#they drug tested me (also for bullshit reasons- to check that I was taking my meds instead of selling them or soemthing)

[alagaisia]

This is something I learned at one of the pre-op visits for my breast reduction! My surgeon was basically I think an independent surgeon (as I guess I would imagine is common for “cosmetic”/plastic surgeons?) and she was telling us a little bit about what to do for talking to insurance about the surgery and stuff, and she mentioned that for us going through insurance it would be at a particular hospital, but she also often did surgeries where people didn’t use there insurance, and she did those at some other place, and the price she charged up front was much lower, because that was the actual cost of the surgery (and equipment and everyone’s salaries etc.) and she had to raise the ticket price significantly when people would go through insurance, because the insurance company would negotiate that price down, and then keep some of the money. (Obviously for us and many others it still worked out to be cheaper for us out of pocket to go through insurance, but the amount she made was roughly the same even though it would look like she charged thousands more for my breast reduction than for someone not using insurance)

So, when you get those bills from your insurance after a doctors visit, and there’s that little table that tells you, this is the cost of the visit, this is the discount we got you, this is how much we paid, this is how much you still have to pay?

That line about “we got you this discount” is misleading. They actually caused the provider to raise the initial cost of your care by that amount, or more, in anticipation of the insurance company refusing to pay the full amount so that they could tell you they got you a discount.

"Why does a 15-minute visit with a doctor cost 150 bucks in America???" you're gonna want to read Money-Driven Medicine, by Maggie Mahar, and probably also The Social Transformation of American Medicine, to answer that question. It is not because your doctor is a greedy bastard; your doctor does not see most of that money. It is because the system is broken to a level that is truly impressive in its dedication to making a shit ton of money for insurance company executives and shareholders.

[hargrove-mayfields]

Day four of the Horror on Cherry Lane Challenge! Today’s prompt was Sunglasses!

Steve has a lot of secrets. Too many probably.

Most teenagers’ secrets are things like sleeping with the wrong people, smoking the cheap shit the jocks pass out, broken curfews and failing grades. He’s got all of those too, but Steve's secret runs much deeper than that.

His is the kind of secret that’d have men in black suits coming to take him away, or at this point, more than a decade after letting him go in the first place, putting a bullet in the back of his skull and calling it a day before any trouble comes up.

He’s been stuck in Hawkins all his life. Been fed the knowledge about the world off a silver spoon he didn’t ask for. His first five years of life are well forgotten to shock therapy and to the lab, where they intended to use him and the rest of the kids like him as weapons. Pawns in their big game of life.

But Steve was different. He could turn his powers off, make them undetectable by the machines they hooked him up to. They thought he was just a failure, so after so long, they wiped his brain with their very own cocktail of drugs and just let him go. Adopted him out to a middle aged dink couple who wouldn’t run their mouths about where their little bundle of joy came from as long as their pockets were lined with enough hush money, and that was that.

It didn’t take long for them to realize though, that he wasn’t as normal as they had been convinced he was. Not even knowing he was doing anything wrong, little Stevie would have outbursts, or small tantrums as momma always tried to convince everyone who told her Steve was too much for her to handle.

These weren’t just normal crying fits though. Anyone who got near him would be just as sad or scared or frustrated as he was. A single sob from that boy had enough power to crack the foundations of the family home.

Most kids when they have a cranky morning will get on the nerves of their parents, but Steve could disrupt the whole neighborhood without even realizing it. And that was his power.

They didn’t have a name for it, really. The range of what he can do is too broad, too undefined by anything else. There was a telekinetic girl, a pyrokinetic he’s pretty sure is dead now. But Steve was just special. Part of what made it so easy to go under their radar was this, but it also made him a risk.

The only reason he wasn’t immediately reported and given back to the bad men was the power this frail boy carried. It scared Ruthie and John, and they decided that they’d rather face the men at that lab again than a seven year old who could accidentally destroy them with his emotions.

So they kept him, and certainly kept their distance. They forced him into a little mold of how to behave properly and made him take pills to weaken his powers. They send him to behavioral therapy and make him act like he’s not a failed government experiment. A fact which he only learned a couple of years ago after his pills worked a little too well at messing with his memory that he forgot to take them, and memories came flooding back.

For the same reasons, Steve’s bored of being careful. Bored of following all the rules and being passive, just pretending he’s like everyone else so mommy and daddy dearest are safe. He starts getting a little riskier, testing what he can do, since this is the first time he’s ever really had control over his ability. He finds a link with other people and their emotions, something of an empathy power, but he doesn’t get far in his research, because his plan very quickly goes to shit when Billy Hargrove rolls into town.

Where to begin with Billy. That boy makes him feel all sorts of things he never even considered. The very first day he showed his unimpressed (but very impressive) face at Hawkins high, Steve cracks his windshield. Oops.

He was able to tap into that control and tone it down, but that reserve dwindled the more he’s around Billy, and from there it just spirals. Bending the basketball hoop on accident, exploding light fixtures, giving everyone in the school headaches. It gets to the point where Steve has to come to terms with the fact that he had a crush on Billy, and that he has to do something to get it back under his control before somebody gets hurt.

That and he doesn’t want to get caught now. He just got back into the swing of using his powers before Billy interrupted his calm. Going back there, or whatever else might happen, is the last thing he wants for himself.

He settles for a pair of ray bans.

It’s stupid, but when Steve was still young and all but popping his mommas brains every single time he cried, she was desperate to find a way to get him to stop. She started to notice he’d concentrate hard on one thing and another would happen, staring at a lamp until it shattered, looking into her face until her ears started to ring and pop. So she does what she can to break that subconscious focus. Puts a barrier between him and all that he’s hurting. A plastic, race car themed barrier, but it does its job, and it worked every time until they got him on meds. So now that he’s old enough not to just tear the damn things right off his face, he figures it’s worth a shot.

Because nothing had made him this emotional, this out of control since the day he found out the truth about his past. Billy is special, and the very last thing he wants is to lose control and hurt him.

He still feels like a dope walking into the school with a pair of shades on. Everyone starts to stare in that way he tries not to let remind him of the lab and the doctors standing in circles around him, prodding and waiting for a reaction. Steve thinks wearing sunglass inside is the least weird thing to happen in the halls of a highschool if Tina can come in with a perm high enough to touch the ceiling, but whatever. He’ll get over it.

The fact that nothing’s exploded from how on edge he is, mostly from wondering if his momma’s trick will work and not because of their judgement, is a very good sign.

Boldly, he decides to put it to the ultimate test, and approaches Billy.

In his head, he’s so focused on just going to talk to Billy, he has nothing planned to say to him, but he thinks he would’ve forgotten anyways, what with the lazy smile Billy flashes him when he notices him approaching.

Steve’s gaze quickly darts past Billy to check for damage to anything, the racing in his chest from just a look like that typically enough to at least crack a window. Maybe he’s not as confident about this as he thought, or maybe Billy’s just really good at making him flustered.

Doesn’t matter, because he’s at the other boys locker before he has time to process what he’s doing, “Lookin’ for somethin’ Harrington?”

“Oh, yeah, I was just checking for uh, my fans. Yeah, they follow me around everywhere, you know?” It’s bullshit, and it sounds more than dumb coming out of Steve’s mouth, but it makes Billy laugh, real low and raspy and that’s a win in his book.

“That what the little disguise is for?” Billy hums and taps his temple, clearly referring to the sun glasses perched on Steve’s nose.

“Oh these? No, I uh, wear these ‘cause of the uh.. because I wanna sleep in class and down want the teachers to know?” His answer comes as more of a question than anything, so he’s grateful when Billy seems to be more interested in his excuse than the subject at hand.

“Pfft, yeah right. I’ve heard you sleepin’ on the basketball bus. Ain’t no way your snoring doesn’t get you caught before your eyes do.”

Steve just waves him off, laughs with Billy even if his heart isn’t in it.

Billy closes his locker door, switching the subject as the scenery switches. It’s all a distraction to Steve, but he forces himself to look Billy in the face as the other boy asks him, “Seriously though dude, you okay? It ain’t like you to switch up your look. You’re not hiding anythin’ under the shades are you?”

“Nah. Just been thinking, I’m not the King because I’m not cool anymore, right? So I’m tryin’ to look a little more.. interesting.” Steve’s not a very quick or good liar, despite the military guarded secret that is himself and the little black number seven carved into his arm, and he can tell Billy doesn’t buy it.

He’s a good sport though, throwing an arm around Steve’s shoulders and assuring him with a little jostle, “Aw, Stevie, you're cool in my book. At least as long as you quit comin’ up with reasons not to hang with me, yeah?”

“Yeah, I- alright. I can do that. Sorry for flaking so much though. Didn’t realize until you said something.”

“S’Cool. Just meet me at the quarry after dark and it’ll make up for it.” Billy offers, obviously trying to play up the coolness neither of them apparently actually have, and Steve can’t help but call him on it. “It gets dark at like, four-thirty, five o’clock anymore?”

“Fine. Meet me at nine, pretty boy.” Billy smirks, dropping his voice to add knowingly, “And lose the shades. I think you’re much more interesting without ‘em.”

[cloudninetonine]

Cogito, ergo sum

Chapter: 2

Pairing: Connor (RK800) x fem!reader

A/N: Hey guys! I want to apologise for the long wait between chpaters but seeing as I’m on my last year of college my school work is coming before everything else so it’s a little hard working between them! Don’t worry, I’m not dropping this series or anything just expect chapters to take a little long to be loaded and everything! Also, this chapter seems a little too far paced for me, so sorry about that as well!

Tags at the bottom once again!

I do not own Detroit become human this is merely fanficion

Warnings: Bad language, physical assault, threats (?), hints of abuse, (Name) being weird like always, also angry (Name), mentions of drugs, there’s a bit of slander against drug abusers that I do not condone!

Undercut babes!

It’s fascinating, it really is, the way her beautiful gaze follows you as you round her, studying her feverishly, your eyes wide and bright.

She’s...well, words cannot describe her. Her beauty lies beyond your imagination and you’re not quite equipped to say anything that her magnificent ears deserve to hear, your words are below her and she’s just-

Wow.

“Ms (Last), please-”

You raise your hand towards the younger engineer, silencing with a small utter of ‘hush’ and he’s shutting his mouth, falling back to the side of your desk with not much else to say.

The android you’ve been un-shamelessly ogling for the past 10 solid minutes is still very quiet, she’s just watching you in her manufactured attire, shy, nervous, scared- everything you really wish she wasn’t right now because there is no way you want her to see you as some sort of threat, far from it.

“Henry” Turning back towards the engineer, he stiffs up like a board, sweat forming on his brow “Why didn’t you dismantle her?”

It’s rude, it’s horrible to say and it sours your mouth when you form those words, but it’s an honest question, you want to know why someone would do this, keep her alive, see her for all her glory.

The public spoke strongly about their opinions of androids, like toys to be played with, slaves to be worked, not the thing you so desperately wanted people to see them as. The masterpieces that stood beyond human comprehension.

The android lets out a noise similar to a whimper as Henry stammers out.

“I-I couldn’t she- um- I-” Finally, he sighs with frustration, Henry makes eye contact with you “She said was scared and...I couldn’t”

You snap back to face her.

“Is that true?”

She hesitates, one second, two seconds, three seconds, four- it takes a whole 30 seconds before she’s finally responding. “Yes…”

Your chest bursts in excitement.

“You’re incredible” Henry deflates in relief, placing a hand against your desk while you grasp her cheeks, her warm grey eyes glancing between your two hands then meet your own stare, confused. “Amazing, beautiful, fantastic, so, so much more”

“...thank you”

You sniff, then you’re pulling away, trying to keep your tears abay. You really can’t believe that your work has gone so far, that new forms of sentient are evolving from a human’s hand, you’re so overjoyed by it all but you’re also kind of realising how weird you’re being.

“Sorry, I’m becoming the creepy stereotypical scientist, let me just-” Pulling off your lab coat, you throw it over her shoulders, pulling it tighter around her for her dainty hands to grasp and hold, a smile growing on her face in gratitude. You’re really still in awe of it all but send her a giddy smile back “Henry get Kamski I’m sure he’s gonna love this”

When the man disappears, closing the office door behind him, you guide her to a chair, kneeling before her kindly.

“Tell me” She waits patiently for you to continue “What’s your name?”

When she opens her mouth, you interrupt her, grasping her hands “No, not the name you were given, the name you have chosen. What is your name?”

You’re at the beginning of history right here, you can already see the books that are yet to be written, all starting at this very moment, with you and her. This android, this amazing, piece of living metal, is the start of something great and you can’t wait to be a part of it.

“My name is….”

-----------

“(Name), I’m sorry, but there isn’t really anything I can do”

Your hands come down on the desk, expression unbelieving.

“But he attacked Ortiz in self defence, it’s not fair for him to be shipped to Cyberlife! That hellhole already has enough test subjects with other deviants, why can’t he be let go!?” Pushing yourself back up, you drag your hands down your face in exasperation “He’s a victim! He was defending himself, why can’t we let him off with a lesser offence?”

Billie sighs, shutting the file softly. “Because in the eyes of the law, he’s not a victim. He’s property and there isn’t much we can do about that. Besides, because Ortiz is dead, his ownership basically goes back to Cyberlife, so they have the authority to take him back”

Billie’s right, you know that they’re right, but it’s just so frustrating, so vexing that this is the case. An android, in the eyes of society, is nothing more than their components, why should they be given the same privilege as those who eat, shit and breathe?

Billie may be a judge, but they didn’t make the law.

You remember years ago, when something like this would have been seen as detestable, that the masses would have stood up to fight this kind of horror, but for some reason, with age came stupidity and ignorance it seemed. What the fuck had happened to you all?

You open your mouth, then close it, then open it again before huffing, taking the file from their desk and ripping your coat off the hanger.

“I’m sorry, (Name)!” Billie calls and you wave them off, shouting back a ‘Don’t worry about it’ then close their office.

The courthouse is only a few blocks away from the precinct, a good walk away, a good way to calm yourself down until you’re having to face the frustration that comes in with having to work in such a high strung place. It’s funny really, you used to say ACAB when you were younger, still believed it too, so it’s really a wonder as to why you joined, but then again sometimes to make change you have to become the very thing you hate-

“Detective (Last)-” 

You scream, almost dropping your files and jumping a meter within the air. Passerbys don’t even spare you a glance, a generation raised on the weirdest websites like Vine, Tiktok, Youtube and god forbid, Tumblr, have them desensitised to whatever shit people like to play at now-a-days.

“Oh my God, Inspector Gadget” A hand falls to your chest, checking your racing heartbeat “You can’t just sneak up on a bitch like that”

Connor, the big old puppy, tilts his head in mild confusion “But I called your name twice, detective”

Oh.

“What are you doing here, Connor?”

The android joins your side and you continue your way. “Lieutenant Anderson informed me that you were heading to the courthouse, so I decided to come and brief you about a new case”

A new case, of course a new case, deviancy keeps popping up all over the country rapidly but you can’t hold your surprise about the fact that it’s been a  few days and there’s already a new case.

“Deadass?”

Wait, you hadn’t mean to say that-

His eyes narrow “Deadass?”

A snort escapes you “Oh my God I can’t believe you just said that, it sounds so cursed coming from your mouth. I meant, seriously?”

You swear on your life, on everything that may be above and so much more, that the android lets out a laugh when he continues, explaining the details as you finally enter the office.

You realise, as he talks, you feel a whole lot lighter than you had earlier.

-----------

“This guy is as scummy as it gets” 

Unfortunately, you can’t help but agree. Todd Williams is about as charismatic as a dumpster fire, messy hair, messy face, stained clothing and the stench of alcohol clung when you finally met him, having to hold back a wince of disgust.

You don’t usually speak ill of others, but you know his type, from the way he carries himself to the way he speaks. You’ve had to face men like him before, his whole demeanor brings back bad memories and you’re so glad that you’re not the one having to get details from him, to have to speak to him.

One thing’s for sure though, you don’t blame whatever deviant decided to book it from him.

“Why doesn’t he just...get a refund from Cyberlife?” You take a sip of your milkshake, staring at Hank, Connor and Mr Williams who looked to be ending off their conversation. “They do that for deviants, don’t they?”

Yes, if you remember, the new flashy CEO of the hell corp spoke it for all to see, that deviance is guaranteed to offer you your cash back.

How inhumane it all sounded.

Gavin scoffs, drinking his coffee “You think a guy like that cares about refunds?”

No. You know why he’s doing it. It’s all about power for fuckers like that.

Mr Williams leaves, Hank is looking through his notes, Connor is heading your way, probably to refer all the information back to you and Gavin is taking in a breath to start his bullshit again, despite your civilness that you had been sharing.

Eh, peace was never an option-

“Your metal boyfriend is heading this way”

The noise you make isn’t human, it’s a mix of a wheeze and scream, like you’ve just choked on the air your breathing and in all honesty, you have, but you’re not letting that mother fucker get away with catching you off guard, especially when he starts laughing.

“Shut up, furry”

Your actually feel the air from his head snapping towards you. “I’m not a fucking furry, quit fucking saying it!”

You pat his shoulder “It’s alright, Reed, we all know you wrote yiff fiction in your spare time-”

You dodge his fist, running away from his red, angered face and petty insults, dragging Connor away from the break room to the side, all while laughing up a storm.

Having your attention on the android again brings back Gavin’s words, his tease of ‘boyfriend’ which makes your face heat up, in what? You’re not quite sure, but it’s enough to make Connor notice your oddity.

“What were you and Detective Reed-”

“Nothing” You cackle, patting down his shoulders to distract yourself “He’s just being an arsehole again, nothing to worry yourself over”

And worry himself he didn’t, because he couldn’t of course, android and all.

Connor was quick to fill you in, an AX400 by the name of Kara had stolen (the word kidnapped comes to mind but you know that the robot detective will just ‘correct’ you on your wording) another android, Mr William’s ‘daughter’, model YK500 named Alice after assaulting him the night before. Mr Williams had been knocked out after the ordeal, as to why it had taken him so long to report it. 

“Were there any signs of assault that you could see? Ones that could lead to a potential take down or unconsciousness?” Connor takes a moment before shaking his head “Yeah, I didn’t think so”

What a lying fuck.

“Let’s head to the briefing room”

Hank is there, as well as a whole group of other police officers, talking amongst themselves as you situate yourself behind the podium, screen remote in hand and smiling brightly. Your partners are at your side, Connor in his usual stoic stance while the old fart has his arms crossed, bored as always and you’re ready to debrief the many uniforms but they keep talking, even after you clear your throat.

You’re not one to get angry at being talked over, annoyed, yes, but anger leads you nowhere with a crowd, so instead, you use your most favourite tactic to date

“Pay attention to me or I am gonna start screaming people” You sing. Not a threat, but a promise. “And you all know I will screech like mother fucker”

The room is silent in the next second.

“Great! So-”

The door to the room bursts open.

“Fucking really-”

“Detective (Last)'' It's the front office assistant and by the looks of it, he is panicked, worried even, as he addresses you. You suddenly feel your stomach knot up  “I’m sorry, but there’s been an emergency with your relative Carl Manfred”

You swallow, hard. “What?”

The meeting ends right then and there.

-----------

Hank hurls to a stop right outside the entrance. You’re already halfway out of the car when he shuts off the vehicle, Connor is taking off his seatbelt and you’re already racing down the soaked concrete path to the front door, rain pelting down on you.

You barely feel it though.

You startle the receptionist when you slam your hands down, eyes wide in panic, breathing coming out in fast, short pants and just looking as though you faced the masses to make it to this spot, right in front of her.

“Carl Manfred, he was brought here about an hour ago is he-”

She interrupts “Are you family?”

“Yes, please, I-”

“In what relation do you have to the patient?”

Is she really fucking serious right now? You debated leaning over and strangling your answer out of her, letting her know what kind of fucking pain you could put her through in this very moment-

But the hand that is placed against your back keeps you still. It’s warm and comforting and keeps you from mauling the fucker right out of her chair, though it doesn’t calm your anxiety, no, but at least it’s there.

You turn to see Connor, who nods towards you politely.

Huh, what a twist of events.

Hank leans over from your other side, looking just as angry as you feel, though he keeps his voice civil when he speaks “Listen, her old man’s just had a heart attack, could you drop the formal shit so she can see him?”

Her voice is sharp, just like her stupid fucking face and she snaps back “I can’t let you in unless I know your relation, unless you’d like to be escorted out by security”

Damn, she’s playing with fire and you’re ready to throw oil all fucking over her.

“I don’t fucking think so-” Pulling out your badge, you slam it against the desk, with nothing short of a growl “Police. Now, tell me where my fucking dad is or you’ll regret the next words that come out of your mouth”

You never abuse your power as a cop, it’s inhumane and back in your younger days you sneered at the disgusting police who would use their authority for their own gain, so you hate to admit but the nervous look that crosses her face when she sees your badge and Hank’s when he pulls it out for extra effect scratches an itch you begged to be scratched.

“Floor 3, the front desk will inform you what room”

“Thanks” You spit, already rushing to the elevator, the other two following.

Connor is quiet, to your surprise. Honestly, you expected him to speak out about your behaviour, your attitude, your unprofessionalism, but he says nothing, just trails after the two of you in silence, obediently, just like he was made for. 

It’s comforting having him here, even if he’s just following orders.

The next receptionist is kinder than the last (she even scowls at the mention of her coworker) and points down the hallway, to where two officers stand with cups of coffee within their hands. They stiffen in surprise at your arrival, but you pay them no mind, pushing your way into the room where you finally pause, taking in the scene of your beloved father figure, laid still within the bed, pale, heart monitor beeping occasionally. 

The doctor by Carl’s side looks up at you. “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

Hank and Connor wait outside.

“(Name) (Last), Carl’s daughter and emergency contact” You explain, walking further into the room “Is he- Can I-”

“He’s fine” She explains with a comforting smile “And yes, you can come closer, though the medication has him knocked unconscious so he won’t be talking any time soon”

The relief almost has you collapsing, brings you back from the panic attack that threatens to kick your arse right in front of everyone and you finally breathe normally.

“Thank you, and you are?”

“Dr Collins” Collins offers her hand and you shake it weakly. “Your father is going to be okay, (Name), but he’s going to need a lot of rest. Cardiac arrest at this age can be fatal, so we were lucky that he lived so close”

You nod, tiredly slinking to Carl’s side to drop into the cushion chair, taking his hand in yours. Kissing it lovingly, you place it close to you in comfort, in reassurance.

‘He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s going to be okay-’

“What are you doing here?”

Your anger shoots right back up, as does you head when you turn to look at the doorway.

“Leo” The name is dragged out of your mouth, it’s spoken with a heavy coat of venom and dirt and for all the participants who are about to see this wild shit show, is a clear indication that you’re far from happy to see the man that stood there. “The fuck are you doing here?”

He scoffs “I’m family, what else am I here for?”

“Oh I don’t know,” You’re standing, stalking closer to him with a raged gleam in your eye “To mooch off him a little bit more?”

The tension can be cut with a knife, everyone can see it, feel it, even Connor, who looks ready to intervene at any given moment.

“No, detective” One of the officiers starts, cutting in in hopes to keep you both calm. “He was there when it all happened, he saw everything-”

“He was there?” No, her words only add fuel to the fire and you’re glaring at your brother once again “You were there? The fuck were you there for? You did this?”

“No!”

“Please calm down” Collins cuts in “I understand the anger but the other patients-”

You ignore her, glancing around the area when a thought struck you.

“Where’s Markus?”

Connor’s the first to respond, “Who’s Markus, detective (Last)?”

“Dad’s care bot” A pin drops, no one is speaking, the two cops are quiet, Leo is scowling, but he’s not looking at you and your anger is quickly making room to fear, cold and stabbing when you push again, harsher, angrier “Where the fuck is Markus?”

The second officer speaks this time, hat in his hands and you know what happens next is not going to be good.

“He was leaning over your father when we walked in detective, Mr Leo Manfred told us he attacked him” The man gulps, hesitating. He’s not nervous for what he’s done, no, he’s nervous about the dark look that seems to be slowly taking over your eyes, “I shot him”

A beat goes by. Then another, another, another, another, another-

“Why were you there in the first place?” It’s soft, curious, but the rage behind it is big, your need for an answer is keeping it back “What was the call for?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t-”

“Answer the question, officer”

His partner offers up the answer “....A break in, ma’am”

There’s silence, then you nod in understanding.

No one is quick enough to stop you from shoving Leo into the wall, hands wrapped tightly around the lapels of his jacket and holding him up so you can scream at him properly, face feeling hot from anger, eyes wild from rage, practically feral. 

“You fucking did this! This is your fault, you good for nothing fuck!” You pull your hand back and punch him right in the face, he’s too in shock to react but everyone else is trying to pull you off “What?! Were you off your shit from snorting that fucking powder again, you damn druggie!? Huh!? HUH!? You high right now, too!?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, (Name), let go!” Hank yells but he’s fucking impressed by your resistance.

“He could have died because of you, you good for nothing cunt! Worthless piece of shit! Now, Markus is fucking dead because of you, the person who was actually fucking taking care of him! This is all your fault! He’s in that hospital bed, because of you! You! Did! This! All for those stupid drugs! You’re fucking pathetic!”

You’re finally tugged off by someone, their arms slipping under your own to stop you from going back at him again. The officers are acting as a wall between you and your brother, Dr Collin’s is checking his nose as blood drips down his face, Leo is still in shock and Hank is leaning over, hands propped onto his knees. That leaves...

“I’m sorry detective (Last), but I’m going to have to restrain you until you calm down”

You scream in frustration and try to fight against it, but damn, you have to admit in a moment of clarity, Connor is fucking strong.

“Lieutenant Anderson, if you could take her legs, we can escort her out of the building without much trouble” Hank huffs something under his breath probably a grunt of ‘fucking android’ but complies, glaring at you when he leans down.

“You kick me and I’ll kick your ass”

Your respect for him makes you comply, but the anger doesn’t stop you from cussing both him and the android out, naming every threat under the sun as they carry you out of the building, back to the car which you are shoved placed into.

“Let me out of this fucking car, Hank!” You bellow, glaring at the man with sharp eyes who stood outside the vehicle, leaning against it “I’ll break this fucking window, I swear to fucking God!”

“You can try, but we both know you won’t!”

Once again, you’re screaming, tugging frantically at the door’s handle that you know is locked, but are way too angered to care right now.

Connor sits by your side, a good distance away to not antagonise you, silent, waiting and watching as you slowly fall from angry to desperate, tears welling within your eyes and falling down your cheeks. It only takes a few more moments for you to stop altogether, your shoulders shaking as you sob, quietly but strong.

The android finally speaks “Detective (Last)-”

You’re on him in a moment, arms wrapped around his frame, face buried into his shoulder, wetting his suit jacket as you cry, shaking.

It’s a new one for Connor. An android built for detective work, to sniff out the bad deviants, to question suspects and actually built with a comforting feature for victims of crimes. But this is a first, a first he’s seen anyone to tears, more importantly, a first of seeing you so broken. Sure, he had seen you defeated those few days ago, but this is different, you’re not trying to hide conflicting feelings behind your bubbly smile and weird jokes, you’re just...crying. Nothing more, nothing less.

His arms are hovering at your sides, hesitant, unsure and it’s not until Hank gestures from outside the car to ‘fucking do something, you stupid machine’ that the protocol finally kicks in, his arms coming to wrap around you securely and comforting, reassuring you through your whimpers.

Connor is a robot, a machine that feels nothing.

But seeing you cry isn’t something he can just let happen.

Software instability.

-----------

Tags: @dillxpixkles @1950schick @pinkittwice @iris-suoh @loveflowsthroughme @thatlonelyalto @starcatcher-kay​ (ya’ll I’m half asleep if I forgot you in the taglist I am SORRY-)

[knockknockchicagopd]

A SERIE WITH HANK VOIGHT. CHAPTER I.

❚❙ WORDS: about 1.5k

❚❙ A/N: this writing hasn’t been edited, you may find some grammar mistakes, I’m sorry about that. If you find a description about body or a word out of place, or something that it makes you feel uncomfortable / unrepresented, let me know by a private message and I will change it delighted.

❚❙ GIF credits: to the author.

❚❙ Tag list: @melblacc @rebelwrites @skyofficialxx @sesamepancakes @scarletsoldierrr @mondefantastique @that-chick212 @enbyamaro @inlovewith3 @ocetevasgirl @sophie-writes @destynelseclipsa @jadakiss13. If you want to be added to my tag list, send me a message.

Grabbing your backpack once you have kept all you need before going to work, you go downstairs following the smell of freshly made coffee. People in the hospital aren't wrong, it's like a drug. You have never been a big fan of coffee till you started to work in the Chicago Med. Since then, you always have a cup in your hands. Checking the hour in your phone, you calculate how many minutes are left for your shift to start. This morning you have woken an hour earlier than normally and seems like you have the house for your own, after Charlotte and Elizabeth have already left for their Firehouse.

Placing your stuff close to the door, you lead your barefoot to the kitchen to have a cup and pour some black hot coffee in it. Sitting over the counter, you spend your time checking some emails from Doctor Manning, your sponsor at Emergencies; test results, consultations and information about your practices in your free time. She is helping you more than anyone in your life with your career, keeping your head focused and your ideas firm.

The doorbell rings, making you raise both eyes from the screen. You're not expecting any visit and the postman came a while ago, and for an instant you're tempted to not open the door and continue with your coffee in silence, but your curiosity ends up winning. Leaving the mug over the counter, you attend to the call. But what you find pushes you into a surprised shock. Hank Voight.

The last time you saw him was the morning before to be arrested. The long hours locked in an interview room, being interrogated about his plans and his shenanigans, come to your head in a sight. The police ‘kindly invited’ you to the District to talk about him. They offered you a deal in exchange for information about him. But you rejected it. Not because you were in love with him, but because you didn't know much more than them and, even so, you're not a whistle-blower. He helped you when everybody turned their backs on you, after being falsely accused of stealing meds from your ambulance, when you worked as a paramedic. You didn't owe him any kind of favor, he didn't ask you to hide his shit. You did it because you want.

But you haven't known anything from him during the last year, more than a couple talks you have had with Erin. He rejected all your visits in jail, never responded to your calls or your letters. Nothing. And now, he is in front of you. Serious grimace as always, looking rested, wearing that dark blue plaid shirt he was wearing on your first date. You remember to tell him how much you liked that shirt, how good he looked with it on. Traveling down your eyes, the badge on his belt next to the buckle earns all your attention. And you can't feel more confused.

Hank Voight being a cop? Again? How is it possible? Who took him out of jail? You knew that his sentence was from six to eight years. It's been just a month and he's walking free again. The pressure inside your chest, racing up your heart, prevents you from breathing with normalcy. Licking your bottom lip, you try to say something but nothing comes from your mouth.

“May I come in?”

Biting the inside of your cheek, you give him enough space to walk inside before closing the door again, behind your back. You want to punch him, shoot him, stab him (...), but you also want to hug him and kiss him, and know how he has been. When you knew he was being sent to Stateville, you thought you would never see him again. It doesn't matter who he was, what he did and who he helped to, he was a cop. And cops don't survive in jail.

“I heard you jumped from the ambulance to the Chicago Med”.

Hank is taking a look at your living room with curiosity, keeping his hands inside the pocket of his black jeans, turning around to rest his waist against the back of one of the sofas there. Raising an eyebrow you can't believe he has heard things about you and that he still cares. You nod in silence as crossing your arms over your chest with your lips pressed.

“I feel proud of you”. He utters then, shrugging briefly. “I always knew you'd be a good doctor. Is in your veins”.

“What are you doing here, Hank?” Putting away the quackery by waving a hand close to your chest, you can't help but tilt your head with confusion.

“I've missed you”.

As soon as he pronounces these words, a bitter and sarcastic laugh from you fills up the place. Shaking your head and rubbing the bridge of your nose, you can't believe this incompressible situation you are in. He stands up with the clear intention of coming closer, he stops dead when you raise both hands between the two of you while taking a step back.

“One year, Hank. One damn year waiting for… anything from you. A call, a text, a letter… Anything!”

“Erin was in contact with you”.

“Should I be… thankful?”

“I didn't want you to get implied”.

“Bullshit. I was since I decided to be by your side. The cops didn't handcuff me because I was working in the fifty-one and Boden knows my family, and knows me since I'm a kid”.

“Yeah, Erin told me 'bout that”. He pulls his gaze away for a moment, rubbing his right cheek. “You covered my back”.

“And you kicked my ass”.

“I wanted to protect you”

“You didn't! You pushed me away! You abandoned me!”

Hiding your face into your hands, you can't help but feel impotence being aware that you still love him after all. You really thought that he cared about you, that all the promises he made once would become real. But then, he suddenly cut any contact with you, for the exception of Erin. Raising your reddened eyes, you watch him grabbing a cardboard fold from under his jacket, to offer it to you.

“I didn't. I put you under protection. That was part of my deal with the State Attorney. Three cops have been following you all day since I walked into Stateville”.

Stupefy and looking at him with parted lips, feeling your lungs out of air for a second, you hold the fold to open it. Pictures, monthly reports, a copy of your tests for the EMT (...).

“Listen now, I was trying to survive. I was trying to have a plan before talking with you, but it took me more than I thought it could. I blinked and I was out of jail again. I'm leading the Intelligence Unit in the twenty-one now, and you're the first person I've seen besides my unit”. Carefully, Hank takes a step closer to you, slowly, hoping you don't take another back. “You've been the reason why I've been fighting all this time and I ain't pretending to come and change your life for a sudden. Only, to make sure you're good”.

“I wasn't. And I'm not”.

Slamming the fold against his chest, you try to walk away from him, but he stops you. He has that look in his eyes that tells you he's not going to leave you again. As his fingers get closed around your forearm, you try to contain the tears. His hand caresses your skin so softly that gives you chills, bristling it, till lacing his fingers with yours. Your heart jumps, just like it did the first time he held your hand that cold night of October two years ago, after insisting on driving you home.

“I've to come back to the Unit”. Hank whispers bending his head towards yours. “I can pick you up tonight. Have dinner. Talk. I will answer any question you have, I promise”.

He lands his other hand on the back of your neck, pressing his rough lips on your forehead, feeling his thumb stroking the back of your hand so tenderly that the only thing you want is to run away with him far from Chicago, far from Illinois and, why not? Far from the United States.

“One thing I want to make very clear, sweetheart. I never stopped loving you... Tell me you know it”.

“I do”. You sniff nodding, not being capable of looking up at him.

“If you don't want to see me again, but you need my help one day, don't hesitate”.

As soon as Hank abandons your house, your heart collapses, breaking into a bittersweet crying not knowing what to do. Not knowing to whom you can talk about it. Not knowing how to confront the mix of feelings and sensations dancing inside your chest, barely breathing as the whinings become louder. Holding the fold closer to your torso, you drag your feet over the parquet back to the kitchen trying to find a solution to all this mess.

[xxisxxisxxis]

Gateway Drug | Part Ninety-One [PT. 1]

A/N: Part 2 coming tomorrow.

Words:3k

Warning(s): explicit language, mentions of drug abuse, mentions of miscarriage, sexual situations

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NIKKI

I stare down at the small, black and white pictures of seemingly nothing except a tiny, tiny little blob, except for one picture which is marked with “4 months” on the back, February 14th, 1986, in white marker in Vivs’s handwriting, one picture out of seven, each with dates…she doesn’t say a word to me, and she didn’t before she handed them over. She just chunked them in my lap and went from there.

I don’t know what to ask, because I don’t know what to say.

“Are these…?” I finally get out, looking at her.

She’s got tears in her eyes, and it slowly starts sinking in.

These are fucking kids--well, tiny little embryo kids, or whatever.

“These are your’s?” I ask next and she nods.

When the hell was she ever fucking pregnant?

I check the dates again…

1983.

1984.

1984.

1985.

1986.

1986...the back of it says “twins.”

“Where was I when all of this was happening?” I ask her, and she licks her lips and breathes out.

“I don’t know, Nikki, where were you?” She replies lowly.

I look at her for a moment, trying to decide if she’s serious or not.

Then she digs in her purse and pulls out a paper, unfolding it before going through the list of dates assigned to each ultrasound image, reciting to me--in my own words from diaries--my whereabouts around the time she lost each one.

I take it that she’s already skimmed through a diary or two already.

I get angrier and angrier with each line, shaking by the time she starts on, “1986--you were unconscious while me and Andy McCoy were trying to resuscit--”

I throw the pictures and they all split from each other and scatter around her, cutting her short.

“None of this is my fault, Vivian!” I scream at her, my heart feeling as though it’s rotting behind my ribs. “I didn’t fucking know!”

“How could you fucking know when you were so damn hig--”

“You came home in ‘83, from that appointment and told me it was a false-positive test and you had just gained a little weight. I wasn’t on smack in July of 1983. In fact, I went a little while on just Tylenol and beer while I was tampering off my heavy meds the doctor prescribed for my shoulder. So you could have fucking told me then what the fuck was happening, instead of shutting down and shutting me out for three goddamn months!” I’m crying without realizing it until hot tears prick down my cheeks, my skin uncomfortable as my nerves singe from my boiling blood. “I loved you, I had just married you for Christ sake--I was happy and excited to be at that point with you and you fucking left me for three months! You’d barely let me touch you, you wouldn’t come out of our room, you wouldn’t wanna go out, I’d sleep on the fucking couch or crash at Robbins or Tommy’s because you’d tell me you just wanted to be alone, and all along I thought it was my fault because I went to that fucking party with Tommy instead of staying with you the night of our wedding and you were just making me pay...and then when you were put on medication I thought it was my fault, too, because I thought you’d figured out I was tampering with smack, and I just…” I’m up and pacing, hands in my hair…

Amber doesn’t say a word.

I think Viv broke her, too, because she looks like she’s trying to find the right thing to say.

Maybe she’s hoping we can talk this one out on our own.

But I don’t want to talk anything out.

Not right now.

“I didn’t tell you about them because I was scared you would cope with the pain the same way you’d coped with pain for years. I was afraid you’d drink and drug yourself and leave me to deal with it by myself, and I didn’t want to put that on you, so I just dealt with it myself.” Vivian admits, her voice cracking.

“Vivian, you haven’t dealt with it, though.” Amber quietly interjects, softly. “You haven’t dealt with it. You haven’t allowed yourself to heal.”

“When were you going to tell me about this?” I shakily ask, trying to swallow down the lump in my throat.

“When you died.” She says next, honestly, her tone a dead giveaway that it’s not something she’s proud of, but it’s the truth. “I was just gonna bury the pictures with you, just in case you had random kids coming up to you in the next life, you’d know who they were, I guess.”

I feel sick to my stomach at the confession, my whole body repulsed with the fact that she’s managed to hide this the past four years.

“Nikki, if you need to take a break, we can,” Amber assures me.

I’m getting the fuck out of there as fast as I can, just desperate to get some air that Vivian isn’t breathing her demoness presence into, and the second I get free, I'm puking my guts up in the hallway. 

I know I had a reason to be angry with her, she hid that from me, like I'd hid so much from her. She thought she was protecting me, though, and I just didn't want her to leave me because I was a pussy and a piece of shit--and I knew it. 

I was more pissed at myself, though, because I knew I'd put her in the position to feel like she couldn't come to me and tell me she was pregnant, let alone had lost it, even before I was on smack. 

She knew how I handled shit--either drink, do whatever drug was accessible, or both. 

When heroin and crack entered the picture, that just cemented her will not to tell me about it. 

I think the biggest elephant in the room, though, despite her being pregnant with Duff's baby at that point, and me and my thing with Vanity and all the other women, and her hidden pregnancies, was the fact she never wanted to get married to me that fast, and I knew it. 

I knew it the day we got married that she didn't really want to, she was just trying to make me happy, and I fucking let her do it because I was so terrified that I was going to lose her if I didn't go as far as I could to secure her to me. 

The amount of unnecessary bullshit she could've bypassed had I just taken a step back and told her we didn't have to get married if she didn't want to...I often times think it would've saved her a lot of heartbreak. We could've broken up when shit hit the fan with smack in '84, I still would've lived through my bad OD in '87,  probably, and we could've gotten back together when I cleaned my shit up--that is if she would've waited for me...and that's why I didn't let up. Because "if she waited" wasn't good enough. I didn't want "if." 

I wanted her. 

So I married her, knowing she didn't want to, and instead of proving her wrong and giving her a relationship to question why she ever second guessed vowing an eternity together with me, I put her through hell, treated her like shit, abused her, endured her abuse, wasted each other's time, hurt each other, ruined each other more and more than what we were when we got into the relationship. 

And that was my first indiscretion against her. 

Marrying her knowing she wasn't ready.

By the time I finish puking, I'm leaning against the wall, taking deep breaths, hearing Vivian crying, still in Amber's office. 

I squeeze my eyes closed, my palms roughly wipe my stray tears. 

Despite being sober, the little fuck that is Sikki is trying to claw out of the box I've put him in for over a month, now. 

Just the faintest, "leave her," echoes in my mind. 

"Fuck you." I audibly tell him. 

"She never wanted to be with you in the first place. Why do you think her body refused to carry your fucking kids? Because she hates you so much that it'd be an abomination to have your little hell rats." 

"Fuck off." I argue, again. 

"And just think about it. The timing of this one she's got now...she was getting her brains screwed backwards right next door to you while you were keeling over. It was like she knew what was about to happen and she was celebrating the fact she wouldn't have to fucking deal with your shit ever again." He taunts, getting more and more of his scraggly hand out of the box, the lid cracking open to reveal his white, sallow skin and dark eyes. 

"Fuck off." I gritt out once more. 

"What's wrong? You don't think she'd do that? After all the times you've admitted she's an evil bitch from the pit fires of hell? Because I think she'd do it. In fact, I bet she'd stare your overdosing carcass in the eyes, screaming out his name in ecstasy, while dripping cum at the mere fact you were dying." 

I slam the lid of the box back down, crushing his boney, track riddled fingers, making him curse me. 

I refuse to listen to his bullshit anymore. 

Vivian loves me. She wants to be with me. She'd be gone by now if she didn't, and I wouldn't blame her. 

1 9 8 1

"Ummm…" I trail off, watching her closely, lickikg my lips, my hand grabbing at the curve of her hip over the comforter she's got pulled up to her chest, her head in the crook of my elbow, looking up at me, awaiting my answer. "...I don't know." I say, honestly. 

"As theological as you are and you can't tell me whether or not you think Aliens are real?" She asks and I roll my eyes. 

"I don't know, miss honor roll, you tell me." I counter and she grins. 

"I think the universe is too big for it to just be us." She informs me. 

"Ah, says the one who also believes a heaven and a God exists within the same wide range of universe." I reply and she hits my bare chest with the back of her hand, gently. 

"Shut up." She says, shaking her head a little. "Is it not reasonable to think there's more than just us?" 

I think about it for a moment. 

"I wouldn't be surprised if aliens are real, I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't." I admit, rubbing my eye for a second. 

"What about God?" She asks next and I try not to laugh in her face. 

"I'm almost one hundred percent sure that God doesn't exist." I state. 

"How do you know?" She says, blinking emerald greens at me, as if what I'm about to say about her imaginary friend she's been brainwashed into believing in, is going to make or break her.

"I'm not sure, baby, I just think...fine, tell you what, I wouldn't be surprised if God were real, and I wouldn't be surprised if he weren't real." I give her the benefit of the doubt. 

"I'd be surprised if he weren't." She tells me. 

"Yeah? Well, how do you know he is real?" I question her, next, a teasing smile on my lips. 

"I don't know, you can't see him or hear his voice audibly, but you can feel him." She explains the best she can and I raise my brows. 

"You can feel God?"

"Well, yeah." She replies, her finger tracing along the few bits of chest hair I've got and I lick my lips for a second before leaning down, kissing her. 

"What about now?" I ask, grinning as my hand pushes away at the covers over her to run against the smooth skin of her thigh and she smiles just a little before pressing her lips to mine, one of her hands threading in my hair with her other arm snakes around me, pulling me on top of her and I chuckle lowly, nestling between her legs while we get hot and heavy with our tongues and teeth.

Both of us let out satisfied breaths when I slide into her, her eyes fluttering closed, brows furrowed slightly, head leaning back as her nails bite into my arms. 

I pat myself on the back and trail hot, wet, sloppy kisses along her clavicle before pulling out of her again, a little shudder going up my back from the tight, soaking heat between her legs. 

When I start building a slow but hard rhythm, her legs are locking at the base of my spine, her arms hugging at my back, pulling me to her as, "Nikki," slips from her lips. 

"What about now?" I ask in her ear as I force myself as deep into her as her body will let me, and she whimpers out, "yes."

A sadistic little pat to my ego causes a pull at my lips, my hand wrapping around her throat as I stare down at her, her nails clawing down my back, tears in her eyes as I thrust back into her…

I kiss at her lips, her cheek, her jaw, moving my hand from her throat to kiss her neck and I swear I hear the faintest, barely inaudible whisper of, "I love you," but decide I'm just hearing things...

Present

I squeeze my eyes shut, the smell of my puke wafting in my face, making me take several steps back to catch my breath. 

It's hard to swallow the fact that I really let myself be convinced for so long that I'd let her fuck my life up, to the extent of blaming her for my life actually being fucked up.

"Fuck." I curse at myself, raking my hands down my face. 

How the fuck am I going to make this right with her? 

How the fuck is she going to make this right with me? 

She's pregnant, with Duff's kid or whatever, and then BAM! just drops this shit on me that she's actually been pregnant multiple times from me and never mentioned losing any of them to me. 

I know it's my fault that she didn't tell me. I know it is. Am I going to admit that to her? Fuck no. Am I hurt over her not telling me anyway? Yeah, I am. 

If I wasn't in sobriety penitentiary, I'd probably be out and about trying to find something to numb and distract me…

I don't know what to do. 

But I do know one thing for sure: I'm not in love with her anymore, but I love her, and I'm pretty sure she feels the same exact way about me...but it's not like we can't get back to that place we were in when we first got together, it's just gonna take some work...a lot of work.

I huff out a breath, taking a moment to get my shit together, mentally. 

Do I go back in there and finish out today or just try again next week? 

I think on it for a minute…

"Fuck it." I say out, shakily, weakly, tears break past my lash line once again, 

a far cry from that tough motherfucker I swore I was for years. "Just fuck it."

Fuck this.

Fuck her.

And fuck me.

[wispandwhispers]

Welcome to Monochromia!

Words: 2048

Previous | Next

Tw(s) : Cursing, Implied torture, getting disturbing commissions, talked about murder (Tell me if there is any to add)

Pairing(s) : Eventually Logicality, Dukeceit, Eventually Prinxiety.

Notes : I’ve had this idea on the back burner for so long and its finally here

"Zynx, how do you plan to secure the vote in the Fumi sector?"

"No comment."

"Zynx, how are you planning to make a comeback after Foster destroyed your chances of getting the majority ?"

"No comment."

"Zynx, is the rumours of you and Crownford sleeping together true?"

"I'm sorry but I'm not sure what you're talking about."

A limousine pulled up in front of the city hall and the chauffeur rolled down the window. A simple eye signal and he knew it was time to go.

"No more questions."

"Zynx a moment of your t-"

The chauffeur slammed the door of the limousine and started the planned safety-checked drive back to his boss' residence.

He looked in the mirror at his employer which a cheeky grin.

"I have a good feeling your sick of this question but how in fuck's name are you going to win this election? "

The passenger glared at his employee, clearly pissed.

"Do not test my patience Remy."

"Holy shit, you didn't say my full name, who are you and what have you done with Logan Zynx?"

"Just pass my yarn bag, I'm so fucking stressed."

Remy opened the compartment and chucked the medium sized light- blue pouch to the back.

"I don't understand why you don't you just go around firing people, snort crack, hate sex or whatever rich people do the wind down."

"I don't really know, this brings me peace for some reason."

The conversation died down and Logan got to work on stress knitting a new scarf/sock/ thing while Remy took the back route to his estate in the Prime sector with the sound of the radio in the background.

The usual daily announcements, the signal time, the weather update, the tired host annoying the news-

-Roman Crownford made headlines tonight when he was caught carrying election candidate, Logan Zynx in the bridal position . Rumours have emerged that the two are in a relationship and-

The driver's neck snapped back to stare at the person in the back seat.

"Spill."

"I don't speak slang."

"Fine, explain."

"I decided to go out for a drink, someone decided to spike it, woke up in my bed with this guy staring at me. That's what I can remember at least."

"Sounds like the start to some shitty rom-com."

-Footage can be seen of the actor carefully helping the politician get to his car to supposedly drive him home.

"Please turn that down, If I listen to that anymore I'll get a headache from the bullshit they are spewing. And I already have one from the debate so please."

Remy turn the dial anti-clockwise.

"Anyway, you need to be focusing on which is the best assassin in the area, I personally recommend Remus-"

In the mirror, the driver could see his employer's eyes sharpen in annoyance.

"I plan to win the election without murdering someone and even if I was to kill Patton, I would probably get caught anyway."

The limousine came to a halt.

"You better get inside, three minutes 'til the signal goes live."

Logan let himself out of the vehicle and faced the other

"I'm aware. That's why I wear a watch if you weren't aware."

Remy just shook his head.

"You're still the fucking antisocial nerd you were as a teen."

"And you were the same shade of black and white since you were twelve but I don't comment about it." Logan retorted as he started to walk to his door.

"Don't come for my kneecaps bitch, I'm being a queen in the colours I can see and I'm fucking proud of my basic bitch style."

"God you're so egotistical. Why am I friend with you again?"

"Your bad life decisions, not mine."

Logan heard the limousine drive off into the distance. He would assume the Remy would just listen to the signal in the car. And then promptly go and get a coffee to fuel his caffeine addiction that can never satisfied.

Logan walked into his house and sat down on his armchair. Cathrine climbed onto his lap but he's shooed her away. She always seemed to meow louder during the signal.

Your daily broadcast is about to begin, remember you can always t̙̰̖̲͔͈͚̱̞͙̐̇͋́̅̊̀̅̕͝ų̺̺̟͇͈͎̝̫̱̳̝͈̬͔̩̠̞̙͑̍͒̌̅͗̔͑̿̋̔͘̕̕̚̕͠͠͠r̡̧̧̛̟̺͍̘̘͉̞͔͇̭͍̮̒̋͆́̎̿̀̉́̏̊͘͘͜͠͡n̡̢̛̥̺̱̫͖̹̩̲̝̪͊̊̊͂̔̇͆̓̄̋̓̓ͅ i̢̱͕̮͎̺͓͂̒̊͂͒̏̍t̨̨̥̦̙̭̦̀̄̾̂̽̄͘ o̧̥̗͚̮͇̬̠̥̼̮̫͕̞̪̭̝̼̍͒̇̀̐̌̊͆́̐͂͒̀̋͌̌͐̕̚͜f̡̢̨̢̥̬̳͓̺̖͍͐͒̍̄̋̂̏͂̍̊̏̅͜f̛̹̱̜̥͇̜̥̙͇̻͍̙͈̱̈́̎͋̏̑̑͊́̌̓̓͗́́͟ ȧ̢̧̢̞̙̦͉̪͇̇̾̄̑̽̓̈́̾̓̌͟͜͝ͅẗ̜͎̖̰͖͉͇̦̥́̍̑̄̚͘͞͡͞ ä̡̫̰̪̰̖͕̲͙̲̝̘̤͎́̂̏̇̓̃̍̽̐́̚͘͢͞͡͡ǹ̢͇̙͇̙̯͎̬̟͖̪̥̹͔̙̿́̓̍̽̊͆̈̓̍̎̀̏͌͌͜͞ͅy͓̪̟̲̩̙͚̗̫͚̰̘̫͈͌̍̊̃̎̓͒̄̔͑͆̈̄͠ -

It cackled unholy sound, like the type static made but way worse and the device proceeded to go radio silent (no pun intended). Logan walked over to see if Cathrine had chewed through the wires again but she was curled up in a ball on the heater.

"I got this fixed not even a week ago, It can't be broken already.."

The box suddenly flickered back to life akin to a car engine. Logan sighed in relief, returning to his chair waiting for the-

Good evening lucky citizen, I am proud to interrupt your daily brainwashing in the hopes that you will heed my warning. Stop listening to the fucking signal or broadcast or wave or whatever you call it in your sector.This is probably the most idiotic thing that you have ever heard. I am fully aware. But also was that story our caregivers told us so we wouldn't cover our ears. So you listened through the hidden circle of hell that was the sound you heard. But you don't remember the pain and only the calm when it ended, don't you? In the very likely case you are currently at your mobile trying to report me., let me save you the hassle of trying to find a name. Call me-

Logan promptly ripped the radio cord out of the socket.

Pacing around his study slowly, trying to mentally recall a fact, he pulled out his phone and checked the time. The broadcast had ended the second he had pulled out the plug. He couldn't dwell on that. He typed in a number and let the waiting sound become his background noise until someone picked up.

"Patton, can I stay at yours for the night?"

*****

" Q.Quill. A twenty year old woman who grew up in godforsaken dump that is Fumi, clawed her way to the top and started to biggest drug empire in the city, who always has four weapons on her person at all times, the person whose body has never gotten more than a scratch before the person who dared to hurt her died was killed by her own hands and you killed her sneaking an acid bomb into her Big Mac. I'm surprised Duke. It's less creative than how you usually murder your target."

"You wound me Pip, when I joined this company I swore to myself that every single job I do , I would pour my hearty and soul into. There is no was in-"

"Let me guess, the acid is more than acid."

'Duke' gave a slick grin. "Wanna know what was in it?"

"Nah, I'm still traumatised from the hat job."

She passed a bag to the assassin.

"You know where to pick up your pay check from. Get the fuck out of my office..

Grabbing the sack, moonwalking on his hellys that Pip was convinced he was not wearing before, 'Duke' went to collect his earnings.

He rolled to the Shed, pick up the cash, stuffed a red hot poker into the eye of a guy who tried to mug him and continued on with his daily rout-

"Thomas!" Duke ran up to the named person and lifted him into the air. Then he slapped his face.

"Ow, what the fuck was that Re...," A frantic head shake for 'not the right time. "Duke .."

Thomas narrowed his eyebrows and pulled the Duke to the nearby alleyway. Thomas was going to speak but the other beat him to it.

"I slapped you, partially because I wanted to and because it's not safe to be around me at the moment because I kinda killed someone off duty so the Shed is probably after me and your dad will kill me if I get blood on your shirt and Janus is terrifying when pissed."

Thomas just stood back, taking a good moment to process the information.

"How did you get chosen to be an assassin?"

"Do you think I know?"

Duke perked his ears up. Footsteps. Very light and carefully planned ones as well.

"Ok Thomas, I'm got to play with people's intestines now, say hi to Janus for me and rennet that's nothing is illegal if you don't get caught!"Duke took out a sewing needle out of his pocket than had green thread.

Thomas felt sorry for the victims ,already starting to back out of the future crime scene.

"Sure!"

*********

Virgil stepped back from from his computer, questioning why he even decided to take commissions in the first place. And seeming from the email, this wasn't someone trying to fuck with him.

Time to get some moral support.

i'llburnifigointothesun: What would you do if a guy offered you one fucking million for a piece of fanart of them living out their romantic fantasies

FosterDawg: You don't need to do nsfw pieces. You're not a broke college student

i'llburnifigointothesun:Yeah, I've upgraded to a broke adult.

FosterDawg : So...Why are you nervous about this? You've drawn kisses before albeit it wasn't normally the most light hearted work but this isn't one of your triggers.

i'llburnifigointothesun: the condition is I have to hand paint this and they want it 'hyper-realistic'. i kinda don't want my hands to die.

FosterDawg : Kiddo, at the end of the day, it's your call if you want to do this or not.

i'llburnifigointothesun: it was such a dad thing to end that with an exclamation mark.

Virgil put down his phone, listened to the broadcast ,stared long and hard at his paintbrushes. After about half an hour he got out a canvas and pulled up reference images.

He gritted his teeth. "If they're lying, I'm about to going to sue."

*******

"Dad, I'm home!"

Thomas flung his backpack onto the floor, walking to the kitchen to partially look for his dad and partially to get the leftover pizza.

"Okay, he's still at work which means time for-"

"Thomas you can't watch Steven Universe re-runs until five in the morning again, you have your revision that you'll procrastinate and then panic a month before you the exam date in guilt of not studying."

The father had seemed to just manifest out of thin air, standing behind his son and the other couldn't tell if he had been there for an hour or two minutes.He rarely wore his emotions on his sleeve.

"Dad, I didn't ask you to peer into my soul.Also Remus says hi." He fiddled with the remote control, deciding what cartoon to binge watch .

The parent rushed to his son ,checking his face to see if was hurt. "Shit, you didn't see him kill or hurt anyone, right?"

"Yep!"

Janus let out a breath he wasn't aware he was holding. "Thank fuck, you can't be used as a witness."

Thomas walked over to the front door to retrieve his discarded backpack and took out his music theory notes. He scanned through the notes and then lowered his head in frustration."Why did I pick this class?"

"It seemed like a good decision at the time, for you and you just started your Hamilton phase." Janus saw his son staring over what he assumed was the homework. The due date was in a weeks time. He had an internal debate with himself and came to a decision.

"You know what, fuck that!," He chucked Thomas homework to the side. "Do what makes you happy tonight, you seem stressed and you should take time for yourself."

Thomas started at his dad for a few seconds and gave him a big hug. " Thanks, I kinda needed that.. This maybe a bad time but I kinda threw my tie-dye pride flag with your yellow dress shirts.

Janus stared at the other with a glare that could be sarcasm or could be anger. "Well, everything could be gayer."

The dad finally put down his hat on the coat stand and started to walk upstairs. "Remember to keep it down, I'll be live."

"Kay.."Thomas started his self care routine by microwaving the leftover pizza.

Taglist( Ask me if you want to be added):

@katlikethesword, @crinklesnuff

[inmyarmswrappedin]

You can find episode 14 on the NRK website without geoblock. In case you decide to jump in for the last stretch!

This is a bit of a weird one.

Aisha is at home, and she straight up texts Emrah that someone saw him kiss her, so now he has to meet her brother. I don’t run the texts through google translate because I’m that lazy, but I’m pretty sure Aisha is being all accusatory with the pronouns, like, “YOU kissed ME, so now you have to take responsibility!” 

The show switches for a moment to Emrah, then back to Aisha, and then... We stay with Emrah for good. Now, if this were a Skam, I’d be like, “what’s this bullshit.” But lovleg did something similar in s2 when, (SPOILERS FOR LOVLEG S2) halfway through the season, the POV switched to Sara for a whole week. 

In my opinion, we didn’t learn anything about Emrah in this episode that we couldn’t have figured out from what we’ve seen so far from Aisha’s POV (except for one thing I’ll mention later). That said, I think if you’ve been following the 17-verse all this time, this is a nice episode to check with the previous mains (who all have a stronger connection to Emrah than to Aisha) and see what they’re up to. At any rate, we can consider this episode, A Day In the Life of Emrah, and we’ll see whether the POV switches to Emrah again before the season is over.

So when Emrah gets Aisha’s text, he’s waiting for Abdi at a basketball court. Abdi is late because now he’s a serious adult who does serious things. Aisha keeps texting Emrah, and Abdi correctly guesses Emrah’s girlfriend is texting him. Emrah says she’s not his girlfriend. They talk a bit, and Emrah says he’s crazy in love with Aisha, but a man’s got his limits. Like getting told off at his side job, that’s a limit. But also he doesn’t blame Aisha because he thinks she deserves the world, and not someone like him. 

Abdi says Aisha is also in love with Emrah, and Emrah scoffs. But Abdi says Aisha wouldn’t have kept texting him and hanging out with him, despite his history, if she didn’t care. Abdi thinks that ladies be making drama, that’s all. And he adds that Emrah has given Aisha plenty of reasons to make drama. 

Abdi then asks Emrah to give him his phone, because he’s going to write a love message in Emrah’s stead. Emrah’s like, “come and get it if you dare.” They play basketball for a bit, and Abdi adds that Aisha should also stop fucking around and commit. 

At any rate Emrah never gives Abdi his phone, and now he has to leave for his job. Which job, Abdi asks. Emrah says, the job.

So Emrah is at his place, dicing hashish in precisely weighed cubes. As he’s doing that, someone knocks on his door insistently. It seems like it’s a drunken lady neighbor who has mixed up apartment numbers. Tis freaks Emrah out though, and he goes to count the money he’s hidden in an envelope under the sink. He calls someone (I’m assuming Bigmac) to set up a meeting.

Emrah is picked up by Bigmac and a bulkier guy who must be the one in charge of dealing physical justice. Emrah gives them the envelope from earlier, and Bigmac is pissed because it’s nowhere near what Emrah actually owes him. This is lunch money to him, he says. Bigmac is tired of Emrah paying back his debt in small increments, as if he were making payments to his bank for a washing machine. He wants the 230,000 NOK he’s owed (around $28K) in less than a month. Emrah says he can’t make that much money that quick. Bigmac says to quit his job at Kiwi. Emrah’s like, “I can’t do that either, that’s my ticket to stability.” So the muscle is about to throw Emrah out of the car, when Emrah says he’ll do anything please!!

The next thing we see is Emrah watching as the car drives away.

Later on, Emrah is in front of his apartment building. Ibo, his brother, has come to visit him. I think maybe he drove part of the way or he got a grade he’s proud of in an exam? (The grade he says is 4, which is what Aisha got for his practice math test, so that can’t be right lmao.) Anyway, Ibo is clearly super happy to see his older brother. He’s staying with his uncle, as the Aydin brothers are orphans. The uncle asks Emrah if he isn’t going to invite them for tea or anything.

While Emrah is boiling water, the uncle points out his wife brought Emrah tupperware full of food he can microwave, as well as nice odds and ends like a tablecloth, to make the flat feel more homely. I instantly adore Emrah’s aunt lol. Emrah’s uncle offers to take Emrah in as well, and Emrah doesn’t know how to tell him that he doesn’t want to risk his brother’s and relatives’ lives like that.

All three men sit down to eat at Emrah’s other room, which is both a living room, a bedroom, and laundry room all in one (there’s a collapsible drying rack propped against the wall). The uncle leaves for the bathroom, which surprisingly isn’t also part of this room, and Ibo immediately is like, “we should get kebabs.” Emrah’s like, “your aunt made us the whole of Turkey to eat.” Ibo argues kebabs are healthier because they’re organic. This boy is so desperate to eat trash after months(?) of homemade food, he doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore.

But after Emrah agrees to let the boy eat a kebab, Ibo remembers Emrah asked him to bring his passport over. He asks if Emrah is going on holiday, and Emrah is like nah, it’s just good to have your passport. Man, going abroad for a drug deal is like another level of crime. Isn’t there any way to stop Bigmac?

Emrah gets a final text from Aisha, and we switch back to her. She’s in her room when Yusuf comes in and tells her he arranged with their mom for him and Aisha to hang out tomorrow. They’ll be at a friend’s house at 6 (in the morning? Not sure), so Aisha should let her boy know. 

Aisha hasn’t gotten a single response back from Emrah all day, so she basically texts Emrah that she’ll be at Khushi’s at 6 tomorrow and hopes for the best. 

[whomstism]

George rambles a little bit about a job interview he had, RV Life, The Gorilla glue girl and now the Gorilla glue solo cup guy, and the 117 year old lady that survived covid ---------------------------------- --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-whomst/support

_________

(Rough unedited Transcript of The Whomst Podcast Episode 129 )

Hey what's up everybody welcome to the homes podcast episode 129 I randomly checked a hundred episodes ago around like 28 to 29 and I don't know why I checked on soundcloud but I did just to see if like anybody listening see if I missed some like comments or whatever but uh, I got a few more more listened than I expected cuz I don't promote. 

A soundcloud at all and back when I was using soundcloud it just was not it was not what's up because I can only upload like four episodes so like the the earliest episode I post say if I post some like six seven eight, nine, I'll have to delete six so I can upload eleven, you know what I mean, cuz I cuz the only give you like a certain I think is like two hours of free free hours or something like that three minutes and I'll use it up in like four episodes or three episode five. 

Talked a lot in one especially in this case. I did episode like episode 27 to 28 with Jason fifi a friend of mine from in fellow comedian from our Alabama and we were we talked for like an hour and a half something like that so that took up like all my space so but that was like the last episode that I uploaded on soundcloud before I realized. 

Because the only way they'll give me more time more spaces if I paid for it and you know what? I'm not paying I'm not paying to talk to myself I'm not that damn crazy right like yeah spend money to make money but it's out of cloud come on good good thing I didn't good thing I am cheap and I kept looking around because I I wouldn't have found my current host would you probably hurt the uh the ad from the beginning of the episode the anchor that anchored out FM, that's basically where I use and now a lot of people use see. 

I thought that's kind of thought I kind of ran into something new like a year ago, but every time I ask people who started up a new pipe. Guess and I try to recommend them the anchor host they already know about it and look yeah, look, okay. I guess I'm not as unique as I thought oh shit. 

But man check the shit out, um, but yeah you already know who's podcast if you knew TLD are basically what to show is it's just me George Collins. I'm a comedian. I just talk about the news talk about what's what's going on that's kind of just do whatever like but uh you already know this episode and all episodes is brought to you by ugly drinks calm that is a the drink of choice for this show ugly drinks calm, they just actually rebooted a flavor great flavor they try to. 

Tease it on Twitter. I kind of guessed that shit quick as hell, but great flavor great flavored sparkling water, so I guess recommended TI if you don't like grape some some weird reason try out peach peach or. Yeah, I recommend peach flavor just try that so ugly drinks.com let's just jump into it, um this week before we get into the news, hey I finally got I actually got two interviews this week. 

I'm trying to get trying to get a second job because you know, I can't really save with my current money that make up I make pretty decent but it's not. I can't save because of me. I'm I spend money on bullshit all the time and I can't stop it, it's a drug yeah. 

I boss you on Amazon I post made a lot of stuff because I don't like cooking. I think I told you I like the ratio of how long it takes me to cook and how long it eats depends on if I actually cook it so yeah, so in the buying a lot of post makes because that's shit and, I mean, yeah, it's my own fault, that's all that is I need to fix it, but what can you do huh what can you get all right but? 

Okay because I did the research right and I don't remember if I told you I'd not but I actually got in contact with some of the some of the gets crushed words with some of the RV sellers here in Vegas and they hit me up and you know, how car salesman this is like they just trying to like make a sale and they'll tell you anything and I told them I had bad credit and shit like that and I mean, you know, yeah, we see what works out and then as he was telling me that I remember when I'm trying to get a car backing out. 

Obama and I'll just try to get my own car again after my ex wrecked my other one. Basically they'll they'll tell you hey yeah we try to work something out but in reality yeah, they'll sell you car but they'll like deposit or be like double sometimes triple so I'll like oh fuck last time I looked at RV and like a dealership they wanted like fifteen twenty thousand like before they even checked your credit so it's like I could just imagine what exactly they wanted. 

I might be exaggerating a little bit it might actually been like ten thousand but it's still in the thousands it's a thousand. Couple thousand dollars deposit, it's like a it's like a fucking house it is house it is a house. So I can just imagine they look at my credit and they're like yeah, it'll actually be like $25,000 down some shit like this so I'm like they kept trying to call me which that's that's cool and all but I'm like, I know I'm not gonna be able to get whatever is no no way yeah, you're gonna be nice enough to let me get something down, let me put a little bit lower down. 

Sort I can get it there then there going by the book instead of going by then they're they're not gonna take a chance you feel me like cuz it's not because the rent the quote unquote rent of the RV I can handle no problem that's that's not a problem at all especially because me doing a math my current rent and my car is will be about a thousand dollars so I can handle an RV which is gonna be a little bit lower than that actually so I can actually handle. 

Because if I got the RV to actually help me out I'm gonna get rid of the car I'm gonna get rid of the car. I'm a I'm not gonna be I'm gonna be staying in this place no more so I can handle whatever payments I have to make for RV so whatever extra money yeah, I'll be saving up I can use for whatever maintenance for an RV but since it'll be like a semi new one. 

I won't have to worry about maintenance or anything like that. I can actually focus on like the things that I need for like to keep it keep it going, you know, I don't know. I don't know it for sure because I haven't. Tad an RV myself but I know you had that like licenses and it might be something here something different than the last time. 

I looked it up in Bama might be some like parking laws or whatever in Vegas. I don't know. I haven't looked all that up. I'm probably should but at the same time like, I don't I don't I'm I don't I don't have the money for it, so what's the plan me looking up if I don't even have one you know what I mean? 

I don't know me being semi negative but yeah I said that because I had got that the second job second when I didn't get it yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get it my experience if they don't they don't pick me. I don't know why maybe because you know, you know what's funny about that because the interview it'll just place called I'm not gonna no, you know it fuck it, it's not fucking say it. 

I don't know what crazy motherfucker listen to this all right, but it was basically they don't want to be called a temp service but they're a temp service and it's they are they basically trying to hire someone for janitor work and I've had plenty of that is whatever and. 

They they try to be like we're done we're we're new we're a new modern day interviewer so we don't do all that old school stuff so one of the things they had me do on top of the application which was weird because they asked me for an interview then did an application that's backwards but a part of application was a survey for like, hey, we're gonna see what type of personality you have so it'll be like three questions and each questions be like a one example would be how do you? 

View yourself and underneath the question to be like a literally a hundred words that you can click multiple words, of course. Click it as many words you want to describe yourself. I kind of. I you I wanted to make a joke about it if I wasn't so serious about getting this position I would have been joking and just like it's either I would have picked just one word out of a hundred words that they gave me who just picked one to describe me or pick all of them just like picked every single one of them just to like fuck around you know, I thought that I don't know but that's it. 

I thought that that was that's like a new thing and then when she was interviewing me, right she was like, One thing that kind of caught my eye which is kind of funny she made it very clear like yeah, we're gonna we can't ask you if you have a criminal record bud if we run one well something pop up like right now and this is like okay, can you do you think you'll be able to pass a drug test well we also senses legal here we it we don't test for marijuana she like made this super clear as if. 

A lot of people did they got they tried to get the position had that issue so they was like who didn't get rid of it or? Or they you know, what kind of makes makes it kind of clear because a lot of people when I first moved here was like, oh they do a drug test but they don't test from marijuana but I'm but you know what I never tested it. 

I never wanted to be in that situation, you know what I mean, like just in case what it would have these mother could just lie, huh? And you get caught and I got marijuana and my system and I just like go take a drug test now. I'm in trouble and I don't have a job anymore because I took marijuana because I had marijuana in my system what I'm gonna argue with them like oh I thought it was legal but like I don't know I stomped I still kind of scary about this so I'll try to like not do it just in case yeah, you never know like who am I? 

I don't have money for lawyers. I can't fight this shit fuck that so no, I'm not taking that chance but she made very clear maybe it was a test. I'm not testing that she angled. Me you're not gonna trick me into failing the drug test plus, um, one thing I'm kind of glad they didn't do it's like hey dress because at the second interview I got the one I didn't go to it was a different position. 

I actually forget what it was no we was working for it was one of those people that works that runs the little cart at the airport and like put it in and out whatever one I didn't I didn't pick that one because it was like nine bucks an hour and like the reviews. 

I've heard that's on ND because You do like reviews of jobs and some other well a good amount of reviews were saying like, oh it's is really hard work and she like that. I'm like nah I'm done and I could look I don't look I'll work hard. I don't mind working hard but at this point how long I've been working in manual labor. 

I I'm not getting paid nine dollars an hour to do manual labor again, all right, you have to pay more than so I kind of left out alone plus on top of that airport job. I mean, I could have moved up but who I ain't got time for this shit. 

Deals like a come to the interview and in business casual and I they never. I could never really understand it like for like certain jobs like like says say if I try to get hired for Walmart when I was younger and like my my sister is on my mom or something like that was me like you have to dress up you have to dress for the interview so like that which didn't make sense because I was I was just becoming like a janitor or like a car pusher like why am I coming in like a half a suit for like that doesn't make no goddamn sense like a dress for the job you want like I'm going to be a carp pressure like I'm coming in jeans and a t-shirt. 

I'm. Come with a smile on my face that's about the only professional thing that I'm gonna put on on purpose, all right Christ, that's that's by anyway, that's what the janitor job the actual interview actually went to. They didn't do that they I just kind of came in the the the clothes that I were to work basically just like these black g black pans and like a black t-shirt my jacket. 

I didn't like look overly hood or anything like that. I don't think I could even if I tried but. But they I if I don't get a job. I don't know. I'm kind of rambling whatever anyway. Well, okay the only reason why I brought that up is because they could have FaceTime me because I went if you know the layout of Vegas, I live on the north side all the way on top right and the interview was all the way at the bottom like past the airport in on like Russell Road, so I'm like, That was like a solid 30-35 minute drive just on my raggedy ass the reggae is jeep just for like a five-minute interview just for them for them to say hey yeah, we just wanted to see your face and see if you come on time and then they gave me the actual application like I said, I gave it to me after the interview and then said we'll hit you up in a few weeks. 

This is a waste of fucking time man all day damn gas plus like look. I don't know it's because maybe because I haven't been driving long distances in a long time, but driving on the highway in Vegas kind of like. Kind of kind of freaks me out sometimes man and I look I just try to rest stay away from them just I just stay on the land stay on the streets these people can drive a drive all extra aggressive and shit only I ain't got time for that. 

I'll be trying to chill. I mean, I maybe you know what maybe the dumb driving all crazy or keep me like alert and because you know, I got the narcolepsy so I'm like, that's the one thing that kind of makes me kind of scary because I'm like driving straight for a long time kind of fucks for me, so maybe the shitty drivers. 

Shaking me awake actually helps maybe I should appreciate what I have. I don't know hope this thing is stop recording. Jesus Christ, oh my God, okay. I didn't. Oh shit all right in the news after 16 minutes of me wrangling okay, look yeah, I already know about the gorilla glue girl and a good news out of that stupidity she she uh, she got certain that surgery but basically we got some doctor that did it for free which is fucking cool as hell. 

Who basically created this like little mixture that broke down the the glue. And she got her hair back, so I mean not all of it, but like she got her hair back, so she's seen my back to normal which I'm kind of happy for for that but same time. 

Yeah, I'm look I'm repeating what other people say it like what the fuck like how to who why did you think that was good idea? Anyway but it was a good good ending to the story on top of she's not I'm pretty sure you saw like online where she was they were saying that she was going to sue the people who created gorilla glue which ended up just being there just another fucking internet lie doesn't rumor one from trying to get clips clicks. 

So at the end of the day, it's just stupid people got stupid prizes and they got a way out of it so that's that's cool like I said, I'm happy for but that's not the end of the story y'all that's at the end of the story, ah, there's a why what one thing why is it always the black folks brah these motherfuckers are like throwing us back further and further every time make some steps it's always some motherfuckers there is you know, it's not even just black people it's just people in general just fuck. 

Ing us up every time we make a step in in a good path somebody always try to do something that are like. Basically give aliens a reason why not the ever communicate with us we're too damn stupid as you can hear me talking um, but no man okay, yes another gorilla group glue is situation this guy I think is from Louisiana, okay, just listen to this clip man. 

Louisiana guy thought that she was that the outcome look. I'm not even remember these people name but this guy from Louisiana made a video. I guess he's a rapper or whatever. He basically thought that the gorilla will girl. Was making it up that it was all for clout like gorilla glue isn't that strong so he so what he did fucking IQ of a thousand what he did was uh, took a bottle gorilla glue. 

Put it on a party cup one of those red solo cups and put it to his lips and he pretty sure you can guess you want to take a guess what happened yeah you're you're right he's in the hospital foot shit he's in the hospital for gluing red solo club cup to his lips and he got it how how some of the articles saying it they saying that he got his whole lip removed. 

I doubt it. I'm pretty sure the surgeon just like cut the surface. That that was actually glued on that's it because anything else seems excessive. I'm not a doctor who knows. To buy it there's a funny thing is like listen to this clip don't show you right and I'll show you but listen to because he basically goes on the news and interviews one of the wonderful things like Fox 6 is I'm sure like that. 

Basically what happened in his mindset and all that stuff is just overly stupid just listen.

you know, all right so the funniest thing about the whole thing is is I love how he he wants to like, oh I'm gonna be careful about like making sure my lips aren't exposed to like this virus and it's an open cut and all this nonsense right but this the motherfucker that put glue on them in the first place like come on like, Look okay let's play devil's advocate for a minute okay, let's say I understand his point of I want to I want to prove that she was doing this all for cloud is all for faking she like there so I wanted to have a real video critical real video of glue actually touching skin, it's not that strong right flow, right? 

Why lips why the lips bro you you had any other place on any other non-incentral places on your body it could have tested it on like your arm yeah your fingers you could be doing arts and crafts, you know, how the glue gets on your fingers like you can test it at that way anywhere else anywhere else does not important like he might he might as well hes squeeze squeeze a little bit and it's nostrils and close them all fuckers up like as well, so we go in important parts up let's let's glue my glue my These I can't talk. 

Let's glue my lips together. Jesus Christ. I'm surprising to do that now plus you know, what what we know is stupid is he didn't he said he we wanted to see if it was real what you're doing real. He could have just he didn't do it on his hair like I figured what he looks like. 

I'm now but uh, he could have tested it Harry at least that's stupidity is comparable at least it has a theme like oh I was I was trying to prove that the her superglue thing wasn't real so I put it in my hair or in my beard so I'm like that at least. 

At least he got that at least you still stupid you still stupid as hell but at least I understand unless you did test on the exact same thing she did you know, but now let's let's put a put this glue a cup to my lip now. I can't use my lips. 

I have to have a mask on the cover of my lips, he pie it only like the where the mask cuz he wasn't wearing it properly in in the video. He was still had he still had his nose out so he was just he just had to mask on the cover his fucking glued on lips, that's that's about it so. 

It's I mean, I guess that one has a semi happy ending he. I mean, he's not so much embarrassed that he didn't he he's going on TV the interview people know his name. Like you doing this for for cloud like it's not working bro, like no one's gonna buy your wrap album yeah, you're mix tapes, oh yeah if people do buy it's really fun novelty just like oh yeah, this is the dude who this is the rapper they glued his fucking lip to a red cuts red solo cup like that's about it. 

I would buy it. I mean, you got that I guess. 

So the sister survived covet, she's 117 years old look me personally. Look if I was 117 and I finally got covered but I will be ecstatic just like fuck finally getting the fuck out of here like god damn and then it don't happen. I'll be pissed because uh, I don't know if you heard it but she's she's blind and on the video she's looks like sitting in a chair obviously she can talk since they interviewed her. 

I mean did like I said, it's just me personally like I can't live that long. I just can't like it's it's been 29 almost 29 years and I'm done with it already, so I'll just imagine. Fuck that's like was 80 almost 90 more years yeah fuck that man. I'm sorry like just in me. 

I like I think I've said it before it's like when I get old enough to where like if something unfortunate happened it happens to me to where I like because I don't mind being old and I could take care of myself just fine yeah if I have the money to take care of my myself and I'm like comfortable that's cool. 

I'm not saying just like being old fuck that no I'm saying is um, If I something happened to you where I can't take care of myself and I just need like let's say if I have kids like my my son on my daughter to take care of me or or if I had the money to to do it have like some like nurse. 

Come to my house and have to do everything for me then fuck that just this like punch me in the soft spot in my brain like just uppercut me into heaven like god damn it, like I know I can't I can't do that man cuz um, I remember when I broke my leg and I don't know just them having it happen to help me get up to go to the bathroom it's just the masculine and even though it's not it's the it's the job and some of them don't complain about it it's cool they they happy to help people and it's people like that that's that's great but don't don't help me the only way to help me is get one of those like miniature novelty bats. 

Crack me across the skull. I write a note so you don't get in trouble fuck that's why I was thinking. I had a random thought earlier this week on Twitter saying, uh, okay, you know how you have like an argument not? I know I don't know if you've done a done before but you've seen it or you heard about it to do this again to an argument and at a bar and one of them gets one of them shoots the other one and. 

Sometimes you'll see the videos on like world started like oh you got a gun shoot me dead shoot me dead and what if its like if that person does shoot them can they is there a loophole in the system? That says, oh says he's especially got video of it like this dude acts for it he asked for you to shoot him is there a loophole in the system that says oh yeah, well you you was just doing this man a service is there something out there like that could add a little yeah that'll take a lot of like a lot of stress out that will take a lot of these people who. 

Try to use that as to to make themselves look tougher like that you need in brah like they'll really think twice about saying whatever they say in an argument like but yeah back to cracking me against the head with a bat. I mean if she's cool, she's happy doing that, but like like she said what she's scared, she's like no. 

And that's why I think like she does talk she just done now she just kind of just waiting you she don't even watch TV she like listening it's like what the fuck do you do you just she's a nun does she just pray all day. I'm kind of fucking around a little bit but like what does she do all day it's like how do you stay sane? 

Is the is the thought of of God or whatever she believes in and follows is that so calming that you're fine with living this life how long has she been blind that's that's why I want to look up to. Because whatever keeps her saying on a daily. I I want somebody because I can see I can walk I can take care of myself and I am depressed. 

Then and that's that's why that's the one thing I don't like the back like when I was a teenager because I'm an atheist so I'm more of a gnostic now because I don't argue with people about it. I understand why people need things like back when our teenager. I'll argue with people about like the afterlife of God notice stuff, but now I kind of I understand why people need it and, I'm kind of jealous. 

I kind of how my brain works. I just cannot. Cannot do the whole religion and spirituality spiritual spirituality and saying that word it stuff like that. I just can't do it, so that's why I'm not but I'm jealous for people who can who looks into a book and can be happy. 

A book and just just have hope and be happy for the rest of their life just doing whatever because they have this this figure in the sky looking out for them quote unquote looking out for them. I'm jealous for that so if that's. Was keeping this lady alive and being fine with the fact that you can't do shit for real. 

Then. Is on owner like. That's good that's cool. I guess I don't really have nothing funny to say about it, it's just like I am I'm gonna I'm a little bit jealous of people who just if that actually is the reason that's keeping her alive and keeping her saying then and yeah, that's that's that's what's up but um, 

Not me though give me into about 60 and I can it and it takes me like three times as much strength to get up out my seat nope ended please game over well when I fart and I and I fucking pissed myself nah don't hit in this shit. I never oh I didn't want to end it on a dark note but like down but I look I'm happy that she's survived she's a second old second oldest person ever in the world, I guess. 

I've been looking for number one is. That's that's not a good existence. I wonder what their diets are like what how did what did you eat on for all your life to survive that long sometimes like I was arguing with people not arguing but we just have enough conversation on the clubhouse. 

About death because this dude came in like super fucking woke, you know, those dudes who have like a three dreads but they call it locks now yeah he had three locks and so he's like super spiritual and shit like you start talking about like playing the garden and shit he's like asking us do we plant gardens like obviously a fucking don't come on now? 

I don't I don't garden it's the same way. I don't like cooking it's like I'm not fucking waiting. Two and a half weeks to eat one tomato wait, obviously if you keep doing it you do it do it properly yeah. I know but like still I'm not it's just takes too fucking long but so I appreciate the moderate modern day way of us eating shit yeah, it's not great for us but like who the fuck cares like? 

Haha look at stuff it's just. You don't matter if you eat well you're still gonna die and it was like saying those same delves truck that that was being negative. Because like I don't know because I because I accept death that's that's I don't know people just don't understand me. 

Let me see hold on what the fuck? Oh well, basically I'll just say and tell them I'm like it don't matter if you eat well like yeah, oh add maybe 20 years to your life but do it do it really really matter especially when you're 60 if I die at 60, sometimes it don't matter you like you eat all the well your exercise every day you take care of yourself you take your vitamins and you'll still die of stroke at 32 like sometimes you get unlucky and like you can't. 

Just blame food it's not always food it just sometimes, you get luck unlucky it's like I had I had a stroke during the fucking pneumonia. I was fine. I was working fine that week before and then I went to sleep woke up fucking body hurts so like the shit happens all right and I'm actually I'm actually taking care of myself. 

I only started only start eating like shit and again because I was in quarantine for so goddamn long and I couldn't do shit. I just got bored so I just went back to what I was doing but before that I was taking care of myself, so. Explain that damn. 

I don't know I'm gonna leave it at that. I've been talking for too long. I talk to you later thanks for listening episode 129 now see ya next week thanks for listening, um shit just I got the links on the Instagram and the bio is you can buy merch you can all borrow that good stuff follow me on Instagram at regular as George shared a show share the show. 

I appreciate y'all love y'all peace.

[thurisazsalail]

Chronic Illness + Cars

A lot of us with chronic illness try to explain what it’s like to try to get treatment, when what we end up with is gaslighting, ineffective bullshit from doctors, no treatment at all, and worse from the medical community.  I’m frustrated right now especially because my new psych fucked with my meds for a disorder that was *already being managed*, because she refuses to treat the one that’s unmanaged and that is ruining my life (ADHD). And allll the Fun Stuff with a BAD change in psych meds is happening. Because female-assigned autistic people with ADHD don’t exist guys, and we especially don’t go to college, k? We’re just in it for the student debt and the drugs.

So after awhile of trying to explain it ineffectively, especially to cismen, I kind of get it. In stereotypical, non-mechanic perspective, it’s like this:

You have a car. It is your only car with no chance of getting a new one, ever. For some reason, you absolutely cannot get anywhere at all without this car for purposes of metaphor. The car is your body. 

Car has an oil leak. You broke a head gasket. Oil is spraying all over other necessary parts. At first, it’s not a big deal- you can clean up those other parts as soon as you get the head gasket fixed, but that’s gotta be quick, because a broken head gasket going unfixed leads to engine stress and other broken parts from the oil leak side effect. 

You somehow have the funds to take it to a mechanic, at least for the base appointment. No one will tell you an estimate over the phone for testing. Fine, you have insurance, whatever. They have good reviews. Somehow, magically, you aren’t put on a waitlist or told to make an appointment for two months from now to be seen. You get in tomorrow. You show up early, fill out some paperwork about the history of the car, what you were doing when you noticed it leaking oil. You suspect a head gasket from some of the rumbling and other issues, but you’re not sure. 

The mechanic spends 10 minutes looking at the car, agrees that there MIGHT be an oil leak, and wants you to fill out a paper to track the oil leak for two weeks. .... what???? Insurance is denying coverage for opening the hood and looking at the engine right now. Bring back the paper as proof, they’ll probably cover it. Uugh FINE so you do that.  Now the engine is starting to labour more, and another part goes bad. The starter is starting to fail because it’s covered in oil. You bring it in again and note that the starter is not turning every time, probably because of the oil leak. Your mechanic tells you that the engine and starter are two different parts. You fucking know that, but they’re connected to each other and I don’t know, it could be that the broken thing leaking the oil is causing that as a side effect????  The insurance changes your mechanic before you find out. 

You start over. 

This mechanic actually agrees that the oil leak might be related to the engine. Huh, how about that. Okay. Check the damn engine, please??? The engine warning light has now been on for a month. It’s running pretty hot. You’re dumping in a quart of oil every week. It’s got to be going somewhere, genius! Yep, mechanic says broken head gasket. Insurance won’t cover a broken head gasket though, so we’re gonna clean some of these parts and file for a gasket replacement.

Before he can win that argument, your insurance changes your mechanic again. 

New guy can’t read the notes of the previous mechanic so well, and the first mechanic didn’t bother to make any. Great. Start over. Now you sound like you’re making up a really big case! Why didn’t you get seen SOONER?! If it was a REAL head gasket leak, you’d have thought it was more important! Now you have TWO leaking head gaskets AND the starter is really giving you trouble. Also, there’s something funny with the battery sometimes?? Or it could be the alternator? Or some part of the electrical harness might have oil on an exposed section from dry rot. It is getting to be an older car...

Your new mechanic says that he thinks you really just need a proper oil change and filter reseating. You ask how the fuck that’s supposed to help, when previous doctor agreed that it was a head gasket and these other parts are now bad because of it not getting replaced. You need help getting the head gasket, now two of them, fixed. You’ll deal with rest at a future appointment; your copay is too high. The mechanic now thinks you’re making stuff up to try to get free oil changes. When you argue with him about it, your file now says “Noncompliant customer. Oil change seeking behaviour.” You have to change your mechanic AGAIN. It’s now been a year.

You are now paying for your mechanic out of pocket. The cost is astronomical. The mechanic asks you why you’ve seen so many mechanics. It’s suspicious- there are people who see lots of mechanics to try to find ones that do illegal window tinting and speed modifications. You’re agitated. You probably fit the profile. You’re here to talk about your engine and starter. He thinks that’s red flag behaviour. A mechanic would have treated all this stuff by now if that’s what was REALLY wrong with your car! You must have broken this stuff recently to get attention. You seem to know a lot about head gaskets, alternators, batteries, and oil changes for someone who isn’t into cars... 

You say “yeah, well, none of these mechanics listened to me, and it’s my only car, I have to get to work and stuff or I’ll be homeless and starving, but they won’t fix anything and the one who was GOING to got switched out by my old insurance company... so I looked stuff up and tried to learn about cars. Maybe there was something I could do to keep it from getting worse, or even make it better in the meantime...”

He thinks that’s even MORE suspicious. Maybe you’re illegally practicing drag racing. That’s how that engine got blown out. He recommends driving more slowly and replacing the battery. He will absolutely not fix the engine, and any time you bring it up, he shuts it down or changes the conversation. 

You realize he’s never going to fix the damn oil leak.

You switch mechanics...

[whyyallsweatin]

My experience in a recovery house.

I’d like to share a story about my recent experience while in recovery housing.

At first I moved in with really high hopes. The place I moved into seemed very positive and safe. It was run by a nurse who was also a recovering alcoholic.

When I moved in, there were two other women in the house, L** and T****. They were both older. L** was the senior roommate with the responsibility of reporting any suspicious behaviour by the other tenants.

A few weeks in and I noticed some tension between L** and T****. Eventually, T**** relapsed on alcohol inside the house and was removed. This was scary for me, because T**** tried to get me to leave the house a little earlier with her, likely to use, but I refused. She exposed herself as drunk later on in the evening and was quickly removed.

About a month later we got a new roommate. Her name was C******. When she moved in she started to behave in a way that would make me embarrassed for her. When she first came to the house, she had just left a rehab facility and seemed to be full of stories about how ‘hard core’ her drug use was. She admittedly was taking suboxone, but she also admitted to being a regular cocaine/crack user and alcoholic. What was strange was she had a lot of glory stories about how she was a successful drug dealer, pulling in a few million a year. Her friend had a bunker where they hid from the cops, bla bla bla.

She took quickly to L** and I’d often hear them outside chatting in the early hours of the morning while smoking. So I figured she’d be easy to get along with since my roommate liked her. I trusted L**’s judgement at the time.

Quickly after moving in though C****** started to say weirder things. This included stories about how she frequented a well-known biker group’s clubhouse in Victoria. The only thing is, there is no clubhouse currently in Victoria. I asked her when she went, since there was one briefly here a few years ago and she told me right before she went to rehab a few months prior. Okay…

Following that she’d frequently go for walks on her own to the pharmacy or the store. She came back twice with two weird stories. Once, she told us while in the pharmacy she told my roommate and I that a man approached her and told her she was incredibly good looking and that he’d like her to model for him. I don’t want to be judgemental – C****** is in her fifties, is about 4’9 and is not really someone I’d see modeling.

Another time she came home and told us some knight in shining armour approached her on steel horse (motorcycle) and knew her name. He spoke comforting words to her – as if to encourage her on her mystical journey in sobriety. Since we lived in a private location, I was concerned that this man may have followed her home. I asked her and she told me that he already knew where she lived because he told her that he was expecting her. This was her destiny.

She also went into great detail about how her friends knew how to cheat urine tests. This alarmed me because she was super wobbly at times and looked sedated. I don’t know if you can supplement suboxone with illicit heroin and pass a test, but if she used clean urine – that would be a fail too since she had to test positive for suboxone. I asked her a few times about what suboxone would show up as and she didn’t really answer.

C****** was also very animated about her therapy sessions. She would be in her room for hours undergoing intense therapy and she would tell us how hard it was on her, garnering sympathy from L**. To me I wasn’t really buying it. You don’t get exhausted talking on the phone laying in you bed. She said she had a lot of trauma. I tried to relate to her and asked what some of the things she experienced were that traumatized her. She went into detail about an abusive boyfriend – then the next week she was elated having spoken to the same boyfriend she had claimed to have been abusive.

Whenever the conversation wasn’t about her she’d turn it into a conversation about herself. She had so many different incongruent stories about her family life, boyfriends, husbands, friends. It was hard to keep up. She admitted that her daughter and her had a strained relationship – which I could understand since she was a junky fuck up who neglected her.

She’d often complain that friends had alienated her who were still using, and then make statements that these friends she owed money to, then she said they forgave her. Etc. who cares. She gave me about five different names of boyfriends she had and she told me that she knew a male friend of mine that I was close to and insinuated she had a relationship with him. When I asked him, he told me he didn’t know who she was.

Another girl, named J**** came to the house a few weeks after C******. She was suffering a great deal. It was clear that she had either relapsed or was being heavily medicated still. She also came from the same rehab facility as C****** but there was no indication that the two had interacted, which I found strange. They were there the same time.

I knew J**** from my first attempt to get sober a year before. She was doing quite well and actually was in charge of the recovery house I was at the year prior. It made me sad that she had relapsed because she was very young, and when I knew her a year ago, I was really confident in her recovery and thought of her as an example.

J**** was struggling quite a bit and C****** and my other roommate quickly began to gossip about her outside. I could hear them through the open window. This upset me since they seemed to judge her quiet behaviour immediately. They reported her and we took drug tests which J**** and the rest of us initially passed.

Regardless, J****’s behaviour was withdrawn and they continued to insinuate that she was relapsing until she was finally kicked out. I don’t know if she did relapse but being under that kind of scrutiny could very easily push anyone into a position where they would.

Once J**** was gone, things between my roommates quickly turned to me. We were stuck inside due to Covid and I became quite depressed, wanting to get out and get a job and other things. I didn’t like online meetings and the group meetings we had on Zoom were heartless and seemed forced. Additionally, my roommates were given permission to go out and do things, but for some reason I was not.

Things got weird one evening when I went for a walk with C******. She told me her any my other roommate were “worried about me.” I had recently expressed my frustration with the situation, but nothing alarming. I echoed things my roommates said about the circumstances and tried to keep myself occupied.

During that time, the owner of our house, J*, employed a ‘helper.’ Her name was T*****. We were directed to call her twice a week and check in. After the first few conversations with her, I started to feel like the conversations were forced and T***** seemed combative. I began to forget my phone calls and the J* and T***** implemented a card system, where you were issued a yellow card as a warning. After 5 yellow cards, you’d get a red card, which meant eviction. I was issued a yellow card after missing a phone call with T*****. I didn’t think much of it but I felt like I was interesting in moving out since the restrictive rules of the house, which fluctuated in severity between tenants, seemed to make it impossible for me to have a healthy social life. But, I never indicated that I was officially moving out since my finances were a mess.

At this time, I was quite interested in getting back to work. And at this very time the local newspaper ran a story about a company I worked for. The company was ensnared in a money laundering scandal. This concerned me because I was worried about my reputation being involved in this company when I was set on finding new work. I told my roommates and showed them the article. I was also contacted by a news reporter, who wanted me to speak on the matter but I declined due to the fact that I had signed a confidentiality agreement.

I expressed my concerns during one of the forced group chats on Zoom while T***** was present. I didn’t know at the time, but talking about these matters – things that were concerning to you – was not of essence during group. Group was a place where recovering addicts and alcoholics were expected to parrot each other, feel guilty and talk about what they’re doing in recovery to better themselves by talking about the same things over and over, like making a gratitude list. My idea of getting better was to get a job and get out in the real world instead of isolating – so my contributions were not appreciated.

Everyone was sort of crumbling from the isolation due to Covid, and the household chores were being ignored. I took it upon myself to do many of the chores without complaining, even if they weren’t my assigned tasks. We would write down the chores we did and I did this after doing the lion’s share of chores. One morning, after doing every chore, I heard L** and C***** angrily chatting about the chore log book and saying it was “bullshit” that I did them all, even though they heard me vacuuming, cleaning the washroom etc.

One night, the mop was broken, so I used detergent and a rag to clean the floor on my knees. It wasn’t a big area to clean, so it wasn’t really a big deal. However, I bumped into a mirror that was hanging on the wall and it fell and broke. I made sure to clean up the pieces and then told my roommates to watch out for shards because I wasn’t sure if any had gone under the fridge or might emerge, even though I had scoured the entire area of any sharps. I also had to dispose of the mirror, so I told them I had put it outside. Neither of them saw or heard me, but they quietly nodded as I told them and then retreated back to their rooms.

The day after that I could hear them talking about me upstairs while I watched tv downstairs. “Does she think that, like, she worked at that company, or something?” I heard. “Yeah she broke that mirror and she probably did it on purpose.” What? I went upstairs and asked them if they were going to talk about me to keep their voices down. They were stunned. They then went on to say “we’re not talking about you.” I bluffed and said I had recorded them. “Oh, well we’re very concerned.” Ok, I thought – you weren’t talking about me but you were. Which one is it? They made all sorts of claims and when I responded, asking them again, to simply lower their voice they started making dismissive remarks like, “JUST WOW!” “YIKES!” I didn’t speak to them for the rest of the night. Honestly, saying things like “JUST WOW” and “YIKES” are a dead give away that the person saying it has already made up their mind about you – and that what you said was horrible and they expected it.

The next morning I was asked to take a drug test and passed. A few days passed and things seemed normal again. Then I missed a call with T***** and was issued another yellow card. Whoops.

A few days later things got very strange. Around noon, I saw my roommates dramatically run for the door, get into a car and leave. The tires squealed as they left, as if they were the Dukes of Hazard or something. Then the owner of the house, J* and he husband came over. They began to confront me about breaking the mirror and told me that the psychiatric unit from the hospital was on their way. They insisted that they were worried about me, and I admitted that I was frustrated and depressed so maybe I should go to the hospital.

When the psychiatric unit came, they seemed quite friendly. But they asked me questions that started to make me alarmed. There was a male and female psychiatrist there, and the male asked me if I was paranoid about someone following me, or that the company I worked for that was in the news was stalking me. I didn’t understand where they had heard that I thought that so I was stunned. They then asked me if I thought my roommates were part of a conspiracy to stalk me with the company I claimed to work for. I was agitated, so I expressed my disbelief in why they would come to the conclusion that I would think that. During this time, I did admit that I was experiencing anxiety and agreed to go to the hospital under certain conditions. In my previous dealings with Victoria’s Psych Emerge, I had been repeatedly treated like a criminal. I asked that I not be exposed to this and they agreed.

I rode to the hospital with J*. When I got there she gave me a hug and I was escorted in. I took a drug test and waited to speak with a psychiatrist. I spoke to a nurse, a social worker and several psychiatrists in a private room while security guards looked on. They asked me over, and over, and over again why I had violently broken a mirror. I told them each time that it was an accident. The last psychiatrist I spoke to noted that I was getting agitated and that she was going to give me something.

I was let out of the room and I heard the doctors and nurses debating on whether or not to administer powerful anti-psychotics while restrained in isolation while I sat patiently in the wait room. I sat patiently without showing any signs of violence while they loudly debated restraining me and administering anti-psychotics.

There isn’t a lot of documentation on anti-psychotics and their misuse because no one understands why psychiatrists would prescribe medication that makes people miserable. Unfortunatly, anti-psychotics are lauded for curing everything from anxiety to delusions, depression to psychosis. I don’t doubt they have some benefit in short term use by minimizing psychosis, but their long term use has never been accurately documented and psychiatrist cherry pic anecdotal testimonies about patients who benefitted from them to cure an broad, unbelievable range of psychiatric problems.

I’ll briefly explain how they work: they block dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for regulating the brains reward system. Hard drugs like cocaine, crack, meth, heroin etc. high-jack the brain by flooding the dopamine receptors. People feel good, too good, on these drugs. That’s why they’re addicting. Anti-psychotics do the opposite. How in the hell does high-jacking and retarding the brain’s reward system help with depression if it stops your brain releasing dopamine? They’re tranquilizers in that they make people subdued because they feel nothing. They don’t feel rewarded for their actions. This is good because they may be rendered unable to act violently because they have no desire to do anything. So, that’s good, I guess. It’s good for someone who’s violent and impulsive. Temporarily.

Naturally patients who aren’t violent or don’t fit into categories of psychological distress that require sedation have no idea that a doctor would give them something that would impair them from feeling good, so if they experience the overwhelming negative effects of anti-psychotics, they likely won’t make the connection that they’re actually being caused by the medication the doctor has prescribed to make them feel better. Regardless, they’re non-addicting and some patients reported they feel better, maybe. And, they put people to sleep making agitated patients easier to deal with. So, with that overwhelmingly limited amount of evidence to support the administration of anti-psychotics, they’re given out like candy by psychiatrists all across Canada.

I’m sure psychiatrists don’t do this because their intentions are bad. Big pharmaceutical companies like Johnson and Johnson have made incredibly convincing arguments to support the use of Risperidone, despite overwhelming cases in which males were reported to have grown female breasts, thousands of patients displaying suicidal ideation, mental impairment and brain shrinkage. Marketers from Johnson and Johnson make powerful, emotional pleas to defend this drug – lauding it as a cure all for austistic patients, depressed patients, psychotic patients, bi-polar patients. You name it. And since the goal is to sell, they claim the sale of this drug is both beneficial to them monetarily, while saving the world from mental illness. It’s fucking beautiful, everyone wins!

Anyways – I was force injected with the anti-psychotic Risperidone for 6 excrutiating months in 2018. It was like being stuck in a torture chamber – mental anguish 24 hours a day. I reported the side effects but they were dismissed, repeatedly. I often resorted to using hard drugs just to escape the absolute anguish just for a few hours to watch a tv program. While on Risperidone, I went to the hospital several times because I couldn’t breath, the anxiety was overwhelming. Regardless, no one listened. I was under threat of imprisonment while under the mental health act if I did not take the medication, so to prevent me from not taking it they gave me injections.  It was so unbelievably terrifying. What my psychiatrist at the time did was a crime – but, no one cared. I guess if he believes it works, and I’m telling him it doesn’t and I’m the one taking it, then he must be right. Okay…

After months of fighting for my life on this drug, I admitted myself to rehab, mainly to get off Risperidone so I no longer needed to supplement my drugs with illicit ones just to feel normal. However, I was not informed that Risperidone causes a deadly withdrawal symptoms. The withdrawal included symptoms of anxiety, restlessness, ruminating thoughts, sleeplessness and depression that were so severe I could barely walk. Naturally, my councillor at rehab assumed I was ‘faking it.’ It took roughly 30 days for the injection to wear off. I still experienced some anxiety and was, you guessed it, administered another anti-psychotic. This time it was the lesser of all the evils, Abilify. I trusted the psychiatrist there so I stayed on it. It was a low dose and I was on a few other medications that probably cancelled its effects out including Concerta – a life-saver for people who abuse stimulants to concentrate.

Anyways, fast forward to my recent stay at the hospital this year after J* convinced me to go, where I listened in fear as they debated on putting anti-psychotics in me. I had a wrist band on when I signed in that said not to administer anti-psychotics, but when they asked me about it, they asked me why they couldn’t. I told them I wasn’t under the mental health act and that anti-psychotics caused adverse effects. Frustrated, the doctors just administered my normal sleeping medication.

The next day I was released the doctor I saw told me he didn’t understand why I was admitted in the first place. He believed I hadn’t acted violently and I showed up the confidentiality agreement that was sent to me by my former employer so I could convince him I worked there and wasn’t delusional.

After that, I was free to leave and got on the bus and went home. When I got home I went to the door and tried to get in by punching the buttons to the code on the door lock. Only, the door lock was dead. I rang the doorbell several times and one of my roommates came to the door. I could hear her on the phone, “should I call the cops? SHOULD I CALL THE COPS?” Eventually she opened the door, muttered something at me and I went to my room.

I called J* and told her what happened. She seemed disappointed and upset and told me to call my case-worker since she was busy at work – dealing with Covid (there was no one in the hospital with Covid by the time, but Okay…). I called my case-worker, S*** and he told me that I was being kicked out. He didn’t have time to talk to me much either. Wanting answers I then called T*****. I told her I was very nervous about what was happening and she became very combative. I asked her why I was accused of deliberately breaking a mirror and she asked me why I did it. I then asked her why I was asked if I thought people were after me because of the job thing and she told me that she knows the owner of the company I had worked for and none of that stuff has anything to do with me. I asked her if she, my housemates and J* didn’t believe I worked there and she told me she didn’t believe anything I said and repeated that she’s friends with the owner of the company, they’re handling it and that the newspaper is publishing false claims. She was also insinuating she had told him about me. Girl – my stay at the house was confidential ya’ll can’t go around telling your friends.

I went downstairs since I was worried about what to do and phoned a friend. When I was on the phone, my roommates dramatically ran down the stairs and I heard them say “I’m scared, let’s call the cops! CALL THE COPS!” They then squealed out of the parking lot - like some kinda post-menopausal Thelma and Louise - just as J* came in. J* worked about 45 minutes away but she arrived within 10 minutes of me talking to her when she told me she was at work. So she wasn’t really working like she told me.

J* came in and started talking. She told me that what she was doing was for the safety of the other roommates. I then cut her off and asked her if she had my safety in mind. I reiterated that I was taken to the hospital, interrogated about a mirror breaking and interrogated about being delusional about a job I worked at. She then told me that what she did was what she was told to do in these situations and that she was legally bound to protect the other tenants. Okay…

I wasn’t comfortable with how combative T**** was or that she had told anyone she knew about me and I questioned her qualifications. J* told me she had a bachelor’s degree - later I’d go on to find that was a bachelor’s in marketing (relevant, right?)

I made the case that I was actually put in danger by her and my roommates insinuating that I was delusional and violent – that she took something my roommates said at face value without asking me. She had no intention to uphold my safety since no one told me at the hospital that I was being kicked out, that the door was locked with my valuables inside and no one in my family was informed. What if I came home the night before instead of staying at the hospital – with no access to my belongings, money or phone. What she did put my life in danger. There’s no limit to what my roommates could make up about me – and since their first claims were taken at face value, who knew what else they could fabricate. Those claims were enforced and legitimized. There’s no limit to what someone can fabricate and when those fabrications are endorsed by a superior, the urge to fabricate more – especially in low self-esteem harbouring recovering drug addicts becomes intoxicating. Why feel bad about your mistakes when you can make someone look worse. I get it. I’ve done it.

Fortunately, I learned that my roommate had bunged up a call to the police when I arrived because she couldn’t report that I was doing anything wrong. She just told them I was at the door. They asked why the door was locked to me and if I had been told that I wasn’t allowed in and she said, “no.” I didn’t hear the rest of the call, but I assume they hung up or told her that they were busy with real problems.

Instead of stay and argue, I called my sponsor who told me to get my stuff and leave. I had real fears – their perception of me ruled how they perceived what was going on, so I’d better just vanish. Which I did. My sponsor told me that they wanted a reaction, so I didn’t give it to them. I had to get my dad to pick me up. This for me was the most difficult part since anyone in any position of authority is right compared to me – so even when J* admitted she made a mistake after I made my case, she did so only to my dad (not me of course), I knew he didn’t really believe that. I knew there was always some reason for him to believe I was kinda responsible.

Just some foreground on my dad – when I was growing up he’d abuse my brother and I verbally and for a brief time physically. The later stopped when my brother punched him straight in the face and knocked him out. His verbal abuse continued, belittling me for things I did because I was dreadfully shy. He called me a loser with no personality in my graduating year. Made me ashamed of my interests. Would talk me out of seeking out better opportunities because he had so many doubts about my abilities. Scary stuff.

So naturally, even if my roommates and J* had done something wrong to me – who the fuck cares, its me, I am the source of all the problems because of the way people think of me. I have no money, no job, lying junky, so – whatever.

A few days later after I left, a resident from one of the other houses owned by J* asked me what happened and I told her. I didn’t want to seem like I was “delusional” or that I feared them in anyway since they might use this as a means to have my committed again.

A few days after that, the same resident told me that C****** had moved out. This struck fear in me. I don’t know where she is, and since the house I lived with her in was a good 45 minutes away, I trusted I wouldn’t run into her at meetings etc. because of this. But, now, I have no idea where she is.  I don’t wish her any harm, I just wish to never see her again. I don’t fear her for reasons that are unrealistic. They’re based on things that happened: bold displays of fear about me when I’m doing nothing to her culminating in cartoon worthy behaviour fleeing from the house while shouting things she obviously wants me to hear about calling the cops..Bitch, if you were really scared you would have already done called the cops. Also, the weird stories about knights in shinning armour on motorcycles and modelling scouts, impaired mentality from suboxone and/or illicit drugs to supplement. Bunkers, relationships with men who’ve never met her. etc.

L** blocked me on Facebook, which is alarming for me since she could have some fake profiles looking at my posts in order to try and twist something I write into a threat to her. I just stick to posts about animals and wholesome stuff.

See I have real fears, based on facts because things actually happened to me based on things that people fabricated. But I’m not going to call the cops. I won’t waste their time. I doubt either of these too people can effectively cause me any harm physically - but who knows what they might say behind my back. Fuck it, I’ll just fabricate stuff about them. I’m a better story teller anyways. If people don’t believe me at least they’ll enjoy my story.

I can only guess that the whole delusions about where I worked concept was spawn from some deep seeded disbelief that anyone who had a drug problem could have a professional life, since neither L** or C******* did. Everything seems unbelievable when you’re so self-centered that you only think your level of success is the benchmark for anyone else in your state of recovery.

See, L** and C****** are career abusers. They always failed. They never were anything. Their stories are lengthy ones, filled with selfish actions to feed their addiction. Of course someone else in their situation couldn’t have been anything else but what they were or worse. They can’t see beyond their own experience. And they can’t see beyond the wonderful world they’ve created in recovery – vindication from their failures by parroting their peers in recovery. That’s the easy way out and it takes no effort. It’s a formula. 

Go fuck yourselves. All of you.

Bye.

[the-blind-assassin-12]

Oblivion

Part Nine: You Can Get There With Me

A/N: Juliet’s plan is underway as you and Logan leave everything behind. This is the “official” end to this series. (unofficially, there’s an epilogue already in the works.) Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who read or commented, and to everyone who gave me feedback and helped me get through this train wreck. Y’all rock. 

Warnings: Language, mentions of suicide/self harm, mentions of drug use/ overdose, physical abuse 

Word Count: 4,531

“So you’re telling me,” Erik paced the luxury suite with his phone attached to his ear, a scowl ruining the mask he wore for meetings and negotiations, “that my wife is missing in the park? I told you where to look! I told you to check the chapel, I-”

 You’d been talking in your sleep the night before your trip, mumbling about a chapel... about getting to the chapel and to him. Erik’s lip curled in the dark as he lay awake listening to your dreams, listening to where you two had planned to meet. He wasted no time in telling his contact at the park to monitor you, to give you a head start so you wouldn’t catch wise like you had when you and Logan had run from the Sweetwater Inn, and then to apprehend you and bring you safely and inconspicuously back to HQ. He thought it was airtight- he knew a location, knew you’d be holed up there for three days, and knew you’d be with Logan. He needed to catch you two together, needed to catch you red-handed so he could make his demands and have a reason to. He was berating his security contact, asking what was so hard about finding you when he’d given him the location, told him where to send Angela, when he was cut off by the man’s response.

 “Sir, there are seven chapels inside Westworld. We’ve sent the Host Unit in question out to all seven locations, and it has covered at least five of them, but your wife hasn’t been found yet.”

 “Well get to those other fucking locations!” He was vibrating with anger, his tone somewhere between dangerous growl and hysterical scream. “Find her!” He hung up as the man on the other line apologized profusely, promising to find you. He loosened his tie and stalked across the room to the liquor cabinet, pouring himself a hefty measure of gin with the smallest splash of tonic. Throwing the drink back, he tried to drown out the unease of your seeming disappearance. She’s up to something. She thinks she’s going to win. No one beats Erik Speer. He slammed the empty tumbler on the marble countertop and resumed pacing, phone in hand, waiting for the call that said that you’d been found. He knew he couldn’t go after Logan, not while his last name was Delos, but that you were fair game. I was generous before. But that’s over now. He decided right then and there, as he poured a second drink, that not only were you done in the park, but that he’d go through with his threats to send you away if you gave him any trouble about it. More trouble than she’s worth, he thought, though he knew it wasn’t true- your marriage had made him one of the most powerful businessmen in the country, the world, even. He knocked back the second drink and sunk into a plush armchair by the window, staring out towards the park. Where the fuck are you?

 .  . .  .  .  .  . .  .

 Logan kept his hand firmly secured around yours, fingers locked together as the two of you followed your silent guide across the sand. You’d left your horses, the Ghost Nation Host giving them each a slap on the rear to send them running- you’d be faster on horseback, but also easier to spot from a distance if someone were looking for you, and chances were good that someone was. The sun was relentless in its heat and intensity, beating down to bake you both. Logan looked over his shoulder to see that the chapel had vanished, leaving only the shimmering desert in your wake. Sweat dripped down his forehead into his eyes as you reached the hour mark in your trek, but he’d gladly walk to the ends of the Earth on the surface of the sun if it meant that the two of you would be free. Wiping his brow with the elbow of his free arm, he looked down to where your hands were linked. He could feel your nervous energy coming through your skin, buzzing around you like an aura, and he tightened his grasp. You looked up at him and gave him a small, hopeful smile, your forehead dripping, too, a few strands of your hair plastered to your face. I’d do anything for her...to be with her...she’s...she’s everything. He returned your smile and reached over to move the hair away from your eyes.

 He knew it couldn’t be much farther, not according to the plan that Juliet had laid out, and his heart increased it’s already rapid beat in anticipation of getting to the service tunnel. Gotta be close now...just have to keep going. He let his mind wander back to when his sister first shared her plan with him on the night of the gala.

 He’d been pacing the small balcony outside his bedroom, his sister calmly sitting cross-legged on the stone railing as she lit the cigarette that was held in her thin fingers. “Jul...this is...that’s crazy, though!” He exhaled incredulously, pushing his hair back with both hands and clutching his skull as though trying to keep his racing thoughts inside his brain. “We’re not...we aren’t there yet...the technology isn’t…”

 “We are there, Logan. Trust me,” She took a puff and let out a cloud of smoke against the black night. “I’m working on the designs and code myself.”

 Logan stopped pacing and spun to face her, arching one eyebrow and dropping his mouth open. “You...what? Jul. No. You’ll get caught, Dad will-”

 Juliet stood with a roll of her eyes. “Dad will do nothing because he’ll never find out. He doesn’t watch me like a hawk like he does with you. I fly so low under his radar...I bet he’s even forgotten that I’m a damn good engineer. Not exactly a highly desired skill in the marriage market.” Another eye roll and a scoff as she took another drag of her cigarette, leaving the perfect imprint of her plum lipstick on the filter. “And Damien will help us…” Her voice cracked so slightly on the name that someone other than Logan wouldn’t have noticed. He knew that Juliet had a secret affair with one of the programmers, knew that it had been going on for years and that it was more than just a fling. He knew that she loved Damien and that she was only biding her time until she could figure out a way to be with him...He knew that she was putting her own happiness and her own love and her own life on hold for him. He gave her a look that was full of gratitude and sympathy, full of secret sibling promises and trust.

 “Jul...you’ll get out of this too...you have to...promise me you’ll-”

 “Logan, focus.” She reached out and gripped his shoulder. “I’ll figure out what to do about Dad and William… and Damien... later. Right now...right now we need to talk about you.” She shook her head. “I won’t watch you destroy yourself slowly, Logan. I can’t. So this needs to happen. Now. Listen.”

 He was about to say something else but the sharp look in his sister’s eye, illuminated by the ring of burning paper between her lips stopped him, and he stood stock still as she explained everything, ready with answers for all of his questions. Yes, with just a strand of hair or a drop of sweat we’d have enough DNA to make a convincing copy. No, the fidelity testing wouldn’t be an issue- yes, even with the short turnaround time.

 “But what about the trials? All the copies have broken down...deteriorated...malfunctioned over time…”

 “No one expects much of either of you, Logan. We don’t need these copies functioning at a very high level, in fact…” she let out a breath and her bravado faltered only for a second. “In fact...we need them to deteriorate…” She flinched and tried to cover it by bringing the cigarette in front of her mouth, but Logan saw, and he understood- the copies would be programmed to self destruct...in the same ways that you and he would have, had you not found one another.

 “But...after…” he choked- after your copy ended things and his copy poisoned itself- “After...they’ll know. They’ll see. At the morgue or medical examiner or...I don’t know the fuckin’ doctor...they’ll know and then they’ll come after us and…”

 She shook her head. “No they won’t Logan. You think the great James Delos or the proud Erik Speer are going to want it to get out that they’d been duped by their own fuckbots?” she laughed, humorless and cold. “No way. They’ll deny any foul play. They’ll decline to comment and claim that they need to grieve in peace or some bullshit. They’ll use private doctors and they’ll pay anything they have to to keep the story that gets published one that makes them look like saints. Logan.” She stood directly in front of him, demanding his attention. “Trust me. I’ve thought this all through. It will work. Now, here’s what we’re going to do…” She’d gone on to outline the plan top to bottom. The two of you would wait in the chapel for a guide who would deliver a coded message so that it was sure he could be trusted. Logan had suggested using a quote from The Tempest, knowing that it would put you at ease, that it would be so unmistakably trustworthy that you wouldn’t even question it. The guide would lead you both to a service tunnel, where Juliet and Damien would be waiting with the copies. She explained that she’d code them so that you would be Logan’s copy’s cornerstone, that he would be yours, but that ultimately neither of them would do anything to defy a human command until the internal conflict of obedience and love broke them to pieces. Logan’s copy would be programmed so that Host gunfire did nothing- “You’ll still be expected to go to the park...show people around, make deals...fuck off…” she smirked on that last line. “So I’ll make sure your copy can take a bullet or two without bleeding out or spilling gears everywhere.”

 “You...you can do that?” Logan was stunned and awed by the thoroughness of the plan she’d laid out.

 Juliet’s eyes rolled as she tilted her head. “Of course I can, Logan, come on, don’t tell me you forgot how fucking brilliant I am like Dad. I could code them to do whatever the fuck I want.” She laughed and elbowed him in the ribs softly. “I’ve got you, big brother. It’s going to work. I promise.”

 There was no one in the world that he trusted more than his sister, aside from you, and nothing that he wanted more than for the plan to work. “Okay...okay. Where will we go?”

 “Still working that part out, but...I have an idea. Don’t worry about it now. On the day, I’ll have everything ready.” She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek, holding her cigarette off to the side as she hugged him with one skinny arm. “I love you, Logan. I’m not letting this fall through.”

 Logan responded to the embrace instantly. “Jul…” he reciprocated her kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”

 She tossed her cigarette butt over the balcony to give him a proper hug. “Thank me by living your life, okay?”

 With his hand securely around yours, heading towards the unknown, Logan couldn’t think of a better way to start thanking her.

 .  . .  .  .  .  . .

 Every step in the orange sand was one step closer to forever. Every breath of hot, dry, stagnant air was one less constricted breath, one breath closer to the deep refreshing relief of leaving your world behind you, and starting a new one with Logan. You looked over at him again. You’d been doing so every few minutes, as though checking to make sure he was still there. Even as you felt his knobby knuckles locked tightly between your own, even as you heard his breathing, felt the sand shift beside you with his footsteps, you had to be sure that he was there...that something or someone wouldn’t snatch him from you and leave you to die, to let the mechanized vultures pick at your fragile bones. But there he was. In the sunlight he looked younger, his skin less pale, his hair a warmer shade of brown. He looked like someone who could be happy, someone who could thrive and laugh and grow and live. Your heart flipped. I get to be there for all of that. I get to be with him.

 A smooth, rounded red rock loomed ahead, the ground seemingly glimmering around it from the heat. Your throat tightened and so did your grip on Logan’s hand as you realized that this was it- the entrance to the service tunnel...it’s in that rock… Your guide stopped in front of the formation, turning to wait for you and Logan to catch up.

“We’re here…” Logan breathed the words so quietly they almost evaporated. He quickly pulled the hand he’d been holding up to his lips to kiss the back of it before looking down at you and saying it again, louder this time. “We’re here.”

 “Yeah, Logan,” your throat was so tight it was hard to form words and your eyes watered with involuntary tears. “We are. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

 You both took long strides until you reached the rock, where your guide pressed its hand against a smooth area that you realized was a release for the door. A portion of the rockface slid down into the ground, some sand slipping into the opening. Stepping aside, your guide stood motionless awaiting instruction. You peered nervously inside the darkened corridor. Where’s Juliet? Why is it so dark? Your heart hammered and your head filled with white noise. You looked questioningly up at Logan.

 “It’s okay...she’ll be here any minute.” He nodded and trained his gaze on the downward slope of the hallway inside the rock. “Juliet says she’s gonna do something, she does it. I know it.”

 His reassurance was all you needed. You let out a long breath and steadied your heart rate, and within seconds you heard the tell-tale click of stilettos that always seemed to precede Logan’s sister. Beside her was a park employee- Damien, Logan had told you that was his name- a programmer who could be trusted. You sucked in a breath as your eyes fell on the two figures behind them: exact replicas of yourself and the man beside you. It was not at all like looking in a mirror. It was like being outside of your body and watching yourself dream. It had your hair- every wave and curl and highlight. It had your eyes- every fleck of color, every ounce of sadness. It had your lips and your elbows, it had your teeth and your knees. It was you. It had your scars and your freckles and… oh...shit...

 Logan was staring at his copy with the same shock written all over his face that you’d just felt. “Goddamn, Jul, they’re...it’s...holy fuck!” He was dumbfounded.

 “I told you I was brilliant,” Juliet smirked. It gave way to a wink. “But come on now, we can’t just stand here and chat. We have to move so these two,” she cocked her head at the silent copies, “can go get caught fucking somewhere so the bastards will think they’ve won.”

 Logan chuckled and tugged on your hand to follow Juliet back down the hallway she’d just come from, but you dug your feet into the dirt and tugged back. You needed to share the realization you’d just had...about all the perfect ways the Host copy of you had been replicated...and the one imperfect thing that it lacked.  

 “Logan, wait,” you reached up with your other hand and gripped the crook of his elbow tightly, fingers digging into the fibrous cotton until you could feel the muscles and tendons of his arm.

 He instantly turned when he felt the urgency in your touch, eyes wide and alert. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” He reached for you but you shook your head which only increased his concern, eyebrows coming together, tongue darting out to wet his lips, suddenly as dry as his mouth and the desert that surrounded you.

 Juliet turned when she heard Logan’s panicked questions, eyes falling to his arm where you were still clutching it. “What’s going on? We have to go, we need to get you out of here as quickly as possible and-” she was using her executive tone, but faltered when you cut her off, blinking as you silenced her.

 “No, listen!” She stopped gaping at you and arched one brow. Logan took advantage of your brief interaction with his sister to reach out for you again, and he raked his long fingers through your hair until they curled behind your neck. He ran his pinky up and down soothingly against your skin. You looked up at him and knew that you were about to break his heart, but it would pass, and you had to say this for the plan to work. “She...it doesn’t have bruises, Logan...I’m… I’m covered and Erik will know… we have to…” your breaths were coming quickly, heart pulsing anxiously as you realized just how dangerous this plan actually was, if a few missing bruises could derail it completely. I caught this one, but… You shook the thoughts from your mind, focus, damnit, you castigated yourself.

 You saw the realization happen behind Logan’s eyes, saw a range of emotions working and trading places in those deep dark depths. Anger, anxiety, sadness...He squeezed them shut and took three breaths through his nose before opening them again. “Fuck,” he exhaled the word, eyes narrowing as his face fell. He turned to Juliet. “I can’t...Jul...I can’t do it.”

 She was already pulling out a control pad, punching things into it with her tongue poking out between her lips. “Got it,” she said, eyes still fixed on the screen as the raven-haired Host covered in war paint came into the tunnel. Where before he looked like a blank slate, now you saw aggression in his eyes and though you knew that the Hosts were programmable, it was another thing to see the flip switched like that in front of you. It approached the copies, and Damien stepped aside to let it pass. You felt your heart plummet through your stomach as, horrified, you watched the Logan copy try to protect the frightened replica of yourself. You felt Logan’s hand clamp even more tightly around your own as he pulled you to him and tucked his face into your hair.

 “It’s not real, Logan, it’s okay, it’s not really me.” You whispered as you slipped your hand out of his and held him as he tried to block out the sounds of your screams being mimicked, the sound of his own voice trying to plead with your copy’s attacker, trying to fight it off. Damien pulled out another control pad and with just a few strokes he froze the Logan copy and silenced the one of you so that the job could be done with as little emotional impact as possible, but it was too late for that. You felt Logan shaking against your body. “Hey, shh,” you felt him press you closer, felt your bones right against his. “It’s okay, Logan. It’s done. It’s over.” It was. Your bruises had been very convincingly recreated, but more than that, you’d never suffer them again. “It’s over, Logan. He can’t hurt me anymore.” You knew that he hated the fact that Erik had ever touched you at all, let alone that he’d done the things that he’d done to you over the years, knew that it was part of what had triggered this reaction.

 “I’ll never hurt you,” he promised, untucking himself from the curtain of your hair, pressing his lips to the corner of your eye. “Never.”

 “I know,” you said and offered him a smile.

 Juliet cleared her throat, simultaneously closing her control pad. She’d entered new commands for all three Hosts; the Native American chief straightened up and went blank again, exiting the tunnel. The copies resumed motion, the Logan copy immediately wrapping the sobbing version of yourself in its arms. “Erase that memory, please, Damien,” Juliet softly requested. Damien nodded, a knowing look in his tawny eyes. You watched as the copies relaxed, their faces changing from pain and anguish to warmth and delight. They laced their fingers together and, like your former guide, exited the tunnel, journeying to their destination: oblivion.

 When Erik demanded things, they wouldn’t be from you anymore. When James tore open old wounds, they wouldn’t be in Logan’s heart anymore. When you cried yourself to sleep, when you drank yourself sick, when you’d be found in a pool of blood...it wouldn’t be you. When Logan took William to the park, when he was left naked, alone and tied to a horse to cook in the unforgiving sun, when he finally took too much...it wouldn’t be him.

 You hugged Juliet tightly as you cried into her shoulder, thanking her over and over for making this possible. “Just take care of each other,” she’d answered between tears of her own. “Take care of him.”

 .  . .  .  .  .  . .  .  .

  It had been a long drive- a couple days, taking back roads and switching cars at certain checkpoints mapped out by Juliet. You were lightheaded and dizzy with the euphoria of having done it, having left and not been followed or found, having escaped with Logan so you’d both be safe and free, unencumbered by the things that smothered and suffocated you. When he finally pulled in front of the cabin, you had to shake yourself out of the delerium. He beamed at you from the driver’s seat. He looked tired from the road, but happier than you’d ever seen him, and you thought you could fly. You got out of the car and immediately came around to his side, both of you taking in the sight before you.

 It was something time forgot, stones pulled right from the lakeshore, logs chopped down from the forest that it was tucked up against. You froze in your tracks and took a deep breath that wavered in your throat. Beside you, Logan was standing just as stunned, just as still. The sky above was endlessly blue, reflected perfectly in the pristine mirror of Lake Louise, making it seem bottomless. Trees climbed the sides of jagged gray rocks to try to scrape the few delicate clouds, their deep green peaks swaying in the breeze. It was like a work of art; like if you reached out to touch the rough bark of a tree or the slippery surface of a rounded stone, your hand would come away wet with thick, rich oil paint. The scenery was breathtaking, with no shortage of places to look. But it wasn’t the forest or the lake, it wasn’t the mountains in the distance, capped in pure white glittery snow that caused your eyes to swim and your soul to stir. Your gaze was locked on the plain, simple wooden front door of the cabin. That’s our front door. This is our…

 Logan’s fingers reached for yours, finding them and tangling them together until he held your palm in his. You squeezed his hand and he responded by pulling you closer to him and spinning your body until you were chest to chest, only air between you. His eyes were just as black as they always were, but when he looked down at you now you could see that all of the darkness was gone from them, replaced with a spark that was new to you. That spark lit your heart, and you couldn’t contain a breathy little sound from falling from your lips. He raised his free hand and, almost tentatively, as though he were touching you for the first time, seeing you for the first time, he brought it to your cheek, fingertips spreading into your hair. He wet his lips before they stretched into a slight smile, an involuntary sigh that echoed yours slipping out in the form of your name.

 “We’re home, Logan...this is our home.” You tingled head to toe as you said the words, barely able to speak loudly enough for him to hear.

 He shook his head slowly, thumb coming up to swipe a tear from your eye that you hadn’t even felt. “You’re my home,” he said. “You.” He pressed his forehead to yours and closed his eyes, his fingers in your hair curving against your scalp. Your hand came up to wrap around his wrist as he continued. “We could be anywhere, and if I’m with you, I’d be home. That’s our house...where we’ll live….but this,” he let go of your hand to bring both of his to your face. “This is home,” he said, opening his eyes and pulling back to look into yours. “My whole life...all of it, I’ve been trying to find something...trying to be something, trying to...to make my father proud, to be the person everyone expected me to be…” He softly traced his fingertips down one side of your face and you fought with everything in you not to let your eyes fall shut beneath his touch, to keep them open and on his so that you could see everything that he was feeling as he spoke. “But what I was really looking for...what I was really chasing… it wasn’t a title, or money or a high...it was you.”

 He brought his face to yours, tilting his head so that the bridge of his nose brushed against yours as his light touch traveled down your neck and shoulders, down your arms and around to your back before pulling you closer, before finding your lips with his own in a kiss that was different from any you’d had before. When his tongue entered your mouth is was slow and meaningful and left you whimpering down his throat. When his hands came back to your neck, to your face, they were gentle and tender and they painted your entire body with goosebumps. Your eyes fell shut and his did, too, both of you lost in your first kiss in the great wide open of your new found freedom. When it finally ended you leaned into Logan’s chest and he tucked you under his arm. With a smile that could rearrange the stars, he leaned down to whisper in your ear. “Come on, beautiful, lets go check out that balcony.”

 Breathless, you let him lead you toward the cabin, toward the rest of your life. “Logan?”

 “Hmm?” The gravel crunched softly under your feet.

 “I love you.”

@something-tofightfor @my-little-dumpster-fire @suchatinyinfinity @lexxierave @ms-delos @ymariejp @obscurilicious @belladonnarey

[finderskeepersff]

56. Part 3

Cassius hasn’t really answered the question he asked me, I am waiting for him to answer but he decided upon going into the warehouse. He thinks walking off and doing other things will change the fact he needs to make a fucking decision, if he does openly want Celine in his life then I think I will have to say bye to my friend, I will lose him “just get this shit out, ok. It shouldn't be here still should it. Ignore what Cassius said ok, get it out” Cassius be coming up in this building confusing the damn workers, I know they think why is he here. I mean after what he did in New York, they shook “we get them out for you, why did Cassius say round them up?” the guy overseeing the workers said “I don’t-” I moved back as a bullet flew right across my face and right in this guys head, the guy just dropped onto the floor. Turning my head to see who the fuck that was, everything is so still. I looked up and Cassius just stood there staring down at me, I hope that wasn’t for me and he purposely missed “clean this up! Get it moving, now!” I would like to know his fucking problem, he is probably hating me for whatever reason unknown, I am just speaking the truth. He has been fucking with Celine for far too long and it needs to be cut off but I don’t think he will, I don’t know. Jogging up the stairs, he scaring everyone in this place. Pushing open the door “I don’t know that bitch, tell her that. Kill her for all I care” Cassius said on the phone, closing the door behind me. Walking over to his desk slowly, seeing a rolled up bill “bye” he disconnected the call “who was that?” he threw his phone on his desk “someone begging for money” nodding my head “tell her that you said, you know this person. So who is it” sitting down on the chair “my mom” he laughed “kill her? Did you take something? Are you doing it again” I am not sure about him, he been using his own stuff for so long that I don’t think it takes affect on him unless he has excessively “doing what? Are you asking a crackhead if they had crack, that is funny actually” he sat back in his chair “why did you shoot him? I was speaking to him, why?” I don’t understand, Cassius shrugged “maybe because you was speaking to him, I mean who cares” he laughed “you can be such a dickhead at times, you going to be alone. You know that, right?” Cassius doesn’t care, I can tell he doesn’t “it will get to the point even Celine won’t want you” Cassius got up his chair “want me? She wants me, only I will be the one to kill her, remember that” he pointed at me “you attempted that several times, I seen. I am going, you can do what you like” I am not fucking with his attitude, it was only Myles that did but I don’t, I think he actually has took something.

I caught a cab back after walking for like twenty minutes, I needed to clear my mind a little. Cassius can be very intoxicating, I caught a cab because I don’t want Sofia to see I am back without Cassius, it’s just adding to the mess and I don’t want that. I just need to back away from Cassius, at times I miss Myles because he did remain there and kept me updated even thought he wanted to kill Cassius, maybe it would be easier on a lot of people if he was. Closing my door behind me, I am so drained from him and I wish we had a longer holiday. I think what pushed it is that he said kill his mom, I mean that is bullshit he loves his mom and he knows that. I stopped walking seeing Amira on the floor with Cartier on a playmat that Amira got him “oh you back” she saw me, I smiled at little Cartier. He seems happy with those toys “don’t act like you ain’t happy to see me” I smiled at Amira “I am just saying” shaking my head as I made my way to the couch “I ain’t done well Amira, I left him there” sitting down on the couch “Cassius?” she got up from the floor “yeah, he is being the worst and on top of that he just won’t let Celine go, he just shot a guy because he was speaking to me which pissed me off and then he said kill the bitch, which is his mom” rubbing my face “not this again, Cassius has always been unstable. I said that to you, when I heard he was coming out if being locked up I was not impressed. But he has been good” I am so annoyed “the point is, I can’t handle him” Amira sat across from me “how can I tell Sofia that I left Cassius there still not wanting to accept shit he does and in a place full of shit he was addicted too, tell me that Amira. I just don’t agree with him” why did I leave him there.

I feel bad for Cartier now that I am seeing him “you need to consider that Cassius loves his family, he lost them. He lost a brother, a friend which is close to him, he nearly lost his family. Everyone was looking to him, personally with all that stress I would do that shit too. I mean you know Celine, would she tell you the truth if he was. Seeing as Cassius talks to her a lot?” nodding my head “if I tell her that he is killing himself” rubbing my chin “does she love him?” Amira asked and I chuckled “a lot, they are bad for each other though. She is clean, but I know if they got together they would both be on it. You don’t know half of the shit I seen with them. I think he wants them both, not sexually with Celine” I don’t know what to do “first thing you do, call Celine. You speak to her yourself, you said she is clean and changed, bitch show it. I want to do what we can so we can keep these two together, also I want Cartier to have a dad. Kyle, this is a test for you. You need to help your friend, not run. I know he wouldn’t ever harm you. I do know that” Amira said “I know, I need to check on Ethan about his family. You think he is doing this for Celine? Because we saying stop it?” I questioned “I told you, he is probably going through it, I am shocked he even getting married. You told me everything about him, he ain’t a guy to have a child and get married because he is a bad guy but he does have a heart, I don’t think Cassius knows what he needs in life or what he should be” I sighed out “he can’t be loved” I mumbled “Carnell would say that to him every day, any sign of weakness, he said to him boy, you can’t be loved. Nobody will love a dealer like you, a killer like you. I was scared of Carnell myself, on god. He scared me, still does. We was only sixteen and he will drill into his brain about selling yourself to that life, which he has I mean he wouldn’t leave it” I need to make phone calls now.

I now have to contact Ethan and Celine, I think I will do Ethan first. Pressing my phone to my ear as it rang out, I do pray that Cassius is not going to spin out of control but him shooting that guy, I mean good aim but that was not cool “Kyle” Ethan answered the phone “Ethan, I need an update on Cassius family” let me find out Ethan did anything “Cassius said kill them, I mean not me personally. He told me to not protect them anymore Kyle, she came to me and begged to call Cassius and for him to speak to her, I sent her away, to walk home. I can’t do what he hasn’t told me to do and that is protect them. Niggas out here are foul and will kill her, that is what I don’t want “Ethan, Cassius is just going through something, listen to me. You don’t let any harm come to his family. When he opens his eyes he will regret it. Tell Monique to just stay away from him” she needs too “she said she is flying out to see him” that is just great “if you can stop that, it would be great. Keep in contact and protect them” disconnecting the call “Monique is wanting to fly here, how about you stay away from him. You ruined him and now you want to fucking come here, annoying as shit” Amira sat next to me and hugged my body “you done that, now you call Celine” she is a dumb bitch, I know her, she will tell Cassius straight away that I called her about him.

Waiting for the call to connect, I mean Celine and I don’t really see eye to eye and I don’t really speak to her “it’s different to see you call me” here we go “you know me, anything for my nigga” Amira is trying to listen to the call “he just got off the phone with me” Amira kissed her teeth, that was loud as shit. Moving away from her “what was he saying?” she won’t tell me shit “my cousin is going to leave him” he actually said that “and why is that?” I questioned “she don’t like me speaking to him, maybe if her ass wasn’t so stuck up and paid attention he would speak on it to her. But here I am” that is their business “since you know everything about Cassius, is he taking again? I think he is. Celine this is not a fucking joke, he has a son this time and I don’t want him to lose that and if you love him you will speak the fuck up” the phone line went silent “you know your cousin like you say, she will take his son” Celine huffed out “he said he had a line or something. I said to him why, don’t do that. I did tell him to not do it. I am clean Kyle, I don’t do it. I am happy” this is so fucking annoying “but he isn’t happy” I retorted.

Celine and I have been quiet for a while now on the phone “why?” she finally said “he has my cousin, he got a son. He is in love” I wish it was just that easy with him “that is true but Sofia don’t want him inviting you to the wedding or speaking to you, they argued. Why exactly is he holding onto you Celine, what is it? He’s not fucking you” I am confused, let her go it’s so easy “we talk Kyle, that is it. I don’t know what you want me to say, we talk on things. And he has been wanting to go back to drugs for a damn while now Kyle, this is not new to me. Since he got betrayed, since his brother died. Since being a hero to ungrateful people he said it to me, I told him no. Be with your son, yes I do love Cassius and I would want him but he don’t want me, he wants me to be there for him. He loves Sofia a lot and I have to accept that, yes he tried killing me for her and then I tried to talk him into coming with me but no, the boy is in love. I realised, sometimes with love you don’t get the man but he wants me to be there to talk too. If he wants to stop then he can say it but he doesn’t want too” licking my top lip, I wasn’t there for him mentally, just there to help. I mean none of us were “if you love him Celine, let him go. Let him be with Sofia” Celine laughed “when I can feel he is hurting” this is a mess “think about it” disconnecting the call.

I want to scream but I won’t “so what did she say?” Amira said as she picked up Cartier from the floor “that she fucking loves him, she said he told her he wants to have drugs a while ago. He has had some, both cousins love him” shaking my head feeling stressed “she said they talk, he wants her there to talk too but fuck me, talk to Sofia. She is there” Amira sighed out “what if they do talk, Sofia can’t know? Just talk him out of inviting her to any wedding” looking up at Amira “then that is starting a marriage on lies, I can’t do that to her” I mean that is crazy talk “but then do you want Cassius to be in that bad place, look at Cartier. That is a small thing compared to what he is like. He only became calm when he was locked up, he then had some now and then but if he is starting again he is going to be awful” I groaned out “don’t you think I know that, I have failed him. Why can he talk to her and not me?” that is so bad “maybe he knows we will be disappointed, maybe Cassius is faking it with being clean. Maybe he feels he can’t be him, we all trying to be something we not right? I am a club owner, a legit one. When really I am running dirty money through it. Maybe we all don’t think what if Cassius is lost, we didn’t think on how he felt. He balances all these things and when anything goes wrong, who gets blamed. He does. I don’t know about you but maybe Celine helps him on that side” staring at Cartier “I need to break him” Amira looked at me dumbfounded “Sofia can’t know of this” I am crazy, I am.

Amira laughed nervously “break him, how?” I pointed at Amira thinking “I need you to get Sofia to come here, I am going to get Cassius home and she won’t be there. There needs to be an intervention. Don’t mention to Sofia he taking anything, I think this will work. I want to see how Cassius will react when I lie and say to him she gone, but somehow you need to get her to come here. Girlie night here, you need a catchup or some bullshit. Here is the thing Celine knows Cassius loves Sofia, she said he got to stop. This will work, team work yeah?” Amira grinned at me “yes but I am going Miami tomorrow so you need to do this quick time, I will work my magic on Sofia and you do Cassius. We can then get them together, I just don’t want them to break up. She is good for Cassius, look how he is when she is around. I think to be honest he is a lost soul at times, don’t you think?” nodding my head “I suppose, you get that done and then I can go and see him, I hope he ain’t done anything stupid. You don’t understand, I was right there and the bullet just missed my face” shaking my head in disbelief “I told you that Cassius is smooth, he is very smooth with the way he does things. I would love to watch him play boss” side eyeing Amira “stop it” her and this smooth shit.

Amira just text me saying that she has talked Sofia into having a girlie night in so this could work, my car is still here so Cassius hasn’t destroyed it or anything. I am sure he is still here, walking into the warehouse. I see Jasper is here, so Cassius is here then “where is he?” I asked Jasper “office” of course he is, making my way through the warehouse. Looks like they have also cleaned the mess up from the guy being shot, Cassius should be real glad that I love that nigga, to be doing this but it will be interesting to see his reaction but I know he will end up getting upset, he loves Sofia. He needs to just understand Celine needs to go and whatever is bugging him then we are here for him, jogging up the steps “it’s just Kyle” Fabian said, some new nigga thinking he can take aim at me. They both moved out of the way “he said he don’t want to be bugged” Fabian said “does it look like I care?” pushing the door open “you back” closing the door behind me “you got a whole brick there” I pointed out “Sofia wants you home anyways, let’s go” Cassius waved me off “maybe later” I will get him home, even like this.

[chaniters]

Clarity

Faced with imminent death, the heroes have a brief moment of clarity. Awan’s tech skills are put to the test against The Void.

Enjoy!

_________________________________

You approach the canisters to examine the attached explosives.

Charge and Anathema follow you closely.

"A little space... please?" you say nervously. They step back as you try to make heads or tails of it all.

Charge starts calling with a large brick phone... warning the LDPD about the need for immediate evacuation of the area. You hope it's not too late for that...

As you thought, it's impossible to just remove the bombs. and emptying canisters full of hero drugs without the proper equipment is also suicidal. It's already gaseous in its current state, and the entire lab is set to create many tiny doses to sell on the streets, not to store large amounts of it.

Ok... The only way is forward. Lucky you, you've done this before in training.

"We need to remove the lids over here first" You explain while looking for the tools in your bag. "Just need a screwdriver for this and..."

"Allow me" Anathema approaches and slides a finger over the first lid. You flinch momentarily, fearing the worst... but he is careful... the acid only corrodes a very thin line, and the lid falls off in no time.

"Or that," you say. "That works too" you begin working on the first bomb, as he repeats the procedure on the second lid.

Ortega looks incredibly nervous, and that does NOT help. Anathema exudes fear, not for himself but for the two of you... You don't want to break his bubble of invulnerability by reminding him that such a concentration of hero drugs would kill him too, like a bug exposed to insecticide... that wouldn't do any good no...

Good thing you were creating explosives as well... you have pretty much all the essentials in your bag. You connect the first bomb's electronics to a phone you are using for field hacking and access the countdown, turning off the countermeasures...

Your phone displays the counter... 6 minutes and 30 seconds left. It's a good time so far...

You repeat the procedure on the second bomb. And then you double check them...

Only 5 minutes and 15 seconds left. You begin removing another section of the first bomb.

"Anathema, please unscrew that?" you ask him. He's less nervous than Ortega... his hand should be steady.

It's only when the second lid is removed that you truly begin to panic as well. There is a mess of cables inside. Nathaniel must have planted decoys...

Fuck. No time to find the true detonator... You can narrow it down a lot, but it still comes down to a 50% chance... green or yellow.  And the second bomb is just the same.

You rub your eyes... this can't be happening. Why you?

"Marshall... Anathema...You should both leave. I ... I have to cut a cable... And I could make a mistake. If you make it out now you could still outrun the cloud..." your voice breaks as you speak these words... but it's what's expected of you. What you were trained to do.  

"I can contain one explosion with my body" Anathema offers

You snort... "I don't... think that will work... "

"I'm staying here too" Charge states. "I can try to shortcircuit the other bomb..."

"You two are... just ...insane," you say clearing some tears. Shit, you've totally lost your cool now.

"Ok... We have one final choice to make ... yellow... Or Green? Honestly, there's no way to tell..." you confess.

They both speak at the same time after a moment...

"I say...Yellow," says Anathema

"Green must be it.." Charge chooses instead

"You are NOT helpful" you laugh nervously trying not to freak out.  

Oh shit, you're about to die.

You're not afraid of death itself... You were created to protect the innocent... at least that's what the computer programs whispered to your ears during your sleep cycles back at the farm while enduring initial training.

A servant to protect the state, to serve the innocent, to prevent pointless deaths and to face the enemies that would destroy your country. Developing your powers to the absolute maximum was your directive, all in service to the nation.

And then, that part of your training was over, and your actual missions had nothing to do with that... murdering... killing, blackmailing... spying...

You would have been content to fulfill the role you were told you had in life. The obvious hypocrisy is the first form of cognitive dissonance Regenes face in their existences.

You take a deep breath.

You know the answer... Nathaniel was not only your handler, but he was also your instructor. He taught you everything you know about explosives. You remember his words well...

"If you ever need to disarm one of my bombs in the field, 412, remember, go for the green cable".

That should be simple enough.

But then he also told you he would always have your back. That you would always be a team. That he would let you do things your way... that he almost felt you were his partner. And those were all lies.

He could have switched the bomb's sequence with a simple command of his detonator. You know how it works.

If he did... and you cut the green cable... You'll kill everyone.

You don't care to die if it will save the innocent... but to die and cause them all to die as well?

"I can't," you say walking back... "You... you do it!" you offer the tool to Charge.

"Ki... Sidestep. You're the only one who can do this" Charge says looking into your eyes. "I know what I said before but... Mierda, I believe in you, ok? You're doing better than any veterans I know... I trust you. You can do this"

"You can do this" Anathema offers you a nervous smile. Fuck. He actually means it. 

This is just so corny... But right now, their reassurance brings you some badly needed peace of mind.

59 seconds...

"I..." you take the pincers "Ok... here... here goes"

*SNAP* The first cable is cut... and you're still in one piece.

You take a deep breath... and approach the second one...

You drop the pincers. Crap! You pick them up fast as Charge lets out a light gasp.

*SNAP* The second cable is cut…

Is that it? Did you do the right thing… or not? It didn’t blow up, that’s good. But you can’t know if he switched the sequence… not yet...

24 seconds left.

"Why... why didn't the counter stop?!" Charge is losing it...

"The countdown should be disconnected from the detonator"

"How do we know that's true?"

"We can’t… we have to... wait," you say. "Nothing else we can do... if we cut more we will trigger a hard countermeasure... and no time to outrun the cloud now. I'm sorry"

You look at them... it's suddenly really cold. What if you made a mistake...? What if...

You close your eyes and raise your shields... You know they can't protect you against explosions, or poisonous clouds...but you do nonetheless. It's what your instincts tell you to do.

23...22....21... you count silently... And you can’t stop shivering.

20... 19... 18...

And then you feel... hands? Arms? Charge. He is hugging you... What in the... And then Anathema. Charge is hugging and Anathema has his arms around the both of you. Anathema places his back against the bomb... as if to absorb the explosion.

“I’ve got you guys”

You know the gas will likely still kill you all if the bomb goes off, but the symbolism of the gesture isn't lost on you. It’s stupid, but the dorks are making you feel protected and it’s… just weird. Why would anyone protect you? You were made to protect others… These humans are odd. You let them be.

"Don't be sorry Sidestep... you did your best, whatever happens." Charge says. Yeah...You can’t help think those words will be making very little sense if you all end up in pieces...

But you don’t say that.

“Thank you” is all you say them. 

9...8...7...

Ugh... You can’t help it. Maybe it’s the closeness of these two… But right now, if you are going to die... you don't want to be alone. You extend your hands and hug them as well.

You might die. So anything goes. Pretend to be one of them... To the bitter end. You wonder if it’s really different from being one. It’s almost funny...

4...3...2...

"Shitshitshitpleasebedisarmed" your lips whisper beyond your control

1...0...-1?

A few more seconds pass.

And then a few more.

Unlike most humans, you have a very good internal clock... When it’s over, you don't really need anyone to come to tell you.

"Ok ok people it's... it's over" you say...

They don't let go initially, so you have to push quite a bit to free yourself. Anathema walks a few steps wobblily, and Charge simple falls on his butt.

"Hand's off you two, the touchy-feely-special-friendship hour is over. No respect for personal space!...Geez... Are you two just clingy or what?" you dust off your clothes, to reinforce your point.

"Wh.. you were pressing hard too! Hugging us for your life!" Charge accuses you

"That's bullshit!! I did no such thing!"

"We all thought we could all die there!  What's wrong with admitting to wanting some human contact when faced with death?"

"When I need human contact, I'll ask for human contact!" you grump back at him.

"We weren’t going to wait for you asking! It was a safety maneuver! Protect the Civilian!"

"I’ve got a hero name! And I had disarmed the bomb already!!"

"Then why were you closing your eyes and trembling?"

"I wasn't trembling!"

"We all heard you whispering terrified as the count went down!" Charge glares.

You try to ignore the fact that he’s right and focus on the important point about him being an asshole right now...  

"Prove it marshall cuddles! You had your sausage fingers all over me for no good reason!" you shoot back... Why the fuck did you just say that? You end up blushing.

"W... what?" Charge seems equally confused for a few seconds before answering. "What is that even supposed to mean? You've got some serious delusions kid! I wouldn't touch you with a six-foot pole and..."

You are interrupted by the laughter.

You both turn... and see Anathema filming you.

"Please don't stop, this is just too damn funny"

"Aww...mierda... this is just... just great, look what you did" Charge complains at you.

"Shut that thing down!" you run up to him, trying to stop his recording you without a mask.

"Hey hey, stop it" he chuckles as you wrestle him. He is unmovable, but you're not a quitter.  

"Guys... where's Ember and Medea?" Charge asks.

"Oh shit" Anathema and you say simultaneously

"THey've banished." he continues

"Well... I'm too tired to chase them. I got tased by Void earlier..." you say

"Same. He tased me too!" Anathema says while showing you he's deleting the recording to stop you from trying to snatch his phone. "Ok, ok, stop it"

"And I got burnt" Charge sighs. "We'll have to get them next time guys."

"Next time?" you ask

"Yeah" He smiles "Even if you are some sort of anti-social gremlin, It was good working with you ... Sidestep." So you're not the *kid* anymore. Good thing he learned.

"It was a blast! And you disarmed those things! Both of them! You're just awesome!" Anathema shakes your hand energetically.

Now you feel awkward... not used to compliments. Doing your job is just normal... It's what's expected of you.

"Hey, do you want to join us for dinner? On the ranger's tab," he asks.

"Ehrm... for real?"

"Yeah for real"

"Maybe some other time," you say excusing yourself... Free food is tempting, but you can see the police lights approaching and you don't want to be here much longer.

"Oh I get it... you don't like to stay for the paperwork" he grins "Well the invitation stands... One question before you go... Are you going to keep it up, the crime-fighting I mean... or was this a one-time thing? I could give you some tips and training if you want and..."

"In your dreams sparkles!" you shoot him down... you're not going to be anyone's sidekick ever again... that didn't end well last time. But then you realize that might have been a bit harsh.. you open your mouth again. "I prefer working alone... But It wasn't... you know, it wasn't all bad working with you either.. maybe we'll meet again Charge."    

"Hey what’s wrong with the sparkles? Everyone loves them!” he grins “...  allright, see you around, take care!" he offers you his hand... and you shake it.

And then you leave, putting on your hood and covering your head with your bandana. You wave at Anathema, who's talking to the police on your way out.

-----------------a few blocks later-----------------

Time to head back to the hotel...

This was... odd. Not really all bad…?

You came in for revenge... and got something completely different.

Maybe you can keep doing this? Use your powers for the purpose you were made? Protect the people? It's what you always wanted... the only thing you wished to do while you were training at the farm. Be a real protector?

It doesn't sound bad... not bad at all.

You'll have to find a place to stay... that hotel isn't a really appropriate crime fighting base of operations...

With your powers, it shouldn't be hard to steal back some money from con-men and other criminals.

And The Void is loose... You'll have to deal with Nathaniel eventually. He knows your secrets, as you do his. He didn't switch the bombs sequences... does that mean he didn't really intend to kill you? He did say he would meet you again you now recall... that should mean something? Did he knew you would disarm them...?

Your mind tells you it's impossible to know for sure... You just want to believe he didn't want you dead... Maybe he still sees you as a sort of friend, in his own twisted way? And if he does... what in the hell does it mean for you?

You are so confused...

And then there's Anathema and Charge...

Anathema seems friendly enough. You won't mind working with him in the future...

And the Marshall... He came around... you earned his respect, and he earned yours in the end...

But why do you keep thinking about his arms around you...? And why do you enjoy arguing with him so much? You're not generally so confrontational with anyone else. Is it because you can't read his mind?

Yes...

Definitely must have something to do with it.

In any case, it's a mystery for another time.

______________________________________

My Fanfiction: https://chaniters.tumblr.com/post/181692759294/my-fanfiction-for-fallen-hero    

DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fan fiction using characters and the setting of the Fallen Hero: Rebirth and upcoming Fallen Hero: Retribution games written by Malin Riden. I do not claim ownership of any characters from the Fallen Hero wold. These stories are a work of my imagination, and I do not ascribe them to the official story canon. These works are intended for entertainment outside the official storyline owned by the author. I am not profiting financially from the creation of these stories, and thank the author for her wonderful game/s, without which these works would not exist.

[dreamwritesimagines]

Bad Habit 2- We Are A Fever [Billy Russo x Reader]

A.N.: Thanks to everyone who wanted a second part, here it is! I loved your feedback! <3

Special thanks to :  @boyfriendmaterialforyou @the-doctor-9-10, @jugheadjonss @vixsyncynco  @just-another-potterhead @fictionalthrill and lovely anons who  commented or sent messages! <3 

Characters: Billy Russo x Reader, Karen Page, Frank Castle

Summary: Dates are complicated

Read Bad Habit 1 here! .

Warning: Explicit language, cussing

Word Count: 2657

Please tell me what you think<3

Gif’s not mine

Karen watched you as you paced in the room, biting your nails. You had been staring down at the number on your phone screen for the last five minutes, feeling too scared to hit the call button and you turned on your heels.

“Maybe-“

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m gonna say!”

Karen rolled her eyes, “Some sort of a bullshit excuse to not to call the guy who you referred as ‘Personification of a wet dream’.  So no, stop being a coward.”

“Maybe we misunderstood it.”

Karen looked up, as if praying for patience.

“He gave you his phone number and asked you to call him, even threw me in a as a part of the deal- how exactly did we misunderstand it?”

“He’s way out of my league.”

“He’s an ass.”

“Why do you want me to call him then?!”

“One, for my career, and two, it’s obvious you’re attracted to him. What harm could it bring?”

You bit on your lip and shook your head, putting your phone to the small coffee table in front of her and ran your fingers through your hair, walking in the room.

“There’s no way.” You shook your head. “I mean- he probably forgot about me, or-or he was in a truth or dare situation or I accidentally spiked his coffee with hardcore drugs or alcohol-“

“It’s ringing.”

“What?” You turned on your heels and your eyes widened when you saw Karen holding your phone to her ear and you almost tackled her while snatching the phone from her hand but then froze when you heard his voice.

“Hello?”

Karen poked you in the ribs, mouthing ‘Speak’ and you took a deep breath.

“Billy?” You said, your heart pounding against your chest. “Hey-Hi! It’s um- it’s Y/N. From- from the coffee shop. You probably don’t remember but I-“ You were cut off when you heard his silent chuckle.

“I remember.” His voice was low “How are you?”

You fanned yourself with your hand, “I’m fine, thank you. How about you?”

“Can’t sleep, I guess your coffee was strong.”

“I guess I’m to blame for that.”

“I guess you are,” You could even hear his grin, “I wonder what we should do about that.”

You licked your lips, “I can give Karen some sleepy time tea for tomorrow?” You asked, “Careful not to spill it on your overly expensive coat though, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to pay for the dry cleaning.”  

“When do you get off work tomorrow, or did they fire you already due to your implacable serving skills?”

You snorted “I have many regulars, thank you very much.”

“Beats me why.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not because of my implacable suit wearing skills.”

“What time do you get off work?” You could even hear his smile when he asked you again and you tried to hold your giggle back.

“At 9.”

“I’ll send you a car then.”

You paused “No offense but I really don’t trust the places you hang out in.”

“Why is that?”

“I just have a feeling they involve too many forks,” You shrugged as you heard his chuckle, “How about I pick a place and text you the address? It’s really close to the café I work in.”

There was a pause, “Okay.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow then.”

“See you, Y/N.” He said in the same low voice that made you all tingly inside and you hung up, turning to Karen who was watching you with a smirk on her full lips.

“Uh huh. We totally misunderstood it.”

“Shut up.”

The next day you went to the café carrying a huge bag that had your clothes, heels and make up in it, all planned by you and Karen. For some reason, the more you tried to calm yourself down, the more nervous you got and you did your best to focus on work, but it was no use considering you kept checking your phone to see whether you got a text even if you had it on full volume.

Of course, there was also the fact that you were a blabbermouth when you were nervous, so by now almost everyone knew you had a date.

“Told you your prince charming would come.” Liz said and you scoffed.

“I’m trying to keep my expectations low.”

“Low as in…?”

“I have already planned my wedding dress and we will have two children, one girl and one boy.”

She raised her brows, “Very low.”

“Thank you.” You placed the tray on the counter as Vicky, another coworker stumbled into the café, shedding her coat.

“Sorry, sorry!” She said as she ran to the counter, “I overslept, is the boss here?”

“Nope, you’re on a lucky day.”

“Not as lucky as her.” Liz winked at you and Vicky smiled, still breathing hard.

“What did I miss?”

“Y/N has a date.”

“Which is such a miraculous thing that I feel like we should form a circle and start chanting to the ancient Gods.”

“Show me pics!” Vicky pushed your shoulder with hers and you googled his name, then handed her the phone.

“Holy shit, does he have a brother?”

“I have no clue, but you guys and Karen are wearing navy blue in our wedding.”

“Low expectations, Y/N!”

“I didn’t say what neckline, did I?” You wiggled your brows as you went behind the counter and Liz scoffed.

“I’m serious about the brother!” Vicky said and you gave her the Girl Scout salute.

“I promise I’ll ask!”

The rest of the day went in a blur, and before you knew it, it was time for you to leave the work. After spending thirty minutes to make your eyeliner look good, you decided you were at least content with how you looked, so you left the café and made your way to the bar, texting Billy the address.

Even if it was almost 9.15 when you got to the bar and he was nowhere to be seen, you decided it wasn’t a big deal, considering you had also just got there, so you climbed onto a bar stool, motioning at the bartender and ordering a beer.

You played around in your phone, huffing out as ten minutes passed and you were already done with your beer so you ordered another one, texting Karen, and drummed your fingernails on the polished, wooden counter as you watched the crowd. Everyone seemed to have fun – everyone but you.

When another fifteen minutes passed and there was no text or call from him, you felt your heart sinking.

“Of course…” You mumbled, “Makes sense.”

Your eyes were burning so bad with the humiliation but you bit on your lip, forcing yourself not to call him or ask him where he was. It was bad enough that he had stood you up, you weren’t about to make it a big deal and make a fool of yourself more than you already had. You put some cash on the counter, downed your beer and slammed the bottle on the counter, grabbed your purse and walked out of the bar.

When you reached home, you were almost shaking with anger as you opened the door, ignoring Karen’s texts and closed the door behind you, leaning your head against the door, trying not to cry. You dug the heels of your hands into your eyes, not caring about messing up your make up and heaved a sigh, then kicked off your heels and made your way to the bathroom. You carefully took your makeup off, put your hair into a bun, then unzipped your dress, grabbing the tshirt and shorts that were lying on the floor. You went to the kitchen, made some tea for yourself, then grabbed the ice cream from the fridge while it steeped as your phone buzzed on the table and you dug the spoon into the ice cream, then went to check it.

From: Billy Russo

I’m terribly sorry, something came up.

“Oh fuck off.” You said out loud, staring at the phone, then your phone buzzed again.

From: Billy Russo

Can we meet now? I’ll make it up to you.

“No we can’t, motherfucker.” You muttered as you grabbed the phone and ice cream, then made your way to the couch and switched your laptop on, then looked for a show to take your mind off the horrible events of the night as your phone started ringing and his name flashed on the screen. You shook your head slightly, turned silent mode on, then licked around the spoon as you finally found a show and leaned back, making yourself comfortable.

You were on the third episode when someone knocked on the door and you groaned.

“For God’s sake, Karen…” You muttered, putting the ice cream bowl on the tiny table and went to the door, then swung it open, ready to vent to Karen about how it wasn’t a big deal, but you stopped dead on your tracks.

Billy was standing at the door, his hands in his pockets as he shot you a small smile.

“Hey.” He said as he took in your appearance, “So you already knew I was coming?”

You looked down at your shirt which said “Go the fuck to sleep.” and then glared up at him silently.

“I uh… got your address from Karen. She said I had good references from Frank, I don’t even know what that means.”

“So being an asshole isn’t enough, you also gotta be a creepy asshole?”

“I had that coming.”

You rolled your eyes and attempted to close the door, but he stopped you.

“I have a taser gun, I also have knives in my kitchen, don’t test me motherfu-”

“I was about to leave the building, then something came up- which I can’t talk about right now, but-“

“I don’t care, screw you and to be honest screw your hair, my ice cream is melting-”

“Let’s go now.”

You gawked at him. “Excuse you?”

“Yeah- what bar do you wanna go? We can go now.”

You could feel the anger bubbling up inside you as you tried not to smack him across his pretty face so you dug your fingernails into your palms then gritted your teeth and turned around, made your way to the kitchen while he stayed at the doorstep. You grabbed a vacuum flask, poured the tea into it, then put the lid on and went back to the door.

“Your sleepy time tea, have a good fucking night.” You said, then slammed the door on his face, then let out a breath and went back to the couch.

Even if you didn’t feel like going to work the next day, you managed to force yourself to get off the bed, and got dressed. You hair was already in a good shape after you spent an hour on it before your non-date date, so you just brushed it, grabbed your bag and walked out of the apartment.

When you got to the café, Liz and Vicky were already waiting for you, and you tried not to show the sadness you felt, instead, you just smiled at them.

“How was it?!”

“Morning to you too.” You mumbled, hanging your coat and grabbing the apron from the kitchen, as Liz followed you.

“Come on! I wanted to call yesterday but I didn’t want to interrupt anything.”

“More importantly, does he have a brother?” Vicky called out and you took a deep breath.

“It didn’t happen.”

“What do you mean it didn’t happen?”

“He stood me up.”

“What?!”

You shrugged, “It’s not a big deal.”

“It is! The nerve of the guy-“

“Doesn’t matter,” You shook your head, “Let’s just- let’s not talk about it.”

Vicky raised her brows and looked over your shoulder.

“That might be a little hard.” She muttered and you turned around to see Billy standing in front of the counter, as innocent as he could look. You rolled your eyes, clicking your tongue.

“Vicky-“

“Dealing with the coffee machine!”

“Liz-“

“Sorry, tables need to be cleaned.” They both walked away and you gritted your teeth, then made your way to the counter.

“What do you want?”

“As always, amazing customer service.”

You rolled your eyes again, “I’m working, so if you could go now-“ You nodded at the customer standing behind him and he shrugged.

“I’m just here to get some coffee.”

“Make it quick then.”

“Sure. I’m gonna need twenty cups, five cappuccinos, five espresso shots, five cups of black coffee with no sugar, and five lattes, non fat, all to go.”

You, the customer and Vicky all stared at him.

“You need twenty cups of coffee.”

“Yeah.”

“All of them. You need all of them now.”

“Yep.”

The customer behind him just shook his head and walked out of the café, while Vicky heaved a sigh.

“Dude, why do you already hate me?” She murmured as she started preparing them and Billy leaned against the counter.

“Can we talk meanwhile?”

“I’m working.”

“I’m well aware. While I’m waiting for my order?”

“Jesus Christ…” You mumbled as he handed you his credit card.

“So while we’re waiting for those to be prepared, I figured we could have a date.”

“Are you high or something?”

“Better than waiting here silently.”

“You’re not half as cute as you think you are.”

“Completely irrelevant, do you have a brother?” Vicky called out and he chuckled.

“Nope.”

“Cousin?”

“No, sorry.”

You crossed your arms, “You can take a seat while you wait.”

“No I’m comfortable here. So, do you have any pets?”

You glared at him, “You expect me to drool for your attention after you stood me up last night? Not happening.”

“No pets then. Family?”

“A brother who could kick your ass.”

“I doubt it.”

“I don’t.”

“I used to be a Special Forces soldier so yeah, you should doubt it.”

You pulled your brows together, “You have a company,” You said, momentarily getting distracted and he nodded,

“I started that after leaving the army,” he said, “So no, I’m not the rich asshole you think I am,” he paused when he saw your glances and took a deep breath, “Fine okay, I’m an asshole but I wasn’t born into this.”

You stayed silent,

“I actually grew up in the system. Orphanage, foster parents, you name it.” He said, “Then I joined the army. I was pretty good at it too, but then I decided I wanted to leave.”

“Why?”

“You grow tired of people dying around you after a while,” he nodded, “You grow tired of war. Me and Frank…” he trailed off, “Anyway, yeah. Then I started Anvil. We do a lot of business overseas, hence the fucked up timing last night.”

You scoffed, but didn’t comment on it.

“And I’m not a serial killer,” he stated, “In case you still haven’t looked me up on the internet.”

“Your order is ready.” Vicky called out and you looked up to see him looking at you hopefully, his dark eyes completely focused on you. You couldn’t help but to notice the way your heart beat sped up and you scolded yourself mentally.

“So I did all the talking this time, how about you talk on the second date?”

“She’d love to!” Vicky said and you rolled your eyes,

“Vicky, he doesn’t have a brother, chill out.”

“Oh come on Y/N, if you don’t want him, I can take him.”

“She’s joking.”

“Figured as much,” Billy stated, “So? Tonight? In a place which doesn’t need more than one fork?”

You licked your lips and nodded silently, trying to hide your grin but it was hard when his lips pulled into a boyish smile.

“Keep the coffee.” He said, winked at you and walked out of the café, while Vicky gawked after him and you leaned against the counter, shaking your head.

“I’m so screwed.”

Part Three is here! 

[violetsystems]

#personal

There’s a point where you are pushing a boulder uphill where you actually think you’re pushing it over the top.  You look up.  You look down.  There’s this exact even point between joy and dread where you don’t know which way it will go.  Seeing as how it’s an exact middle point you expect it to pass.  Like this whole process goes on for a year and you emerge mentally “over it.”  You expect something to change outside of your skill at rolling the boulder.  You say to yourself that you can keep doing this all day like some juiced up eighties American action hero.  And then you look up and down again to observe your process.  It’s still limbo.  You might even become strong enough to maintain this mirage of an ascent while doing other things.  Watching a movie or a television show.  Play a game on your phone.  But the boulder is always there.  The positioning is different these days.  It feels like I keep pushing the boulder and the hill keeps stretching.  Like there’s a bulldozer dumping other people’s shit onto the incline.  Which makes it seem I’m climbing up a relentless garbage pile of other people’s baggage, perceptions, and detritus.  This is essentially true particularly in the city I live in.  Which mind you living in a city is much closer to the edge than where I came from.  I lived in the suburbs for half my life.  It felt like the bottom.  An Irish and Italian Catholic suburb plagued by hard drugs and abuse.  I eventually found a job in the city through my friends at the time.  And later I eventually found a place to live.  And I have lived in this city long enough to know there isn’t really something wrong with me.  The incline is easy enough but sinking in other people’s shit seems to be the norm.  Around here whether it’s Chicago or America, people like to disarm you by making your priorities seem selfish.  We’re all in this together after all.  In times of crisis, we pull together and help our own.  Which is a reminder that for about a year I’ve been isolated taking care of my own.  I spent about as much time per day trying to engage people on LinkedIn without any real success.  It is place where I feel I’m successful at showing the professional side of me.  Sort of like Tumblr is a place I feel like I’m successful showing the human and empathic side of me.  Which one feels like the boulder?  After all the years I’ve spent writing to the void here, I’ve seen a connection.  Expecting too much is what shatters hopes and dreams.  But I have spent a really long time expecting the very least and being given less.  In a twisted turn of fate, I have a lot more financially than I may have in my previous life.  To have to label it previous is a sure sign I stopped pushing that boulder a long time ago.  I was forced to.  Left with a realization that the world is bigger than this and yet I can’t seem to escape it.  I played a game of magic yesterday online.  Sometimes lately the player names are a little too telling.  I had just built a Tiamat deck so I tested it out in Standard Ranked.  The username popped up as “Escapeurf8yt.”  I quit Hearthstone for less.  The last two games I played in that Blizzard game were so sus that the player names were meant to trigger me.  That last match was against a player named “Imcomingforyou.”   Nerds aren’t the most delicate when they have their chance to wield power.  I won the Tiamat game without even having to play Tiamat.  But it left me with a similar feeling.  Why do I try to be part of things that don’t have any real modicum of respect for other people’s feelings and identity?  

That example could be chalked up as being a little too sensitive I guess.  Every time I walk around the neighborhood lately it’s like I have to tiptoe around people’s feelings.  I’ve gotten mad at my situation more times than I can count the last year.  Anybody would.  I lost all my ground.  I lost everything and yet gained something in the process.  People whispered behind my back and watched.  Looking for clues to pin the blame on my downfall on me.  And yet for all the new things I tried and did to survive, I’m still pushing the same generic boulder to most people.  I’m not even good enough to be recognized as a writer by the broad public.  I’m some sneaky individual that everyone feels it’s their duty to check up on at the expense of my civil rights and general mood.  The gaslighting is at the very center.  That nobody wants to address the elephant in the room.  They can’t really.  And maybe it’s for the best.  Because the way I see everything from the inside out is troubling.  Nothing has returned to normal.  People’s privilege has been laid bare and somehow everyone is looking for the scapegoat to deflect the blame.  I’m sick of it.  Everybody being so nosy and confrontational with nothing to offer expect a bad attitude and a jokey stare.  This is why I no longer go out for anything other than groceries.  Why I decide to have things delivered instead of having to participate in a clown show parade of well intended bullshit.  Why everybody speaks for me when no one has spoken a kind word to me at all.  Everybody expects me to reach out and fix the trust they broke with me.  And it gets sadder and sadder that people don’t understand that I’m pretty much a boarded up house at this point.  Living in a little shack enclosed by people’s expectations and barriers.  Time just keeps passing.  People do keep reading.  But here is where I feel people have the most context at how horrible I feel after all of this.  Some of it is for the best.  The community people ask for in the real world without deserving it is non existent or coerced.  I know this because I’ve been welcome down here in the bowels of the internet.  You don’t expect the community here to cross the line.  Even when it does, it is a more delicate and slow process how you let people into your life.  In the real world, it’s abrasive, clumsy and inconsiderate.  And I dance around it all just the same.  But there’s a point when it just becomes macabre.  People out there might say they know me.  But I’m the one out here alone constantly.  I have a full year to prove it.  More than that to be honest.  I just gave up on trying to figure out everything that happened before that.  I’ve lost my own history in that regard.  I will never reboot my dj career.  I will never be accepted as a writer.  I will never be good enough to be called an artist.  I remember this intense discussion I had with an ex during a break up.  We were living together at the time.  We had been together for about a decade at that point.  We lived in the eastern side of this neighborhood at the time.  It was designated by the developer as an artist’s neighborhood.  My girlfriend at the time was a photographer.  I was mostly her assistant.  I paid most of the rent.  We were at a crossroads.  She cheated on me in front of my face in front of our house.  Even after telling her to go, she wouldn’t leave.  She told me to my face that I didn’t belong there because I wasn’t an artist.  I also gave up my car in that breakup.  I’m realizing just recently the reason I never renewed my driver’s license was because I knew I would never afford a car again after I lost that one.  Which is a great thing to remember when State officials yell at you asking why you haven’t renewed it.

The world says it gives a fuck.  It doesn’t show it.  It doesn’t act.  If it did we would never be in this situation.  I know this because I was born to survive.  I have pushed many boulders up many hills.  So much so that I’m grey and over the hill.  And apparently completely fucking meaningless to most people.  Only good enough to speak through T-shirts and guerilla marketing.  There’s a level beyond that I know.  There are people that actually care but the situation is impossible at best.  I’m supposed to see this and accept this out of love, care and attention.  And for a few people I barely know, I do.  The person I care about the most probably knows this too.  But I don’t know anything.  It’s blind faith.  Which is saying a lot for spending two paragraphs saying I have faith in nothing around me.  I don’t,  That’s the curse.  Seeing it how it really is.  Knowing you’ve spent half your life pushing up a boulder for other people that wasn’t worth the slough.  I gained some muscle mass.  Some context to my backstory.  But my life is dead in the fucking water aside from having actual net income.  Kanye and Trump are cash poor.  This is just a fact.  I’m not.  And yet nothing has changed.  There’s no end in sight to where I need to be a year later.  Just the same disrespectful shit.  How I’m supposed to sacrifice my humanity for some rich people’s game with my emotions.  The world uses you, eats you up and spits you out.  If you are lucky to survive this you’d be me.  Has anyone out there really thought about how I feel after all of this?  How dark it must be to know the real truth and keep pushing that boulder just the same?  How tiring and exhausting it feels to be able to write it so delicately but still be so fucking misunderstood just the same?  Is my life just to be joked about backstage as some quirky subplot to steal ideas from?  You cannot be me after all of this.  I will remind you on my very last breath.  And every day that passes is a reminder that you’ve tried.  People have tried to say they know me.  People have tried to say they speak for me.  Understand my pain.  And yet I’m never good enough to acknowledge.  I’m invisible and supposedly this is my thing.  In that case it is.  From this day forward.  Let’s not beat around the fucking bush.  I got here on my own.  I bled, I cried, I screamed and I retreated into the inevitable.  How does anyone expect me to feel if I’m supposed to accept what I accept and know what I know.  I don’t really know.  I feel awful.  I feel broken.  And I feel like everyone who cares about me knows this by now.  And the stakes are higher than my personal feelings about it all.  But my words are meant for people who read them to understand me better for the love of it.  Not to get a jump on me.  Not to subvert me.  Not to teach me a lesson or use me as a stereotype.  Not to be a punching bag or scapegoat for communities who would rather burn me at the stake than hear what I have to say.  In that you will forever fail.  I love the culture that swirls down here.  I love how hardcore it is without pinging the radar for the vultures and the marketing teams.  And yet we have this power that still goes ignored.  Gets laughed at.  Joked about.  Talked over because people are vapid, bored and only succeed by watching other’s fail.  I dropped that boulder a long time ago.  It apparently has not smashed the opposition yet.  It is a long way down as it’s been a long way up.  Tough at the top for sure.  But there’s only room enough up here for two.  And that seat is taken.  <3 Tim

[courtof-storms]

The End of Letra, part 6

Previously: 1  2  3  4  5

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

Erin fell off the row she was laying on, landing on Faye before sitting upright on the girl’s lap.

“What the fuck was that!?” Faye asked, pushing Erin off of her lap before going to the cockpit. Erin got to her feet and went to wake everyone else up, starting with Jynx, then going to Aria and Bel.

“Uh, guys, you might wanna look at this.” Faye said, coming back to the cabin from the cockpit.

“Faye what happened?” Bel asked, sitting up and rubbing her temples.

“Uh, I don’t wanna scare anyone-”

“For fuck’s sake spit it out!” Erin interrupted, bringing her hand back from her forehead, looking at the bright red smudge on her fingertips.

“Our engines are down and we are in a controlled descent towards Jolder.” Faye informed, not knowing what to do with her hands so she hid them behind her back.

“Well that’s not good.” Jynx said, getting on her feet and getting the voice modulator for Aria. “You might want to put this on.” She suggested to Aria, who took the ring-shaped thing from the noble and put it on, getting on her feet and going to the cockpit.

“Faye, I’m your copilot, let’s try not to crash.” Aria ordered, Faye went back to the cockpit and started helping Aria out. Bel got to her feet and went to Erin’s side to check how bad her injuries were. Erin tried to shrug her off for a bit before ultimately letting her help.

“Wait, Jolder?” Jynx asked, now pacing back and forth, trying to think something through.

“Yeah, is that something important?” Erin asked, watching Jynx pace.

“I think so…” Jynx started, rushing to the cockpit door before finishing. “Hey Aria, what are the moons of Skorri?”

“Uh, there’s Helta, Nijat, Porlach, and-” Aria’s reply was cut short by another explosion outside, shaking the shuttle and bringing Jynx to her knees.

“And Jolder.” She finished, getting back to her feet and rushing to her seat, strapping herself in. A wave of dread came across everyone else’s face.

“Well, there goes the life support. Everyone buckle up, this is gonna be rough!” Faye shouted to the cabin, buckling herself in. “Aria, you know where that shit is coming from?”

“...They’re coming from the surface…” Aria replied, checking the instruments many times over before getting annoyed and punching the wall to her right, denting it.

“Of what, Skorri?” Erin asked incredulously, strapping Bel in next to her before getting herself.

“No, it looks like...oh no.” Aria started, checking the scanner and the life support levels.

“I don’t like the sound of that.” Bel said, frantically trying to patch Erin up before another explosion rocked the shuttle.

“They’re coming from the surface of Jolder.” Faye said, fighting the controls to try and keep the shuttle from nose diving.

“Isn’t Jolder fuckin’ uninhabited?” Aria asked, shielding her face from the shower of sparks coming from her console.

“It was, I think there was a colonization effort there a couple solar cycles ago.” Faye informed.

“Why the hells do colonists have fucking huge missiles?” Jynx asked.

“It was a failed effort, everyone on the voyage died, it was deemed uninhabitable.” Bel informed.

“Well it seems pretty fucking inhabited now.” Erin spat.

“Brace for impact, we’re going down!” Faye shouted back to the cabin. Another explosion shook the shuttle. The lights went out for a few seconds before being lit in a neon red glow and an alarm blaring. Everyone put their heads between their legs and started muttering to themselves. Erin reciting lyrics to a song, Jynx saying her vows, Faye and Bel saying the same prayer, and Aria reminding herself of her programming in binary. A final explosion rocked the shuttle and sent them into freefall towards the surface of Jolder.

------

Surface of Jolder, 30 minutes before

------

Alys curled up into a ball at the foot of the tree, just about on the verge of tears as Morrigan crawled her way towards her, grimacing and using every ounce of self control she had before she got to Alys and put her good arm around her.

“Everything ok?” She asked, trying to hide the discomfort in her voice.

“I fuckin’ spend 200 years trying to get off of this godsforesakened rock and another 500 avoiding this entire corner of the system until this bullshit started happening and a fuckin’ scientist on  Skorri said she could help me out and then I’m fucking back here. How the fuck could I be ok about any of this!?” Alys responded, her grief giving way to anger as she spoke until she was practically screaming at the top of her lungs. Lysander instinctively backed up slowly with their hands raised for a couple seconds before remembering he was a hologram and stopping in their tracks.

“...You’re shitting me, right?” They asked, a smirk starting to form on their face.

“Do I fuckin’ look like I’m kidding? Does this tail or this fuckin’ fur look like a gorramn joke?”

“W-wait, you’ve been alive for 700 solar cycles?” Morrigan asked, trying to figure out how Alys could’ve been alive for so long.

“Don’t listen to the bitch Mori, she’s clearly off her meds or something, the hospital she’s staying at is probably looking for her right now.” Lysander said, what parts of her face weren’t covered in fur was now a bright shade of red as she picked up a reasonably sized rock and hurled it at him with it passing through him.

“Why the fuck would I lie about something I’ve spent half a millenium trying to forget?” Alys spat at them, ripping off her cloak to reveal scars that were just about as old as the cloak she just took off.  Her exposed chest looked like a first year doctor just learning how to cut someone open for autopsy, complete with the stitchwork to accompany it, what was visible of her arms looked like they were cut off and replaced at the shoulders, and the ends of the scars on her chest looked like they connected with a couple more that weren’t quite as deep but went over her shoulders and supposedly continued on her back.

Lysander’s mouth was practically on the floor and Morrigan was so in shock she couldn’t form full words, only grunts and gags.

“You think these are a joke, Hologram? You think I slapped them on before getting on your ship?” Alys asked with enough venom to poison a small city on Urda. Lysander shook their head slowly and the three were in almost perfect silence, save for Alys’ panting for a minute or so until Morrigan finally broke the silence.

“What happened?”

“Hmm, let’s see, I was injected with a mix of shit for months, operated on while fully conscious. Oh, they took my heart out of my chest and showed it to me, can’t forget that. I had my lungs taken out through my back, there were beatings, a fighting pit, they took my arms too, these arms I have aren’t my actual arms. I was starved, deprived of sleep, treated like a fuckin’ animal. I had to listen to them kill off everyone in my ward once a month for FIFTY FUCKIN’ YEARS. They brainwashed me, had me kill my girlfriend, and that’s not even counting the fuckin’ sexual shit they subjected me to!” Alys yelled until she doubled over and started coughing. Morrigan’s face looked about as green as the leaves above them and Lysander looked like they were about to explode.

“Oh boo hoo, you were a test subject, I FUCKING DIED, got shot by some fucks with a badge who were looking for my boyfriend’s brother who didn’t do anything wrong besides forgetting to do his homework from time to time. My brother created me out of grief and then gave me to his best friend, Morrigan here, because he couldn’t bear to look at me or himself anymore for the matter. You know what he did the second he implanted me in her? He poured bleach in his eyes.” Lysander shot back, just about ready to cry as Morrigan looked at the ground under her.

“Hah, fuckin’ talk to me about dying when you’re on your fifth life, prick. At least your brother is still alive, albeit he’s blind but he’s still alive. I have no one left, everyone I knew died almost a thousand years. I have no one, You know how lonely it is to be the only immortal you know of? Yeah, that’s an unintended side effect those drugs had on me, no matter how hard I try I can’t fuckin’ die.” Alys spat back at him.

“You try a bullet to the head? That seems to work wonders.”

“Yeah, woke up the next morning with a headache that could only rival this fucking tail coming in in pain.”

“Can you both fucking shut up for five fucking seconds!?” Morrigan shouted, shutting up Alys and Lysander in an instant.

“Thank you, now Alys, apologize to Lysander…” She started, interrupted by Alys gaping and Lysander starting to laugh. “Lysander, apologize to Alys also.”

“HAH!”

“What? Why do I have to apologize to the fuckin’ reject?” Lysander asked.

“Shut it, now apologize now.” Morrigan said, her voice only shreds away from yelling.

“Fine, I’m sorry I said you were a lying thabule.” Lysander said, not even trying to hide that they don’t mean it.

“I’m sorry I said you were a hopeless piece of code.” Alys halfheartedly said.

“That wasn’t too bad now, was it? Alys, I take it you know where we are?” Morrigan asked.

“Sadly I do.”

“Ok then where do we go?”

“I had a cave about a 20 minute walk to the  uh… that way.” Alys informed, looking around before pointing slightly to the left.

“That’s southwest, dumbass.” Lysander spat, clearly not hiding their disdain.

“That’s enough Ly. So a 20 minute walk southwest, that sounds doable.” Morrigan said.

“Easy for you to say Red, You can’t walk.” Alys said, slinging her bag over her shoulder and putting the pistol at her feet in her left boot.

“Oh, so you’re saying that you’re just gonna leave me here?” Morrigan asked, looking down at the ground like she was going to start crying.

“No.”

“So you’re gonna carry me?”

“Yeah, so long as the other one keeps quiet.” Alys instructed, Morrigan brought her head up and she had the biggest grin on her face. Lysander looked like they were going to say something but Morrigan instantly shot a look in their direction and they shut up.

Alys picked up the redhead and carried her bridal style the entire time, almost tripping a few times and somehow managing to fall on her ass about halfway to the cave, the two of them had a laugh about it before they inevitably went back to silence the rest of the way. Morrigan wanted to ask the strange woman a million questions but didn’t because she felt Alys was done talking for a while and Lysander was following far behind them, wanting to punch the smug look Alys had back at the crash site off of her face. They calmed down after a while and walked next to Alys for the last five minutes.

“Here we are.” Alys said as they came up on the cave she called home for a hundred years and change. She laid Morrigan down on the dusty makeshift bed near the back before taking her bag off and getting a bottle of water from it, handing it to Morrigan and helping her drink it without choking.

“Hey, mouthy one, how long until she’s back in working order?” She asked.

“I’d say two days tops.” Lysander informed, looking around the cave for something they could focus on in the meantime, looking outside just as a ball of fire formed in the sky.

“Hey what’s that?” They asked, pointing at the trail of smoke it formed as it fell. Alys came up next to them and saw what they were looking at.

“I think it’s another shuttle.” She said. The two of them watched as it fell, leaving their sight for a minute before it reappeared on their left, crashing off to the right of them. Alys went to the back of the cave and looked through her bag for a bit before pulling out a flare gun and handing it to Morrigan.

“I’m gonna check that out, see if there’s anyone alive on that.��� She said.

“What’s this for?” Morrigan asked, holding up the flare gun.

“Velocitars are mostly nocturnal, sunlight blinds them, if you see one, shoot this at the floor of the cave near the entrance, it’ll deter them from coming in for the night.” Alys informed, gently running a hand down Morrigan’s cheek and giving a slight smile before turning around and walking out. Her face didn’t show her fear but her tail was all rigid and straight, she was terrified.