#they all had amnesia

[princessofghosts-posts]

I just realize that all of the sons of the Big Three had memory loss.

Percy and Jason got switched and Hera erased their memories.

Percy could remember only Annabeth's name because Hera couldn't totally cancel her from his brain (their love is so strong and,also,probably Aphrodite's doing),of his beef with Ares (hate so strong that he couldn't forget it) and unconsciously also Nico (some says it's for the strong guilt that he has for him,but I don't think so).

Jason,on the other hand,couldn't remember anything of his past,and with also Aphrodite and her mist manipulation,he had his brain a little fucked up. Even after HoO,he didn't have ALL of his memories back,and his friendship and relationship were based on a lie (Jasper could have gone on,they could have started all over again as they wanted if they really wanted to,but Rick didn't give them the possibility).

Both of them had their memories taken away by Hera,that for Percy is like an horrible petty aunt,and for Jason is like a sort of strange step-mother,and he was also her champion.

Then we have Nico (and Bianca).

The memories of his life,before arriving at the Lotus Hotel & Casino,have been washed away in the Lethe by his father himself. And for half of the narrative he struggles to remember his mother and what his life was before the discovery of being a demigod. And,like Jason,I don't think he'll ever be able to get all of them back. Hades thought he was doing them some good (especially with Maria's death,that at the time was still fresh and he didn't want them to live with that weight),but he still deprived his son of memories of a mother and sister that he will never get back,or at least not all of them.

On the other hand,we have Bianca,Hazel and Thalia: their daughters.

Bianca had the same problem as Nico,but she never understood what was actually happening with her memories,because she thought it was only the Lotus effects on them (70 years is big after all,even tho for them it was only a couple of weeks). And she died too early to find out that her father erased half of their life.

During SoN,we see Hazel struggling with her flashbacks regarding her past life. And it's linked to her death. Hazel spent years as a soul,although she remembered who she was and her life. But when she was brought back to life by Nico (he became the equivalent of Jesus in Greek mythology at this point) those same memories returned with her too. This caused her to have flashbacks both because she had to readjust to being alive again and because of her curse. She also had to readjust herself with the modern world,that was different from what she had always knew. It was never a memory loss,but for me it's close to that. She was processing her life.

Thalia's been dead for years,and when returned to life,after the events of SoM,she felt like she didn't belong. Luke,her best friend (and crush),become their enemy; Annabeth,the girl she took care of,had grown up and knew how to take care of herself now; Grover was almost never present at the camp,and she did not know who most of the demigods there were. Time passed for everyone but her,and she felt stuck in the change. I don't think she had any sort of memory loss problem,but more of the fact that she had to readjust herself with the years loss.

At this point for the Gods,erasing the memories of their demigods children/nephews,it's a family tradition. Because half of them had amnesia and the other half was stuck in time (2 of them also came back to life,while another one died,but anyway-). Unfortunately Nico belongs to both,that guy can never catch a break.

[fantastic-nonsense]

I'm always fascinated by which pieces of comic canon actually manage to seep their way into "canon that fic acknowledges"

large swaths of post-Crisis canon make it in but fics acknowledging post-Flashpoint canon is like...Red Hood and the Outlaws is (unfortunately) everywhere. Tim had his identity crisis and is dating Bernard. All of Damian's character development and a couple of his friends are here. Duke is increasingly present. Dick's undercover spy era is occasionally discussed. Harper is inexplicably way closer to most of the Batfam than she ever was in canon.

And then basically nothing else ever that happened after 2011 gets acknowledged. wild, really

[starry-bi-sky]

Stuck in the middle of a forest made of

Flesh and bones and they're all scared of

A lost little boy who has lost his heart

Fear's not enough, they have to

Tear him apart —-------

There are two things Daniel Fenton knows that his family knows as well: 

He’s adopted.

He can’t remember anything else before that.  

‘Adoption’ is a loose term, implying that they went through the official legal processes and troubles of adopting a child into their home willingly, and with the full intention of doing so going into it. That is not what happened. What happened is that Jasmine Fenton found a half-dead child, in strange clothing, in the middle of the woods at her Aunt Alicia’s cabin, and then she went and got her parents. 

What happened is that a twelve year old Danny woke up in the same cabin, wearing clothes much too big on him that didn’t belong to him, and with very little memory of before that moment. He wakes up like a spring being set loose, sitting up so fast he scares the daylights out of Jasmine Fenton sitting next to him. He wakes up, reaching for his sleeve for something that isn’t there, and when it isn’t his mind stutters, like he’s tripped at the top of a steep hill. 

When they ask him for his name, he tells them, clearing muddled thoughts from his mind; Danny. He’s twelve.

(He thinks that’s his name, at least. It sounds right; it feels right. If he thinks really hard about it, he thinks he can remember someone calling him that, utter adoration in their voice. So it must be his name.) 

The Jasmine girl convinces her parents to take him home with them, and they give him the spare guest room upstairs. He has nothing to fill it with.

It’s… a strange experience, to go to a ‘new’ home when he doesn’t even remember his old one. 

The official adoption process… happens. He can’t say it’s easy, or difficult. He’s oblivious for the most of it, Jasmine intends on helping him settle in and Danny can’t say he enjoys the smothering. He learns that he is stubbornly self-independent, that’s one new thing he knows about himself. 

His adoption papers say ‘Daniel J. Fenton’. Danny remembers staring at the name ‘Daniel’ for a long, long moment, something curdling sour in his sternum. His name is Danny, that he knows. But it’s not Daniel. But he doesn’t know any other way of saying it, so he keeps his complaints to himself.

(Jack Fenton boisterously claps his hand on Danny’s shoulder and jerks him around, grinning wide as he welcomes him into the Fenton Family. Danny’s mind blanches at the touch on his shoulder, an instinct snapping like the maw of a snake, telling him to cut off the man’s fingers for daring to touch him.) 

(He keeps the thought to himself, tension rising up his shoulders the longer Jack Fenton’s heavy hand stays on him.) 

They found Danny in the summer. It’s a perfect coincidence, Maddie Fenton says before she goes back into her lab with Jack Fenton. She says it’s enough time to allow Danny to adjust; that they’ll enroll him into the school year in the fall. Then she stuffs a canister of ectoplasm onto the top shelf, and disappears like the ghosts she studies back down the stairs.  

(There’s something eerily familiar about the ectoplasm sitting in the fridge, something unsettlingly so. Danny knows what that stuff is, but he doesn’t know where. When the house is empty, he takes a can from the fridge and inspects it.)

Jazz wants him to leave the house. Danny doesn’t want to step foot outside of the FentonWorks building until he has something that quells the feeling of vulnerability he gets whenever he does. He tried to once, and he felt exposed. Unsafe. 

He turned back around and went inside.

—-------

Where do we go

When the river's running slow

Where do we run

When the cats kill one by one

—------

One day, when the house is empty — or, as empty as it can be; the Fenton parents down in the lab, and jazz out with friends. Danny is making a sandwich, and he caves into the urge to flip the knife in his hands between his fingers. A childish impulse, but one he falls for nonetheless. It comes to him easily, like second nature, in fact. The slip of the blade between his fingers is seamless, flowing with an ease like water running down the wall.  

He’s almost startled by it; his body holds memories that his mind does not. Muscles that know which way to move and twist, limbs that know how to hold and how to throw. He continues twirling it, fascinated, as if he were a scientist discovering a new species of animal. 

It’s not for a handful of minutes when a new thought hits him; an impulsive thought that pops in the back of his mind like a firecracker; Danny moves without thinking. 

He turns, and throws the knife. The pull of his shoulder, the flick of his elbow, is familiar like a hug. He knows when to let go, and the blade flies through the air in impressive speed, embedding itself into the wall with a hearty, loud thunk. Sinking into the drywall like butter. 

Danny stares at it in shock, he feels relieved — about what? — before he feels the guilt. He scrambles across the kitchen to pull it out, heart racing in his chest at being caught, and prays no one notices the hole it left behind. 

(He runs up the stairs before anyone can find him, food forgotten, and hides the knife beneath his mattress like a guilty murder weapon.)

After that, he leaves the house more. It’s more out of fear of being caught than the desire to leave. But Danny is quickly learning that among all things, he is someone who was dangerous, before he lost his memory. Even with his mind in fractures, he is still dangerous. 

He’s not sure how to feel about that — he thinks he should be scared. He feels a little proud, instead.

—------

Hazel beneath our claws

While we wait for cerulean to cry

Unsettled ticks run through time

Enough for the hunt to go awry

—-----

There’s another thing he learns about himself. That he knows about since he woke up. He knows that he left someone behind. He doesn’t know who, but he knows they must have been close; he’s always looking down and finding himself surprised when the only shadow he sees is his own. 

He thinks that he must have sung to them a lot; he finds himself humming familiar melodies when he’s lost in thought. Lullabies lingering at the tip of his tongue, an instinct to turn and sing them to someone beside him. He can’t remember the lyrics, but his mouth does, it tries to get him to say them when he’s not thinking. He can’t. 

Danny’s found himself humming under his breath more times than he can count, trying to recall whatever it is his mind is trying to claw forward. 

(“That’s a pretty song, Danny.” Jazz tells him at breakfast one day, Danny screws his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized he was humming. “What is it?”) 

(Something mean and possessive rears its head on instinct, uncoiling like a snake from its ball. His shoulders hunch defensively, he bites his cheek to prevent himself from baring his teeth. He doesn’t know what song it is, but it’s not for her. “I don’t know.”)  

He misses his person. Dearly. He knows, the longer he is without them, that they must have been close. Otherwise, he wouldn’t feel like he’s missing a chunk from himself. He wouldn’t be turning to someone who's not there; reaching for a hand that’s missing, birdsong on his tongue, a story to tell. 

A dream haunts him one night. Warm and familiar, he’s holding onto someone smaller than him, they’re tucked into his side like a puzzle piece. He’s humming one of his songs that is always playing in the back of his mind, an unfinished tale of a harpy and a hare. Danny can’t remember their face, not all of it. He remembers green eyes, hair dark like his own, skin brown like his. 

He loves them more than anything else in the world, a fact he knows down to his soul. He loves them so much it fills his heart with sunlight. Danny squeezes them tight, nuzzling into their hair; he makes them laugh. Then, he proudly boasts something. That when he takes something of their father’s, that his person — a sibling? That feels right — will be… the word fades from Danny’s mind before he can make sense of it. 

His person hugs him tight, his… brother? And their mother — a woman whose face he can’t remember either, but who he loves like a limb nonetheless — appears, smiling. Her hands reach for them both, voice calling them, ‘her sons’. There’s ticking in the distance, it sounds like the fastening of chains.

Danny wakes up cold, tears streaming down his face. The details of the dream already fading from his mind like the cold pull of a corpse.   

—-------

Harpy hare

Where have you buried all your children?

Tell me so I say

—-------

When school starts that Fall, Danny joins the sixth grade class, and quickly learns more things about himself. One of those things being that he’s smarter than the rest of his grade, whatever education he had before, it was better than the one he’s getting now. 

Everyone knows he’s adopted right off the bat. He tells them when the teacher forces himself to introduce himself, but it’s not like they needed him to tell them for them to know; he never existed in their little world before now, and the Fentons are pale as they come. Danny is not.

He befriends Sam Manson and Tucker Foley; they ask him about the scars fading up and down his arms, they ask him about the scar carved diagonal across his face.

Danny, as politely as he can, tells them he doesn’t remember. He thought kindness would come second nature to him, his dream burned into his mind where he hugged his brother so sweetly. Apparently, his sweetness is only second nature to people he considers his own. 

(It becomes even more apparent when Dash Baxter tries to bully him later that day, and Danny ruffles like an eagle threatened. His mind whispers, hissy and agitated, sinking like a shadow at his shoulder, several different ways Danny could kill him for talking to him like that, and fifteen more ways he could cripple him.)

(Danny ignores those thoughts, up until Dash Baxter tries to grab him. Then he breaks his nose on the wood of his desk. It’s easy how quickly the rest of his grade sinks him down to the status of social pariah.)

(At least Sam and Tucker still talk to him after that. When Danny goes to the principal’s office later, he wisely doesn’t mention the worse things he could’ve done than break Dash Baxter’s nose.)  

—--------------

It clicks and it clatters in corners and borders

And they will never

Hear me here listen to croons and a calling

I'll tell them all the

Story, the sun, and the swallow, her sorrow

Singing me the tale of the Harpy and the Hare

—-------

More dreams come, of course they do. Each one halfway to forgotten whenever he wakes up, ticking faint in his ears. He is many different ages. He is young, shorter than a table. He is older, holding onto his little brother. He is singing in almost every single one. He is singing to his brother. 

Danny can barely remember the lyrics, he’s begun leaving a journal by his bedside so that it’s the first thing he can write down when he wakes up. He’s a storyteller, he learns. He feels like a historian, trying to piece together a culture long dead and forgotten. 

His most vivid dream-like memory is not a happy one, and for once he’s almost relieved he barely recalls it. He is somewhere that isn’t home, but his mother and brother are there. He is dressed in black, blades keen in his hands. 

They are atop a moving train. They are fleeing something. His brother is struggling to keep up, he is small, and young. It’s beautifully sunny, they are somewhere green and lovely. 

It is a fast dream. 

His brother stumbles on something, and Danny, fast as a whip, snatches him by the back of his shirt and hoists him up to his feet before he can fall. “Watch your feet, habibi.” He murmurs low, a hand on his back. It’s hard to hear, there is wind in their ears.

His brother, face obscured in all but his eyes, which are green as emeralds, nods. 

The dream blurs, but Danny falls behind. His foot catches on air — impossible, it should’ve been, at least. He never trips. — and he lands against the roof with a thud and a grunt. His mother and brother stop, and turn for him. 

The train hits a turn before Danny can get up, and he shouldn’t have, something pulls on him, he swears, but he slips. He can’t find the purchase to pull himself up, cold fear hits him as his nails scrape against the metal. 

His mother and brother’s horrified faces are the last thing he sees before he disappears off the side of the train. 

(The ticking is at its loudest when he wakes up, pounding against his inner skull. He only manages to write down ‘train fall’ in his journal, before he’s flipping over to press his head into his pillow to get the pain to stop.) 

—---  

She can't keep them all safe

They will die and be afraid

Mother, tell me so I say

(Mother, tell me so I say)

—-------

When Danny is fourteen he is still humming songs he can’t remember, his mind still in a broken puzzle. But his room is now decorated with stars and plants in every corner. He has a guitar he keeps in the corner of his room, and he plays the lullabies in his head on the strings over and over again. 

The ectoplasm in the fridge still unsettles him, still reminds him of a past he can’t recall. The knife beneath his mattress has returned to the kitchen — he doesn’t need it. He found a box in the attic last year, it had his name on it, and inside he found familiar, strange clothes, and more weapons than he thought was possible to carry on one person. 

(Even without knowing that the Fentons prefer guns to blades, Danny knows, instinctively, that they were his weapons. He was — was? Is — a dangerous person. He takes the box down to his room to sort through. The weapons all fit into his callused hands almost perfectly — the grooves worn to fit his palm. They’re just a little small.) 

(He tentatively takes a small blade with him to school one day, and feels much more comfortable with it sheathed beneath his shirt. He’s kept it on him ever since, like he’s reunited a lost limb to himself.)   

Danny doesn’t have a name for his person, his little brother, nor does he have a name for his beloved mother. He’s haunted by dreams every few weeks, many of them repeating. He’s ingrained the words he can remember to memory, and the ones he doesn’t, he writes down in his journal. His little brother; Danny calls him a bird, he can’t figure out what kind. His little bird of some kind; when Danny takes something from their father — what, he can’t remember what — then his little brother will be a little bird. 

(He doesn’t have a name for his brother, yet, but he’s calling his birdie in his head. It’s better than nothing.)

—------

Seeker, do you ever come to wonder

If what you're looking for is within where you hold

Will you leave a trail for them to follow a path

You'll soon forget

Home

—---------

When he’s fourteen, Danny dies. It does nothing to fix his fractured memories, much to his consternation. It just confirms something he already knows; that he was someone dangerous, and that he still is. 

When the shock of death has worn off, Danny inspects his ghost in the metal reflection of the closest table. It’s blurry, hard to see, but shock green eyes pierce back at him, green like the portal. Lazarus, Danny’s mind whispers, and he blinks rapidly.

‘Lazarus,’ he mouths to himself. It’s familiar. Sam shows him with her phone what he looks like, joking that he looks like an assassin. Danny doesn’t think she’s that too far off. 

He doesn’t tell her that. He tucks the thought away with the rest of his secrets, and fiddles with the hood gathering at his neck, attached to a cape with torn edges swinging down to his ankles. He pulls it over his shock white hair. It shadows over his face impossibly so, until all you can see are his green-green eyes peering out like a wolf hiding in the brush.

He ends up calling himself Phantom. 

(Maybe now he can start putting lyrics to his lullabies; his memories may not have returned, locked away with the sound of a clock, but the dead can talk. One of them may just have answers.) 

----------

Home is where we are

Home is where you are

Home is where I am

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

Dedicated to @gascansposts for being the one who introduced me to the band Yaelokre, and thus being the whole reason I was inspired to write this in the first place >:] Those lyrics at the line breaks are all from their album Hayfields.

[batcavescolony]

I see a lot of people upset about William Kaplan being dead and no one mourning him cus Billy stole his body and I just don't see it that way. The kid in Wanda Vision is Billy Maximoff, The teenager at the Bar Mitzvah is William Kaplan, the Teen that got taken to the hospital after the wreck is neither and both Billy Maximoff and William Kaplan. That Teen went home with the abilities of Billy Maximoff, to the home of William Kaplan, with memories of neither and lived there for three years. He cares about Rebecca and Jeff, he lied to the to protect them from pain, they are his parents. He wants to find Tommy, he has magical powers, he wants to know who he is. All of these things are true. I wouldn't say William Kaplan is dead he just doesn't remember, like Agatha wasn't dead when he was Agnes, she just didn't remember.

[turnaboutstar]

yes you will be fine little apollo you will have fun with your little sister soon,,,

[arthurtaylorlester]

so like do you ever think about john doe

[shouldprobablybereading]

At this point I’m expecting Dalinar to wake up at 8:15 on day 10 and go “storms, I’m late” and then squabble around the bedroom like “navani have you seen my coat?!? The blue one, no the other one. I was supposed to be meeting odium 15 minutes ago”

[airrec]

Let's talk about the relationship between "personal level redemption (i.e. one character starts making changes for the better)" and "the corrupt institution/context in which the characters are developed to hurt each other".

Now, one or two characters reaching the point where they say "that's it, no more, I don't want this, this is not right, I am choosing not to continue on this path" is great, don't get me wrong. Redemption (AKA the path towards trying to do better, to make reparations, to not repeat the mistakes of before - forgiveness is not an obligation here, only that the character has recognised their hurtful actions and has ceased them and is now trying to do better) on a personal level is so important, and should not be diminished in value.

However, it is also simply and factually true that when it comes to the context in which certain characters have made those terrible choices or been forced to become something they otherwise might never have become, that in order for there to be actual long term solutions, those corrupt systems, those violent institutions - those must be dismantled. These things must stop in order for the system to not just keep on chugging, to not just break the next set of characters as it broke the last ones.

Sometimes, a character cannot realistically meaningfully travel very far down their path to redemption before something changes or shifts within that system in order to allow them that. For example, a character who is constantly on the defensive because people are hunting them down to try to kill them doesn't have the option of not defending themselves (usually with violence) unless they choose to die at their hunters' hands. Even if they do not start fights, they can't disengage if others start them first; in order to stop, others must also stop.

It is unfair, in contexts where there is a great and systematic corruption, to place the onus of a "happy ending" on singular people if there is no intention of dismantling the system that gave birth to such horrors. How cruel, how unjust, to take one person and say to them, "this is all, totally and completely, your fault, and it is your responsibility to change because you are the thing that needs fixing here."

Think of it like climate change: yeah, sure, putting your rubbish into the correct bins and reducing your personal carbon footprint etc is helpful. But what change you can make, if you make it alone, if you make it isolated, will never meaningfully chip away at the global level of pollution caused by the whole system. What needs to happen is a lot of people banding together to force the system to change, and for those who benefit from it to be held accountable. Because that's the other element of tragedy: there is nearly always someone benefitting from the tragedy, and it is not often those who are the most blamed or slandered.

Yourself may be a good place to start, but it is not where it ends. It is a long hard road, to the recognition that there are many factors that contribute towards tragedy - to the personal choices of characters, and to the reasons they made those choices in the first place; the action = reaction, the consequences, the pressures, the emotional and mental factors, the physical factors, the numerous interweaving stories of everyone trying to protect them and theirs, and sometimes in doing so hurting others.

Redemption and understanding how tragedy came to be is rarely as simple as we want it to be, and this complexity is a feature, not a bug. If you want to be able to point at someone and say "there; that is the bad thing" then 99/100 times I would first take a good look around to see what made the bad thing bad. Then I would take one good look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself if you could have been the bad thing, too, if things had shaken out just that little bit differently - the answer might not be one that comforts you.

[vyinter]

louis is like that one hot and funny girl you know who just cannot stop getting into toxic relationships and daniel is his no nonsense bestie who will call him out on his bullshit and claudia is his kid who's SICK of all this step-dad nonsense 'cant you just be a single mom' she asks 😭 deep down he is so messy how many times did he say he was bored when he was with armand. he didn't even want the relationship the whole time he was just going along with it as a revenge to lestat for 50 SOMETHING YEARS louis my boy you may be stupid

[askamnesiamoonjumper]

DUMP OF SOME AAU ART FROM TODAY !! YIPPEE🎉!!!!

Shady sunburnt mj friendchip…. (Context for the Snatcher thing. um. Points at contractor who had his head pop off. Lol. Lmao.) also I think this is the first time I’m mentioning it bc initially I counted it as spoilers but nowadays I don’t care but ye they’re the same species so yayyy but also I don’t draw him enough to get the chance for that lil lore fact anyway soooo yeag 👍 his [redacted species name] design is very fun methinks I need to play around w him more :3€ ily shady sunburnt you’ll always be famous to me

Erm.. Meow?? (Redrew this one frame from the MV for this song :3€ (don’t ask why I sent two vers I like them both ok peace and love) oh fancy rendering how I missed you so, sighs dreamily,,,,,)

LASTLY A!BADGE MY FRIEND BADGESELLER !! YAYYYYY <3333 !!!!!

otay that’s all tips my hat and walks backwards before falling into black hole on floor like a cartoon charact🕳️

[daffi-990]

Seven(ish) Sentence Sunday

It’s Sunday for me so I’m kicking things off with something from my Buddie Slow Dance Fic. Still struggling with The Lightning Amnesia Fic atm (I’m so close to finishing it 😭), but I did have some writing mojo for this so it’s a win.

Buck’s currently dancing with the prettiest girl in the room, Jee-yun’s small feet on top of his, hands clasped as he sways them to the music, matching smiles on their faces. He’d already taken a few spins with Maddie, had one dance with his mother (she’d insisted, to keep up appearances most likely), and was on his third song with his niece. He really needs to sit down and have a drink.

The song ends and he swoops Jee up into his arms to give her a crushing hug that has her squirming in laughter.

“Where’s my favourite girl at?”

The pair turn to face Chimney, a big warm smile on his face as he looks at his daughter.

“Daddy!” Jee reaches out and Buck passes her over to her father’s waiting arms.

“Did you have fun dancing with Uncle Buck?”

Jee nods “I dance with you now?”

“You know I can’t say no to you” Chim says before adding in a conspiratorial whisper, “Don’t tell your mother”

The corners of Buck’s lips curl as he tries to stifle his laugh, “Pretty sure she already knows. You two get your groove on, I’m gonna take a break”. He gestures to the kitchen where the bar has been set up. Chim gives him a nod before whisking Jee off for a dance.

No pressure tagging: @wikiangela @wildlife4life @monsterrae1 @messyhairdiaz @exhuastedpigeon @eddiebabygirldiaz @eddiediaztho @captain-hen @callmenewbie @callaplums @rainbow-nerdss @rewritetheending @lover-of-mine @loserdiaz @ladydorian05 @thewolvesof1998 @try-set-me-on-fire @jesuisici33 @princessfbi @hippolotamus @honestlydarkprincess @homerforsure @hoodie-buck @spotsandsocks @fortheloveofbuddie @forthewolves @giddyupbuck @glorious-spoon @fiona-fififi and anyone else who wants to share something! 😁

[warrenwaskilledbyadeer]

Can we talk about how the heart and soul of the original Ace Attorney trilogy centers around how Phoenix loves his sister Maya so much he will do literally anything for her but all the fandom wants to talk about is Wrightworth

(HAD TO EDIT THE POST BECAUSE PLEASE DO NOT TAG SHIP)

[starry-bi-sky]

I had a thought, dear However scary About that night The bugs and the dirt Why were you digging? What did you bury Before those hands pulled me From the earth? I will not ask you where you came from I will not ask you, neither should you

-------- an extension of this excerpt because I've been thinking of Femme Danny and Jason all week. It's mildly suggestive, but that's really the only heads up needed. --------

Music blaring, bass heavy in her ears, Danny finds him in a ditch at the bottom of the bluff. She was leaving the observatory, and she nearly misses him as she turns out onto the last stretch of road leading back into the city.

She catches sight of him, just barely. A glimpse in the corner of her eye; something reflecting on the light. She thinks it's a deer at first, and instinctual terror that only the idiocy of a deer denting her car can give her, strikes her hard. There's no one behind her, so she slams the breaks.

Her car stops; there's no deer. She looks and looks, but there's no deer, no deer buddy — they always come in pairs. But something still catches her eye; light reflecting off leather, in the ditch below just a few feet in front of her.

"What the fuck is that?" Slips out of her mouth before she can really think it through, and she's pulling off to the shoulder, wheels crunching gravel, before she thinks that through either.

Danny's climbing out of her car within seconds, putting it in park and hitting her hazards as her door clicks open and she stands up on the ledge. The trees block the sky, and there is no moon beholden to brighten the land, only the dull light of the stars and the brights of her car.

There's a man in a ditch. And he's not moving. From the distance, Danny's not sure if he's breathing.

She breathes out for him; "Fuck." She's running around the front of her car, not thinking it through. Her feet crunch the gravel, bugs buzzing at her ears, and she's sliding down the small hill into the ditch to reach his side.

"Please don't be dead, please don't be dead." Repeats in mantra under her breath, she can smell blood; heavy and iron, mixing with the dirt and the grass. Her hands find his side, Danny rolls him over onto his back. Her fingers find his pulse, and she breathes relief. He's alive.

—---------

Danny finds no less than two — no, three guns, four knives, and an actual, goddamn shiv on the half-dead ditch man. But not a single ID or wallet.

The man reeks of danger, even in his unconscious state it lingers on him like a rich cologne. It's the human instinct to be curious, and maybe it's the blood and dirt that tells her he's bad news. Common sense, naturally.

She doesn't know what to do with him. Danny wants to help him, but the ghostly part of her, the one that seeks safety above all else — for herself, for her loved ones. Because growing up in a house of weapons on the tables for sticky, pudgy fingers to play with, and food that needs killing twice, and labs full of half-broken beakers and radioactive substances spilling onto the floor robbed her of it entirely, — tells her to leave him.

He's dangerous. Her core hums cold, freezing the tips of her fingers, making her ears ring. She forgets to breathe, her hands going numb. Leave him for the coyotes to find; for the bugs to feast on; for the mud to swallow whole. Leave him for the land. Nobody carries this many weapons on them unless—

He groans. In only the light from her high beams, his cracked lips split and makes a noise of pain. His chest rises, shuddery and slow, and he doesn't wake. The man slips back down into unconsciousness. But he's alive.

He's alive.

Danny exhales. It's springtime, wreathed in life. It's cold; he's cold. But alive. She shakes the chill from her fingers, resolution warms her lungs.

Carrying him up to her car isn't easy — dressed like fucking Dean Winchester and wearing half as many layers, the man is probably two hundred pounds. But she's been working out and taking boxing classes since sophomore year of high school. She throws him over her shoulder in a fireman's carry, and hikes them both up the hill.

She drives them home. Don't ask her why she didn't take them to the hospital; she can't give an answer. Not one that makes sense. She knows enough first aid to fix almost anything he might have.

Danny blasts the heat and turns the music on low; switches to something softer, more comforting, in case he wakes up. She kicks the passenger seat back far enough so that if he does, he's reclined comfortably.

He doesn't wake up, she can't keep her eyes off him anyways.

—---------

Danny lays him on the couch in her house. He gets blood and mud on the fabric, and she'll need to get a new one because of it. But she takes off his boots, strips him of his shirt and jackets, and flies to the bathroom to get her first aid kit.

He doesn't wake up the entire time she's putting stitches in his side. Nothing is broken, but he's bruised and cut. Some get band-aids, others get bandages.

The man has half as many scars as Danny does. Stabs, cuts, a few burns here and there. Danny has those too, but she doubts the man has been impaled before like she has. The luck of ghosts that they can't die by mortal means. Or curse, depending on how you look at it.

(There's a thin scar on his throat, like someone tried to slice it open. She sees it while she's stitching up a laceration near his collarbone, and Danny can't stop herself from huffing.)

("We match." She murmurs, joking dry and ingenuine. She doubts anyone's survived a botched decapitation like she has. At least his scar is thin and hard to see. That wasn't a good night for her; she had to sew it closed herself, alone out of refusal to let her friends help.)

When she's done, she collapses into the recliner beside him, and falls asleep. She slips in and out of dreams all night.

—---------

When she wakes up, the man is staring at her, sitting up on the couch like an animal listening for the predator nearby. It's a good thing she hid his weapons in the floorboards when they arrived. She stares back at him, eyes half-lidded with sleep.

He's handsome. She thinks, and wakes up fully.

—---------

His name is Jason Todd, he doesn't remember who he is.

That's... a problem.

—---------

She makes them both food, and she'll never stop appreciating the fact that she no longer needs to fight her fridge before the food inside lets her eat. She hasn't lived with her parents in years, and yet the awe still hits her some days.

"I thought I told you to stay seated." She frowns when Jason Todd enters her kitchen, a hand hovering over his bandaged side. They're both tense; awkward and wrong-footed. Off-kilter. It's not a surprise to her. He's amnesiac, she's a stranger.

Jason Todd blinks at her, leaning against the doorframe. From her periphery, he shrugs, only to suck in his teeth in pained regret moments later. "I got bored." He tells her.

"Well, I don't have painkillers," Danny retorts, cheek comes easy to her. Too easy, sometimes. "if you tear your stitches then I'm giving you a rag to bite into while I redo them."

Well, if anything, it gets a snort from him.

—---------

"So, do I have a shirt, or did you just find a half-naked, half-dead man in the woods and decide to take him home?" Jason Todd asks her from the table a few minutes later. She can see, even standing a few feet away, the gooseflesh rising bumps against his skin.

Her cheeks color pink, and she moves to the hallway. "You have a shirt," she says, "you have two actually, and a jacket. I threw the shirts in the wash because they were filthy."

The jacket was leather, so during the night, when she woke up from her many bouts of restless sleep, she got up and cleaned it by hand. "I would've done the same with your jeans, but I can take a half-dead man home," she opens the dryer and pulls out the shirts, "but I draw the line at taking off his pants when he's unconscious."

It gets a short laugh out of him; harsh and brief, and it makes her relax, just a little. Laughter meant just enough comfort to not be tense... most of the time. She returns to his side and drapes the still-warm clothes onto the table.

"What if my legs were hurt?" He asks her, raising an eyebrow even as he reached for the first shirt.

"Then that is called an exception to the rule, ditch man."

—---------

He stays with her. He has nowhere to go — and trust her, they looked. Or they tried to. But he has no social media that shows up under the name ‘Jason Todd’. Oh, there are Jason Todds, but none that match the way he looks — none of them his age, none of them with black hair and blue eyes, no white streak in the curls at the front.  

Well, there was one possible candidate. A Jason Todd-Wayne, infamous adoptive son of Bruce Wayne. But he died the same year Danny did, and unlike her, he didn’t come back. 

“Great.” Jason Todd sighs heavy, “I match with a dead kid.”

“I’m honestly kind of impressed.” Danny tells him, frowning despite her laughing disbelief. She scrolls through every social media she can find, and he just doesn’t show up. There are no warrants out for his arrests, no celebrity interviews with him in it, no missing news reports matching his description. Nothing. “How do you not have any socials? You’re like a ghost.” And she knows a thing or two about ghosts.

It’s equally as suspicious as it is impressive. Who are you, Jason Todd? She wonders, looking over to him.  

He merely shrugs, careful of his injuries, and slumps into his chair. “Don’t ask me, I don’t remember.” 

She gives him the guest room, and they go out and buy him clothes with what budget she can afford. She drags him to a thrift store first, to every thrift store in the city, and they come back with a decent enough haul that he has clothes for at least two weeks. 

—---------

“Danny, what is that?” 

She takes a long sip of her drink, Jason lingering at her side like a shadow. “A smoothie, Tucker.” She says, deadpan like it's the most obvious thing in the world as she slides into their favorite booth with practiced ease. “You know this, I always get one on Fridays.” 

Jason follows her easily, slow and careful, mindful of his sides. He’s back to awkward, tense, acting like an outside looking in. Like he’s not quite sure what to do in the face of her friends. They’ve been together for a week now, and she asked him if he wanted to meet Sam and Tucker with her. 

(“You’ve been cooped up here all week.” She says when he asks her why, her hands shifting the purse at her shoulder. In shorts and a tank-top her scars lay on display for the world to see, and while she's long since shed the worst of her self-consciousness, it still creeps up on her. She can feel his eyes on them, even after a week. “Some fresh air and a change of scenery might do you some good. Maybe even jog that noggin of yours.”) 

Sam and Tucker stare at her, expressions unreading on their faces. Their eyes flick to Jason at her side, and then back to her. Danny takes another longer sip of her drink, and when she lets go with an obnoxious smack, she jerks her head to Jason. “Oh,” she says like an afterthought, an impish smile shadowing over her lips. “This is Jason, I found him in a ditch on Sunday.” 

"You what!?"

—---------

She doesn’t know how it happens. It sneaks up on her like sunlight creeping across the grass, melting away the morning dew and warming the dirt. She loves him. She loves him, she loves him, she loves him. It’s a terrible, choking thing. Wonderfully beautiful, melting her from the inside out. 

She loves him, she loves him, she loves him.

It’s greater than anything she’s felt before. Different from when she nearly dated Valerie in high school — but so, so similar to it at the same time. Warm in its certainty, in its similarity, burning in its difference. 

Danny doesn’t even realize it until half a year living with him, maybe just a little bit longer. But she realizes when she comes downstairs in the early dredges of the morning, sleep clinging to her lashes and sunlight unfurling through the windows, and finds him in the kitchen making food already. 

It’s not the first time she’s woken up to him doing this. But it’s, for some reason, only now that it hits her how fucking domestic it is. With music playing soft through the speaker of his used phone, barefoot in nothing but sweatpants, and humming along under his breath. He’s gotten so comfortable here; he laughs easier now, smiles easier. It was like watching a flower bloom in real time. 

And the sunlight cards through his hair like fingers, caressing over his face in that loving way it does when it wants someone to see the breathless beauty of their eyes. 

Something constricts in Danny’s chest, tight, fond, wanting. Mine, her mind whispers, faint and distant, and knocking the air from her lungs like a fucking train. Her fingers curl tight around the stairway rails, she has half a mind to crack it in two. 

Then he turns and sees her, he always notices her quickly, and Jason smiles at her. 

Somehow, Danny manages to smile back smiling with the ease of breathing, even when her mouth runs dry.

(If she kisses him, will she taste sugar? She hopes not — white sugar is unfilling, sweet but with nothing else to it. If she tastes Jason Todd, she hopes she tastes caramel.) 

—---------

“Want to go throw axes with me?” Danny asks, draping over the back of the couch and hanging her arms off Jason’s shoulders. Her hand finds his hair, and her fingers tangle with the dark curls. She can smell his shampoo when she hooks her chin on the top of his head.

Jason stills, a book in hand — he’s always got a book, and Danny’s never had much artistic talent but she always want s to find a pencil, maybe some charcoals, and sketch the sight down on paper. Memory isn’t enough, she needs it burned into something tangible. She wants to burn everything he does onto paper, wants to remember every little thing about him.

Then he hums, questioning and low, and Danny tries not to shiver with greed to hear it again. She hums back, her next inhale clearing her head. “Well, it’s not just me, but Sam and Tucker too. A new bar opened up downtown and we were gonna check it out, and we have enough time to add another person to the reservation.” 

A silence, thick and thoughtful. Jason tilts his head back to look up at her, and she removes her chin and hand to look down at him. Her hair curtains over them both, locking her into his eyes — impossibly blue, and beautifully so, with teal lining the iris. 

He wears his thoughts on his sleeve, his brows furrowed and mouth puckered in lighthearted thoughtfulness. Quit making me want to kiss you, Danny thinks, and forces her eyes to remain on his face. Idly, her hands trace over his shirt, rising slowly to drag the back of her nail over his collarbone. 

Jason shudders, sighs out slow, and smiles easily. “Sure, what time are we leaving?”   

—---------

Danny sighs as if she aches; she does. Her fingers find Jason Todd’s hair, soft and slipping between her fingers like silk. He’s so close to her face she can feel his breath on her lips, it’s driving her crazy with it. 

“My god.” She murmurs, her voice slipping out without her consent as her fingers drop from his hair to trace featherlight touches down his temples, down his jaw. His eyes haven’t left hers, half-lidded they are, and heavy, staring at her like he might just swallow her whole. 

Please do, she thinks, tilting her head to the side to slot their noses next to each other. His hands tighten at her waist, fingers digging through her hoodie into her skin. He hums, questioningly, low and rumbling like a thunderstorm on the horizon. As if he can’t trust his voice to say something instead. 

Danny chokes on nothing’s heat and runs her thumb over his bottom lip, the flesh catching briefly on her nail. She can’t think straight with him so close to her. Not when he’s so close she can smell his cologne, not when he’s so close she can lean down and sink her teeth into his throat and leave a bruise. She should, it might clear her head. 

Instead, she sighs again, her mouth so close to his that she brushes over his lips when she says; “You’re divine.” 

In the end, she doesn’t need to think about leaving bruises on his throat, because Jason closes that centimeters’ worth of distance between each other and kisses her like he needs air. 

—---------

“Do you have to go, love?” Arms snake around her waist, slipping easily over her dress, and Danny laughs, soft and easy, as Jason pulls her flush against his chest and drops his head into the crook over her shoulder. He dwarfs her in the mirror, capable of curling around her entirely, and she raises a gloved hand to rake her fingers through his soft hair.

Danny hums deeply, tilting to bare her throat as Jason starts pressing kisses to the skin. “Vlad will be upset if I don’t show up.” She wasn’t sure of the importance of this party, but Vlad had promised her a hefty bribe to show up, and call her greedy but damn if she wasn’t going to turn it down.  

Teeth bite gentle at the underside of her jaw, and Danny laughs out of surprise. Jason smiles, indenting it into her skin, and his hand finds the slit of her dress and covers the burn scar on the outside of her thigh. “What about running late?” He asks, something impish in his tone. “I’ve never seen you wear this one; you look good in red.” 

Danny laughs again, turns her head to catch his lips against hers, and kisses him long and sweet. “Yes, he’ll be mad if I’m late.” She says when she pulls back. 

He pouts, and really, how else is Danny supposed to react other than kiss him again? So she does, happily. “Wake me up when you get back,” Jason murmurs against her mouth, chasing after her, “I want to help you undress.” 

—---------

Some days, death creeps up on her, and the phantom pains of it render her coiled into a ball in her bed. She wakes up at three am burning, her starburst scars rooting down to her bones to remind her of the feeling of being torn apart by the atoms and stitched back together again. 

Danny can feel her heart beating in her ears, fast and panicked like she ran a marathon, filling her mouth with iron and the urge to cough out her lungs. There’s a scream stuck in the back of her throat like a spider sac, and she writhes with her head in her arms for what feels like an hour before she forces herself out of bed, mind half-muddled like a zombie. 

Jason is still asleep, Danny doesn’t have half the mind to be grateful, she shuffles herself down into the garage and grabs a compressed canister from the fridge, hidden in a false shelf. She might not keep ectoplasm in the kitchen, but she does in the garage. 

She returns on second nature to the bathroom. She locks the door, shuts the drain, and runs the water to boiling, and doesn’t stop the faucet until the water reaches the little drain in the wall beneath that prevents overflow. The compressed canister cracks open with a hiss, and Danny dumps what’s probably an ounce of ectoplasm into the steaming water.

The effect is instantaneous, the water swirling and turning bright with ectoplasm all the way down. It’s diluted, and Danny only remembers to take off her sleep shirt before she slips into the water. 

Relief sinks into her, and chases away the worst of the pain. She sighs, she can breathe again, and dunks her head beneath the water. 

Then doesn’t get out until she’s freezing again and nearly peeling with wrinkles. 

(She goes downstairs when she’s changed into dry clothes and her hair is damp, and then collapses into Jason’s lap. Her face finds the crook of his neck, and Danny slumps, arms wrapping around his neck.)

(Jason’s hands find her waist, and his thumbs rub circles into her side, slipping under her shirt to run over the raised skin of the burn there. “What’s wrong?” He asks, murmuring low and close to her ear.)

(“Phantom pains.” Danny mumbles.)

(“Where?”)

(“Everywhere.”) 

—---------

When Danny returns home after finding Jason again, she feels numb, she feels cold. Her engagement ring is heavy on her finger and she feels like an outsider looking in when she looks down at it. 

She can’t get the way he looked at her out of her mind. It’s seared into her brain. 

Her back hits the door, and slowly she slides down it, a sob building in her throat. Her lip curling, her heart aching, her heart breaking. Too many questions inside her head for her to try and sort through them, but one is prevalent; Jason Todd is a liar.  

Danny shrieks his name so loud that she breaks her ceiling lights, and takes out the power throughout the entire block. There are dogs howling, cars wailing outside. There’s broken glass beneath her, scattered across the ground, cutting into her palms, and she hurts so much she wants to take the biggest shard and shred herself into ribbons. 

—---------

The memory fades away back into its small star-shape, and floats back up to the ceiling of her lair’s observatory. Danny watches it go, something small and aching still in her chest. Two weeks since she moved into the Zone, and she hates that she still loves him. She loves that she still loves him. 

She hates that she still misses him. She still visits Sam and Tucker, but Amity Park is tainted with the memory of Jason Todd; she needs away from it for a little while. Maybe a long while. She’s not too sure right now, she just needs to stay away. Somewhere where she can’t run into him. 

Danny pulls down another star to watch another memory again. One where they're dancing.

[idiotwhotalkstoomuch]

The Pokemon fandom with amnesia plots

[cels-not-so-secret-love-affair]

forget-me-not (mary & lily)

a/n: mary obliviates herself nearer the start of the war. don’t ask me why or how, it’s kind of timey wimey. i guess i was just thinking about the angst of not remembering…

‘So, first time client, what can I do for you?’ Mary inquires brightly, sporting her signature sunny smile as she runs her hands idly through the long locks of red hair in front of her.

‘Um. Just a trim, please. And a blow-dry,’ the redhead sat in the chair before Mary answers quietly. She’s gazing vacantly at her reflection with a lost sort of look, and the edges of her eyes are tinged slightly pink as though she’s been crying. Mary feels overwhelmingly sad for her.

‘Sure babes, that’s totally fine! Sorry, remind me of your name again?’

‘It’s Lily. Lily Evans.’

‘Okay Lily. You’re in good hands.’ Mary squeezes Lily’s shoulders in an attempt to reassure her, and meets her eyes sympathetically in the mirror. ‘How much do you reckon you’re willing to take off? A few inches?’

‘I don’t mind. Whatever you think.’

‘That’s a lot of trust, girl! Now, I don’t know what I’ve done to earn it, but I can promise you I absolutely will not fail you. Best in the biz, I am.’ She winks at Lily, but she doesn’t reply. She just looks…broken. A strange ache digs into Mary’s ribs, and she feels awfully as if she’s said the wrong thing.

‘You good to come with me to get you shampooed, Lily Evans?’ she asks quickly, eager to move on and dislodge the odd, constricting grief from her chest.

‘Yeah. Yes, thank you.’

‘Alright, hun.’

Washing Lily’s hair doesn’t present any issues. Mary does as she always does, massaging Lily’s scalp and laughing and gossiping with the others in the shop, her curls bouncing happily about her face as she moves about her station. The salon is always full of life and love, especially on Fridays. It’s one of the reasons why she loves it so much. Halfway through a regular turns up, a grumpy little old lady named Marjorie with big square glasses, and Mary waves to her cheerily as she comes grumbling in. Everything’s just as usual. Sure, Lily isn’t saying much, but some clients just aren’t that chatty, and Mary pays it no mind. She hums along absentmindedly to the songs on the radio and can almost ignore the quiet tugging that’s settled in her sternum since the beginning of the appointment.

‘Anything exciting planned for the weekend?’ Mary pipes up once they’ve returned to the chair, hoping to inspire some conversation as she expertly snips the ends of Lily’s hair with rapid precision.

‘Yeah, it’s, uh… it’s my best friend’s birthday.’

‘Oh, really? Which day?’

‘The Sunday.’

‘Oh my god, no way! That’s my birthday too. You’ll have to wish her well for me.’

‘I will, thanks. And happy birthday, in advance.’ Lily offers up a wan smile before looking away.

‘Thank you! I’ve a day off on Monday, so me and a couple of girlfriends are going out on the town to celebrate.’

‘That’s really great. I hope you have a good time, Mary.’ Mary gives a buoyant, dazzling grin by way of a reply, and Lily looks like her heart is breaking.

‘Okay, I’d say we’re just about all done! What are we thinking? Something you’d like to change?’ Lily’s tired green eyes flick to her hair and the soft curls that are now framing her face prettily. She gives a small shake of her head, but Mary gets the sense that she’s not really seeing it. She seems distracted.

‘You’re definitely happy?’

‘Yeah. It’s perfect. Just how I’ve always had it done.’

‘If you’re sure,’ Mary smiles, pulling the hairdresser’s cape from her shoulders with a soft whoosh and giving the ends of her freshly washed hair a final zhuzh. ‘Anita over there will sort out payment for you, and she can help you schedule your next appointment as well - that is, if you think I’ve done a good enough job to warrant your coming back.’

‘I’ll ring.’

‘Perfect. It was lovely to meet you, Lily. I’ll be sure to remember you for next time.’ Lily flinches at the last part, then swallows thickly.

‘Yeah, well. I’ll be going. Thank you, for… being so friendly.’ And then she’s gone, departing to speak with Anita at the desk and leaving Mary sat stewing in a distinct sense of loss.