the Hunter.” Later, she asks the lab tech if the John Doe could be “a paranormal.” “You mean like the Thing?” he says, “Or Captain America? Or one of those guys?” then follows with, “If he was a mutant…you’d need DNA tests for a definitive diagnosis If he was paranormal in some other nonphysical way, there’s usually not much you can do to tell.” This conversation is interrupted when Bill the Security Guard tells them, “Some crazy off the street” has entered the hospital. “Tall, muscular guy, Russian accent, wearing leopard-skin tights and a skinned lion’s head for a vest, if you can believe that…He said he was the hunter and said he’d go wherever he chose to go.

The cops who tried to detain him for questioning are now being worked on in the emergency room. So’s some poor guy in the elevator who gave him a lecture about the evils of wearing fur.” Gwen knows the Hunter has arrived. She has Bill barricade the door to the Psych Unit and tells him to prepare to shoot anyone who enters. From his cell, the John Doe starts screaming and pounding on the door, without anyone telling him about the oncoming danger. Gwen sends Gordy and Flack to help Bill. Then she hears “John” ripping the padding off the walls, in order to eliminate its blow-suffusing effects. Gwen, who knows “John” is her only hope, wishes they hadn’t assisted in weakening him. Soon after, “John” tears the door away and, weak and feverish, he confronts Gwen. He tells her he needs gauze to conceal his face from the Hunter. “His eyes were wide, pleading…and sane.” Gwen acts without hesitation, helping him to the supply room where she wraps his head. Then the Hunter arrives.“John” goes out to face him and Gwen follows soon after.

There she experiences the full force and power of the Hunter. “It would have been impossible for any living thing to look at this man and not consider itself his natural prey.” She notices that Bill, Gordy, and Flack have already been disposed of and she sees “John” “facing the Hunter in a position midway between a crouch and the confrontational stance of a boxer.” The Hunter carries “curved jaguar tusks…both dripping with something black and foul.” He lunges forward at “John” and the battle continues, their movements impossibly fast. “Then they sped up, moving with such superhuman speed that Dr. Harris found herself unable to follow it all.” After a protracted battle, the Hunter gets “John” into position for a killing blow. But Gordy “charged across the room and piled into the Hunter with every ounce of his three hundred pound musculature. Gordy had been a star quarterback in college. He’d almost made it to the pros. He didn’t even budge the Hunter.” But he does distract the Hunter long enough for “John” to disappear.Gwen feels herself lifted off the ground, “up near the ceiling…and she found herself flying back down the corridor.” She soon realizes that “John” is carrying her as he runs along the ceiling. “John” tosses her into the storage room. She sees the Hunter pass by the room and hears him catch up with “John.” She can tell that “John” has lost.

She grabs some items from the supply room and follows, only to find the Hunter “holding John Doe off the floor by his neck.” Since “one of the first things she’d ever learned was that with great power comes great responsibility,” Gwen plunges two hypos full of Thorazine into the Hunter’s neck. The Hunter knocks her across the room and growls, “Stupid woman! When I’m done with him, I’ll break..your…neck!” “John,” who still thinks of Gwen on some level as his Gwendy reacts to this. “No! Not again!” he yells and becomes an “engine of destruction.” “A new expression entered the Hunter’s eyes. Helplessness. Terror.” And eventually, the Hunter flees. “John” stops to ask Gwen if she is all right, then he follows the Hunter.In the aftermath, Gwen asks for and gets the day shift. “The fingerprints and photographs taken of the perpetrator known as John Doe quickly disappeared from the filing room at the precinct house where he’d been booked – a locked room three stories up, with a single window that did not happen to be equipped with a fire escape.” Two weeks later, Gwen finds a dozen red roses in a vase on her desk with a note taped to it.

The note reads in part, “It was one of the worst nights of my life, which is saying a lot. I’ve had some bad ones, Doctor; you’ll never know how bad. But this was one of the worst. And you were there for me. You kept me hanging on even when there was nothing to hang on to. And though part of it was your accidental resemblance to a friend long dead and gone, even that wouldn’t have been enough if not for your strength, your courage, and your compassion…Thank you.” Gwen sniffs the flowers and a spider moves from the vase to the back of her hand. “As she studied it, the little thing froze in indecision, unsure which way to run. Tsking with sympathy, she took it to a window and set it free.”

If taken wholly in isolation this wouldn’t be all that terrible. it sort o combines two typical types of super hero stories.

a) the ‘everything you believe has been a product of delusion’

And

b) the hero is locked up in an asylum

In the ways the story works it works due to ‘Gwen’ being the POV character.

But that’s also it’s weakness. I find it a little difficult to believe that a NYC resident like Dr. Harris would honestly not deduce that ‘John Doe’ is Spider-Man. Part of that is her and the other staff dismissing ‘John’ mentioning his rogue’s gallery. Surely the Goblin’s implication in Gwen’s death and ‘John’s super human strength would be enough to put two and two together.

Additionally ending the anthology with a focus upon a random new character we will never see again is kind of...well lame. In theory this could have worked as a third party observer might’ve put some grander perspective upon who Spider-Man is and what he represents.

But since Peter isn’t exactly ‘sober’ in this story it winds up being about Gwen’s gradual discovery of who her patient really is.

And it executes that well but I’m just questioning the point of it. I suppose it makes for a nice full stop for the anthology because it manages to be touches upon Spidey’s broader history. But then again...there is a particular emphasis upon Gwen.*

Again in isolation this sort of makes sense (though much moreso if this was set shortly after her death) but within the context of the anthology it’s retreading old ground. And ground trodden better before I might add (Deadly Force utilized Gwen’s death far more effectively).

Perhaps the most egregious point about the story is that it’s placed in a weird place in the book. The entire anthology is intended to move along Spidey’s timeline but this story must obviously be set before Kraven’s Last Hunt and yet the prior story must’ve been set way later than that. Essentially this should’ve been the penultimate story and the prior yarn the actual final one.

But I suspect the editors recognized that this was the much stronger story and ultimately a more fitting tale to end the anthology on.

Other than that I have little to say about this story beyond

a) The narrator finally delivered a decent performance as Spider-Man, chiefly because Peter wasn’t in his right mind and therefore wouldn’t sound himself anyway.

b) Kraven was done pretty well, in that he was scary and intimidating.

c) Maybe this story prompted Castro’s eventual Sinister Six trilogy

d) For a story called ‘Untold Tales of Spider-Man’ this story doesn’t really take advantage of the concept. This story could’ve happened at almost any time after Peter had met Felicia and before Kraven’s death and it doesn’t really explore anything new. Even the prior story had Jonah react to Alstair’s Smythe’s new body and saw him teaming up with Gargan.

Over all...it’s not a BAD story by any means but I think there are much stronger entries.

As for the anthology as a whole, it’s a mixed bag but that’s to be expected. Anthologies are rarely anything but mixed bags.

But as anthologies go I have to admit this one was superior to Ultimate Spider-Man, albeit none of the stories in this book top the best material from the USM anthology.

*That makes 3 and a half stories that emphasis Gwen and like half a story that emphasises MJ. That kinda sucks.

#Adam-Troy Castro #spider-man #Untold Tales Of Spider-Man #Peter Parker #Gwen Stacy #Kraven the Hunter #sergei kravinoff

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life-love-stress-and-set-backs · 5 years ago

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Fuck the mental health system

Honestly... I can’t put into words how traumatizing it was to be “sent away.” I was stripped of my dignity, but not my courage. I fought and was discharged immediately the following afternoon... but the day and night of E.R bullshit before being admitted to the psych ward was terrible enough. I was led there by my therapist, who believed I was a danger to myself and others. Seeing her for the first time in almost three years had triggered immense emotions and I was panicking and expressed my suicidal thoughts in confidence. I was told to give up all my items, down to my undergarments. Everything, including my phone, and given those fucking extra large blue scrubs. A security guard came in and took my things. “There going to take care of ya real good here.” Not even allowed to have a hair tie to contain my textured floofy hair, I must of looked a fucking mess.

After blood and urine work, and immersive interviews from many hospital staff, I was told to wait while I cried and cried and cried. For nine. Fucking. Hours. Alone in a cold room with the door open, with nothing but a TV and bed. After about 3 hours, I decided I had enough and requested to leave as I had calmed down and was not having intrusive thoughts. I simply wanted to go home. Instead, I was greeted with threats of calling the police. I demanded my phone after the next few hours of sobbing and realizing I was pretty much being held hostage. I called my boyfriend, who came and held me for the next two more long hours of waiting...

Til they took me in an ambulance to another hospital. Inpatient facility. Baby proofed. I was forced to sign a consent form, if I refused, I would have received an immediate 48 hour hold...Also the nurses didn’t believe that I had two jobs. I had to front and act polite and “cooperate.” They were all incredibly condescending and on some weird power trip. I’m sure not all of them were like that, but not being allowed to extract my employer’s phone number to make a call about my absence was definitely some shit.!

I keep having flashbacks... to when I was laying in that cold, bleak baby proofed room with white sheets, a white pillow, and white “blanket” that was as thin as a towel. I laid there, my Fitbit reading at 1:25 in the morning. I’m not sure why they didn’t take my Fitbit, but took all of my other belongings. Anyways I laid there and just cried and cried and cried.

I had a roommate, Beth who I found out later was on some heavy ass meds and slept a lot. Snored a lot, too.

I hope she’s doing okay in there.

#personal

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write-havoc · 6 years ago

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The Glasswing Butterfly Part 13

Summary: Chuck has never thought of herself as anything special. Just an average beta living her life next door to a womanizing alpha named Negan. But her life, and Negan’s too, are turned upside down when Chuck suddenly presents as omega.

This is a non-zombie AU featuring A/B/O dynamics.

Fandom: The Walking Dead AU

Pairing: Negan/Original Female Character

Status: Ongoing

Contains: swearing, smut

Intended for readers 18+ of age only

Masterlist in my bio

Negan and Chuck are sitting side by side on the front steps to the porch, waiting for the ambulance and Rick to come. Negan has his arm around Chuck, rubbing up and down on her right arm in reassurance as she clutches her broken left one to her chest.

“Does it hurt a lot?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she chokes out. “The bite does, too.”

Negan growls low in his chest at the thought of Eldritch trying to claim Chuck.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “We made it out of it.”

They sit in silence for a few more moments before a bark pierces the air.

“Oh my god! Mozart!” Chuck calls out and jumps up to follow the noise.

Negan follows, too, and they find the dog in the fenced in part of the back yard, safe and sound.

Chuck’s tears are renewed upon seeing the dog. “Oh my god!” She bends down to try to pet Mozart. “How did I forget about you?!”

In actuality, Mozart is a very friendly dog and when Eldritch came to the back door, Mozart simply greeted him with a wag of his tale and cheerfully walked outside when Eldritch prompted him. Eldritch then closed the door after him, locking the dog outside and out of the way.

Negan scratches Mozart behind the ears, but is quick to nudge Chuck back up. “He’s fine back here. I don’t want you to hurt your arm worse.”

Chuck nods then kisses the dog on the head. “It’s okay, Mozart. We’ll come back for you.”

Negan leads Chuck back around the house just in time to see Rick’s cruiser coming down the driveway. Somehow, he had beaten the ambulance there.

As Rick exits the driver’s side, a dark skinned woman with thick dreads dressed in a smart pant suit exits the passenger side. They both take in the sight of Chuck and Negan and are taken aback. Both of them are have a significant amount of blood on them. Negan is covered in blood from his mouth all the way down his chest, his formerly white button up completely ruined. Chuck’s fluffy white robe has blood staining the shoulder and some of her left sleeve. The newcomers school their expressions to spare Chuck and Negan the knowledge of just how bad they look.

Rick walks up to the couple. “EMS should be here any minute.” He turns to the woman off to his right. “This is Michonne. She’s my girlfriend, but she’s a lawyer, too.”

Michonne starts to talk quickly. “We don’t have a lot of time before the other cops get here, so tell me everything that happened.”

As Chuck and Negan go over the details with Michonne, Rick goes into the house to check to on Eldritch. The man in question is laying in a large pool of blood, his throat obviously ripped out. A very quick check of the pulse shows that the man is good and dead. When he comes back out, Negan is just starting to go over what happened when he got there.

“...and he was fuckin’ biting her and I saw red. I thought he claimed her. I just fuckin’ pulled him of her and started punching. Then he started to fuckin’ strangle me, saying he was gonna fuckin’ kill me. Then, Chuck got him off me. He fuckin’ pushed her back and I bit him.”

Michonne nods as she takes notes in her pad. “We have a lot going for us for this to be justifiable homicide. With everything you said... just tell the detectives all that. And Rick had written reports of what you told him before, so there is a record of that. It strengthens your case.”

Chuck and Negan nod.

Michonne lets out a heavy breath. “It will help your case if you refer to each other as your mate to the detectives. Really play up that ‘true mates’ thing. I know there isn’t an actual claim, but you’re still dating and if we can convince the detectives that you see each other as mates, it will be better for you.”

They both nod again as they start to hear sirens.

Michonne continues. “I need you to stay calm, Negan.”

“Okay,” he responds.

“Because they’re going to arrest you.”

“What?!” he calls out. “You just fuckin’ told me it was justifiable!”

Michonne puts her hands up in a soothing gesture. “That’s for the courts to decide, not the police.”

Negan throws his arms up. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

Chuck starts to cry again. “He can’t go to jail!”

“I’m not gonna fuckin’ leave her,” Negan says with conviction to Rick.

The sheriff takes the placating stance now. “You have to calm down before they get here or they’ll take you straight to the alpha psych ward and they’ll dope you for seventy two hours.”

Negan looks up to the blue and red lights shining through the trees as multiple cars and two ambulances race down the road to the house. The thought of being away from Chuck for three days isn’t at all attractive. He takes a deep breath to calm down and puts his arm back around Chuck. “I won’t fuckin’ fight them,” he decides.

“I’m pretty sure I can convince the district attorney not to press charges,” Michonne says quickly before more people come. “Just hang tight and cooperate.”

The cavalcade finally pulls up and the whole scene turns to chaos. One detective questions Chuck as she’s getting treated in one ambulance. Negan gets the same treatment, though he doesn’t have as extensive of wounds as Chuck does. The EMTs say he doesn’t need to go to the hospital, but they do take Chuck to get X-rays for her arm. Both Chuck and Negan don’t want to be separated, but they know that they have to be for now.

During the investigation, the police log and take pictures of all of the scrapes and bruises on Negan’s skin, including the deep bruises around his neck from being almost strangled to death. Cops are in and out of the house for hours, taking pictures and dusting for fingerprints, all the while, Rick and Michonne stand by Negan.

One of the detectives comes over to Rick and starts to go over their preliminary findings. “Back door was definitely jimmied. And that dog isn’t much of a watchdog. Seems pretty likely the vic broke in which is consistent with the statements. Evidence all supports the couple’s story, so your friends are seeming innocent.”

Rick shakes the detective’s hand. “Thanks, detective.”

“We still gotta take the alpha downtown, though.” He flicks his gaze to Negan.

Rick nods. “Yeah. He knows that. He’s not gonna fight it.”

Negan can hear the whole exchange, but he decides to keep his mouth shut, no matter how much he doesn’t want to.

Finally, the cops take Negan to the jail and get him processed. Luckily enough for him, it’s standard practice to keep alphas mostly in isolation, so he doesn’t have to deal with any other prisoners in his cell.

Not that he really cares about himself right now, anyway. All he can think about is Chuck and how she must be handling everything.

When the ambulance pulls out taking CHuck to the hospital, Chuck asks one of the EMTs to contact her mother, who should be at work right now. The kind beta, who happens to know a lot of workers at Charity General Hospital where Diane is, gets word to her. She says she will get to Spring Harbor Medical Center as quickly as she can to be with Chuck.

Chuck gets wheeled in to get her arm X-rayed. It reveals a fracture in her wrist that needs to be set in a cast. Her shoulder is also looked at more extensively. Dr. Bailey, who was called in to oversee all of Chuck’s medical procedures, determines that Chuck is very lucky not to have been claimed by Eldritch.

“One inch up and it would have been a full claim,” Dr. Bailey explains to Chuck and Diane. “We could have reversed it, but...” she lets out a breath. “You were very lucky.”

It’s an incredibly long day, but eventually, Chuck gets the chance to relax at her mother’s house. They had stopped off at Rick’s to pick up Mozart before heading home, as Rick took the dog for safe keeping.

“You okay, sweetie?” Diane asks softly as she pushes some of Chuck’s hair from her face.

Chuck lets out a deep breath. “I think I’m just gonna take some of those pain pills and go to bed.” She starts to walk into the kitchen to pour herself a water, but she pauses and turns back. “Do you think Negan is okay?”

“I’m sure he’s fine.” Diane hugs her daughter gently. “You heard Michonne when we picked up Mozart. She figures Negan will get released tomorrow.”

Diane’s phone goes off and she looks at the message. “Aaron’s boarding his plane now. He’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

Chuck nods. “That’s good.” She heads into the kitchen and takes her two pills. “I’m gonna go to bed. Night, Mom.”

Diane gives Chuck a quick kiss on her head. “Night, sweetie. I love you.”

“Love you, too. Come on, Mozart,” she says to the dog, who is laying on the couch. “Let’s go upstairs.”

Mozart follows her up to her room and settles in at the foot of her bed. By the time Chuck slips under the covers, the pills have made her drowsy enough to have her falling asleep quickly.

The next morning, Chuck sleeps in, her body taking all the rest it can. When she finally gets herself up and around, Aaron is already there, sitting in the kitchen.

“Hey, sweetie,” he chokes out and steps forward to hug Chuck.

“Hey, Uncle Aaron,” she replies softly.

“I’m so sorry, Chucky.” He starts to cry as his guilt builds. All he can think of is that Eldritch wouldn’t ave attacked her if she weren’t at his isolated house.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Chuck is quick to say. “I don’t blame you.”

Diane walks in. “Michonne has been texting me all morning. Negan is going to get released within the hour.”

“Thank god,” Chuck says automatically.

“Michonne’s going to drop him off here.”

Three hours later, a car pulls into the driveway. Chuck jumps out of her seat on the couch and runs out the door. Negan is already stepping out of the car when he sees Chuck, so he rushes toward her, too. When they meet, Negan wraps her up in his arms, lifting her off the ground.

“Are you okay?” He sets her back down and cradles her face in his hands.

She runs her fingers over the cuts and bruises on his face that have developed overnight. “Oh, Negan. I’m sorry.”

He grabs her hand and brings it to his lips to kiss her palm. “I’m fine, baby girl.” He gently takes ahold of her cast. “Is it bad?”

She shakes her head. “It’s broken, but it’ll heal.”

“Are you in pain?”

“A little.”

“Shit,” he mutters. “I fuckin’ hate that.”

Michonne comes up behind them and clears her throat, causing the couple to turn to her.

“Hello, Michonne,” Chuck greets. “Thank you for taking care of all of this.”

She smiles warmly. “You’re welcome. I’m sorry you both went through what you did.”

“So is this all over,” Chuck asks.

Michonne gives a tentative nod. “I think so. There’s a slight chance the district attorney could still take it to trial, but I sincerely doubt that will happen.”

Negan holds his hand out to her to shake. “Seriously. Thank you for this. You and Rick. You saved my ass.”

“You’re welcome,” she says again. “I need to get back. I’ll keep in touch, though. Hopefully I can get your phones back from evidence tonight and release Aaron’s house as a crime scene.”

They all bid their farewells and Michonne leaves. The Langdon family plus Negan all go back into Diane’s living room and share some hugs upon Negan’s homecoming.

“Fuck,” Negan mutters at some point. “I need to call the fuckin’ dealership and tell him what happened.” He gets on Diane’s landline and dials the familiar number to work, asking for his boss.

“Hello, Negan,” Mr. Adams says in an unimpressed tone.

“Look,” Negan starts to explain. “Some shit happened, but I’ll be back at work on Monday.”

“No you won’t,” his boss says flatly. “You’re done.”

“Are you fuckin’ firing me?”

“Yeah, Negan. I’m firing you.”

“You know how many fuckin’ cars I’ve sold for you?”

“You know how many days you’ve missed in the last few months? You walked out in the middle of a sale yesterday!”

Negan takes a deep breath, knowing that there’s nothing more he can say. “Fine.” He hangs up the phone and stands in place, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Chuck had heard the whole exchange from behind Negan. “You didn’t really like that job anyway,” she says quietly, trying to make Negan feel better.

He turns around and nods. “You’re fuckin’ right. I goddamn hate that fucker Adams. He’s a piece of shit.”

Chuck steps forward and hugs Negan’s torso. “You’ll find something better.”

He kisses her forehead. “Yeah, baby girl. I will.”

The pair lay low at Diane’s house, along with Aaron, since his house was first a crime scene and then it needed a few days at least to get cleaned up by a professional crime scene cleaning company.

The couple finally heads back home and resumes their “laying low” lifestyle, since neither of them are working at the moment. Ad Astra software decided to shut down temporarily, considering someone very high up in the hierarchy is now dead with extreme circumstances. Chuck isn’t too concerned with heading back to work with them anyway. Not that it was really the company’s fault, but it still leaves a sour taste in her mouth.

One afternoon, Rick stops by as Chuck and Negan are in Negan’s apartment. They all sit in the living room.

Rick scratches at his beard in apprehension. “There’s been a development.”

Both Chuck and Negan sit forward in anticipation of what Rick might say. They were under the impression that the whole thing was over.

“They’re not fuckin’ prosecuting me, are they?” Negan asks.

“No.” Rick takes a deep breath and continues. “We ran Eldritch’s DNA through the system. It matched a thirteen year old cold case of a beta woman that was raped, strangled, and bitten on the neck. That case’s MO matched several other unsolved cases in the past twenty years. All betas. All bitten. All redheads in their early twenties with similar body shapes.”

Chuck is too shocked to say anything. The man that was her boss and then attacked her had actually killed people.

Negan blurts out, “You’re fuckin’ kidding me.” He’s shocked, too.

“All the cases, he was meticulous in cleaning the bodies of evidence. But that one, we think he was rushed or something. The FBI is involved now because some of the victims were from Maryland. They’re set to have a press conference in twenty minutes.”

“Oh my god!” Chuck finally cries out. “He was going to kill me?”

Rick shakes his head. “We found journals in his house. He was fixated on...”He looks away. “He wanted to breed you. It seems like you were the first omega he met that matched his type.” Rick lets out a sigh. “FBI profilers are saying it’s alpha psychosis. Their instincts to mate go haywire causing them to be violent. They said it can come and go, so they look and act completely normal one day and then...”

Chuck lets out a sob and leans into Negan for comfort.

“I knew he was fucked up. I should’ve killed that fucker the second I met him,” Negan growls out.

Chuck’s phone starts to go off. She doesn’t recognize the number, but she answers it anyway after wiping at her cheeks.

“Hello?”

“Charlotte Langdon?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“My name is Kate Pine and I work with the Richmond Times. I’d like to ask you some questions about being the only survivor of the Redhead Killer.”

Chuck is taken aback. “W-What?”

The woman continues. “Is it true you were saved by your true mate?”

Negan looks over to her and sees her confusion. “Who is it?”

Chuck answers. “It’s a reporter.”

Kate overhears. “Is that Negan? Put me on speaker.”

Negan snatches the phone out of Chuck’s hand and hangs it up. “Fuckin’ reporters. Really?”

Rick shakes his head. “A high profile case like this, they’ll come out of the woodwork.”

“Great.” Negan’s phone starts to ring then from an unknown. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

“The reporter asked about us being true mates,” Chuck says.

“Shit.” Rick scratches at his jaw. “Someone leaked the case file to the press before the press conference. That true mates stuff was in the report. They weren’t gonna mention it in front of the cameras.”

Negan shoots up from the couch and starts to pace. “Motherfucker! We just went though that shit with that psychopath fuck and now we gotta deal with the fucking press?!”

Rick stands. “I’ll see what I can do. This isn’t my jurisdiction, but I’ll ask the police here if they can watch you guys. And I’m gonna talk to your landlords and ask that they lock that downstairs door. It should be locked as it is.”

Chuck’s phone starts to ring again. “God!” She looks at the unfamiliar number. “I’m just going to block these numbers.”

Negan hands her his phone. “Block them on mine, too.”

Rick starts to walk to the door. “I’m sorry about all this. You guys take care of yourselves.” He leaves.

The whole rest of the night, Chuck and Negan get calls from various reporters and their numbers are quickly blocked. But they keep coming and coming until about midnight when they mercifully die off.

The next day, the calls start again and more numbers get blocked. When Chuck’s phone starts to ring right after lunch, Negan has almost had enough.

“This is fucking ridiculous!”

Chuck looks at her phone, ready to deny the call and block the number, but she stops when she sees Dr. Bailey’s name on the screen.

“It’s Dr. Bailey,” Chuck says before answering. “Hello?”

“Hello, Chuck. How are you?”

“Actually, uh... I’m getting hounded by reporters,” she explains.

“Well,” Dr. Bailey pauses, “that’s why I’m calling. I’ve been getting calls, too. They’ve been asking me about you and Negan and whether you two are really true mates.”

“Oh, god.”

“I haven’t said anything, of course. I don’t know how they even got my name. I haven’t even published any of my findings concerning your being true mates, yet. Not that I would have had your real names in there, anyway,” Dr. Bailey assures. “I just wanted you to know that that information is out there.”

“Yeah. We knew that,” Chuck admits. “But thank you, anyway for telling us.”

“You’re welcome. It just seems that the public may be interested in you and Negan being true mates and I want you to be safe. I don’t want them to just see you as a commodity.”

“We’re trying to lay low as it is. But thank you for your concern. We just want to move past all this.”

Later, just before they sit down to eat dinner in Negan’s apartment, they hear a knock on the door. Their landlords had taken Rick’s suggestion of locking the main door to the building from non residents, so it’s a little weird that someone is there.

Negan gets up from the table and looks through the peephole. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me?” he mutters as he spies a young woman with a microphone in her hand standing in front of a guy with a camera on his shoulder pointed at the door.

“Who is it?” Chuck asks.

“A fucking reporter,” he answers.

“How’d they get in?” Chuck stands from her seat.

“They’re fuckin’ rats.” He turns back to the door and starts to yell without opening it. “Get the fuck away from my door or I’m gonna call the fucking cops!”

The beta reporter is undeterred. “Please, Negan. We just want a comment. Were you protecting your true mate from the Redhead Killer?”

“Go away!” he yells again.

“You would be the first reported instance of true mates in modern times. Would you care to comment on that,” she tries again.

Negan has had enough. “I said go the fuck away !” His alpha voice doesn’t affect betas like it does omegas, but betas still know that it’s smart to obey a command from an alpha.

The reporter and her cameraman quickly leave without another word.

“What the fuck,” Negan says to himself.

Chuck gently rests her good hand on his chest. “Why do they care about all this?”

He pulls her into him and hugs her. “Because they’re fuckin’ vultures.”

During the next week, Chuck and Negan hunker down in Chuck’s apartment. The story of The Redhead Killer and the only victim to make it out alive, who happens to be true mates with the alpha who saved her, positively blows up. It’s front page news on every newspaper in the city. All the local news stations try to get interviews with anyone even remotely close the Chuck and Negan as their main stories. Fortunately, the people closest to them refuse. Even Simon.

Rick and Michonne do their best to try to protect Chuck and Negan, which actually does help. The reporters stop contacting the pair after Michonne issues a statement saying that they would not be giving any interviews. And Rick makes it clear that any people found trespassing where Chuck and Negan live will be arrested.

Since the both of them are still not working, they really have no reason to leave the building anyway. Chuck officially leaves Ad Astra Software with a generous severance package that gives her enough money to live off of temporarily. She knows they gave her the money just so she doesn’t sue them, but she wouldn’t have done that anyway.

Negan has a lot in savings, as well. Not that he had ever touched that money before, really. It was Lucille’s, after all. She was an only child and had inherited her parents’ assets when they died. Lucille and Negan were newlyweds at the time, so they moved into the house her parents had left her and put the money in savings for any children they might have had. That didn’t happen, though, and a good part of that money went to Lucille’s cancer treatment. After Lucille died, Negan sold the house and put all the money in a savings account, never to be thought of again. At least until now, when he needs it.

Thanksgiving comes around and Chuck and Negan decide to brave leaving their little cocoon to head to Diane’s for dinner. Things are okay when they first leave their building, but then Negan notices a car following them after a few blocks.

“Are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

“What?” Chuck asks.

“There’s a black Suburban following us.”

“What?” Chuck looks out the back window and sees the car Negan is talking about a few cars back. “Are you sure it’s following us?”

“Yeah. I think I saw a guy point a fuckin’ camera out the back.”

“Oh my god! We’re not even doing anything but driving.”

“If they approach this car, I’ll fuckin’ kill them.”

“Just... Don’t do anything, Negan. They want to sell the pictures or make a story out of it. If we don’t give them anything, they’ll go away.”

“Fuckin’ vultures. It’s fuckin’ Thanksgiving for Christ’s sake! We’re trying to see goddamn family.” He takes a sudden turn to try to loose them.

“Negan!” Chuck cries out, having not expected the movement.

“Those fuckers are not following us all the way to Diane’s.” He takes a few more unsignaled turns and loses the reporters before they leave the city.

Chuck isn’t exactly impressed with his driving. “Don’t do that again.”

“What?”

“Drive like an idiot! You could’ve killed us both!”

“I had it under control.”

“I’d rather have a million pictures get taken of us than to get in a car crash.”

“Sorry I scared you.” He reaches over and grabs her hand, bringing it up to his lips to kiss her fingers, since the rest of it is under the cast.

They make it to Diane’s without any further incident and pull into her driveway. She lives in a nice little neighborhood with its own neighborhood watch. Diane had told Chuck and Negan that they had to chase away a few reporters, but they haven’t had any trouble for a few days.

Diane greets Chuck and Negan as they enter. “How was the drive?” she asks.

Negan hugs Diane then Aaron. “We had some shit stuck to our heel for a ways.”

Diane somehow understands that he means a reporter had followed them. “Really? They followed you from your apartment?”

“I think they picked us up away from home,” Negan explains. “They know they’ll get nabbed by the fuckin’ cops if they set foot on that property.”

“They should be arrested,” Aaron throws in his two cents. “What sort of amoral assholes hound two people that just went through what you guys did?”

Chuck nods. “I never really thought about how invasive the press could be. I guess I always just assumed that they asked permission for the photos and stuff.”

Despite the craziness of their lives at the moment, once they sit down to eat, the meal is pretty relaxed.

“You need some help, baby girl?” Negan asks Chuck as she picks up her utensils to cut up her meat.

She giggles. “No. I can manage,” she answers. “I’m getting the hang of this thing.” She lifts her left arm to indicate the cast on her wrist.

He chuckles and holds his hand up. “Just asking.”

“Does it still hurt?” Aaron asks.

“Not really,” Chuck answers. “Every once in a while I’ll have to take some ibuprofen.” She shrugs a shoulder. “It’s not bad. More annoying than anything.”

Diane swallows her bite before talking. “Remember when you broke your foot?”

Negan turns to Chuck. “You broke your foot?”

“Yeah. My senior year in high school,” Chuck explains. “It sucked. I almost didn’t graduate because the gym teacher wouldn’t work with me and I wouldn’t have had the PE credits to graduate if I failed the class.”

“Then I went right to the principal,” Diane jumps in. “She wasn’t too happy with that asshole coach after I told her everything.”

“What a dick,” Negan comments. “I wouldn’t have let you fuckin’ fail.”

“That’s right.” Aaron points at Negan with his fork. “You were a gym coach.”

“I was.”

“Are you thinking of going back to it?” Diane asks. “Since you’re unemployed.”

Chuck looks up to Negan with a smile. He had told her before that he loved teaching kids, so the thought of him doing it again as a warmth blooming in her chest.

“I don’t know,” he answers. He hadn’t really thought about it, but now that the suggestion is out there, it is a good one. “I don’t know if any school would fuckin’ take me, though. Considering the goddamn shit show I’m living now.”

“You weren’t convicted of anything,” Chuck points out. “All the charges were dropped.”

“Everyone still knows I fuckin’ killed someone, though. Parents would probably flip their shit about that.”

“Well, you won’t know until you ask,” Aaron provides.

The rest of the meal is filled with light conversation and a lot of laughs. It’s unlike any Thanksgiving Negan had ever had. When he was a kid, the holiday meal was tense. His alpha father was a violent drunk that treated his omega mother like a slave. Nothing she did was good enough for her husband, so the meal often devolved into smashed plates and screams.

After his parents died, the next time he had Thanksgiving dinner was with Lucile and her family. That was also tense, considering her family hated him from the get.

But this is a real family holiday meal. No yelling. No tears. No broken glass. No glares from across the table. This is absolutely perfect. And it has Negan daydreaming about cooking his own turkey in his own kitchen in his own house in the suburbs. He wouldn’t make Chuck slave away at the meal by herself, like his father. He’d help out. Shit, he’d do most of it. Diane and Aaron would be there. Maybe he’d invite Simon, if he didn’t have any place to be. The kids would be seated at their own little table off to the side with their own little plates.

Kids? Negan questions himself.

“You all done, Negan?” Diane pulls him from his thoughts as she points to his plate.

“Oh, uh...” He clears his throat. “Let me do that.” He stands with his plate in his hand and moves to pick up the others on the table.

“No, no. You’re a guest,” Diane tries.

“You cooked all that shit. Let me clean up.” Negan continues to gather the plates, despite Diane huffing beside him.

Chuck giggles at the exchange. “Me and Aaron are gonna set up the other room while you guys clean up.” She and Aaron quickly leave to go back into the living room.

Diane chuckles to herself. “They do that every year.” She shakes her head and walks over to the sink with Negan.

He puts the dirty plates in the sink and starts to wash them. “They leave you to clean up every year?”

“They do.” She takes the cleaned plate from Negan and dries it off, setting it on the counter. “Did you like the meal?” she asks with a smirk.

He smiled. “I fuckin’ loved it.”

She chuckles. “I saw that goofy grin on your face.”

“I’m forty seven years old and that was the first nice Thanksgiving dinner I had.”

Diane’s face turns sad. “Really?”

“Yup. My home life wasn’t exactly The Waltons when I was a kid. And after I got married...” He pauses. “Her family didn’t like me much.” He looks back down in the sink and scrubs one of the plates.

Diane pats him on the back. “Well, you’re welcome here. It might’ve been rough at first, but you’re family now.”

He smiles at her. “Thanks, Diane.”

“But don’t you dare ever call me mom,” she jokes. “I’m only a year older than you.”

“Shit, really?”

She playfully punches his arm. “I don’t look that bad for my age!”

He laughs. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just... shit. Chuck is fuckin’ young, I guess.”

“I wasn’t really that old when I had her. Just turned twenty two. Me and her dad got pregnant on our honeymoon, pretty much.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. But Chuck is the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Negan doesn’t say anything as he starts to wash the last plate.

“You don’t have to say it,” Diane whispers. “But I know she’s the best thing to happen to you, too.”

He looks over to her, and nods his reply.

Chuck, from the other room, is getting impatient. “Come on, guys! Hurry up!”

Diane chuckles. “We’re done!” she calls back.

When Negan and Diane enter the room, Negan sees that there is now a card table set up in the center of the room with four chairs placed around it. Monopoly is set up in the center of the table with all the money divvied out already.

“What’s this?” Negan asks.

Chuck comes over to him with a smile on her face. “We always play Monopoly on Thanksgiving, but first...” she takes him by the hand and leads him closer to the piano. She sits down on the loveseat beside it and prompts Negan to sit with her.

Aaron picks up his acoustic guitars and Diane sits down at the piano.

“I see what this is,” Negan says. “You’re trying to ambush me, but I’m telling you. You really don’t fuckin’ want me singing.”

Chuck leans toward Negan and starts to sing. “Is this the real life?” Diane and Aaron join in on their instruments as Chuck continues. “Is this just fantasy?”

He shakes his head. “Bohemian Rhapsody? That’s fuckin’ low. No one can resist singing this shit.”

Diane and Aaron join in singing now. “Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.”

Negan shakes his head. “Nope. Not gonna sing.”

“Open your eyes.” Everyone looks at Negan as they sing their parts. “Look up to the skies and see...”

They all stop and stare at Negan, waiting for him to join in. He lets out a huff and takes in a breath.

“I’m just a poor boy,” he starts quietly then Chuck and Diane jump in with the background vocals. “I need no sympathy,” he continues.

“Because I’m easy come, easy go. Little high, little low,” the Langdon trio sings in harmony.

Negan likes hearing them sing. And though he would rather just lean back and listen to them, being part of the song is nice, too.

“Anyway the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me,” he sings more confidently over the harmonies, though his voice is much lower than the song calls for. “To me...”

They go through the whole song, building in intensity until they’re all practically screaming the crescendo. The rest of the song devolves into fits of giggles until the last notes are played.

“Bravo!” Diane calls out as she claps her hands.

“Yes,” Negan starts. “Bravo to all you guys who know what you’re fuckin’ doing.”

Chuck nudges him with her shoulder. “I liked hearing you sing.”

He looks down at her. “You did?”

“Yeah,” she answers with a smile. “You sound good. I like your voice.”

Negan starts to lean in for a kiss, but Diane (intentionally) interrupts the moment. She may be okay with Negan and Chuck’s relationship, but that doesn’t mean she wants to see them all over each other.

“Time for Monopoly!” she calls out as she moves toward the card table.

The others follow her and take their seats at the table. The board is already set up with three pieces already on the Go square, the Scottie dog for Chuck, the thimble for Diane, and the top hat for Aaron.

Chuck picks up the remaining pieces and holds them out for Negan to choose. “You get to pick your piece.”

He instantly grabs the little car. “The race car, for sure.”

Chuck sets the piece on Go with the others and they start to play the game.

Negan rolls the dice and starts his first turn. “I haven’t played this game since I was a fuckin’ kid.”

“You remember the rules, right?” Aaron asks.

Negan lands on Connecticut Avenue. “Shit yeah, I remember. It’s a fuckin’ land grab.” He takes out the $120 to buy it and hands it to Diane, the banker. “And you all are going fuckin’ down.”

As the game progresses, it becomes clear that both Negan and Chuck are shrewd capitalists. They quickly become opponents, their only goal is to take the other one out.

Diane laughs as Negan lands on one of Chuck’s hotels, letting out a curse as he gathers the money he owes. “Did we forget to tell you that Chuck usually wins every year?”

“I’m not out yet,” Negan comments. “I wanna start making deals.”

Diane and Negan become allies as Chuck and Aaron strategize themselves. The game drags on, with both Diane and Aaron going bankrupt, leaving just Negan and Chuck with their respective Monopoly fortunes. It seems they’re fairly evenly matched and the game continues on for a long while with money exchanged between the two with no real accumulation of wealth and neither any closer to bankruptcy. Negan would land on a hotel and give Chuck a bunch of money. Then Chuck would land on a hotel and give it right back.

Diane yawns as it’s getting late. “I think we can consider this game a draw.”

Negan looks to Chuck. “I’m gonna beat you at this stupid game at Christmas.”

Chuck laughs. “We play Risk after Christmas dinner.”

“Even fuckin’ better! I love Risk. I used to have a tournament for my baseball team at the end of the season every year. And guess what?”

Chuck gives him a sassy face. “What?”

He leans in. “I always won.”

Chuck laughs. “Don’t get cocky, mister. I always win my games, too.”

Aaron jumps in. “And that’s with me and Diane teaming up against her.”

Negan smirks at Chuck. “You’re on, little girl. We’ll see come Christmas that there’s a new fuckin’ king in town.”

Everyone says goodbye and Chuck and Negan head home. Since it’s late, they immediately go into Chuck’s room to get ready for bed once they get there.

“Did you have fun with my crazy family?” Chuck asks as she pulls on her purple nightgown featuring a pattern of little kitty cat faces.

Negan strips down to his boxers. “I fuckin’ loved it. It made me realize that I’m fuckin’ sick of this city. The traffic, the noise, all the fuckin’ people... I want a yard again. I want peace and fuckin’ quiet again. So I’m gonna look into buying a house.”

Chuck’s face instantly drops. All she can think about is that Negan would be moving away from her. She wouldn’t be able to just run next door too see him. She’d have jump in her car and drive however long to get to him.

He sees the look on her face and knows what she’s thinking. “Come here.” He pulls her into him and sits on the edge of the bed with her right beside him. “I want you to come with me. Move in with me. We already practically fuckin’ live together.”

“You want me to buy a house with you?”

“Fuck yeah. I’m not going anywhere without you.”

“I-I don’t know if I have the money to buy a house.”

“You don’t have to fuckin’ pay for it, sweetheart. I got the money. And I wanna take fuckin’ care of you. Get you away from all this shit.” He gestures vaguely. “Away from those fuckin’ reporters and anyone else that would fuckin’ bother you in this city.”

She bites her lip to keep from grinning. The prospect of officially living with Negan is very exciting to her. “You don’t think it’s too soon?”

“No,” he answers bluntly. “I’m fuckin’ sure about this.”

She grins up at him. “Okay. Let’s get a house.”

He leans down to kiss her. “Shit, I’m fuckin’ excited.”

The thought of moving forward with Negan in this way has her thoughts racing. “Should we talk about... the other thing?”

“The other thing?”

“Claiming.”

His eyes instinctively flick to her neck then back to her face. “Claiming?”

“I mean, moving in is a big step, right? So... I mean, we’re together. And you’re an alpha and I’m an omega. If we’re together, don’t you want to claim me?”

He thinks for a second. He does want to claim her, but he’s afraid to. He’s not sure if he’s ready to have an actual mate again. “What do you want?” he finally asks.

“I’m-I’m a little scared of being claimed.”

That makes his heart drop a little. “You are?” he asks. Even though he’s scared, too, it hurts a little to hear that she feels the same.

“It’ll change me, right? And I’m still sort of learning how I am as an omega to begin with.”

“That makes sense. You’re not afraid of me , though?”

“No, no. Of course not. I know you’re my... my alpha. I want to be your mate. It’s just...” she trails off.

“Scary?” he completes the sentence.

“Yeah.”

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into a hug. “We got time, baby girl.” He kisses the top of her head. “There’s no fuckin’ rush.”

She hugs him back. “Thank you for being so patient with me.”

He pushes her back to look at her. “You never have to worry about me pushing you into any-fuckin’-thing. I would never hurt you like that.”

The next morning, Chuck wakes up to an empty bed. That’s not unusual; Negan is an earlier riser than Chuck. She gets out of bed and feels a little twinge of something, but it’s slight so she ignores it and exits her room. Negan, dressed only in his boxers, is on the couch, drinking his coffee and reading the paper.

“Morning,” Chuck greets. She looks him over and sees a light blush on his cheeks. “You feel okay? You look flushed.” She comes forward to place her hand on his forehead.

“I’m fine.” As soon and Chuck gets close to him, he realizes what’s going on. “You’re going into heat.” He sets his coffee down and runs his hands up her legs to her hips. “I’m starting a rut, I guess.”

At his words, Chuck starts to recognize the feeling in her abdomen as such. “Oh god,” she murmurs.

Negan pulls her down into his lap and wraps her in his arms. “It’s gonna be okay,” he whispers.

Chuck is nervous. This will be the first heat that she won’t spend in the hospital. Dr. Bailey had told her that with Negan there, her heat won’t get too bad and won’t be dangerous. Still, she’s worried.

Negan pushes some of Chuck’s hair back and cradles her face. “I’m gonna take care of you.”

Chuck nods. She does trust him, but she’s still anxious.

“Let’s get some food in us before were too far gone to care about that shit.”

Negan makes them breakfast then sets out to ready Chuck’s room. He leaves a case of bottled water by the door to keep them hydrated and brings out some extra towels in case things get messy. He also sets out the condoms on the nightstand for easy access, considering they are going to be using a lot of them, probably.

While he’s doing that, Chuck leaves a text for her mother telling her that she’s going into heat and probably won’t be texting back for a couple days. She also gives Dr. Bailey a quick call with the development, as well.

After getting one of the condoms ready, they both cuddle up on Chuck’s bed to rest before their heat/rut sinks in too much. After a few minutes, Negan starts to instinctively run his hand over her, covering her in his scent as his rut starts to wrestle more control over his rational mind.

Chuck isn’t doing much better. Her omega side is calling out for her to get this all started. As her temperature starts to rise, she pulls away from Negan and strips off her nightgown, leaving her naked.

The sight is too much for Negan and he practically pounces on her, his lips crashing into hers in a fervent kiss. She returns it with enthusiasm as she snakes her fingers through his hair to pull him even further into her.

His hands rove over her body, squeezing her curves and leaving his scent on her skin. It doesn’t take long before his impatience starts to grow. He pulls back from Chuck to remove his boxers, freeing his already hard cock.

When Negan moves away, Chuck’s omega side takes over and her body turns onto its stomach with her knees tucked underneath her. The classic submissive pose is too much for Negan’s alpha side to handle and he is spurred into action.

He crawls over Chuck’s back and swiftly enters her, starting up a brutal pace. He had never taken Chuck like this before, but he’s not exactly in his right mind. Neither is Chuck, though, and Negan’s movements are just what she needs to sate her heat.

“Fuck, omega,” Negan growls into Chuck’s ear. “I’m gonna knot you.”

“Yes,” she moans.

As they both get closer to their ends, Chuck instinctively tilts her head to the side, exposing her mating spot. The action has Negan’s alpha side completely overriding his rational brain and he places his mouth to her neck.

“Fuck, you smell so good,” he groans as his knot swells.

“Alpha,” she moans and bucks her hips back into him.

“I’m gonna knot you.”

“Yes,” she breathes.

He hovers his mouth over her neck as his knot pops inside her and triggers her release. As he cums, somewhere deep in his mind, there’s a voice telling him Don’t do it! She told you she wasn’t fuckin’ ready!

But his alpha side is too strong. Especially when he sees the fading scar of Eldritch’s bite on her neck way too close for comfort. He sinks his teeth into her mating spot with a growl as he holds her tightly against him, not much caring for the consequences of his actions. Yet.

#negan #negan x oc #negan fanfiction #negan x ofc #alpha negan #negan x original female character #negans thirst squad #negan/original female character #negan / oc #negan / ofc #negan / original female character #Jeffrey Dean Morgan #JDM #The Walking Dead #twd #the walking dead fanfiction #The Walking Dead AU #the glasswing butterfly #writehavoc the Glasswing Butterfly

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awritersnightmare · 6 years ago

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Spooktober Day 4- Ashes

Day 4! I don’t have much to say other than it’s done with different characters again. Ones I haven’t done much in awhile but I’ve missed very much. Hope you enjoy! Please reblog if read.

Day 4- Ashes Shanley crouched in the grass, her face glued to the house in front of them. Her childhood home had clouds of smoke curling their way into an overcast sky. Her hands were pressed into the spiky blades under her while the ashen pieces of the burning house fluttered around her lazily. The smoke that eventually reached her found its way to her throat and choked her slowly. She coughed, haggard and deep from her stomach. Still she refused to move. Arya’s hand rested heavy on her shoulder. Shanley didn’t look up. That was fine. Arya and Casey were here to help and support her. The two with her couldn’t possibly understand the thoughts and feelings that were going through her mind and body. It wasn’t their house. It wasn’t their childhood. It wasn’t their crime scene. Not exactly at least. Right now it was, but the original crime had been Shanley’s alone. This whole thing had been Arya’s idea. She was of the opinion that everything could be solved by just getting rid of it. Burn the house, burn the memories, and burn the guilt. She’d done it herself after all. Sure that had been over a century ago, it worked. At this rate, Shanley would try anything to get rid of the aching horror that had carved its way inside. She was a host for all the pain her family must have felt, for all the guilt she was now cursed with for being the one that had done it. They were dead, dead because of some stupid fight they’d had. A stupid fight that had rested heavily on her subconscious the same night as the full moon. The first time she’d turned. Arya could imagine that guilt. She’d been the cause of her own family’s deaths. Sure in her case it hadn’t been her fault exactly, but the guilt was still there. Sometimes. She’d gotten remarkably good at turning her feeling off. Sobs rose up and echoed out over the empty cul-de-sac. If anyone was home they didn’t notice the three figures watching the burning house. They didn’t even notice the burning house that, under normal circumstances, might have spelled disaster for the rest of their homes and manicured lawns. But not tonight. Not with a fire being carefully contained by a witch. No one would even notice the house until it was simply rubble and charred pieces and when the three of them had hightailed it back to Salmon Creek. Far away from the middle class public and humans who dominated the whole area. “We should get going,” Arya said. Shanley didn’t answer, her crying eyes hyper-focused on the fire. The top floor had caved in and the house was just a pile of kindling now. The structural integrity finally giving out. The police tape that still surrounded the house was starting to melt too. The plastic creating an acrid burn that made the three scrunch their noses in disgust. Casey and Arya exchanged a glance, worried that Shanley hadn’t heard them. That this had done more bad than good. She’d just been so sad lately, moping around the house, ignoring her studies, refusing to take Gwen’s calls. It was causing suspicion in the town. And while most of the residents of Salmon Creek were Mystics, the humans at the school had started asking questions. It was bad exposure. The cops were at their house enough on calls of loud noises and disturbances. They could only be satiated for so long. It was hard enough having a new werewolf in the house, and there was only so much an inexperienced witch and a seasoned vampire could do. Only so much they knew how to handle. “Can you make it go faster?” Arya asked Casey. Casey’s eyebrows knit together. “Only if you want me to drop the cloaking spell. I can only do so much at once. I don’t have an infinite pool of energy.” Groaning, Arya dropped down onto the grass and leaned against Shanley. “You holding up okay, Lassie?” Shanley shrugged, resting her head on top of Arya’s but still staring at the house. “I feel kind of empty.” “That’ll pass.” That made her look over. She frowned at Arya and asked softly, “did it pass for you?” Arya forced a smile and hugged the weeping girl tightly “it sure did. It sure did.” A loud crash made them all look up as the house’s last level gave out and the entire building sat in what used to be the basement. Shanley let out a shuddering breath and curled her body against Arya’s thin frame. Casey dropped her hands then and the fire burned on. It would until the entire house was just black ash. Maybe the occasional support beam or piece of tile left to remind the residents of the cul-de-sac that yes this had once been a house. The night air must have been cold, but none of them felt it. The heat from the house permeated several feet around it on all sides. The beautiful three storey homes began to light up as the residents smelled the smoke. They poked their heads out, cellphones in hand. Yelling to each other that “its fine I got!” Arya smirked at the thought of twenty white suburban moms calling the fire department and bemoaning how ugly their neighbourhood was going to look now. Served them right for the way they ostracized Shanley afterwards. Without even remembering how sweet she was, they had instantly believed that she was guilty. Deranged and guilty. Even when it had come out that wounds looked like they’d been done by some kind of wild animal. Yes, Shanley had been the wild animal, but these sensitive idiots really believed that she had done it herself. Not that their opinions mattered much, she’d ended the court case viewed as a survivor, covered in blood and scratches. And so that was how she’d been charged, locked in a psych ward to get help for the obvious trauma. Only, the trauma they were treating her for hadn’t been correct. Thank all the powers of the universe Arya had found her when she had. “We really should get going now,” Arya said. She stood up, helping the crying Shanley to her feet. Casey nodded and wrapped her coat tightly around herself. It must be really cold if even the fire wasn’t keeping her warm anymore. Arya was always cold, both from being undead and just… leftover poor circulation from when she was alive. It was a curse, one she had just learned to deal with. She wore large coats almost all the time, but it was never enough. “I’ll drive,” Casey said when they reached the car. “You stay with Shanley okay?” Arya nodded and helped the girl in the car. Shanley buckled her seatbelt and looked back out the window at her house. The world outside was now raining ashes, some of it was caught in her hair. Casey revved the engine and pulled away from the scene. The further away they drove, the more she seemed to relax. The cloaking spell was dropping. “You’re gonna be okay kiddo,” Arya said to Shanley. Shanley nodded numbly. God Arya hoped she was right.

#spooktober2018 #writober2018 #my writing #halloween #halloween prompts 2018 #halloween writing prompts

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blood-and-lilacs · 3 years ago

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Whumptober Day 5!

Prompt: I’ve Got Red In My Ledger

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34174888/chapters/85427851

Summary: Archie and Henry get drunk and talk about their feelings. . . sort of.

Contains: alcohol use, drug mention, discussion of murder, stabbing, and injustice

Archie and Henry were celebrating.

That was what they were calling it, anyway.

It had been a tense couple of weeks since. . . well. . . since everything. Since Archie had gotten out of the pysch ward. Since Henry had killed Troy Lipton. Since Gretchen had been arrested again. Since she had strung Jeremy Reynolds up with hooks and Archie had left him there to bleed out.

There was a lot to unpack there, and Archie and Henry were not particularly good at unpacking. Not while they were sober, anyway.

But as of today, Henry's lethal force investigation and Archie's psych eval had been completed, and they had both been reinstated for full duty. So it was time to celebrate. And celebrating, at the temporary Sobol-Sheridan household, meant alcohol. Even if maybe, technically, Archie's exit paperwork might have definitely included a promise not to drink. That was stupid. He didn't have an alcohol problem. Pills, yes, those were a problem, everyone knew that. But as long as he stayed off the pills -- and Henry's house was infuriatingly pill-free, no matter how hard Archie looked -- he would be fine. He knew that, and Henry knew that, so the exit paperwork was now acting as a coaster for Archie's fourth beer of the night.

The couch was doing double-duty as Archie's bed while he was staying here. He had pushed aside the blankets and pillows when he sat down earlier, but as the night wore on he shifted position to lean on one pillow, then two pillows, then to roll up a blanket and push it behind his back. There had to be some combination of bedding he could sit or lean on that would make his ribs stop aching. But he hadn't found it yet. Barring that, maybe another drink would do the trick.

Henry was settled across from him on the beaten-up armchair that had come with him from his apartment when he bought the house. One of the cats had settled on his lap, and since it was obviously a crime to dethrone the cat, it was now Archie's job to hand him drinks when need be.

This had been almost a normal occurrence for them, back when they were working the Beauty Killer case together nearly 24/7. Every few months Henry would declare that they had been working too hard and demand that they take a night off to relax. It had gotten harder after the kids were born, but they still made it work now and then. But this was the first time since Gretchen, and nothing they could do would make it feel natural, the way it had felt before.

Henry was filling the silence with rambling stories of his adventures motorcyling though South America. Archie had heard most of them before, but he was trying his best to pay attention because if they could just talk about normal things like that, maybe it would stop feeling so forced. But then Henry stopped talking too, and there was only a ticking clock, and a purring cat, and Archie opened another beer and gave up on feeling normal and asked the question anyway.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"About what?" asked Henry. Archie had thought it would be obvious, but now he realized that of course there were a dozen things they weren't talking about that maybe they should be, and he would have to be more specific.

"About Troy Lipton. Or about how you tried to blow it off by telling me you'd killed before, like that somehow made it better. You know I've seen your files, right? There's no record of you killing in the line of duty before. So do you wanna talk about Troy Lipton, or about whatever else you've done that we don't know about?"

Henry sighed, drained his bottle, and held out a hand for another. Archie got up slowly, all the aches that he had managed to dull slightly with cushioning returning as he did so. He got another six-pack from the fridge, cracked open a bottle and handed it to Henry. He sat back down but couldn't get as comfortable as he had been before, even though he thought all the pillows were in the same places. "Fuck, my ribs hurt," he mumbled.

"Yeah, you know what would help that?" said Henry.

"Vicodin?"

"Yeah."

Neither laughed, but they both smiled, and that was a start.

"It was in Alaska," said Henry, and it took Archie a minute to realize what he was talking about -- he had thought Henry was going to drop the subject entirely. "My wife at the time had this shitheel ex. It was a small town, everybody knew him, everybody knew he was no good. He came up to us at the local bar and started harassing her right in front of me, so I stepped in. It was just a barfight, that's all it should have been, only the fucker pulled a knife. I got it from him and he still came at me and -- " Henry shrugged and made a "what can you do" sort of gesture with his beer. "There's barely law enforcement in the rural towns up there. There was barely an investigation, I was never arrested, everyone pretty much just shrugged and said he had it comin'. And I got my drinks on the house from then on, 'cause they didn't have to deal with him anymore. And that's all there is to it."

It wasn't how he normally told stories. There were no details, no drama, no embellishments. He just said it, almost tonelessly reciting the details, and then drained the bottle Archie had only just handed him.

"How did you handle it?" Archie asked, wincing as he got up to hand over another bottle.

"I didn't. I put it away, I told myself there wasn't anything to 'handle' because I didn't do anything wrong. Same as with Lipton."

"Doesn't sound like you're comfortable with that answer, though." Henry glared at him, which combined with the cat and the large stature and the bald head made him look somewhat like a Bond villain. Archie gave an apologetic shrug. "I'm a detective. And also it's really obvious."

"Yeah. I know I didn't do anything wrong, but it still feels like I did. And there was no real justice with the guy in Alaska -- I should have at least been investigated, somebody should have done something to make sure things happened the way I said they did. At least there was that with Lipton. But still, everyone knew it was just a formality. It doesn't feel like enough. It feels like there should be a consequence, even if it was 'justified.'"

"You feel like you did something wrong, so you want some kind of punishment even though other people think it's fine."

Henry raised his eyebrows. "Sound familiar?"

"Sure fucking does. Does that mean you're gonna stop giving me crap for it?"

"Nope. Just means I know what the fuck I'm talking about when I give you crap for it."

"Fair enough." He finished off his bottle and debated with himself whether getting another one was worth having to move again. "You used the plural. You said you'd killed people before. Not a person. People."

"Yeah, well. I think that's enough for one night."

#whumptober2021 #archie sheridan #beauty killer

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sure-am-existing · 7 years ago

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tl;dr Don't shoot IV drugs into your taint.

aka; the Swamps of Dagobah patient horror story, submitted to reddit by banzaipanda in 2013.

OR Nurse here. This is kind of a long one...

I was taking call one night, and woke up at two in the morning for a "general surgery" call. Pretty vague, but at the time, I lived in a town that had large populations of young military guys and avid meth users, so late-night emergencies were common.

Got to the hospital, where a few more details awaited me -- "Perirectal abscess." For the uninitiated, this means that somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the asshole, there was a pocket of pus that needed draining. Needless to say our entire crew was less than thrilled.

I went down to the Emergency Room to transport the patient, and the only thing the ER nurse said as she handed me the chart was "Have fun with this one." Amongst healthcare professionals, vague statements like that are a bad sign.

My patient was a 314lb Native American woman who barely fit on the stretcher I was transporting her on. She was rolling frantically side to side and moaning in pain, pulling at her clothes and muttering Hail Mary's. I could barely get her name out of her after a few minutes of questioning, so after I confirmed her identity and what we were working on, I figured it was best just to get her to the anesthesiologist so we could knock her out and get this circus started.

She continued her theatrics the entire ten-minute ride to the O.R., nearly falling off the surgical table as we were trying to put her under anesthetic. We see patients like this a lot, though, chronic drug abusers who don't handle pain well and who have used so many drugs that even increased levels of pain medication don't touch simply because of high tolerance levels.

It should be noted, tonight's surgical team was not exactly wet behind the ears. I'd been working in healthcare for several years already, mostly psych and medical settings. I've watched an 88-year-old man tear a 1"-diameter catheter balloon out of his penis while screaming "You'll never make me talk!". I've been attacked by an HIV-positive neo-Nazi. I've seen some shit. The other nurse had been in the OR as a trauma specialist for over ten years; the anesthesiologist had done residency at a Level 1 trauma center, or as we call them, "Knife and Gun Clubs". The surgeon was ex-Army, and averaged about eight words and two facial expressions a week. None of us expected what was about to happen next.

We got the lady off to sleep, put her into the stirrups, and I began washing off the rectal area. It was red and inflamed, a little bit of pus was seeping through, but it was all pretty standard. Her chart had noted that she'd been injecting IV drugs through her perineum, so this was obviously an infection from dirty needles or bad drugs, but overall, it didn't seem to warrant her repeated cries of "Oh Jesus, kill me now."

The surgeon steps up with a scalpel, sinks just the tip in, and at the exact same moment, the patient had a muscle twitch in her diaphragm, and just like that, all hell broke loose.

Unbeknownst to us, the infection had actually tunneled nearly a foot into her abdomen, creating a vast cavern full of pus, rotten tissue, and fecal matter that had seeped outside of her colon. This godforsaken mixture came rocketing out of that little incision like we were recreating the funeral scene from Jane Austen's "Mafia!".

We all wear waterproof gowns, face masks, gloves, hats, the works -- all of which were as helpful was rainboots against a firehose. The bed was in the middle of the room, an easy seven feet from the nearest wall, but by the time we were done, I was still finding bits of rotten flesh pasted against the back wall. As the surgeon continued to advance his blade, the torrent just continued. The patient kept seizing against the ventilator (not uncommon in surgery), and with every muscle contraction, she shot more of this brackish gray-brown fluid out onto the floor until, within minutes, it was seeping into the other nurse's shoes.

I was nearly twelve feet away, jaw dropped open within my surgical mask, watching the second nurse dry-heaving and the surgeon standing on tip-toes to keep this stuff from soaking his socks any further. The smell hit them first. "Oh god, I just threw up in my mask!" The other nurse was out, she tore off her mask and sprinted out of the room, shoulders still heaving. Then it hit me, mouth still wide open, not able to believe the volume of fluid this woman's body contained. It was like getting a great big bite of the despair and apathy that permeated this woman's life. I couldn't fucking breath, my lungs simply refused to pull anymore of that stuff in. The anesthesiologist went down next, an ex-NCAA D1 tailback, his six-foot-two frame shaking as he threw open the door to the OR suite in an attempt to get more air in, letting me glimpse the second nurse still throwing up in the sinks outside the door. Another geyser of pus splashed across the front of the surgeon. The YouTube clip of "David at the dentist" keeps playing in my head -- "Is this real life?"

In all operating rooms, everywhere in the world, regardless of socialized or privatized, secular or religious, big or small, there is one thing the same: Somewhere, there is a bottle of peppermint concentrate. Everyone in the department knows where it is, everyone knows what it is for, and everyone prays to their gods they never have to use it. In times like this, we rub it on the inside of our masks to keep the outside smells at bay long enough to finish the procedure and shower off.

I sprinted to the our central supply, ripping open the drawer where this vial of ambrosia was kept, and was greeted by -- an empty fucking box. The bottle had been emptied and not replaced. Somewhere out there was a godless bastard who had used the last of the peppermint oil, and not replaced a single fucking drop of it. To this day, if I figure out who it was, I'll kill them with my bare hands, but not before cramming their head up the colon of every last meth user I can find, just so we're even.

I darted back into the room with the next best thing I can find -- a vial of Mastisol, which is an adhesive rub we use sometimes for bandaging. It's not as good as peppermint, but considering that over one-third of the floor was now thoroughly coated in what could easily be mistaken for a combination of bovine after-birth and maple syrup, we were out of options.

I started rubbing as much of the Mastisol as I could get on the inside of my mask, just glad to be smelling anything except whatever slimy demon spawn we'd just cut out of this woman. The anesthesiologist grabbed the vial next, dowsing the front of his mask in it so he could stand next to his machines long enough to make sure this woman didn't die on the table. It wasn't until later that we realized that Mastisol can give you a mild high from huffing it like this, but in retrospect, that's probably what got us through.

By this time, the smell had permeated out of our OR suite, and down the forty-foot hallway to the front desk, where the other nurse still sat, eyes bloodshot and watery, clenching her stomach desperately. Our suite looked like the underground river of ooze from Ghostbusters II, except dirty. Oh so dirty.

I stepped back into the OR suite, not wanting to leave the surgeon by himself in case he genuinely needed help. It was like one of those overly-artistic representations of a zombie apocalypse you see on fan-forums. Here's this one guy, in blue surgical garb, standing nearly ankle deep in lumps of dead tissue, fecal matter, and several liters of syrupy infection. He was performing surgery in the swamps of Dagobah, except the swamps had just come out of this woman's ass and there was no Yoda. He and I didn't say a word for the next ten minutes as he scraped the inside of the abscess until all the dead tissue was out, the front of his gown a gruesome mixture of brown and red, his eyes squinted against the stinging vapors originating directly in front of him. I finished my required paperwork as quickly as I could, helped him stuff the recently-vacated opening full of gauze, taped this woman's buttocks closed to hold the dressing for as long as possible, woke her up, and immediately shipped off to the recovery ward.

Until then, I'd only heard of "alcohol showers." Turns out 70% isopropyl alcohol is about the only thing that can even touch a scent like that once its soaked into your skin. It takes four or five bottles to get really clean, but it's worth it. It's probably the only scenario I can honestly endorse drinking a little of it, too.

As we left the locker room, the surgeon and I looked at each other, and he said the only negative sentence I heard him utter in two and a half years of working together:

"That was bad."

The next morning the entire department (a fairly large floor within the hospital) still smelled. The housekeepers told me later that it took them nearly an hour to suction up all of the fluid and debris left behind. The OR suite itself was closed off and quarantined for two more days just to let the smell finally clear out.

I laugh now when I hear new recruits to healthcare talk about the worst thing they've seen. You ain't seen shit, kid.

#banzaipanda #swamps of dagobah #patient horror story #ask reddit #my favorite thing

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tigerlilynoh · 7 years ago

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What Remains of Alicia Banes

Words: 3,128 Characters: Sam Winchester, Max Banes, Alicia Banes Trigger Warning: Discussion of depression, self-harm, suicide attempts

Teaser: Eight months after the events of Twings & Twine & Tasha Banes (12x20), Sam receives a phone call from Max Banes asking for help. When Sam arrives, he discovers that the situation is far from what he was expecting.

It’d been roughly eight months since Sam had last spoken to Max Banes. On the night that they’d killed the witch that had murdered Max’s mother and sister, he and Dean had offered to help him out whenever he needed, though there hadn’t been a peep from him until that morning. On the phone he’d sounded upset, but wouldn’t explain what was wrong. He’d asked for Sam to come alone. Something had happened and it sounded like he was embarrassed or ashamed.

On the four-hour drive to the Fox family estate, Sam considered the possible reasons why Max would request that only he come. A trap seemed unlikely; Max didn’t seem the sinister type and there were enough other friends and acquaintances that would serve as more blindly-compelling bait. For a brief moment he considered that maybe there was something to his suspicion that Max had been flirting with him at Isa Fox’s funeral, though feigning an emergency and making him drive that far didn’t seem like a reasonable funny-meeting-you-here moment. It could’ve been that Max had noticed that he was the more magically attuned of the Winchester brothers and therefore might be more sympathetic or useful in an instance of a spell gone wrong.

When he got to the small mansion he noticed that it was almost entirely dark except for a light in the entryway and one of the rooms upstairs. Some of the decorative plants in the front yard appeared overgrown. A shingle had fallen from the roof and left on the front porch long enough that a spider had taken up residence. He wasn’t sure if Max’s grandmother was still alive, but either way the house had a look of neglect about it. After trying the doorbell, Sam opened the unlocked front door.

Max was sitting on the first few steps of the wooden staircase just beyond the door. Large, old blood stains tarnished his grey skinny jeans and his olive green sweater. There weren’t any obvious injuries, but he seemed in a daze. His pink, puffy eyes were transfixed on his bloody hands until Sam closed the front door. Sam was about to ask what had happened when he spotted the silver ring containing a teardrop-shaped gem of purple made irregular by the dark splotches of drying blood that had crept inside the setting. Max was wearing the cursed thing. He'd taken the deal.

“She’s upstairs,” the witch said when Sam’s gaze flicked reflectively around for Alicia—what was left of Alicia. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

“I came here to help you. I’m not gonna hurt anyone.” Sam raised his hands in a subtle gesture of reassurance. “You asked me to come.”

“Yeah.” Max nodded, but he barely looked at Sam.

His face was a bit pale and his skin was clammy. He was in shock. It reminded Sam painfully of the last time they’d seen each other.

“Is that her blood?” Sam asked.

“Is her blood even blood…?” Max muttered to himself before pursing his lips. He leaned his head back and took a sharp breath to collect himself. “Yeah, man. It’s hers.”

“What happened—“ Sam thought better of bringing up the obvious events that had occurred the night Alicia had died. They had more urgent worries. “How did she get hurt? How can I help?”

“I….” Max shifted, trying to regather his normal suave composure. “I heard you were in a psych ward twice—no judgment. With all the things I’ve heard about you…. I thought maybe you’d know what to do. How to make her better.”

Sam had no idea what his mental health history had to do with any of this. Alicia, or some facsimile of her, had been injured and that was…. Sam nearly cringed at the realization of what had happened, but he managed to mask his concern. If his guess was correct, it would be important to be a source of stability. He knelt down on the hardwood floor in front of Max so that he wasn’t towering over the undoubtedly terrified witch.

He softened his facial expression and tone. “Was this the first time she hurt herself?”

Max moved to wipe away a tear, but stopped when he saw that the wrists of his sweater had turned brown with blood. He shook his head.

Sam pressed the issue. “How many times has this happened?”

“Three.” Max’s voice was too quiet. “This morning, when I got things stable… I told her not to do anything until you got here. She's just lying on her bed, waiting.”

It’d been months since Alicia had died. The golem, doll—whatever she was—had probably been alive for that long. The spell had needed her heart…. Sam pushed the mental image of what Max had done from his mind. Whatever he personally might’ve thought of it, what was done was done. Right then there was just a scared kid, who needed his help. Sam glanced upstairs. Actually, there were two scared kids.

“Max, I need you to tell me how this works.” Sam tried to keep his tone somewhere between reassuring and academically curious. “I’m not gonna try to stop it; I’m not gonna make her go away. I just want to understand what we’re dealing with.”

“She’s almost her, almost Alicia. She has all her memories, knows all our jokes. She even hassles me when I try to drive.” Max let out a sad sort of chuckle. “I burned the body. There’s no soul…. I don’t know—I don’t think there’s a soul. I took her heart. She has Alicia’s heart, but there’s no EMF....”

“Okay, so probably no soul.” Sam tried to make his voice noncritical. He needed to keep Max focused. “Does she remember dying?”

“No, not really. She doesn’t remember it, but sometimes she asks me questions about our mom’s death and…. She figures out something’s wrong; like there’s a piece missing. Alicia was always smart. She was nosy like that.” Max’s lip wavered between a smile and a grimace, then he covered his face with his hands for a moment, heedless of the dried blood on them. “When she realizes that something’s wrong I make her forget. A few times it went too far before I knew she’d figured it out and she’d already hurt herself. I can make her stop if she starts—she has to do whatever I tell her. I don’t do that much, but when she hurts herself….”

Sam broke eye contact and nodded in acknowledgement of everything as he started trying to figure out what to do. Max was dabbling in controlling her—whatever she was. Despite his good intentions, he was getting ominously close to falling down a path of domination and abuse, the kind of power trip that gave witches a bad reputation. It was dangerous on that level, but in an immediate sense Max’s actions were unintentionally harming the creature upstairs… the creature that had Alicia’s memories and personality. In all probability she didn’t know what was going on, and none of this was her fault.

“You’re going to give up control," Sam instructed with the calm conviction of a man trying to impart subjective centuries of wisdom. “You don’t get to tell her what to do anymore.”

Max’s brow to furrowed. “What if she wants to kill herself again?”

Thankfully, Max’s voice was more confused than resistant—he at least felt conflicted about controlling her. Sam put his hand on Max’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort, then gently turned Max’s face to look him in the eyes, emphasizing the next point.

“If you think she’s having a hard time, you try to talk to her about it and get her help. You don’t take away her personhood.”

“She’s not….” Max was trembling, uncertain how to finish the sentence.

“I don’t care how she got here. I don’t care if she doesn’t have a soul. She has thoughts and feelings. She thinks and feels that you’re her brother.”

Max clenched his eyes, feeling the anguish borne from his choices, then sighed. “I know.”

“She’s your sister.” Sam paused a beat to let that sink in. He could tell Max was truly listening to him. “Treat her with some respect.”

Sam politely knocked on the bedroom door despite suspecting that Max’s instruction for Alicia to do nothing probably applied until she became aware of his presence. Sure enough, there was no answer. He slowly opened the door and stepped into the small but lavishly decorated bedroom.

She was lying on top of her bed, wearing a previously cream colored blouse and blue jeans that were half-covered in maroon-brown stains. Sizable, bloody gauze bandages covered both arms from her wrists to a few inches shy of her elbows. She was staring straight up at the ceiling, completely frozen—not even breathing.

On the floor beside the bed were several bowls of damp cloths and bloody water. The nightstand held a porcelain tea set, ready to provide a soothing drink. Evidently Max had been trying to tend to her before he’d gotten there.

“It’s me, Sam," he offered as a greeting and a harbinger of conversation.

As soon as he’d finished talking she seemed to revive. Her chest started rising and falling in either a subtle guise or sincere self-delusion of breathing. When he took a step closer, her half-open, bloodshot eyes watched him cautiously, then flicked away in embarrassment, self-consciously settling on her bandaged arms. She pursed her lips and might’ve rolled her body away from him, but he suspected that she really was too exhausted to properly evade him.

“Can I sit down?” Sam asked. When she didn’t answer, he took the liberty of pulling an armchair up to the side of her bed. “I wanted to check on you, to see how you’re doing.”

“You don’t know me.” She spoke so quietly that Sam had to scoot a few inches closer. “We haven’t met.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Either way, you’re my friend and I’m concerned about you.” Sam gave her a few seconds to process what he’d said and potentially argue with him, but she only blinked slowly. “Do you know why you hurt yourself?”

“I… I think so,” she hesitantly replied. "I wanted to know if I feel pain.... And—and after I started, I just... kept going. I want—I wanted it to stop."

“You certainly look like someone who’s in pain.” Sam offered her that validation. “Do you remember what physical pain feels like? Do you have the memory from before you died?”

“Yeah. When I was fourteen I was biking down a hill. I slipped on some loose gravel and skidded along the ground; I lost most of the skin on my arm….” Her face dimmed as she stared at the bandages. “Alicia lost most of the skin on her arm.”

“Did cutting yourself hurt?” He kept his tone somewhere along the lines of neutral interest. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was judging her.

“Not as much as I would’ve thought.” Her words seemed heavy, burdened by her shame and disappointment.

Sam nodded subtly with profound appreciation for both her discovery and the unease it had created in her. “Depression can do that.”

Alicia shifted her body so that she could look him in the eyes. Her brow was furrowed slightly in confusion, but her lips were relaxed instead of scowling. She was curious—a very welcome emotion, all things considered.

“How do you know I’m depressed?” she asked warily.

Sam gave a little shrug. “I imagine I would be if I was in your position.”

“You’re a person,” she countered.

“And you aren’t?”

She didn’t have a comeback for that. They stared at each other: him with a friendly smile on his face, her trying to figure out what he was getting at.

Sam started checking the teapot that was on the nightstand; it was still warm. He began pouring himself a cup of tea in an attempt to fill the silence with an act of utter normalcy while giving her whatever time she needed.

“I… I don’t think I have a soul,” she replied after almost a minute.

“I didn’t have a soul for about a year and a half," Sam commented, then sipped his tea. “Even though I was a bit disjointed back then, I was still a person.”

She inched toward the head of the bed in an attempt at partially sitting up to give him more of her attention. He put down his teacup and helped reposition the pillows for her. Her eyes were more lively and her mouth moved a bit, experimenting with voicing a thought.

“What do you mean by disjointed?”

“I felt numb. I was confused about what was happening to me, but I wasn’t really scared. Nothing scared me.” Sam pursed his lips at the unpleasant memory. “Things didn’t feel as real—I think I was fine with that at the time, once I knew why everything was the way it was.”

“Do you hate him?”

Sam didn’t respond at first. He knew that she was probably drawing parallels between herself and the version of him that had existed without a soul. He didn’t want to be dismissive or insulting to his former self and risk her taking it as a reflection on herself as opposed to him. But at the same time he wasn’t prepared to lie to her in some shortsighted ploy to protect her. She’d already lived through too much deception in her short life.

“There’s no ‘him,’ not in the way most people think of it. He’s just me under different circumstances.” Sam chewed his lip a bit, struggling to find the right words to explain the relationship. “When I was him…. He did things that I wouldn’t do now, but I understand why he made those choices. I don’t hate him. I used to a little, back before I started trying to accept myself.”

“What kinds of things did you do back then, things you wouldn’t do now?”

“I was single-minded, mostly about hunting. I wanted to be as good a hunter as I could, and…” Sam swallowed a bit of his emotion. “...I was unrelenting. I killed people that didn’t need to die, because it was efficient.”

“There was something wrong with you, because you didn’t have a soul,” she suggested.

“I didn’t have a soul because there was something wrong with me. There’s a difference.” Sam pointed out the false equivalence. “I’ve known plenty of people without souls who’ve been better than I was. A human, angels, vampires, even a demon or two—”

“But they’re….” She looked around, eyes trying to avoid his. “I don’t know who I am or what’s real.”

“Soul or not, I’ve been in a similar position a few times before,” Sam offered, tapping experience gained from far too many incidents for a single lifetime. “I’ve been confused about reality, not being sure if I can believe my own eyes or my memories. It’s frightening.”

“Are you still frightened?”

“Sometimes, but over the years I’ve gotten better.” Sam smiled for her benefit, but also at the realization that it was the truth. “That’s why I’m here, talking to you about this. Maybe I don't understand everything about what you're going through, but you trying to explain it to me... that's the foundation we build on. That's how we try to make it all less frightening."

“It’s not the same.” She shook her head. “You’re real.”

“And I’m saying that you’re real. Maybe you aren’t human, but you’re definitely a person.”

“I’m a puppet.”

“Puppets don’t have existential crises.”

He expected her to argue with him, but she just sat for a moment. Her chest heaved a few times with a series of what he hoped were deep, calming breaths. She looked back down at her bandaged arms for a long while, then up at him.

“What am I supposed to do?”

His heart nearly ached with sympathy and a glimmer of hope. “You’re going to hurt.” He got right to the hard truth—she deserved the truth. “Your brother isn’t going to erase the pain anymore and he won’t be telling you what to do.”

“He… he was just trying to….” Alicia started tearing up.

Sam slowly moved to sit down on the bed next to her, carefully telegraphing his intent and watching for signs that she was uncomfortable. He gently pulled her into a hug and could feel her begin sobbing. She tried to wrap her arms around him, but her forearms were too damaged or too painful to really manipulate. Instead she rolled her shoulders forward, burying as much of herself in his embrace as possible.

“You’ve been violated, betrayed—I get that. I know your brother had good intentions, but it was selfish of him to do that to you. You’re allowed to be upset.” Sam assured her, then held her back away from him so that he could look her in the eyes. “It’s going to take a long time for the trust to come back. You two trusting each other. You trusting yourself. But I want you to know that I trust you.”

“Sam, I….” Alicia’s mouth moved, but she couldn’t get the words out. She looked down and shook her head in a distinctly ashamed tell.

“It’s okay. You can tell me anything," Sam encouraged her. “I won’t be upset.”

“What… what…” Her breath hitched as she started crying again. “What if I’m evil?”

He wrapped her in another hug and held her tightly. She nuzzled into his chest, allowing herself to be comforted—something for which he was deeply grateful. His hand softly rubbed her back as she wept.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Let it out.”

When she was done sobbing, she looked incredibly exhausted—understandably so. He carefully helped her into a sitting position, leaning her against the headboard. She partially drew her knees up toward her chest, but she didn’t seem nearly as withdrawn. While she was repositioning, Sam grabbed a box of tissues for her, then picked up the teapot. He held it, ready to pour a second cup, then looked to her. After a moment she nodded.

“You know, worrying that you might be evil is actually a good sign.” Sam moved to hand her the teacup, but realized she might have trouble holding it with her injured arms. He gingerly held the cup up to be in front of her lips, then gave a diminutive, apologetic shrug. A reflective smile flickered on her face before she leaned forward and took a sip. “Let me tell you a story. Back when I was a little younger than you, I started getting psychic visions….”

#spn fanfic #spn fanfiction #Supernatural fanfic #supernatural fanfiction #Sam Winchester #max banes #alicia banes #spn #supernatural #spn 12x20 #twigs & twine & tasha banes

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mothergwendoline-blog · 5 years ago

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Disclaimer: This blog contains discussion of suicide and depression. If this makes you feel unsafe, please leave.

The Greatest Act of Kindness

So I made it back into the psych ward. The funny thing about talking to emergency psychiatric services is that they’re often wrong when it comes to environmentalism. Which is hardly their fault, but it makes for difficult conversation when they ask why I want to kill myself. I tell them the planet is dying. They tell me;

“But you don’t have to worry about that! Good people are working hard to protect the planet. And even if they weren’t, human civilization won’t end for hundreds of years!”

This is heroically naïve. So I correct them politely. I tell them that young people like me can’t expect to live until old age, that the world will see two billion climate refugees by the end of the century, that the ice caps and permafrost are melting, the seas are rising, heatwaves ravage arable land, fresh water is running out, plastic fills the oceans, insects are facing their Armageddon already, the Arctic is literally on fire, the Clathrate Gun has likely already been fired, we’re in the middle of an extinction event and, to put it bluntly, we’re all going to die. Then I get told to go to the hospital.

I presume I’m admitted primarily for suicidal ideation as opposed to apocalyptic visions but to me they are inextricably linked. I want to die primarily because the world is ending but all emergency services hear is “suicidal”. I wonder how many other calls are made due to climate grief and if I have any siblings near me in the death throes of despair. The world is overpopulated, I contribute nothing to actively benefiting the planet and halting climate change, I may as well be dead.

So on Wednesday around midday a staff member from the psychiatric ward paid a visit to my home and picked me up to be voluntarily admitted and watched so I can’t kill myself. I have a bedroom to myself, everyone here does. It’s actually reasonably large, warm, cozy and the bed is big enough for someone as tall and fat as me. I’m not allowed to vape in the patio or garden, the smoking area is a dirty little patch of concrete out the front with three deck chairs. The other patients here are quiet and all as sullen as I am for the most part. I get checked on every hour to make sure I haven’t made an attempt on my life and we get notified when food is served. The food is not vegetarian but I am too depressed to care. I wonder about the other patients and check my privilege. For although my family is poor, I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, three meals a day and basic hygiene. Do the other patients have this at home? My guess is some of them don’t from the things I can hear. For them, the psych ward must be almost enjoyable.

Because I’m voluntary, I’m not placed in the secure ward and I’m allowed to leave during the day which is essential for maintaining my exercise regime. Wednesday is my rest day but otherwise I have maintained regular exercise and intermittent fasting. Thankfully, I have not gained weight. I haven’t lost weight but I’ve managed to maintain a balance, which is fairly normal for the first few weeks of concentrated diet and exercise.

I don’t know if I feel any better; not really for the most part. But I have people watching over me making sure I can’t do anything. It’s petty little solace but I am determined to reach my goals before I kill myself on the footsteps of government. That’s the sole reason I admitted myself. Not to prevent suicide entirely but to postpone it. Of course, this I cannot reveal to psychiatric services or they may commit me.

In the meanwhile I have little to do and am driven mad with boredom. There are no activities in this house, I occupy myself solely with writing. I have little peace other than words in this place, my blog and my stories. Hospital time moves slower than usual days outside. I feel itchy with restlessness but as it is I am already living life an hour at a time, trying to make it through the minutes without planning to kill myself. I want to drag my fat fatigued body into one of the bathrooms, lock the door and lay myself down on the linoleum and slit my wrists open under the shower and watch the blood go down the drain. That was how I did it the last two times I attempted, it’s a peaceful and humbling way to go.

I do not know when I will be discharged from the psychiatric ward, perhaps in a week’s time they say. My medication will be checked but as it is I’m already on a powerful dose of anti-psychotics and anti-depressants. I am being enrolled in a group therapy service and first need to be assessed to see whether I am suitable for group therapy.

The nurses on the psychiatric ward differ greatly from the incredibly helpful and homely to the jaded and bitter drones just working a paycheck. I’m told that whenever I feel suicidal I must go to the nurses, talk to them and try have a conversation about my troubles. “They are trained professionals” my counselor told me. So today when I saw an article about the arctic wildfires and heatwaves in the Northern hemisphere and fell into a deep depressive anxiety, I did what I was told and sought out help.

“Have you taken your PRN meds?”

“Yes” I say.

“What usually helps when you are in a state like this?”

“Talking to people about my fears”

“What else?”

“Nothing” I answer truthfully.

I’m told to take some more PRN and sit in the lounge and try distract myself with writing. So much for professional therapy. I hate it in the lounge, the other patients only ever watch the most mind numbing dribble on TV. Friends, The Chase, The Simpsons (the bad new episodes, not the golden years), other game shows, and the news. I hate the news. I can’t stand it. It sickens me and hits something deep and existential in my brain. Seeing the flashing play-by-play repeats of global horrors drives me insane.

It’s gotten to the stage where I no longer know what a healthy environment and lifestyle is to me anymore. Whenever they discharge me, what will I occupy myself with other than diet, exercise and seeking employment to fund transition? These are all worthy goals but they are not purpose or belonging, and where to belong is harder still to discern. And I know whatever menial employment I find myself in will hardly suffice either. Writing is all I have. It is my world.

I think what makes my life so draining and complicated is that I know suicide is my inevitability, so it is hard to think of any future or purpose other than death. Whenever I take my medication, go to therapy or get admitted to the psych ward, I only see it as postponing the inevitable. I know I’m going to kill myself in about five years’ time and I know where I’ll do it. In the meanwhile, everything I do feels like idle busywork passing the time. My life is an ethereal state of prolonged palliative care, only I am the only one who knows I’m terminally ill. But it doesn’t feel like an illness and I wonder whether it is. I feel calm, collected and certain. The planet and society are sick, not me, I am merely a symptom of a broken world. When humans rape and pillage nature so brutally and selfishly as they have done, what can be expected but for people such as myself to seek escape? To me, suicide is the greatest act of kindness I can show myself.

Mother Gwendoline

#Apocalypse #Climate change suicide #Climatechangesuicide #Environment #Environmentalism #Fitness #Hospital #LGBT #LGBTQ #Lifestyle #Medication #Psych ward #Psychiatry #psychology #Suicide #Trans #Trans woman #Transgender #weight loss

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singingwordwright · 7 years ago

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The Sebastian Manifesto v 2.0

I conceived most of this meta during the hiatus between seasons 2a and 2b, and wrote and published it after episode 2x11 once we finally meta Sebastian. However, now that we’ve come to the midway point in 2b and seen a major reveal with Sebastian, I feel like it needs updating. It hasn’t been entirely Jossed yet, not by a long shot, but there’s definitely a few parts where it needs some adjustment. I’m editing some of the existing, but I may miss a few bits here and there. Most of the changes are going to be in the new sections.

Sections 1-3 are what I’ve posted before, sections 4 and 5 are new.

I’m going to start off by saying that I DO NOT SHIP SEBASTIAN AND IZZY. Don’t let the title fool you. I think Izzy is going to play an important role in the Sebastian storyline, but not on a romantic level. Don’t even go there, please.

Most of this meta, you can find in various other posts I’ve made along the way, and particularly scattered through my episode-by-episode recaps from Season 2a onward. What I’m saying here is nothing particularly new, it’s just condensed into this one particular post. Which is a long-ass post. Be sure to buckle up.

I will also point out that I could be entirely long. Part of my goal in posting this is to get it out there so I can play a game of “let’s see what I got right” with myself as the season progresses.

I’m going to put this behind a cut because it’s quite long and contains spoilers from the books that may or may not come to pass in the show. What follows is discussion about what I think they’re going to do with Sebastian in the show, and how vital a role Izzy is going to play in it.

1. The ALDERTREE-IS-SEBASTIAN theory: not quite as defunct (or debunked) as you may assume

I follow a lot of Shadowhunters fans, and thus most spoilers and meta about Shadowhunters crosses my dash sooner or later. If there has been any official confirmation debunking this theory, I haven’t seen it. If it exists, please link it to me, and I will officially rescind this part of my meta and admit I’m wrong.

Nonetheless, a lot of people appear to have moved on from the idea that Aldertree was Sebastian in disguise, since we didn’t get confirmation of it at the end of Season 2a. That’s definitely understandable; the end of 2a would have been the perfect time to reveal that there had been a snake in the Institute’s bosom the entire time.

On the surface, it would appear the connection between Aldertree and Sebastian was weak to begin with. They both have English accents, they both (supposedly) hail from the London Institute, and Aldertree isn’t a nice guy so those of us who knew about Sebastian wanted to make sense of that by assuming he’s the Really Not Nice Guy we all knew was coming down the pike. And on the surface, that’s it. That’s all that links the two of them together.

Underneath the surface, though, it’s a lot more.

First of all, Aldertree isn’t just a not-nice guy. He’s either terminally stupid, or he’s in league with Valentine actively working on an agenda that doesn’t benefit the Institute.

Note the edit I made there. One aspect of this meta that HAS been somewhat Jossed is the idea that Sebastian is working with Valentine on Valentine’s agenda. Given the end of 2x15 and the sneak peek we’ve seen of 2x16, I think it’s safe to say that he’s not actually allied with Valentine. However, it’s still possible that, as Aldertree, he positioned himself as an ally and colluded with Valentine. His agenda, however, appears to be far different.

Regardless of where you stand on the Sebastian theory, what we see from Aldertree in Season 2a isn’t just a bunch of random bad-guy mustache twirling. In the end, he does actually help Valentine achieve what Valentine is trying to achieve.

And a large part of that takes the shape of an organized campaign to drive wedges between the Lightwood siblings (including Jace,) thereby weakening the power structure in the Institute.

He isolates Jace, first by making him a fugitive (2x01)…

…then by making the other Shadowhunters in the Institute doubt him and finally by driving him out (2x06.)

He isolates Izzy, first by making her choose between Alec’s life and turning Jace over the the Clave (2x03)…

…then by trying to get her addicted to yin fen (2x05.)

When Aldertree attempts to use her yin fen dependence to get her to spy on Clary, Izzy begins isolating herself (2x07) because by that point she’s been forced to betray the trust of someone she cares about twice and she knows no one she cares about is safe.

When Aldertree realizes she’s slipped the hook with regard to the yin fen, he tries simply charming her instead, but it’s too late.

Jace and Izzy being isolated means Alec is isolated. Still, Aldertree produces a convenient tale of tragic lost Downworlder/Shadowhunter love in order to distract Alec and cut him off from his most powerful ally, a warlock who has successfully opposed and thwarted the Circle more than once. (More on this later.)

But none of this necessarily means Aldertree is furthering Valentine’s agenda for his own purposes, right? He could just be a random bad guy.

Except…no. There’s more to it than that. Because weakening someone by isolating them from their loved ones is a play right out of Valentine’s book. One of his favorite plays, in fact. Our loved ones serve as our conscience, the better angels of our nature. They provide rational thought when we can’t see things clearly. This is why it was so important to cut Jace off from his found family, so that they couldn’t provide the antidote to the poison he kept pouring in Jace’s ear about demon blood and “to love is to destroy” and so forth.

With the Lightwood siblings splintered apart and distracted by their own worries, no one—including the Best Forensic Pathologist in New York--thought to run a DNA test on Jace and Clary to confirm their mutual parentage, or to try to figure out just what sort of demon blood Jace had in him and whether or not Clary had the same. They had no time or opportunity to compare notes and see the way they were being individually manipulated.

There are other ways in which Aldertree served Valentine’s purposes, so much so that it seems obvious to me that Aldertree abetting Valentine in whatever capacity you choose to believe

How did Aldertree know about Jace’s falcon? (2x04) Look at the confusion on Jace’s face there. I don’t think that’s a story Jace would have willingly confided in just anyone, so how did the Clave’s representative find out?

How did Valentine know about Clary and Alec’s visit to Iris Rouse (2x05 and 2x08?) Unless he has spies on Clary 24/7, the only way he could have learned about that is because Alec and Clary went back to the Institute and made a report about Iris’s warlock-baby mill, and that report found its way to Valentine.

But here’s the kicker:

In 2x09, when Alec asks about Izzy’s whereabouts and expresses his suspicion of Aldertree, says he knows Aldertree is hiding something. Aldertree responds by threatening to make Alec submit to a psych evaluation “after what happened at your brother’s party.”

Aldertree knows what happened at Max’s party (2x08.) This means he also knows Magnus’s counter-spell book was stolen.

Aldertree is Head of the Institute. He has to know which warlock created the Institute’s wards. That would certainly be on record and considering Magnus’s close relationship with one high ranking member of the Institute, Aldertree would have checked Magnus’s records.

Even if we assume Aldertree is too stupid to realize what implications there are for the Institute’s wards in Valentine stealing a book that can undo every spell Magnus has ever cast, Magnus would never be negligent enough not to notify Aldertree that the wards were vulnerable (nor could he possibly be stupid enough not to put it together that they were at risk.)

Aldertree knew about the missing spellbook and HAS TO HAVE KNOWN about the vulnerability to the wards. And yet, what’s his first line in the beginning of 2x10 when Madzie brings down the wards? He blames lax security. He never got another warlock in to plug the security leak.

He left the door standing wide-open for Valentine.

His scene with Alec up on the roof in 2x10 is very obviously a delaying tactic. He brags about being able to hack into the system from there, and then can’t do it. Really?

Then there’s the story he tells Alec about his lost love. Shadowhunters and Downworlders can never be together because Downworlders will always give in to their demonic nature. Golly…that’s just identical to what Valentine keeps telling Jace and Clary, isn’t it? And maybe it’s not an exclusively Valentinian philosophy, but the way he uses it to try to get inside Alec’s head and do a mindfuck to turn him against a powerful ally is, again, straight out of Valentine’s playbook.

(Why doesn’t he just kill Alec? I’ll get to that later.)

Conclusion: Aldertree was abetting Valentine. But does that really mean he’s Sebastian, you may ask?

Well, again, there’s the whole thing about weakening Izzy, Jace, and Alec by driving wedges between them and isolating them from one another. Yes, it’s a trick straight out of Valentine’s playbook, but more importantly, it’s a very intimate trick. It’s the sort of trick you learn by being mentored by someone, or by growing up with an abusive parent who did it to you. Aldertree wasn’t just abetting Valentine, at some point he was close enough to Valentine to truly learn and adopt his philosophies.

2x14 offers us another clue, as well. Sebastian tells Raphael he “always knew” Izzy was getting her vampire venom straight from the source. The wording is odd because at this point, Sebastian has been around for a couple weeks maybe. The wording, however, seems to indicate a knowledge going back much father than that. But if, as Aldertree, he sussed out what Izzy was doing, it would make more sense.

What ties Aldertree and Sebastian together most convincingly, is Izzy.

2. ALDERTREE AND IZZY (an obsession is born)

Aldertree zeroes in on Izzy right from the beginning.

In 2x01 when threatening Izzy and Alec, he goes immediately for the deruning threat, and he looks at Izzy while he’s doing it, knowing that particular threat would carry weight with her. He also keeps a seemingly casual/amused eye on Izzy and Clary’s training session, clearly knowing they’re up to something (more on that later.)

In 2x03, Aldertree makes his first move. He forces Izzy to betray one brother to save the other. And he acts benevolent about it, claims he’s trying to save Jace’s life. He’s driving a wedge between Izzy and Jace while simultaneously attempting to position himself as someone who just wants to help her.

2x05 is where things get really interesting, and I admit this particular point is mostly supposition. I keep wondering: if the Soul Sword’s purpose was so super-secret that Aldertree needed to send an expedition to the Adamant Citadel to get input from the Iron Sisters, how did Valentine know? The obvious answer is that the Soul Sword’s purpose isn’t as secret as we’re led to believe.

If Aldertree is abetting Valentine, especially if he’s convinced Valentine he’s an ally, Valentine quite possibly would have told him what the sword does. Even if Valentine didn’t, whoever it was within the Clave that DOES (and someone has to, or, again, how did Valentine find out) likely would have in order to warn Aldertree about what Valentine might intend.

There are at least two ways Aldertree might have known about the sword. So…why send Izzy to the Iron Sisters?

Well, let’s assume Izzy’s lifelong fascination with and admiration of the Iron Sisters is fairly common knowledge. She grew up in the Institute, and it’s not something she would have had reason to hide. It would be known to the people she grew up around and quite possibly in her personnel records.

If Aldertree wanted a hook in Izzy, he’d have to offer her something she yearned for badly enough that she would accept the yin fen despite the risks. The mission to the Iron Sisters was never about the Soul Sword. It was about Izzy.

He dangles the Iron Sisters mission (by way of letting it drop to Jace that he’s organizing it) to get into her good graces, and possibly to get her to accept the yin fen. Then he uses the yin fen dependency to try to get her to spy for him. What he doesn’t count on is the purity trial at the Adamant Citadel, which makes it clear to Izzy just how much danger she’s in. She gives the yin fen back and he loses his hook in her. We don’t see him in 2x07 and 2x08, but then we get to 2x09, and this is where it really all comes together.

In 2x01 when Izzy is advising Clary, she cites Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Remember how Aldertree was keeping an eye on that whole thing?

In 2x09, when Izzy comes to see Aldertree and he unsuccessfully asks her out, there’s a very pronounced close-up of a copy of The Art of War on his desk. And later in the episode, when Alec accuses Aldertree of hiding something regarding Izzy, Aldertree is reading the book, and again, there’s a close-up of the cover.

In TV and film, you don’t do a close-up of a prop like that unless it has significance. The producers wanted us to know he was reading the same book Izzy had been advising Clary from. This is a book that advises things like isolating your enemies in order to weaken them. Don’t let them join forces. Try to conquer the city without warfare or siege, subdue enemy forces without fighting.

And, of course, as Izzy points out: to know your enemy you must become your enemy.

Now that philosophy makes Aldertree’s timely anecdote to Alec on the roof in 2x10 about Shadowhunter/Downworlder romance a lot more convenient and suspicious, doesn’t it?

And that’s what leads us to Sebastian.

3. SEBASTIAN AND IZZY (Becoming your “enemy”)

There’s absolutely no reason to believe the Inquisitor, Imogen Herondale, when she says that Aldertree is in Idris facing reprimand. She also said the Soul Sword is in Clave custody, and we know that’s a lie. Those of us who have read the books also know Sebastian must have been the one to take it (one assumes the reason he didn’t destroy it as per the vision Ithuriel gave Clary and Jace is because it wasn’t charged.)

Why would the Inquisitor lie about Aldertree’s whereabouts?

First, because it would be a massive loss of face for the Clave if it were known that their golden boy, the one sent to whip the New York Institute into shape, was a traitor working with Valentine. So if he disappeared with the sword, they would want to cover that up before the Institutes started losing faith in the Clave’s leadership.

Second, the Clave is probably claiming the Soul Sword is secure and in custody because if the Downworld found out it’s in the wind—in the hands of a traitor who probably aided Valentine—the Downworld is going to lose its collective shit even more than it already has following the massacre in the Institute.

So Aldertree/Sebastian is at large with the sword, except he can’t bring himself to stay that way because of what he’s left behind.

Namely, Izzy.

In the books, Sebastian has an incestuous obsession with Clary. But the show has been trying to downplay the incest angle. Maybe that’s because of network censorhip, or maybe it’s because the producers in their wisdom decided it was a disgusting sideplot that needed to be shelved. At any rate, aside from a few hints of lingering feeling, they basically dropped Clace until they could reveal that Jace wasn’t Clary’s brother.

It’s Sebastian, not Jace, who is Clary’s brother. If they bring in that obsession, they’re going to be right smack back in the middle of stuff they’ve been making a concerted effort to omit from the show. I admit, 2x12 has called my theory here into question, since obviously Sebastian DID go there with Clary, at least a little, but mostly they’ve been focused on his interactions with Izzy.

So what I truly believe they’ve done here is transfer Sebastian’s fixation to Izzy. Especially in light of the recent interview where Emeraude remarks something to the effect of things aren’t going to be the way they were in the book, they’ll end up in the same place, but they’ll take a different route to get there.

There’s a REASON our first scenes with Sebastian are between him and Izzy. That’s significant. And look at what those scenes contain.

Look at the parallel here, between this and 2x05 when Aldertree applies Izzy’s first dose of yin fen. While this scene isn’t as blatantly sexualized, there is often something sexual overtone to a grown adult ingesting something from another adult’s hand. Even if there weren’t, the fact that Izzy is once again willingly accepting an unknown substance from someone she has no reason to trust is parallel enough.

But beyond that, look at who Sebastian is portraying himself as being.

He’s a yin fen addict who has bravely kicked the habit, and he has just what she needs to get better. He’s is a great cook who effortlessly takes care of people with delicious food. He’s a child with a troubled relationship with his mother who still manages to be okay.

Sebastian hasn’t just “become” Izzy, he’s become the person Izzy wants to be. Someone Izzy will admire and want to emulate. Someone she’ll be grateful to for rescuing her.

And in the process he’s undoing the damage he did by getting her hooked on yin fen, because look at the glance Izzy and Aldertree share on the roof in 2x10. He feels remorse for that, or at least he understands that he’s harmed and endangered someone he wishes to possess.

Does this mean they’ve transferred most, if not all, of the Clary/Sebastian plot to Izzy? Maybe? I don’t know. But I believe Sebastian’s driving motivation is going to be his obsession with Izzy, rather than with Clary.

Why Izzy? I don’t know.

It could be because she outthinks him in 2x01 in order to advise Clary on how to get around him.

It could be because she somehow managed to slip his yin fen blackmail hook, even at desperate cost to herself, and he admires that strength.

It could be because he homed in on her as the weak link of the Lightwood sibling chain in 2x03 and something about how much she loves her brothers touches him and sparks an obsession.

That last one is probably what’s going to be closest to the way things play out. And it could have very interesting implications for Alec. Because in 2x11, Sebastian reacts evasively (looking away, changing the subject) or violently (burning himself) when Izzy’s love for Alec comes up. I’ll come back to the burning thing in a bit.

Keep in mind, if Aldertree was Sebastian, Alec has thwarted him and stood between him and Izzy. He’s thrown down with Sebastian and challenged Sebastian’s “claim” to Izzy. And there’s no way he will ever win Izzy the way he wants her unless he finds a way to undermine Alec. But he can’t kill Alec, because he’d definitely lose any chance with Izzy (hence the reason Aldertree takes Alec to the roof to get him away from the fighting and keep him busy/distracted, instead of killing him.)

Also, Alec is the leader Sebastian tried and failed to be. Alec effectively ousted Aldertree as Head of the Institute. It very well could be that, just as the show is transferring some or all of Sebastian’s obsession to Izzy instead of Clary, they may be transferring some or all of his obsessive jealousy to Alec instead of Jace.

What this means in terms of the “dark parabatai”/twinning thing, I have no clue. I suspect, given what Dominic Sherwood said in an interview recently about how Jace isn’t going to be catching a break anytime soon, even as far as he’s been told about Season 3, that that storyline is still going to play out pretty much the same.

In the books, iirc, Sebastian is jealous of the fact that Valentine loved Jace more than him even though Sebastian is Valentine’s true son and Jace isn’t. And he’s jealous of the fact that Clary loves Jace and can’t give Sebastian the time of day.

It may be that the show will focus more on the family bonds instead of the romantic bonds. The parallels between Maryse and Jocelyn’s imperfect mothering are an obvious starting point. If that’s the case, if the focus of his jealousy and obsession is familial love rather than whatever it was book-Sebastian was after with Clary, then certain events coming up later this season are going to be particularly tragic.

What will Clary and Jace be doing if they take those storylines away? I really haven’t the vaguest idea. I think what’s most likely is that we may see a hybrid of my theory (where it’s primarily focused on Izzy and Alec) and the book canon that’s focused on Clary/Jace. I honestly have no idea what that would look like; the same story but just more spread out and inclusive of these characters as a whole group, I guess? Mostly I’m just thrilled at the idea of them taking a major storyline like “being the object of the bad guy’s obsession” away from Clary and giving it to Izzy. Because that’s freaking awesome.

4. SO WHAT IS SEBASTIAN’S AGENDA

Given the fact that in s2ep15, Valentine was sincerely unaware of who Sebastian was, and also the preview we’ve seen for s2ep16, I think it’s safe to say that either he hasn’t been working with Valentine, or if he was (especially as Aldertree) he was doing so to further his own agenda.

What is that agenda? Good question.

I think Valentine believed Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern to be either dead or banished to another realm. Remember this moment in 2x11?

In s2ep15, Magnus reveals to us that what the agony rune showed him was not the worst thing that ever happened to him, but the worst thing he ever did. The torment of the agony rune isn’t about sorrow or loss or helplessness, it’s about guilt.

That’s an important distinction.

We know Valentine experimented on his and Jocelyn’s son with demon blood. And we know from Jocelyn in 2x02 that Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern had not just one flower-killing mishap, but a whole series of incidents in which it was made patently obvious that he was partly demonic.

I believe what we saw in 2x11 while Valentine is being tortured is the memory of what he did to Jonathan. Either he was trying to somehow “purify” Jonathan of any excessive demon-nature and thought he had killed him instead, or he decided Jonathan was beyond salvaging and performed a ritual to banish him to a demon realm (likely Edom, which is the joint province of Lilith, whose blood he used in his experiment on Jonathan) and considered him gone forever.

This would explain why Valentine is so invested in Jace. In the books, he deemed Jace too soft-hearted and wrote him off, sending him to be raised by the Lightwoods while he focused all his attention on Jonathan/Sebastian. What we’ve seen on the show, however, is a bit of role-reversal there. I think it’s Sebastian he wrote off, so he could focus his plans on Jace.

Clearly, Sebastian has taken a dim view of all this and is angling for revenge.

I think Sebastian plans to destroy the Shadowhunters (or at least most of the Shadowhunters.) And he’s trying to foment conflict with the Downworld to accomplish it, which is why it was in his interest to abet Valentine’s goals during Season 2a.

In the books, it’s eventually revealed that Sebastian is the (in an older form) Seelie Queen’s lover. We’re already seeing hints of the two of them working toward the same agenda, in the way that the Seelie Queen tries to create a rift between Simon and Clary/Jace, the way she emphasizes “they always choose their own kind” (which could very well be words right out of Sebastian’s own mouth, if he believes Valentine tried to kill or banished him in favor of Jace.)

But let’s look at what Sebastian is doing on that front as well.

2x09: (as Aldertree) Asking Izzy out on a date once he realizes she’s going to a vampire to get her yin fen fix.

2x10: (as Aldertree) He tries to create a divide between Alec and Magnus by telling Alec a tragic tale of tragic Shadowhunter/Downworlder romance-gone-wrong.

2x12: Disregarding Clary’s relationship with Luke to convince her she’s without family, and asking her out on a date, thereby attempting to get between her and Simon.

2x13: Probably being somehow complicit/the mastermind in the whole Kaelie scheme, which was obviously an attempt to start a war between the Shadowhunters and the Downworld

2x14: Taking a discussion of Jace and Maia’s hookup and turning it around to bring Jace’s attention back to Clary (probably knowing that the Seelie Queen would later also try to nudge Jace and Clary toward each other.)

2x14: Interfering in Raphael and Izzy’s relationship to convince Raphael to walk away from Izzy.

2x14: Trying to derail the Downworld Cabinet by setting Luke up for attempting to murder Valentine.

Sebastian has a very clear pattern of trying to divide Shadowhunters from their Downworld loved ones and allies. At first I thought this was because he was working on Valentine’s Nephilim supremacist agenda, but now I think it’s the opposite. I think, like Valentine, he wants a war, but he intends for Downworlders and probably demons to come out on top and to exterminate the Shadowhunters.

And he’s not having an easy time of it. Mostly because of Izzy.

Now, I said earlier that I thought his burning himself was a violent reaction of jealousy toward Izzy’s love for Alec. I wrote that after 2x11, well before 2x15, so I really have to revamp that theory.

Again, look at those pictures of the little boy burning from 2x11. That is what happened the last time Jonathan/Sebastian loved and trusted a Shadowhunter. I think the reason we see him burning himself is because of his attachment to the Shadowhunters he’s infiltrated (particularly Izzy,) because he needs to remind himself of the pain of being betrayed by his father and why he thinks it’s necessary to do what he’s doing.

Do I like this particular plot? I’m not sure, but I see some really big potential pitfalls. Mostly because it potentially positions the Downworlders as aggressors whom the Shadowhunters need to heroically defend themselves against with deadly force, when in fact that exact opposite has been the case. It runs the risk of echoing various white supremacist propaganda that portrays people of color as aggressors against whom white people must defend themselves, and I’m really hoping they won’t go there.

However, after 2x13 we saw that the writers and producers do have some awareness of the metaphor they’re dealing with, and the show has brought two women of color into the writer’s room for Season 3, so it could be that they find a way to sidestep that trap. At least I really hope they will.

5. SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE US WITH REGARD TO THE BOOKS? (SERIOUSLY MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD)

The short answer is: I think Season 3 will be the last season of the show. Or at least it will definitely be the last season of the show that follows the books in any significant regard.

In the books, we don’t really see Sebastian depart from Valentine’s agenda until after City of Glass, where he’s killed by Jace, and then resurrected by Lilith at the end of City of Fallen Angels.

But here’s the thing: other than resurrecting Sebastian, City of Fallen Angels doesn’t do much that we really need to see on the show. Jocelyn is dead, so the whole plot with her investigating the demon babies is out of the question. We saw Simon go to a dark place, feeding off a mundane, in 2x15 so that’s done. Other than that, all that happens is the introduction of Maia’s abusive ex, Jordan Kyle (who doesn’t need to be introduced at all, thanks) and a whole lot of Clace angst (which I’d also rather be spared.)

So, again, hearkening back to Emeraude Toubia’s remarks about how the show is going to end up in the same place as the books, but take a different route to get there (and the fact that Dominic Sherwood has stated that Jace isn’t going to catch a break even well into Season 3) I think at the end of Season 2, we’re going to see the show skip past most of City of Fallen Angels and jump right into events lifted largely from City of Lost Souls for 3a and City of Heavenly Fire for 3b.

A while back, there was a bunch of excitement from the production team over some last minute casting for a character in 2x19 and 2x20.

I think that character is going to be Lilith (I also think it’s the role Sarah Hyland is going to play, but I could be wrong there, she could just as easily play the aged-up Seelie Queen or Helen Blackthorn, as other people have suggested.)

I think in 2x19 we’re going to see the history of how Valentine made Sebastian, how Sebastian’s demon blood came from Lilith. And I think in 2x20, we’re going to see Lilith do what we’re told in City of Fallen Angels that she did at the end of City of Glass: save Sebastian after Jace kills him.

But Jace also dies at the end of City of Glass. City of Fallen Angels is all about the fallout from that, but most of it could easily be bypassed and the story wouldn’t suffer one bit. In an interview this week, Dominic Sherwood talked about how at the end of this season, there’s going to be a “heartbreaking rift” between Jace and Alec. Most of us in the know about the books believed that to be Jace’s death breaking their parabatai bond, and that may very well be the case. However, instead of having Lilith go through all the CoFA hoops to create the dark parabatai/twinning, it could easily be that being resurrected at the same time somehow bonds Jace and Sebastian instead, and thus we move right into CoLS. That would make as much sense, storytelling wise, as anything else.

So, that’s where I think this is going. If the show continues beyond Season 3, it will be a show completely removed from book canon, which let’s be real has been a millstone around the show’s neck for a while now. The showrunners will have fulfilled their obligation to book fans to portray the events that are considered iconic from the books, and thereafter they will be free, especially since it’s well-known that they don’t have the film rights to either Tales From Shadowhunter Academy or the Dark Artifices trilogy.

Could be interesting. Could be a disaster. I guess we’ll see.

#shadowhunters #sebastian #izzy #meta #shadowhunters meta #book-based meta #sh speculation

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imaginebeauty · 8 years ago

Text

Second Chances // Part 14

Second Chances Masterlist

Masterlist

Words: 2052 Pairings: Bellamy x Reader; OC Grounder x Reader Warnings: Injury, Torture-ish; Violence Episode: 2x03 Reapercussions; 2x04 Many Happy Returns; 2x05 Human Trials; 2x06 Fog of War; 2x07 Long Into an Abyss; 2x08 Spacewalker

Author’s Note: I’m tryna speed through S2 and get to the much more exciting events of S3 that I have planned, so please bare with me. Please leave feedback, comments, and reblog to share the love. Tagging is still open so hit me up and I would love to tag you to help keep you updated.

You walked beside Monty, both of you looking for Clarke. You rounded the corner, almost bumping into Jasper and Maya.

“Jasper. Have you seen Clarke? Nobody has,” Monty asked, before looking to Maya. “Hey,” He said, only a hint of warmth before looking back to Jasper.

“Hey. You guys should uh-“ Maya started.

“No no, we’re gonna have to breakfast. I’ll meet you in line,” Jasper interrupted. She smiled and waved before leaving.

“I’ve got a bad feeling,” You stated. You felt uneasy and worried. You knew how anxious Clarke could be, always expecting the worst, always paranoid someone was out to get her and the rest of the 100.

“Look I’d love to talk to you about Clarke any time in my entire life except right now,” Jasper stated without a care, with no worry for his friend.

“Hey! What if she’s in trouble?” You snapped at him, taken aback by his lack of concern.

“Trouble? She’s Clarke, whatever she’s up to I’m sure she can handle it,” Jasper said, before turning around and leaving you and Monty standing there dumbstruck.

You sat next to Monty in the mess hall, silently eating your food as Claire de Lune played in the background. You looked up to see Jasper but instantly look back to your food.

“Hey. Nice to see you too,” Jasper snorted.

“Sorry, I was hoping you would be Clarke,” You stated.

“Have you seen her?” He asked, brushing off your statement.

“No, I don’t think she slept in her bed last night,” Monty answered as Jasper sat down in front of him. “What do we do?”

“Maya has access to everything through her job, maybe she can snoop around. If Clarke’s in trouble, she can find out,” He said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

You glanced at Monty, an unsure look on your face. “I don’t know but Clarke doesn’t trust them. What if she’s right?” You asked, looking back to Jasper.

“We can trust Maya, you still think we can’t? Besides what choice to we have?” Jasper argued, and frankly, he was right. You sighed in defeat but nodded slightly.

You and Monty mumbled back and forth, mentioning anything that could’ve happened, but everything seemed improbable.

“You find out something?” Monty asked as Maya strutted up to you and the two boys.

She looked at y’all with a weird an expression, prompting Jasper to ask,”What is it?”

She glanced at you, before shying away and returning her gaze to Jasper. “Apparently Clarke had some sort of breakdown, just snapped. Started pulling out her stitches trying to hurt herself,” Maya stated, not daring to meet your eyes, which you found odd.

“Where is she now?” You asked.

“Psych ward being monitored. I talked to a friend who works there and they think it might a couple days before anyone is allowed to see her,” Maya said, again not meeting your eyes.

“We’ll see about that,” You stated, before walking away, causing Monty to shrug apologetically before following behind you.

“And you believe him?”

“Yes, I believe him. Clarke left us, Y/N. She faked being crazy to get into medical and she took off,” Jasper argued, which you could see her doing.

“Ok, ok. Well, we need to go after her,” You stated.

“Where would you go?” He asked.

“The dropship for starters,” You answered as if he should have already known that.

Not even a moment later, Maya walks into the dorm. You didn’t fully trust her and were way beyond beginning think she was right about these people.

“I just heard. You’re leaving?” She asked, finally looking you in the eye.

“Yes, we are,” You answered, meeting her with a cold glare.

“No, we’re not,” Jasper objected.

“What would Clarke do?” Monty asked, taking your side on the matter.

“No, you can’t. It’s too dangerous,” Maya pleaded, mainly at Jasper.

“Don’t worry. He’s a coward,” You stated, giving Jasper a cold glance.

“You can’t make her come back,” Maya stated, trying to convince Jasper.

He sighed. “Monty and Y/N are right. She’d go after me,” He said in defeat before an alarm blared through the dorm.

“Whoa. What… ?” Maya started, confused. “Radiation. There’s a containment breach,” She realized, turning around to face you all. Only this time, her face was covered in blisters and burns, much like how your arm looked after the acid fog. She started screaming in pain, yelling for help.

“Help! Help!”

“Somebody help her!”

Soon enough, the breach was fixed and some of the nurses came and rolled her out on a gurney.

Bellamy hugged Clarke tightly, glad that at least one of his friends was alive. But if Clarke was here, then maybe she brought you back too. His heart fluttered at the thought of seeing you again, being able to hug you, touch you, hear you. He hated not knowing if you were ok, he hated not being able to protect you.

He pulled away from Clarke, meeting her eyes. “Is Y/N here with you?” He asked with so much hope in his voice and a hint of a smile on his lips.

She looked up at him sadly, shaking her head. “She is still there,” She started. before informing Bellamy of Mount Weather and the Mountain men.

You sat on your bed, listing to Jasper’s pitch along with the rest of the 47.

“Guys think about what they’ve done for us. They gave us shelter, clean clothes, kept us safe from the grounders. Miller, they saved your life,” Jasper pitched.

“Dude, you puked for three days,” Miller pointed out, earning a few nods of agreements from the other teenagers.

“That was different. The normal treatments wouldn’t be as bad,” He stated, but you didn’t believe him.

“So they say,” You chimed in.

“So what then, only puking for one day? Yeah, I’m out,” Miller stated, followed by mumbles of agreements.

“Sorry Jasper, I’m out too,” Harper added.

“Yeah, same,” You answered. You didn’t trust them, no way would you willingly give up your blood to them in return to spend a whole day puking.

Jasper kept trying to persuade the 47 but was failing, when all of a sudden Maya walks in.

“Right on time..” Monty whispered, making you smirk slightly.

“Hey, guys. Jasper, I’m so glad to see you feeling better,” Maya said in her sweet voice as she fluttered her eyes at Jasper. Before you could get irritated with that, you noticed a notepad she held up reading “Act normal, they’re listening!!!” It gave you the chills, and you instantly knew that Clarke’s mistrust in them was well placed.

“Thanks, I am,” Jasper answered, acting normal as told before she turned the page.

The new page wrote, “The breach wasn’t an accident follow me!”

“I’ll see you around, I’m gonna stay with Miller and Harper,” You said with a smile before giving Monty a pat on the back with a smile.

The last thing you remembered, you were walking down the hallway listening to the music President Wallace gave you, and next thing you knew you were being dragged into some lab. There was a table in the middle of a concrete room, cages along the wall all the way around.

“Wha- What are you do-“ You started. You were interrupted when they shoved you into the room, forcing you to the table. “No, no, no, what are doing? What are you going to do to me?” You asked, frantically struggling against the straps that held you down. When your eyes landed on a large scalpel in the women’s hand, you lost it. “P-please…no, please…please,” You begged, crying from fear.

“Don’t worry. This won’t hurt,” She said, almost robotically, not a hint of emotion in her cold voice. She cut into your flesh with the scalpel, making you scream as an immense pain shot through your body. “The hip has the largest marrow pocket. We’ll begin in the aspiration there -“

“I don’t need to know the details. Just do it,” Cage interrupted, talking loud enough to be heard over your screams.

“Your father will come around, Cage,” Doctor Tsing assured, turning around to switch out the scalpel with some other tool.

He was silent for a few seconds, the room only filled with your cries. “And what is he doesn’t?” Cage asked.

“I just want to go home,” You mumbled brokenly. Everything hurt, everything burned.

“I know. So do we,” Cage stated, crushing your hopes of pleading your way out.

“Please…I just want to go home,” You whimpered, wishing that any minute Clarke and Bellamy would storm in and save you with Jessie right behind them. But as the clocked ticked, and the minutes passed, no one came to help you. Painful tears led trails down your cheeks until your body could take the pain no more. Your eyes started to flutter shut as your voice faded to nothing, the last thing you saw was the blinding light of the fluorescent lamp hanging over the operating table you limply laid on.

“Commander Lexa, we must help them,” Jessie pleaded. He knew you were in there, and it was almost as if he could feel the pain you were feeling. At night, Jessie couldn’t sleep knowing that you could be in danger.

“Why do you care so much, Jessie?” Lexa asked, giving him a questioning look.

Jessie grew up with Lexa, so speaking with her wasn’t very knew. He only called her by her formal title when Indra or other people in power were around. He looked around at the people surrounding him nervously as his fingers fidgeted around his armor.

“I want a moment alone with Jessie kom Trikru,” Lexa ordered, followed by Indra giving him an intimidating look. The rest exited accordingly, leaving the two alone together. “Answer me.”

“Lex,” He started cautiously, using the nickname he gave her when they were small. “I know one of them that is trapped in the mountain,” He stated, earning a hard look from Lexa.

“How?”

“I saved her from the acid fog..” He answered in a quieter voice, knowing he wasn’t supposed to, in fact, he was supposed to be killing them. “Lex, they aren’t bad. They don’t want to hurt us, they are just scared.”

“Why do you care so much? You know one of them, ok, but why are you so concerned with whether we help them or not?” She asked, poking for a certain answer.

“…you know why,” Jessie said, shy about admitting his feelings to his Commander.

“I do. I want to hear you say it,” Lexa stated, a smirk rising to her lips.

“I love her, Lexa, ok? We need to help them. They don’t know the Mountain Men like we do,” Jessie stated.

“I’ve heard you. We will help them, if they hand over the boy, Finn,” She stated. “I won’t tell, Jes, this conversation will stay between you and me,” Lexa stated, making Jessie sigh in relief. He knew that Indra would disapprove along with his friends and fellow soldiers.

You woke up in a cage. Your eyes shot open at the feeling of the cold metal against your skin, but quickly sunk down in your box when you remembered where you were and what was happening.

“Y/N?”

“Monty?” You noticed, voice hoarse from the hours of torture.

“Y/N, what did they do to you?” Monty asked, noticing your sunken cheeks and the purple bags under eyes. He could see the dark bruises along your wrists and ankles where you struggle against the restraints. He noticed the way you stared at the table with empty eyes as if they had taken a part of you away.

You didn’t answer, you didn’t hear what he asked, all you heard were mumbles against the ringing in your ears. “47.. they built one for each us..” You whispered, more to yourself than Monty, though he looked on ahead to see the other 45 cages.

Tagging:

@otaku-fangirlse @random-fandom-lady @blue-berry-barry-allen @krystyna-exe @in-my-dreams-200 @youtubehelpsmesurvive @damagedbrokenbuthappy @famchester @s-wood @mayasmedberg @two-worlds-collab @got17kookiesss @leenasleena-blog @okaybellarke @pinkleopardss @im-socialy-awkward-no-joke

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hamilficsfordays · 8 years ago

Text

New Beginning—Chapter Five: Colossal Load of Bullshit

Disclaimer: I don’t know Lin, nor do I know any of his friends or family.

Also posted on Ao3

Summary: Lin is distraught after losing Alexa. Alexa is feeling the same way about Lin. Things appear to be out of their control. It’s time to fight back and Vanessa knows exactly how to do so.

Rating: T for language

Words: 2874

Askbox / Masterlist / Chapter Four / Chapter Six

Lin and Vanessa headed home that night, trying to get a few hours of much needed sleep and relieving his parents of their babysitting duties.

Lin desperately tried to keep his eyes closed to no avail. He’d watched the sunrise that morning from their bedroom window, feeling the exhaustion drape over his entire body despite no desire to give in.

With only a few minutes before Sebastian was due to wake up, he headed to Alexa’s room, where he grabbed the duffel bag she’d arrived with and attempted to fill it with clothing that his mother had bought her. Being in the room without her was emotionally taxing; it wasn’t long before he was choking back tears.

When the bag was mostly full he sat for a moment on the edge of her bed, breathing; trying to accept this new reality.

Suddenly he’d remembered something, an item in his office that he felt compelled to put inside as well.

His copy of Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton was covered in notes, both written on the pages and on post-it notes. After years of working on his production, it had tons of ideas and concepts stored inside. He grabbed another post it note, writing a quick note and attaching it to the inside of the front cover before he stored it at the bottom of the duffel bag.

Alexa was forced to stay in the hospital, given fluids to rehydrate her before her psych eval. The next morning, Claudia arrived again, greeting her with a small bag of clothing.

“You can’t be serious…” she started, seeing the bag. “You realize none of this was their fault, right?”

“Nothing is set in stone yet.” she insisted. “But for the time being, it looks better if we pull you out.”

“Right. I forgot it’s only about how it looks. How someone actually feels isn’t important to you people.” she rolled her eyes.

A nurse stepped into her room then, two cups in her hand.

“I have a Plan B pill for you.” she offered, handing the cup to the teen. “If you want it.”

She took it without question, swallowing the pill with the water the nurse handed her in the other cup.

“Once you’re back to a hundred percent, they’ll relocate you to the pediatric psych ward. In the meantime,” Claudia pulled a small bag out of her purse, a collection of pills inside. “Your zoloft.”

She took that pill as well. Claudia sat in the chair on the far side of the room, her bag of Alexa’s things at her side.

“I was hoping to talk to you more about what you can expect in the coming days—” Claudia tried.

“Jesus, that sounds terrible.” she admitted before grabbing a clean gown, a towel and a bottle of body wash from the bedside table. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

She walked into the bathroom, locking the door behind her and sinking to the tile floor, groaning in frustration.

Finally she stripped, stepping into the searing hot water.

Whether it was the temperature change or something else in her system, a sudden wave of nausea caused her to vomit, stepping out of the shower and running to the toilet just in time.

She managed to carefully re-adjust the water temperature before stepping back into the shower so as to avoid a repeat incident.

A few days passed.

As the sun rose over Manhattan later that week, news of the incident began to spread like wildfire.

“Just in for you this morning, we have reports that Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of the broadway hit Hamilton, was in for quite a shock earlier this week when he was sent photos and videos via twitter of his sixteen year old daughter being raped, choked and urinated on while heavily intoxicated at a party last night by fellow male students. The victim was taken to Roosevelt hospital, treated for minor injuries and released just yesterday. Since then, the parents have reportedly had the teen removed from their home and put back in the care of the state. We’ll have more for you on this story as soon as more information is released.”

From the comfort of their living room, Lin and Vanessa suddenly felt very small.

The idea of losing their child after everything that had happened was embarrassing enough, but they had every intention of keeping that information private.

It was very clear that doing so would no longer be possible.

“Can you change the channel?” Lin asked, defeated. “I can’t listen to this.”

Vanessa grabbed the remote, jumping to another news network before realizing they were telling the same story.

“—an array of unlabeled prescription medication and traces of other drugs like cocaine, ecstasy and other opiates. These are some of the things they believe a sixteen year old girl was under the influence of when she was sexually assaulted last Thursday night. Several incriminating photos and videos of the act were posted to twitter last night by members of the Columbia Prep male lacrosse team—statewide champs for the last three years running. Not only did they post them to twitter Katie, they tagged the victim’s father, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer and star of Hamilton, in the hopes that he would see them. Now Miranda, after seeing these tweets, showed up to this party, called the police to break things up, and got an ambulance there to take his daughter to Roosevelt Hospital. She was treated there, given a psych eval and held by doctors until her release yesterday. What we do know so far is that no suspects have been taken into custody and that the foster child has since been removed from the Miranda household and reclaimed by the state.”

“Turn it off.” Lin shook his head in utter disbelief. “How can they even talk about this? It’s supposed to be confidential information.”

Vanessa turned it off, making a note on the laptop in front of her. “Only more collateral damage to add to this case.”

“V,” he reached out, taking her hand. “I’m glad you’re so passionate about taking her back, but you don’t actually expect to sue the entire state, do you?”

“Maybe I will.” She shrugged. “I have to do something. I haven’t seen you this upset in ages.” She squeezed in hand. “Even if I don’t sue, I can at least build a strong enough case to scare the shit out of them.”

“Oh, is that all?” he smiled.

“And at the very least, I got you to smile. That’s been pretty hard to do lately.”

Downtown at the orphanage, Alexa woke up in the same bed she’d had before. Staring up at the same dirty ceiling, listening to the same girls complain about bathroom space.

Only one thought seemed to frequent her mind as she headed into the shower stall that morning.

This is a colossal load of bullshit.

After another bland cereal and soy milk breakfast, she was brought in to a meeting both with Claudia and her superior Janine. Alexa had never met Janine, but seeing her for the first time revealed three truths at the exact time. She wasn’t a natural blonde, she was old enough to remember all of the eighties, like most white women her age with enough money, she’d clearly had some work done.

“How are you feeling, Alexa?” Janine carefully offered a hand to the teen as if she were afraid to break her.

“Fine…?” She sat in one of the two large chairs opposite the desk in Janine’s office, Claudia in the other.

“That’s great.” her smile was off-putting. “I was so glad to hear you made it out of the hospital safely. I hope your experience there was enjoyable.”

Alexa gave her a confused look. “You mean, after I was drugged and raped?”

“Well, I know the doctors took care of you.” she clarified.

“After that rape kit, which was easily the most invasive experience of my life…” she paused. “Well, that I can remember anyway, I was dying to get out of that hell hole.”

“I understand you were given a psychological evaluation?” She was immediately handed a file by Claudia, containing the results of her psychological evaluation.

“Oh yeah, that sucked too.” she added, much to the disappointment of Claudia.

Slightly frustrated with her responses, Janine lowered her voice to whisper to Claudia. “Have you been making sure she’s taking her medication?”

“I’m sitting right here, dude.” Alexa shot back.

“Zoloft once a day in the morning.” Claudia confirmed. “She’s been under my care since I got to the hospital.”

“If you have a problem with my attitude, maybe you shouldn’t have pulled me from the best foster home I’ve ever been to.” the teen pointed out. “Also, zoloft only works if you digest it. I’ve been getting sick all week. You’re leaving opportunity for an insane mental breakdown while I’m under your care.”

Janine turned back to Claudia. “I expect you to handle this.”

Claudia dug through her bag, searching briefly before pulling out a small pill bottle with Alexa’s name on it. She tossed it toward the younger girl who didn’t bother catch it.

“You know what? I refuse to take my meds until you put me back with the Mirandas.”

“We’ll have to put you in psychiatric care if you refuse your medication.” Janine pointed out.

“Just put me back where I was before and I’ll stop refusing! It’s not rocket science!”

“That household has been deemed temporarily unfit.”

“Okay so when does it become fit again?” she demanded. “This whole ‘punishing-so-that-it-looks-like-you’re-doing-your-job’ thing is getting old really fucking quickly.”

“We’ll send you back when and if we see fit.” the blonde pointed out, flipping through the results of her psych eval. “If,” she repeated.

“Don’t I have a say in this? I WANT to go back!”

“Yes well, I brought you in to offer my well wishes after you released from the hospital. If you don’t mind, your case manager and I need to speak privately.”

“So I don’t have a say at all.” Alexa stood up, storming out. “Whatever.”

The door slammed shut behind her.

“If I could speak candidly,” Claudia started receiving a stern look from her superior.

“It’s just, I see no reason to remove her permanently. In fact, I was hoping to send her back before school starts. Lin and Vanessa had enrolled her at this outstanding private school on the Upper West Side—”

“We have plenty of reason to keep her permanently. More youth in our system means more money from the state.” Janine shot back. “Does that not make sense?”

“Well… we’re not a for profit prison—” Claudia tried.

“Can I be frank, Claudia?” she interrupted the older woman. “I know I’ve only been in charge here for a few months, but I’d like to think I have a good instinct about these things. Right now my instincts are telling me that you might not be the best case manager for this job.”

“Wha—I’ve been working here for thirty years.”

“It looks like your case seems to be missing a few—” she pulled a few pages out, sliding them into the paper shredder underneath her desk. “important documents. If the state were to find out that you weren’t staying consistent with a case like this, you could lose your license. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

Claudia finally seceded, trapped at the mercy of her superior. “What do you want?”

“The important thing here isn’t putting Alexa back in that home, it’s avoiding a lawsuit. That woman—Vanessa—she’s a lawyer. I need you to make sure she doesn’t file a lawsuit. If she does, we’ll have to look into this case file and with so many inconsistencies… your job might be on the line.” She handed the file back to Claudia, a smug smile on her face. “I hope we understand each other.”

Outside in the large room with the other teens, a fight broke out nearby. One of them tossed an open bottle of water at the other, most of the water landing on Alexa, though the two fighting didn’t seem to notice.

Her shirt was soaked, prompting her to angrily return to her bed and dig through her bag to find another one.

Frustrated, she dumped the entire bag out on her bed. There, on the top of the pile, was a large book she hadn’t seen before . There were post it notes sticking out of the pages; the book certainly wasn’t new.

She turned it over, seeing the cover of a biography of Alexander Hamilton.

Why would he give me this? she thought, opening the hardcover to find the first post it note inside.

Meant to give you this opening night. Read it.

I see his passion and drive in you.

Don’t ever lose that.

Love you,

Lin

Alexa could feel her emotions rushing to the surface faster than she could handle, tears building up in her eyes as she read the note over again.

She remembered that night, receiving a text from Lin about the show, about how he was grateful for her.

Most importantly, how he loved her.

She was so scared of the word that she didn’t bother to respond. Now it seemed, she may not ever have a chance to.

Maybe she did love him, but what did it matter if she couldn’t say it?

A tear fell, landing on the first page of the book which she quickly wiped away.

She promised herself that, should she ever see Lin again, holding back feelings would not be an option.

Uptown, Claudia paid the Mirandas a visit that evening, informing them of the decision that had been made.

“I don’t understand.” Vanessa was sat beside her husband with Claudia across the dining room table, obviously uncomfortable being the bearer of bad news. “You said this would be temporary.”

“They came to the conclusion that this was an unstable in environment for Alexa and that they wouldn’t be sending her back. I’m sorry, this wasn’t my choice. They went over my head.”

“We’re going to sue.” she insisted. “Not only because you removed her for unjustified reasons, but being dishonest about bringing her back—”

“Por favor no hagas eso! You can’t sue!”

“We absolutely can!” Vanessa shot back. “I’ve built a bulletproof case against your organization. If you think you��re getting away with this—”

“I wanted to send her back!” Claudia finally admitted. “My superior, Janine, went over my head on this. She wants to keep Alexa.”

There was a pause. Lin, who was unmoved until this point glanced up, shocked to hear what had just been said.

“Let me guess… more kids means more funding.” his wife concluded.

“Sí, she shredded documents from my file for Alexa. If you file a lawsuit, they’ll have to have access to the file and with too much information missing—”

“You lose your license.” Vanessa finished. “Shit.”

Just as the realization hit, Lin slowly sunk down in his chair. “We’re never going to see her again, are we?”

Tobillo, who had been otherwise silent under the table, stood up to lick Lin’s hand as if she understood why he was upset. It was more comforting than he expected it to be.

Vanessa was distraught seeing Lin so upset, it was the worst shape she’d ever seen him in. For a moment she was silent, working out details in her mind to come up with a solution that would put an end to this once and for all.

“I think I know how to fix this.” she finally said. “We can’t sue, but we can pressure them into getting what we want.”

“How?” Claudia pressed, Lin curious as well.

“You wouldn’t happen to have all of the statements you took from that night, would you?”

“She shredded half of them.” Claudia reminded her. “They’re gone.”

“They’re shredded, not burnt. They can be salvaged. If we can get a hold of them and piece them back together, we make copies and we bring it to the press anonymously. That should put enough public pressure on them to back off.”

“That’s impossible.” the older woman insisted. “Even if you could piece the pages back together, how would you get a hold of them in the first place?”

“Use your imagination, Claudia. You’ve worked there for years. Bribe the cleaning staff to let you take the garbage when they’re pulling it out of Janine’s office. As long as you can get a hold of anything in that shredder, we can get what we need to move forward and no one needs to lose the license.”

Another pause. Vanessa, beaming with confidence in her plan, saw a glimmer of hope flash across Claudia’s face.

“They clean every night at nine.” she recalled.

Glancing at her phone, Vanessa noticed it was just after eight. “You better get going then. Let us know when you find it.”

She made a quick exit, headed straight for her place of work downtown.

“Lin,” she put a hand on his shoulder. “I need your help with this too.”

“Whatever you need me to do.” he insisted.

“What you do best. I need you to write something.”

#hamilton fanfic #hamilton fanfiction #hamilcast imagines #hamilton imagines #imagines blog

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quoratopstories · 8 years ago

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What is the weirdest/grossest/most disturbing thing seen by emergency room staff? Do you ever find it difficult not to faint?

Not a personal experience. I came across this on a similar thread on Reddit. It is quite long but the OP elicits quite the imagery, if you will.

OR Nurse here. This is kind of a long one... I was taking call one night, and woke up at two in the morning for a "general surgery" call. Pretty vague, but at the time, I lived in a town that had large populations of young military guys and avid meth users, so late-night emergencies were common. Got to the hospital, where a few more details awaited me -- "Perirectal abscess." For the uninitiated, this means that somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the asshole, there was a pocket of pus that needed draining. Needless to say our entire crew was less than thrilled. I went down to the Emergency Room to transport the patient, and the only thing the ER nurse said as she handed me the chart was "Have fun with this one." Amongst healthcare professionals, vague statements like that are a bad sign. My patient was a 314lb Native American woman who barely fit on the stretcher I was transporting her on. She was rolling frantically side to side and moaning in pain, pulling at her clothes and muttering Hail Mary's. I could barely get her name out of her after a few minutes of questioning, so after I confirmed her identity and what we were working on, I figured it was best just to get her to the anesthesiologist so we could knock her out and get this circus started. She continued her theatrics the entire ten-minute ride to the O.R., nearly falling off the surgical table as we were trying to put her under anesthetic. We see patients like this a lot, though, chronic drug abusers who don't handle pain well and who have used so many drugs that even increased levels of pain medication don't touch simply because of high tolerance levels. It should be noted, tonight's surgical team was not exactly wet behind the ears. I'd been working in healthcare for several years already, mostly psych and medical settings. I've watched an 88-year-old man tear a 1"-diameter catheter balloon out of his penis while screaming "You'll never make me talk!". I've been attacked by an HIV-positive neo-Nazi. I've seen some shit. The other nurse had been in the OR as a trauma specialist for over ten years; the anesthesiologist had done residency at a Level 1 trauma center, or as we call them, "Knife and Gun Clubs". The surgeon was ex-Army, and averaged about eight words and two facial expressions a week. None of us expected what was about to happen next. We got the lady off to sleep, put her into the stirrups, and I began washing off the rectal area. It was red and inflamed, a little bit of pus was seeping through, but it was all pretty standard. Her chart had noted that she'd been injecting IV drugs through her perineum, so this was obviously an infection from dirty needles or bad drugs, but overall, it didn't seem to warrant her repeated cries of "Oh Jesus, kill me now." The surgeon steps up with a scalpel, sinks just the tip in, and at the exact same moment, the patient had a muscle twitch in her diaphragm, and just like that, all hell broke loose. Unbeknownst to us, the infection had actually tunneled nearly a foot into her abdomen, creating a vast cavern full of pus, rotten tissue, and fecal matter that had seeped outside of her colon. This godforsaken mixture came rocketing out of that little incision like we were recreating the funeral scene from Jane Austen's "Mafia!". We all wear waterproof gowns, face masks, gloves, hats, the works -- all of which were as helpful was rainboots against a firehose. The bed was in the middle of the room, an easy seven feet from the nearest wall, but by the time we were done, I was still finding bits of rotten flesh pasted against the back wall. As the surgeon continued to advance his blade, the torrent just continued. The patient kept seizing against the ventilator (not uncommon in surgery), and with every muscle contraction, she shot more of this brackish gray-brown fluid out onto the floor until, within minutes, it was seeping into the other nurse's shoes. I was nearly twelve feet away, jaw dropped open within my surgical mask, watching the second nurse dry-heaving and the surgeon standing on tip-toes to keep this stuff from soaking his socks any further. The smell hit them first. "Oh god, I just threw up in my mask!" The other nurse was out, she tore off her mask and sprinted out of the room, shoulders still heaving. Then it hit me, mouth still wide open, not able to believe the volume of fluid this woman's body contained. It was like getting a great big bite of the despair and apathy that permeated this woman's life. I couldn't fucking breath, my lungs simply refused to pull anymore of that stuff in. The anesthesiologist went down next, an ex-NCAA D1 tailback, his six-foot-two frame shaking as he threw open the door to the OR suite in an attempt to get more air in, letting me glimpse the second nurse still throwing up in the sinks outside the door. Another geyser of pus splashed across the front of the surgeon. The YouTube clip of "David at the dentist" keeps playing in my head -- "Is this real life?" In all operating rooms, everywhere in the world, regardless of socialized or privatized, secular or religious, big or small, there is one thing the same: Somewhere, there is a bottle of peppermint concentrate. Everyone in the department knows where it is, everyone knows what it is for, and everyone prays to their gods they never have to use it. In times like this, we rub it on the inside of our masks to keep the outside smells at bay long enough to finish the procedure and shower off. I sprinted to the our central supply, ripping open the drawer where this vial of ambrosia was kept, and was greeted by -- an empty fucking box. The bottle had been emptied and not replaced. Somewhere out there was a godless bastard who had used the last of the peppermint oil, and not replaced a single fucking drop of it. To this day, if I figure out who it was, I'll kill them with my bare hands, but not before cramming their head up the colon of every last meth user I can find, just so we're even. I darted back into the room with the next best thing I can find -- a vial of Mastisol, which is an adhesive rub we use sometimes for bandaging. It's not as good as peppermint, but considering that over one-third of the floor was now thoroughly coated in what could easily be mistaken for a combination of bovine after-birth and maple syrup, we were out of options. I started rubbing as much of the Mastisol as I could get on the inside of my mask, just glad to be smelling anything except whatever slimy demon spawn we'd just cut out of this woman. The anesthesiologist grabbed the vial next, dowsing the front of his mask in it so he could stand next to his machines long enough to make sure this woman didn't die on the table. It wasn't until later that we realized that Mastisol can give you a mild high from huffing it like this, but in retrospect, that's probably what got us through. By this time, the smell had permeated out of our OR suite, and down the forty-foot hallway to the front desk, where the other nurse still sat, eyes bloodshot and watery, clenching her stomach desperately. Our suite looked like the underground river of ooze from Ghostbusters II, except dirty. Oh so dirty. I stepped back into the OR suite, not wanting to leave the surgeon by himself in case he genuinely needed help. It was like one of those overly-artistic representations of a zombie apocalypse you see on fan-forums. Here's this one guy, in blue surgical garb, standing nearly ankle deep in lumps of dead tissue, fecal matter, and several liters of syrupy infection. He was performing surgery in the swamps of Dagobah, except the swamps had just come out of this woman's ass and there was no Yoda. He and I didn't say a word for the next ten minutes as he scraped the inside of the abscess until all the dead tissue was out, the front of his gown a gruesome mixture of brown and red, his eyes squinted against the stinging vapors originating directly in front of him. I finished my required paperwork as quickly as I could, helped him stuff the recently-vacated opening full of gauze, taped this woman's buttocks closed to hold the dressing for as long as possible, woke her up, and immediately shipped off to the recovery ward. Until then, I'd only heard of "alcohol showers." Turns out 70% isopropyl alcohol is about the only thing that can even touch a scent like that once its soaked into your skin. It takes four or five bottles to get really clean, but it's worth it. It's probably the only scenario I can honestly endorse drinking a little of it, too. As we left the locker room, the surgeon and I looked at each other, and he said the only negative sentence I heard him utter in two and a half years of working together: "That was bad." The next morning the entire department (a fairly large floor within the hospital) still smelled. The housekeepers told me later that it took them nearly an hour to suction up all of the fluid and debris left behind. The OR suite itself was closed off and quarantined for two more days just to let the smell finally clear out. I laugh now when I hear new recruits to healthcare talk about the worst thing they've seen. You ain't seen shit, kid. tl;dr Don't shoot IV drugs into your taint.

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Lesslie John on Quora:

What are some hilarious Marijuana stories/incident?

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