#they need to make the tag limit like 60 or something i have too many thoughts

[triglycercule]

i am severely upset at the sexyman polls for this year. yeah its absolutely because im biased and not a single one of the mtt won. but killer vs error is still going on you say!!! NO,,,,, killer's lost,,,,, its 70 error 30 killerISH so yeah,,,,, none of the mtt MADE!!!! IT!!!! and with the boom in killer content these past few months i wasSO FUCKING SURE that he'd like AT LEAST get higher up. nope. because of ERROR. listen i like him. he was my og bias when i first joined this fandom. i was an error fanatic. but bro,,,,, bro,,,,,,,,, killer,,,,, lost,,,,,, AND FUCKING HORROR AND DUST LOST TOO!!!! LIKE WHAY. WHAT. PUTTING HORROT AGAINST ERROR AND DUST AGAINST CROSS!!!! THEYRE LITERALLY BOTH THE TWO GUYS THAT (1/2 of them) WON LAAT YEAR!!!! OF COURSE THEYRE GONNA BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THE MTT!!!!! this is very upseting im really sad imMAD. but no point in being a sore loser.... mtt won in my HEART 🧡

dust laughing at both horror and killer for getting the shit beaten out of them by error and then they bring up the fact that he lost to CROSS. this is the second time someone in the mtt lost to cross (theyre all making out in the loser's room) (mtt poly real btw)

[e-dubbc11]

Thank You for 400!!

Celebration Anyone?

Pic isn’t mine. Found it on Pinterest.

Greetings lovelies from my little blog!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who follows me, comments and reblogs my fics, throws a ♥️ at anything I post/write or sends a tag game my way.

To my pocket friends that I chat with on the regular and sometimes not so regular, you always bring a smile to my face when I see your messages.

I know interaction has been down here in the Tumblr-verse lately but I’ve decided to do a celebration anyway. I hope you’ll come say hello and drop something in my inbox ♥️

I don’t really have a name or a theme for this celebration so I’ll just say thank you again and the rules will be under the cut.

This isn’t limited to my followers, although I would love it if you did.

My two muses I write for are Matt Murdock and Billy Russo, although there are a few characters that I wouldn’t mind trying to write for ( Dean Winchester, Donald Pierce, Quinn McKenna, Brock Rumlow, but I’m really scared to. Maybe I just need a nudge 🤣

Send in as many as you’d like

Fuck, Marry, Kiss (or Kill if you wanna make it interesting) I’ll do characters from the following…

MCU

Supernatural

Netflix Series ( DD, Punisher, Defenders)

Boyd Holbrook characters

Ben Barnes characters

Fall Activity Moodboard 🍁🍂🎃👻🍺

It’s getting to be my favorite time of the year in my neck of the woods. I love everything about autumn. This one is for mutuals only OR if you have ever reblogged and commented on any of my fics.

Send in any character with a fall activity (apple picking, Halloween related, cider tasting, etc.) and I’ll make a moodboard for you

Song Lyric Prompt

Full disclosure, I am not a new music girl. I probably stopped listening to newer music around 10 years ago. But I love anything from the 80’s thru early 2010’s. (I love older music too from the 60’s and 70’s)

Send me a character and a song lyric (from those time periods) and I’ll see what it inspires me to write

Miscellaneous

Send me a character plus a fluffy or smexy gif and I can try to write a drabble/fic based off of that gif

Pick a scene from a fic of mine and I’ll write it from the other person’s POV.

Prompt Lists

I’ll leave some prompt/dialogue lists below and if something strikes your fancy, send it on over with one of my muses (or challenge me with a new one from the above list) and I’ll see what I can do with it. Or if you have one in mind not on these lists, that’s absolutely fine also.

Confessions of Feelings

Kiss Prompts

Hurt/Comfort Dialogue/Prompts

Random Dialogue Prompts

Autumn/Fall Dialogue/Scenarios

I’ll keep this open until September 16 CLOSED

Again, thank you all for following me, for commenting on my fics, just all of the things! Nothing goes unnoticed, I promise you ♥️ Everyone’s support means a lot to me and I hope you continue to like the content I put out. ♥️

Tagging some of my lovelies that always cheer me on and hug me from afar whenever I need it, thank you again!

@mindidjarin @saintmurd0ck @munsonownsmyass @ilovewhiteroses @ruflirtingwithme @russosafehaven @qu1etwolf @kayhi808 @k-marzolf @wheresthesunshinesblog @danzer8705 @snowkestrel @fictional-hooman @itwasthereaminuteago @fluffyprettykitty @mattmurdocksscars @theradioactivespidergwen @skvatnavle @imagine-a-fictional-boyfriend @music-indie-tv @idaofinfinity @vaguekayla @pedrito-friskito @wint3r-h3art @freshabogados @gijos @nutmeg17 @jvanilly

[mariatesstruther]

Have you talked about any headcanons of Tommy finding out maria is chronically ill for the first time 👀 I need more of this au

i have!!! i believe in my first post about maria having severe iron deficiency anemia i hc that for a long time in jackson it’s a secret only she and her father and maybe jackson’s doctor knows, because she’s private about needing additional help and has already worked incredibly hsrd to get the people of jackson to see her as capable as she is. being a black woman is one thing, but being a black woman with chronic fatigue and a tendency towards fainting spells is an entirely different playing field she doesn’t yet want to navigate

so she keeps it to herself. she hides her fatigue and cold feet and joint pain, until on bad days she can’t. sometimes her father notices and immediately makes up an excuse for them to go home; he often covers for her by saying he’s tired asking her to take him to go lay down. maria’s father is in his 80s, the oldest in jackson and the oldest man many of the kids born in jackson have ever met, so no one questions when he needs rest, or a day off, or even an entire string off days to himself—residents assume he’s being taken care of by his daughter, when really it’s the other way around. hank makes sure maria spends as much time as possible bundled up in her bed, warm water packs wrapped around her hands and feet with the comfiest towels jackson has. he asks dina’s older sister talia to bring them extra eggs and red meat with their meals—as maria’s best friend, she’s worked out at this point who really needs them, but respects maria’s privacy and space to do it without question

i think in this time where she’s trying to keep it private, tommy definitely notices something is up with her health wise that she’s not being forthcoming about. because he’s slowly but surely falling in love with her, he pays extra attention: he sees how she wears gloves on days even when the temperature goes up into the 60s, about once a month she seems to get a cold so intense she nearly dies, and about the same time during dinner every night, all the energy seems to drain out of her in one giant whoosh, leaving her barely able to talk to anyone but talia or her father (or, on days where God decides to bless tommy, him too) as she picks at what’s left of her food. eating wise too, she seems to need a lot of meats and grains: any seasons where jackson is limited on them, her energy seems to wane greatly. and he recognizes enough signs of chronic pain on her from joel, who always seemed to be tryin to hide winces and hold back groans, too. within six month of being in jackson he knows for sure that something is up, but he also knows it’s none of his business and maria could still kick his ass if she wanted to, so. he doesn’t ask

until the dreaded day she faints into his arms. (this next part is from my og iron deficient maria post, also under chronically ill maria au tag): after her father dies, no one in jackson besides talia and her doctor is left to know about her deficiency, because she doesn’t want to tell anyone. she’s not used to nor comfortable with people besides her dad caring and worrying about her, so she doesn’t expect anyone to want to know. she doesn’t think it’s useful information for the community, so why not just keep it to herself, right? wrong. tommy and jackson residents definitely find out because, one day while it’s a little too hot out she just, like, FULL ON faints while tommy’s repair group was working on a weak part of the wall. tommy catches her before she fell because he’s right there flirting with her, and everyone is like??????? YO???? MARIA??????? SOMEBODY GET THE MEDIC WTF??? everyone is freaking iut, including buckley, who is barking up a storm and whining and has to be comforted by talia while he attempted to lick at maria’s face

she wakes up a few seconds after and is just like “sorry yall :) happens sometimes” and everyone is like WHAT THE FUCK. MARIA. tommy and her bestie talia (dina’s older sis) very pointedly do not leave her side for like two days. buckley starts following her around for like two weeks straight until he deems that she’s Okay According To Buckley, Very Much Not Going To Faint. from then on tommy, talia, and the rest of jackson start paying a lot closer attention to their favorite local government gal

so so so much love to u @bearrycool

[lollipopsub]

~ getting to know your BL mutuals ~ 

I was tagged by @leonpob so lessgo

I’ve been stressed about this for days cause I need to make the RIGHT choices?????!

rules: answer the questions and @ some people. include the tag 'g2ky BL mutuals 2022' on your post so we can find everyone's answer.

what have been the BLs that took you by surprise this year?

I think I was the most surprised by Eternal Yesterday. I went into it expecting something more along the lines of Senpai, This Can't Be Love or Kabe Koji, which is kind of slapstick, lighthearted and not too intellectually challenging, but boy was I proven wrong. The show manages to take a ridiculous premise and turn it into a well-written, well acted story that is probably going to break my heart (at the moment the final episode is yet to air...)

what have been the BLs that you felt a bit a lot disappointed with this year?

Sing In Love.

I was excited about a grittier plot and a new Japanese production, but it just made me uncomfortable and I did not want to finish it.

Cherry Magic The Movie also felt like a letdown. It just bored me, honestly.

what has been your favorite BL this year?

omg i looked up a list to see which ones were from this year, and it was like 5 Japanese, 5 Korean, 5 Taiwanese and then 60 billion Thai😂

I think my favorites are Old Fashion Cupcake and Eternal Yesterday.

Old Fashion Cupcake is everything I wanted in a good drama; good pacing, relationships between characters that make sense, believable character behavior and good acting and also really hot actors.

Eternal Yesterday has just absolutely overwhelmed me. I am a sucker for melancholic stories (to the surprise of literally no one), and the way Japanese dramas manage to wrap up some quite profound thoughts about the world and what it means to be a human is something I really adore.

In Episode 6 when Koichi asks if it's impossible for the people you love to be tied in the same place; for two people to be equally important to and loved by you. Or Episode one, where Mitsuru says it's not that Koichi broke down his wall, but he opened a door through it.

I really thought about adding More Than Words to the list, but I feel like it shouldn't really be grouped into the BL-genre. I still feel like the frames of the genre are limiting many aspects of film-making and storytelling, and that it's more an LGBT+ story than a BL drama.

favorite BL couples (not just of 2022)?

BounPrem and YinWar I think. Now that Prem has gone independent, I just want him to drag Boun with him to Yin and War to create a Supreme Company for Hot People™ and to actually make the YinWar Concert Trailers into a really hot show.

Especially War is an absolutely incredible actor, so I just really hope the two of them will get some interesting projects in the coming year!

what's your non-BL favorite this year?

Silent.

No doubt, no question. It's so good. Everyone and their grandmother should watch it pls.

.... Oh wow I am really biased, huh? 😬😬

I didn't intend for every show on here to be Japanese, I just think the Japanese shows I'm mentioning are a lot more well-rounded than the Korean and Thai and Taiwanese counterparts that I've seen this year. I am intrigued by how Korea seems to be branching out more and embracing the genre not as adaptations of fictional stories, but as stories about people. I just feel like the genre is so old in Japanese medias that they're a step ahead and I like how the Japanese shows are carried by the stories of the characters and their little lives rather than some large, daunting outer factor.

I want to tag a lot of people but I am an awkward turtle so I don't have a lot of people to tag. I hope it's ok to tag @storge and @chaeunwoo 🥺

[2af-afterdark]

Oof, it's been a hot minute since I've sent you an ask... Sorry 'bout that and also for not sending you any New Year's wishes, irl stuff kept me pretty busy lately. I hope you had fun celebrating! <3

...Admittedly, part of the reason for my absence was that I've also been feeling unpleasantly drained by the Nightmare Pass missions, on top of everything else. I feel a little bad about pretty much coming here and complaining, but I'd like to hear your opinion since you have the Pass activated and I'm f2p, so I wonder how our experiences differ.

I feel like the rewards are.. lackluster, in all honesty. The yellow keys are nice, the frame is pretty... And that's about it. Aside from a small bonus of getting some gems after completing the daily missions, there's really not much to look forward to. It feels like there's far too much effort required and not enough rewards.

Not to mention the missions themselves. God, the missions. I hate the way they work with a passion. The fact that you need to log in daily is fine, the fact that you need to grind a bit is also fine... But then there's shit like "claim a likeability reward" which I'd love to do, except I only have one left over from Andrealphus and still half a Pass to get through. I remember you writing that it feels like being punished for unlocking content, and I completely agree. That's exactly how it feels. I am not going to waste all of my red keys in an attempt to get a new L-grade card since I have all S-grade devils maxed out already.

And speaking of wasting red keys! The "special draw" missions also leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I remember making those single-pulls while sighing deeply because, well, it just doesn't feel like all of the resources I'm consuming are going to be compensated. I spend Solomon's tears, both types of keys, a lot of energy (in-game and irl) and most of the time I get... A few boxes of randomised jellies? That I can get extremely easily through other means? At least make them select-type like the ones in event shops, damn it!

Basically, I'm salty and kind of sad. I love the game dearly, but I think I'm going to give up on the Nightmare Pass. Once I hit a likeability reward mission that I cannot complete, I'm out. The frame is pretty, but getting one from an event shop is going to be way easier and less stress-inducing. I don't want to burn myself out (any more than I already did) by trying to complete it.

So sorry for such a long rant, I ended up getting a bit carried away... I'm really interested in how the effort/reward ratio feels like with a purchased Pass. I'm not really active in the fandom (I pretty much only follow you and the official acc, lol) so I haven't seen people speak about it yet. Hopefully, at least some people have a better time with that hell of an event.

— 💛

So, I used my premium pass from the pre-order rewards on the Nightmare Pass so I could study the way it works from a p2p perspective. I must say, the reward you get in p2p are much better. I received many yellow and red keys, Solomon's Tears, Puddings, Books, Coins, etc. I had unlimited auto-fights in the nightmare dungeon so I can grind coins for the shop easily. Over all, the amount of rewards you get may justify the $60 price tag IF you can afford it and you want the card at the end. Also, this assumes they do this within limited quantities. Like, I would say once every few months at most. Maybe very 2-3 months at most. Still sucks you can only get the card if you're willing to pay out the nose for the rewards. I did look at the f2p rewards and... yeah, not worth it. That is a lot of grinding for very little payoff. I was getting 2-4 reward every day because I was getting the rewards for every tier so it felt more worthwhile.

Also, yeah. I have been playing the game less since the Nightmare Pass started because I was afraid of locking myself out of future requirements for the missions. I had trouble with likability (something I usually max out within 2-3 days of getting a new unit), I was afraid to level up characters and their skills, I wasn't promoting anyone, I wasn't doing anything because I was so afraid I would screw myself by playing the game.

That's why I think Nightmare Pass kind of sucks the most. I felt like I was being punished for having played the game up until this point. Some missions were, as you said, fine. Any missions involving pleasing someone in the Secret Club were fine (not the unholy board because some of those I had maxed out already and it was pain to advance them more). Any missions where I had to fight were good. That I can always do. But missions that have finite end points are terrible (there is a max number of levels characters can have, a max amount of promotions I can do, only so far I can go on an unholy board, likability stops at 100%, characters can only evolve 5 times before they are maxed). Those missions suck because I can screw myself by actually having invested the time into the game before the Nightmare Pass is even out. It actually sucked to basically stop playing this game because I was afraid to play and screw myself out of getting Gabriel.

And the missions are kind of sucky too. Because each stage only unlocks after the previous one is completed, it's hard to know what is coming up and easy to screw yourself. Not everyone has 20ST available multiple times. Not everyone hoards their keys to do the multiple draws over and over again. And having 25 stages that can only be unlocked once daily rather than continuously (since the one mission on each day is to login) it means that if you miss a few days, you are screwed. You can pay to unlock the path with Nightmare Coins, but that assumes you have enough (and each reward gets more expensive as you go).

Overall, Nightmare Pass feels like the kind of event that is aimed toward people who dedicate time to the game to complete the rewards, but those same people can easily get screwed if they put in all that effort too early. The nightmare Pass isn't terrible, but it definitely needs some tweaking. It's the kind of event I would only continue in the future if I really want the card/haven't invested so much I screw myself. Honestly, it feels like the kind of event you finish and only debate purchasing the other rewards after you see how far you've managed to get to see if you can justify the expense.

Also, never feel like you can't rant to me. I rant all the time. Goodness knows I rant all the time... I don't do it because I hate the game. It's me trying to point out issues for others and because I want to see things changed for the better.

[teaandinanity]

So I found a meme template for 'About You: Video Games' which I wanted to do except a) we all know I am incapable of Not Talking, b) the boxes were tall and skinny and that is Not Ideal for shoving game titles into because they generally need width to be legible, and c) what the fuck do you MEAN I can ONLY PICK ONE so I'm converting it into text form. Also I'm rearranging the order because all time fave should not be first that's what you wrap up with c'mon.

I am also hoping other people will steal this formatting and tag me so I can go 'ooh that sounds neat!' about other people's games lists.

[cut because this will probably go long]

1. Childhood Game

Cannot pick.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time still holds a soft and nostalgic spot in my heart. Music! Horseback riding! Puzzles! I was terrible at it and did not beat it but I LOVED it.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, which I also did not beat but which also nonetheless did SOMETHING to my id which persists to this very day, because it is fascinatingly batshit.

The Longest Journey has also left imprints on my id; I think it was the first adventure game I managed to beat, maybe the first game I managed to beat at all.I’d tried some of the King’s Quest games but I kept getting myself stuck in unwinnable situations and/or dying which obviously was not that fun. But TLJ wanted you to see the story; as far as I know, it’s impossible to get yourself into an unwinnable worldstate, so outside the sections where you’re beating your head against a puzzle it’s just wonderful.

2. Best Soundtrack

I already mentioned Ocarina but honestly a lot of the games I grew up with had excellent music, perhaps because the system limitations (midi instruments on a shitty tube television) meant the songs really had to be able to stand on their own. Other stand-outs for me include Legend of Mana and Final Fantasy VI, each of which has more than one song I remembered well enough to hunt down the soundtracks more than a decade after I played them. Also obviously there's things like Bastion now, which has amazing music, and Dragon Age: Inquisition has tracks that (between the music itself and the associations) give me Very Large Feelings.

3. Best Art Style

I have to at least mention Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning here. I still can’t believe a game that is this lovely while playing got such unutterably boring box art. Who did that to you, KoA:R, you deserved so much better. It's got the punchy, amped-up kind of color palette you see in World of Warcraft (which I love; gritty realism and unrelenting brown are boring) but with higher-quality textures and better models than an MMO that needs to be able to run on a potato can handle, and honestly the whole thing is just Nice To Look At. 

Also mentioning Legend of Mana again because the art was cute as fuck. A lot of the older pixel stuff had so much charm!

Throwing Winter Voices in, too, because while the game itself is an incomprehensible clusterfuck like 40% of the time, the other 60% it is quite lovely. It remains the only game where the SKILL TREE made me go, 'oh gosh that's so PRETTY.'

4. Relaxing Game

Flow is a good one. Also Stardew Valley. And Spiritfarer. Roots of Pacha.

5. Stressful Game

When I saw this one on the list I was like 'but I hate being stressed' and that is true but also:

Long Live the Queen is HORRIBLY stressful but also kind of neat?

And bits of Scarlet Hollow have stressed me out but I am VERY MUCH having a good time with that. Delightful horror-themed roller coaster of a game; it wants me to be having a good time even when I’m going AAAAAH! and trying to make impossible choices.

6. Tons of Hours Played

Rimworld. We’re not looking at my time played on this. 

Also every MMO I have ever played but especially WoW (which I am emotionally invested in still, WHY) and SWtoR (because if you let me decorate a house I will spend SO MANY HOURS decorating a house).

Also Crusader Kings, which is basically a Telenovella Creator if you’re successfully avoiding combat and is therefore delightful - I usually manage at least two generations of absolute nonsense before someone murders me horribly or I lose against the rebellion my aunt has raised because oops there are too many branches of the family tree and some of them are overly successful and have turned into kudzu and are now here to strangle me to death.

Also The Sims, over the course of all of these games the hours played are definitely horrifying. The hours just on 4 are um. Bad.

Baldur’s Gate 3 has over 100 hours already. Oops.

Dragon Age gets this also although that’s also why I haven’t replayed Inquisition; too much of it is spent schlepping across the Hinterlands  a g a i n.

7. Favorite Protagonist

For more defined characters: The MC in Gilded Shadows. So relatable. So snarky. Love her.

For less defined, I ADORE the Dark Urge route in BG3 - set enough to feel really connected to the world, but still so much freedom for the player to go nuts. Also the things that are set are UNHINGED, it’s fantastic.

8. Favorite Villain

[nervous villainfucker laughter]

Solas probably counts as an antagonist. Manerkol from The Soulstone War. Sarevok specifically in BG2:ToB when you could Found Family/Power of Friendship him into being less of a dick yes this was partly because I thought he was Very Hot shut up it’s not my fault his VA was Like That.

TBH if I find the villain compelling I probably also want to kiss him it is a recurring problem.

9. Favorite Ending

To The Moon made me cry, but like, in a good way.

The ending of Fire Emblem: Awakening was pretty darn satisfying imo.

I liked Tresspasser very much but I’m still a little irked that DAI was like ‘the real ending is DLC.’

10. Favorite Boss Fight

The final conversation in Trespasser. No, shoosh, it counts and I DESPERATELY want to see more climactic conflicts in games that aren't solved with violence. I loved Planescape: Torment and Fallout: New Vegas for letting me circumvent combat with other skills but Trespasser is the only instance I can think of off the top of my head where you just... Do Not Fight the Final Boss. The POINT is that you don’t fight. I love that.

11. Game You Always Come Back To

I have replayed Choice of Romance SO MANY TIMES and 95% of the time it is with the same MC. Ana is now a comfort character.

7KPP, partly for the fandom, which is full of friends <3

12. Guilty Pleasure

This would require me to feel guilty about my games and I generally don’t? I mean, I have admitted to playing the homophobic horse game to people I work with.

That said the homophobic horse game probably counts because I’m constantly like ‘why are you like this’ about the company as a whole and most of the people who work there and also a significant chunk of the player base.

Maybe World of Warcraft also. ActiBlizz as a company is more than a little bit Yikes.

13. All Time Favorite

I think I’m giving this to RimWorld. The base game was solid and fun and I played a zillion hours. The updates have been good. The dev actually listens to the player base about what’s wanted and then builds it into the game. Modding is allowed and adds some awesome stuff too. The expansions are great and add a ton to the game. It creates very compelling little stories. There are a bunch of youtubers with amazing playthroughs. I found a perfect map seed.

Like, my ALL TIME favorite game is the one in my head, that’s like 30% Breath of the Wild, 30% UnReal World, 20% RimWorld, 20% the homophobic horse game, but unfortunately that does not actually exist. Maybe if I win the lottery.

[liesoverthec]

OG 911 Character Details from Canon Pt 2

Hi y’all I’m back! I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who reblogged the last details post - I sort of just thought people would like it and it would die, so to see it travel and hopefully reach more writers was so great so thank you again!

Details under the cut since I went a little crazy 😅 and if this is your first time seeing this, the first part, and any future parts, can be found under this tag here!

Quick note before I get to the details - always, ALWAYS take details from dialogue or plot over details from the set or props if they contradict each other. The writers have the ultimate say over what happens on the show/for the characters, so whatever they say goes, even if it goes against something props has already laid down (eg, Chim’s birthday, sorry Libra crew. He’s an Aries or a Pisces). So keep that in mind for the future in case some of these details I have which are from props/set are changed in the future, or if you’ve noticed something yourself!

Also if you have questions, I am MORE than happy to answer them, although if you leave them in the tags on this post I’m probably gonna lose them, so if it’s something you’d genuinely like an answer to, drop it in my inbox! Besides my standard “ask” tags, I’m also tagging asks about canon details with this tag here. Every time I make a big post like this, I’m going to link all the asks I’ve gotten since the last post, but if you’re looking for more info in the mean time, that’s the other spot to look!

Buck has a grill on his patio.

Eddie doesn’t hang Christopher’s art on the fridge - instead it is either hung on the corkboard in Chris’ room to the left of the door, or Eddie puts it in an actual frame and hangs it using a hammer/nails in Christopher’s room. All the Diaz family has on their fridge is a bunch of bendy people magnets. (I absolutely ADORE him putting all this effort into treating Christopher’s art like it’s something you’d buy from a professional artist).

Info on everyone’s ages can be found here. (Little more discussion of Chim’s situation here).

Albert has a bachelor’s degree! I don’t know in what though, except that it’s some field for which is a Master’s is useful.

Athena was in a sorority in college, Delta Sigma Theta. Their website describes them as “ ...a sisterhood comprised primarily of Black, college-educated women ... [that] considers the issues impacting the Black community and boldly confronts the challenges of African Americans and, hence, all Americans ”, which I love for Athena, and feel is very in-character for her at that time in her life!

Chim is an aviators dude. When he wears sunglasses, they’re always aviators.

Athena also wears nothing but aviators.

Bobby wears square aviators.

Eddie, on the other hand, always wears Wayfarers.

Buck either doesn’t really like sunglasses or he constantly forgets he owns them, since we’ve only seen him wear them once in 60 eps, in a move I’m pretty sure was ONLY for dramatic effect.

Hen’s sunglasses change style over the seasons like her regular glasses do, but she tends to like browline sunglasses.

Info on Christopher’s school can be found here!

There are two colors of dispatch polo, and there doesn’t seem to be any rhythm or reason for who wears what. Maroon - Maddie and Linda. Blue - Josh and May. Jamal has actually worn both maroon and blue, so it doesn’t seem to be TOTALLY set in stone although I’ve never seen anyone else switch. Sue is too badass to wear a dispatch shirt.

Both Bobby and Eddie drive 4 door pickups. Bobby’s is navy. Eddie specifically has a black, 2020 GMC Denali 1500 pickup truck (in case you want to specifically look up what the inside of it looks like or what features it has 😂)

Info on the 118’s medical certifications can be found here.

Correction to Eddie’s living situation from last post: no next door neighbors, but instead UPSTAIRS neighbors. (Pointed out by Abigail in this ask). Also since someone else was wondering the notes of the last post - no, there is absolutely no discussion on the show of whether or not Eddie rents the apartment or owns it. But based on the fact that it’s 1) LA and 2) an apartment, my guess would be he rents it.

When Maddie isn’t feeling like herself, she tends to straighten her hair rather than curl it. It seems to be more when she’s uncertain about her place in her own and other people’s lives, rather than just when she’s simply worried - eg it’s straight in 2B, when she’s uncertain if she wants to continue working as a dispatcher/is unsure about her relationship with Chim.

For work, Chim, Eddie and Buck all use black duffel bags with a LAFD patch on the top. Hen uses several different cute bags, and Bobby seems to have a plain black duffel bag.

Watches - Bobby, Athena, Chim, Hen and Buck all wear their watch on their left wrist (but Athena ONLY wears hers for work, she takes it off at home.) Eddie wears his on his right wrist, and Maddie doesn’t wear one.

Chim (and Maddie by default) literally still have the exact same couch as in the pilot. (Which means that Chim has cuddled Tatiana on that couch, AND Albert has had sex on it. TIME TO GET A NEW ONE, BUCKLEY-HANS 😂)

The 118 has five different rigs - the engine (E118), the ladder truck (T118), two ambulances and the captain’s truck. 95% of the time, when the team is chilling in the cab of a rig and chatting (eg the ‘stuck under a live telephone pole’ scene in Jinx), they’re in the engine, not the truck. (Which I personally learned recently are NOT interchangeable terms!)

Athena and Michael got married when Athena was 37.

If you’d like to give Maddie a full name beyond “Maddie”, you should use Madeline. (I know, I know, in 4x04 she says Maddie is the name on her birth certificate, and that you should never use props details if they contradict script details, but I always thought that was a super weird exchange in 4x04 which could be explained by Maddie getting a nickname since she was born when Margaret and Phillip, you know, actually loved their kids and showed it, so of course Buck doesn’t get one, and in 4x04, Maddie was trying to avoid the entire issue of why she got one and Buck didn’t. But! Do what you want, and use Madeline as the full version of Maddie if you’d like, since that’s what’s on the BOLO in 2x13 😂)

Athena’s call sign is 727 L30, but she doesn’t have a specific squad car - the number changes throughout the series.

Chim really likes chewing gum, but he’s the only one out of the entire family!

The station has an Xbox One S, and it’s white.

In the real LAFD, there are stations 1 through 114. To avoid confusion while filming on the streets (I’m assuming), our fictional LAFD never uses the number of a real station. So if you want another station for a fic, and you want something that would be real in OUR universe, use the numbers 115 and above. They’ve gone as high as 221 in our universe.

Battalions - station 118 is in Battalion 7, which is also not a battalion in real Los Angeles. The 118 has interacted w/ Battalion 1, which is a real battalion, but other ‘non-real which makes them more likely for our universe’ battalions include numbers: 3, 8, 13, 16, 19 and above.

S1 Buck knew the term Jedi, but based on context, didn’t understand AT ALL the context provided by Star Wars, so there’s another edge of his pop culture limits for you.

Chim is the most tech-savvy out of everyone, hands down.

Athena has a VERY active Twitter account.

Abuela’s house number is 8902. I don’t have a street name for you unfortunately though. :/

Athena’s favorite flowers are white roses. None of the other women are really flower people.

Michael likes to wear purple.

When they’re at a call, Buck does pretty much all of the stuff with the hammer and the saw. Eddie does all the work needed with the drill.

Harry goes to Meadowbrook Elementary.

Buck lives on the fourth floor of his apartment building, across the hall from Apt. 416. The lovely @lovelessmotel found this listing for what is more or less the apartment. What happened was: the set crew rented this apartment for the one episode at the end of s2 when Buck moved in, and then over the summer before s3 built their own set of it, and changed some things - eg giving him an island, and moving the sink to a second counter against the far wall, you can see the changes here in this amazing gif set by the awesome Austen, but the listing should let you click around a little more upstairs and figure out dimensions better than what the show provides!

When Athena and Hen go out to eat together, it’s always fast food burgers and fries.

Waffles are Athena’s favorite food, and tiramisu is her favorite dessert.

Every takeout we’ve seen Buck eat has always been in a Chinese food takeout container, and we know he likes Thai food the best. EXCEPT! The one time we see him eat takeout with Eddie and Christopher, they have pizza. So take from that what you will......

Eddie has a cell phone and a landline.

Chim is a shameless multiple texter.

Chim and Bobby sleep closest to the door in their respective bedrooms (both right side of the bed if you are standing at the foot, facing the headboard), and Athena and Maddie sleep furthest away from the door (left side).

Some canon last names for other firefighters at the station in case you wanna add more people to a fic - Mitchell, Sanchez, Serrano (woman), Porter, Meyers (woman), Maxwell, Voyta

Hen and Karen really love decorating their house with dark/red wood.

Karen is Mommy and Hen is Mama.

Bobby has a brother, and a grandmother, and that’s literally ALL we know about his family outside of Marcy and the kids.

Evidence points to Eddie being the oldest child in his family.

Karen has multiple brothers (no sisters), but no idea how many - just that one of them is named Trey, and one of them lives in LA and has kids. They might be the same brother and they might not be.

Both Hen and Athena are only children.

Athena has been on the police force for 30 years.

Christopher and Denny are the same age (born in 2011), and Harry is two years older than them.

Michael lives in apartment 308.

The bank in this universe is CalAm.

Hen and Karen have a picture of Denny, May and Harry on their fireplace mantel.

Eddie having a black thumb + a lot of plants in his living room = him buying fake plants bc he likes the aesthetic ™ or someone (cough Carla cough) is taking care of them for him.

The COVID timeline in OG’s universe is fucked up compared to the real world’s, so it shouldn’t be used as a way to measure time! They just throw it in wherever it makes sense for the story they want to tell (eg the vaccines in s4 ep 8), since s3 was both done before COVID hit but also airing while it was happening. It makes absolutely no sense for May to graduate in March nor for Chris to be going to what is specifically labeled summer camp, and the vaccine plotline was INCREDIBLY early, even for real life, so don’t use anything from that as a measure of time. I’ve found except in specific examples, eg the two tsunami episodes, it’s very safe to say every episode covers a week - fall holidays on the show line up with their real life counterparts, indicating about the same amount of time is passing for us and them.

On that note - Jee-Yun was born in late January, early February 2021. (Conceived in Pinned, which was end of March/beginning of April, meaning Maddie was around a month along at May’s graduation in May ➡ 42 weeks + 3 days from then = late Jan/early Feb. Which unfortunately means we most likely won’t see her birthday celebrated on screen. If we assume she was conceived on the date Pinned aired, aka the very sexy hotel scene, then January 21st or 22nd would be Jee’s birthday, depending on if she was born after midnight or not.

Buck has had at least one other Jeep between the one Maddie gave him, and the one he has now, which means that when he needs a new car, he is purposefully choosing Jeeps.

I hope this was all as interesting/enjoyable to you as it was to me! And just to repeat - I love answering questions so pls let me know if you have any at all ❤

🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

Tagging: @buckbuckley

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

Mon 15 March ‘21

FIRST TIME GRAMMY AWARD WINNING ARTIST HARRY STYLES!! From the bottom of the stairs to the top of the fucking world baby, get itttt!! He won Best Pop Solo Performance for smash hit Watermelon Sugar-- the other two categories he was up for went to others but he was a dark horse for any of them so getting one is awesome! Yeah the grammys are shit but I’m so happy for him to see him receiving validation and acclaim from the industry that has never appreciated what he (and his bandmates) are and can do as artists, it’s a fucking start you know? We can enjoy the moment! Harry did! His acceptance speech was short and it feels like he was blindsided and forgot everything (including not to swear on TV and as pro as he is you know that means he was absolutely reeling, I love that) but later he said “I want to thank my fans for giving me an environment to be free to make the music that I want to make and supporting me along the way the last ten years”, yes that’s right we have helped you find a place to feel good, and “this is an incredibly sweet icing on the cake of what I get to do everyday so thank you.”

But that’s not all! He also performed, and wore things! Say what you want about Harry (or better yet please DON’T at least to me but that’s a losing battle) we always get so hyped up about even just seeing his outfits and he does not let us down! BLACK LEATHER, TITS FULLY OUT, DICK BANANA CHARM, AND A MUPPET BOA? Yeah he did that! Shirtless under a patent leather suit, I mean: wow. Very glam rock, very… well listen it’s just very GAY in like so many different ways??? Harry Lambert said they wanted “something darker, sexier, and more unexpected” which is definitely about that look I’m assuming and not the pastel thrift store rummage bin hodgepodge he wore later, unless Harry(s) and I have very different ways of interpreting “darker”. (Harry L also said “free the nipple” and we can all see that he MEANT it.) Harry red carpet-ed and accepted his award in a lavender muppet boa, tits slightly less out but still cleavagey, and with a seemingly random collection of other garments YES BABY OKAY you just WEAR THAT THEN! About that Harry L said, “we wanted to do something that felt British and eccentric, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll and a little bit camp,” but the people have spoken and they said ‘we think he looked like Cher from Clueless’ so, sorry Harry(s)! Esquire struggling to describe the look-- “the kind of thing that Styles seems to make wearable” klasjdlk the doubtful ‘seems’ is sending me. Either way we can definitely all agree on the camp part, and that the matching face mask (as seen in the audience shots and in adorbs pics of him camping it up with Lizzo backstage) is amazing, love that (even if he does spend way too much time nervously pulling it on and off omg just LEAVE IT) and it even went also with outfit number THREE (or at least it did as well as any of his anything went together lol) which was a big floppy orange coat and plaid pants and a THIRD BOA, a dignified (haha JK NOPE it’s still a muppet) black number this time.

It seems the performance was filmed in advance rather than done live-- there were clues suggesting this might be the case, but the real giveaway was when a picture from it leaked before the broadcast, lol. Way to make it so we “can’t even tell if it’s live or not” Ben, and why is he STILL so obsessed with trying to gaslight us anyway my god just say what’s prerecorded it’s fiiiine. ANYWAY Harry played Watermelon Sugar and only WS; well after all it is his GRAMMY AWARD WINNING SONG. Plus it was a really nice version, all smooth and funky, with a highlight of the night being Harry’s full on 60s girl group choreo move with the backup singers, omg. Those backing vocalists were the duo G.A.W.D., and there was extra accompaniment by fellow nominee Devonte Hynes aka Blood Orange (who also directed the performance and no I do not know what that means) and “Spencer and Josh” on horns (the closest I can find to someone crediting them so, apologies guys). Anyway! All of them (regular HS band included) were decked out in matching gucci black leather too and looking good. And Harry looked so happy to be up there performing, just beaming like a lighthouse, so overall- good good stuff, I just keep on dancin!

The real bombshell of the performance though was subtle and needed confirmation after for the excitement to really hit-- it was Sarah drumming  decked out in tight black leather and visibly pregnant!! That’s right, band drummer Sarah Jones is PREGNANT by (Grammy Award winning) guitarist Mitch, there’s a HARRY STYLES BAND BABY on the way!!!! WHAT A NIGHT! It wasn’t enough for Harry to find love in his own band, he’s somehow cupid-ing that energy all over the place and spreading it around, AMAZING!

And Liam comes through with not just a sweet congratulations for Harry (“what a huge moment, proud to be your brother” awwww) but also the final word on the performance look- goddammit it IS one of the rejected Best Song Ever video looks, LMAOOOO. But did he tag HSHQ instead of Harry directly in acknowledgment of how the awards system really works and that they are all to be congratulated or simply because it was easier? We will never know.

Additional tidbits-- bassist Hynes was apparently playing creative director Molly Hawkins’ dad’s bass- did we know her dad was a famous bassist who played with Fleetwood Mac and many other 70s stars?! If I did I had definitely forgotten! And more Molly news-- she’s also pregnant!! Harry will soon be surrounded by quarantine babies, dreams really coming true huh? Harry posted a pic of himself with Mitch and Devonte looking very cooool, we saw the ceramic watermelons label execs were sent for the WS release last year, and Rebecca Ferguson who knows 1D from way back when (and has recently drawn attention for talking frankly about how fucked up the industry is and about having seen unnamed boy band members literally slammed against the wall by their management) congratulated Harry and posted a couple of baby pop star Harry pics, cuuuute. Louis’ merch handlers, in response to no complaints whatsoever, sent out emails apologizing. They say they’ve run out of lanyards which were meant to be sent out so they will “be adding a freebie which we know you’ll enjoy” to affected customers’ orders. That is sucky about the lanyards but that’s customer care! Niall posted about his cool bright limited edition merch to remind that it will be gone gone gone tonight and also shared a pretty and touching picture from a the large anti violence rally held in London to protest the killing of Sarah Everard today. And finally some good advice from Bebe Rexha, loved by larries; she says she loves us right back but please don’t kill anyone for not streaming her new song! Yes good plan.

[la-li-lu-le-lol]

I have a thesis statement: There is a reason why there hasn't been another MGS1 remake since 2004, and that reason is because today, in this age, it would take way too much effort. Making all the assets and making the game HD and super pretty won't be an issue, that's the EASY part. Fans have been re-making Shadow Moses in the Unreal engine for literal years.

The hard part(s) is literally everything else that's not the graphics. The entire game would need a significant level design and gameplay overhaul because MGS1 was designed for the late 90s. Shadow Moses was physically designed with a top-down camera in mind, it was designed for backtracking to pad the game's short length (MGS1's game area is actually very small, as were a lot of early 3d games), even the sizes of rooms and placements of doors and hallways and level transitions were designed specifically to work with the polygonal rendering limitations that a fifth generation machine has. We're so far removed from all of that now, that don't worry about ANY of those things anymore.

A remake would require level design overhaul that still FEELS like the original Shadow Moses but is different to where it works with the conventions of modern Stealth-based level design. Likewise with gameplay - the backtrack for the sniper rifle and heating/cooling the cards, nah nah. Leave that shit out. Also, what do you even do about the codec? Turn it into cutscenes? Have it be audio-only, like in MGSV? If it's like that, then the devs have to worry about making sure the player doesn't progress too far while the codecs are playing and potentially sequence-break. If it's turned into cutscenes, then whole-ass amounts of shot direction, modeling, and motion capture will be needed. (Potentially, something like MGS4's codec might work, but that was 2008...)

It would basically require the amount of effort and original thought that went into making FF7R, something that no small studio can do without barrels full of money.

What makes this extra difficult is the amount of pressure and hype surrounding the idea of an MGS1 remake, which is expected to be perfect and faithful by the series rabid cult following, but also it paradoxically cannot be perfect if it is faithful, and if it's not faithful in order to gel with modern game design, it'll get shit on if it's not the most amazing re-imagining in the world. In other words, the idea of an MGS1 remake screams "big fat risk that will require way too much work for not a lot of payoff"

I know people THINK they want a highly faithful, "Twin Snakes but HD"-esque MGS1 remake, but we're about twelve years too late on that being an acceptable style of release. I can tell you now that playing a "faithful to a fault" remake would expose MGS1's many weaknesses that naturally come from being 24 years old lol. It would be way too short for its 60$ price tag, way too easy, and way too clunky standing up against remakes like FF7R.

Anyway, yeah. Them's my pessimistic realistic cranky old lady thoughts.

[ram-reads]

End of the Year Reading Tag

I was wondering if something like this was going around! Thank you @ninja-muse for tagging me 💖

did you reach your reading goal for the year (if you had one)?

I hate to say it, but no I didn’t. My original reading goal was 72 and I was basing that number off of how many books I read in 2020 (which was 67). Then I realized that was stupid because I was out of work in 2020 for months so I had all the time in the world to read and now I don’t, so I ended up changing my reading goal to 60...still didn’t make it though. I did get up to 56 so I’m not too disappointed. I also don’t keep track of all the fanfiction and webcomics I read which is a lot so I know I technically did make my goal. 

what are your top 3 books you read this year?

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, The Deep by Rivers Solomon, and Master of One by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett.

what’s a book that you didn’t expect to enjoy quite so much going in?

A Universe of Wishes anthology edited by Dhonielle Clayton. I decided to read it because someone was looking for a buddy and I knew it was on my list. Didn’t think it would amount to anything special. Then I ended up liking all but three of the fifteen stories. I’m actually hoping most of them get turned into full length novels because I became too attached to some stories and need more.

were there any books that didn’t live up to your expectations?

Sadly, yes. The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley. I’ve liked all of her books, so this was a bigger disappointment than usual. 

did you reread any old faves? If so, which one was your favourite?

I don’t reread books since I don’t have a lot of time to read and would prefer to read books I haven’t read before when I do. That being said I found myself going back to Nine by Zach Hines throughout the year to reread my favorite moments. I’ve been craving a sequel but I don’t think it’s going to happen so I’ll just have to satisfy myself with the one book. 

did you dnf any books?

YES! I’ve actually been meaning to make a post about this because it’s the first time I’ve dnf’d a book in my life. I’ve finally gotten to a point where I’m tired of wasting time reading books I’m not enjoying. The book in question is Son of the Storm by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. I got about halfway through the book, but I wasn’t connecting with any characters and I didn’t care about the plot so I finally gave up and let it go. It was such a great feeling. 

did you read any books outside your usual preferred genre(s)?

I’ve never been big on literary fiction but The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. sounded so good so I gave it a shot. It was a pretty good read and I wish more people knew about it.

what was your predominant format this year?

Print always. I don’t have the attention span for audiobooks and my tablet is too big to hold comfortably for ebooks.

what’s the longest book you read this year?

According to Goodreads my longest book was The House of Hades by Rick Riordan because my edition had two additional short stories in it. I didn’t read those though, so I think technically my longest is Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo at 607 pages. 

what are your top 3 anticipated 2022 releases?

I actually don’t know a lot of what’s coming out in 2022 so my options are limited, but I will say The Ivory Key by Akshaya Raman, So This Is Ever After by F.T. Lukens, and The City of Dusk by Tara Sim. 

what books from your tbr did you not get to this year, but are excited to read in 2022?

Oh, man there are so many. Where do I start? The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir, Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell, Legendborn by Tracy Deonn, and A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske.

Tagging @bvkspine @rensreadingrainbow @ireadiguess @otsoreads if you’re interested (and sorry if you’ve already been tagged)!

[ahiddenpath]

Digiwrimo Ideas

Hey guys!  So I mentioned the idea of a gentler Nanowrimo for the Digimon Tumblr fandom a while back, but it was buried in a post about something else.  So here’s a post dedicated to the (theoretical) event!  

I’ve always wanted to have Nanowrimo buddies, but joining Nanowrimo is a hard sell.  Nanowrimo entrants attempt to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November, or 1,667 words/day.  It’s brutal, and a lot of writers (reasonably) don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole.

I would love to create with my fellow digimon fandom writers for a month, so I wondered…  Would anyone be interested in a modified Nanowrimo, aka Digiwrimo?  

This event is about tackling content on your to-do list and building/encouraging the habit of creating daily.  I haven’t worked this out, but there would be no prompts or limitations (except for likely limitations on what can be reblogged on the event blog; for example, no explicit content/other sensitive subject matters).  Digimon content from all seasons/games would be welcome.  

More beneath the cut, if you’re interested.

Setting goals

Entrants are encouraged to set individual goals that fit their needs.  Sample goals include:

-Word count:  The traditional 50K, 30K, 20K, 10K, 5K written in the event month.

-Writing habit/session goals:  Make a promise to yourself to write for 60 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day every day in the event month.  They say it takes about a month to establish a habit, so this could be a fun way to set up your daily writing habit!

-Project goals: Finish that oneshot you’ve been meaning to write!  Write 1, 2, 3 chapters of your fic!  Write that meta collection/drabble collection!  

If we work together, it’s much better!

-Discord for Digiwrimo with weekly write-ins

-Declare your project and share updates on the Discord

-A Digiwrimo blog to reblog all posts tagged with an agreed on tag

Share your work

-Digiwrimo entrants are encouraged to edit/complete their Digiwrimo manuscripts for a month or two.  Then, anything posted on personal blogs with an agreed on tag will be reblogged on the Digiwrimo blog for signal boosting, barring sensitive subject matters.

Those are my initial ideas!  I have no idea if people would want to do this, I just…  I’ve heard a lot of variations of, “I want to try Nanowrimo, but it’s just too much.”  I thought this event might be helpful for people?  It probably won’t be scheduled for November, so that people who want to join Nanowrimo can do that.

There are a LOT of upcoming digimon events scheduled on Tumblr, though, so maybe this is just one thing too many?  Heck, this also doesn’t have to be an official “event.”  If a few of you would like to try this with me, we can do that, and I’m happy to reblog your stuff when we’re done, barring sensitive subject matters.

I wrote this with writers in mind, but there’s no reason why an artist can’t work with these goals (finish that piece/series from my to-do list, draw for x time per day, etc).  The more, the merrier!

Please let me know if you’re interested!  And thank you to my pals who have given feedback :D

[druidx]

Family Treasures

Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go (2015) Context: A friend linked me a TAG fic with the most perfect description of Lasagna I have ever read. I then got carried away and read nearly every fic she recommended to me... and then I figured I should watch the 2015 version of Thunderbirds (having only seen fragments of the original ‘60s show as a kid)... and then this happened. I’ve also been leaning heavily into the subtext thing still, so constructive criticism, with subtext in mind, is welcome on this piece. Words: 1700 CW: Injury mention, worried people, minor maudlin thoughts Tagged: @viawrites-andacts​​ @strosmkai-rum​​ @scribeofred​​ Read on AO3

Kayo paces. Her sleek leather boots sink into the plush carpet of Tracy Island's lounge. She has been grounded by injury, left to recover while the Tracy boys are out there doing what they do best. She trusts them; knows they know what they're doing, knows they can handle themselves... But it doesn't help. Her fingers itch to activate the comms, but she doesn't. The boys don't need her micromanaging, and she trusts John to forward anything if he thinks she can assist... But still, the ache remains.

Those leather boots softly tap as she reaches the parquet flooring, and Kayo finds herself standing in front of Jeff's desk. It's a big, sturdy, mahogany thing. Impish sunlight glints off the polished surface, winking and laughing. It makes her think of Virgil. The sun drifts behind a cloud, and the laughter vanishes. She turns away.

Her steps lead her to the portrait of Thunderbird One, and the nicknacks beside it. Her eyes slide over the portrait – seen a hundred times before – to an antique barometer on the shelves. And there is Scott: Quicksilver in a glass; carefully controlled vim and daring. She pictures him in freefall, madcap laughter stolen by the rushing wind. The thought of his pack failing at fifty thousand feet is enough to have her leaning against the wall, head reeling like she's nosediving, seconds before the impact that has left her arm in a sling, and Thunderbird Shadow a pile of scrap.

Kayo huffs out her indignation at her weak and maudlin thoughts, wrenching back from the wall. She pinwheels away, her boots marking out time on the parquet as she passes in front of the vast window. Outside the sun glimmers off the swimming pool. Bright. Cheery. Such a laughable contrast to the storm inside. She wishes it were raining, dark skies and tempestuous winds. The bowl of forget-me-not blue is almost mocking in its temptation. She closes her eyes, breathing deeply, and brings herself back to ground level.

Kayo finds herself in the far corner of the lounge, at a kitschy '60s coffee table tucked into the fold of the room. On its surface sits a porcelain pug, which reminds her of Sherbet – and, by extension, his owner. It appears delicate – a dainty conversation piece; but her foot knows it is sturdier than one might think. Her eye catches on a woollen beanie, abandoned next to the pug – and she scowls; Lady Penelope has Parker to keep her from serious trouble. Kayo's brothers are up there without their usual safety net.

She turns back, pacing towards the piano. She plays only a little; her mother insisted, to start with. But after a year of tantrums and sword fights, Mama Kyrano gave up. But the island is empty – even Grandma Tracy is on the mainland – and the house is too quiet.

Kayo sits down at the piano and raises the lid, leaning absently to the side as a small, spring-loaded, plastic frog sails over her shoulder – the latest victim in the ongoing prank war. Her fingers wander over the ivories, and she settles into picking out Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in the upper third. As the sweet notes fill the air, Alan comes to mind – bright, lively, graceful; effortless as the rising music. Kayo lifts her head as if she might somehow see to the edge of space; see Thunderbird Three shimmering with star-stuff as if picked out in the silver, gossamer notes she plays. She dismisses the fanciful thought with a twitch of the lips, finishing the refrain.

As her hand falls still, she looks across the room, gaze drawn back to Jeff's desk. She remembers the moment he asked her to become his head of security – when Papa Kyrano retired. She'd not long returned from her last field stint with Mossad when he'd called her to the desk. His lips had asked her to help him protect the world; his eyes had asked her to protect his boys.

Kayo sighs, the guilt of disappointing the indomitable Jeff Tracy laying heavily over her shoulders. She closes the lid and turns on the stool, intending to resume viewing life through the plate-glass barrier, when her foot nudges the plastic amphibian, abandoned on the floor. She picks the thing up, lips quirking at the cartoonish features – the bugging eyes and wide, red grin – and is inexplicably reminded of Gordon. Kayo places it on the piano, where it wobbles, brilliant green out of place on the ebony-silk surface. Three birds, two star-men, but only one squid-boy. She purses her lips and tries to tell herself the unease this thought causes is about lack of process redundancy. Perhaps she should expand her skillset in an aquatic direction...

She stands with purpose and walks over to the nook in which sits Goron's transport chute. But as Kayo reaches over to activate the chute, a flicker of something catches her eye. Her free hand is already fumbling for her stun-gun when the interloper reveals itself: a long-legged tropical spider has found its way into the aquarium. It flails and panics, and she wonders if it might drown. But even as she watches, it's already hoisting out of the water and building a complicated nest in the corner of the tank. Kayo watches it work, watches its ingenious use of resources in an unfamiliar environ, watches it engineer a refuge... and thinks of Doctor Hackenbacker. Distracted from her previous thought, Kayo turns away from the chute access, making a note to tell Gordon about the spider. She doesn't think it's a threat to the fish, and the lid is a four-handed affair. Besides, knowing Gordon, he'll want to coddle the thing before he releases it.

Instead, Kayo climbs to the mezzanine. Somewhere in the aether, a stack of security reports grows ever larger, but she is unable to read them, to even consider distracting herself with them at a time like this. Worry still fills the well of her stomach, bilious and vile. There are too many close calls, too many near misses. Too many times she's snatched one of her brothers from certain doom. She's so useless here. Idly, she picks up a blown-glass paperweight. Does John ever feel like this? she wonders as she stares into its nebulaeic swirls. Drifting high above them, like a flame-haired malāk – a messenger of God – with his brothers so far from his grasp, does John ever feel powerless? She wonders how he does it: how he can stay so removed from the action, remaining so calm. She wonders how he manages the silent panic that maybe this is the mission someone does not come back from.

The glass has chilled her hand, chasing phantom skeins of cold and fatigue through her body. Kayo carefully replaces the paperweight and makes her way back down the stairs. She settles into the sofa lining the conversation pit, a hand falling to her side as she allows her body to sink into the plush stuffing. Something rough touches the side of her hand, and Kayo fishes out a blackened cookie from where someone – Gordon or Alan, most likely – has stuffed it between the sofa cushions. Kayo screws up her nose, making a noise of revulsion. It's been at least a week since Grandma Tracy tried baking again. Mouth still in a down-curve of disgust, she leans to put the cookie on the table but finds herself pausing as the light sluices across its dark, oleaginous, undulating surface. It reminds her of the Iceland mission and the pictures of cooling magma Doctor Hackenbacker proudly showed off – and his lecture on igneous rocks. Created by fire, he'd said, melded and reforged into something tougher. Used the world over – even here on the island – as foundations. Unshakable and resistant to all the world could throw. It makes her think of the island's second foundation, of all Grandma Tracy has been through, and yet still stands firm and loving despite it.

She wishes any of her extended family were here, now. Like that spider, Kayo feels out of her depth, could do with someone strong, cheery, soothing; a solidity under her feet. But they are not.

Kayo is a woman who knows when her limits have been met. The island is empty, there's no one around to witness the break caused by cracks of worry, pain and fatigue. Her lip wobbles, vision growing hazy with tears. She gives a small sob, then another, allowing herself the luxury of a little cry.

"Kayo?" She sniffs, swatting at her eyes, and looks up to see Alan's hologram looking down at her, eyes pinched with worry, tone edging towards frantic. "Kayo, is everything okay? John-" "John," comes the even tone of the auburn-haired man who appears next, "should be more careful about what side remarks he makes while on comms to his worry-wart little brother." He rolls his eyes. "Sorry to disturb you, Kayo. But your telemetry did do something unusual a few moments ago-" "Kayo? Alan pinged me. What's your status?" Scott cuts in, as if they are in the sky and all is normal. Before Kayo can say anything, Lady Penelope appears, the picture of decorum and class as usual. "I'm sure it was nothing. Isn't that right, darling? Just a little wobble, eh?" her Ladyship says. "'Wobble'?" asks Gordon, from where he and Brains cluster behind the pilot of Thunderbird Two. "What the hell does- Hey!" Kayo's lips twitch in amusement, as Gordon rubs his head from where Virgil has given him a brotherly love-tap. "It means: keep your nose out, squid-boy," Virgil tells him. "Is everything okay, Kayo dear?" says Grandma Tracy. "John asked me to- Oh," she adds, looking at the packed comm channel. "Well, it looks like you all beat me to the pinch." She smiles and rubs the back of her neck. Kayo looks over her family with a swift, critical eye. Apart from Gordon's head, they all appear healthy and uninjured. Relief floods through her, loosening tense muscles. Her wry amusement turns into a full-blown smile. "I'm alright," she says. "Like Penny said, it was just a little wobble. Everything is F.A.B."

[bonsaiiiiiii]

100 Weird AU's? Yes.

So, I had these AU prompts on my phone for quite a while, and I was actually thinking about using them. And what better way to do it than using them with the Tracy's?

Reading and reading these prompts again (and under the gentle guidance of @willow-salix ) I thought that these prompts doesn't exactly match the brothers' everyday situation, but what if we push it past its limit? Yes, biting more that you can chew can be a little difficult, but I don't think it will be impossible. And that's where this challenge is born!

Get the Tracy's out of International Rescue's bubble and let them live an everyday situation as normal people! They can also be medieval nobles or even futuristic robots, the choice's up to you! You can choose from soo many things others don't even think about (and not even me, for a while)!

Many thanks to @tag2060 for the cover and @willow-salix for the support (both emotional and 'fic-ical'. I love both of you💚

NOTE: THESE PROMPTS AREN'T ALL MINE. I TOOK THEM FROM A GIRL I'M NOT IN CONTACT WITH ANYMORE, BUT I WAS TOLD I COULD USE THEM. ALL CREDITS FOR THESE AU'S GO TO HER, WHATEVER IS HER NAME (lmao). THE GOLD MARKED ONES (7, 11, 20, 23, 39, 47, 63, 64, 70, 83, 89, 91, 93, 96, 100) ARE ALL MINE, IN SUBSITUTION OF A FEW THAT WERE THERE, SO CREDIT FOR THE GOLDEN MARKED ONES GOES TO ME, BUT NOT EVERY ONE OF THEM.

NOTE²: SOME OF THE PROMPTS CONTAIN STRONG THEMES, LIKE DEPRESSION AND SEXUAL CONTENT. IF YOU'RE SENSIBLE TO THESE THEMES, DON'T DO THEM, NOBODY FORCES YOU IF YOU DON'T FEEL COMFORTABLE.

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ:･ﾟ✧(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ:･ﾟ✧(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

To participate in this challenge, all you have to do is take one of the AU prompts from the list, one or more (or all) Tracy characters, and post your fic (can be a ficlet, or a series) under the tag #100weirdTracys and #100weirdAUs.

If you don't want to participate, please don't harass/bully me. I made this challenge just for fun, and I don't want for it to feel like something bad. In fact, I don't even regret doing this thing, even if it's strange.

Ah, I almost forgot: this challenge will be over in December, so you have 4 months to choose a prompt and make a fic about it. On December I'll review all the fics, but I'll always be reblogging and reading during these 4 months lol.

If you want to tell me something, hit me up on DM's! I hope you have fun with those prompts and those bois!

(づ￣ ³￣)づ(づ￣ ³￣)づ(づ￣ ³￣)づ(づ￣ ³￣)づ

TO RESUME:

• Swearing is allowed.

• You can write as many words as you want!

• Oc's and muses can pop in too!

• Make sure to tag your fic(s) under the '#100weirdTracys' and '#100weirdAUs' tags, so that I can find them easily.

• Always tag or contact me if you need help with anything! I'll be more than glad to help you!

• If you decide to do the mature prompts (19, 90, just to state an example) please refrain from using a too mature language and don't go further than making up. I don't like that kind of language, so it would be peachy to just avoid writing so they make wild sex behind a bush. Any kind of very mature fic or language won't be read by me, I'm sorry. You can still use those prompts, but don't work their bed life too much.

• Any dialect or first language apart from english is more than welcome in this yard! I would love even to read snippets of foreign language in fics, as long as there's a translation near it, but you're not forced to write in another language. If you don't feel comfortable doing it just don't do it, even if I'm telling you. (For the record, I love Irish so much I could listen to a person speaking this language for hours and you won't hear me complaining).

• I will accept this challenge in whatever form it takes, be it a fic, a drawing, a song, etc. I’m open to anything and I watch everything that comes before me!

φ(．．)φ(．．)φ(．．)φ(．．)__φ(．．)

That said, you can find the prompts down here:⬇️

 #1 I saved you from drowning!AU

#2 I broke into your house at two in the morning because I was drunk and I thought it was my house!AU

#3 I am a door-to-door seller please buy something!AU

#4 I grabbed the wrong luggage at the airport!AU

#5 I know we hate each other, but a wedding would be more convenient for both of us!AU

#6 I accidentally poured you a love potion!AU

#7 I sent you 12 messages but you left me on read!AU

#8 I am your secret admirer and I leave you anonymous cards!AU

#9 Sorry, but I was first in line!AU

#10 We don’t know each other but let's pretend to be together because someone is bothering me!AU

#11 We pack up to do a funny trip but we end up in Bolivia without fuel!AU

#12 Locked in quarantine and we're bored! AU

#13 I do everything to find out the identity of this superhero and you try to mislead me because it’s really you!AU

#14 I got into a taxi just to find out it was already occupied!AU

#15 I called the wrong number!AU

#16 I got into the wrong car OMG I'm ashamed, but while you’re there why don’t you give me a ride!AU

#17 I found a wallet and my business is to find the owner and return it!AU

#18 I am a street artist and you complain that I play in front of your house at night!AU

#19 I caught you watching porn!AU

#20 We're two strangers that start chatting while waiting for the bus!AU

#21 Nosy and sloppy roommates!AU

#22 Old childhood friends who come back after years!AU

#23 I got shot to the arm/leg but you're there to save me and OMG ILY!AU

#24 We’re sitting next to each other on a plane and please don’t throw up on me!AU

#25 We accidentally switched phones!AU

#26 We are both contestants in a reality show and let's pretend to be together because the audience will ship us!AU

#27 I am a wedding planner and my ex’s wedding had to happen to me!AU

#28 I learned sign language to communicate with you!AU

#29 Professional model and novice photographer!AU

#30 Sorry I ran you over!AU

#31 We make out and then I find out that you are my roommate’s boyfriend!AU

#32 I’m quoting aloud the last book of a series and I’m spoiling you!AU

#33 It is a universally acknowledged truth that a bachelor with a large fortune must be looking for a wife!AU

#34 I am a Partisan and you are a fascist!AU(Italy during World War II!AU)

#35 I am the blood of the dragon!AU (Iron Throne!AU)

#36 Your dog is hitting on mine!AU

#37 I’m depressed and I decide to call a hotline!AU

#38 You are my soulmate but I am in love with someone else!AU

#39 Strange encounter at tattoo shop!AU

#40 On my mark, unleash hell!AU(Roman Empire!AU)

#41 I am an Elf, don’t look at me for ears I am ashamed of!AU(The Lord of the Rings!AU)

#42 Maybe my life should be more than just survival!AU(The 100!AU)

#43 I am an activist and I am trying to convert you to the cause!AU

#44 We are occupying the school but you are a spoilsport!AU

#45 All our friends are drunk and we're not!AU

#46 We’ve been together for three months and now you’re telling me you’re a werewolf!AU

#47 X has to go into a rocket to the moon and Y has to train X!

#48 Knight in shining armor and damsel in distress!AU

#49 We reluctantly team up against the zombie apocalypse!AU

#50 I’m a vampire and your smell is driving me nuts!AU(Twilight!AU)

#51 Monsters have attacked the Earth and the only way to save humanity is aboard giant robots piloted by two people who must maintain a mental union!AU(Pacific Rim!AU)

#52 My timer stopped as soon as I saw you!AU(Soulmate!AU)

#53 I need a lawyer and you are the best!AU

#54 I’m a Viking and I plundered your ship!AU

#55 I’m a classic dandy from the Regency Age and you’re just a silly girl from the lower middle class!AU

#56 I’m a policeman and you’re an intrusive journalist and I really shouldn’t give you any information about the new murder!AU

#57 You are a wannabe actress and I am a theatrical director who is losing patience and health!AU

#58 Due to a computer error, X and Y become college roommates!AU

#59 X wants to see the world of Y, how he lives and what he usually does, and ends up spending a night in prison!AU

#60 I attend the yoga course just to watch how flexible the instructor is!AU

#61 I am a bounty hunter and you are my prey!AU

#62 I am a secret spy and pretend to be your friend only to get information about your father!AU

#63 I discuss with you about a thing but you have in mind another!AU

#64 We are forced to be best friends just because our moms were best friends too but you're too bossy for me!AU

#65 We broke up but I never changed emergency contacts and now I’m in the hospital and they called you!AU

#66 I am an angel and you are a demon!AU

#67 I hit you on the balls during a game of paintball and oh my god I am so sorry!AU

#68 We live in a dystopian world where your partner is chosen by society!AU(Matched!AU)

#69 I’m a dragon trainer I’ll prove to you that they are peaceful creatures!AU(Dragon Trainer!AU)

#70 Date at japanese restaurant!AU

#71 You’re a cheerleader and I’m a punk and we live in two different worlds!AU

#72 I was a zombie and I was "re-animated" but you treat me like I’m still a monster!AU(In the Flesh!AU)

#73 I am your son’s teacher and I am calling to talk to you about his conduct, would he also come to dinner with me!AU

#74 I am an Achaean warrior and you Trojan and we are fighting the Trojan War!AU

#75 I met my asshole boss at the bar but I found out he’s pretty cool!AU

#76 It was not my intention to touch your ass, it’s just that the bus is crowded, it’s not my fault ok!AU

#77 I went fishing and accidentally fished a mermaid!AU

#78 I just committed a crime and I need to use you as a hostage!AU

#79 You’re the bastard who always parks in front of my door and in spite I’ll scratch your car!AU

#80 I accidentally went back in time and fell in love with you, too bad you’re a barbarian!AU

#81 I urgently need you to fix my computer but please don’t judge me for my chronology!AU

#82 I work on the cruise ship where you are spending your holidays!AU

#83 I'm out in the rainstorm without an umbrella because the weather forecast was sunny!AU

#84 I hugged the wrong person from behind!AU

#85 Celebrity on the run and ordinary citizen confused!AU

#86 Stuck in a ranch cleaning horse poop but it doesn’t matter because that cowboy is a badass!AU

#87 We got married in Vegas, but we’re total strangers!AU

#88 But, officer, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was just smoking a joint, want a hit!AU

#89 X is an astronaut and Y is a weird but funny alien that likes to scream, overreact and laugh!AU

#90 I slept with you for a bet but I loved it and I’d like to keep seeing you!AU

#91 I reveal to some friends that you wear boxers/underwear with green aliens on them but you're behind me and oh gosh total shame!AU

#92 Oops I accidentally entered a busy dressing room!AU

#93 You're a stranger but I keep crossing paths with you and I'm kinda confused right now!AU

#94 X is a medium and Y a ghost!AU

#95 X is a guardian angel and Y wants to die!AU

#96 X accidentally enters in a cat and Y has to rescue it from up a tree!AU

#97 X risks losing the house because Y’s company wants to buy the land!AU

#98 I’m an artist and I need a model do you want to pose for me!AU

#99 I’m not really sick but the new doctor is so beautiful that I found out I have a disease with an unpronounceable name!AU

#100 A strange job application!AU

φ(．．)φ(．．)φ(．．)φ(．．)__φ(．．)

If you find them more practical, I also have some photos down here with all the prompts organized:⬇️

That said, enjoy! Hope it brings you joy and makes you happy while you do it!💙💚🧡💛❤💜💖🖤

[huenjin]

Do you have any advice for skz smut authors that are just starting out or have things that you wish you knew when you started? You seem so so sweet and I hope that you are having a lovely day/night! ♡♡

disclaimer: i am not a native english speaker (though it is the language i speak about 60% in my life). the content written below are purely my observations and nothing more than that. it is what i do on my blog and that is all i can share. if this does help you find your way through stayblr, i am delighted and glad.

omg, the fact that you thought i was qualified enough to do this <3 thank you so much. i've been in the stay fandom for about two (2.5?) months and i thought i'd share what i believe works with writing and posting here. this got long because i wrote down everything i felt matters —

you should always write stuff you are comfortable. there is a difference between trying out stuff from out of the box comfortably and uncomfortably. you'll definitely know your hard limits and you should never pressure yourself to write something you don't want to — even if you get requests for it. prioritise yourself. you tend to forget you as an individual when you run a blog and instead start doing stuff to make others happy and that's fine as long as it doesn't make you do stuff you regret. okay? place yourself first over anyone else.

smut always works in a fandom. or this is what i thought until i entered the stay fandom and realised — surprise, bitches! it is unpredictable here. my best performed fic is a fluff. most of my well done smut fics have a huge amount of softness along with it and i realise people view the boys softer much more. not that there are no hard stans because there are and that's what makes the fandom unpredictable — any one of your fic could do well. for more prediction and likes, refer this survey.

make friends! lots and lots of mutuals. the best part of being in a fandom must be this — the people you meet. in the two months i've been here, i met way too many nice people. they are all supportive, interactive and so so nice <3 enjoy your stay, stay <33

interact with your readers. talk to them. hear them out. it helps grow the blog into one that makes everyone happy!

now about writing — this is me saying purely on the basis of the fics i read and nothing more. by all means, i do not consider myself a good writer and i believe that we are all genuinely just struggling and trying to fit in, in a place that we can call home.

punctuations, and spacings are oh so important to me as a reader. i get really flustered and turned off by a fic that cannot space well or use punctuations alright. i can't stand single inverted commas in the place of double inverted commas for quotes. need spaces after commas and fullstops.

i don't mind capitalisation and stuff and tbh, i think the full small lettered fics for aesthetics are kinda cute sometimes uhm (灬º‿º灬)

having a basic layout with pairings, genre, and warnings is so important — it really does help your reader, i promise. plus, use the read more feature!!

now about posting and tags —

firstly, big disclaimer. tumblr is a bitch. like such a huge bitch omg. it eats my posts most of the times and all nsfw asks never ever turn up in the tags, oh god. so this is just luck.

tag your posts properly. the first five tags are the most important ones and it is what tumblr reads. so tag them right. if your fic is a hyunjin smut fic — tag the fic under, #hyunjin smut, #stray kids smut, #skz smut, for sure. if it's just a smut fic, please do not tag it under fluff. it's not fair for the minors and only fluff readers. that being said, i do think long 20k fics with like major fluff of 15k words and like hardly 5k smut should be allowed to tag in both. but these are my thoughts.

there are some moments when tumblr eats up asks and that's usually around 23:00KST to 00:00KST. and idek why it does it but it does. still doesn't stop me from post at those times (〒﹏〒) you'll find out what time works the best for you and your content's exposure by posting at varied time! <3

but in the end, tumblr is still annoying with its tags argh. send the support team a message every time they eat your post up, okay?

eventually, i truly hope you just enjoy your time here. no fandom is without their drama. i try to stay away from it for my own sanity tbh. have a good time writing and sharing your content — the fics you worked so hard on — and i'm sure people will appreciate you for that. happy writing and welcome to the fandom, bby <3

[tsarisfanfiction]

WIP #46

(Send me a number 1-60 [or a fandom/character I guess] for the corresponding wip) because I’m bored and brain-fried and have too many wips that’ll otherwise never see the light of day.

For @janetm74 who actually asked for ‘Thunderbirds, 31′ but 31 isn’t TAG so we’ve got the closest TAG one instead. (top tip: wips are mostly arranged alphabetically by fandom and the TAG wips are 46-59!)

It was really only a matter of time before someone hit Scott!whump, wasn’t it?  Snippets of this one have actually appeared in previous ask games, so you get the whole thing this time (because I don’t remember which bits I’ve already posted).  Fun fact: this was my first attempt at Virgil’s PoV!

There was always something wrong about Scott in Thunderbird Two.  Of all the Tracys, he was the least likely to travel in the green behemoth that was, in Virgil’s private opinion, the heart of International Rescue.

And yes, that included John.

Gordon was his co-pilot, his wingman, his back-up.  For all that the aquanaut was, well, an aquanaut, there was honestly no-one else Virgil would rather behind the controls of his beloved girl if he was needed elsewhere. Heavy lifting, or – his least favourite – medical duties could sometimes pull him elsewhere, and in those moments his immediate brother would take the helm with a joking smile but steady hands that would never let anything befall Two (if only, he thought from time to time, because without Two Four would be grounded).

Alan was all nervous energy, a genius pilot but too cocky for Virgil to ever be truly relaxed when Two was in his hands, but it was far from uncommon for his youngest brother to be perched behind him, screens and panels showing readout after readout as he assessed situations and started remote assembly of pods when time was particularly of the essence.  Sometimes, often, he knew Alan desired the speed of One, but he also liked his comfort and short of pulling Three’s own seats into One (a feat done once, never repeated), there was no comfort as a passenger of their first response craft. Or even as the pilot, in Virgil’s opinion.

John was an unusual passenger, unlikely to be Earthside for a mission – and even if he was, quickly wrapping things up and ascending back to the lofty heights of Five and the world at his fingertips – but when he was Earthside, well, Thunderbird Two was his ship of choice.  He didn’t pilot her, for all that he was trained, but no matter what Scott would mutter, John was stubborn about always using Two to get to the danger zone.  Something about reckless flying and too much gravity. Virgil couldn’t truly say he understood, because John’s aversion to gravity had never been a point in common between them, but he did at least appreciate that Thunderbird One was fast, and generated far more Gs than any atmosphere-bound craft had any right to make.

Statistically speaking, Scott did travel in Two more than John did, but as he didn’t spend over three hundred days in the year off planet, Virgil wasn’t quite so fussed on the literal numbers.  Scott in Two always, always meant something was wrong.  Maybe One was out of action (again) but Scott wanted to be on the rescue anyway.  Maybe the world was conspiring against them, and Scott just wanted to be with his brothers rather than haring off at triple their speed and leaving them alone and vulnerable (Virgil knew that really One was more vulnerable than Two, although his eldest brother could never see it that way).

Or maybe, the worst wrong of all that always lined Virgil’s stomach with lead and dried up all the saliva in his mouth, Scott wasn’t fit to fly.

John was hovering, holographic form always a little too dull to accurately capture his brother’s vibrancy. Gordon had flight control, gloved hands firmly on the yoke as though he was her designated pilot.  Alan had co-pilot, booted feet reaching the floor with little difficulty nowadays – he would out-grow Gordon soon – as he flicked switches in uncharacteristic silence.

Virgil was in the medbay, scanner clutched in his hands like a lifeline as it told him nothing that he wanted to hear, and many things that he didn’t.

Scott was in the medbay, doing nothing.

Danger dogged their steps with every rescue.  They knew that – had always known it, even before the Zero-X blew their father sky-high as he tried to save the world – but it never made it any easier when it got closer than normal.

As normal for them was less than a second’s escape – buildings collapsing the moment their trailing foot left the threshold, planes erupting into fireballs the instant they leapt clear – closer was barely possible.  Closer was a Thunderbird coming home with deep gouges.  Closer was broken bones and terrorised faces.

Closer was their eldest brother lying motionless in his ‘bird’s medbay because it had taken thirteen minutes to find him after the snow roared down.

Avalanches were a messy business.  Survival rates were low, some of the worst odds International Rescue ever faced, and there was no denying that their own past experience did nothing to help whenever John uttered the word in a brief.  This one shouldn’t have been too bad, as far as snow monsters went.  Out of season, with few people in the huts that dotted the lower reaches of the slopes and fewer still outside.  Ten people were reported missing.

They found nine, all fortunate and breathing, before the second one struck.

Alan had been in Thunderbird Two, holding her steady in the air because the large Thunderbird would have done more harm than good if she’d landed and providing a much-needed birds’ eye view of the danger zone.  It had been entirely due to the combined information from him and John that had let them find the nine lucky people so quickly.

Gordon had been on triage in the hut deemed safest in the event of a second avalanche.  Virgil had just reached him with rescuee number nine when it had struck.

Scott had been heading up the slope, travelling scant inches above the snow via jetpack, searching for person number ten.  One’s drones had been with him, scanning furiously even as John hijacked them to give Five even more data than the space station had already obtained from other means. Those same drones had given them a glimpse of blue, grey and white all jumbled together before going dark.

It took two minutes for Virgil and Gordon to force their way out of the semi-buried but still standing hut. One more for Alan to configure a pod and tentatively lower it from the module even as they realised their original one would take too long to excavate from the snow.  In those three minutes, John had triangulated all the data he could amass from Five to provide the most viable search area.

Five minutes to find a body, cold to the touch.  Rescue number ten had never stood a chance.  Face down and neck broken, he would have been killed almost instantly during the original avalanche.

Fifteen minutes was the time limit.  Nine people had already defied it, surviving anything between half an hour and an hour under the snow before International Rescue reached the scene and dug them out. The Tracy family never had that much luck, and an avalanche was their own personal hell.  They knew, in that cold-fist-closing-around-their-hearts way, that Scott would not be number ten.

Twelve minutes and the pod’s heat sensors showed yellow-green in a sea of blue.

Thirteen minutes and their eyes showed them blue in a sea of white.

Scott had been wearing his helmet when the avalanche struck.  As Virgil knelt to ease his limp, cold, but breathing body from the frigid prison, he’d thanked their parents for that fact silently but profusely.  Still intact, the helmet had stopped snow clogging his airways, and had enough of an air supply to stop Scott from suffocating to death in the thirteen torturously long minutes it had taken them to find him.

In the medbay, scan finished, Virgil finally removed the life-saving gear.  The detached feedback from the scan told him as much, but he sighed resignedly when there was no response.  Scott didn’t gasp dramatically as his recycled air supply was replaced with the real deal, nor did lightly closed eyes snap open.

“How is he?” John asked unnecessarily as Virgil’s hand lingered under brown hair longer than strictly necessary after lowering the now helmetless head back down onto the stretcher.

“Cold.”  Virgil humoured him, knowing full well that John had been desperately analysing the results of the scan as they occurred. Their suits were well designed for the varied environments they found themselves in, and while Scott had shown up far, far too cold in their initial search for him, as soon as they’d got him into the security of Thunderbird Two the hint of a shiver had taken hold and Gordon had encouraged it with a single blanket.

Scott’s uniform was somewhere in the middle as far as easy to remove International Rescue uniforms went. While Gordon and John’s specialist environments necessitated almost vacuum-tight uniforms, and Virgil and Alan had heavy-duty but therefore less clingy attire, Scott wore a streamlined flight suit that didn’t adhere precisely to his body but wasn’t exactly loose either.  Still, the zip tugged down easily enough and Virgil manipulated his rag doll of an eldest brother out of the tough material delicately before clearing away any leftover snow trying to chill him further and cradling him in blankets.

John watched in an agitated silence, the distance between their physical bodies never so apparent as when one of them was hurt and he was twenty two and a half thousand miles away. Sooner rather than later, Virgil knew the space elevator would be docking at Tracy Island, but before John could leave Five he needed to get One nestled back safely in her hanger.

The Thunderbird had escaped the avalanche by never landing, set to an autopilot hover by Scott upon his arrival to the danger zone because despite being smaller than Two, her VTOL posed just as much of a risk to the stability of the snow.  With Gordon at the helm of Two, and a universal desire for the whole family to be together landing Alan in the co-pilot seat rather than their brother’s Thunderbird, it was up to John to remote pilot her home.

Hypothermia was not the only issue Scott had been hit with by the avalanche.  None of them had done the exact calculations – John might have done, but if he had he hadn’t shared them – but Scott had been swept a fair distance by the sheer might of the snow and the journey had been far from smooth. Something had knocked him out in the tumble – what, Virgil couldn’t begin to decipher – and while his ribs were miraculously okay, thanks to the support of his flight suit, his left arm was bent awkwardly.  Already, beneath the blankets, his skin was blossoming in the reds and purples of early bruising.

“Any change?” Alan asked, his hologram flickering into existence beside John’s.  Gordon was just visible at the edge of the projection.

“He’s warming up,” Virgil assured them, eyes never leaving his eldest brother as shivers slowly intensified.  “No sign of consciousness, though.”  He leant forwards, running his hands gently through gelled hair.  The scan didn’t indicate a concussion to accompany the rest of Scott’s injuries, but with no evidence for why he was remaining unconscious barring the hypothermia itself, Virgil needed a more hands’ on check to reassure himself that there would be no further complications.

“We’re almost home,” Gordon chipped in.  “Make sure you’re both ready for the landing.”

“F.A.B.”

Securing Scott was easy, straps looping over him and cinching tight but not too tight against the stretcher.  The temptation to stay standing beside him, watching like a hawk for any sign of change – good or otherwise – was strong, but John made a small noise in the back of his throat and Virgil forced himself to take the two paces away from the stretcher and collapse into a fold-out seat.

“Thunderbird One has landed,” the astronaut informed him, and Virgil managed something that was almost a smile.

“See you soon,” he said, and John returned the almost-smile before floating with purpose.  With the limitations of the holograms, it was difficult to tell where he was headed, but Virgil knew there was only one place John wanted to be.

Their landing was soft, softer than Gordon had ever managed before, and Virgil shot out of his chair and back to Scott’s side as soon as he felt the wheels connect solidly with the runway. The touchdown had done nothing to disturb him, eyes still softly closed. His skin was pale, and the shivering was still gaining in intensity, but Scott’s face was as peaceful as Virgil had seen it since the Zero-X.

He pulled the scanner back out, running another one just for something to do as Gordon taxied them back into the hangar.  Scott’s temperature had risen marginally, still too cold but headed in the right direction.  He adjusted the blankets cocooning him as Thunderbird Two finished her rotation and the hydraulics either side of the module whirred into action, raising the body of the craft.

Someone had remembered to call ahead – a flash of guilt coursed through Virgil as he realised that should have been his job – because as the module door lowered, letting in the orange flickering light that indicated mechanical movement in the hangar, Grandma was standing there, arms crossed and finger tapping nervously. She didn’t wait for the door to finish lowering, jumping into the module as soon as she could and heading straight for them.

“What happened?” she asked, wrapping an arm around him firmly for a moment before taking the final step to Scott’s side and tutting at the results of the scan.

“Avalanche,” Virgil responded, even though he knew she knew.  Old hands that had yet to lose most of their dexterity pulled at the blankets, exposing Scott’s throat enough for her to press two fingers to his pulse. “Nine survivors, one fatality.”

“Broken arm and extensive bruising,” she mused, light fingers dancing over her eldest grandson’s body as she confirmed the scanner’s results for herself.  “His suit protected him from the worst of it.  Let’s get him inside.”  Virgil nodded, reaching out to activate the hover jets on the underside of the stretcher before releasing the clasps that held it to the wall.  Hurried footsteps indicated the arrival of his younger brothers, finished with their flight checks and anxious to see their eldest brother.

“Is he awake yet?” Alan asked, blue eyes filled with hope.  Virgil shook his head as Gordon placed a hand on the youngest’s shoulder.

“Your brother will be fine,” Grandma assured them all before he could find the words to explain Scott’s condition.  “A little battered and bruised, and rather cold, but some rest and home cooking will sort him right out, you’ll see.”

Gordon’s mutter that home cooking would do more harm than good wasn’t as quiet as he’d clearly intended, but Grandma ignored the slight as she put a firm hand on the hovering stretcher and started to guide it towards the house.  Virgil paused, checking his two younger brothers over thoroughly.  Alan was pale, shaken at the sight of Scott’s limp body, while Gordon headed over to the discarded uniform and picked it up.

“He’ll be alright,” he told them.  Both nodded sharply.  “John’s coming down; Alan, why don’t you go meet him?”

Neither asked why John was coming down if Scott was going to be fine.  It was a much appreciated fact that sometimes a hologram wasn’t enough for reassurance, and none of them would ever begrudge John the chance to be there in person.  Alan nodded again and left.

“I’ll clear up here,” Gordon said.  He was feeding the damp uniform through his hands, most likely unconsciously.  Damp, half-melted snow littered the module, and the remaining pod.  “Go help Grandma.”

Virgil didn’t protest, although he gave Gordon a final look over before turning to leave his ‘bird. They all needed to feel useful, finding something to do while they waited for Scott to wake up.  He would have cleaned his ‘bird himself, but Gordon’s order had been a hidden plea: I want you with Scott.

“I want her spotless,” he said instead, and Gordon laughed.

“Yes, yes,” he dismissed. “Now go help Grandma keep Scott in bed.” Because that was going to be the hardest task of all.  None of the Tracys made for a good patient, but Scott was the undisputed worst patient of all.  Alan and Gordon would try for subtle, the elder blond with more success, escape attempts made when they were left alone for too long.  John hid in Five, well-practiced in manipulating holograms to make him appear healthier than he actually was – although the arrival of EOS had put a stop to that particular trick.  It was the thing that had finally got her into Scott’s good books.  Virgil himself knew that he gave his brothers a little too much grief, largely because he knew how to treat his own ailments better than they did.

Scott didn’t bother with subtlety.  The moment their backs were turned, and sometimes not even then, he would be forcing himself up and out of bed, determined to carry on working no matter what. He’d never been a good patient, but it had only worsened since their Dad’s crash.  Knowing why didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

Not bothering to change out of his uniform, he ran after Grandma and the stretcher, catching up with them just outside the infirmary doors.  Scott was still unconscious, a fact that bothered him considering there was no sign of injury that would cause it, but it made transferring him from the stretcher to the soft bed far easier.  A pile of warm blankets were gently tucked around him, mindful of the broken arm.

As Grandma fussed with an IV line, more a precaution than a necessity, Virgil turned his attention to the limb.  It was a clean break, simple enough to reset and splint.  Scott let out a noise of complaint as the bones were dragged back into place, and both he and Grandma immediately looked at him.  Brow furrowed, hazed blue eyes flickered open.

“Scott?”

“Vrrgg?” his eldest brother slurred, eyes slowly focusing on him. “Whh..?”

“We’re home,” Virgil told him, resting a hand on the blankets over where Scott’s right shoulder was buried.  “The rescue’s over.”

Scott blinked at him slowly, the haze of confusion not quite leaving his eyes.

“Rsscu?”

“Let’s focus on getting you warmed up for now, Scott,” Grandma cut in, smoothing his hair back gently. She gestured sharply with her other hand – hidden from Scott’s view – to the reset arm.  Virgil took the hint, returning to strap it up, knowing that he’d need to mix up a proper cast for it if he wanted any chance of it healing properly with Scott’s reluctance to rest of any length of time.

“Buh-”

Scott’s protest was cut off by the door slamming open, the pitter-patter of Alan’s booted feet flying into the room.  Behind him, at a more sedate pace, John followed, turquoise eyes raking over the scene in front of him sharply.

“Is he awake?” Alan asked, skidding to a stop by the bed.  “Scott?”

“Ara?” Scott started. Virgil lunged up to stop him as he made his first attempt to get up.

“No, Scott,” he said firmly. “You’re still too cold.”  Scott didn’t fight him, a sign that he was still confused.  It didn’t go unnoticed by either Alan or John, the former losing his smile and the latter narrowing his eyes for a moment.

“Go get yourselves changed,” Grandma told them.  “He’ll still be here when you come back.”  Hoping she wasn’t including him in that order, Virgil busied himself with fussing over Scott, fixing the blankets he’d dislodged and hushing any attempts to ask about the rescue.

“It’s over,” he repeated as his two brothers left the room with orders from Grandma to also locate Gordon and make sure he got changed, too.  “Stay still.”

“Virgil,” Grandma warned, and his shoulder slumped.  “You too, young man.  You’re still wearing some of the snow.”

He hadn’t noticed, but when she mentioned it he realised that the creases of his uniform still carried damp white.

“I won’t be long,” he promised Scott, who looked at him with wide blue eyes.  They reminded Virgil of Alan.  Usually it was Alan who reminded him of Scott; he didn’t like it the other way around.  “I’ll bring you back a drink.  Think you can manage that?”

“Drrnk?”

Virgil sighed, and turned to Grandma.

“I’ll bring him something,” he told her and she nodded with a tired smile.

“You do that,” she said. “Now go get out of that wet uniform before you catch a chill, too!”

With a last look at his brother, still too pale but thankfully shivering properly at last, he forced himself to leave the room.

When it came to Grandma, there were fights that could not be won, and unspoken orders to be heeded nonetheless.  It was not as simple as tugging off his uniform, throwing on some casual clothes and running back into the infirmary with a warm, sugary drink in hand served with a straw to sip it with, so he begrudgingly threw himself under a hot shower, allowing his own body to warm up after too long in the snow himself, albeit not buried like his big brother.  Still, a shower did not have to be long to be effective, even if he would usually take the time to let his muses grow amongst the gentle hiss of pouring water, and within five minutes he was thoroughly warm and worming his way into clean clothes.  A quick blow with his hair dryer got the worst of the water out of his hair, but he forwent the gel to return it to its usual style.  Certain younger brothers might have a field day about his hair not being carefully sculpted, but a certain hypothermic older brother was worth a little bit of pride.

John had beaten him to the kitchen, a hot squash – blackcurrant and apple, from Scott’s personal stash – steaming on the counter.  Virgil glanced around the room to make sure nothing was broken.

“You haven’t taken it in?” he asked, wrapping a hand around the container.  It was almost hot to the touch.  John shrugged.

“I’d drop it,” he said, plucking a blue straw from the collection in the cupboard and neatly dropping it into the top of the cup.  Virgil couldn’t disagree with the possibility and scooped it up, straw bobbing in the dark liquid, before continuing on to the infirmary.

Alan and Gordon were there, both out of uniform as per Grandma’s orders, and trying to get a laugh out of Scott, if their antics were anything to go by.  Scott himself, Virgil was pleased to see, appeared less confused than when he’d left.

“I have a drink for you,” he announced, passing it to Grandma as he perched on the bed by Scott. “Think you can manage some sips?” Scott was still shivering but managed a grateful smile.

“Will i’ tas’e goo’?” he asked, still too cold to pronounce his words properly.  Virgil gently brought the head of the bed up slightly before propping Scott up in a more upright position with the use of many pillows. Gordon helpfully readjusted the blankets as Alan crawled onto the bottom of the bed.

“It’s from your own stash,” he promised, taking it back from Grandma and holding the straw to his lips. “John made it hot, so be careful.”

“’M alway’ ca’ful.” Scott mumbled the biggest lie Virgil had ever heard before accepting the straw and taking a sip.

“If you say so,” he said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to help keep him in place as he drank.  He was still cool to the touch, despite the blankets wrapped around him firmly.

Scott hissed as the liquid entered his mouth, and Virgil tightened his grip even as he rolled his eyes.

“I warned you,” he said lightly, as John entered the room and perched on the end of the bed, watching Scott carefully.  Scott took another sip, more cautiously the second time.

...tbc one day..?

[capnjay21]

A House is Never Still 4/6

Five years ago, Emma Swan disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Killian Jones’ disappearance, well, not so mysterious – given the denizens of Storybrooke all but blamed him for her murder. Drawn back to town by a series of strange events, he soon realises the story of what really happened the night she vanished is beginning to unravel, and what’s more: it isn’t over.

A/N: and here is chapter four! thank you so much for all the support so far, this chapter actually has one of my favourite sequences I’ve written for this fic. but I’m not telling which it is!

again, heaps and piles and many fancy vases full of gratitude for @hollyethecurious​ for creating this amazing aesthetic, without which this fic would not exist.

Rating: T

Warnings: mentions of suicide, canonical character death, and some Spooky Business™.

starting a tiny taglist since I got a request for one, so I am ~tentatively~ tagging a handful of people I think might want to read this - NO obligation to, and feel free to drop me a message to say hell nah if you would prefer! I won’t be offended in any way, shape or form! 

@snowbellewells​ @carpedzem​ @kmomof4​ @optomisticgirl​

AO3 | one | two | three

-/-

4 – an unearthly hand

Present Day

The clouds parted for the first time since Killian’s return to Storybrooke on the day he brought Regina to Brooke House, lifting the feeling of grey that had cast its blanket over the town. For days, it had warmed itself in open doorways, prowled after townsfolk around street corners and crept beneath windowsills, and Killian was relieved to be granted something of a reprieve from the fog of autumn in New England.

The house stood, as it had the day before, in the north woods just a brisk, ten-minute walk away from the well-trodden track of the White Pine trail. He didn’t need the faded pieces of string to guide his path to the house anymore, and it had become so present in his impression of the town that he had forgotten that Brooke House, as it looked at that moment, had not always been there.

Regina had stopped twenty paces from the door, expression unreadable but for her parted lips.

It seemed almost unusual to see it in the sparkling sunlight of the morning, like something had been taken right out of it. Here it was white brick and rotted wood and barren, where at night it positively brimmed with something far more than any one person could comprehend. Even at a shell of its normal, terrible self, Regina had taken a little time to process.  

“It really is here,” she had said finally. “How about that.”

She said how about that the same way you would say it if you found out an old classmate had gone on to become a movie star, or you discovered your local grocery store was lifting its embargo on branded products.

Not like a house that was sometimes there, sometimes not there, was today, decidedly, there.

It had been a bit more of a laborious journey than he was used to, but Killian’s Chevelle could only take them so far and he had a lot of equipment to bring with him today, cramming everything he could as delicately as possible into his rucksack. Regina, too, had brought a duffle bag full of materials, and Killian could spot the heavy corner of her book of shadows poking out from within, begging to be noticed. The previous times he had visited Brooke House he hadn’t been properly prepared, but this time around Killian was determined to leave the house with something he could quantify, rather than just the deep, sick dread that had left with him every other night.

He had entered the house ahead of her, the novelty of its return long since worn away, and moved into the living room just to the right of the hallway. It was far brighter in the light of day, the long, Victorian windows allowing a brilliant glow from the outside, and Killian could now even spot a few holes near the top of the front wall where the mortar had crumbled away, as dapples of sunlight trickled directly in from above painting yellow specks on the floorboards. Even still, he was not entirely comfortable being there. He walked twice around the edge of the room, every unexpected creak making his heart lurch uncomfortably into his mouth, and even once whispered Emma’s name out into the dust.

Nothing stirred.

Today it was bricks, and rotted wood, and bare.

He was just setting his camera atop its tripod when Regina finally entered, the heels of her boots clicking loudly on the old wood.

“It’s like walking back into high school,” she commented drily, clearly taking in the discarded scarf, the Apollo chocolate bar wrapper. “Is that my Ouija board?”

She looked almost indignant, as if Brooke House were an old friend who had borrowed a CD and never bothered to return it, but Killian wanted her attention focused elsewhere.

“Here, come and feel this.”

He led her by the hand (amid protests) to the centre of the room, a ring of dust slightly newer than the rest just barely visible on the floor. It was the place he had been standing the night prior, when Emma had dug her nails sharply into the back of his jacket.

“Palms out. Doesn’t it feel colder here than the rest of the room?”

Regina looked unconvinced. “Maybe a little.”

“It is,” Killian insisted. “I’m sure of it. Stay right there.” He darted back to his rucksack and pulled out two identical aluminium rods, bent at a right angle six inches from one of the ends. When he returned, he held them out to Regina so she could hold the shorter end, and although she pursed her lips in displeasure, obligingly she took them. “Hold them loosely, like this.” He adjusted her grip to match.

Regina looked unamused. “And what, in God’s name, are these?” She arched an eyebrow. “I better not get struck by lightning.”

Killian returned to where he had been squatting by the camera, tilting the tripod so it could capture the spot Regina was standing in. On the infrared display, she was a warm scarlet and gold storm.

“They’re dowsing rods.”

“You’re joking.”

“Couldn’t be more serious. Hold them steady – like that.” Regina reluctantly obliged. “Tell me if they move.”

Killian had experienced limited success with dowsing in the past – it had been shown to him by a farmer in Iowa who had used it to find buried metals and ores underneath the ground, and admittedly actually had a lot to show for the results. Killian himself had been sceptical, and given how intermittent his own successes were, there was no way to tell if they could be attributed to any real sense of divination or sheer blind luck. Still, he wanted to throw everything in his arsenal at Brooke House.

“I don’t have to tell you about the ideomotor response, do I?” Regina said flatly. “Unconscious involuntary movement. Dowsing is bullshit.”

“Says the woman brewing potions in her living room,” Killian shot back. “I mean it – even if it’s a little, tell me if they move.”

Satisfied with the positioning of the camera, he plugged in his tablet and left it set to record before returning to his rucksack. After some deliberation, he reached for the electro-magnetic field reader he had tried to cushion in the bag with a thick scarf. It was blocky and old, and looked like something that had been lifted from a 60s Star Trek set, but it had become one his most valued instruments over the years.

Regina had been craning her neck to see what he was holding, and once she realised, she let out a noise of frustration.

“Killian, if you wanted an EMF reader I would’ve brought mine – at least it’s not a hundred years old. And that’s clearly a single axis meter.” Single axis meters were notoriously more difficult to use than a tri-axis, as they required significant coordination in order to measure the information recorded across all three axis ,while also trying to move the instrument to gather more data; a tri-axis allowed for much more detailed data acquisition. You could only point Killian’s meter at one thing at a time, slowly, whereas Regina’s could probably handle something far more intricate.

Even so, Killian had far more faith in his own device.

“Believe me,” he informed her, “this is better.”

He could practically hear her rolling her eyes.

“Where did you get all this stuff anyway?”

“Ebay, mostly.”

She scoffed. “You look like a quack.”

Killian laughed. Quack was probably the most positive way Regina had ever described him. “And you’re listening to a quack,” he pointed out, “so what does that make you?” He glanced over to see her still standing where he had left her, holding the two dowsing rods outstretched. It didn’t look like they had moved. “Let me know if they cross.”

He was just tweaking with the settings on the EMF reader when Regina carried on.

“Where’s David today, anyway?”

She said ‘where’s David today’ as if she were enquiring which films her old school friend had starred in, or when branded products would be making their way onto the shelves at her local supermarket. Mild disinterest and a characteristic neutrality. She didn’t fool Killian for a second.

She carried on. “I was sure we’d be joined by the witless wonder in no time.”

Killian had sent David just one text message last night, a simple I’m sorry. David had read it, and not replied. He had to remind himself it was better off this way.

“He’s… busy.”

Regina looked surprised. “It’s been three days. How have you already fallen out with him?”

Killian tried to make his shrug as blithe as possible. “It’s a gift, I suppose.” He could just add David Nolan to the long list of people in Storybrooke who really didn’t want him to be there. Deciding finally that the dowsing rods weren’t getting anything from the cold spot, or perhaps weren’t getting anything from Regina, he crossed back over to her and swapped them for the EMF reader. This was something Regina was far more familiar with, and immediately began spinning slowly in place even as she wrinkled her nose disdainfully at the antiquated design.

“And, why, exactly, are we here?”

“We’re looking for Emma.”

Help me, Killian. Let me out. Please.

He had thought it over constantly over the last day. Maybe those words hadn’t just been spoken by that dark, terrible spectre of the house. Maybe that had been a little of Emma, their Emma, bleeding through. He had to find out for sure if there was anything but darkness left, and these were the only ways he knew to look for ghosts.

“We’re looking for Emma,” Regina repeated, in a strange tone.

It gave him pause, so he turned to look at her. She looked unfairly doubtful, and it made irritation flare within him. “The house is here, isn’t it? Where it wasn’t before. It stands to reason she could be here too. David saw her. So did Ruby. You said it yourself, something is changing. Why can’t it be her?”

He’d seen her, he wanted to say. But something held him back. Something private and longing and scared beyond his wits.

“Why can’t it be her?” he repeated, a little more forcefully when she didn’t immediately reply.

Regina bit her lip, as if trying to work out how best to proceed. She took a few steps forward, the wood underneath her boots creaking loudly.

“You and I both know… Emma wasn’t the only thing there that night. In the dark.”

Black lightning. Her wrist stained red, angry welts erupting across her forearm. Eyes as dark as obsidian.

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

A wave of nausea rose within him.

“Is it wise for us to start messing with stuff we don’t understand – again?” To her credit she looked like the suggestion made her almost as miserable as it did him, but her nature dictated she give voice to the thoughts that cut everybody to the quick. “I mean, what if this is something else, just taking the shape of Emma? And appealing to those made most vulnerable by the sight of her?”

So good of you to come and see me.

First David, then him. After all, Mary Margaret hadn’t reported any ghostly sightings, and neither had Regina – and she had practically drenched herself in the supernatural.

Killian shook his head, clutching the dowsing rods tightly.

“But what if it is Emma?” he said finally. The crux of the thing was that he could never ignore her, no matter how sensible the suggestion that he do so. He knew he looked weak, that the confidence he had projected toward Regina since returning to town had crumbled and he must look stupid next to her now, seventeen again and blithering and hopeful beside her world-worn pragmatism. “We have to try.”

He begged her, pleaded with her silently to support him.

Regina was quiet for a long moment, and the EMF reader let out a low zinging noise from where she was pointing it. After a while she sighed.

“Alright,” she said briskly, and Killian visibly sagged with relief. “But I’m going to need much more sage.”

-/-

October 24th – Five Years Ago

“Killian, it’s creepy here,” whined Mary Margaret. “When can we go?”

Emma watched as Killian laughed from where he sat across the room, drawing something onto the floorboards in thick, black marker.

“I’m sorry, Mary Margaret. Just indulge me a little longer.”

Brooke House wasn���t nearly as scary the second time Emma had visited it. They had come virtually straight from school, the sky starting to fade from bright blue to soft pink, but while Emma still didn’t exactly relish the idea of being there after dark, it had lost something of its harshness from the last time she’d been there. Somehow, by bringing Regina and Mary Margaret too, expanding their nervous trio out into a confident fivesome, it took power away from the old walls of the house. Regina had laughed when they showed her the spinning wheel, kicking it into an aggressively fast spin while they all gaped and cried for her to stop. Mary Margaret had removed the sheet from one of the armchairs in the sitting room, declared it looked comfortable enough to sleep in and confidently sat herself down – only for a large spider to creep out of the seams of the cushion, and crawl onto the edge of her dress.

Her shriek had nearly brought them all to tears, and Emma hadn’t been able to move or breathe for laughter for at least ten minutes.

Ever since Killian had asked them all to come to the house, and David had taken great pleasure in informing them it was probably haunted, Regina had been saying she would bring something to match the occasion, and she did not disappoint. Currently she, David and Mary Margaret sat on the floor (the latter with her skirts bunched up around her, casting nervous, fearful glances around for anymore creepy crawlies) surrounding what Regina had called a Ouija board. Emma recognised it only as something she’d once seen on television.

It was an old, polished wood surface ornately decorated, with all the letters of the alphabet and the numbers 0-9 beautifully calligraphed across the top. The symbol of the sun had been drawn in one corner, and a crescent moon in the other. The board came with a planchette, a triangular pointer with a glass circle in the centre to allow you to see the characters underneath. The idea, as Regina explained, was that spirits were supposed to speak through the board, by directing the planchette around its surface to spell out words and wishes.

All three held the tip of a finger on the pointer, and Emma watched with mild interest as it inched across the board. It was all bullshit anyway, but it did add to the atmosphere.

“Mary Margaret, you’re moving the pointer,” Regina scowled.

“I am not,” she replied, affronted. “David’s moving it!”

“I’m not! I swear I’m not!”

Regina brushed her hair from her face impatiently. “At least wait until we’ve asked it a question.”

“Where’d you get the creepy board, anyway?” Emma asked.

“My mom was keeping in in the attic, I found it last year when I was looking for Christmas decorations. She was so pissed when I brought it down, made me put it straight back. I always knew she was a bit nuts.” Regina grinned smugly. “So obviously I had to get it out again now the occasion called for it.”

David cleared his throat loudly, drawing their attention back to the board. “Let’s start.” He raised his voice, projecting it around the room and inserting as much grandiose as he could muster. “Are we alone in this house?” The planchette slid across the board, and David sounded out the letters it landed on. “N… O. It said no.”

“David, you’re clearly moving it.”

“I’m not!”

Leaving them to bicker, Emma turned her attention back to Killian. He had finished what he had been drawing on the floor, and was now scattering salt in a circle around it. Completely entranced in his work, his attention flickered between the salt in his hand and a few battered pieces of paper he had lain flat against the floor. Emma recognised one of them as the one etched with doodles and a few scribbles that they had found in Liam’s toolbox. Somehow, that only increased her feeling of unease.

“Hey,” she said, after crossing the room to sit beside him, hugging her knees to her chest. She was careful not to let her trainers disturb the circle he had made. She also wondered if Archie knew where all the salt at the group home had gone. “You okay?”

He had joked around with them while they let the others explore the house, but had soon retreated to his work. Which, Emma now realised, was a five-pointed star drawn on the floorboards in thick black marker, with each tip touching the edge of the salt circle.

“Yeah,” he replied, flashing her a smile. “I’m almost done.”

Emma bit her lip. “Remind me what it is you’re hoping to achieve? Do you really expect to, uh… summon some kind of ghost?” The look he gave her was unimpressed, but Emma shrugged. He hadn’t exactly given them a lot of clues. “What? I was there with Belle, remember? ‘Do you believe in magic?’”

Emma most certainly did not believe in magic.

The five-pointed star and the circle of salt were telling her something else about Killian, though.

“All I want is to understand. To just – get in his head, I don’t know. He was working on this house for weeks, but it looks like all he did was start peeling off the wallpaper. And why did he go and see Belle? Why did he –?”

Drive his car into a ravine? Emma couldn’t count the number of times Killian must have asked himself that.

He shook his head.

“It has to have something to do with this house. And look, these were in his toolbox.” Killian stepped carefully over his handiwork so he could crouch beside her, showing her the piece of paper, curling at the edges. “He drew the pentagram, right there.” He pointed out an image identical to the one Killian had just drawn on the floor. “I was doing a little research into the symbolism, and a lot of Satanic cults use it for, uh, stuff.” He trailed off unconvincingly, and Emma tried not to look the equal parts amused and creeped out that she felt.

“And like he’s done here, I’ll light a candle at each point. The notes he’s actually written are brief so I just had to interpret as best I can – ‘salt circle’ and ‘curvy dagger’. Did you bring your fishing knife like I asked?”

Emma leant forward so she could reach into the back pocket of her jeans to retrieve it. She held it close to her chest for a moment, thinking about all the comfort it had given her back when she was a kid – in a world where she could control so little, she had liked how powerful it made her feel. The first time she had showed it to Killian was when they were fourteen, and his eyes had grown so round that she hadn’t been able to stop herself from giggling.

After a moment of hesitation, she handed it over.

Another of David’s noisy questions out into the room drew their focus.

“Will I become rich and famous one day? Oh – Y… E… S.” He smirked triumphantly. “Well, better start sucking up to me now guys.”

Mary Margaret laughed. “It’s for talking to spirits, stupid, not predicting the future.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Regina purred. “Will David get a smack if he keeps moving the pointer? Yeah?”

There was a loud thump as she swatted him on the arm.

“Looks like it tells the future just fine.”

“Regina!”

They joined in the laughter with the others, the indignant surprise on David’s face just too funny to ignore; he protested loudly at all attempts of maltreatment, and started entreating the spirits in the house to retaliate on his behalf.

“They think this is a joke,” Emma said quietly, careful to keep her voice low so the others wouldn’t hear her. “Please don’t let it get to you when… if this goes nowhere.”

Killian had started wandering down a dangerous rabbit hole – she just didn’t want him to get hurt.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her, as he started placing candles at the five corners of the star. “Summoning an evil spirit? I have my expectations really low.”

“E…M…M… Emma, it’s spelt your name!” Mary Margaret squeaked.

Emma rolled her eyes, growing more tired by the minute of the game Regina had started. “Cut it out.”

“C…O…M…E.”

David narrowed his eyes at Regina suspiciously. “You’re moving it, right?”

Regina glowered back. “No, you are.”

“Guys,” Killian called over, “I’m ready.”

They left the Ouija board where it was, planchette resting atop the E, and came over to join them in the centre of the room. Killian directed each of them to sit at a point on the star, David and Mary Margaret giggling to each other but trying to keep a straight face, before he followed the line of the circle with some matches, lighting each candle. David jokingly blew on his, causing the flame to flicker wildly, and Emma shot him a warning look.

She only wanted them to take it seriously for a few minutes, just for Killian.

“What exactly are we trying to do?” Regina asked, looking bored as she played at dabbing the tip of the flame with her finger.

Emma had been about to bark a rebuke, but Killian beat her do it with an indulgent grin.

“We’re trying to get results.”

“I think I saw this ritual on an episode of Ghost Hunters,” Mary Margaret whispered excitedly. “See, the wife had murdered the husband, but they found a second body buried under the…” She seemed to sense the atmosphere starting to shift to something a little more sombre, and let her sentence trail off.

Killian stepped outside the circle to take his place at the final point of the star, placing the knife carefully in his lap once he was settled. Then they waited.

For a beat, nothing happened at all. The candles flickered in place, they exchanged uncertain looks. The shadows inside the sitting room had grown longer the closer the sun inched behind the trees, and it made the dappled light from the star in front of them look a little more ominous now that daylight was fading.

Regina huffed loudly. “Now what?”

“Erm,” Killian scratched the back of his neck, “I don’t really know.”

“Maybe we should hold hands?” David suggested quickly.

Emma felt that suggestion was probably more to do with the hand he would be holding than wanting to increase their chances of success – and she knew Killian agreed from the amused glance he sent her, but they consented all the same. Mary Margaret blushed as she slipped her hand into David’s.

Killian’s hand in Emma’s was warm, and a little clammy. It didn’t feel like it had the day of her birthday, when he had walked her back to the Nolan house from Granny’s. They had held hands the entire way, continuing to talk with enough forced nonchalance that they both knew the other was also clearly trying to pretend it wasn’t a big deal, hiding their smiles with glances out into the road. Then, it had made her feel dizzy with possibility, the gentle move of his thumb on the back of her hand sending her stomach spinning with delight.

This afternoon it didn’t thrill her the same way. She could feel how nervous he was in the slight tremor of his hand, and as she glanced at Regina on his other side she could tell the other girl could feel it too. Whether it was a sense of compassion for him or a desire to just get it over with, Regina slipped smoothly into control.

“We’re talking to the spirit in this house,” Regina said clearly, firmly, looking up into the ceiling. “Are you there?”

They all waited with bated breath.

“Can you hear us?”

All at once Emma was struck by the old, kind face of Belle Gold, wide eyed and fearful.

He found – he found a house, in the woods – and he thought it might make him strong.

Something thumped inside her chest. Like static from a radio, she could hear something crackling at her ear, but every time she turned her head toward the sound it disappeared. Twice she cleared her throat to try and speak but no sound came out. She knew, she knew, but she didn’t know how she knew, and Killian had turned to look at her, concerned, as her hand tightened on his.

“The knife,” she blurted out, and he raised an eyebrow. “It should be in the middle.”

Killian didn’t question her, merely stared at her curiously as he let go of Regina’s hand to slide the knife into the centre of the circle. It clattered against the floorboards before rolling to a stop in the middle.

But it felt – wrong.

“Wrong,” Mary Margaret echoed. Her eyes were closed.

David, too, had shut his eyes, and after Killian had once again completed the circle, Emma did the same. Regina didn’t speak again. Emma sensed she felt the same as she did; they had asked whatever they meant to ask, and it would be cheap to do so again. Only for show. Outside was nothing but stillness, not a sound to drown them out – in fact she had only become conscious of noise in the absence of it, and she now wished she had been playing closer attention to what it was that had stopped dead when they formed the circle.

They had been heard.

“I’m here,” Killian whispered quietly, so quietly Emma couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it. “Find me.”

It had grown colder, gooseflesh beginning to erupt along her arm. Everything began to feel much farther away, as if her ears had popped, and a faint buzzing replaced the quiet that had blanketed them before. Oxygen was taking longer to reach her lungs, like the pressure in the air had changed. She could feel hair rising from the back of her neck and the thought suddenly entered her mind with a shuddering fear that she was about to be struck by lightning.

A rumble sounded from above, the rumble of something trapped beating against impossibly old doors.

The wardrobe.

It was all – wrong.

Come.

Listen.

Static zinged through her grip on Killian’s hand, and they both yelped and broke apart.

“What?” David spoke first, but the other three were all giving them baffled looks. Both Killian and Emma nursed their injured hands with matching grimaces. “What happened?”

“Electric shock,” Killian answered, shaking his hand out. “Bloody hell, ouch.”

“It’s the weather,” Regina offered. “I saw the forecast earlier. It always gets like this right before a storm.” Finally tired of the whole affair, she blew out her candle with an air of finality. “I think we can safely say this house is not haunted.”

Emma was willing her racing pulse to slow, trying to process what the fuck had just happened, but everyone else seemed to be carrying on as if nothing had occurred at all. David was helping Mary Margaret brush cobwebs from her hair while she asked if he wanted to come over to the Blanchard’s for dinner. Regina stood up and began to pack up the Ouija board. Killian stared at the flickering wick of his candle, looking despondent and a little frustrated. All like nothing in the world had taken place.

“Wait,” Emma said, looking around them all at confusion. “Are we really not going to talk about what just happened?”

They all turned to stare at her.

Killian was the first to reply. “What do you mean?”

“The – you know. It went quiet. The, uh, atmosphere.” She realised with frustration that it was amazingly difficult to describe, that breathlessness. The sense of standing on the edge and peering out into the dark. “You said it,” Emma pointed at Mary Margaret, remembering now that the girl had spoken. “You said ‘wrong’.”

Mary Margaret frowned. “No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.” When Mary Margaret again shook her head, Emma grew indignant. “You did!” She hadn’t goddamn imagined it, so why was the other girl bothering to deny it?

“Emma, she didn’t say anything,” David said cautiously. “Nobody said anything until you guys did.”

When she opened her mouth to retort Killian put a hand on her arm. It made her hesitate long enough for them all to brush past the moment.

“This place is creepy,” Mary Margaret declared, “and I’ve got to get home. David, are you coming?”

As Mary Margaret collected her stuff, David looked torn. Emma merely smiled at him weakly, but nodded her head – he should go. She was just… she was overtired. She probably shouldn’t have stayed up so late the night before studying for their calculus test on Monday. And she was letting the feeling of that house, of Killian’s hopefulness in that house get to her, and she’d let herself get carried right along by something else altogether.

They finished helping Regina pack the board away, but Emma stayed behind to help Killian clear up, promising to see the others at school the next day, and David that night once he got back to Ruth’s. The pair of them worked mostly in silence, using the old bucket and sponge Liam had left and a bottle of water to wipe the black marker away from the floorboards. Even amongst the disrepair of the house, it felt dishonest to leave the markings on the floor.

Or perhaps they just didn’t want to leave any permanent evidence of their being there.

“I believe you,” Killian said quietly. “I didn’t hear her, but I believe you. I think these things have to affect all of us differently.”

And by ‘these things’, he meant the supernatural. Ghosts. The movement of the planchette across Regina’s spirit board.

Things Emma definitely, categorically did not believe in.

Right?

She dismissed him. “You only think I heard something because you want me to have heard something.” It wasn’t true belief in her, it wasn’t because he knew her to be honest or trusted her. It was because something else was what he had come here for, and her ramblings had been his only glimpse of it.

Killian’s wanting, longing, was palpable in his every hopeful inhale.

“That’s unfair.”

Emma chose not to reply.

“What else did you feel? In the circle?”

“Killian, stop.” She made sure her voice was firm. “You promised not to let this get to you. We tried, okay? Nothing happened.”

They had been heard.

“But you said –”

“I didn’t hear anything, alright? Just forget it.” She stalked over to the window and picked up her rucksack. If she said it forcefully enough to him, she could make it just as true to herself. “Do you want to grab some dinner somewhere?”

She knew she sounded irritated, and Kilian didn’t respond, just watched her from the centre of the room. He was not impressed with her brushing him off, clearly wanted to continue down that line of questioning, and was waiting until she felt ready to talk about it. Suddenly irritated with his saintly level of patience, Emma huffed.

“Fine. Stay here by yourself. See if I care.”

Without waiting to see if he would reply, Emma barged out of the front door and stomped down the rotted steps without another word.

-/-

But she couldn’t sleep that night.

Every time she shut her eyes, drifted near enough to something dreamless, images so vivid they felt more real than the bed she lay in assaulted her. Killian’s disappointed expression from the centre of the room, expectant, waiting. The scrape of the pointer across the board. The knife, lying still in the middle of their circle. Firelight flickering. Regina blowing out her candle with a whoosh that seemed to extend for minutes at a time.

The nothing she had felt as she sat and breathed in the circle. That terrible, absence of anything.

She had realised too late that she had left her fishing knife in Brooke House. It was altogether likely that Killian had picked it up, and after a quiet dinner with Ruth she considered going around to the group home to retrieve it from him. Instead, a wave of annoyance had risen in her. If Killian had picked it up, he should have brought it round to her. And after the brief spat they’d had before she left the house, she decided, really, he should be the one putting effort in for her. Her resolve had strengthened, and she had announced to Ruth that she would be going to bed early.

She had lain awake for a few hours, ears pricked for any noise downstairs. David had come home a little later than expected, had spoken with Ruth for a long time before retreating to his own room. Ruth had stayed in the living room for a while, likely catching up on a few chapters of the novel she had been reading, before Emma heard the creak of the stair indicating she, too, had gone to bed. Killian had not come round. Still the night wore on, and Emma found herself no closer to sleep.

Downstairs the refrigerator hummed, and the electric heater on the landing rumbled, with the occasional clank she had grown used to. On her first night, all the odd sounds of the Nolan house had unnerved her. Much like tonight she had stayed awake for hours, worried she would never be able to sleep, certain the Nolan’s would want to send her back before too long, missing Killian terribly. The further her anxiety had skyrocketed, the more restless she became.

Tonight the noises included the sliding pointer, the squeak of Killian’s pen on the floorboards, Mary Margaret’s quiet whisper, wrong.

In Brooke House, something clattered in the attic. The wardrobe doors bumped and groaned.

Emma’s eyes flew open.

Something was trying to get out.

Her heart began to thump wildly.

Come.

Listen.

She threw back the duvet and reached for her trainers.

Which was the last thing she could remember before she found herself stood in front of Brooke House.

Emma stumbled backwards, as if she were just now falling back into her own body and her knees felt weak with the strain of it, and dry leaves crunched underfoot. She was wearing her trainers. She was also still wearing her pyjama shirt and shorts, but had thrown a hoodie and a coat on over the top. Her legs were bare, and cold. In one hand she held a torch and the other was clenched into a fist at her side.

Why had she come here?

Something loud crashed inside the house, a shadow darted across the upstairs window.

Yes, Emma remembered now. She had come for her knife.

She always felt safer with that knife.

Climbing the front steps, slowly, her shoes sounded more muffled than usual. Before she had a chance to touch it the front door creaked open, beckoning her to step inside. She felt foggy, all – all lost, and what time was it, anyway? A dazed search of her pockets told her she hadn’t brought her cell phone. Why had she left without it? Why couldn’t she remember?

The by now familiar creak sounded from the landing. Emma was halfway up the staircase before she remembered setting her foot on the first step.

For a moment she felt Killian’s hand resting on the small of her back again, ready to steady her if she lost her balance, and she began to lean backwards into it – before it vanished and she had to jerk herself forward to avoid toppling down the stairs. Her hand was so tight on the banister that her knuckles had turned white. Right, Killian wasn’t there. Killian was at home, asleep.

Emma was in Brooke House.

The second floor was lit with tendrils of moonlight, dirty white and shapeless, crawling up the walls and stretching across the floor. The creak sounded again, and Emma gently opened the door to the room with the spinning wheel. As expected, the spinning wheel lay turning slowly on its axis by the soft press of the pedal underneath, except this time a man sat there, steadily feeding in pieces of straw until they came out as spun gold twine, which then pooled into a basket at the end. His face was obscured by the shadow of the windowsill, but he raised a hand in greeting before returning to his work.

She shook her head to try and confirm what she was seeing, and realised with a start that the door to the spinning wheel room was closed, and her hand was still poised above the handle. Had she opened it at all? She couldn’t remember. The old wood of the spinning wheel groaned behind the door and, firmly this time, Emma swung the door open inwardly. The wheel spun slowly – but on its own. Gone was the man, the spun gold, the straw. Only the empty dark and the dancing moonlight remained.

An odd noise jerked her attention away from the wheel, just as the light from her torch winked out. Now concerned, Emma smacked it against her palm a few times to try and knock the device back into working, but it did not respond. The sound came again, and to her ears it seemed like –

No, there it was again. She was sure.

It was a giggle.

High-pitched and delighted, something was laughing at her.

“Who’s there?” she said. Or did she?

She might have said: “I’m coming.”

Uncertain which she had said and which she had not said, Emma reached the end of the corridor and stood on her tiptoes so she could begin to scrabble with the door to the attic. The metal ring which would allow her to pull it down was just out of reach, but after she asked politely the panel dislodged from the ceiling by itself, and with it came the ladder. She rose one cautious step at a time, up into the black, and tried to remember why she was there.

Her knife, yes. She was coming for her knife. She had been just thirteen when she took it, lifting it from a set of tools a dockworker had left abandoned while he helped unload a seiner, and it had made Emma feel so dangerous to be holding it that she had immediately cradled it with both hands before making her escape. The blade was deadly sharp, far sharper than any knife she had seen in the group home or otherwise, and she had cut her hand while examining it later.

It had reminded her of herself. All along she had been afraid that one day someone might fall on her, and get hurt on all her sharp edges.

Another banner year, right?

What?

We’ve all got ghosts here.

As she reached the top her pulse began to race, and her heart turned her head and waited for her body to catch up. She ignored the desk, the vials, the shattered glass on the floor; like a string had been tied to the centre of her chest, made of hope and sadness and something wild, it propelled her forward to the darkest corner of the room. There, tucked into the downward slant of the roof, stood the wardrobe. It rattled in place, as if someone were stood behind and shaking it back and forth, and she could feel it.

She could feel it wanting, could feel it longing for her, and she longed for it right back. Breathless and exhilarated, she crossed the room in three short steps and knelt before it, hands reaching for the ornate handles on the doors. Darker swirls of colour spun out from the handles and almost seemed to move, curling delicately around her fingers.

Yes, they whispered, come.

Listen.

Emma tugged open the doors.

Which was the last thing she could remember before she found herself in her bed at the Nolan house, blinking against the hazy light of morning.

Once realisation struck Emma bolted upright, glancing wildly about her room. Her trainers were tucked against her dresser, her coat hung on the back of her door. There were leaves in her hair. Once she registered it was morning she scrambled for the clock at her bedside, which read 6.03am. Almost time to wake up for school.

Had she – had she dreamed it? The house?

It was already beginning to turn foggy and fade, the corners curling in on themselves with greater speed the more she tried to remember, like clutching at the tendrils of a dream that was vanishing out of sight. Everything was as it was.

Except for the knife.

Emma blinked, realising her left hand had been curled around the hilt of a very strange, very ornate knife – no. Dagger.

The hilt was black as pitch, and cool to touch, but the blade was what interested her the most. It’s edge was curved, as if it were blurring in and out of sight in the nature of a mirage, and was ornately patterned with twisting black shapes reaching all the way to its desperately sharp point. It was heavy, and unlike anything Emma had ever seen before.

But perhaps what intrigued her the most was the name emblazoned across it, written in an almost medieval cursive.

Weighty in both heft and emotional damage, Emma could scarcely believe it. What did it mean?

For written on it was a name she recognised. One they were all familiar with.

Liam Jones.

-/-

2nd May 2015 – Seven Months Later

David was the last to arrive by a couple of minutes. Although the air that night was cool, the day had been hot, and he was still dressed in the same t-shirt and shorts he had been wearing earlier. Killian couldn’t be more grateful for the drop in temperature – he could remember a time he had been a fan of the immortal summer, of scorching afternoons and ice cold drinks, it made him think of fly fishing in the lake in the middle of Memorial Park or setting off cheap fireworks by the docks that fizzled and burnt with the whole year’s lost potential. Last year he and Emma had borrowed Archie’s car and driven all the way to Portland, just so they could track down a lobster restaurant a traveller stopping in at Granny’s had told them about. They spent the entire afternoon searching until, tired and hungry, they’d picked up a few sandwiches from a convenience store and perched at the edge of the harbour, watching the boats roll in, and roll away again.

The whole day had been a bust. Killian couldn’t remember it being anything but perfect.

As the days stretched and he found himself looking for her amongst the sun-soaked streets of Storybrooke, summer became just one more thing he wanted no part of anymore.

“Is this going to take long?”

Mary Margaret’s voice jogged him back to the present, and Killian quickly jerked his head around to check nobody else was nearby. They had met at their usual spot, just a little ways into the north woods. Far enough that they would go unnoticed by any stray observer near the edge of the forest, but near enough that the distant sound of cars zooming past on the street could still be heard. Most of them were reluctant to venture any farther in now, if it could be avoided. Especially after dark.

Regina scoffed. “Why, are we keeping you from something?”

“My mom doesn’t like me being out late anymore,” Mary Margaret replied defensively. “I had to sneak out my window.”

“Well, our apologies for the inconvenience.” Unsurprisingly, Regina did not sound that sorry at all.  

“Would you just stop?” David groused.

“Guys, please,” Killian interjected, wanting to cut them off before they could start getting too snippy. He turned his attention to Regina. “By the way, are you alright? I hear Humbert gave you a hard time yesterday.”

Regina had been collected from the school gates by Sheriff Humbert, in full view of everyone. He liked them to be observed when he decided to bring them in for another interview; it was one of his favourite tactics.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she shrugged. “It was the same questions as always.”

Why were you out in the woods? When did you see her last?

Is there anything you’re not telling us?

Smooth, long exhale.

Nothing, Sheriff Humbert.

“Good,” Killian answered, nodding slowly. “That’s good. And you, Mary Margaret? Did you get a chance to look for the house this week?”

They had been taking it in turns for the last few months, always making sure that they weren’t spotted together heading down the White Pine Trail, to investigate the place Brooke House had once stood. Ever since the first time they had been caught by Sheriff Humbert there, they had realised the man had started watching their every move in the weeks that followed Emma’s disappearance. Killian, especially, had scarcely been able to get away with taking an unusual route home from school without the sheriff picking up on it. The more time marched forward the less observed they felt, but they still stuck to the same precautions just to be sure.

It had been seven months since Emma had disappeared. Graham Humbert never let him forget it.

And with Emma, Brooke House had also vanished. Nothing stood at the end of the orange string trail Killian had once left anymore, only silence and torment.

Finding it again had to be their best chance at finding her. It was just that these days, finding felt a lot more like waiting.

Mary Margaret hadn’t answered him, so Killian flicked his eyes over. He could see her eyes were averted, jaw clenched. One of her shoes kept stringing up a restless beat on the floor for a few seconds at a time.

“Mary Margaret?”

She let out an almost irritated sigh. “No, Killian, I have not gone looking for the damn house.”

Killian blinked. “And what’s with the tone?”

“I have to study,” she burst, “I have AP tests in two weeks, and if I don’t pass I probably won’t be able to go to college. And instead, I’m disobeying my parents, standing in the middle of the woods and thinking about how much I don’t know about environmental science.”

Regina looked the way Killian felt; completely dumbfounded. “You’re thinking about exams right now?”

“It’s not just exams, Regina,” Mary Margaret insisted. “It’s my life. I want to make something of it one day, and I suggest you do the same.”

Something still had settled between them, as if Mary Margaret had started to lift the lid on something they had sworn to keep closed, and even the night around them was stiffening with anticipation. It was sacred ground on which their harsh words steered them, and it was impossible to discern where the line could be drawn between how to move forward, and how to avoid moving backward. At times they seemed to be the same thing, but somehow it was impossible to think of them the same way.

Emma had wanted to pass her exams too. Desperately, in fact. It had been so important to her that she be able to push off into the rest of her life in better straits than how she had been brought into it, and to that end she had often stayed up long into the night studying at the group home so she could avoid the noise and the steady stream of interruptions that came during the day. It was that which had prompted her to accept Ruth’s offering of a fostering, even after deciding long ago never to hand her heart out again to somebody she was sure would just return it later.

Killian had encouraged her; he had hoped she might find more at the Nolan house than a quiet place to work, and she had. She had found David, and with David came Mary Margaret, and Regina had fallen in as easily with them as she had with Killian and Emma years earlier. They had been a haphazard band, and for a year everything was warm and gold.

That was over now, and they had begun to splinter.

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

He heard her, always. Always, always.

“What about Emma?”

It was David who spoke, and he looked stricken to have even needed to say the words.

What about Emma? Was holding onto this, meeting clandestinely in the middle of the night to yet again swap how little progress they had made in getting her back – was this moving forward? Or was this trying so desperately not to move backward that they couldn’t keep their focus on anything ahead? Brooke House was never there when they looked for it. But Killian didn’t care about school, anyway. He’d had enough credits to graduate at the end of his junior year, before all of this. Every AP class he’d taken he had since dropped. Archie had barely been able to convince him to go to school for much of the year.

It didn’t matter to Killian, not a whisper; but was it okay for this to matter to someone else?

“Emma is gone,” Mary Margaret said, quietly. As if scared that they might hear her and yet desperate for them to. “And it’s…” She sucked in a sharp breath before continuing. “It’s devastating. But it’s – it’s been seven months. We have nothing. And more importantly, the police have nothing.” Killian could tell from a subtle movement in her fist that she was trembling. With fright, anger, sadness. Who could know for sure? “Finding Emma, if she can be found, should be up to them.”

Killian felt as if he’d been slapped. “How can you say that?”

“It’s their job, isn’t it?” she bit back. “And the more I think about that night… the more we feed into that – that hysteria, or – or whatever we thought we saw – the less help we’re being to them. The police, I mean.”

Killian felt his temper rising. He knew what he had seen – they had all seen it, although for reasons Killian couldn’t fathom, it had become a matter of spirited debate between Mary Margaret and David, and he and Regina.

“We never should have lied,” Mary Margaret continued firmly. “We should have told them everything from the start, about the house, about all of it.”

“They would have told us we were crazy,” Regina pointed out. “Hell, I would have called you crazy if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

“But at least I wouldn’t feel like this!” Mary Margaret’s voice cracked on the last syllable, and the bite in her expression had crumpled. She was all melancholy, draped in it like an old cloak, where in their group she had always been warmth. Everything was twisted now, like none of it could ever be light again. “Like I have this weight, poised above my head, and I’m just waiting for it to – to fall and crush me. And it hurts.” She clutched at her throat, eyes wide and sad. “And I’m breathless, and scared. All the time. And sometimes – sometimes I don’t realise I’ve forgotten that it’s there, but then I look up –”

David had taken a few steps closer to her, and put his arm around her shoulders. She curled into it and buried her face into his chest for a few moments, shaking, while he murmured something neither Killian nor Regina could hear. They couldn’t find the words to interject.

After a few long moments she gathered herself, her fist clenching into David’s shirt.

“It’s this lie,” she said fiercely, speaking into the solidness of David’s form, sounding as wretched as she looked. “And this feeling that if – if we’d just told the truth then they would have found something, and they would have found her.”

The accusation was softly cushioned, and gently aimed, but Killian felt it with the keen force of any blow.

“They wouldn’t have found her,” he answered evenly. They couldn’t. “It’s up to us.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “Of course you would say that.”

Killian’s temper flared. “Excuse me?”

“It clearly doesn’t bother you, Killian, but I’m just saying – if I could do this again I wouldn’t lie.”

I wouldn’t tell the lie you told me to tell.

The lie he had told them tell to protect them.

Humbert’s hard expression flashed in front of him.

Your friends say she was with you when she went missing. That you were the last one to see her.

“I wouldn’t either,” David added quietly.

Disbelief marred everything, it made everything black as tar – was this really what it was all coming to? Rounding on him?

“And what would you have told them?” Killian shot back. When David grimaced he pressed on. “No, really, I’m interested to know what you would have told the sheriff about the haunted house and the magic dagger.”

“Stop that,” Mary Margaret snapped, “it’s not magic.”

“Then how the bloody hell do you explain it? Explain this?”

With intent, Killian reached into his jacket and pulled out the dagger. Its curving edges glittered dangerously in the dim light, and in a movement so quick he might have imagined it he thought he saw Regina reach out a hand to take it, before snatching it back. The intricate pattern engraved onto the blade was one he had memorised from long nights spent staring at its edges, begging for it to reveal its secrets. The inky black writing crafted beautifully on top spoke of everything they had lost – the truth they all knew, and the only tangible proof that forces greater than themselves were at work.

The name carved across it was clear: Emma Swan.

Like a spell, it brought with it an almost supernatural quiet. Mary Margaret had begun to weep silently, and she shrugged away from David’s touch this time. Regina watched but did not speak. David couldn’t bear to do more than glance at the dagger, a pained expression on his face clear before he turned to look out into the forest.

“This is how we know she’s still out there,” Killian insisted fiercely. “We can’t give up now. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

For a little while, the only noise was Mary Margaret, trying to suppress a gasp or wiping her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. After some time, she sank down to perch on a nearby log and Regina joined her, threading their fingers together tightly. In the distance Killian could hear the rumble of the road, the sound of an engine increasing in volume before skittering away. Although reluctantly, he slipped the dagger back into the inside pocket of his jacket, and the blade was cool against his chest even through the fabric of his shirt. A cold comfort, but a comfort all the same.

“The truth is,” Mary Margaret began quietly, staring at the mossy ground at their feet. “I want to grieve. I loved Emma. I want to treasure her memory… I want the chance to miss her.” She lifted misty eyes and looked at each of them in turn. “But it’s impossible around all of you. For you she’s still here. But I want to keep moving forward.” She brushed a hand across a tear-stained cheek. “Will you – will you let me do that?”

With quiet strength, she dug the stake into the earth. Beneath it, they cracked.

She stood. There wasn’t anything else to say.

She looked impossibly guilty, and Killian searched for something to say that would deliver her from that, but all of it felt brittle and fake. The honest truth was that he loved her and wanted nothing but her happiness, but he might never forgive her if she walked out of that clearing now.

Mary Margaret looked to all of them, but it was Killian’s gaze she sought most eagerly. He couldn’t give it, staring stonily at the ground instead.

“I’ll… I’ll see you.”

She didn’t say at school, since he wouldn’t be going anyway and they both knew it. Recklessly, he thought that without it there might not be another excuse for their paths to cross. If she wanted to keep moving forward and leave all this in the past, then Killian would not be going with her. Dry leaves crunched as she departed, slowly receding until the only sound was the breeze whistling by.

“I’m not giving up. No way.”

It was Regina who had spoken, and Killian felt a wave of unreserved tenderness for her.

Her face softened, and she stepped over to lay a gentle hand on his arm.

“She’ll come around.”

She wouldn’t, but it was easier to pretend.

After Regina had gone Killian sat on the damp earth underneath him, leaning his head back to stare through the canopy. The trees had clustered together here, dark shapes towering over through which he could spot the stars winking in and out.

David shifted from where he stood. “Are you okay?”

Killian let out a long breath, one that he felt like he had been holding onto for a number of days. His chest felt tight, and he could feel a familiar tugging sensation behind his nose as the stars started to swim before him.

“Belle died. Yesterday.”

David let out a soft expletive. “I’m so sorry, Killian.”

“It was peaceful,” he nodded to himself, like it made everything fine. “In her sleep.”

Belle had been a great source of comfort for him. She talked in circles and remembered very little, but she remembered Liam and often asked after Emma, and had lived a deep and fulfilling life she loved to tell him about. It did her good to talk, the nuns had said, which was why they let him come. Every character in all of her stories was long gone now, but it didn’t cause her any pain. She spoke only of the joy in having known them and the colours with which they had brushed her soul. It didn’t matter how lonely it looked now, or how sad everyone else thought she must be to be alone; she had assured him many times that she was lucky, and wanted for little else.

He wanted desperately to feel like that, even if only for a heartbeat.

Sometimes, she had said with a smile, the best books have the dustiest jackets.

“It just feels like everything is slipping away.”

Mary Margaret, Belle. Liam. Emma. Everything he touched was dust.

Don’t tell me – it’s hot cocoa, with cinnamon, and you’re about to hand it over.

A hot tear spilled down his cheek and he angrily swiped it away.

He cleared his throat loudly, mostly to try and cover the sudden rush of emotion, but he knew that David had seen it. “Sometimes I can’t help but think… maybe it’s all in my head, you know? The more I think about that night the hazier it gets.” Like trying to remember a dream after you’d woken from it, every single day more details faded into nothing. “I just hear her.” That final, startled scream. It would never leave him, he just knew it. “All I can hear is her.”

Killian – Killian, don’t –!

“Me too,” David admitted quietly. “I hear it too.”

“I’m leaving,” he said suddenly, and with the confession came a twinge of relief, and he forgave himself a little more for it. “Right after graduation. I have to find an answer, and there isn’t one here.”

He’d go as far as needed, for as long as it took. He’d walk the stretch of the Earth if he had to.

For a moment David looked crestfallen, but he mastered it quickly. “I understand,” he said. And he might think he did – but David would never be looked at the way Storybrooke looked at Killian. In their eyes he would never be blameless, not the way the David Nolan was. Emma was his sister; she was just Killian’s victim.

“I’d go too,” David continued, “but my mom… it’s just hard, you know? I feel like there’s so much she doesn’t know. And I couldn’t…”

“I know,” Killian assured him, “it’s alright. I wouldn’t ask you to come.” It was something he would rather do alone.

A few moments of stillness passed, before David let out a low whistle.

“So. Right after graduation, huh?”

Killian nodded. June twenty-third, 18:00.

There was a bus to Augusta that he had promised he would not miss.

-/-

Present Day

As night fell, Killian again returned to Brooke House.

He had already spent much of the day there with Regina, taking readings, burning herbs and mumbling variations on familiar incantations from her book of shadows. There were a few key vocabularic differences, but the intention behind a few spells seemed similar to some he had seen from the coven in Pennsylvania. Just once they had let him sit in on a cleansing ceremony, a practice of healing for the soul, and he could recognise some of the actions as Regina guided him through a ritual for cleansing the air in the house. Smudging, she called it. But by the time they had departed in late afternoon, visibly nothing had changed within the house.

After grabbing a quick bite at Granny’s Killian had spent the remainder of early evening categorically working through all the other data he had been able to gather over the course of the day; and not one instrument had indicated anything outside of the realms of a normal abandoned house. In fact, most of the anomalous readings one could expect from a long period of constant use (a sudden spike in electromagnetic radiation, a noise in static on a recorder where there had been none aloud) were completely non-existent. Brooke House was as silent as the dead other than the sounds he and Regina made. It were as if they were measuring nothing at all.

No doubt, that was its intention.

He expected much to be different in the dark.

Again, he left the dagger rolled up in his scarf in his car, not wanting to bring it any closer to Emma – or to whatever Emma was. They were clearly linked, the spectre of the house and the dagger, and he had to believe that somewhere buried in there was his Emma. She retained the same memories, even if she warped them for her use. She recognised him. It was her name on the dagger.

He had taken the dagger to three different psychometrists over the years, seeking insight. Each one had only been able to tell him that its origin was evil, that its master was lost.

Even Killian could have surmised that much.

“Emma?” he called, as he stepped over the threshold. Only creaks of old wood answered back.

He lingered briefly in the sitting room, checking his old tape recorder that he had left running, tucked under the sheet of one of the armchairs as gently as possible. He wanted to avoid the possibility of muffling any sound while also trying to prevent its detection from any nefarious spirits that chose not to make a sound while he and Regina were there. All he needed was some kind of proof that something in the house moved when it was left to its own devices. In the morning he would return for it and listen for any erroneous sound.

As if reading his thoughts, an audible thump came from above him. He headed back out into the hall. For now, Killian decided to pocket the recorder and return it after he’d come to say what he meant to.

Again Killian called Emma’s name, mounting the stairs slowly. Once he reached the top he spotted the flash of white fabric trailing along the floor, disappearing into one of the rooms on the landing. Aside from the room with the spinning wheel that never faltered, Killian hadn’t spent much time in the other two rooms. One was a bedroom and the other a study, boasting only a desk and a wall lined with ancient, brittle bookcases, the tomes atop them turned grey with age with faded and illegible titles. It was into the study that he had seen her go, so Killian opened the door cautiously so as not to startle her away.

The bottom shelf of the bookcase nearest the door had collapsed, the books falling into a haphazard clump onto the floor. A dust cloud still lingered so he imagined it couldn’t have happened too long ago; he wondered if that was the noise he had heard from downstairs.

Emma stood with her back to him, the rustle of pages the only indication that she was moving. Then, without warning, she swung her right arm back and hurtled the book against the wall. The binding tore with a snap, and in pieces it clattered down onto the ground. Killian, reluctant to become a target for one of those heavy missiles, cleared his throat to announce himself, but quickly tucked the tape recorder subtly into one of the bookcases as he did so. He didn’t want her to catch it on him.

Emma turned, her jade eyes sharp in the gloom. As always, they cut right through him.

“Have you decided?” she said, her voice as heavy as stone.

Killian didn’t answer immediately, but tried to look at her more critically. What was he seeing? Just what he wanted to see, or something more?

Regina’s warning repeated itself over and over. What if this is something else, just taking the shape of Emma? And appealing to those made most vulnerable by the sight of her?

“Why didn’t you show yourself to Regina?”

They had been at Brooke House all day, there was ample opportunity. Not a creature had stirred out of place, as if the house had been holding its breath and waiting for them to leave. That meant one of two things – Emma did not think Regina could help with what she wanted, or there was nothing of Emma to show.

Emma lifted a shoulder in a half shrug and turned back to the bookcase. She picked up another book, and began lazily flipping through its contents.

That, too, found itself tossed to the edge of the room.

“I didn’t feel like it.” She reached for another.

“Come here,” he said, before he felt he’d truly made the decision. “Let me look at you.”

She turned slowly to stare at him; it was clear in her expression that she was unaccustomed to receiving orders, and was flirting with the idea of being furious, or going along with it. Keeping her eyes locked on his she discarded her final book, letting it flutter onto the floor, and started to walk towards him. It felt distinctly like being stalked by a predator, and he resisted the urge to step back when she came to a stop in front of him, looking up.

Instead he steeled his resolve, and lifted his thumb and forefinger to her chin. Her skin was glacial to the touch, pale and smooth. Like marble.

Applying a little pressure, Killian turned her head first to one side, then to the other. She allowed him, her eyes continuing to follow him intently. Up close, she looked human. With a little more colour in her cheeks she would look just like he remembered her. Would it even be possible, he wondered, for him to conjure up something so near to perfection? Was he capable? Could he really have imagined this?

“I’m so sorry,” he sighed sadly, brushing his fingers along her jaw, stilling them when they reached the tip of her neck.

Emma tensed underneath him. “What for?”

The list was unending.

“All of it.”

Something flickered across her expression, but it had moved too quickly for him to notice it. A blackened petal dropped from the circlet around her head, and became tangled in her hair. Without thinking, Killian gently tugged it loose.

“You don’t need to be sorry.”

A cold hand came to rest over his. Then, to his surprise, she lifted herself onto her tiptoes and leaned forward. Too shocked to move, Killian froze in place as she reached him. Like the rest of her, her lips were icy to touch, and moved gently against his like the purl of the ocean against the sand. His eyes stayed open but he could see hers had fluttered closed – she looked unarmed. Gentle. Like a girl.

She pulled back because he did not know how to keep her, and he could feel now that he was trembling. He was cold, his heart ached with grief, and he was furious.

That was a kiss that he had been saving, and she had taken it.

He opened his mouth to rattle off a rebuke, but something in her manner had changed. Her brows had knitted a little closer together, her lips parted – even her eyes looked as if they might have dulled from their usual startling shade.

Recognition fluttered across her features. She blinked slowly. “Killian?”

Killian’s heart began to hammer against his ribcage. Hope stuttered to life with every beat, but he tried to remain cautious. Something was different, he was sure of it, and now he wished he had been paying closer attention to her before so he might able to more clearly see now what had changed.

He watched her warily. “Emma?”

It happened in painfully slow motion. Her eyes glazed over, she turned herself away, something that had been out of alignment clicked back into place. In an almost unnatural way her head tilted, and began to stare at him with those new, wide eyes.

Her lips curled in a snarl. “That’s enough of that.”

A rush of air blew past him and she was gone, but Killian, exhilarated and almost breathless, couldn’t let her go.

“Wait, I –” He caught her in the hallway, her hand resting on the door to the spinning wheel room. She whirled around to face him expectantly, eyes ablaze. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you.”

The corner of her mouth curved upwards, a smirk rising into place.

Killian swallowed. He’d been at her mercy since the moment he laid eyes on her.

“Just… tell me what you need me to do.”