#they must be suffering so much due to the lack of appropriate clothing

[maximura]

I have always maintained that the Ateez Demon Line is Hongjoong, Seonghwa, San and Mingi. It is interesting that none of them could find proper shirts to wear to Coachella. Interesting indeed. I think San's went missing. And Mingi suffered an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction. Seongjoong split a shirt in half to share due to tough financial burdens in this economy. Truly unfortunate. Praying for them.

[snorlaxlovesme]

wishing for a shadow

Did anyone ask for a fix-it fic that actually addressed how fucked up it was to make a 15 year-old girl fight naked?

We really don’t talk about Hagakure Toru enough. I know that invisibility is a pretty well-used superpower by now, but Toru has been invisible ALL HER LIFE, ALL THE TIME. There’s so much good story potential there and Horikoshi is like, let’s have her do peace signs in the back of class 1-A pictures sometimes or whatever.

So here’s 8k words of Hagakure actually having a personality and searching for a way to have a hero costume. Cheers!

(Content warning for nudity, obviously, and implications of nonconsensual groping due to the invisible nudity. Did I mention that fighting and rescuing people naked as a teenage girl is really fucked up?)

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

Toru hated her hero costume.

Or maybe it was fairer to say she hated her quirk. While everyone else had a special power that they could turn on and off at will, Toru had to deal with her quirk all. The. Time. And it was exhausting. Wearing special clothes on the train so she wouldn’t be sat on or shoved against a wall. Flicking on a designated lamp in her parent’s house so they’d know when she was home. Making just enough noise in class so that people remember she existed. 

Being invisible had so many unnecessary drawbacks that early on in Toru’s life she decided there must have been a reason she was given this quirk. And maybe the reason was that she was meant to be a hero.

After all, it was the only real way to practically apply her quirk, wasn’t it? The choice was either to use her unique ability for good or fade into the background of her own life. So she chose to stand out, and what better way to do that than to apply to UA, the best hero school in all of Japan?

Newsflash: Hero school was hard. And even though no one could see them, coming back to the dorms every day covered in bruises and scrapes was not how Toru had planned to live out her teenage years.

What Toru really wanted was to be a normal girl. To go to the mall with her girl friends for make-overs and stay up way too late texting each other about which boy would ask them to the next school dance. She wanted to wear her hair in goofy styles and cry about zits and not worry about a building crushing her during her midterm exams. It was a simple dream, but Toru didn’t have a simple life. She’d thought by now she’d be over these silly fantasies, but when she saw her classmates’ modifications to their hero costumes the feeling hit her again before she could stuff it into that part inside of her where she kept her lost dreams.

Midoriya was testing out kicks at Ground Beta with his newly armored boots while Uraraka laughed a few feet in the air, marveling at her lack-of-queasiness from her new electromagnetic helmet. Toru stared forlornly at the new pair of gloves she’d received, with new colorful stitching. Her costume was….

Well, it wasn’t. The whole point of an invisibility quirk meant that she couldn’t wear a costume. It would kind of defeat the whole point then, wouldn’t it? To remain transparent, she couldn’t have any floating garments or gadgets attached to her body. Even the gloves themselves were technically a hindrance, but she needed some object to orient herself with her setting, otherwise her depth perception would suffer. It was a lot easier getting her bearings if she could tell whereabout her body was, and without her gloves she tended to move slower, not entirely sure where the rest of her body was while she moved.

Practically speaking, not having a costume for someone with a quirk like Toru’s made sense. Reasonably speaking—

“Oh! Hagakure-san, is that you?” Iida asked, embarrassed. She was lucky it was him who had run into her. His hero costume was made of bulky armor, so she doubted he felt it when he had brushed his arm against the side of her naked boob. She shrunk away.

“It’s not your fault, Iida-kun,” she said, hoping he could hear the smile in her voice and not the fakeness of it. “I’ll be more careful.”

It was hard, though. To be careful. The students of 1-A were gathered in a loose crowd in front of Aizawa-sensei, ready to hear what their mission was for today’s exercise. Toru was used to standing on the outskirts of groups to avoid being bumped into, but today she had gotten swept up in the middle. She held her gloved hands out at her sides, her default position to show everyone how much space she was taking up, but she still jumped when she felt Ojiro’s tail brush the small of her bare back. He flinched too, and sent an apologetic smile in her general direction, though nowhere near where her face actually was. She apologized again.

She hated her hero costume.

-

When class 1-A returned to the dorms, Toru made a beeline for her room, not that anyone noticed until her door slammed shut. She dug through her closet frantically until she found her warmest, fluffiest pink robe, and through it over her shivering body. She was so sick of this.

Aizawa-sensei was known as one of the toughest teachers of UA. He was also known for not playing favorites. But would it have killed him to warn her that they were doing underwater exercises today? While everyone else had at least some form of pants and a shirt to do their rescue dives in, Toru had to swim through the freezing-cold pool completely naked. It might have been an advantage if she didn’t have to spend most of her mental energy trying not to touch her rescue victim (Sato) with most of her body. 

And coming out of the water? That was a treat. The water droplets that clung to her transparent body made her look like a sex-shop mannequin, perked nipples and all. She had no choice but to leave the training grounds immediately, nothing but wet footprints in the cement to prove she was even there to begin with. Toru waited until she had dried off before returning to class, making up a lie to Aizawa-sensei that she felt sick and hoping no one but Sato saw her dripping wet figure before she’d fled.

How come no one else had to deal with this? She’d tried to talk to Momo about it once, feeling like she of all people would understand Toru’s pain. After all, she had a quirk that required her to show a lot of skin as well. But ironically enough, Momo had responded that her quirk wasn’t so bad. And besides Mineta, all the other boys in their class were very respectful about not looking at her while she pulled back her hero costume to use her Creation quirk. Using it in public was hard, but certainly not impossible. Besides, Momo had pointed out, in the heat of hero-ing she barely had time to think about modesty. She was too focused on saving people.

Toru had left that conversation at that. Any further discussion would make her sound jaded, and that’s not the type of image she liked to project to the world. She didn’t have an actual image, so to others Toru’s attitude was all she had. So she kept quiet about how frustrating it was to have to constantly avoid being sexually harassed while saving people, all while hoping that others didn’t think she was sexually harassing them. Toru, the fifteen year old girl with a very unfortunate quirk, didn’t want to be made out to be a villain for something she simply could not help. But what was the right answer?

Toru searched the floor of her messy dorm room until she found a terry-cloth towel and then began to scrub her head with it, trying to dry off as quickly as possible and maybe just scrub the rest of this awful day off of her. The type of towel she was using would cause her hair to frizz (she watched enough beauty gurus online to know), but it made no difference to someone like Toru. The world didn’t know the incredible condition she normally kept her hair in. 

Sometimes it felt like everything about her was a secret.

-

“Just hot soba again, Toru-chan?” Tsuyu asked her the following week at school as they grabbed their lunch trays. Even though her voice was even as she said it, Toru could tell there was concern in it. Even at lunchtime, Toru could always be found with either bread or a sweet on her tray. It had been quite a while since she’d eaten a red bean bun. She just wasn’t in the mood lately.

“Yeah, I’m just not very hungry today,” Toru told her friend, trying to sound chipper. She didn’t want to concern anyone, not in the least, but it was getting harder and harder to keep up her upbeat attitude when everything about her quirk just seemed to be bothering her lately.

Tsuyu nodded, though she didn’t look convinced. But thankfully she wasn’t the type to pry, so she led them to an empty table in the cafeteria. Toru sat across from Tsuyu and removed her face mask, a plain black one that she had bought online a few months back when she had hay fever. Lately she’d been feeling very self-conscious of people constantly talking to her chest, so she started wearing the mask to give people something on her face to focus on when they spoke to her.

She slurped her soba noodles in silence, not having much to say, when Midoriya and Todoroki passed by.

“Are these seats taken?” Todoroki asked. Toru glanced around to make sure they were talking about actual empty seats, not hers.  But there were two vacant seats next to Tsuyu, who gestured to the boys that they could join them when she continued peeling an apple for herself.

“Have they bothered trying to see if Eri’s quirk would work on him?” Todoroki asked, continuing a conversation they must have started while getting their food.

Midoriya shrugged. “I haven’t asked lately. I think they’re still scared that Eri wouldn’t be able to control her quirk and would rewind him too far. She’s still so young.”

“When would be an appropriate age for her to finally use it on him, then?”

“Are you talking about Togata-senpai, ribbet?” Tsuyu asked.

Midoriya nodded, looking pained. “I don’t know, Todoroki-kun. He’s still coming to school, at least, but not full-time. Without his quirk he doesn’t have much use for the hero courses he was taking.”

Toru had vaguely heard about this from Tsuyu and Ochako. Apparently the third-year who had done a fight demonstration for class 1-A after the provisional exam was injured during the Shie Hassaikai raid.  He’d been hit by one of the darts manufactured to take away people’s quirks while rescuing a child. Toru, in one of her darker moments, had selfishly wondered what would happen if she had gotten hit by a dart like that. Would all of her problems be solved? If her quirk was erased would she be visible? Could she finally live her life like a normal girl?

But then she had passed by the hospital wing shortly after, to get some bandages for Kaminari. Togata Mirio sat alone in a hospital bed with a bandage wrapped around his waist and the blankest expression she had ever seen on the normally-cheerful upperclassmen’s face. She was thankful for her quirk in the moment, so Togata didn’t have to see the shame written all over her.

The feeling still burned through her at the mention of his name, so Toru kept to herself as she ate her lunch, seamlessly blending with the background as she often did.

“Le Million isn’t gone just because Togata-senpai doesn’t have his quirk,” Tsuyu told the boys insightfully. “He’s still plenty heroic without his Permeation.” 

“He could always just be a citizen for a few years until Eri gets older, I suppose,” Todoroki said idly. “Or he could be a police officer. Quirks aren’t required to be a part of the force.”

Midoriya stared off into the distance. “I guess. I just can’t imagine him in a police uniform instead of his hero costume. It’s too hard to think about.”

Toru slurped her noodles a bit too loudly at that, and all at once all eyes were on her. Well, her chopsticks.

“Hagakure-san?” Midoriya said.

Toru cleared her throat delicately before speaking. “Hero costume? I thought that Togata-senpai couldn’t wear clothes while using his quirk.”

“Oh!” Midoriya said cheerfully, understanding her surprise. “The only time you saw him fight was in his P.E. uniform, wasn’t it? No, Le Million’s hero costume is this really awesome full-body suit with a cape and the number one million written across the chest! I think he got the inspiration from—”

“But how does it stay on him?” Toru asked, cutting Midoriya off before he could start rambling.

If Midoriya was put off by her interruption, he was kind enough not to show it. “It’s woven out of some specially-made fabric,” Midoriya said. “The inspiration appears to be from—”

And for the second time that day, Toru cut Midoriya off. But this time it was to abruptly leave the table, leaving the rest of her soba and her friends behind.

-

Toru hoped all the work she had put in making friends with her classmates for the past few months would make up for her rudeness at lunchtime. But after hearing that there was a specially-woven fabric that could form to quirks, Toru could no longer sit idly by.

This could have been her solution! Not the one she had secretly, selfishly wished for, that her quirk would one day disappear and she would wake up a normal, visible civilian. But the more attainable goal, that she could find a way to make a costume that wasn’t so revealing. Something that gave her more coverage while still allowing her to maintain the one advantage that her quirk gave her in the field.

She had run immediately to the Principal Nezu’s office and requested Togata Mirio’s contact information, saying that it was urgent and related to education. The principal gave it to her with little hesitation, perhaps seeing an outcome to their meeting that she couldn’t fathom with her human brain. But Toru didn’t care, so long as she was able to talk to Togata about the nature of his costume.

Texting him had been a little nerve-wracking, especially since her senpai probably didn’t even know she was alive, but after explaining through text that she was a student from 1-A with some hero questions, Togata seemed perfectly happy to meet her in the courtyard on campus and chat with her.

Feeling better than she had in weeks, Toru made an effort in her appearance. Wearing a form-fitting black turtleneck, checkered skirt, and thigh-high stockings, she was feeling more like herself than she had in a very long time. Another girl would probably style her hair or apply make-up for a meeting with an upperclassmen boy, but Toru didn’t. She brushed her transparent hair and let it hang down straight, not that anyone else would know the difference. She did choose a more stylish mask today, looping a purple one with a bedazzled kitty face on it around her ears before heading away from the dorms to their meeting spot.

She sat on a bench in the courtyard, a few minutes early, and anxiously tapped on her thighs as she waited. Now that she was here, she was starting to get nervous. As excited as she was to talk about hero costumes, it was now occurring to her that her blank-faced senpai might not actually want to talk about hero work now that he had been forcefully relegated to civilian status. He’d gone through a traumatizing ordeal and had his whole life ripped away from him only a few months ago. Was she being incredibly selfish again?

“Hagakure-san?” Toru heard, and leapt to her feet awkwardly as Togata entered the courtyard.

“S-senpai! I’m glad you could come on such short notice!” she squeaked. She shouldn’t have asked him to come, what was she thinking—

“I like your mask,” he said with a sunny smile, coming to sit beside her on the stone bench. He didn’t look upset in the slightest. “I really love cats.”

“Really?” Toru asked stupidly.

“Yeah!” he said enthusiastically. “The way their tails swish back and forth, their rough tongues, their little toe beans? Cats are the best. If I could spend a day in a pile of cats, that would be the best day ever.”

Toru….did not know how to respond to that. The last time she saw him he had looked so depressed. She didn’t think that he would come here to talk to her and look so happy. Togata was sitting beside her, all six-foot-something of him, with his broad shoulders and his perfect hair and he was talking to her about cats. What did she call him here for again? 

Thankfully, Togata could not see the way she was gaping at him and just took her silence as a means to continue. He went on a Midoriya-like ramble for the next few minutes or so about his favorite breed (Singapura) before Toru finally found the will to speak.

“Togata-senpai?” she said gently, trying to make up for her earlier rudeness with her friends by at least interrupting this boy kindly. He stopped talking to look at her curiously. “I actually didn’t come here to talk about cats. I was hoping to talk to you about hero work…if that’s okay,” she tacked on lamely, hoping not to offend him.

He looked unbothered, smiling at her kindly. “Sure! I have a lot of experience out in the field, so I’m sure I could offer you some advice if you need it. Is something bothering you?”

“Well,” Toru said, looking down at her lap. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to bare her soul so openly to someone who was basically a stranger to her, so he kept her explanation brief. “Due to my quirk,” she splayed her arms out to gesture to her invisible form, “I don’t have a lot of options, costume-wise. Midoriya told me that your Le Million costume was constructed of a special fabric so that you could wear it while using your Permeation quirk, and I was just wondering if the same material might work for my quirk as well?”

Togata looked on thoughtfully. “Well, you see. My costume was made from my own hair.”

Toru blinked. 

“Your hair?”

He nodded. “With Permeation, I phase through every solid object around me when I use my quirk. You saw me fight your class, I could barely keep my P.E. uniform on,” he said with a bashful chuckle. “But if my costume is made from me, I can use my quirk on it so both me and my clothes permeate. You see?”

“Oh,” Toru murmured. 

She really didn’t realize how much hope she had in this plan until it was dashed right in front of her eyes. There wasn’t some special all-in-one fabric swatch she could use to make her own full-body suit with a cape. She was Hagakare Toru, and life did not treat her that kindly. She would spend the rest of her hero days either shivering from the cold or being unintentionally (or even worse, intentionally ) groped by every person she attempted to save.

Her vision swam from disappointment, and when the tears started beading in the corners of her eyes, she did nothing to stop them.

“Hagakure-san! What’s wrong?” her senpai asked, flapping his hands wildly in concern when he saw the water drip down the invisible contours of her cheeks.

“I just thought—I just hoped I could have a costume like yours, Senpai,” she sniffed miserably. “I can’t stand doing hero work with no clothes on. I don’t want to want to be a hero if I have to be naked for it.”

Togata seemed to finally understand what she was here for, and the sympathy in his eyes showed it. While the pity was appreciated, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be around anyone right now. She stood to leave, but before she could turn away from him Togata touched her very gently at the elbow. She stopped and looked down at his hand, and he immediately took it away. 

“Wait, don’t go yet. I understand completely what you mean. I spent so much of my first year at UA forced to laugh it off whenever my clothes would fall off while training with my classmates. I know how it must feel for you, to an extent.”

Toru thought of her classmates, who brushed off her concerns dismissively. “You do?”

That constant smile returned to his face, though there was a sad twist to it. “Embarrassing. Vulnerable. Incredibly lonely.”

She blinked a few more tears away and nodded.

Togata continued. “It’s hard when you have a quirk with such a unique drawback. No one wants to think too much about how hard it might be for you. Especially since you’re so cheery; you can’t possibly be bothered by it. Sound familiar?”

To a tee. 

“It sucks having to be the positive one all the time,” she said, brushing her cheeks with the palm of her hand. “It means no one likes you when you act truly unhappy.”

Togata swallowed and nodded. She wondered what it must be like for him now, to have lost his quirk and still keep that sunny smile on his face. She wondered how genuine he was when he first showed up here, or if he was putting on an act just like she did every day.

She thought to ask him. “Togata-senpai—?”

But Togata was already pressing on. “But I do think there’s something we can do for you. While the material for my suit won’t be usable for you, there’s no reason why the same method of costume production won’t work for you, Hagakure-san.”

“My hair?”

Togata shrugged. “If it worked for me, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for you. It’s worth a shot, anyway. How long is your hair?”

Without asking, his hand reached out. Toru never got used to this. It was always worse because of how horrible people were at guessing body position. You’d think that after looking at so many humans on a day-to-day basis that people would be able to reasonably guess where certain body parts were, but Toru was often unpleasantly surprised by where people grabbed her first. 

She closed her eyes and waited for it to be over, but his hand never fell. She cracked open one eye and saw Togata’s hand, suspended a few inches above the crown of her head. Her eyes then flicked to his face, where he waited patiently for her.

The saltwater didn’t seem to have fully left her eyes as she reached up her hand and took hold of his own, before guiding it gently down the length of her hair. His fingertips grazed the very ends of the strands for a moment before letting it fall back to her shoulders. He smiled again.

“That should be plenty to start.”

-

“Shouldn’t we be going to the Costumes Department?” Toru asked as she followed Togata’s lead, walking towards a wing of UA that she’d never needed to enter before today. 

“Nah, they’d take too long to make it. They’re always backed up. But the Support Class students are always itching for new projects,” Togata said like the wise senpai he was. “No one is more Plus Ultra than UA students themselves, after all,” he said with a wink.

Toru took this logic in stride as she stood before the Support Class Workshop, but admittedly she was a little nervous. They were still students, after all.

“What if they mess up?” she asked. She’d be foolish to not voice her fears now, before it was too late.

Togata seemed unfazed. “Then we try again. Hair isn’t a finite resource after all. It grows back. And if you can find someone with a helpful quirk, your costume material could grow back faster than you think!”

Toru supposed she couldn’t argue with that, so she steeled herself for whatever was to come and opened the door.

A drone zipped past her head and out the door, so quick Toru didn’t even have time to duck.

“Don’t leave the door open!” a student covered in grime yelled from on top of an incredibly tall ladder. “My babies will escape!”

“Babies?” Toru asked curiously. Togata closed the metal door behind them and caught another drone flying their way before it could smack into the wall. The student who had yelled at them before was already focusing her attention elsewhere, picking up an electric tool that Toru couldn’t identify and hopping inside of the cabin of a giant mech.

“That’s Hatsume Mei,” Togata told her. “She’s a first-year, but she’s already at the top of the Support Class. If anyone can help you, it’s her.”

“Is that praise I hear?” Hatsume Mei called out, poking her head out of the robot and grinning wildly. “Le Millioni! It’s been ages. What can I do for you?

“We’re actually here for Hagakure-san today.” Togata explained the situation to her while she worked, undeterred when Hatsume climbed back in her machine and continued working on her invention. He told her of Toru’s unique problem as impersonally as possible, only telling her the necessary details, which Toru was grateful for. Her fingers fiddled with the hem of her skirt as she waited until Togata ended his explanation, wondering if Hatsume could fashion a costume for her out of her own hair.

“So you said it was mid-back, right?” Hatsume Mei yelled over the sound of a drill. She was back inside the robot and sparks were shooting out of it at rapid intervals. Toru and Togata ducked their heads in tandem as some shot their way.

“Closer to my lower back, actually!” Toru shouted back. 

Toru had always been incredibly proud of her hair. It was a personal thing, obviously, since no one could see it, but that didn’t stop Toru from meticulously maintaining it from a young age. Even if it wasn’t visible, Toru could still feel it, so she’d always gone out of her way to treat her hair properly so she could at least revel in the sleek texture of it. She’d followed beauty influencers online for years to discover the perfect balance of shampoos, conditioners, leave-ins, and other miracle products to keep her hair in perfect condition. Hair length like hers could only be achieved through proper care of healthy hair.

The drilling noise cut off suddenly and Hatsume pulled herself out of the robot and climbed down the ladder. She flipped up her grease-smudged goggles to eye Toru curiously. Toru, used to this reaction, let herself be scrutinized. 

“I can work with that,” she said finally. “Though there is the caveat of it being invisible. I need to be able to see my materials in order to make a beautiful baby out of them.”

There was always something, wasn’t there? Every time Toru thought she was taking a step in the right direction, the rug was pulled right out from under her—

“That’s an easy fix, though,” Togata said. “Temporary hair dye will help you cut it off of her and work it into usable fabric. Then you can wash the dye out when you’re all done.”

And just like that, there was hope again. Toru looked at Togata in amazement.

Hatsume smiled grandly at Togata. “Look at that! Beauty and brains. What don’t you have, Le Million?”

A quirk , Toru thought glumly. But Togata didn’t miss a beat. “Time to waste, Hatsume. Toru needs this costume done as soon as possible, okay?”

“Don’t they all,” Hatsume said flippantly, tossing her tool on a desk behind her. “Alright, cutie,” she said, addressing Toru this time. “If you want support gear from me ASAP then I’m going to need you to come back to me as quick as you can with dyed hair, got it? Then I’ll get to work on turning it into something usable for you.”

“Do you really think you can do it?” Toru asked. All of this hoping was exhausting her.

“Ye of little faith. I perform miracles in this workshop every day!” she shouted, extending her arms out widely to gesture to the room of junked parts. “Now, begone until you’ve returned with dyed hair. I have schematics to work up.”

And just like that, they were kicked out of Hatsume Mei’s workshop of miracles, something Toru believed in for the first time in a long while.

-

Two days later, Toru walked out of the Workshop of Miracles feeling lighter than she had in all the time she’d been a student at UA. Most of that was due to the 13 inches of hair cut from her head, but she couldn’t deny that optimism had something to do with it too.

“I like the haircut,” Togata told her as he met up with her outside of the workshop. He was smiling that same sunny smile, but Toru didn’t have it in her to question it after feeling so high. 

She shook her head from side to side, reveling in the feeling of the tips of her hair hitting her face. The other night she had approached the girls of 1-A with a proposition: make-over night. Thrilled beyond all belief, they were incredibly eager to follow her to the drugstore for a night of fun, picking out nail polish and facial masks and of course, hair dye. After mixing it with care, Ochako had taken a specially purchased paintbrush to apply the dye evenly and consistently to her hair, making sure every strand was fully coated. The morning after, she had sent an email to Aizawa-sensei saying she wouldn’t be able to participate in Stealth training for a week and then took the day to bask in the feeling of being truly seen.

“It’s a shame I didn’t get to see it while it was still long,” he said as he walked beside her, matching his pace with hers as they made their way to the cafeteria. Despite the fact that she had a freshly-cut, lilac-colored bob swishing on her head, he still made the effort to focus his gaze on the space between her hairline and her mask, a white one with rainbow-colored cat whiskers. Toru smiled widely.

“It’s alright, Senpai. You didn’t miss anything,” she said genuinely. 

What he wouldn’t want to miss was still yet to come.

-

This was, perhaps, the one time Toru truly allowed herself to be manhandled. Even the word “allow” felt a little strong, for Hatsume Mei had come to her with an eagerness that couldn’t be denied, but with Toru being just as ecstatic as the engineer was, she didn’t push back too much when Hatsume insisted that she blindfold Toru for the reveal of her new costume. So after tying a UA uniform-standard tie around her eyes, Hatsume set to work dressing Toru, making easy work of her and not once misplacing where certain body parts might be.

“Are you guys almost done in there?” Togata asked from outside of the crudely-made fitting room. It wasn’t more than some strategically placed Support Pieces and a curtain draped between the stacks, but it was more privacy than Toru usually got when she undressed, so she was grateful.

“Al-moooooost,” Hatsume sang, in an extraordinary mood, which only made Toru’s spirits climb higher. After the rustling of fabric and a few tugs later, Toru felt herself being spun in a circle and led to the outside of the fitting room. Togata remained quiet as Hatsume untied the tie and pulled it from Toru’s eyes in a grand flourish.

Before Toru was a large full-length mirror, with Togata off to the side, watching with quiet awe. She almost couldn’t understand his expression at first, until she turned her body slightly and saw her hair catch the light, a purple shimmer still tinting parts of it even after she’d washed it several times.

But that’s all she saw.

Toru walked forward and touched her hand to the mirror before pulling it away. The glass felt cool and smooth beneath her palm, but she had not seen her approach the entire time she’d walked towards it. Only Togata and Hatsume’s giant smiles as they stood behind her.

Togata’s expression started to dip when he saw the tears rolling down Toru’s cheeks, a similar sight to what he had seen the day he first met her, except now they were suspended alone in midair.

“Oh, no. Hagakure-san, if you don’t like it—”

A little laugh bubbled out of her before she could stop herself, then another, until Toru found herself crying and laughing in equal parts.

Togata looked confused until Hatsume, who had never stopped grinning, handed over her goggles to him.

“Click the right button twice for thermal imaging, Beauty,” she whispered to him.

And then Togata was able to see Toru as she truly stood, a smile practically splitting her face in two as her hands roved up and down her body. Just her 13 inches of hair had made enough material for a shirt the length of a crop top, with spaghetti straps crossed behind her back. Her bikini-cut bottoms covered her front and backside completely, and there was even a tiny bit of material left over to make a tie for Toru’s hair, so the longer strands of her bob could be pulled back into a small ponytail at the back of her head. She was invisible, but she was covered , for the first time in her life, and Toru couldn’t stop crying as she clung to the feeling of security around all her most intimate parts.

“Now once your hair grows back, I’ll be able to add more to it, of course. This is just the prototype stage. If you take your vitamins or, if you’re like our senpai over here, you find someone with a hair-growth quirk, we’ll be able to add all sorts of pieces to it, such as—”

Hatsume couldn’t get any more words out, crushed as she was in Toru’s vice grip embrace.

“Thank you,” she cried into the engineer’s neck. “Thank you so much.”

Hatsume hummed and patted her back. “All in a day’s work. Glad I could help.” She rubbed Toru’s bare shoulder for a moment before jumping back. “Oh! Wait, I didn’t show you the best part.”

She extracted herself from Toru to head back to the makeshift dressing room, where she brought out the briefcase that all UA students carried their costumes in. Toru’s had previously only contained her white striped gloves. But when Hatsume opened it up, she saw much more.

It almost looked like a miniaturized closet, a rod going across the top of it and a tech-y looking hanger dangling from the middle. On the bottom of the velvet-lined case were a bunch of black discs the size of silver dollars, each with a blinking red light.

“This—” Hatsume said as she pointed to the hanger “—is where you put your costume after you’re done wearing it. The hanger is weight sensitive, so when your costume is on it, it will light up green so you know that it’s there even if you can’t see it. Should it not be in your case and you need to try and locate it—” Hatsume picked up one of the small discs “—use one of these sensors to track it. Your costume gives off a signal that can be registered on one of these from up to 500 meters away. There’s a tiny twist of wires in both pieces that act as a homing beacon. I made them as small as possible so they’re barely visible to the human eye unless you’re dancing in front of a stark white background. Otherwise you should be good.”

Toru twisted and turned about, patting down her sides, unable to even feel the wires Hatsume was talking about. The engineer was good. 

“Why are there so many sensors?” she asked.

“Ah, yes. These also double as tools to be given to your team when you go out on assignment for hero work. Now your teammates can locate you even if you can’t respond to them aloud. Helps with rescue ops and things like that.”

Toru didn’t know what to say. 

“You put a tracking device in my suit so my friends can find me?”

“Yes, essentially.”

Toru swallowed, the emotion in her throat coming close to clawing out of her. How did Hatsume know? How could she have known that Toru was terrified of getting lost or injured during her hero work? Of no one knowing where to look? She’d never told anyone that. She was Hagakure Toru, the upbeat attitude of 1-A, the comic relief when everyone else was feeling overwhelmed. How did she know Toru was petrified that a stealth operation would turn into a mission where she’d be lost forever?

“I can’t take the credit for that idea,” Hatsume continued good-naturedly. “Brains here came up with that one.”

Toru turned to her senpai, who had been standing back the entire time and staying out of the girls’ way as they discussed the details of the costume. He was still wearing Hatsume’s ridiculous-looking goggles, which meant he could still see Toru, though it seemed like he didn’t need the goggles at all for that to be possible. Maybe he’d been the one person truly seeing her this whole time.

She stepped toward him, not at all feeling self-conscious for perhaps the first time in her life and took his hands in hers.

“Thank you for everything you’ve done for me, Togata-senpai,” she said, her voice packed with sincerity.

She’d seen so many smiles from him in these past two weeks, but the crooked one that climbed up his face now felt the most genuine out of all of them.

“I’m always here to help,” he told her.

-

No, this was the most genuine smile she’d seen him wear in weeks.

“I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!”

She laughed good-naturedly as the former-hero Le Million lay on the floor of a cat café, covered in kittens. He’d been shrieking with joy for the past half hour while she sipped her coffee and watched him. This was the least she could do for her upperclassmen after all he’d done for her lately. A small orange kitten crawled over his chest and flicked its tail at Togata’s nose, and he looked like he just won the lottery.

“This is the best day,” he said happily, his hands patting at the floor while an older striped cat batted at his fingers. “I feel like now I owe you something, Hagakure-san. You didn’t have to do this.”

“I absolutely did,” she said, setting down her cup. A cat sitting on the chair across from her scurried away at the noise, not being able to comprehend how the cup had seemingly moved on its own.  “And frankly I owe you about a thousand more cat cafés after all you’ve done for me.”

Togata sat up, holding the striped cat up to his face to give her forehead a kiss before setting her down to run away. He looked at Toru, eyes still full of light. “Now that’s just silly.”

Maybe so, but Toru felt he deserved it nonetheless. She wouldn’t be feeling as happy, as safe, as she felt now without his help. And the trackers…she really couldn’t thank him enough. He’d done so much for her despite barely knowing her. 

She wished she had been able to do the same when she saw him in that hospital bed all those months ago. When he was feeling lost, who had helped out Le Million? Back then, Toru had seen the pain on his face and had only thought of herself. Toru felt the venomous shame coursing through her veins again. Underneath all the smiles and child-like exuberance was a boy who was suffering without his quirk. The fact that she’d envied someone who’d been hurt so deeply still made her stomach twist. The cat café could provide him temporary happiness, but she could see that saving people was the thing that caused him real joy. 

“Togata-senpai?” 

Togata, who’d been dangling a feathered toy in front of an uninterested black cat’s face, looked up.

She was going to ruin his good mood, but she felt like she had to say it. 

“I’m sorry you lost your quirk.”

For once, Togata didn’t plaster an automatic smile to his face. “Why do you say that?”

Toru fiddled with the hem of her uniform skirt awkwardly, unable to look him in the eye. “You seem like a really kind person. I know that you would have made an amazing hero.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “The fact that you lost your quirk is really unfair.”

Togata remained quiet. Toru did as well, not knowing if she should continue or change the subject to lighten the mood. Hagakure Toru, known for her cheery attitude, was not known for her grace when it came to serious topics. She probably shouldn’t have brought it up. It was out of her own guilt that she felt the need to mention it, and now she was forcing Togata to think about it—

Togata stood up, leaving the bell toy in front of the cat, and sat at the table with her. His voice was uncharacteristically somber when he spoke.

“I won’t lie to you. When I lost my quirk, I thought it was unfair too. I’ve worked hard my entire life to be able to turn my quirk into something useful, and having all that hard work taken from me so suddenly felt like a slap in the face. Like a part of me was taken, you know?”

Toru nodded sympathetically.

“But you know what?” Togata said. “After a while I began to realize that no one can control what is or isn’t fair in their lives. We can only control how we react to it.” 

There was truth in the simplicity of his statement. Toru felt it in her bones every time she’d been dismissed, ignored by people who often forgot about her if she didn’t work so hard to take up space. Life was unfair, and the bitterness she felt in her heart about her own quirk probably wouldn’t go away for a long time. But stewing in hate wasn’t going to help her move forward either.

Togata continued, “I lost my quirk, maybe permanently, but that doesn’t change my purpose. Le Million’s goal is to save a million people. I don’t need to be a hero to do that. Every day that I help someone in need is another person saved, and I use that reminder to stay focused on the future.”

Toru thought about that. “Does that mean I’m another person you saved?”

Togata hummed pensively. “Maybe. But I think that asking for help means that you already did half the work for me. And now that you can do hero work more comfortably, you can save lots of people too!”

The smile forming on his face was infectious. She felt the corners of her lips turning up, hope lighting a fire in her heart that hadn’t been there a month ago. 

Toru put her hands on her hips, but kept a teasing edge to her voice.. “Don’t think that you can use my rescues towards your count, Le Million!” Toru retorted playfully. “If you want to save a million people you need to do it fair and square!”

Togata laughed at her joke—a full, exuberant sound that Toru found she quite liked. The conversation tapered off from there as her senpai located a lone Singapura cat basking in the sunlight a few tables down, but Toru was fine with that. Something told her that this was the beginning of a new chapter for both of them. 

The future was looking brighter for her already, and with a new costume and a new friend, she was excited to see the kind of hero she’d turn out to be.

[deathonyourtongue]

They Would Try

Summary:  The color has washed out of everyday life, and it’s the routine that keeps him going. Pairing: Henry Cavill x Reader Word Count: 2.2K Warnings: HEAVY angst. Description of some palliative care procedures. A/N: You know the drill. Sorry in advance. Bring the tissues. The song for this one is The Wisp Sings - Winter Aid ____________________________________

Let me sleep I am tired of my grief And I would like you To love me, to love me, to love me

Men deal with grief in different ways. Some choose the path of anger and violence, lashing out at anyone and everyone, bringing about their own demise because they cannot release their hearts. Others choose to martyr their feelings, vowing never to love again, forever shutting the door in the wall they’ve built around their hearts. Rarely, a man will choose persistent kindness. 

Having suffered the great blow to his heart, he will treat others with unfailing gentility, understanding that everyone has their plight and that everyone, in some way, is grieving. It’s the sort of kindness that makes it clear the man providing it is permanently broken, his heart shattered. Most who are privy to it, are able to feel the anguish coming off such a man in waves; I’ve been hurt before, please do not hurt me again, for I cannot take another blow. The kindness in and of itself is a shield, a way of pretending to be okay when one is clearly not. Of all the ways to cope, it is the most heartbreaking.

His days are routine now, a small comfort in a world that no longer truly holds any interest. The color has washed out of everyday life, and it’s the routine that keeps him going. Knowing the things he must do, make it possible to get out of bed every morning. 

When the alarm goes off quietly, he rolls over, eyes still closed, willing himself to make it through the day without tears. Happiness has long since removed itself from his vocabulary, and it’s rare that he does not find himself wiping his eyes either due to constant, dull ache in his heart or at the sight of something that sparks a memory of a time when he could laugh and smile. Mostly, the tears come in the quiet hours, when there’s no one watching with concern pouring out of every fiber of their being. He does his best to cry in private, but sometimes it can’t be helped and he finds his shoulders shaking as he nuzzles into your shoulder, the tears always silent. One of the doctors said it was best to not be upset, lest it aggravate the situation, and it’s something he’s taken to heart ever since. 

A quick shower is the first must on the to-do list. In and out only to maintain basic hygiene so as to pass the inspections he knows are always being conducted, even if he’s told to the contrary. Fresh clothing completes the ritual, leaving him free to take care of more important matters. 

The curtains are opened along with the windows to circulate the air lest the room grows stale and once a week, the sheets are changed. The birds singing help him remember better times and often, he has to stop in his tracks and curl in on himself, heart aching for what it can no longer have. 

His hair’s grown substantially since that first day, and though he’s perpetually asked to take a day for himself, to go get a cut and a shave, he can’t bring himself to leave. His full attention is required and nothing can get in the way of that, least of all something so self-serving. 

It’s been two years since he came home to find you in Nightingale. Two years since he learned the horrors of what you went through on your own. Two years since he came home to find the bed soaked in your blood. 

Two years since he last heard you speak. 

Henry’s best friend is growing impatient. It’s been long enough. Too long, if you ask him. 

“Don’t you think it’s time you moved on, mate? I mean, you’ve given up your career, you rarely leave the house, and at family things, you’re a downright stick-in-the-mud! It’s time for you to let go, to let her be taken care of by professionals somewhere, and go on with your life!” He vents to Henry one morning, having barged in shortly after breakfast. 

Henry looks stung, words unable to describe what he truly wants to say in his heart of hearts. He doesn’t need to speak, however, as your nurse, Kathy, hears the whole thing. Incensed, she has to take a moment to collect her thoughts before stepping into the room. 

“Pardon me, Jonathan, but did I just hear you ask Henry to let go of his wife so he can, what, go back to whatever life it is you approve of better? Shame on you. Have you no heart?”

“Of course I do! I just...He’s wasting his life laying here next to her, crying himself to sleep and wishing for things to change, when it’s clear they won’t. She’s not coming out of this-this catatonia or whatever it is. She’s a vegetable that can breathe, that’s it. He...I just don’t want him to spend the rest of his life moping here next to her, willing things to go back as they were. It’s not healthy.” 

“Would you say the same if it were your own wife, sir? Or heaven forbid, your mother or sister?” Kathy asks, eyes wide in disbelief, her hands shaking in ire. 

“I would, yes! It’s not like he’s even doing anything. He just lays there all day, gazing sadly at her. All her care is provided by you, is it not? He’s wasting the prime of his life, all because he--” 

“Actually, sir,” Kathy interjects, clearing her throat and blocking what she knows will be too painful a sentence for anyone to hear. “Mr. Cavill does 99% of her care on his own. I only visit once every two weeks to update her chart and help with certain dressings that are hard to manage on one’s own.” 

“Dressings?” Jonathan balks, not understanding in the slightest. 

“She gets bedsores, despite...Despite my best attempts,” Henry finally speaks, his voice hoarse from lack of use. There’s shame in his eyes and even as Kathy rubs his shoulders, it’s clear that it’s a touchy subject. 

“Mr. Taylor, why don’t you sit a while? Keep your friend company so you can better understand what he does all day,” Kathy suggests through gritted teeth, her tone making it clear that it’s a demand, more than an invite. Henry manages a small smile of thanks to Kathy, hoping this will put any protests as to why he’s chosen to put his life on hold, permanently to rest. 

“When you’re ready, son,” Kathy nods, watching as Henry moves to your side, kneeling next to you on the bed. Tucking his head down, he whispers to you tenderly, his tone apologetic and full of regret. 

“We have to change your dressings, love. We’ll be as quick as we can. I’m so sorry.” Henry’s snuffles, his voice pinched with emotion and when he lifts his head again, tears fill his eyes, though they stubbornly refuse to fall. 

Jonathan is appropriately horrified when he sees what’s beneath the old dressing on your lower back; Your groan of pain certainly doesn’t help matters. 

“Looks much better, Henry. It should heal completely within the week,” Kathy says softly, her smile encouraging and understanding. Henry only nods, his breathing shallow and erratic as he waits for it to be over so he can tuck you back in. 

“Everything’s in order, love. Do you need me to stay?” Kathy asks, eyeing Jonathan with disdain, not trusting him to open his mouth and say something utterly heartless after she’s left. 

“We’re all good on this front, Kathy. Thank you, as always.” Henry shakes his head, giving her the same smile that breaks her heart each time she visits. Kind but filled with anguish, the feigned happiness never reaches his blue eyes, and she thinks of her own son, vowing to check in with him when she gets home. 

Henry smoothes your hair away from your face with a gentle hand, a soft kiss to your forehead following after. He takes a moment to collect himself before moving off the bed and around to the side closest to Jonathan. 

“W-what are you doing?” His friend asks, leaning forward in his seat, trying to see what Henry is pulling out of a mini-fridge that now serves as your nightstand. Henry doesn’t say a word, knowing Jonathan’s question will be answered in time. Two syringes, one pre-filled with saline and the other with a pinkish-brown liquid, are set on top of your sheets, and Henry pulls a chair close to your bed, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves after pulling the sheets down far enough. With the utmost care, he inserts the second syringe, the procedure becoming apparent to Jonathan by the look on his face. 

“She can’t eat on her own. We tried assisted feeding for a bit in the beginning, but it didn’t work,” Henry explains, his tears gone as he focuses on pushing the contents slowly through the tube that had long ago been inserted directly into your GI tract. When your meal is done, Henry flushes the line with saline, and covers you back up, albeit momentarily. 

By the time he’s done your morning routine, which includes two more procedures Jonathan couldn’t imagine doing, not even for a loved one, Henry’s friend is beside himself, tears of regret streaming down his face. Henry takes it in stride, knowing that no one, save maybe for Kathy and now Jonathan, truly understands what it takes to keep you alive and relatively healthy. 

“I’m sorry, mate! I’m so-so sorry!” He blubbers, hugging Henry tightly, his initial stance shattered by what he’s seen. Henry cups the back of his head, offering comfort to what he knows is a shock. 

“To answer your question. I couldn’t let her stay there, in that cold place, where the staff just go through the motions. She’s my wife, she’s my responsibility. In sickness and in health. I love her too much to let her waste away in a place like that, Jonathan. Even though...Even though life is not like it was before, she’s still my love. Still the other half of my heart. Do you understand?” 

Jonathan nods hurriedly, sobbing quietly and knowing full well he’s never had that type of love, nor given it. It makes him feel ant-sized and foolish for even thinking that Henry could just give it all up.

It’s well past lunch by the time Jonathan leaves and having skipped breakfast, Henry eats only because he must. It’s the bare minimum, but enough to keep him going another day and that’s all that matters. 

He tries not to look into mirrors much lately; the man that looks back at him is foreign. Gone are the muscles he’d been known for, the bright eyes and beaming grin. Gray creeps further and further into his beard and hairline now, and the hollows of his face are far more prominent. His sallowness always spooks those that visit, and if he’s not ready for it, it scares him a little too. Today, he looks, tries to find any remnant of that man that once was. There’s always a bit left, but as time goes on, it gets harder and harder to find. Today, he doesn’t see it, and it terrifies him. He has to keep hold of that man, if only so that if the day comes that you should wake from your condition, there may be something familiar for you to grasp onto.

In the small hallway that gives way to the room the two of you still share, Henry slides down the wall and curls up, sobbing softly, closer than he’s ever been to giving up. He allows himself a meager five minutes to wallow before wiping his eyes with the inside of his shirt and padding back into the room, knowing there’s more to be done. 

He bathes you, washes and combs your hair, and sets to work on your physical therapy, intent on keeping as much of your muscle tone and mass as he can. By the time he’s finished, he’s emotionally exhausted and physically worn out. 

Crawling into his usual spot at your side, he holds you close, sniffling. Today is one of those rare days, one he knows may do you more harm than good, but Henry’s always been honest with you and despite everything that’s happened, that will never change. 

“I miss you, my love. I miss you s-so much,” he stammers out, the tears coming easily, pooling on the pillow next to your shoulder as he reaches for your hand, lacing your fingers together. Henry lets go of the burden in his heart, knowing full well you wouldn’t want him to keep it in any longer than he has to.

“I lo-love you so m-much, darling. Please-please, come back to me. I n-need you here wi-with me!” His sobs soft, he shakes more with each rattled inhale; it’s a condition that hasn’t gone unnoticed by him or Kathy or indeed his own family, but one he’s willing to ignore so long as he can continue to provide you with care. 

It prevents him from feeling the first sign of hope in two years; your fingers slowly curling around his, squeezing weakly.

And so the day goes on, Henry’s list of musts growing smaller with each task he completes, until, come dusk, he finally finds himself curled up again, this time to sleep what few hours his mangled heart and tortured mind allow, hoping for the strength to wake another day and do it all over again. 

[schoolblogroxanne]

How can I create a non-pathological culture, while embracing deviancy and tradition at the same time?

In order to make a non-pathological culture you need to know what a non-pathological culture is a Non-pathological culture does not focus on the leader's personal interests and resources. The information is not processed in a way to further or advance particular parties within the organization but to benefit the organization as a whole; this culture may seem abnormal but can be a beneficial way for the community. In order for it to work you need to know how to act in the deviance in the society; to balance the scale in the society, the wants and needs of the society and if these things are essential, for example, if the law of the government that is in power does not coincide with the needs and wants of the society, the society will feel alienated from nation it serves, it will break the balance and cause chaos, just like what happened to the Philippines when it was occupied by other nations, a revolution occurred because the balance was lost when other nations applied there laws and tradition to the society, therefore a non-pathological culture can be doable due to its components and ways, not only the government or the people that are on power will benefit the but all of the people who are under this nation or society. Non-pathological culture is not power oriented and is a positive type culture.

Deviancy is classified in two types, Over conformity and Under conformity, Over conformity is based on accepting and conforming to norms without question where the actions, traits and ideas of athletes and coaches involves such an extreme conformity that they perform “supranormal” actions and potentially endanger themselves and others for example models, Some models suffer anorexia due to their obsession of having a  thin body: Anorexia is form of eating disorder which the person having this psychological disorder fears to gain weight. Another example of deviant Over conformity is that an athlete makes sacrifices for "the game", an athlete strives for distinction, an athlete accepts risks and plays through pain, and an athlete accepts no limits in the pursuit of possibilities. Because of the presence of this moral code of athleticism, athletes who over-conform to theses norms and commit deviant acts aren't necessarily viewed as deviant. The four main norms of the sports ethic states that an athlete must make sacrifices for the game and accept risks, which can in turn, glorify the decisions that an athlete makes to behave in a deviant way. If an athlete decides they need to better their physical health in order to succeed in their sport, and decides to take performance enhancing drugs or along the way, develops an eating disorder in pursuit of becoming a larger asset to their team, according to the sports ethic, they are only fulfilling their duties as an athlete, some athletes also do Over training or staleness occurs when an athlete ignores the signs of overreaching and continues to train. Many athletes believe that weakness or poor performance signals the need for even harder training. So, they continue to push themselves. This only breaks down the body further pushing the body to its limit. This act of deviance Overconformity is mostly acceptable in the athlete society because other athletes will understand what that person feels and the reason why he did those deviant acts, even though there is bad side on this type of practices some of the characteristics of this deviancy has a positive effect because of their goal to be the best or the be known they motivate their body in order to reach those goals.

 The other form of deviancy is Under conformity, under conformity is based on ignoring or rejecting norms, this often happen to people who has low esteem, those people who take their talent for granted and people who are under too much pressure. This type of deviance is a negative form of deviance, the complete opposite of deviance over conformity, this type of deviance can result to generalizations or stereotypes, people will consider you taboo, someone who is not acceptable to the society, because people are more used with the uniform ways, doing under conformity makes you different, strange , or much worse a bad influence to other people, some culture reject this kind of thinking because it may affect there laws and tradition, an example of under conformity is obesity, obesity is a complex disease involving excessive of body fat, a gateway disease that may cause other diseases and health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and some other certain cancer. Another example to this is an unmotivated student, a student that avoids academic challenges; the student shows boredom and lack of attention in class, in order to tend to this unmotivated student you need to do two things he first is to change his thinking so he comes to believe that, if he puts forth effort, he can be successful with academic tasks. The second is to figure out what does motivate them to identify the settings, situations, and conditions that he responds to and that can be used to foster his interest, so here we it the two types of deviance, deviance has its good side and its bad side, If we use deviance in a good way we could gain from it but we need to put balance on the decisions we make, because too much of anything is bad, other traits of having a deviant under conformity is that the person having this have sub normal ideas, traits, actions that indicate rejection or ignorance of their existence. This type of attitude could link into anarchy and lawlessness, this type of mindset can be dangerous to the people around him/her because he/she could harm them in order to get their wants and needs, and also this type of deviancy can cause the person to lose confidence to self and due to being unmotivated it can affect the people around them and in academic studies.

 Tradition can also be preserved even though there is deviance, it can be preserved by Sharing your culture's art and technology. Each culture has its own clothing, music, visual art, storytelling traditions, and many more unique characteristics. Other members of your culture will be overjoyed to teach or talk about their hobbies, their jobs, their crafts, and what they do for fun. This includes traditional artwork you would find in a museum, but material culture goes far beyond that. Even a kitchen spoon or a piece of software is a cultural artifact. People with less sophisticated technology are often considered ignorant or less intelligent. This is completely wrong. Culture passes on tools adapted to a particular environment, and every tool has generations of thinking behind it. Shaping a stone tool is one of the oldest cultural practices there is, and it still takes great skill and knowledge. Cook family recipes. It's never too late to whip up some recipes from your grandmother's cookbook. Smell and taste have powerful connections to memory. As you knead dough or try to guess the right amount of spices, you might remember meals from you childhood or holidays. Just reading a recipe can teach you how much ingredients and kitchen tools have changed. And even if some of them are unfamiliar, others have most likely become your comfort food or a source of family pride, even though these are simple things it is very effective in preserving the traditions you grew up to have another way to preserve tradition is to Accept change. The dialogue around passing on culture often sounds defeatist. Cultures are "endangered" or need "preserving" before they die out. Real challenges and threats do exist, but don't assume that all change is bad. Culture helps people adapt to the world around them. The world has always been changing, cultures have always been adapting, and it's up to you to choose a direction you can be proud of. Almost everyone participates in more than one culture. Be proud of your blend of ideas and behaviors, Talk about it and share it with other people. People are often fascinated by the different ways that people do similar things. Start a conversation and help bring others into the fold, sharing your culture is a good way to connect with other people, therefore the society can still embrace deviance and traditions. Some individuals use technology as a means of deviating from more traditional cultural norms. For example, in the United States, employees in offices are encouraged to remain productive and efficient, letting their minds wander off-task as little as possible. In the past decade, most companies have installed high-speed internet access as a means of improving efficiency. However, employees often appropriate the internet access to avoid work by using social networking sites. Such procrastination and corporate inefficiency stemming from internet access is called “cyber loafing”, but even though employees cyber loaf it the installation of high speed internet connection has motivated the employees to work faster.

[galaure]

Properly To Using the Waist Trainer

Enhance your core before as well as during waist training

This will certainly aid avoid your core muscular tissues from atrophying as soon as you're wearing a trainer for several hrs a day. Do not take these suggestions lightly, otherwise, you'll end up depending on the waist trainer to hold you up.

Failing to exercise before as well as throughout waist training will certainly offer you the reverse of your preferred impacts. Your stomach will look flabby due to a lack of abdominal muscle as your waist trainer has taken over for your core in holding your body upright.

Some excellent core workouts include planks, side twists, heavy crises, as well as leg lifts. Purpose to do these workouts 3 times each week.

While some people do work out while wearing waist trainers, medical professionals recommend against it as it can interfere with your ability to breathe, making it difficult for you to obtain a full workout, as well as add to back acne.

Know how to place on your waist trainer

Your waist trainer must include instructions on exactly how to place it on. These may depend on the design as well as producer, but right here are some general instructions:

Many individuals find it assists to wear a thin-fabric top underneath the corset to prevent skin irritation. A soft camisole or close-fitting storage tank top will do perfectly.

For a steel-boned bodice, loosen all of it the way and also reverse any type of snaps. Ensure that it is right side up as well as move it around your body, with the snaps at the front and also shoelaces at the back. If your corset has a discreetness flap (the panel of textile that rests beneath the shoelaces on your back), it ought to just touch the opposite of the corset

Before tightening the laces, hook the eyes. It can assist to begin in the middle.

Next off, get to behind and also get your lacing loops, then draw them far from you to tighten the waist.

For a latex waist trainer, there are no laces involved. There will likely be two sets of snaps at the front of your trainer (i.e. these rest on your tummy). Beginning at the largest setting (the initial collection of breaks), and after that carry on to the tighter setup as you grow accustomed to the trainer.

Barging in (aka "seasoning") your bodice.

For the first several days of wearing your waist trainer or steel-boned corset, ensure that you take some time to gradually break it in:

For a steel-boned bodice, do not tie it also securely when first putting it on. It ought to fit comfortably, however you need to still have the ability to glide a minimum of a couple of fingers or even your whole hand in the top or bottom of the corset. The boning will certainly get used to your shape with time. After using it for an hour, you can tighten it much more.

Don't tighten too much also quickly

If you tighten your corset before you and also it prepares, you'll take the chance of contorting the bodice as well as possibly even injuring yourself. Go slow-moving. An appropriately experienced bodice will certainly mold to your body, making it a lot more comfy to use.

Despite what type of waist trainer you're wearing, bear in mind not to go as well limited the first time you place it on. Offer it time to mold to your body, and also it will certainly be a lot more comfortable and also effective in the long run.

Slow as well as constant wins the waist

From days 4 to 14 of using your corset or trainer, Gradually enhance your wear time from 1.5 to 2 hrs a day to 6 to 8 hours a day, or extra.

Do not quickly start wearing your corset for 12 hrs a day. Even when you're advanced, you can escape 6 to 8 hrs a day and also still see outcomes Latex waist-trainer professionals advise using them for 8 to 10 hours every day. Some people wear their steel-boned bodices for up to 23 hrs a day. Make sure to know the threats involved with lengthier periods of waist-training. Most importantly else, make certain that you are never suffering.

Begin seeing results.

You need to start seeing outcomes within a month of using your waist trainer, yet it can take much longer. If you're currently rather slim as well as in shape, you may not see a significant change for approximately 2 months. Your results will certainly depend upon your way of life (i.e. diet as well as a workout), body type, and also how long you wear the waist trainer daily.

Strategy your clothing

You'll have the ability to see the corset through a lot of shirts, so see to it that nothing is also thin, lightweight, or sheer, or else, you'll have the ability to see the bodice with it.

Know when to take it off

If you experience pain, feeling numb in your arm or legs, or stomach problems such as indigestion or heartburn, loosen or remove your waist trainer or corset.

Keep it tidy

Be sure to hang your bodice approximately air out after using it. The area its shoelaces over the wall mount to ensure that they don't drag the corset down or obtain captured in anything.

Unless the supplier tells you or else, you need to never clean a corset. If you splash something on your corset, you can most likely identify tidy it with a damp towel, however, that's the extent of it. Each manufacturer will have their cleansing directions, so consult them before cleansing your bodice.

Adopt a healthy and balanced lifestyle

Drink sufficient water, eat a healthy diet plan, as well as work out frequently. Doing every one of these points will certainly help you see more substantial outcomes while waist training. It can likewise assist to prevent foods and also drinks that make you bloat, which will certainly be two times as uncomfortable when you're putting on a bodice or latex waist trainer. Lots of physicians agree that proper nutrition, as well as routine exercise, will certainly do more to trim your waist than a waist trainer will. Slabs, as well as twisting problems, are recommended.

If your bodice has a modesty flap (the panel of material that rests underneath the shoelaces on your back), it must simply touch the other side of the bodice

If you tighten your bodice before you and also it is prepared, you'll run the risk of warping the corset as well as potentially also harming yourself. Don't immediately start wearing your corset for 12 hours a day. Some people wear their steel-boned corsets for up to 23 hours a day. It can likewise help to prevent foods and beverages that make you bloat, which will be two times as unpleasant when you're using a corset or latex waist trainer.

Find out more advice here: prowaist.co.uk

[littlethingwithfeathers]

HBO’s Chernobyl - A Content Guide

Hey everyone!

So... the docudrama “Chernobyl” on HBO is probably one of the best things to ever grace a television, and everyone should totally go watch it right this now.

However, it is not an easy watch, even if you’re stout of constitution like me. While the show does not over-dramatize or sensationalize the horrors that happened during and after the Chernobyl disaster, it also does not shy away from showing them when appropriate. So I thought I’d put together a watch-guide just to make people aware of the more graphic scenes and topics in the show. I don’t have time-stamps. This is just more painting with a broad brush. And if you’ve got questions, feel free to ask me. 

I do my best to leave plot elements out of my summary, so as to avoid “spoilers” (if you can really have such a thing in something like this), but there are some plot points that could be potential problems for people so... spoiler warning?

Also, the full scripts are available online here if that’s helpful as well. They’re actually worth a read after you’ve seen the show... lots of interesting commentary in the blocking.

The guide is below the cut. Enjoy!

Episode 1 - "1:24:45"

This episode concerns the first eight hours after the reactor explodes. Point of view bounces back and forth between what's happening inside the reactor and what's happening in the nearby town of Pripyat. 

Ep. 1 gets a blanket warning for pandemonium and confusion in the wake of the explosion (which happens almost immediately at the start of the episode), gore/blood/wounds consistent with very acute radiation sickness, including burns, frequent vomiting of blood, and vibrant "radiation tans" which appear similar to severe sunburns. There is very little screaming or crying save in a couple of specific cases I will detail below. Mostly, dying of radiation sickness looks like someone with a serious case of the stomach flu who also has a horrible sunburn. 

There are no jumpscares, but the whole episode has a palpable escalating tension about it almost in the style of a horror movie. "No no no don't go in there! The core is open and you're going to die!" That's the general internal monologue while watching. The viewer knows, but characters do not really understand what's happened for the entirety of the episode. Most of the tension revolves around the plant management insisting that everything is fine and making people go to the reactor site to check on things and them becoming horribly ill. It's not until close to the end of the episode that someone goes and looks in daylight and sees what's happening (and even still the management doesn't believe it until the next episode).

Spot warnings:

The first scene is a suicide. A man hangs himself in the very beginning. We only see his feet dangling. It's very fast. We don't see a struggle.

The explosion is also very early in the episode (about 7 minutes in) and is not a jumpscare or particularly rattling. It's viewed from a far off window and is silent initially until the shockwave arrives. There isn't a huge tension build up. It's something very distant. 

(personal note) This is one of my favorite things about the show… they don't go the traditional narrative route. Show starts and they do two things in the first ten minutes. Kill the main character, and blow up the reactor. All of it without any sort of ceremony or tension-building.

Any scenes in the wrecked reactor, turbine, and water pump halls get a blanket warning for radiation related gore and suffering. There is no screaming or yelling due to injury. It feels very claustrophobic and dread-inducing because of the way it's shot. It's almost as if there is a monster in these halls, but that monster is the rapidly leaking radiation.

Same goes for any scenes involving the firemen outside the reactor. They are standing next to an open reactor core spraying it with aerosolized water. They are going to get very sick, and many of them do on site. Vomiting, lethargy, and obvious radiation tans are the main symptoms shown.

One fireman picks up a hunk of graphite which is highly radioactive. Later, he is screaming on the ground in pain when they try to pull his glove off, revealing a very severe and graphically depicted radiation burn on the entirety of the palm of his hand.

A group of people from the town watch the fire burn from a railroad bridge. As they watch, ash falls from the sky. This is actual, honest to goodness fallout. Nothing happens while they are watching, but the cinematography and the score make sure you know that they are all going to get very sick. 

Three men from the plant are sent to lower the control rods by hand, which has them going into the open reactor core (again, they don't know it's blown apart). Two go in and are instantly radiation tanned. The third, who pried the door open, is also partially radiation tanned, but because he had wedged himself against the radiation-leeching metal of the doorframe, he is severely and acutely burned where he'd braced himself. The burns are under his white clothes, but he begins bleeding profusely before collapsing in the hallway.

We find this man later, clothes soaked in blood. He is nearly incapacitated and obviously dying, but there's no screaming or wailing. He actually asks another plant worker for a cigarette and smokes it quietly.

Two men go down to open water pumps and are made incredibly ill by radiation poisoning. Again, there is no screaming. They just get weaker and weaker.

The control room manager, Dyatlov, vomits in a conference room near the end of the episode.

A man is sent to the roof of the reactor building at gunpoint to survey the damage. When he turns back from the edge of the reactor pit, his face has a severe radiation tan.

***

Episode 2 - "Please Remain Calm"

This episode happens over the next 60 hours or so after the accident and concerns the discovery of just how bad the accident is. Up until this point, no one really understood or accepted that the core had cracked open. This is the slow dawning of the apocalypse. There is less gore in this episode. It's more building tension as everyone comes to understand how awful things are and how much worse they are going to get. Blanket warning for general struggle and pandemonium in the hospital scenes, and milder images of radiation sickness (they're all still very sick and traumatized, but there's less actual blood). 

Spot warnings:

In the burn ward of the hospital, the firemen are all there and very very ill. A doctor recognizes that it's radiation poisoning and begins pulling their clothes off. The clothes are thrown in the basement. As she's leaving, the doctor looks down at her hand, which had been holding a bundle of clothes and she has a mild radiation burn.

There is a tense scene when the fireman's wife arrives at the hospital. She runs into some of the people from the railway bridge who are very sick. One man begs her to take his baby and run away from Pripyat. There is a lot of pitched yelling and begging.

There is an argument between Legasov and Shcherbina in the helicopter about whether or not they're going to fly over the core. It gets quite tense with vivid threats on both sides.

The plan with the helicopters to drop sand and boron on the reactor goes about as well as one might imagine at least until they get the distance worked out.

When the decision is made to evacuate the city, people are forced to leave their pets behind. 

Towards the end of the episode, it is discovered that there are pools of water under the reactor that need to be drained. This must be done by hand and it is made clear that whoever it is will likely die of radiation poisoning. Three men volunteer to go down under the burning reactor in diver suits, and wade through chest deep irradiated water to open the valves and drain the tanks. Again, this goes about as well as one would expect. It's probably the most tense moment in the whole episode. They get lost when their flashlights fail. The dosimeters are going bananas, and to top it all off… it ends on a cliffhanger with them lost in the dark. So… you might want to keep going. Not that the next episode is much better.

***

Episode 3 - "Open Wide O Earth"

This episode sprawls out over the next couple of weeks post-explosion. It largely concerns itself with the immediate cost of human lives. It gets a huge blanket warning for radiation-related gore, most often in the Moscow Hospital. Radiation poisoning this acute is a horrible and incredibly visceral way to die, and while it's not sensationalized or overwrought… they don't shy away from showing how it truly is. Legasov actually lists the symptoms and progression early on in the episode before we watch it happen. Which goes in this order.

-Initial symptoms were seen last episode: "nuclear tan" surface burns on the skin, vomiting, lethargy, loss of consciousness. This continues for a day or two. 

-Patients seem to rally as they enter a latency period and the immediate effects seem to subside. Recovery seems possible. The firefighters are shown playing cards at one point. Burns are visible on their skin but it looks like a really bad but healing sunburn. This lasts a day or two in these cases.

-Then the true breakdown begins as the cellular damage starts to catch up to the lack of new cell growth. Basically, you decompose from the inside out, starting with bone marrow, then organs, then the vascular system. This is incredibly painful as pain drugs cannot be administered due to failing tissue integrity. Visible symptoms are open, seeping sores, necrosis, eye discoloration, etc. 

They show this on a few patients unflinchingly. Close ups. Full body shots. It's gross and difficult to look at. They are basically melting. Honestly… I stopped wondering why zombies are a thing after I watched this. :(

Spot warnings:

Episode opens back on the divers again, lost in the dark with the dosimeters going ballistic. It's pitched and panicked, but they formulate a plan to handle the situation and succeed in their mission.

Important scream warning: There is a scene that begins with water dripping in the sink. This is followed by a man screaming. The nurses are trying to get the fireman's clothes off and he is shrieking in pain. It's a quick scene but hard to watch. If you're bothered by agonized screaming, cover your ears from the time you see the water dripping until Gorbachev's face appears if you want to avoid. This is probably the worst instance of pain-screams.

After the scene with the miners and the minister, there's another long scene at the hospital. No screaming, but it's the fireman. His condition is clearly deteriorating. Long shots of skin lesions and bandages.

After the "no fans" conversation with the miners we return to the hospital. This time the patient is one of the men from the control room. The one that went down to work on the pumps. He is in severe condition. Eyes are discolored. Skin is swollen and red and shiny. He can barely speak. Again, this is a long scene with lingering shots on his face and body. After he gives his age to the person interviewing him, he gets a nosebleed, which the person cleans up.

After that scene, they transfer the worsening fireman to a critical care ward. His skin is in awful condition. Worse than the patient from the control room. This also has lots of long shots of his symptoms. His face is turning black and necrotic. His skin is pocked with necrosis and looks like it could slide off his bones. For me this was one of the most difficult things to watch, and I actually had to look away. And I pride myself on having a pretty strong stomach.

There's a short scene with Legasov and Shcherbina in their trailer-office, and then… NAKED PEOPLE!!! Naked miners to be precise. Lots of them. Full frontal and everything. It's actually a pretty funny scene… blessedly.

After the scene with the naked miners we go back to the control room operator in the hospital. Then to the other operator's room. We never see the other operator. Just the interviewer's face. Then we go back to the fireman's room briefly.

The episode ends with a funeral, shot to great but incredibly sensitive effect. The firemen are buried in metal coffins, welded shut and covered in concrete.

***

Episode 4 - "The Happiness of All Mankind"

This episode chronicles the efforts of the "Liquidators" who were sent to the surrounds of the plant to raze the forests, turn the turf, and kill all the animals. 

So… blanket statement for lots and LOTS of animal death. We're talking critters wild and domestic alike killed by the truckload and buried in concrete to prevent the spread of radiation. Most of it is offscreen, but the spot warnings will have specific warnings of particularly sad/graphic instances. There are also some scenes of mild radiation sickness symptoms, but they are barely blips on the radar if you've watched his far. Just some vomiting and people looking generally unwell.

There's also a warning for pregnancy and child death, though labor, delivery, and death all happen off screen.

Spot warnings:

First scene is of an old woman milking a cow. There is a soldier trying to evacuate this old woman. She refuses. Then he shoots his gun, and for a moment you're unsure where the bullet landed. Then her cow falls over dead.

The episode is mostly conversations until you see the soldiers and Pavel roll into a neighborhood in a green truck and start pulling out guns. Bacho will give Pavel some instructions (don't let the animals suffer and so forth) and then he whistles for the animals. They come running and they start shooting them. We don't really see anything, but we hear it. Gunfire and some yelping/whimpering. Mostly we're just watching Pavel's reactions. 

When Pavel gets sent to go door to door, he comes across a cream and gray colored dog. This is the worst scene regarding animal cruelty. You will definitely want to look away when Pavel says "Go… go go go away." He shoots the dog, wounds it but doesn't kill it. We see the dog lying in a pool of blood. Pavel is overcome with guilt and approaches. Bacho appears and shoots it to put it out of its misery. It's over when you hear Bacho say "You're dragging that to the truck."

There are brief glimpses of the animal corpses on the truck when the soldiers are having lunch but they're in the distance and out of focus.

If shouting and smashing things in anger is an issue, be warned that when the German robot gets fried on the roof, Shcherbina flips his shit. He calls Moscow and screams at them, ultimately smashing the phone to pieces.

After the discussion of what to do about the roofs after the German robot fails, we go back to Pavel working. He and the soldiers are shooting animals. Again, you don't see the animals. Just hear the shots and the whimpering. But it's short lived. No wails of suffering or anything.

After Bacho tells Pavel to go door-to-door, he goes up to a house and finds a mom-dog with puppies inside. Bacho follows him and when he sees what he found, sends Pavel outside and kills them himself. Again, you just hear the shots and see Pavel's face.

After this, the three soldiers bury the animals. There's a brief image of them being dumped from the truck, and another of them being covered in concrete. 

One of the most pitched and harrowing scenes comes after the General gives a speech about how to clear the graphite off the roof to a new set of recruits. They are in crude lead shielding and rubber suits, they run out onto the roof and use shovels to clear graphite. They are stumbling and struggling, dosimeters going ballistic the entire time. It's incredibly tense. When they are called in, one of the men stumbles and gets caught on a piece of graphite. His boot tears. The scene lasts about 90 seconds.

In the scene that immediately follows, we see the fireman's widow. She picks up a girl's mitten to hand it to her, and she goes into labor.

The final scene of the episode is the labor ward in a hospital. We see the fireman's widow alone behind a partition.

***

Episode 5 - "Vichnaya Pamyat"

This episode is largely concerned with the trial of the plant management which is intercut with flashbacks to the day of the explosion.

There is a good deal of tension as they are showing step by step what went wrong, cutting between the trial testimony and the flashback to the reactor control room. There is a fair amount of arguing and yelling, mostly on Dyatlov's part both at the trial and in the control room. The flashbacks do not go beyond the explosion so there's no scenes of radiation related trauma. 

Spot warnings:

Shcherbina begins having coughing fits during the trial. He later shows Legasov a bloody handkerchief. 

There is a very tense scene with the head of the KGB after the trial is concluded.

Other than that, nothing to speak of.

***

Hope this is helpful! Happy watching, and again, if you have any specific questions, feel free to send me a message or an ask!

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

"😓A misunderstood character is ostracized, perhaps even threatened, for their peculiar habits, interests, or studies" - this is gonna be v specific but like.... Drabble where vetinari and downey giggle about people gossiping about vetinari being a vampire? Perhaps? Pls?

Thank you so much for the ask! i’m not sure if this is quite what you were hoping for, but I hope you enjoy. 

--

Midnight and Downey hears clicking so he’s half-awake, then fully awake and thinking there’s someone in the room with him. He can’t see them but knows a presence when it is felt, only: he can’t move. The clicking increases, an insect-noise, as something prowls near his head and he does not wish to look over but does, because he can’t help it, and there sits a monstrous creature poised with stinger above his face and the weight on his chest holding him down reminds him of that one poor man accused of witchcraft, or was it being vampire?, all those hundreds of years ago who was pressed to death in the main square. The rocks they put on his chest were later used to build the base of the Brass Bridge. When you walk over them you walk over his ghost. 

And now Downey is awake. Awake and sitting upright, which means he can move, but he’s still seeing the insect so there remains whispers of the dream. It is a dream, he reminds himself, because he has had such before and, more importantly, he knows all the insects on the Disc and the one he imagined next to him is not one of them. If he is going to go and discover a new species it won’t be whilst half-asleep in the middle of the city. 

He rubs eyes, looks to pillow beside him and finds it empty.

Sinking back into bed he pulls the eiderdown up around his head and burrows in an attempt to reclaim even a shred of disturbed sleep. 

But it’s gone. His mind is already going fast-fast-fast there are so many things he must do as Term moves into exam season and holiday festivities must be planned and budgeted for and rooms prepped for new students joining them for Winter term after Hogswatch. Then there’s City Council matters and Guild matters and three jobs lined up, hasn’t he already decided he’s too busy, tired and old for this?, and then there’s the never ending social calendar. Which he enjoys. But, it can be a bit much. 

Bedroom silence is as maddening as his racing mind. He’s staring at the thin pool of moonlight on the floor. It’s autumn, so skies are a perpetual grey with only a weak sun to splash watery gold and pink across horizon at morning and evening. The grey continues into the night obscuring stars. So everything is a shadow of its summertime self. 

He is restless. His nerves are up. He has spooked himself and remains half-convinced there’s someone in the room with him. The presence, he repeats to himself, was the dream and the dream was made of stress.

He rolls around for a bit. Then, out of a sense of paranoia, he retrieves a blade from between mattress and headboard, and prowls about his room but finds nothing and neither do Alsace nor Harold. He ought to be content if not pleased.

Fear is an anathema to him. One of the first rules of performing assassin is knowing that you are the most dangerous thing that walks the streets. And if you don’t know it in yourself, for certain, then at least exude it to others. Smoke and mirrors &tc. 

One autumn, as a boy of seven, he developed a deep fear of vampires. They can turn into mist, slide into bedrooms through keyholes and hide under the bed or in the closet. They drink your blood and make you one of them whether you wish it or not. 

The fear left him as he grew up. At first, because he learned how to kill them. Then, later, he met a few, became friends or an approximation of friends, with a few. Olivia Hunter, one example, said, it’s being damned for a sin you’ve no part in. People look and say ‘We know your kind’ when they know nothing of anything. What is my kind? Genuan? Black? Woman? Secretary? Vampire? Omnian? 

And that’s a sentiment he understands, was raised to understand, for his grandmother would talk about the bad old days in Brindisi when she was a girl and they had to leave, which happens sometimes, because people decide they know your kind and whatever it is, it’s unwanted. 

He dresses. Alsace and Harold become very excited at this sudden change in events. As always, he takes a circuitous route through the city to the palace. He weaves through alleys, up and down stairs and closes, trots this way and that across streets. For a time, he loiters on the Brass Bridge and peers at different stones. The foundation stone’s date has worn away with time so when you trace fingers over it there is only the merest indentation. Was this the stone that finally killed that man all those years ago? He’s never seen a witch stoning and has no desire to. There are some violences and brutalities that go too far. 

The palace is shades of moth-wing grey. Downey slips in between shadows and up to the patrician’s bedroom where, as expected, Vetinari is up. The man is seated at his desk half-dressed with robe wrapped around him and a blanket over shoulders. 

‘Have you considered a brazier?’ Downey asks upon entrance. Vetinari flicks a look at him. ‘It would help with your consistent lack of heating.’ 

‘I am quite content, Downey. If the temperature was comfortable people might wish to stay.’ 

Downey feigns offence. He drapes himself across the bed and stares up at canopy. Alsace and Harold make themselves at home by the meager fire next to Mr. Fusspot who remains unphased by the sudden presence of dogs easily three times his size. He snores on in peaceful slumber. 

‘May I be of assistance?’ Vetinari’s voice drifts over coupled with the ruffle of paper. 

‘Oh no, you’re fine.’ 

‘Is there a reason you’re here?’ 

‘Must there always be a motive for my coming? I had a desire to be mildly chilled and to stare up at your canopy.’ 

Vetinari makes a noise, a scoff or snort. Downey smiles at the fabric above him. 

‘We didn’t have plans,’ Vetinari says, quietly, to himself and his desk. Downey does not respond. Vetinari’s penchant for exact order crops up time to time. They are both men with strong affinity for order, but applied in very different areas of their lives. 

Downey orders butterflies and beetles and natural and manmade poisons. He also orders accounts, aligns the debit-credit column of the guild, his wardrobe, his drinks cabinet. He does not order his personal life. He doesn’t need to, Vetinari orders it for him. 

‘You know,’ Downey drawls as a thought occurs. ‘Your desire to have cold rooms and no creature comforts is probably why people think you’re a vampire.’ 

A cough from the direction of the window. 

Downey props himself up and looks over. ‘Tolerant of extreme temperatures? Lack of expected, human reactions to circumstances? Patience of a rock? Never seen sleeping?’ 

‘You have seen me sleep.’ A lofty, disinterested expression, ‘and you can attest to my ability to react appropriately in certain, ah, circumstances.’ 

It’s a lascivious grin on Downey’s face. Vetinari tells him that he is being lewd. Downey replies that he is not being lewd at all. Vetinari says, ‘very well, your face is making lewd insinuations.’ Downey begs his pardon with great animation, delighting in the other man’s long suffering sigh. He delights in most things Vetinari does, including his more obsessive ticks. It’s a pleasure to know there’s someone who won’t judge you for talking to your plants and will understand the extreme stress of holding one’s tongue when someone is wrong about biology in public. Which happens with great regularity. 

A huff, Vetinari decants from his desk to the bed where Downey, who has pried boots off and deposited cloak, scarf, hat, gloves, frock, and so on, on the floor, happily scoots beneath covers. 

‘And you have very cold hands,’ Downey continues. 

Vetinari snorts, ‘the people of this great city really have nothing better to do than speculate upon my supposed inhumanity?’ 

‘I think it’s an improvement over their wildly inaccurate speculations about your manhood.’ 

Vetinari’s face is a portrait. Downey kisses it. 

He continues, ‘I would correct them, of course. But that would cause more grief than it’s worth. Now, you as a vampire on the other hand, I can see their reasoning.’ 

‘I’ve eaten food in public. I drink…wine.’ 

Downey snorts, ‘Mr. Warrender at the Cloak and Dagger believes it all to be an elaborate ruse.’ 

‘I see,’

‘He was going on about this the other night,’ Downey begins plucking at Vetinari’s robe which he considers an affront as it is another layer of clothing to take off. ‘I think he managed to make a few converts to his cause. He says that he’s never seen you handle coin before therefore you’re avoiding silver. You don’t attend religious ceremonies because of holy ground. Your robe is annoying me deeply. And you rarely go out, uncovered, in daylight due to discomfort in the sun.’ 

‘I’m not sure Mr. Warrender would have any opinion on my robe. Downey, I’m quite busy tonight.’ 

‘Yes, I’m here now. Your metaphorical dance card is full for the remainder of the evening.’ 

Vetinari stares. Downey stares back. Vetinari opens his mouth to reply, apparently reconsiders it, and sighs. Downey kisses him again as it seems the right course of action. 

Downey rolls Vetinari over to his back, snaking a hand beneath robe, down, pulling up nightshift beneath. Vetinari liftst hips to allow the clothes to be hitched up, ‘why are you here, Downey?’ 

Downey raises an eyebrow. Looks down at their bodies then back up.

‘That’s not why you’re here. This is a symptom, not the cause.’ 

‘I dislike that. Being associated with disease isn’t something I enjoy, but I’ll save my annoyance for tomorrow. I was awake and restless.’ 

‘Right.’ A beat. ‘My apologies.’ 

‘Thank you,’ Downey hums. He cannot think how to explain: I had a dream and spooked myself. So he chooses not to. He continues with vague answers and determined exploration of Vetinari’s body, a boney, you’re-a-bit-of-a-shut-in sort of experience. Being opposites in most regards, Vetinari has nothing spare, all strung together with skin and only the amount of muscle needed to operate a body compared to Downey’s more, as he puts it to himself, comfortable, frame.  

As teenagers, therefore posturing with great energy and determination, Vetinari once said: I’m an aesthete. Downey hadn’t been entirely sure what an aesthete was so made some general scag-dog-botherer related insult and went off to ask Ludo what it meant. Ludo explained asceticism with a wry expression. Downey then spent the remainder of the day mocking Vetinari for being a nerdy prat. 

Downey thinks that to be fair to sixteen-year-old Vetinari the young man hadn’t been wrong. He was, and is, very much an aesthete. But, Downey adds on, he was also a nerdy prat. 

Not that he, himself, was a joy and pleasure to be around at that age. Eleven to five-and-twenty, he thinks, those are terrible years where no one is at their best.  

Vetinari scoops an arm around Downey’s neck and leans up, pressing their mouths together. ‘Would you still be here if I was a vampire?’ 

‘Yes. Though, there’d be very strict boundaries.’ 

‘Naturally.’ 

‘’I’ve no desire for immortality. The one thing I wonder is,’ Downey settles on his side. ‘Would you still be you if you were one? It’s a rude question so I haven’t asked anyone I know.’ 

Vetinari shrugs. How does never dying change a person? How does not tasting, not needing sleep, not bodily changing, shape an individual? Would that change be any different from the normal changes all people go through as life forms them forever into something new? 

Neither choose to answer the questions. Downey figures they were rhetorical more than anything. But even if they weren’t, he has no answer. He likes his humanity. He’s content with being merely mortal. There is a thrill to life that he thinks wouldn’t be there if you knew you weren’t going to die. Pleasures would lose their meaning. He likes luscious fox fur, richly patterned cambric, heavy brocades because he knows they are his but for a limited time. When he dies they’ll be of no use save to cover the body until it’s cremated. But doesn’t that limitation of enjoyment make it all the sweeter? There will be a finite end to champagne and oysters and music and dancing and gold and silver. 

But as a vampire, at least with regards to the clothing and objects, you would have it forever. One fades, buy another. 

Perhaps they find meaning in other things less worldly than clothes and beautiful things. 

What a terrible concept. 

‘You had a mistress who was one, didn’t you?’ Downey asks. 

‘Mistress,’ Vetinari’s bemused by the word. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ 

‘What was her view?’ 

‘On how she was before? She didn’t speak of it much, but I think she takes the long view of things. So time is both fast and slow. She said that because relations with humans are so fleeting she found them more precious.’ 

Downey pulls a face. See, finding meaning in less worldly things. Vetinari flashes a smile, returns to his usual impassive self. 

‘I don’t think it’s life that would suit you, Downey.’ 

‘I’d have to become philosophical, which is a horror. I would be required to place value in things other than material wealth. Absolutely terrible.’ 

Vetinari props himself up on an elbow and takes to considering Downey’s face with great intent. Downey looks away. He frets that Vetinari is going to say something about him being more than what he intends himself to be. Which Vetinari tends to do because he enjoys telling Downey home-truths. 

Life delivers. Vetinari says, ‘I think you hold things beyond material wealth as important. A limited amount,’ he amends. ‘Perhaps a very limited amount. But nonetheless, they exist.’ 

This is too much, Downey can feel a flush crawling up his chest and neck so leans up, gives a messy kiss, then rolls over in search of his clothes. He says he should go back to the Guild. It’s late, he has much to do in the morning. Vetinari sits up and watches him dress. Downey swans about, makes it a bit of a theatrical moment, then the final flourish, he places his hat on. 

‘I will see you tomorrow,’ Downey says. 

‘You will. Or today, as the case may be. We are well into the small hours.’ 

At the door Downey pauses. Behind him is the sound of Vetinari dressing. The shift of linens, bare feet on soft, wooden floors. 

‘I don’t think it would be a life that suits you either,’ Downey says to the doorframe. His palm rests flat against it, a profile to Vetinari’s line of sight. 

‘Immortality, or vampirism in particular?’ 

‘Both.’ Or maybe, Downey doesn’t think, he wishes to believe that for his own sake. He doesn’t like to think of Vetinari going on, existing as some lonesome, grey rock in the midst of human life for any longer than he already has. 

‘Possibly. Quite possibly you’re very right.’ 

Downey sucks in a breath through teeth then, because he enjoys hurdling head first off cliffs from time to time, ‘I’m glad things are working out, you know. Between us. Despite the fact that you’re a nerdy prat, Dog-botherer.’ 

He’s gone before Vetinari can reply though he imagines he heard a soft exhale of a laugh. One of those dry ones Vetinari gives when amused but feeling many things at the same time. It’s a ghost of a sound and follows Downey through streets homeward. He wishes to remember it forever.

[corruptapostasy]

The Only Option

Chapter One

Summary:

“...A sleep-induced sickness? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

No cost too great.

“It...It..It’s in my head..It..It won’t go away...”

No mind to think.

"You may have seen me put a blade through Her heart, but I was foolish to think She was really gone."

No will to break.

“The Void bends to no one. It merely makes room. It asks a price, but never asks in words. You must pay in kind."

No voice to cry suffering.

“...No matter what happens, just know that I will never stop loving you.”

“Oh, my Root... I’ve known that since the beginning of time.”

The Only Option: Chapter One

“M-My King, The Watcher’s Report has come in for you to look at.”

The King blinks out of his musings as the voice rings out through the silence, and he looks over to see the trembling visage of the advisor, holding up a stack of stone tablets, all of them bearing the insignia of his disciple’s mask, before carefully extending a claw to tap the surface of his work desk. “Thank you, Wek. Set them down here.”

“Y-Yes, My King.” The little bug scrambles to do exactly that, placing each tablet down like they’re made of spun glass, giving one last, long, reverent bow before quickly shuffling her way out of the room, visibly flustered to be in the presence of her great God.

He couldn’t help but sigh a little after watching her leave, giving a little shake of his head; sometimes he wished his nobility wouldn’t act so fearfully reverent towards him whenever he walked by. It was almost tiresome to be around those that worshipped the ground he walked on, especially when they acted so very nervous around him and his visage. He lets his gaze stray to the tablets and let out another, heavier sigh, before walking over to his desk and sitting down in his chair, taking a moment to let his tail hang over the arm rest and for all his legs to tuck against his carapace, before he picks up the nearest stone. The tablet was encased in a grey slate, displaying Lurien’s mask, acting as a fail-safe, preventing anyone lacking his divine touch from opening them and reading the contents inside. He idly presses his thumb against the outline of the mask, watching as the slate cracks and crumbles, before dissipating into white fragments of light that dissipate from view. The writing of the tablet glows white against the smooth black surface, and the King begins to read.

“Lively Crossroads: Temperature was around 72 degrees, with a mild breeze coming in from up above. A minor confrontation broke out involving two drunken pill bugs outside of a tavern, one of them being arrested while another was sent to the local hospital for minor wounds and cracks to the shell. A family of newcomers were properly settled down into their homes, and repairs had to be made to several street signs after being dented inwards by a group of rowdy adolescents.”

The King couldn’t help but hum to himself as he read over the transcript, giving it a once over at least two or three more times before finally setting it down, deciding that nothing in the Crossroads needed his attention as of this moment. Nothing needed to be fixed, no crimes needed to be judged, all the subjects seemed relatively happy, going about their daily lives. Perfect.  He picks up the second tablet, repeating the unsealing process and beginning to read once again.

“Greenpath Gardens: Temperature around a steady 86°, with a light fog surrounding the Lake Of Unn. Gardeners are hard at work taking care of the various fauna, including the lilies and the tulips. There was a small breach in one of pipes in the north-west side of the Gardens, in which the acid had eaten away at the surface of said pipe, which had rusted due to what seems to be negligence in cleaning duties. No one was greatly injured, however one of the Menderbugs was sent to the City hospital for minor acid burns.”

The King couldn’t help but curl his lip in a soft sneer, not out of anger or disgust, but simply irritation. The damnable acidic liquid was a rather unavoidable aspect of the Kingdom, and one he couldn’t help but need to work his way around. He had his suspicions that the acid originated in the depths of the Fungal Wastes, where the spores of the mushrooms and the chemicals of the soil somehow mix into the water pouring in from underground streams, creating some kind of foul reaction that causes the water to turn acidic, which in turn begins to leak into other areas of the kingdom. He would’ve sent Menderbugs to attempt to plug up the water, perhaps work on making pipes that would funnel the water into other sections of the kingdom, but he had a suspicion that the mushrooms subsisted entirely off of this bubbling broth, and the Mantises wouldn’t exactly take kindly to their home lands being slowly killed off due to starvation. Best to not ruin the treaty, especially one that they worked so hard to forge.

He finally lets out a sigh upon re-reading the last section, before making a mental note to have one of his advisors send a message to the managers of the Gardens; he wanted to make sure that they covered the cost of the injured bug’s medical bill, as well as the broken pipe, if it wasn’t already fixed. The fact that the Report didn’t say was almost unusual. He picks up yet another tablet, but pauses in opening it, looking up from his work to tap a claw against his desk in idle thought before simply nodding to himself in silent agreement. He picks up a hand-held bell off of the surface of his desk, ringing it briskly, at least three times, and there was a small bit of silence before the soft fluttering of wings is heard, and two bright white eyes peek out from beneath a spherical shell. The King merely glances back to his work and undoes the next seal, speaking loud enough so that his creation would hear him. “Go down to the kitchens and bring me my meal.”

The creature doesn’t say a word, and merely disappears out of sight. The King starts to read once more.

“City Of Tears: Temperature around 67° degrees, no winds, and a steady rain throughout the day, week, month, etc. Soldiers had to apprehend a thief that tried to mug one of the citizens in one of the many back alleys of the city, and he is now being held in the capital’s prison. One of the houses over in the Elevated District is in dire need of repairs due to water damage, and several doctors had been seen wandering the City making house calls due to an undetermined sickness, seeming to affect the old and the young.”

That last part immediately grabs the King’s attention, and his claws stiffen. Illnesses were unfortunately common from within the capital’s depths; constant, endless rainfalls tend to soak through even the toughest of metal plating or expensive cloth, so doctors and medical professionals were always busy tackling the common cold and such. Nothing too out of the usual in that regard, but sick subjects wasn’t exactly something he wanted, nor was it something he needed, especially if children were getting ill, as well as the fact that the illness in question had yet to be properly identified. The water damage to that one building was concerning as well, especially since most of them were crafted from stone and glass. Perhaps he would have to have his architects try to figure out a way to more appropriately funnel the rain, to make it so that it wouldn’t lead to such inconvenient problems.

There was also Lurien himself. He had read the Reports for as long as he had bestowed him the title of Watcher, and they were usually much more detailed than this. Much more thorough. It was strange, though it didn’t exactly concern him; he knew Lurien better than anyone, and he knew that the oddity of a bug happened to be somewhat of a workaholic, the type that tended to not rest all that much, and when there is no rest, work tends to get sloppy. Perhaps he ought to pay him a visit, just to see how he’s doing. After all, it’s high time he steps out of the Palace grounds, at least for a little while. Being cooped up for too long was something he could never really tolerate, as vexing as it was, but he couldn’t blame himself for his little quirk; it was nothing more than a primal instinct from his long dead days.

He sees a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye and looks over to see the little creature floating back in again, its beady white eyes narrowing behind its shell, tendrils of black slipping out of the seams, holding up a plate of roasted meat and cooked vegetables, as well as a goblet of sparkling wine. He reaches out to take the platter from the creature, nodding to it before moving to set his dinner on the desk, next to the rest of his unopened Reports. He speaks, barely with any thought in mind, his voice quiet and unassuming. “Thank you.”  

The little Wingsmould floats there, no indication that it heard anything at all, before moving to float away, the tendrils of black slipping back into its core, like they were never there to begin with.

••••

A week passes in the kingdom’s depths, slow and steady, before the King finally realizes that something is wrong. He began to see it in the Reports as the days went by, small, almost inconsequential details, ones that slipped by his grasp and grew to become troublesome problems.

“A Doctor from the City came to the Crossroads to visit a sick child, one who had been displaying several odd symptoms, including sleep deprivation.”

“A bug fell asleep on one of the benches in the Western side of the Garden and began to display what seemed to be sleeping fits. When he was woken up, he seemed delirious, as if not knowing where he was.”

“There was a mining accident over in the Crystal Caverns, one that resulted in the hospitalization of at least 2 miners. A third had sleep-walked and activated a dormant machine, one that the previously mentioned workers had been relaxing on taking their lunch break, and as a result, were nearly crushed under the weight of the pistons. The third bug has been taken into custody at the City prison. The injured bugs are in critical condition.”

That last Report was enough to have him finally decide to get himself involved; it was troublesome enough that this odd phenomenon was somehow occurring amongst the local populace, but the sheer fact it was impacting the focus and the minds of his workers had the potential to be dangerous, especially considering they were responsible for the cogs of the kingdom running smoothly. He could not afford to have this unforeseen affliction getting in the way of his work, the work of the people, and he needed to put a stop to it. Of course, in order to learn how to do such a thing, he first had to learn of this sickness, what it was, and how it worked, how it affected the body of those that were infected, and he needed to learn of it quickly, in order to avoid the potential of this sickness spreading to the populace.

It was his duty as King to analyze and eliminate any possible threats to his kingdom, to his people, and it was a duty that he would see through.

“Send a message to Lurien and Lady Monomon at once. Tell them I wish to discuss a matter of great importance.”

•••

He lets out a sigh, soft and subtle, as he walks along the Pathways to the Archives, an ocean of fog flowing around his feet, his gait regal and refined, just as it always has been, his tail idly twitching beneath his robes. The atmosphere was thick, heavy, and though the path was made of stone, there was evidence of nature growing all across it, patches of dew and moss that felt cold, soft beneath his feet. Bubbles grew out from the flora-laden walls, the ceilings, no doubt due to strange abnormalities of the atmospheric conditions that occurred this deep underground, and he couldn’t help but crane his head up ever so slightly to gaze at a particular one, thicker than the other ones he’s seen, less transparent, more plump, almost...spongy looking in texture, as if there some form of flesh contained within. Perhaps the bubbles were some kind of odd fungus that wrapped its prey up in its own mass to absorb the creature’s organic structure into its own? He wouldn’t put it past Monomon to cultivate such strange creatures, not with her and her scientific wiles.

As if even thinking of its gracious and ambitious mistress was enough to rouse it, the entrance to the Archives was revealed to him, a golden archway of light overrun with the moss and lichen of the canyon, looking as if it hadn’t been touched with a gardener’s shear or trowel in ages, and knowing Monomon, that very well could be the case. He casts one more glance behind him, to check if the equipment was secure, and that his guards from the City were still present, before turning to make his way into the glamorous bronze building, the bubbling and frothing of deadly acid so vigorous that he could feel the vibrations beneath his feet. Even as he walked amongst the narrow tunnel of the Archives’s entrance, he could hear distant conversation, the tone loud, one sounding much more irritated than the other, and he couldn’t help but let out a sigh and shake his head. Right from the start of his reign those two always seemed to be at each other’s throats, and it seemed that would never change. In a way, it was amusing, heavily so, (were circumstances different, he gladly would’ve sat back to watch) but it still didn’t change the fact that now was not the time for a petty squabble. He could begin to make out the words now, slowly walking closer, seeing the dark figures of his two closest disciples illuminated from the glow of the acidic pipes.

“And you’re absolutely certain that your experiments won’t end up causing any unnecessary deaths?”

“Oh don’t be silly! Whatever gave you such an outlandish idea? Like my precious creations could even hurt a lumafly.”

“Are you not aware that I see your so-called progress on these...things, and how they have a tendency to literally explode?”

“Oh, pfft! How cares about a little rattling of the pipes or two?”

“I do! And you should too! I know you have an odd tendency to bathe in this horrid acid, but I’ll have you know that most bugs die when coming into contact with it! And those are just the lucky ones!”

“...Ok, I will admit that there are a few...quirks, to the Ooma’s designs..”

“Quirks is putting it lightly, Monomon. Very lightly.”

“It’s nothing I can’t figure out. It’s probably an instability in their inner cores, some type of chemical reaction or rapid increase in pressure that causes it to react so violently.”

“I certainly hope you’re right. I wouldn’t want to send in a Report to the King about how the entire Canyon is flooding with acid because your Archives got blown up.”

The King finally reaches the end of the tunnel, walking into the main room, one of his hands slipping free from his cloak to lift to his mouth, letting out a soft clearing of the throat, the guards behind him immediately freezing to a stop and moving to position themselves on either side of the doorway. “Ehem. If you don’t mind, I’d like to bring this conversation to a different topic.”

Both Monomon and Lurien blink upon seeing their ruler, the former half-submerged in a vat of acid, the rim of the tank level with that of the floor, her upper tendrils resting against it, while the latter was standing at least a few feet away, his robes sparkling with that of gemstones and glamour, clearly having adopted the look from the nobles of the City. Monomon was the first one of the two to speak, her mask shifting into that of a grin, one of her tendrils lifting up to give the King a soft pat to the forehead, the sensation warm, almost slimy, with the slightest hint of an electric tingle. “Oh, terribly sorry, King. I just got a wee bit distracted is all while we were waiting for you to arrive. My little creations have been coming along nicely, and I suspect that by the end of the year, this Canyon could be a living electrical network!”

“You mean living time bombs.” Lurien shakes his head, his mask remaining as passive as always.

King merely lifts a hand to take Monomon’s tendril in his claws, giving it a soft squeeze before letting go. “That is pleasant to hear, Monomon, though it is best that we end that topic as of right now. Currently, as far as I know, the unexplained sickness has begun to build within the populace of the kingdom, and I need to see to it that I cure it.” His gaze shifts to that of Lurien. “Tell me, are there any new cases in any of the sections of the kingdom?”

His gaze peers into that of the King for a moment before he tilts his head up, and the small hole that’s been cut into the polished white surface of the mask begins to glow, the faint whispers of divinity beginning to fill the air. It was a sight that was both familiar and yet also not, and he felt the slightest of tugs within his being as Lurien’s blessing began to bloom to life once more. He merely watches, the dim memories of bestowing the blessing upon his second disciple, of flooding his body with his own divinity, his piercing bright light, flickering at the back of the King’s mind like a dying ember. Those times were somehow simpler, in all of it’s endless chaos, though they were days the King did not wish to revisit.

Finally, Lurien’s head lowers, and his expression somehow gains a more rigid look despite the mask never once shifting or changing. “...Two more cases as we speak, in the Crossroads. Two kids, one 10 years old, the other one 6.”

The King’s hands clench, his knuckles growing tight, before he turns to face the guards, giving them a stern nod. They silently drag forth a golden box in front of the two advisors, plated on all sides, marked with a large key hole, and place the key in the King’s now outstretched hand, before exiting the building in its entirety, never once looking back. Monomon went still, her mask tilting never so slightly, her tendrils curling in on themselves slowly, her voice slightly more quiet than usual. “..So, we’re starting off with that method, are we?”

The King merely moves to place the key in the lock. “No. This is merely a check-up; the doctors in the City are only experienced with minor illnesses or a cracked shell. They won’t know how to deal with this new sickness, not unless the information on how to do so is sought out and spread. And the only way to do that, is to examine an infected individual.”

He turns the key, swiftly, and the plating falls away with a loud clatter to reveal a beetle, no cloth to be seen on his body, his limbs bound in white chains, securing his arms behind his back, rendering him incapable of struggling. The bug didn’t make a single noise, and merely looked downwards, his expression looking vacant, with just the sheer vestiges of guilt dwelling within his eyes. Monomon slowly raises herself up on her tendrils, the tank she was submerged in rippling and sloshing, waves of acid spilling down the sides of the metal to drop to the floor, though she paid no mind to it. Instead, she merely lowered her mask closer to the face of the bug, and she went silent for a few moments. “..This bug is infected, is he?”

The King watches, his own expression growing steely, almost cold. “Indeed. He worked in the Upper Sector of the Mines, when he had fallen asleep. Apparently, in his sleep, he activated a machine that ended up nearly killing two of his coworkers.”

“...A sleep-induced sickness? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Neither have I. And that’s what troubles me.“

Lurien slowly walks forward as well, bending down to stare the bug in the face, his expression unreadable beneath his mask. “...So, you called the both of us here to examine this fellow?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Do we have any limits on what exactly we can do?”

The King lets out a sigh, lifting a hand to rub at his forehead, swearing he could feel a headache about to come on. “You cannot kill him, nor can you perform any acts towards his body that requires cutting him open.”

“But taking a look at all of the inner organs would be a viable way to examine how this virus operates.”

“For once, Lurien and I agree.” Monomon leans back to glance between the two of them, and when the King gives her a sharp glance, her mask twists into that of a sheepish look. “..From a scientific standpoint, it would make more sense. The flesh is going to show wear and tear from fending off the sickness, especially if it’s theoretically induced by sleeping.”

The King’s headache grows, and he can’t help but let out a groan, shaking his head in exasperation. “....You understand that cutting open my subjects is the exact opposite of protecting them, yes?”

“Of course, but we also understand that just looking him over from the outside won’t do much good.” Lurien shifts, and his hand lifts free from his robes to put a hand on King’s shoulder. “This might be the only way we can go about things.”

“You haven’t even tried yet.” The King’s hand comes up to rest upon his Watcher’s, but his gaze is unwavering.

“We don’t need to try, King. That’s the thing.”

Before the King can reply, the bug lifts his head to gaze at his mighty ruler, and shakes his head. “...I...I don’t want to hurt someone again.”

All three of them turn their heads to glance at the forlorn man, and Monomon is the first to speak. “..You think it can happen again? Your... sleep walking?”

The bug nods, softly. “I know it will. It…It’s been happening for a while. My... My sleep, I mean. It... It’s been weird..”

“How so?” The King steps forward, eyes narrowing in thought, in suspicion.

The bug visibly flinches away, a faint twitch of involuntary reflex, and his eyes show of both fear and awe all at once, and his voice, already hoarse and soft, starts to crack. “I...W-Well, the thing is...I never dreamt. Never had a dream once in my life. Just...I j-just fall asleep and wake up. But, at least a week ago, m-maybe two, I started dreaming. D-Dreaming of this...I-I don’t even know what it is...All I know is that it’s bright and hot and...and strong and...” He starts to shake, and his eyes start to fog over. “It...It..It’s in my head..It..It won’t go away...”

The King couldn’t help but stare for a moment at this, and a moment was already too long. He feels his knuckles clench under his robes, his tail quiver, and he straightens his spine, taking one deep breath, two, before finally speaking once more. “...Are you sure you want this? This can likely mean your death. Surely dreams aren’t worth that of death.”

The bug’s eyes snap back into focus after at least a moment or two of breathing, and he shakes his head, rapidly. “No, no, I want this. Do it. Kill me, tear me open, do anything you want. If it means ridding me of these dreams, of that horrible..That horrible...” He shudders, a full-body quaking that leaves the chains rattling like an unsteady pebble that’s about to fall from the lip of a cliff, his voice rising in volume, in desperation. “Do it, for the good of the King, for the good of Hallownest, do it! If this is an illness, I...I need you to find it! Find it and kill it! Before it gets the chance to hurt anyone else!”

The King finds himself unable to say a word, turning his head to glance at both of his disciples, to judge their reactions. Monomon was looking the slightest bit disturbed under her mask, her tendrils tensing and clenching in a nervous, almost skittish manner, while Lurien simply watched the whole exchange, his face forever covered within the depths of his mask, his head shifting to stare into his  King’s eyes. He slowly nods, as does Monomon, and no words are spoken. None needed to be. The King tried to keep his gait as impeccable as it always was, even as he heard Monomon call for her assistant, even as Lurien began to question the Teacher where she kept her tools. He never looked back.

When he was sure that no eyes were watching him, no eyes were perceiving him, he stumbled, sagging against the wall, as if he had just been struck by a fatal blow, lifting his hands to his face to see that they were shaking, shaking and trembling like a gods-damned child. He had just watched a bug, teetering on the scalpel’s edge of his own sanity, cry and beg for death, to be cut open and have his guts ripped out of his bleeding husk. Something within that sickness had contorted his mind, his thoughts, his very being until death seemed like a blessing, until he found himself staring into the figurative abyss and jumped head first into it.

And all he, the King, could do was sit there and watch. Sit there and let it happen. That bug, insane as he was, in essence, gave his life for him. For him and the glory of his kingdom. And all he did was walk away.

His hands clench.

...No. No, he could not let this cloud him. Cloud his mind. It was just...It was just one simple procedure. One bug. One sacrifice, for the sake of untold lives saved. That infected body had chosen his fate, chosen to die, chosen to sacrifice. He could do nothing to change that, and as his duty as King, he needed to focus his mind to the future. He could not show weakness. This was all it was. A momentary bout of weakness. A momentary cost.

His claws clenched so hard he could feel the soft shell of his palms creak, before he finally took a deep breath, and his emotions fell, cast down by unseen blades. Then he began to walk once more.

Not even a day later, he had received a Report from his Watcher, one that he had left alone for hours before finally opening.

“The Miner was examined with a simple glance over at first, and nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. He looked and seemed completely healthy, aside from a slight fatigued look to the carapace beneath his eyes, and his jittery, skittish nature. Monomon’s assistant first took blood in an effort to see if there was any visible contamination, any oddities, and when, finally, the operation was made. His organs were worn, slightly so, as if put under significant stress, but aside from that, there was nothing. The sickness, as far as we know, is completely invisible to our eyes. My only question to you, My King, is this.

What do we do?”

[pingo1387]

For Their Sake

One Piece Valentine’s Day Exchange 2019! @opvalentines  Written for @zu-lake-ah!  College AU  Pairing: ZoSan 

Luffy, hanging upside-down at a desk in an empty classroom, tilted his head when the door slammed open and someone yelled, “I just can’t stand it anymore!” 

“Hi,” Luffy said to his friend with a wave as they pranced in and sat on his desk. He sat up. “What is it today?” 

“Mr. 2!” 

“Okay. What can’t you stand?” 

Mr. 2 clapped his hands to his face. “Our dear friends the samurai and the cook!” 

“What about Zoro and Sanji?” 

“Darling, they’re in love, but they won’t do anything about it!” 

“So?” 

“So we must do something to rectify this situation! Oh, my poor heart aches at the thought of their pain! Come along, Mister Straw-hat!” 

“Sure,” Luffy said, hopping to his feet and jogging after Mr. 2. “Why am I coming?” 

“Emotional support, for me and them both! They’re your friends, too!” 

“But why do we gotta do anything about it in the first place?” Luffy asked as Mr. 2 threw open the doors to the empty theater and spun into the dressing room. 

“Because they’re suffering, darling! Our friends are suffering!” 

“Oh, no!” Luffy exclaimed in horror. “I didn’t know! We gotta do something!” 

“Exactly! Now, I have a plan to end their woes! Just give me some time!” As Mr. 2 dug through the drawers for makeup and ran to the cabinets for wigs, he said, “Do you know where the poor dears are at the moment?” 

“Zoro’s got . . . um, some kinda math,” Luffy said. “In . . . the building that looks like a spiral.” 

“And Blondie?” Mr. 2 said, slicking back his hair and placing a blonde wig on his head. He took it off and pulled out the makeup he needed, seizing tools and dusting something onto his face, opening his mouth and staring at his reflection in the dusty mirror. He ran back to the cabinet and pulled out a fake suit, yanking off his normal clothes and jumping into it. 

“Sanji’s . . .” Luffy scrunched up his face and looked at the clock, squinting. Mr. 2 looked at it and told him the time. “Sanji’s . . . got science. Chemistry? In the building that looks 2-D.” 

“Fantastic!” Mr. 2 placed the blonde wig on again, combed the hair a certain way, and turned around. “How do I look?” 

Luffy jumped. “You look just like Sanji! Wow!” 

Mr. 2 had applied makeup in such a way that his face shape had altered completely. He had a colored contact in just one eye, for the other was covered decently by the blonde wig, and a black pencil made his visible eyebrow curl up at the end. 

“Think it’ll be enough to fool dear Zoro for a few minutes?” he asked. He coughed and cleared his throat, lowering his voice. “Is this better?” 

“You even sound like him! Zoro’s dumb, so that’ll get him for sure!” 

“Then off we go!” 

Zoro looked around as Mr. 2 and Luffy sat on either side of him in the lecture hall, grinning. “I’m in the middle of something,” he said, scowling and gesturing to the questions on the projector. “If you’re gonna be dicks, can you do it later?” 

“No, no, I have something important to ask you,” Mr. 2 said. He placed a hand on Zoro’s desk. “I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time . . .” 

“W . . . What is it?” Zoro said, looking down at his hand and back up at Mr. 2. 

“I like you, you silly fool.” Mr. 2 smiled. “Won’t you go steady with me?” 

Zoro’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he said. He stared at his desk. “Geez, all of a sudden . . .” 

“Won’t you?” Mr. 2 insisted. “You don’t know how long it took to work up the courage . . .” 

“Y---Yeah,” Zoro said, hiding his face. “Of course. Of course I will.” 

“That makes me so happy! Will you meet me at the café in the quad in about an hour?” 

“Yeah. I’ll see you there.” 

“I look forward to it!” 

“Bye, Zoro!” Luffy exclaimed, causing heads to turn as he and Mr. 2 pranced out of the classroom. “He’s really happy.” 

“I can never tell with him,” Mr. 2 said, popping out the contact as they moved. “The poor man has the worst case of resting bitch face I’ve ever seen.” 

“So what’s the plan now?” Luffy asked as they hopped down the stairs. “Zoro said he’d meet you for lunch, but he was talking to Sanji, and Sanji doesn’t know about this.” 

“You simple dear! We just need to pull the same stunt with Sanji!” 

“Oh, of course!” 

Due to troubles with finding an appropriate green-hair substitute, it was almost time for the lunch date when Mr. 2 and Luffy finally met up with Sanji in his classroom. 

“What do you assholes want?” he snapped, packing up his things amid the end-of-class chatter. “I’m busy.” 

“Busy?” Mr. 2 said. His face was neutral, having drawn on stern eyebrows with the same pencil from earlier, and he wore a sweater to cover up the lack of muscle in his arms. Having used several packets of green Kool-Aid to dye his hair and his fingers to mess it up, it looked just like Zoro’s. “That’s too bad. I was hoping we could hang out.” 

“Yeah, well, you can take your hanging out and shove it---” 

“On a date.” 

Sanji froze, his ears turning red. “What?” He looked at Luffy. “Uh . . . so, Luffy, why are you here?” 

“Emotional support, he said,” Luffy said, pointing to Mr. 2. 

“Don’t change the subject,” Mr. 2 said, clearing his throat. “I’m asking you out.” 

“But---but---you---” 

“It’s a yes or no question, curly. Will you at least meet me for lunch?” 

“Yes,” Sanji burst out. He twirled his hair in his fingers, smiling. “Yes, I’ll come. Do you have someplace in mind?” 

“The café in the quad. We can talk more there.” 

“Okay! Yeah, sure!” Sanji grinned. “I never thought you’d be the one to ask, you idiot. Stupid. Give me a few minutes to get ready, okay?” 

“Whatever you need,” Mr. 2 said. “I’ll be there. See you.” 

“Bye-bye,” Sanji said, waving. He turned around, smiling out the window as Luffy and Mr. 2 ran away. 

“We did it!” Luffy exclaimed, high-fiving Mr. 2. “So what now?” 

“Now we spy! We’ve got to make sure the plan worked!” They made it back to the dressing room, panting, and Mr. 2 threw off the clothes and changed back into his normal ones. 

“Your hair’s still green,” Luffy said, pointing. 

“No time to wash it out!” Mr. 2 ducked into the sink in the corner, scrubbing his face until the makeup vanished. He applied his normal eyeliner and lipstick again and combed his hair back to its usual style. “We’ve got a date to supervise!” 

“Use this,” Luffy said, taking off his hat and handing it over. 

“Thanks ever so much, darling! Now let’s go!” 

Sanji arrived at the café and spotted Zoro at a table already, the sun shining through the window and the lights low inside. He took a deep breath and strode up, sitting across from him. 

“Hey,” Zoro said with a small smile. 

“Hey,” Sanji said with a big one. “So . . .” 

“I’m, uh . . . gonna get some tea,” Zoro said. “You want anything?” 

“Coffee. Black.” Sanji handed him a few dollars. “If that’s too much, let them keep the change.” 

“Sure.” Zoro stood and Sanji tapped his fingers, smiling. Zoro soon came back with two cups on a small tray, one full of coffee and one full of hot water and a teabag. 

“Thanks,” Sanji said, taking his cup and stirring it. “So . . .” 

“So . . .” 

“Here we are.” 

“Yeah.” Zoro sighed. “Why today, of all days? What pushed you over the edge?” 

“What?” Sanji said, halting his stirring. 

“You’ve . . . liked me for a while, right? I have, too.” 

“You have---? Yeah. Yeah . . . ?” 

“So, what? You just couldn’t stand it any more?” 

Sanji frowned. “Don’t act like you didn’t instigate this.” 

“Huh?” Zoro said, dunking his teabag in and out of the water. 

“You and Luffy barge in as I’m packing up and making other plans, and you ask me out all of a sudden, and now you’re pretending it’s all my fault for saying yes?” 

“What---when did this happen?” 

“Like, twenty minutes ago. When my class ended.” 

Zoro frowned and folded his arms. “You’re mixed up. You and Luffy barged into my class about an hour ago, and you asked me out.” 

“Wait, wait, what? I was in class this whole time!” 

“So was I.” 

“So what---who---” 

As one they looked around the café and spotted Luffy and Mr. 2 hunched over a table together, Luffy with hot chocolate and Mr. 2 with iced tea. They stood together and marched to their table. 

“Hi,” Luffy said, grinning. “Are you guys having fun?” 

“What’s the meaning of this?” Sanji hissed. He looked at Mr. 2. “What is it today?” 

“Mr. 2.” 

Sanji yanked the hat off of his head and stared at the green hair underneath. He glared at Mr. 2 and Luffy, who smiled back. 

“So,” he said through gritted teeth. “You thought it would be funny to disguise yourself as us to get us on a date together?” 

“Not so much funny as necessary, dear,” Mr. 2 said, drumming his fingers on the table and taking a sip of his tea. “You were never going to do it yourself. And you both said yes.” 

“But---” Sanji looked between him and Zoro. “I---” 

He gave up, kicked Mr. 2′s shin, and stormed back to his table. 

“You’re a dick,” Zoro said to Mr. 2 and Luffy, punching Mr. 2′s shoulder for good measure before following Sanji. 

“They say thank you,” Luffy informed Mr. 2. 

“They’ve got a funny way of doing that,” Mr. 2 moaned, rubbing his shoulder and leg. “My poor limbs!” 

Zoro sat across from Sanji again. “So . . .” 

“So?” 

“Wanna go out?” 

Sanji stopped tapping his foot and stared at him. “What?” 

“They’re right. We both said yes.” 

Sanji folded his arms, unfolded them, and stirred his cooling coffee again. 

“Yeah,” he said at last. “Yeah. How about you? Wanna go steady?” 

“Of course.” 

“Good.” Sanji glanced again at Mr. 2, who waved at him with Luffy. “For our second date, wanna shank them together?” 

Zoro grinned and placed his hand over Sanji’s on the table. “Sounds perfect.” 

[erinelizabethh]

Memento Mori | Catherine (1/?)

So I thought no one asked for this but apparently on AO3..... they unfortunately did. So, voila!

A self indulgent Jonny x OC :)

"Astra inclinant, sed non obligant." "The stars incline us, they do not bind us."

The story of Rapunzel supposedly goes as follows, if the two different text messages of the same folk tale were any indication of its length; Rapunzel was a child imprisoned in a tower due to her parents’ misdemeanors. With the careless compromise between her father and a witch that owned a garden, Dame Gothel, the newborn Rapunzel was taken from her birth parents where she would live the rest of her days under the witch’s care. However, the age of twelve proved troublesome for Rapunzel, as she was maturing into the most beautiful lady of the land, and she was shielded from the world’s sins and virtues at Dame Gothel’s jurisdiction. Not to mention, she was told by the witch to care for her golden threads of hair during the time inside the tower, forcing her silk strands to be grown as long as Dame Gothel found them to be of use. Then, a prince happened upon this garden, and the tower in which Rapunzel inhabited, with the girl letting down her hair for him under the illusion that he was the witch.

Yawn.

Because neither the prince or Rapunzel had phones, or time to waste skimming through this two-parter crammed inside a screen, the prince would return every night with the incentive of eventually asking her to marry him. As Dame Gothel was only inside the tower when the sun was out, the two hatched a plan where the prince would bring her eight threads of silk for the following eight nights; a total of 64 threads, this would be a ladder for Rapunzel to craft and make her escape… and that was the end of the message beyond the limit of one hundred and sixty characters. Presumably, this person halted their incessant typing of this tale in need to be told at the realization it was towards the wrong number, their story reaching its abrupt end in a cliffhanger that was neither correct or far from its climax.

The utter tenacity and perseverance of man to never complete what was began, perhaps that was to blame for the welcomed cutting of ties of relatives, and this flat… apartment that was now my home. With a curl of my finger, the slick matte of my cellular device—flip-phone, quite the term—smacked against my palm with the notification of the time at its most recent being half past two in the afternoon. A glance at my carpet was my confirmation, lines of translucency through holes of tattered curtains defiled with specks of neglect and abandonment. Like the curtains, the hues of the interior that once were semblance of idiosyncrasies and individuality were dulled to a mundane, boorish gray. Even the marble coating my kitchen counters were discolored save for the line the pads of my fingers once tampered with, lacking a glimmer that only existed when the landlord gave a shit. One could assume every appliance before me shared these traits, deserted and lost in their apparent lack of use to the world.

All too familiar of a reality, a grunt left my lips at both the thought and the weight lifted from my arms as I placed the box of belongings on top of a surface meant to sit in my dining room, hands reaching up to push my glasses against the bridge of my nose. Why the people moving my furniture to and from apartments befuddled themselves with the placing of an ottoman and a transparent glass table reaching my waist, commenting on a job well done despite achieving nothing, perhaps I was never meant to know. Regardless, I left the cardboard box of memories if only for a little while, if only to perform feats the movers apparently could not. For what seemed to be an hour or two, my mind was occupied with the layout of my home and what decorations atop shelves and hung on walls were worthy enough of dwelling on. Frames of high school events and reunions were inches from ruin, edges of the rectangular mahogany bordering the genuine smiles of my classmates nearing the ledge. The same could be said for the photo sitting adjacent to that one, my teeth concealed with a tight-lipped smile contrasting the stretched cheeks of my coworkers at my farewell surprise party. The snapshot of that moment in time, the glimpse of people showering me with gifts and good wishes, was to be kept of importance regardless of the mood I entered my apartment in.

Of course, no longer could I recall the date that picture was taken or the people inhabiting the photo upon further digging into my past. My mood soured the moment a ring was in the grasp of my thumb and pointer finger, the moonstone at the center twinkling in the becoming twilight; no fixed breeze or impending golden hour could ever hope to better the emotions bordering on painful and insincere. With this ring in my vision, thousands of years caught up to me and shackled me in chains of oblivion and contempt, unable to ever allow me catharsis for as long as I lived. With that gem, my life lost its façade and in it was a reality that was meant to remain as verbal tales and visual illustrations, passed down through generations through people so dense in their faith they would believe it. If only they didn’t, if only—bzzzzt.

The ring fell from my grasp at the disruption, a knock at my door my temporary release from it all. A slight murmur existed beyond my walls, belonging to a man and a woman, and moments passed before they were under the impression that no one was inside. However, one last push at the button beside my doorknob, and I was striding towards the entrance of my apartment with the intention of halting that vexing sound. Sliding my lock along the hole, my arm was reared behind my back as the door opened to reveal presumably a man and his girlfriend standing idle in the hallway. Over their shoulder was a glimpse of the apartment across from mine, a twin sized bed edging past the view of the doorframe shared with magazines and clothes thrown to the floor to stay there for good.

“Welcome, you must be…” The woman before me, carnation strands of hair falling past her hips, tapped her baby blue polished finger against her lips. “Eris! Sorry, but that’s got to be short for something.”

Ereshkigal. “It’s really… not.”

“See, Katherine?” The man beside her, shaggy black hair resting centimeters above his stone blue eyes, leant his shoulder against the wall. “Eris here isn’t even done moving in yet.” Intaking a puff of air, he blew it all out in a long and suffering exhale. “Sorry about this— the, uh… landlord’s been going batshit over a new tenant.”

Katherine’s elbow collided against the hot pink graphic shirt her partner wore, her frown stretched to a smile towards the newcomer. As polite as their appearance was, my face hitting my pillows in the hopes of the force knocking me into an awaited slumber was much preferred. “And I thought Vincent should welcome you into the complex. Just a thought I had, considering you’re now neighbors.”

With a simple wave of my hand, Vincent was nothing more than an acquaintance to me. Judging by him threading his fingers through his locks of damp hair, droplets of water trailing past his chin from a visit in the shower, he shared my sentiment of neighbors, and nothing more. Although, before he grabbed Katherine’s hand and led her down the hallway, the one act of kindness offered was the recommendation of a bar down the road, the Stray Sheep. A place he frequents, he said, this statement was followed by his promise for us to meet again in an apt, “I’ll be seeing you… I guess!” With fingers wrapped around his doorknob, then entwined with the ones of whom I presumed belonged to his girlfriend, the two strode down the hallway with their hands a bridge of a supposed distance put between them. With one last inquiry of the foreign pronunciation of my words throughout our conversation, a mutter of guesses not far from correct bouncing off of the two, they instead were searching down the flight of stairs for an answer rather than asking me themselves.

“Yeah, no shit ‘I guess,’” My body trembled with laughter, head shaking. Pushing myself off my palms, I was no longer leaning against the door, my feet planted inside the square tiles of my entranceway on the way to my bedroom. Pulling at the hair tie wrapped up in my hair, the auburn strands fell past my shoulders as my other hand inched at the power button of the remote. A sigh of relief was appropriate, considering the cables and plugs were tangled to the point where it was difficult to recall which belonged to the television; the attempts to prod at the outlets were questionable considering my aptitude for innovation, yet I solved the mystery of which plug fits with that color, reaching back to my long, long, long term memory in order to figure the definition of an HDMI cable. Regardless, the blur of my reflection was evident until the screen popped with color, and I was able to pat myself on the back for a job well done.

“— and in other news, a series of mysterious deaths have continued to plague the city, with scientists fearing the worst: a global epidemic.” Now that was able to grab my attention, since I hadn’t bothered to find a seat in my fascination with what was falling past this news anchors plush, crimson lips. “More to come.”

I held her to that promise. With the side of my head leaning against my palm, my body was relaxed towards the direction of the television, my shoulders tense with what was to come, if it would at all. If not, I was forced to crawl from my mattress and pull out the folder of notes and information regarding to the reason of why I was transferred; the source of these deaths was found to be among the population I was now a part of, so the next course of action was to appoint me, a forensic pathologist with an attachment with death and what followed. No one else appeared to be on that wavelength, as humans could never, so a bit of kissing my ass here and there and I was convinced I would be the one to investigate. With that came the decision that a new life for me was well deserved, as well as a search for more that I couldn’t seem to shake.

With that being said, something else well deserved would be my treat for today.

The thought caused me to pack up my case files, papers folded at corners and crinkled at edges due to my careless cramming inside my messenger bag. Inside were also pens and erasers without pencils to complement them, as well as my proof of verification as the new forensic pathologist at the precinct and evidence I smiled a bit too late when I was told to; a façade my exterior was, as just one glance inside my personal belongings was enough to tear that down. However little the effort required, that did not stop me from peering into the mirror resting against the living room wall, swiping at blemishes while dragging the bristles of a brush from the root of my hair to my ends. Perhaps that was to be another bonus for living alone, and preferring it that way, as no one saw the repulsive and grotesque that was underneath. Why bother raising up others hopes for a better, more tangible me when they could accept what was?

That task proved to be of ease once I was beneath the awning of the aforementioned bar, men and women alike halting their routine to spare a glance at the one outlier of it all. Customers inside were no different, tables free as regulars flocked toward one another in the attempt to not drink alone for that night and the next. Above me was the faint, hollow noise of a tune mirroring the blues, sad in its tone while coalescing with the dimmed lights overhead. Surrounding me was endless chatter, words picked out from voices ranging in pitch pieces of a puzzle: just what was the talk of the Stray Sheep tonight? Chills were travelling throughout my nerves, setting them alight with the demand to continue, to take a seat, to converse with people not appreciative of a newcomer at this bar. Regardless, my fingers fiddled with the sleeves of my cardigan, nails pulling at the fuzz resting atop of the gray cotton, before taking two steps up stairs and circling to the booth near the entrance. To distract myself from the lingering gazes and whispers lost in the horde of conversation, my papers were spread out on the table before picked up in multitudes to at least correct the page numbers.

“A newbie! Haven’t seen you around here.” With nails tapping at the table to the left of my figure was a woman with hair the hue of fresh blood, brown eyebrows at a fine angle that suited her exuberant demeanor. One of her hands reached up to pinch her nametag—Erica—resting on her uniform the color of dandelions, red strips trailing up her middle past her apron to exemplify her cleavage. No doubt was she a hit with customers. “Where you from?”

“Man— Manchester.” My cheeks brushed with crimson, for my lack of social skills could not save me from the accidental shuffling of eyes towards her chest. “United Kingdom.”

Her eyes were wide, fist against her hip. “You’re kidding! Jeez, what brings you all the way here?”

Her head fell to the shoulder, a dazzling smile tugged on her lips glimmering with red lip gloss, so charming that I couldn’t help but return the grin. Regardless, before I was to respond with a curt answer regarding work, the woman’s ears perked up at a demand for more drinks; with nothing but a frown passing her expression, Erica’s heels clicked across the floorboards, only pivoting to send a wink my way and a promise to continue the conversation after she was done tending to her customers. Not that I planned for discussion, her body exhibited radiance from her actions and her way with words, and the tension gradually rolled off of my shoulders as I moved to organize the pile of files before me. Adding to the tone set inside the bar, Erica’s attitude provided the need for destress, the allure to stick around for a while. For regulars, worries that once remained a thorn at their side were as trivial as fallen leaves beneath their feet, the choice given to either choose someone to vent to or allow the issue to eventually slip from their minds.

Maybe this was the intention of one of the victims listed in my papers, a man by the name of Georg Valença, a man of Polish descent and once a video game developer at Fowles Electronics. It was reported three months ago that the man was in good health prior to his death, nonetheless lying in the midst of severe atrophy that rendered his body in a questionable state due to the cause of death still unable to be found. Said to stem from a physical condition unbeknownst to the people he surrounded himself with, Georg’s death was one of many that continued to baffle investigators and those living in the city. Two photos snapped of him during the process of rigor mortis and after were held behind a silver paper clip, essays of victims in connection to him behind it. However, one fact was common in all victims, a deduction handwritten in capitalization and highlighted in pink on the ninth page: most, if not all, were men reaching their thirties that visited this bar. Despite the fact that I was allowed no permission to investigate this myself, the case was captivating enough to the average eye—meaning I was obligated to, for the people.

It was evident to the masses I hadn’t the slightest clue of what to order, and how to act, as my gaze remained fixated on the notes before me instead of the foreign environment I was in. Difficult as it was to not heed such distractions, having one drink to belittle such distractions into trivialities was my goal, since the energy required from me to shop for groceries and order for delivery was depleted the moment my foot stepped past the threshold of my flat—apartment, again. Allowing sociability, the chance for someone to do their worst to me, wasn’t virtues I was willing to uphold in this lifetime… or the next. The moment my eyes left the ink on the papers was a regrettable one because it was also the moment I caught the stealing of glances from the booth diagonal from mine, four men including my neighbor awaiting the opportunity to insert themselves into my business. Now that wasn’t happening, I nevertheless clawed at my piles of work and held them to my chest, a giggle bubbling up in my throat as I greeted them with an extended, worse alternative than keeping my mouth shut: “Hi.”

With a cigarette lodged between two fingers, the man nearest to the bar ruined the silence. “Hey. I’m guessing you’re Vincent’s new neighbor?”

Ignoring Vincent’s groan, assuming that this man was able to discern of my identity based off of a description from the man himself, the only response I could muster was a nod of my head. I could feel the hairs trailing along my skin standing at his voice, oh so gruff but flat upon first meeting; charcoal threads of hair were swept past his eyebrows, irises the color of coffee beans, easy to become lost in the universe behind them—fuck, it had been a while. Still, it was difficult to disregard the words of greeting from the two blondes lounging in their booths as they raised their glass bottles of beer from the same, popular brand. However, the tones of their voices appeared to be complementary, sleeves of a cobalt jumpsuit falling from the elbow of what was evidently the man with the most years ahead of him as his range grew with each word. Meanwhile, the acknowledgement from the man beside Vincent escaped past his lips as a low and gravelly, “Vincent’s told us about ya’,” attempting to mask his cheeky grin at further embarrassing his friend by tipping his fedora over his face.

“Um.” My lips were tightly pressed together, never apart until my legs slid themselves from the seat at the booth. Now I was forced to speak, gathering up the rest of what I was working on before my thumb pulled the strap of my bag back to the juncture between my neck and shoulder. It was then that I inserted myself into their business, my nose scrunching up at the hypocrisy of it all, standing beside their table with an affirmation, finally. “Yeah… Yeah, I moved in— t-today.”

“Woah! That accent!” The blonde sitting at the edge of his booth threw his hands in his pockets, figure leaning towards mine. “Vincent did tell us you were British.”

“Slow your roll, Toby.” One of the men allowed a chuckle to fall past his lips, eyes then finding mine. “Name’s Orlando. This here’s Toby, and the quiet guy over here is Jonny. Don’t be shy. He doesn’t bite.”

Jonny’s eyes rolled to the back of his head. “And you do?”

“Ignore him, Eris, please.” Vincent warned, fingers pulling at his ear, but I expected his actions stemmed from an exasperation built from love and acceptance of his friend’s behavior. “Didn’t expect you to come, if I’m gonna be honest.”

Was quite a fascinating sight, witnessing the friendship transpire between these four men. Despite Toby by far the most juvenile, the three men accepted his youthful demeanor and enticed him to their woes and fortunes, building a relationship off of each other so strong Toby’s age was trivial in the grand scheme of things. While this was all conjecture, there was no mistaking the bond existing among them, the four unable to run out of topics to dwell on until they unconsciously and simultaneously took a swig of their drinks. I couldn’t help but will my teeth into biting at my lip, as having friends such as Vincent’s would have certainly spiced up my life. My friendships never were to last; I was brought into this world aware that humans were fearful of me, as I was symbolic of their inevitable damning. I lived mortal lives after with me unable to grasp the concept of it, instead awaiting news of the deaths of acquaintances knowing they would no longer exist on Earth… knowing I would continue to. Despite the longing for contact, media and prior experience solidified that I was better off alone in this world; life was more laid back, and effortless.

Just how life was meant to be lived. “Surprise.”

“What’cha workin’ on?” Toby chimed in, bringing the attention back to me. “You seemed pretty— Oh, Erica!” True to his calling, the waitress’ shoulder brushed against mine as she returned from her duties. In her palm was a circular tray, arm raised to balance the one Cosmopolitan leaving its imprint upon the name of the bar carved into the center; eyes trailing past her chest, the Midori Cosmopolitan in her grasp swayed with the movement of her hips, almost pressuring me to order the favorite of mine. My taste buds began to water, fingers wrapped tighter around my papers to suppress the urge to reach up on their own free will and request the same drink with a hard pull on her sleeve.

“Told you I’d be back.” Her free hand found her hips. “These guys aren’t bothering you, are they?” With a shake of her head, the woman’s wrath was to be subjected by the group of four before us. “Didn’t I tell you to go easy on her?”

Jonny pulled the glass of sake from his lips. “Relax, Erica. She approached us.”

“He’s right. I’m— I’m Eris.” Holding my hand out, I mustered up the best smile I could manage. “Vincent’s neighbor.”

Instead of her hand weaving with mine, she decided a better place for it would be to hang off my shoulder. “Yeah, yeah. I know who you are. This is for you, by the way. Boss insisted it was on the house.” In a surprising turn of events, the tray was now held to my height, still despite the delay in my reaction. “Sounds like he’s got his eye on you. I’d keep my eye on him, if I were you.”

Solid advice from the waitress, it was a warning that could not be taken in stride regardless of the incentive behind Boss’ actions. Vincent shared my sentiment with a, “Didn’t know Boss was the type to give freebies to newcomers,” downing what little was left of his rum and coke before setting the glass inside the circle of faint discolor on the table. Regardless, I accepted the offer by dragging a raspberry down the needle sitting at the edge of my glass, the tangy yet sweet burst of red then overflowing my taste buds. My favorite fruit, next to pomegranate seeds, there was still the desire for hesitation upon that second bite and that first sip that I inevitably threw aside since, well… Boss’ reputation for mixing drinks certainly preceded him. For someone to offer my favorite drink paired with my favorite fruit was mere coincidence, a speck of fortune in a world thriving on them.

Before I could share my gratitude, Erica shook her head with her pointer finger raised toward the man standing behind the bar. The man exhibited no signs he was aware of our conversation, occupied with grabbing a rag and wiping lipstick stains off of the edge of various shot glasses. His silver hair was slicked back, no hairs out of place despite the angle of his face; in fact, he was so well put together it was to be expected, being the boss of the establishment after all. What was unexpected, even catching me by surprise, were the sunglasses pressed against the wrinkles on his face, contrasting from the notion that he was indoors at nighttime. However, the regulars surrounding him paid no mind to the peculiar trait he displayed to the public, the discussion to be had a necessary distraction from whatever fashion sense this man held. Could I be sure he wasn’t heeding my response if his shuffling of gazes were so effortlessly hiding behind his glasses?

“Th— This is my favorite.” I approached him following the exit of the majority of people at the restaurant, my elbows resting atop the damp bar. “I didn’t… didn’t want to come while you were working.” No reply. “Thank you!”

“You’re very welcome, Eris. I hope it was to your liking.”

So he was listening.

“Don’t fall for a dog who has eyes for every bitch.”

Now no one could anticipate those words, in that order, spilling from his mouth like destiny foretold it so. Of course one would laugh it off, eyes shuffling to their twiddling thumbs in hopes of erasing the musings from their short term memory before it lingered, but I was that fool who inquired of his reasoning. “I— I didn’t fall for anyone,” was what I began with, hoping to entice more out of him, a foolish alternative than shutting up and never asking why. What I received in return was but a gaze over my shoulder, the man doing away with his laid-back and charismatic demeanor to allow a frown to pull at the lines forming at his cheeks. What foolery it was on my part to follow the direction of his vision, his still stature confirmation that whatever was behind me was far from permissible. However, the one excuse I could offer was the morbid curiosity overpowering any thought that would save me from myself, a desire for a quick glimpse behind those sunglasses that perhaps held the world.

A woman, clad in a dress of cream lace and form fitting material, was tugging at my new neighbor’s jacket collar in an attempt to pull him closer towards her embrace. Her lips, soft and baby pink, clashed with Vincent’s as his whimpers were faint beneath the smoke, her fingers entwined with his as they continued their tango across the ends of intricate, thin designs that were outmatched against her beauty. In other words, if no one was to step in, there was no doubt this woman would lead to his ruin, an utter damnation at the expense of his friends, the one whom I thought was his girlfriend… with that, I swiveled back around towards the direction of the kitchen, my body warm with what transpired. Warm was an understatement in fact, the smoke was no match for the fire trailing along the hairs of my skin, nipping at my fingertips as if attempting to mirror the same effect. Eris— My hand smacked at my cheeks, expelling the thoughts lest they become normalcy. Get it the fuck together.

“Frazzled, are you?” Boss chuckled. “Well, what are you—”

Quite the question, was it not? What was I to do regarding my neighbor lip-locking with a woman not sharing the familiar pink threads of hair trailing past his girlfriend’s waist, instead sporting ringlets of blonde pigtails tied at her temples mirroring her youthful complexion? What was I to tell Katherine if the question popped up in the middle of a conversation—not that it would if I never spoke to her following this chain of events, but if it did… what then? There was no telling if Vincent would recall any of it, his cheeks brushed with a deep crimson as his words left his mouth in a slur that would warrant repetition. Did I have an obligation to poke my head into such trivialities? Was control of situation perhaps in my grasp? Cheating, that was what that moment narrowed into; however, that one word could destroy Vincent’s life, taking the lives of those most dear to him down with it, and I somehow had the ability to act to perhaps lessen the impact.

“None of my business,” I said, a mistake in the making.

[blackpinehq]

THE INTANGIBLE CONCEPT facts

. name: lennon isabella mancini . age: 25-35 . gender identity & pronouns: non-binary, she/they . occupation; mortician in training

backstory (death tw)

you were always fascinated by death. it wasn’t morbidity, but that you saw death as peaceful and intriguing rather than heart-breaking. when your mother passed away early into your childhood, you were the first one to peek into the open casket. you thanked the mortician for having ‘fixed’ and made your mom look exactly how you remembered her: beautiful. since then, you’ve aspired to join the funerary business and bring the same peace and comfort to other mourning families. you were contacted by the sheriff department to assist them prepare abigail’s body, but when you arrived to the scene where no body was ever found, you were puzzled. the mystery intrigued you, but you knew there was an even bigger web of paradoxes and oddities behind all of this. you’ve found yourself questioning everything given the bizarre deaths in the town’s recorded history, and the sort of things you’ve had to cover up with fluid and makeup. others might only see the surface, but you’ve long come to realize that you are treading wicked ground. 

connections

. the mystic » you’ve never been one for affection. previous relationships left you damaged, and admittedly, sort of bitter and numb to the romanticized concept of love. still, you found yourself falling for them. around them, you could take off your armor and let your skin breathe. they make you feel silly and childish, and you never thought you’d let someone in like that. it’s scary, but at the same time, they’re gentle and surprisingly exciting. 

. the sovereign »  you can’t stand them, but then again, it seems like not everyone can. you were a believer in finding the good in everyone, but now you’re not so sure. they act as if the town were theirs, which might be fitting: a wicked ruler for a wicked town.

face claim

alice pagani

Lennon Isabella Mancini had been, appropriately, born on a blisteringly cold December morning. An hour sooner and she would have been spared the curse of sharing birthdays with a religious holiday. But alas, Lennon arrived screaming at 1:12 am on the 24th with no apologies. It was a fact she had begun to hide nearing her 13th birthday, the teasing and pity-filled inquiries grating on her. Sure, it was ironic that she, of all people, had been born on Christmas Eve. But it was less so when you peered beyond the black clothing and smudged eyeliner to glimpse the certificate of baptism in her baby book, or the countless childhood photos of Lennon hand in hand with her mother who attended every Sunday service. Granted, she had not been since the age of ten, but before music and art had influenced her darkened appearance, Gloria Mancini had cradled her daughter under the assumption she was nothing short of a miracle from God.

Lennon was blessed with a picturesque childhood. She was the single offspring to a father that worked as a grade seven teacher at the Blackpine primary school, and a mother who accompanied him as a librarian there. They drove her and friends to and from school every morning and evening, arriving home just in time to eat dinner as a family while laughing to The Brady Bunch, or Happy Days. They were hardly ever a source of gossip for prying neighbors, their most notable arguments tended to be the trivial sort, over misplaced keys or a stray puppy Lennon begged to keep. With two parents on the school’s payroll, Lennon’s grades were exceptional. If maintained, she was surely promised a scholarship; a chance to explore that outside of Blackpine. That was, perhaps, their biggest fault. Already straddling the highest peak, their little family had nowhere to go but down.

And that they did. At the tender age of ten Lennon was awakened by Christian Mancini’s frantic movements. The phone’s ringtone buzzing incessantly, left off the hook in her father’s hurry as he shuffled around for his shoes. The clock near her bedside read 3:26 am. Crawling from beneath a quilt she crept curiously into the hallway, still wrapped in her sheets, and peeked around the corner to witness the fervent search. She wanted to warn him, to yell out and expose the hidden shoes, tucked neatly under the living room coffee table. But Lennon wasn’t meant to be up this late, and any indication she was would surely lead to her father ushering her back into her room. So instead she bit her tongue, raised on tip-toes as she eyed his slow progress.

Knock knock knock.

The sudden rapping startles Lennon, and evidently her father, who jumps and drops a pair of sneakers belonging to his wife.

”Thank you so much for coming, on such short notice. Lennon’s still asleep in her room, she shouldn’t be any trouble. I really appreciate this, I really do.“

It had been their neighbor, one of the many family friends that came and went. But why she needed a babysitter at 3 in the morning had escaped Lennon. Where was he going? More importantly, why was her mother too busy to watch her? The moment the door closes behind the neighbor, and her father triumphantly tugs his shoes on, Lennon is retreating into the darkness of her bedroom. It’s not for lack of interest, no, it’s to prevent her discovery. Slipping quietly toward her window she peers over its ledge, watching intently as her father slips out of the house, and into the neighbor’s car now parked in the driveway. Their family car is nowhere to be seen, the familiar brown Buick claimed elsewhere.

Lennon hardly has time to scramble back into bed at the distant nearing of footsteps, pulling the covers over her head as she feigns sleep. She can feel the figure enter her room, the quiet creep of her door announcing their presence a beat later. They stand in the threshold, seconds ticking slowly, before silently returning to the living room. Panic strangles her, the creeping apprehension of the unknown making it harder and harder to breathe under the cover of her blankets. What was going on?

Eventually daylight bleeds through Lennon’s blinds, encasing her room in warm amber rays. Voices on television carry cheerily toward her, the distant smell of bacon nauseating in her worry. When her alarm finally buzzes, a cacophony of warning, she jolts upright. Without hesitation she skids into the kitchen, eyes the size of saucers as she pulls on the shirt of a tired-eyed family friend. ”Where did my mom and dad go?“

”Lennon, there was an accident.“

Gloria Mancini was thirty-two when she died. Due to the path the car took, and the injuries sustained, police noted she must have fallen asleep while driving; a careless mistake. There were no other’s involved in the crash, thankfully, as she was the only one in the car at the time. The family car; the missing brown Buick. Her time of death was approximately 1:00 am — Lennon wonders often if it had been, more specifically, 1:14 am. It would be the sort of cruel joke she had come to expect.

The autopsy reveals nothing suspicious, and the funeral is scheduled two weeks after the news.  

Her stomach is in knots, her palms sweating, her mouth dry. Lennon knows if she gets any nearer she’ll be sick. The casket is mere yards away, looming threateningly at the end of a narrow aisle. She can feel eyes on her. The neighbors, the co-workers, the family friends, all watching and waiting for her to approach. But she knows already what beckons her, what gruesome sight awaits to be seen. Lennon had suffered nightmares since the accident. Visions of her mother’s beautiful features twisted, caved in to something ugly. Her eyes, bottomless black pits, void of life and warmth. Her skin, grey and cold, nothing like the freckled tan she often sported this time of year.

Lennon refuses to bear witness to the monster that’s become of her mother, no matter how gently her father prods her forward with pleading words of encouragement. She makes the journey three separate times, the slow, creeping, walk toward the oak box Gloria’s laid in, before turning on her heel and racing out the door.

It’s not until the fourth attempt that the weight of an unfamiliar hand settles atop her shoulder. A blonde woman, with a patient smile, and kind eyes. ”I know this can be scary,“ she admits, and Lennon cannot veil the sigh of relief that escapes her. Everyone pushed and prodded, promised that it would be okay if only she peeked at the corpse of her decaying mother. But not Mary Katherine, the Blackpine funeral director. She tells Lennon of her own deceased mother, years prior. Of the way seeing her there, at peace, silenced the illogical worries of a young girl suffering from loss. She vaguely details the steps she took, the time she spent making Gloria Mancini look how she would remember. How she’s always looked. How she deserved to look, one last time.

Perhaps out of curiosity alone, Lennon takes the hand Mary Katherine offers, and slowly but surely edges her way toward the casket. Tilting her head for a glimpse, she prepares for maggots, and rotting flesh, and a woman she can no longer recognize, a scream poised on the tip of her tongue. And finds —

Her mother, as she’s always been. As she always will be, in Lennon’s memory, thanks to Mary Katherine. The gleam of dark locks, the sun kissed skin, the pout of pastel lips. She releases a breath she hadn’t meant to hold, the burning beneath her rib cage her only evidence of such. The hours of worry are silenced, chased away by the thumb that caresses her hand, the voice of a woman she’s only just met, and the sight of a mother she had agonized over seeing.

It hurts. No amount of make up or kind words could soften the tremendous blow of losing a parent. But the tender goodbye Lennon utters, her voice rattling in spite of the height with which she holds her chin, would have hurt more unsaid.

The quintessential family portrait fractures under the weight of her absence.

Though her father loved deeply still, the rise of Lennon’s cheeks, the ferocity of her smile, the curl of her hair, remind him unsettlingly of a love now claimed by six feet of Earth. The same features he had joyously spouted off matched that of his wife now felt like an unfair punishment. To look at Lennon hurt, as if he had dared to stare at the sun in spite of its unforgiving power. And so he stopped.

Their conversations grew far and few between. The rides to school stopped, and Lennon was forced to either ride her bike or hitchhike via a classmate. At times she passed him, on his way to the cafeteria or to the faculty parking lot, and glimpsed her father in stride with another student. Christian would gesture wildly, his grin stretching from one ear to the next, and a pang of envy would clutch her hardened heart. He loved children, basked in the company of those still eager to learn the way of the world. But the thought of his own produced something ugly in the space between his ribs, and no kind funeral director could correct that overwhelming fear and discomfort.

But Lennon was not one to settle.

Her first attempt at redemption came in the form of hair color. The dye turning her dark brown hair a stark raven black. But to no avail. Her second was the veil of dark clothing she blanketed herself in, so unlike the fabric her cheerful mother would often choose. Her father hadn’t blinked an eye. The last attempt was applied with shaking fingers, the scissors clattering into the porcelain sink as she stared at her own reflection in the mirror. A pale girl with chopped black hair and bangs, wearing a dark dress stared back, unblinking. Lennon hardly recognized herself, but a father would know his daughter anywhere.

The silence grew deafening.

As did the taunts and jeers of classmates who were fortunate enough to remain ignorant to the pain of a fellow student. They didn’t understand the haircut, or the dark clothes. In truth, Lennon didn’t either. But the determination to prove them wrong surpassed her need to understand. She was tired of shrinking herself to appease others.

But pariah’s get lonely too, and in the shadow of bared teeth and rolled eyes, she clung to the individuals with enough pluck to befriend her. At times, too tightly. She was desperate to see the good in Blackpine as she once had —behind the tint of rose colored glasses. But peering through its lenses only blinded her to warning signs she should have seen coming.

Romps in the back of cars ended in lies, trusted confidantes ended in betrayal, and more than once Lennon served as the punchline to a joke she did not know existed. A part of her resented Blackpine for how it had treated her. But the thought of leaving her hometown for good was crippling. Lennon had walked these streets hand in hand with Gloria, watching the leaves change to vibrant colors while fantasizing about a future within Blackpine. But leaving the town would feel a lot like turning her back on those hopes, and in turn, her mother.

That was why, after graduating from high school, Lennon raced to the nearest Ohio university for a bachelor’s degree in mortuary science. Since the age of ten she had known in her heart that she was meant to be a mortician. The town needed more Mary Katherine’s, full of compassion and understanding, and she was willing to carry the brunt of that weight in the only way she knew how. Her four years out of town were uneventful, burying herself in schoolbooks and homework to hurry through her time away from Blackpine. Lennon was apprehensive about navigating relationships or hobbies while away, in fear it would keep her from returning to her quaint Ohio neighborhood. She knew, deep down, any future she was meant to have would take place between its city lines, and entertaining silly notions of places beyond would distract her from her unwavering goal.

When she graduated, a foolish shard of Lennon expected to see her mother or father there in the crowd, shedding tears for the success of their only daughter. But standing at that podium, her gown a size too big and her smile a tad too manufactured, she remained alone. As she did once returning to the town of Blackpine. None came to greet her upon arrival, though it may have had more to do with Lennon’s silence on the subject than animosity.

The town was exactly as she remembered it, which was both a shame and a relief. The same buildings, the same streets, the same people; with but one exception. The Mystic had come from beyond, a foreign force in a town that thrived on monotony. She was eccentric and bright and the naive parts of Lennon that could not be squashed chased the allure of this rare and beautiful creature. The girl was unburdened by the politics of a small town; free from the claustrophobia of fitting into their glass box. She was, perhaps, the parts of Lennon, herself, she had abandoned, and forgotten how to love.

Things were chugging uphill. An apprenticeship with Mary Katherine, a lover that could call upon even the stars to do her bidding, and a chance to make her mother proud.

And then Abigail Myer’s car was found.

It almost feels like a warning. A dark reminder of what can happen in Blackpine when you blanket yourself in false comforts. Lennon may feel like her life has finally begun, but how long until it’s threatened?

[rom-e-o]

Jokamu with "because I love you!" Honestly the “it wasn’t me! I mean, it really fucking wasn’t, so quit me the third degree. It wasn’t me, i’ve had enought! Just forget the fuCKING COOKIE, CAUSE IT’S NOT ABOUT THE COOKIE” was super tempting too though XD

[ANON, I love this. Thank you so much for sending such a lovely prompt! I had some fun with this one, and thank you for being so patient and wonderful while I took the time to answer it. And yes, I did find a way to get cookies in the fic. Of course. ;) ]

AO3 link is here. Enjoy!

“Ouch!”

The sting of disinfectant prickled her skin with the intensity of a handful of needles.  It caused her to let out a hiss of distress that only petered out when the deep gash was enfolded with a soft slab of clean cotton.

“Corrin, I told you to hold still,” Jakob said as he taped the bandage down over her recently cleaned injury.

“I know you did, but it still hurt.”

“With all due respect, my love, it hurt more because you didn’t hold still.”

His teasing reply earned him a sanguine glare. The look was meant to be harsh but lacked any real fire.

“How would the disinfectant hurt less if I held still?” Corrin asked, still squirming in discomfort as he continued to patch her up. She knew the injury had to be cleaned, but the awareness didn’t mean it was a pleasant experience to endure.

“It wouldn’t, but it would help me work faster so it would be over sooner,” Jakob replied promptly, still focused on her injury. He sealed the edges of the tape with a firm press of his thumb. However, he had to re-tape one of the sides due to the lack of adhesion from runny disinfectant.

Corrin pouted in place of a verbal objection. When it came to cool and composed logic, Jakob usually excelled more than anyone else in the army. Perhaps it was more of a fault than a talent on some occasions.

The newlywed couple usually bickered here and there, but they never argued to the point of shouting or animosity. Such had been the case ever since they’d first met as children.

Having grown up together through thick and thin, the two had mastered the art of communication to a point that greatly assisted in maintaining an open, honest, and loving relationship that wasn’t marred by bouts of hostile miscommunication.

The duo only truly fought if the controversial topic centered around each other’s safety on the battlefield.

Not so coincidentally, that was the exact reason that Jakob was currently tending to Corrin’s wounds in their private bedroom.

With a medical kit nearby, the two had rushed to their private quarters following a particularly nasty battle. The faint trail of blood leading from the door to their bed was still visible when Corrin glimpsed around the bedroom.

While the other healers used their magic on injured party members, Corrin always refused that any healing tomes be wasted on her. After all, the Dragonstone made her body especially strong. She knew she could take the more severe hits with a much higher chance of surviving than some of the other frailer members of their army.

As a result, Jakob kept medical supplies aplenty in their bedroom and always dressed her wounds after battles. Corrin was a fearless warrior and the leader of their army. As a result, she almost always had a few scrapes and cuts that needed extra attention. Jakob was more than willing to comply.

Corrin showed her complete thankfulness by providing the same help for Jakob.

After all, he was usually too busy healing others to tend to his own injuries. As a result, Corrin often dressed his wounds after long battles to make sure he wasn’t assuming his arduous list of butler duties while hiding any traces of discomfort or pain.

Usually, the act of tending to each other’s wounds was an affectionate exchange. Sometimes, if their injuries were mild enough, the act also led into further spells of bonding beneath the bedsheets.

However, it was the third time in three consecutive days that Corrin had crawled off the battlefield barely breathing and able to move. Jakob was far from pleased. His complete and utter worry was masked with a neutral expression of annoyance, but Corrin knew better.

Both had shed their padded armor and dressings in informal lumps in the floor. The trail of clothes led to their shared bed, where both individuals sat dressed in only their underclothes. Jakob, shirtless and adorned only in trousers, sat a few inches from Corrin. His eyes were hyper-focused on her body, not leaving the sight of her injuries even as his hands dug into the adjacent medical kit nearby to withdraw the appropriate amount of sanitized cotton and gauze.

After their latest battle, Jakob had rushed Corrin back to their room swiftly and addressed the most obvious injuries to her stomach and torso first, including a nasty incision that had been carved into her body just above her left breast. The area was tender, but adrenaline had dulled the pain long enough for Corrin to keep still. All the while, she had scooted closer to Jakob so they could share the medical kit while she patched up some more shallow but still dangerously vulnerable cuts. Many of them were on his legs and muscled abdomen, which didn’t have the privilege of being adorned with armor.

Then came the pesky injury on Corrin’s shoulder.

After about half an hour of mending other injuries, the warrior princess had grown antsy as the adrenaline started to wear off and the pain started to slowly seep into the pores of her beaten skin.

Jakob had insisted multiple times she should remain still for a few moments while he sterilized the nasty gash she had acquired on her shoulder. At the time, the bladed weapon had been so sharp that she hadn’t even noticed the way it had glided through her sinew and muscle like a knife through butter.

Now, she was not only acutely aware of the injury, but also her husband’s attitude.

“You weren’t soshort with me when we did this yesterday,” she huffed. She put her chin in her free and leaned forward to put her weight on her unbruised knee. Her lack of clothing, aside from her bra and underwear, highlighted the series of bloody bandages and purplish-black bruises that clouded her complexion.

Jakob offered her an impatient gaze. His usually vibrant eyes were half-lidded in worry and lack of amusement at her complete and obvious act of self-neglect. He synched the bandages tightly without breaking eye contact.

“I’m only being brusque with you because this is the third day in a row that you have taken incredibly dangerous blows on the battlefield,” he said, swapping out her adjective with obvious disdain for the earlier implication.

“What do you want me to do, Jakob?” she asked, half-curious and half-annoyed all at once. “Do you think I shouldn’t protect the people in our army? They’re our friends and family. I can’t just stand idly by on the sidelines and demand that others fight for me.”

“I’m aware of that, darling,” Jakob retorted sharply. “That’s what worries me.”

A pause stretched between them. The silence allowed an opportunity for each other’s words to sink in with almost uncomfortable stillness. Only Jakob’s hands continued to move about as everything else in the room remained silent.

“Then, wait…what are you saying?” she asked, her tone relaxing a bit because of his reluctant acquiescence.

A sigh.

Then, a mumble.

Finally, Jakob’s hands stilled completely as he offered her a sincere confession unadorned of his usual stuffiness.

“I just…don’t like seeing you get hurt,” he admitted, shifting his amethyst gaze away as if he knew that answer would sit well with the noble leader.

His prediction was correct.

“I know, but…” Corrin started, humbled by not dissuaded by his words, “What else can I do? What are my other options? It’s my responsibility to lead the army forward. I’d rather take the pain myself than risk losing you or anyone else.”

She felt Jakob pull the bandages taut. The action was so sudden and swift she thought it must have been a reflexive act on his part. She also heard him audible suck a breath between clenched teeth.

“Please don’t say things like that,” Jakob pleaded softly.

“It’s the truth,” she said with a sad smile. “At the end of the day, if anyone should have to fall on the battlefield, it should be me. Nobody else deserves it.”

“This war is not your fault,” he replied quickly. His tone had deepened from its usual pitch into a low, almost growling baritone.

“The blame might not be completely mine to accept, but I undoubtedly share a piece of it,” she replied shortly. Her irritation from earlier has been rekindled.

“And for that ridiculous reason, you feel obligated to suffer?” he asked her, turning the tables quickly. “You feel you should resign yourself to possible death because of some damned obligation to a kingdom that has given you nothing?”

She was quite close to grabbing a robe and storming from the room until her husband regained some composure.

“Why are you dragging this out?” Corrin groaned in pitched exhaustion turning away from Jakob in a split-second fit of annoyance.

“Because I love you!”

Jakob’s voice had risen to a yell strident yell. The composed butler hardly ever raised his voice.

The swiftness of the reply knocked the breath out of Corrin’s lungs. She turned her head to glimpse Jakob’s expression and saw softness in his visage that hadn’t been as visible before.

“I…really, really worry about you,” he continued to confess. He released her arm and gently reached down to take one of Corrin’s hands into his own. She permitted the touch with a gentle nod and slipped her fingers between his. The gesture was a silent promise that she would stay and listen.

He squeezed her hand passionately between their two bodies.

Then, he took a deep breath and proceeded to speak.

“I know you’re strong,” he began, the fondness in his eyes almost making Corrin go weak. “I know you can take these terrible injuries in stride. I know you feel like you have to bear the brunt of this war alone, but seeing you crawl off the battlefield and bleeding through your armor, gods Corrin, it kills me inside. I hate it. More than I hate anything else I’ve gone through in my life. More than my parents, more than the servants that tried to throw me out when I was a child, I hate seeing you hurt more than anything else.”

Before she could reply, he lifted a hand to politely request further silence while he pleaded his case.

“I know it’s unavoidable,” he said, closing his eyes. A dry laugh crackled through his throat like ash from a parched fire. “War is worse than any hellfire or brimstone because war pulls in the innocent without any regard. You don’t deserve this, Corrin. I know you’re facing these forces nearly alone, and I want to help you just like everyone else in the army does, but what you said is true.

“You’re our leader. You don’t have the privilege of backing down or playing it safe. You’re doing what you must do to push us forward toward peace. That strength makes you a goddess in my eyes.”

His cathartic confession, added on top of their heated discussion from early, was starting to also make her feel emotional.

She bit her lip to avoid sobbing. “Jakob…”

He shuddered uneasily before continuing. However, his grip on her hand never faltered.

“It also keeps me awake at night absolutely petrified because I have no idea what I would do if I lost you,” he finally said.

A mistiness touched his gaze, but he didn’t look away. Not this time.

“I love you so much, Corrin,” he told her, emotion gripping him finally. His voice vacillated to the point of breaking. “You deserve endless love and unparalleled adoration, and yet, you’re sitting before beaten and bloodied for the sake of a war that isn’t even your damned fault. You don’t deserve this suffering”

She didn’t know what to say. Hell, there was nothing she really could say. What she wanted to do was take his face in her hands, hold him close and promise him that nothing would ever break them apart.

She wanted desperately to tell him that, no matter what challenges they faced, they would be able to conquer it because they’d be together. Corrin wanted to look him in the eyes and tell him not to worry because everything would be okay in the end.

However, she knew she couldn’t do such a thing. She also knew Jakob wasn’t naïve enough to believe her if she tried to make such a foolish promise.

It was impossible to ignore that fact that the battles were becoming harder. There was no guarantee of everyone coming back alive.

Nobody could predict the future of their cause. Not even Corrin knew the outcome of the efforts.

As she mused over his impactful words, he took her lack of a reply as mute testimony that he was speaking the obvious and wasting their time.

“I’m…sorry for my outburst,” he said sheepishly as he backed away from her. “That was so selfish of me. How could I say those things to you? Corrin, I’m so…”

His apology was cut short by Corrin hopping up onto her knees and rushing into his arms. The force knocked Jakob onto his back and sent the medical kit onto the floor with a crash.

The sudden embrace also caused both to yelp in agony as their wounds were reopened and swollen bruises were agitated.

A symphony of ‘ow’s and pained moans filled the air as the two injured parties eased apart, chuckling lightly at the complete gracelessness of their union. Once they were a few inches apart and had finished seething from pain, they reconnected their gazes softly. There, she saw emotion still welled up in Jakob’s eyes. Tears rose to her own as she leaned forward and placed a kiss on his forehead.

“Jakob, I’m sorry,” she admitted with a whisper. Her lips trailed down to his jaw, where she placed another soft kiss against his stubble. The sensation assisted Corrin’s epiphany really had been fighting a lot. Jakob was hardly ever unshaven except when they endured long battles together or when he spent days and nights applying healing techniques to wounded troops.

In this case, he’d been doing both.

The wetness in his eyes flashed to shock as he shook his head frantically. “Nonsense! You have nothing to apologize for. I was too emotional and spoke out of turn. It was inappropriate of me.”

“But you’re right,” she replied. She shifted her weight gently to roll over his waist and lock her hips comfortably against his. When she gauged his reactions and safely determined the act caused him no pain and reached down and cupped his face softly.

“Jakob, you never cease to amaze me,” he confessed, her own voice struggling to stay calm as she spoke. “You know, I’m not the only one getting injured in these battles.”

Her hands ran down his arms, where her fingertips encountered plenty of bandaged cuts and slightly raised scars from their hundreds of other encounters. She continued, “You take injury after injury, and yet you do nothing but heal others. You come off the battlefield bleeding and limping, and yet you always tend to my wounds personally. You don’t have to do that, but you do.”

His lips opened to reject her sentiments, but Corrin wouldn’t have it. Her mouth descended upon his and kissed away his hesitation. His stifled words turned to moans as his arms recircled her waist. Pulling her flush against him, his palms flattened against her back as they bodied tumbled back against the pillows, gently this time. Corrin barely stopped kissing him long enough to breath before dotting more butterfly kisses across his lips, jaws, and cheeks. He reciprocated each soft, hurried touch until their mouths met again fully in a moment of kismet that caused both to still in each other arms. They relished in each other bodies, molded together completely in harmony, moving together in sultry concord. Flesh met flesh and hands intertwined until they were tangled together like one.

Corrin only parted away from him to stare back down into his eyes. There, she found traces of the romantic haze she enjoyed finding in his intimate glances. To her excessive glee, all traces of emotion had also vacated his expression. Instead, his face was a picture of surprise and lovesick reverence.

She couldn’t resist kissing him again, and Jakob obviously didn’t argue. He folded her back into his embrace and rolled against her fully, moaning into every touch and caress Corrin initiated with her hands and tongue.

After another minute or so, she retracted her lips to plant them against the throbbing pulse in his neck. He moaned as she continued to praise him, her lips like velvet against his throat.

“I love you too, Jakob,” she gasped, feeling him writhe beneath her body. The desperate motion only added to the thrill building inside her. It was truly unfortunate that they were so gravely injured and couldn’t truly act on their arousal.

Instead, she continued, “You continue to see me at my worst, most grievous moments of injury, but you never leave my side. Anybody would be reeling from such trauma, and yet you stay strong through it all. You’ve always been so strong, ever since we were kids. You’re like my boulder while I’m being tossed in the waves of this horrifying war. You keep me steady and grounded. That’s why we all need you here. I need you, too.”

He scoffed at her praise this time. “You don’t need me, Corrin. I’m the only who needs you. If you weren’t with me, then I don’t…”

She beamed down at him softly and let a sigh plume from her slightly reddened lips. He was as stubborn as he was strong, and she was becoming more and more aware that perhaps she had more in common with that stubborn streak than she ever realized.

Her fingers reached up to gently play with his long bangs, which had become splayed across his face during their multiple kisses.

“I suppose we’ll never know how our lives would have changed if we’d drifted apart,” Corrin posed, thinking back on all the years of their childhood they’d spent side by side. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that I’ve loved the life I’ve lived with you and that I want to live every second fully by your side.”

She bit into her lips again and offered him a careful shrug. “Is…that enough?”

He let out a laugh. Corrin thought at first it was perhaps a sound of realization, but it was loud enough to make Corrin think he found genuine humor in her statement. It wasn’t until his hand coasted up the back up her neck to gently guide her head back into his palm. When she obliged, he dipped his head down and placed another searing kiss on her lips that made her spine snap taut and her hands rise to his hair.

“It’s more than enough,” he purred against her mouth, tickling her into another bout of laughter.

He growled at the sound of her happiness and tackled her, albeit incredibly gently, back onto the bed. There, he pulled her close against his thudding heartbeat, so she could feel just how much of an effect her laughter and sincere joy had on him.

“So, am I forgiven?” she asked him, already knowing the answer as she laid her head against his torso.

Jakob rolled his eyes and nodded. “As long as you forgive me as well.”

They sealed the end of their argument with an embrace that would have been much more passionate had it not been for the damned bandages. Neither party seemed to mourn the loss too much, because their lack of amorous resolution at the moment just meant they would have to make up for lost time in the future. Such a concept was hardly an issue for either of them.

“Well, now that we’re both patched up, how about I make us something to eat?” Jakob posed as he poked the tip of her nose gently. He eased out from beneath her, much to her chagrin, and crossed the room to the wardrobe to grab a shirt. “You must be famished, after all.”

“In more way that one,” Corrin wanted to say, but bit her tongue.

“It’s a shame we don’t live alone,” she said with a disappointed sigh. She also hoisted herself up from the bed and went to grab some clothes. A simple dress and shoes would do for the remained of the evening, no doubt.

“Why is that?” Jakob asked, pretending as is he was oblivious to how she was ogling his bare chest. She slapped him playfully and helped fasten the buttons of his shirt while he worked to tie back his undone hair.

“It’s just a shame to cover up such a nice view,” she mourned, stealing one more peek at his toned chest before she buttoned the chemise to his neckline. “Ah, well. All the other ladies and gentlemen in this camp would be too jealous of me if they saw you walking around shirtless anyway.”

“Corrin, please.”

“I’ll just have to wait until we live along to hide all your tops,” she teased wickedly.

He sighed loudly, creating a rumble in his chest that made Corrin’s fingers tingle with delight. Jakob finished fastening his hair with a quick synch of a ribbon before tousling her wild hair in absolute adoration. “You are absolutely, positively, indubitably insufferable, my love.”

“Are you complaining?” she asked, tossing her hair back and over her shoulders as she flashed a daring smile back up at him.

“I wouldn’t dare,” he quipped with a wide grin. With a nudge, he directed her to the door to their bedchamber. By now, it was late into the evening and most of their encampment in the astral plane had winded down. They would have to be quiet as they padded down to the kitchen.

“What would you like to eat, dear?” he asked her, pushing his sleeves past his elbows as they walked. “Whatever you choose, I’ll make extra for the others as well.”

The question elicited deep pondering from the princess.

“How about some cookies?” Corrin suggested. She knew they had an abundance of flour in their camp thanks to the fields their troops tended to every day. Somehow, the fields had always been spared destruction by any invading troops and were an ongoing source of many bountiful, carb-heavy treats. It was both a blessing and a curse.

“Cookies?” he asked incredulously.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, clearing her throat before assuming a mock accent. “How about some biscuits?”

His hand batted her shoulder in playful retribution for her easy jab at his vernacular. “You know what I mean. Are you certain you don’t want something more filling instead?”

The suggestion made her stomach grumble as she realized with a blush that he had an excellent point. The sound reaffirmed Jakob’s suspicions and he offered her a light chuckle.

“I am capable of cooking multiple things,” he reminded her pointedly. “In fact, I think that may be a better idea. How about I make some stew for a late dinner and some cookies for dessert? I’ll put the extra away for the others to enjoy in the mess hall when they have time.”

The sentiment made Corrin’s blood run warm with thankfulness. “That sounds lovely. That is, as long as you don’t mind. Would I be able to help you?”

“I would enjoy nothing more,” Jakob replied, exchanging another loving glance with her. The edges of Corrin’s sanguine eyes crinkled in delight as she reached down. He fingers ghosted down Jakob’s bare forearm until they reached his hand. There, she slid her fingers between the spaces of his, creating a perfect fit.

She tipped her head and asked sweetly, “Shall we, then?”

The two continued their stroll down the corridor hand-in-hand, leaving their all traces of their heated argument behind them to dissipate like smoke in a zephyr.

[darkmindsthinktwistedthoughts]

A Different Time pt2

note: I have found a new form of torture that is highly effective and results in my long suffering proofreader shouting various profanities at me whilst trying to get their head around a story I have written about a certain ninja.

---

Warning:Scientific Nerdy Ninja

Masterlist

---

Chapter 2 - Lacking Data

I guess I should have calculated the possibility that this had maybe happened before and factored that in somehow to my current situation. After successfully proving my theory of a wormhole achieving the ability to manifest itself, along with proving my theory of its possible application for use for time travel. I had evidently neglected to consider a few basic scenarios. The main one being the smiling woman in front of me. What if I am not the first to fall through the space time continuum?

She rose from her position on the log and walked over to the shack returning with a cast iron pan and she poured water into it from a bamboo canteen. “Tea? I have a feeling we might need some refreshment.”

“Thank you. Can I help with anything?” It may have been a slightly stupid question but I have failed to abandon my manners instilled in me by my parents.

“No …  it’s fine! You’re technically a guest so don’t worry.” She smiled as she placed the pan into the fire to boil and retrieved a couple of bamboo cups. I’m impressed she has enough equipment in her pack to cater for guests.

“Yes, I guess I am a time traveller” She shrugged as she poked at the newly lit fire with a stick. “Although it wasn’t planned that way!”

“Wait so how? When? I’m sorry I must apologize I seem to be experiencing heightened levels of adrenaline causing my speech to become erratic.” I was aware that I sounded less than coherent. If I was honest, my pulse rate had increased so much after this new discovery that I was struggling to regain control of it.

“Ha … it’s ok. I felt exactly the same back at the compound. I never thought I would meet anyone from my time here.” She cautiously looked at me. “I suppose you are from my time?”

“Your time?” Seriously Sasuke now is not the time to repeat back to her like a parrot. “Erm, that is to say what time... when did you get here?” This is starting to sound like the plot for an old sci fi movie. I had finally regained some control over my pulse even if my mind was still running faster than the Hadron Collider with bombarding thoughts.

“Mmm... where to start? I’ll just go from the top and if it fails to answer anything else you want to ask then…” Her fingers were tapping on the side of her cup as she thought about what to say.

“I’ll ask after.” My intention to encourage her caused me to interrupt. Luckily, she didn’t appear to mind.

“Precisely. Ok, well for a start I was on holiday, about eight years ago, and thought visiting Kyoto was a great idea. I always loved Japan and well I’ve never been much of a history buff or anything but I still like it. Kyoto just seemed like somewhere with lots of history all in one place, so I got a ticket and arranged my week around seeing old temples and buildings. I was on my way back from museum and thought I’d look in at a temple on the way to the hotel.” Her voice was a little distant as she recalled her past. The smile on her face did falter a little but it didn’t appear to be due to her feeling sad. Nostalgia. It was a weird idea to think of the modern day in a past tense but that was the reality of the situation we were both in and I could certainly empathise with her on that.

“The Honnoji Temple?” My need to answer the questions running rampant in my head was making it more than a bit difficult to keep quiet. She nodded in agreement.

“That’s the one. It was such a nice night and I was enjoying the walk then out of nowhere it started raining so hard I was soaked to the skin in minutes. I ran into the temple to look for some shelter and …” she paused in thought.

“And?” I hadn’t noticed it myself, but I had drawn my body forward from my seating position and was leaning towards her. Her eyes really are a deep caramel chocolate colour. The personal realisation that I have not only moved closer to her but I have also made such an observation that was not in the least bit professional caused me to shift a little uncomfortably back into place on the log.

“Well that’s just it, I can’t remember past that point. I mean there was a loud crack, I think it might have been lightening. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, I was laying on the ground near a road.” If she noticed how I felt, she was gracious enough to not mention it.

This was incredible! Not only was the location exactly the same as the day I predicted it to be for myself, but it seemed that it was a recurring site of manifestation. I wish I had my notebook on me to make notes on this, but I think I left it at the room I’m staying in. I patted my clothing absentmindedly searching for my non-existent writing materials. The woman watched me and suddenly smiled.

“Looking for something?” She had a sparkle in her eyes that reminded me of the look Lord Shingen would have when handed a plate of sweet buns.

“Sorry it’s habit.” I pushed my glasses back onto the bridge of my nose and took a sip of tea.

“Not the only habit I see.” The mischievous smile on her face did something to me I really couldn’t understand.

I paused in my own musings over the space time continuum and lack of appropriate materials to document newly discovered information. Long dark hair, deep brown eyes, pale skin. Her clothing wasn’t in fact tight so much as it was bound. Over the top of her dark blue kimono was lengths of fabric wrapping the layers closer to her limbs. Practical even if highly unusual. Her headscarf gathered around her neck from where she had unpinned it. As if feeling my inquisitive gaze, she shifted her position and looked directly at me.

“I would say take a picture it will last longer but the technology hasn’t arrived here yet.”

I choked a little on my tea at her comment. It had been a while since anyone around me had used a modern-day reference, never mind making a whimsical joke with one and it caught me off guard. Yes Sasuke, you cannot inhale tea. She smiled at my reaction but didn’t pursue it. Instead she opted to move on with the conversation.

“So? How did you get here then?”

“I had been studying unusual weather patterns and created a theoretical formula that I made from my collected data with the intention of predicting the occurrence of an active wormhole. Although technically there is nothing that suggest that a wormhole can…”

- Ha ha ha -

Her laughter cut through the clearing and went straight into my chest like a kunai. It wasn’t really a bad feeling and that surprised me nearly as much as the whole other time traveller thing. I really wish I had my notebook, maybe if I gathered more data I could work out what is happening.

“Oh, sorry … sorry. It’s just when you are talking you get so animated and ...” she paused as she wiped the corner of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve never been brilliant with science and stuff.”

“I look animated?” I know my eyes widened at that. I could even feel my mouth go slightly agape.

“Yes? Has no one ever told you that before?” she inclined her head and her hair tumbled over her shoulder with the movement.

“Quite the opposite really, I’m usually getting told that I lack expression.” I was still a little flummoxed with her honest observation. Do I really become animated talking about my scientific research?

“What would they prefer you do? An interpretive dance in the middle of a mission? Oh, hang on a minute are you hungry?”

As if on cue my stomach rumbled. When did I last eat anything? Yesterday morning then, I was walking around town trying to figure out if there was a different side to the compound that I could get in at… ah. Ok no I completely forgot to eat anything past lunch yesterday. And now my stomach has reminded me and outed me all at the same time in front of the woman. Bug detected: embarrassment exe. Loading.

She pulled out a saddle bag from the shack and then reached in and pulled out two wrapped bundles bringing them both over.

“Got anything you don’t like to eat?” She enquired.

“No, not really I must admit I eat mostly plain food.” That was in fact completely honest. I don’t like lying and avoid it as much as safely possible even in my line of employment.

It’s difficult to cook anything fancy when on the road and I usually just eat in the teahouses wherever I happen to be for work. Yukimura did at one point say he was surprised at my lack of culinary skill as all I ever seemed to make was rice porridge but it had never bothered me even in the modern day.

“Good because I can only guarantee these will fill you up. I only had limited ingredients so flavour may be lacking.” There was a light flush to the pale skin on her face and I couldn’t help but find that very charming.

“Thank you for the meal.” I bowed my head lightly as I accepted the food bundle. Inside was some onigiri and what appeared to be inarizushi. I picked up a piece of the stuffed tofu and enjoyed the different taste of the fried food mixing with the rice. “This is good.”

“Well then you are easy to please.” She seemed to relax after my honest review and let out a little sigh and started eating hers. “After you finish eating you might want to slip back into town before it gets too busy.”

“You’re right.” I had lost track of the time since sunrise as I was engrossed in my search for information on the wormhole.

“You never did tell me why you were trying to get into the Daimyo’s manor.” There was no sign of her trying to pressure and pump me for information. Her tone was natural and in keeping with light meal conversation.

“My employer wanted some information on him.” I couldn’t really say anymore. Careless talk cost lives and I didn’t wish to be on the list of names of people that had forgotten that.

“I see.” She nodded as if she could read my thoughts knowing I wasn’t going to divulge anything further. “Well if that is all it is, then I might just let you enter tonight.”

“Really?” My eyes shot up to meet hers.

“Yes, I mean you’re not going to interfere with my plan so…” She shrugged.

“Your plan?”

So, did she have an employer? Was she some sort of mercenary? What was she doing? A list of possibilities mixed with a train of thoughts all seemingly unconnected like the stars in the sky and yet there had to be a pattern. There was always a pattern, somewhere.

“Ha, you really do love asking questions.” From the look on her face I knew she was not going to say anymore.

“Sorry, hazard of the job and also having a naturally high scientific curiosity.” I tried to laugh it off. Which I suppose might have worked for someone less expressively challenged.

“It’s of no matter. Eat up and I guess I’ll see you tonight.”

---

Her words were still rolling around in my head as I made my way back to town. What had she been talking about ‘her plan’? And why on earth was her wording of ‘I guess I’ll see you tonight’ making me feel light headed like I may be sick.

There was clearly nothing wrong with the food. I can only theorize that lacking in nourishment for so long whilst also engaging in strenuous activities had depleted my body’s ability to maintain a normal functionality.

When I got to the first building on the edge of town I could hear the people moving around starting their daily routines. The air was filled with happily chattering voices as the traders set up and sold their wares and there were the aromas of freshly prepared food wafting through it all tempting passers-by.

I was moving along the towns small but abundant main road when I caught the glimpse of a familiar red kimono and short brown hair.

“Yukimura!?”

---

[aciditregulsy]

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[pamphletstoinspire]

Death, Where Is Your Sting? - Part 8

A Catholic Approach to Death: by Regis J. Flaherty

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Respect for the Dead

The Catechism reiterates a long-standing Jewish and Christian tradition of respect for the body of the deceased. Lack of proper respect for the physical remains of the dead is an offense against the Fifth Commandment: “You shall not kill.”

“The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy; (1)  it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 2300). The body of the deceased represents an individual who has been loved by God. God loved that individual so much that Jesus gave His life for that person. The respectful and reverential handling of the funeral and burial is consistent with the value of each individual in God’s eyes. People are not disposable. Whether rich or poor, they are precious in God’s sight.

The Scriptures show that human life is a gift from God, and the people of the Old Covenant saw it as such. Even though, for most of Bible history, the Jews did not have a fully developed understanding of an afterlife, they nonetheless treated the body, in life and in death, with respect. Even the Temple priests, who tried Jesus and contributed to His crucifixion, used Judas’ rejected blood money to buy a plot of land for the burial of poor foreigners (see Mt. 27:7).

There are a number of Scripture passages that emphasize the importance of respectful treatment of the dead. Those who fail to treat the body of the deceased appropriately are severely criticized. Meanwhile, those who reverently and faithfully bury the dead are praised. Tobit is identified as a just man because he buried the dead even when it put his life in danger:

In the days of Shalmaneser I performed many acts of charity to my brethren. I would give my bread to the hungry and my clothing to the naked; and if I saw any one of my people dead and thrown out behind the wall of Nineveh, I would bury him. And if Sennacherib the king put to death any who came fleeing from Judea, I buried them secretly. For in his anger he put many to death. When the bodies were sought by the king, they were not found. Then one of the men of Nineveh went and informed the king about me, that I was burying them; so I hid myself. When I learned that I was being searched for, to be put to death, I left home in fear. Then all my property was confiscated and nothing was left to me except my wife Anna and my son Tobias. (Tob. 1:16–20)

Appropriate grieving and a dignified burial are responsibilities that a pious man should not ignore. The author of Sirach writes: “My son, let your tears fall for the dead, and as one who is suffering grievously begin the lament. Lay out his body with the honor due him, and do not neglect his burial” (38:16).

The New Testament also shows the importance of the respectful handling of the body after death. After the crucifixion Jesus was wrapped in a shroud and placed in the tomb owned by Joseph of  Arimathea (see Lk. 23:50–53). Pious women who were followers of Jesus discovered that Christ had risen from the dead when they went to the tomb to anoint His body for burial (see Lk. 24:1–3). This anointing was a common Jewish practice that honored the deceased.

While dining at the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany, a woman came up to Jesus “with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard. She broke the alabaster jar and poured it on his head” (Mk. 14:4, nab). When others at table complained of the expense and “waste” of the oil, Jesus pointed to the value of her action. “Jesus said, ‘Let her alone. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me. … She has anticipated anointing my body for burial’ ” (Mk. 14:6–8).

A Worthy Vessel

Any vessels used for a religious purpose are to be treated with respect. The Church building is blessed and designated for a sacred purpose. Only appropriate activity is permitted within. If the Church is to be sold, there is a special ceremony that marks its transfer from sacred to secular use.

The chalice, paten, ciborium, and other liturgical items are treated with care and reserved only for use in the liturgy. Linens used at Mass are handled carefully and washed separately.

The human body in life held the soul — the breath of God — within it. In Baptism the Holy Spirit took up residence in that physical being. Every time that person received Holy Communion, Christ entered him or her in a tangible way. So, even in death, that body should be treated with the respect due any and every sacred object.

Cremation

Cremation continues to be a growing trend in many parts of the country. Some segments of the population are more open to cremation than other groups. Catholics have had a long tradition of opposition to cremation, so there is a great deal of confusion among Catholics about the appropriateness of cremation for the Catholic and about the regulations that govern such a choice. Since cremation raises so many questions, it is appropriate to review the topic in some depth.

History

The Jewish people of the Old Testament did not cremate their dead. The Bible reveals only one incidence of cremation. In 1 Samuel 31:12 it is recorded that the “body of Saul and the bodies of his sons … [were] burnt … [and] their bones buried.” It is unclear why cremation was chosen in this one incident, but it does stand out as unusual, and certainly was not the norm.

Christians continued the tradition of burial, often risking their lives to recover the bodies of the martyrs and provide a respectful burial for these saints. The Catholic Encyclopedia states: “The pagans, to destroy faith in the resurrection of the body, often cast the corpses of martyred Christians into the flames, fondly believing thus to render impossible the resurrection of the body.” (2)  Catholic teachers refuted this belief, stating that cremation did not hinder God’s power to raise the bodies of the deceased on the last day. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of the pagans was probably an added reason for the Catholics to avoid cremation.

The prohibition against cremation continued through the Middle Ages. Pope Boniface VII in 1300 decreed that a body could not be cremated even for the purpose of transferring the remains to another location. Boniface wrote that “bodies are either to be conveyed whole to the spot chosen or buried at the place of death until, in the course of nature, the bones can be removed for burial elsewhere.” (3)  In fact, he stated that to disobey this directive was grounds for excommunication.

This continued to be the unopposed teaching of the Church well into the nineteenth century. In the late 1800s the Freemasons, a strongly anti-Catholic group, gained government permission in countries that were traditionally Catholic to cremate dead bodies in direct opposition to Church teaching. The Masons practiced cremation, at least in part, as a statement against the Catholic teaching of the resurrection of the body. Many cremation societies were formed in Europe to promote cremation. The Church continued to prohibit cremation while still teaching that cremation was not a barrier to the resurrection of the body. Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) approved the following rules concerning cremation:

■ It was not permitted to join societies that had as a purpose the promotion of cremation.

■ It was not permitted to direct that one’s own body be cremated nor to cremate the body of another.

■ If their bodies were cremated, but against their wills, the baptized could still receive Church funeral rites. This could take place in a church or home, but not at the place of cremation.

■ If cremation was willed, “definitely and notoriously even until death,” it was not permitted to give that person burial in a church. (4)

Modern Times

In our own time cremation has become much more accepted. Certainly few would advocate cremation as a statement of opposition to the resurrection of the body at the end of time. Nonetheless, the Church still favors traditional burial over cremation. Canon law shows this preference: “The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed; nevertheless, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine” (can. 1176§3). Traditional burial makes a connection between the physical body being buried and the glorified body that will dwell for eternity in the kingdom of God. The prayers of the Funeral Rite refer specifically to the “body.” Also, traditional burial arguably emphasizes respect for the body in a way that cremation does not.

The moral theologian Germain Grisez gives an appropriate understanding of the Church’s present approach:

Longstanding Catholic practice favors burying or entombing the corpses of the faithful departed, since doing so provides a fitting sign of the hope that those now resting in death will soon rise to everlasting life. Nevertheless, cremation has been permitted in the past when necessary for a grave reason, such as control of a contagious disease. Today, while the Church’s law still encourages burial or entombment, it no longer forbids cremation, provided it is not chosen to express disbelief in the resurrection of the dead or for some other reason at odds with the faith. Therefore, a Catholic family may choose cremation if there is any other motive for preferring it. (5)

It is respect for the body that should be maintained no matter what the family chooses — full body burial or cremation. For this reason those who choose cremation are most strongly encourage to inter or entomb the cremated remains. The introduction to the 1997 appendix to the Order of Christian Funerals states:

The cremated remains of a body should be treated with the same respect given to the human body from which they come. This includes the use of a worthy vessel to contain the ashes, the manner in which they are carried, the care and attention to appropriate placement and transport, and the final disposition. The cremated remains should be buried in a grave or entombed in a mausoleum or columbarium.

The practice of scattering cremated remains … or keeping cremated remains in the home of a relative or friend of the deceased are not the reverent disposition that the Church requires. Whenever possible, appropriate means for recording with dignity the memory of the deceased should be adopted, such as a plaque or stone which records the name of the deceased. (no. 417)

The OCF on Cremation

The Order of Christian Funerals for the United States, which was canonically approved in 1989, assumed that the Funeral Mass would be conducted with the full body present. The 1989 edition of the OCF made no provision for a Funeral Mass with the cremated remains rather than the full body. However, a substantial number of Catholic families who chose cremation had the body cremated prior to making arrangements for the Funeral Mass. This created a pastoral problem. The parish had to deny the Funeral Mass when the family brought cremated remains rather than the full body.

Responding to “numerous requests and concerns,” in August 1996 the bishops of the United States requested an indult “to allow the presence of the cremated remains of a body at the Funeral Liturgy in dioceses of the United States.” Indults “are general faculties … granted by the Holy See to bishops and others, of doing something not permitted by the common law.” An indult grants an exception to the norm in response to “peculiar local conditions.” The Congregation for Divine Worship in March 1997 granted this request. The Vatican approved texts and rituals for use when the cremated remains are present at the Funeral Liturgy in July of the same year.

Even though cremated remains are now permitted at the Funeral Liturgy, the appendix to the OCF concerning cremation lists several important caveats:

■ “Although cremation is … permitted by the Church, it does not enjoy the same value as burial of a body” (no. 413).

■ The cremated remains at the Funeral Liturgy are permitted in “extraordinary circumstances” (no. 413).

■ It is still “recommended” that cremation “take place after the Funeral Liturgy” (no. 417).

■ Each diocesan bishop has jurisdiction in his diocese to permit or deny the right to conduct the Funeral Mass (no. 427) in the presence of the cremated remains.

■ The value of burial, especially in a Catholic cemetery, is emphasized (no. 417).

Paying for a Funeral

Respect for the body of the deceased does not mean that the most expensive casket or funeral is necessary or even desirable. Balance and prudence, not ostentation, are important. It is the full use of the OCF that is to be encouraged, not exquisite flower displays or stretch limousines. The moral theologian Germain Grisez emphasizes the benefit of a Catholic funeral and the “value of bringing family and friends together.” He does, however, have a caution.

In many respects current funeral practices are neither reasonable nor Christian. In affluent societies, even families of modest means often succumb to the sales techniques of the funeral industry, unreasonable social expectations, and confused emotions, for example, a feeling of guilt unless they provide a lavish funeral. Christian families should not feel compelled to conform to prevailing secular standards. (6)

________

(1) Cf. Tob. 1:16.

(2) William Devlin, “Cremation,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908), available at www.newadvent.org/cathen/04481c.htm.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Available at www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma19.php.

(5) Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord, Volume Two: Living a Christian Life (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), 719

(6) Grisez, Living a Christian Life, 719

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