#this is something i said a little while ago but h want to revisit. what if. he has kit herondale swag

[livvyofthelake]

on tiktok again. just so thoroughly enamored by his sad eyes and big smile and freakish yet somehow nonexistent and void personality. and earring.

[lovethisletters]

The Bat & The Lantern || Batman x Reader

Hi, lovely! I had so much fun writing this (I'm not gonna lie, I was quite nervous at first, since I don't know that much about the whole green lantern universe, but guess it turned out...ok?) so I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and to be honest, I would like to revisit this story again in the future!

Little disclaimer: The reader is a Human green lantern but similar to star-lord she lived the majority of her life in space, that's why she's so oblivious as to whom Batman is, also this takes place during Dick Grayson early years as robin (12-13).

Word count: 2233!!!

Summary: Reader is a new member of the Justice League...but Batman doesn't seem too happy about it.

Keys: Y/S/N: Your Superhero Name | Y/N: Your (real) Name.

Hal Jordan was your friend since you joined the green lanterns (which it was barely 3 or 4 years ago)

Basically...you were "new"

But that didn't stop your fellow green lanterns (?) From seeing all your potential.

Everyone is convinced that with the right training and perseverance, you will become one of the greatest green lanterns of all time.

So, it didn't take long before you proved yourself to be capable enough to join the big leagues.

More specifically, The Justice League.

Hal was the one to introduce you to his companions.

The Amazonian, the human looking alien, the speedster, the other Alien not so human looking, the half robot; everyone was so nice to you since they met you.

Everyone except...The grumpy bat.

When you first introduced yourself, he didn't even bother to be as welcoming as the others.

He just stood there, looking all big and serious that you almost thought it was a statue or the poor guy had catatonic lapses or was way too shy or socially awkward to approach you.

You felt bad, so you approached him instead.

—Hi! I'm Y/S/N...—You said enthusiastically before being abruptly interrupted.

—I know, I heard your introduction already—His voice so devoid of any kind of emotion that you may as well had been talking to a machine.

"Scanning complete, Batman"

A voice inside his cowl informed him, it sounded like an older man with a British accent.

—Thank you, I'll check it later.

That’s when it hit you…the reason why he was watching you so intensely and standing so incredibly still: He was scanning you.

Fucking. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

You stayed there, your face paralyzed with surprise and anger, without knowing very well what to answer; you didn't want to cause a scene on your first day, but this man was just so rude; That is not an appropriate way to receive a new member. yes, it is normal to have suspicions, but you would appreciate if he had the decency to let his suspicions be known when you weren't present.

—she just introduced herself and already on with the paranoic behavior, Bats? seriously? —Hal stepped in your defense.

—this is a routine procedure; I'm just being cautious.

—He was like that at the beginning with all of us too, don’t worry he’ll warm up to you in no time—Wonder woman whispered in your ear after watching your uncomfortable expression.

Ultimatedly you decided to listen to the amazonian and let that one slide, “is normal to be wary of new things anyways” you repeated yourself.

As the months passed you have grown quite frustrated. Between all the missions and meetings even though you felt your relationship with the rest of the team grow closer and they began to trust you and respect you; your relationship with the Batman stayed pretty much the same.

Yes, there was a bit of progress….a bit.

He was bit more talkative to you, a bit more “friendly”, a bit more trusting.

But it was always just a bit never actually fully a teammate to you, your relationship felt more like distant coworkers.

At the beginning it didn’t worry you too much, until your lack of communication started to mess with your performance in the missions, sometimes something completely bizarre and unexpected would happen and because both of you didn’t know each other very well, the mission would take the double amount of time to resolve since you couldn’t coordinate at all.

One time he almost ran you over with his batwing…

The whole thing was kinda funny looking back on it but at the time you were furious (rightfully so)

In his defense, he didn’t knew you were there…I mean…you basically where standing in his parking spot (not that you knew there was such a thing, most members could fly or at least jump really high, so you kinda always forgot he couldn’t…and to be honest you didn’t know his exact powers)

—Sorry—was all he said as he got out of the strangely shaped flying vehicle and directed only one glance at you to make sure you where ok before entering the building, always maintaining that characteristic calm and cold demeanor.

One day you entered the hall of justice earlier than usual only to find an unexpected guest sitting in one of the empty chairs his gaze fixated on a book, he was wearing a rather colorful suit of some sort matching his green mask, then you realized when you were close enough…he was a C H I L D.

You panicked, why was a child here? Is he some sort of mini spy? How was he able to get through the security system?  Did he touch anything dangerous?

This and many more questions ran through your mind, the child noticed you were looking at him and only gave a polite nod as a greeting before returning his attention to his book.

Perhaps a school trip that you weren’t aware of was taking place and this kid strayed from his class? Perhaps he was looking for one of your teammates to ask for a photo and got lost and decided to wait here for his teacher? That will explain why everyone wasn’t here in the meetings room, perhaps they were busy giving the (hypothetical) group of children a tour?

—Hey kiddo! Are you lost? —you began the conversation in a friendly tone before kneeling down a little in order to appear less imposing…after all he was a child you didn’t wanna scare him.

He looked at you so incredulously.

You could almost hear him think “ma’am wtf are you doing???” through his expressions.

—What’s your name?

—Ummm…uh…Robin?­—He spoke like it was something obvious  while signaling the “R” symbol on his chest.

—Robin, uh? What a pretty name! tell me Robin…why are you here? Are you lost?

Poor boy he was so confused, you didn’t know who he was? Didn’t any of the members told you about him? And more importantly…Why where you talking to him like if he was a 5-year-old?

—No, ma’am…I’m just waiting for Batman.

“Batman? Was he a fan of Batman of all superheroes?”  It surprised you a bit, usually kids tend to like superman or wonder woman more since they are nicer and charismatic, and Batman was the opposite.

—Sorry Kiddo, I don’t think he’s one for photos, perhaps you could ask the others some other time! ­— you began explaining trying to dissuade the kid while guiding him towards the exit.

—He’s not here for photos—smooth as ever…the Bat was behind you.

—He’s my sidekick.

Your jaw dropped, a sidekick? He’s a CHILD! You knew superheroes had sidekicks, but you never knew they were that young!

Before you could even begin to protest, Batman ignored you, looking down at the child and instructing him to collect his things.

—Hurry, you’ll be late for class again. — He said before disappearing behind the door that led to his parking spot.

Robin quickly followed, hanging his backpack over his shoulder before stopping in his tracks directing an apologetic smile towards you and saying:

—Don’t worry miss, I can take care of myself! — He must have noticed the concern on your face before leaving.

Since that day your routine changed.

You would wake up earlier, many times you’ll be the first to arrive to the Hall of justice, and even have breakfast flying on your way there all for one thing: Robin.

Once you learned he was Batman’s sidekick you couldn’t help but worry over that poor child, “what if he gets hurt? Is he eating/sleeping/resting properly?” you just couldn’t help yourself.

At first it was just checking on the kid by just…seeing him in the morning and greeting him casually but there were times he wasn’t there, and you would panic internally and there was no other way to calm your anxiety until you would ask the Bat about the child.

He would always replay shortly: “He’s at home” “He’s at school” “He’s busy” and your conversations always would end there.

One day that Robin was there however, instead of your usual ‘greeting nod’ he started talking to you.

He asked you all sorts of things (that weren’t compromising to your real identity ofc) “What’s your favorite color?” “What music do you like?” “What’s your favorite movie?”

And it started from there.

The conversations with Robin grew not only more frequent but also more personal (as personal as someone with a superhero lifestyle can be), to the point it had become a routine for you to come early and talk to the boy, sometimes you had breakfast together or even helped him with his homework before the Bat would take him to school.

Perhaps it was because you didn’t have many acquittances here on earth, but Robin became family to you.

And family takes care of each other.

It had been a rather difficult and spontaneous mission; Lex Luthor was starting to act a little bit fishy (more than usual) using his connections and money Luthor had been acquiring/robbing very specifically concerning items all over the US, his next objectives: a Radion sample being investigated in a secret laboratory in Star city and a Dionesium sample...contained in the Wayne tower laboratories...

The team decided to split to put a stop to Luthor’s minions and his plan.

The Bat insisted the rest of the team should go to Star city, telling them that he and Robin could handle it, but everyone was immediately against it: Luthor had already collected relatively powerful items and being the intelligent motherfucker he is, probably transformed some of those items to give to his goon’s so they might have a chance in harming any of the members if they were to interfere.

Ultimately, the team agreed you and cyborg would accompany them to Wayne Tower.

Robin was stoked, he would get the opportunity to fight alongside you! But Batman…not so much…he kept trying to lose the two of you on the way there; fortunately, cyborg put a tracker on the batwing, he wasn’t going to get rid of you that easy.

Upon your arrival, you could spot several men (armed like if they were military but with a much more upgraded equipment) already leaving the building, carrying two tanks (presumably full of that substance Martian Manhunter had mentioned before) and heading to a truck without any plates.

Long story short: you organized a plan as quickly as you could but…something went wrong…Cyborg and Robin were supposed to create a distraction while the two of you recovered the tanks without damaging them, since the properties of the substance within remained unknown.

But something went wrong: You and Batman failed to coordinate and so you were spotted by the henchmen, they started aiming their weapons at the two of you, initially you thought a force field generated by the power of your ring would be enough...oh no, honey, you’re so wrong.

Sonic weapons were able to not only break your concentration quickly, but also made your ears bleed! One after another you kept re-making the fields, but the sonic waves so deathly and loud just kept coming.

You don’t know how but you were able to stand your ground long enough to make cover not only for Batman and allow him to get the tanks back safely but also for the rest of your team and give them a slight advantage to take down as many of Luthor’s minions as they could.

And then…you passed out.

You woke up at the infirmary in Justice Hall, your head a mess and wrapped in bandages, you had broken your arm because that shit inside a cast too for some reason…and…your ring was gone!

Panic!

No, never mind it was on the nightstand next to the chair in which batman was sitting on.

WAIT…next to the chair in which batman was sitting on?!?!?!

—How are you feeling? — you didn’t know if it was him suddenly talking or the genuine concern on his voice that startle you, so you just nodded slightly while he approached you.

—Can you hear me properly? —Surprisingly you could, but you still were a bit taken aback by his presence.

—I…­—Before responding your brain reminded you of the fact that you didn’t had your ring on, hence your secret identity was revealed to Batman. Your hands practically flew to your face in embarrassment. You didn’t know why but without your mask you felt naked and vulnerable.

He noticed.

His gaze studying your pained expression before he let out a small sigh.

—I came here…to thank you…and apologize— hesitantly his hands moved to the back of his cowl.

—You not only put yourself in danger for Cyborg and Robin, but you also concerned yourself with my safety even when it was probably my fault that we ended up in that situation —He admitted pressing a hidden button loosing up his cowl before finally taking it off and reviling the most gorgeous man you’ve had ever lay your eyes on.

—And for that I thank you and apologize…sincerely—Such sudden action left you speechless for a while, Batman not only had thanked you and apologized, but he had entrusted his identity to you.

—I think-…I think we started with the wrong foot; you know? —You finally were able to respond, breaking the silence that filled the room and surprising him slightly by your sudden declaration.

—Let’s start again…Hi! I’m Y/N—You imitated the same friendly voice tone you first used to talk to him.

The lips on the man in front of you curved forming a subtle almost imperceptive grin.

—Hello, Y/N, I’m Bruce…Bruce Wayne.

 ♡♤♡♤♡♤♡♤

 WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! IT. TOOK. SO. LONG. Sorry :c

I had a bunch of ideas for this request but ended up going with this one since I wanted to expand on their beginning, I’m still trying to figure out a way to write Bruce and this was my first attempt, so…sorry if it was…bad :c I’ll try harder next time!!!

Any errors you might see, please let me know; English is not my first language so I’m trying to improve.

In the final scene I wanted Bruce to show he recognized the Reader as an equal so that’s why he took it off…still I felt like it could improve.

 ♡♤♡♤♡♤♡♤

I will forever thank you if you go check out my other profile: @aileysmirnov​ where I post things about my OC: edits, one-shots, imagines, art, etc. If you like Greek mythology and the bat family maybe you would get to be a little bit fond of her as much as I am!

Anyway! Thank you for reading!

[insidious-intent]

Scent Memory

For @malexweek Day 5 prompt - Smut. I’m a day late despite @winged-fool‘s reminders. Obviously, this is nsfw. 

Read on AO3

The group project was on day four, and Michael was getting a little tired of it. The Project Shepherd bunker was a little cramped, but it meant Michael didn’t have to walk too far to get to the bathroom. The downside was that he could hear Liz muttering to herself eight feet to his left, and Kyle was standing a little too close to Alex ten feet to his right. 

He should have left an hour ago, it was getting closer to dinner time and the group had been in various forms of concentration all day. Maybe it was the small space getting to him, maybe it was just the press of people around him. He wasn’t used to working in a group project setting. Yes, that’s what it was. 

He moved back to the file at hand, a distilled list of powers his people were discovered to have, without the added agony of revisiting all the torturous experiments that led to the discovery. He pushed the unnerving thought of the crowded space he was forced to work in out of his mind and returned to the task at hand. 

Michael was successful in focusing for another thirty minutes. He was still thirsty and the bottle of water next to him was empty. Sighing to himself, Michael grabbed the bottle and walked towards the small hallway of ancient lockers where Alex had installed a water filter. 

He walked past the desk where Alex and Kyle were almost fused into a cerberus looking thing, staring and muttering at a large pile of documents. He shook his head, tearing his gaze from Valenti’s exceptional looking ass and kept walking to the filter. 

It wasn’t until after Michael filled up his water bottle that he froze. Had he really thought of Valenti’s ass as exceptional? What the fuck. 

Michael walked back to his table slowly, feeling his heartbeat pick up for some reason. But it couldn’t possibly be from having Valenti’s over-gymmed ass in close proximity to himself. There was no way. 

But Michael could feel his body reacting, the familiar zing of heat down his spine, the way his heart had been beating faster this whole time. He recognized the symptoms, but his mind couldn’t pinpoint the source. Michael’s heart felt like he’d run a marathon, sweat beginning to build up on his skin.

He drank the water down in a few gulps, trying to find a distraction from the heat and slow building arousal. Michael made his way back towards the water filter, the need to walk towards Alex and Kyle pulling at him. He walked slowly, trying to pay attention to his surroundings when the smell hit him. 

It was a soft, subtle scent that surrounded him and made him freeze. The scent was woodsy and earthy, like the smell of soft grass in early summer mornings. Like the smell of wet earth after a thunderstorm. 

Oh. 

Michael closed his eyes and prayed to all generic media based religious entities that Valenti hadn’t switched his deodorant or something. 

“You ok, Guerin?” Alex’s voice right behind him made Michael jump a little. He whirled around to see both Alex and Kyle staring at him. 

“What?” he asked. 

“You’ve been standing there looking like a statue for five straight minutes,” Valenti piped up, and Michael’s glare at him was only half-hearted at best. 

“I was thinking,” Michael replied, thinking on his feet, “I know that’s a foreign concept to gymrats like you.” 

Valenti’s eye roll was expected, but Michael didn’t expect Alex to do the same. Instead of responding, Kyle turned and slapped Alex’s shoulder. 

“This one is your problem now, I’m going home to get some sleep,” he said. “Ortecho, you too, move it.”

Liz’s head whipped up and Michael saw how red her eyes were. Dang, they really needed to keep an eye on the crazy scientists, before Max murdered them for letting Liz get sick. 

“Uh, yeah, I should also go I think. I’m starting to see double,” Liz replied, swaying a little as she grabbed her jacket. 

Alex quickly walked over to help her with her bag and jacket. “Kyle, make sure Rosa knows that Liz needs sleep.” He helped Liz walk over to Kyle, who quickly put an arm around her. “And I’ll talk to you in two days.” 

Michael didn’t do anything but stay in place as the mad scientist duo walked out of the lab. He tilted his head, and tried to see if Valenti’s walk did anything to change how he was feeling. And that’s the only reason he would give for not noticing Alex coming up to stand next to him. 

“Alright, Guerin,” Alex’s voice sounded mild but Michael knew better. “Talk.”

“Um, what?” he said. 

“Don’t what me, Michael,” Alex said. “You were eyeing Kyle as if he was going to shoplift the Project Shepherd files right out of here.” His voice turned a little cold then, “and right then you were most definitely checking out his ass. What’s going on with you?”

Michael tried to pay attention to the words Alex was saying, but his mind and body were racing. He wasn’t reacting to Valenti, it was Alex. Alex somehow smelled different, and Michael’s entire being had become attuned to the difference, reacting to it. 

“Why do you smell like that?” he blurted out instead. 

Alex looked a little taken aback, but it was a fleeting expression. “What do you mean? Smell like what?”

Michael’s brain realized the right words were not being said here, so his body had to put in some work too. He turned to face Alex and slowly but without hesitation, ran a hand down Alex’s arm to grab his wrist. Michael watched Alex’s face carefully as he brought the wrist up to his lips. 

Eyes now closed, Michael let his senses flood through - the feel of Alex’s soft skin against his lips, that tantalizing scent surrounding them. He pressed his lips to the wrist, inhaling deeply, and in the silence of the bunker, the soft responding gasp from Alex echoed loudly. 

“Michael,” Alex’s voice was barely a whisper. Michael opened his eyes and tilted his head, taking in Alex’s flushed high cheeks, and dilated pupils. 

“You smell like me,” Michael said, lips brushing the delicate skin of Alex’s wrist. Alex’s lips parted and Michael felt his pulse thundering against his lips. 

“I think it’s my-” Alex didn’t get to finish, pulled up to Michael’s chest. Michael’s whole body was singing, Alex was in his grasp, and he wasn’t going to let go. 

All he could say was mine before he kissed Alex hard. 

He couldn’t help himself from the wet desperate slant of his mouth on Alex’s, tongues tangling and heated breaths mingling. Alex kissed back with equal force, clumsy and desperate in equal measures. It wasn’t a graceful kiss, but it felt better than any kiss Michael had felt in a long long time, sinking into his bones and lighting him up from the inside. 

Michael curled his fingers into Alex’s thick hair, giving into the kiss. But then out of nowhere, Alex pulled back. 

“Guerin, are you sure about this?” Alex’s voice was so hesitant, so soft, Michael hurt. He had wasted too much time, too much energy on tragedy, and not enough on making Alex feel loved. But now he had started, he wasn’t going to stop. 

Instead of replying he pushed into Alex’s space, fitting his lips over Alex’s in a smooth motion. Alex’s mouth was slick and hot, moving to fit at a different angle than before and Michael arched into him, Alex’s hand tight on the small of his back.

“Alex,” Michael said, incoherent with desire and feeling honey warm like he was slowly getting drunk on the best whiskey. The kiss deepened somehow, both their bodies curved as one. The bunker was filled with sounds of their lips, obscene and loud in the silence. Michael made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan, and put both his arms around Alex’s neck. 

“Oh god,” Michael panted when Alex broke away briefly to trail hot kisses down his neck, fastening his mouth to the delicate skin over Michael’s pulse point, “oh god, that’s—don’t stop, just—fuck.” Why weren’t they in bed already?

He tightened his fingers in Alex’s hair and pulled him up again, capturing Alex’s mouth. He’d never kissed anyone like this, not during the years he threw himself at every willing warm body while he pined for Alex. Only Alex’s kisses were fierce and frantic and messy, hands everywhere, kissing like fucking, like they were already naked and grasping at each other in bed, like Alex wanted to take him the fuck apart, fuck him into the mattress, come inside. 

Alex’s scent was like a warm blanket around him, enveloping him from inside out. 

He had no idea when his hands unbuckled Alex’s jeans, but he wasn’t complaining when Alex’s breath hitched, Michael’s fingers skimming the hard length of his cock.

“Michael,” Alex whispered, fumbling to unbutton Michael’s jeans, desperate to get his hands on Michael too. The desire to be closer, to have more skin on skin, burned through Michael. He needed to get his hands on Alex, everywhere. He knocked Alex’s hand away, pushing down his own pants and pulling Alex closer, taking them both in hand. The touch of hot hard skin on skin made them both groan, making Michael rub up against Alex a little faster. 

He could feel Alex starting to shake a little, standing in the middle of a bunker, hands clinging on to Michael’s shoulders. Michael’s entire focus was narrowed down to where his cock was sliding in delicious friction against Alex’s cock, the only anchor keeping him from flying apart. Michael wondered if he could hold them in this moment, an amber casing around the feeling of teetering on the edge, savoring the slide of skin against skin, lips against lips. 

But Michael had been on the edge all day, and from the quiet huffs of choked off moans from Alex, the edge was coming up soon. 

Without any warning Michael came, spilling hot against his hand and on Alex’s cock, making Alex bite off a “Michael!” against his lips before he was coming too. 

They stayed clinging on to each other for a few moments, just breathing together in the quiet. Eventually Alex pushed him back and reached behind him, hands thumping around to grab one of the boxes of tissues they kept around the bunker. Handing tissues to Michael, they both cleaned up and buttoned up in relative silence. 

Alex looked up at Michael as he turned from throwing the tissues in the trash. “So I guess you like the new body wash I got, Guerin,” Alex said, his smirk not doing enough to hide the uncertainty Michael could hear in his voice. 

He walked up and put his arms around Alex, making sure to tuck his fingers in Alex’s back pockets. Grinning, he placed three quick but chaste pecks on Alex’s lips. 

“I like all of you, Alex,” he said. 

Alex’s responding smile was like a slow and warm sunrise, and Michael promised himself to never stop making Alex smile like that. 

[evakuality]

“A Thought Exercise” prompt fic

For this anon who sent me an angst prompt.  I don’t know how angsty it ended up, but here - this is what that prompt inspired!

It’s been tough lately to keep up a proper connection, to see Matteo as often as David would like.  Work and university have them both tied up in knots and there are just too few hours in the day.  So the time they do get to spend together is precious, held close to David’s chest and savoured.  The time is so precious, that David makes sure they spend it alone as often as he can.  And that, in hindsight, may be part of the problem.  That may be why he’s standing here staring at his boyfriend, incredulous about what he’s hearing.

David blinks, tries to process.  He’s still unsure where this is coming from.

“I love you,” he says quietly, trying to inject as much sincerity into the words as he can.  

Matteo’s lips purse together, and a shiny film gathers on the edges of his eyes as he turns his head away, clearly trying to prevent David from seeing it.  Worried now, David reaches out, but pulls back when Matteo flinches away.

“I’m not sure what’s going on here,” David says, “but I need you to understand the truth of how I feel about you.”

Shrugging, Matteo looks back at David.  His lip is pulled in between his teeth and his face has an open vulnerability playing about his eyes which is also there in the curled-in body language and the tremble in his fingers.

“Why don’t we go anywhere?” Matteo blurts out, his fingers shaking even more as he drags his gaze away from David’s.  “We never go out.”

That’s almost more disconcerting than anything else this evening.  Matteo is more of a home body than a party animal; going out has never been something he wants to do.  David blinks again.  

“You want to go out?”  

“No.  I mean, not really.  It’s just…” Matteo breaks off, his mouth twisting as he obviously tries to think his way through what to say, and his fingers catching the ends of the strings on his hoodie as he twirls them into tight knots on his knuckles.  “It’s just that you always want to just hide at home.”  He shrugs, and a quiver settles into his voice when he looks back at David.  “Are you ashamed of me?”

The bizarre sense of incredulity ratchets up, and David can’t quite hold in the disbelieving snort that pops out at the words.  Then he’s forced to watch as Matteo’s face shutters completely, every trace of hope disappearing into a look of such betrayal that it stabs something dark and painful into David’s belly.

Scrambling to reel it back in, he shakes his head.  “How can you ever think that?  I love you.”

Something small and painful unfurls onto Matteo’s face as he shakes his head in clear disbelief, making David’s heart ache with the things it says about what’s going on in Matteo’s head.  As if to confirm the thought, Matteo twists away from David’s eyes, wrapping his arms around his body.

“I don’t understand why,” he whispers.  “There’s not a lot to love about me.”

Hoping he’ll give in to touch now, David tentatively reaches out, skimming his fingers along the bare expanse of one of Matteo’s arms and down to his hand.  He doesn’t twine their fingers together the way he usually does, but Matteo also doesn’t pull away so David takes that as a sign he can keep touching.

“You’re wrong,” David says.  Matteo opens his mouth to protest, the shimmer of tears washing back into his eyes, but David smiles gently and adds, “but I know you don’t believe me right now.”

He tugs on Matteo’s hand, pulls them in the direction of the couch, and doesn’t make any further suggestion until they’re settled there.  He doesn’t speak again, lets the tension seep out of Matteo’s body and feels the way it starts to slide, slumping into David’s, his head falling to rest heavily on his shoulder.  Once his breathing has settled, and the slight hitch in his low murmurs is fading, David lets his lips skim over Matteo’s hair.  It elicits a hum that’s maybe not quite content, but at least is acknowledging the connection.

“I felt like that too, you know?” David says quietly.

“Hmmm?”

“Like there’s nothing to love about me, like it’s impossible that you can.  That once you realise that, you’ll leave.”

Matteo’s fingers tighten in his own as if to negate that thought, and David smiles.  Even when he feels this way, Matteo is still so caring of others.  Of David.

“You want to know how I got over that feeling?”

There’s a small huff of laughter at that, barely there and barely amused, but enough.

“You’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Yep,” David agrees cheerfully.  “It was my film class.”

“Your film class?”

Matteo sounds interested despite himself and David rejoices.  Interest is better than whatever was going on in his head a few minutes ago.  So he settles in, fingers running small circles on Matteo’s hand, and smiles fondly in memory.

“It was this exercise we had to do.  Some asshole who thought he was being so smart, pushed back at the professor's comment that we should write what we know.  He said he wasn’t an evil overlord so how could he possibly ‘write what he knows’ about a character like that.  And she just stared him down for a minute, then smiled.”

David shudders as he remembers that moment.  She’d been so clearly delighted, it was obvious that she’d been waiting for some guy to do exactly that.  She’d turned, and with studied nonchalance had sat down on the edge of the desk, swinging one leg as she examined the students in front of her.  David snorts a little as he remembers.

“She basically told us we could get inside a character’s head.  Any character’s head.  And we all expected some sort of ‘imagine the scenario’ sort of thing.  But no.  She was much meaner than that.”

That earns him a soft chuckle from Matteo, who looks a little better now.  His eyes are brighter and he’s not so curled in on himself.  David high fives himself internally and goes on with his story; as much as Matteo is clearly invested now, he still doesn’t appear keen to do any talking.

“What we had to do was describe ourselves.  But not from our own point of view.  It had to be from the outside, and we had to describe ourselves as if we were in love with ourselves.”

“That doesn’t sound so hard,” Matteo says, his voice bemused, and David laughs.

“So you could do it, could you?  Right now, you could describe yourself in loving terms?”

“Mmmmmm,” Matteo says, and it’s not clear if it's in agreement or not.  So David presses a kiss to his hair.

“I hated it,” he says quietly, letting the sincerity bleed into his voice.  “I was all up in my head about how my body didn’t look right to me, how shitty it is that I run away all the time, how I’m unloveable and an asshole, and I don’t deserve anything good.”

“But that’s not true!” Matteo protests, sitting up a little to stare at David in obvious consternation.

David shrugs.  “That’s where my head was.”  

He shakes his head as he thinks back to the exercise.  It had been hard to even start on how to talk about himself in that sort of way.  It had felt so unnatural, even trying to distance himself by starting with a third person attempt with David is a young man who… 

He smiles again, pats Matteo’s hand.

“It took me a while, but I figured out in the end what I had to do.  I had to get into your head.  I had to think about what you see in me, what you like about me.  You’re the one who loves me.”

“I do,” Matteo agrees, softly.  “There’s so much to you that I love.”  

“I kind of got there in the end,” David agrees.  “I worked out what you might say if you were asked the question.  That’s what the point was, obviously.  To get into someone else’s thought process, to make it seem natural.”

“Mmmm,” Matteo says, and this time it’s obviously agreement.  “But I don’t get what it has to do with me.”

David grins.  He can hear the reluctance in Matteo’s voice, because as much as he’s protesting, he knows what David is going to suggest.

“Yeah you do.”

Slumping again, his mouth twisting up into an awkward pursed smudge, Matteo sighs.

“I don’t know how to start.  It’s not easy.”

Kissing him again, David snorts softly.  “Yeah I know.  I had to do it, remember.  Do you know how hard it was to say how sexy I am?”  He can feel the blush heating his cheeks, but it has the desired effect as Matteo lets out a small giggle.

“You think I think you’re sexy?”

“I know you think I’m sexy.  You say it all the time, when we’re--”

“Okay, I get the picture,” Matteo says, pushing David in an approximation of their usual teasing behaviour.  

It’s working, this thing David is doing, and he’s grateful.  He knows he’s going to have to revisit the ‘staying home’ thing, the way he craves Matteo all to himself, and the way that’s affected Matteo’s frame of mind.  But for now, this is more important.  Getting Matteo to see himself the way David does; that’s the priority.  The rest can wait.

“So,” David says, pushing at Matteo until he’s sitting more upright and David can pull his legs over his own and look down into that beloved face.  “Now you try.  Think about yourself the way I think of you.  Remember, I love you and I’d never say some of the shit about you that you were trying with earlier.”

Matteo rolls his eyes at that, but obligingly mimics zipping his mouth.  He settles back then, his hands resting on David’s on his leg, a slight tremble in the fingers the only reminder that this isn’t just some easy thought exercise.

“I don’t know.  I guess… you like my hair?” he suggests, half questioning.

“I do,” David agrees.  “What do I like about it?”

Smirking, Matteo taps his fingers with his own.  “Playing with it,” he says.  “You like that it’s silky, that it’s different to yours.”

“Mmmmm,” David says, reaching out to ruffle it, and to feel that silkiness between his fingers.  “It’s so soft,” he purrs.  “Not like mine, this … this stuff.”  He indicates the riot of curls on his own head.

“Hey!” Matteo laughs, reaching out to feel David’s in his turn.  “Don’t diss this hair.  I happen to love it.”

“Yeah, I know.  That was one of the things I ended up with in my description,” David says quietly.  “You like that it has weight, that it feels solid between your fingers.  It grounds you, gives you something tangible to hang onto.”

Matteo blinks at him.  “You came up with that?  That’s like poetry or something.”

David’s heart swells a little at the compliment.  That’s one thing Matteo does so casually and so easily: lets David know how smart and creative he finds him.  He needs to find a way to get Matteo to admit that to himself as well.  There’s so much David loves about him, and part of him thrills that he gets to explore it in this way, together.

“Okay, mr. poet, now it’s your turn.  What does yours do for me?”

Matteo swallows, reaches up to touch his own strands, ponders them as they run through his fingers.  “It’s a bit like water,” he says slowly after a minute.  “Like it can take you away with it.  Like you’re running away, but staying here at the same time.”

David smiles.  “See, this isn’t so hard, is it?”  He draws Matteo back into his body, wraps his arm around him, and murmurs into his shoulder.  “Now, you get to tell me how sexy you are.”

Matteo laughs, pushes back at him, his eyes much brighter and happier than they were at the start of this conversation.  “Asshole.  You set that one up!”

David doesn’t deny it.  He watches Matteo's face carefully as he thinks his way through what David might say about him.  It takes time, and it’s slow, but they have that time.  He settles in to listen as Matteo hesitantly works through the exercise, sees it working for Matteo the way it did for himself.  Sees the slow blooming of Matteo’s own self-love coming out one petal at a time.  He offers his own insights, in exchange for Matteo’s vulnerability as he does this.  He watches it all, and falls more in love.  Watches as Matteo does the same when David offers his insights into himself.  

It didn’t start well today.  There’s so much still to unpack, so much they still need to talk about, but David can’t regret getting to this point.  He loves this boy, and there’s something so profound in watching that boy fall in love with himself.

“I love you,” David says.

Matteo smiles.  “I know.”

[pinkevilbobdoesthings]

My ridiculous Halloween monster fic continues!! I'm kinda making this one up as I go, so hopefully you guys enjoy it!

Here’s chapter 2 of ‘Make You Scared’.

________________________

Going to between the human world and the monster world always felt funny. Jester couldn’t quite describe what it felt like. It was almost like being peanut butter squished out of a sandwich, but much more solid. Or like putting a coin into a vending machine, but softer. There wasn't a word for it. She wouldn't call it unpleasant, but she never looked forward to it.

Caleb looked positively sick when he came out of the human world. His pale skin was now almost green. "Are you going to puke, Caleb?" Jester asked. He nodded slightly. "There's a trash can over there." Barely making it in time, he rushed over to the can and revisited his dinner there.

Jester had to hold back a laugh. She felt terrible for Caleb, but he was making all sorts of silly sounds as he retched.

"Who is that?" a shrill voice asked. Jester turned to see Nott where she left her. The tiny lab tech had been assigned to wait for Jester since Caleb was such an important scare subject. Usually scarers were sent out alone, but it was almost like they didn’t trust Jester or something.

"Nott, this is Caleb," Jester said waving a hand towards Caleb.

He weakly raised up a hand not lifting his head out of the trash can. "Hallo."

"Uh, hi." Nott turned to Jester and hissed. "Is that a human? What were you thinking? He can't be here."

"I know, but he was in danger up there and I couldn't just leave him, so I was thinking that maybe I could just hide him here." Jester knew that it was a stupid idea, but she had to try and help him in some way. There was something about him that tugged on her heart strings.

Nott looked over at him. "It doesn't matter what kind of danger he's in up there. You can't just bring him down here. Leave human problems to humans. Where did you even find him?"

Jester stared down at the ground, messing with her skirt. "Technically, it's not a human problem. He might need hiding from a monster."

Nott's eyes grew even larger than usual. "What?"

"He's apparently had a run in with our kind before, and I couldn't just leave him up there," Jester said.

Nott's green skin went pale. "Is he your assignment?"

Caleb finally pulled his head out of the trash can wiping his mouth off with his shirt sleeve. "Ja, that would be me. The name's different on the assignment though."

"He's not bad or mean or anything," Jester said. "And he was super scared of Ikithon's name and he shouldn't even know it, so he must've been down here before, so really, I'm not showing him anything he hasn't already seen before."

Nott sighed as she closed the laptop. "I know."

"You know?" Jester asked.

"I’ve met him before."

***

Caleb stared at the strange tiny green woman that Jester called Nott. She had large bat-like ears and sharp snaggle teeth. All sorts buttons adorned her in the form of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings. If he hadn’t already emptied out all of his stomach contents, Caleb probably would’ve been sick all over again at the sight of her. There was an unsettling wrongness to the sight of her. But there was something about her voice that was comforting. "I'm sorry, but we've never met before," he said.

Nott smiled at him in a pitying fashion. "I wouldn't have expected you to recognize me when I looked like this." She fiddled with the necklace of buttons. "I didn't want to scare you." With the flip of one of the buttons, Nott was no longer there. Instead there was a short woman chubby with warm brown skin and two shoulder length braids. Veth.

Caleb collapsed. Nothing made sense. He was in a dark, dark alleyway that had a ladder that lead up to his bed and the colors all felt wrong and off and his best friend, the only person he trusted in 15 years turned out to be a monster. "What?"

"He's very scared," Jester said looking at the strange watch on her wrist. It must've been locked on his vitals or something.

Veth, Nott, Veth frowned. "Oh, I'm sorry, Caleb. but I couldn't tell you."

"Were, were you working with Ikithon this whole time? Did he order you to help me escape?" It was Veth that unlocked the doors. She'd told him at the time that she was a prisoner there too and that she needed help to escape. That was what motivated Caleb to keep going. But she was just a lie.

"No, it's not like that at all. I mean, I do work for Ikithon, but everyone in the science department does. But he didn't know that I let you go. He was furious when he found out you escaped," Veth said.

Caleb closed his eyes. He could stand to look at her. "Change back. Get rid of that lie."

There was the sound of buttons clicking together. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to scare you. And I know that the point of humans is to be scared, but not like that," Nott said. Her voice was shriller in this form. It sounder what Veth did sometimes on the phone. She liked checking on him to make sure that he was okay. That he was doing okay and eating enough and making friends. He really hadn't done any of those things, but those were things that Ikithon wouldn't have asked to be checked on. "What he was doing to you was wrong."

"What was he doing to Caleb?" Jester asked.

"It's nothing for you to worry about," Caleb said. “I’m not going back there.”

Nott looked around nervously. “But you shouldn’t be here. It’s not meant for humans.”

“Ikithon would find Caleb in the human world though. I had to take him somewhere,” Jester said. She sounded so scared and uncertain.

Nott worried the buttons on the necklace the way Caleb had seen her do before as Veth. “And you’re sure that you can find a safe place for him?”

Jester nodded. “I think so. I mean Ikithon’s just one monster and he has liver spots. There’s nothing scary about that.”

“I wouldn’t agree with that,” Caleb said.

Jester put her hands on her hips and pouted. “Caleb! I’m super good at hiding things. For starters, we can’t have you going out looking like this.”

Caleb looked down at his pajamas. “I didn’t think to change before we left. But I’ve got clothes in my backpack.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Jester said rolling her eyes. “You’re just so human looking.”

“I am human. Nott can look human, and Ikithon did too,” Caleb said. Though there was something unsettling and wrong with Ikithon’s eyes.

Nott shook her head. “I can only do it for short amounts of time. And I don’t have any reason to here. But I might have an idea. Follow me.”

Caleb kept close to Jester as they hurried down the streets. Though they were more like the disjointed idea of the concept of streets. Nothing quite lined up right. He kept stumbling and tripping while Jester and Nott walked like it was completely normal. Everything felt wrong like there were crumbs under Caleb’s skin constantly itching. Anytime they passed somebody, Caleb would have to crouch behind Jester.

Eventually, they got to their destination. It was a small apothecary, but it looked like there was an apartment built into it. “You wait out here,” Nott said before scurrying in.

“Um, so, how do you like it here?” Jester asked. She leaned against the wall staring up at the nothing sky. Even though nothing was right, she was beautiful.

“I’ll manage.”

Jester’s tail tapped little rhythms on the wall. “Hmm. So you know Nott.”

“She was Veth to me. Left me notes and tried to cheer me up after each experiment.” Caleb sat down on the ground next to Jester. “Veth saved my life.”

“Nott’s a lot of fun. Most of the science people here are super boring and all ‘I’m so much better than you’, but not Nott.” Jester grinned down at Caleb. "We're really good detectives, you know."

"Ja?" Caleb didn't dare look up so close to her skirt.

Jester giggled. "Yeah! Cause one time there was some paperwork of my mom's that went missing and people were all upset and stuff, so me and Nott found it." She paused for a moment. "Do you think my mom will like you?"

"I know nothing about your mother," Caleb pointed out.

"Well, yeah, I know, but do moms like you?" Jester asked.

Caleb shrugged. He had lost his long ago when Ikithon took him. "I don't know. Maybe."

"My mom's super nice and the best. You'll like her."

"That's good, but I don't think I'll meet her," Caleb said.

Jester leaned over him. "But, that's where we're going. You have to meet my mom. You'll be hiding in the attic."

Caleb shook his head. "That'll put you in too much danger." Besides the thought of staying in one place here made him nervous. "It's better if I keep on the move. Does human money work here?"

"Kinda?"

"I'll take my chances with that." Caleb had a lot of experience with living on the run. "Jester, thank you for your help, but once I have a disguise, I can't keep putting you in danger. And I can move faster on my own."

Jester shook her head her curls shaking about furiously. "You don't know about anything down here and it's not safe for a human to be alone here. Besides, I'm really good at hiding. I used to do it all the time."

"Nein. I can't risk your mother," Caleb said banking on Jester valuing her mother over everything else.

Jester frowned. "Oh. Right." Her brow furrowed and it was adorable. And then she smiled. "So we won't go to my mom’s. We'll be on the run together."

"What?" Caleb paled. "But, you can't."

"Yeah, I can. I mean, between you and me, most people here don't take me seriously, so I don't think it'd surprise them if I just disappeared for a few weeks without a word." She nodded. “Yeah, should work.”

Caleb stared at her. “You can’t be serious.”

Jester pouted. “I’m being super serious, Caleb. I want to help you.”

“Some people can’t be helped, Jester.”

The door to the apothecary opened and Caleb pressed his back to the wall. Nott stepped out of the store carrying a box heaped with old clothes. A second monster close to her size followed her out carrying two bulging bags. He was a greenish brown with messy brown hair that blended into mutton chops on the sides of his face. His features were much more rounded than Nott's and a small pair of spectacle rested at the end of his nose. "Where do these go, Nott?" he asked.

"Back here," Nott said going into the alleyway. Caleb tried to hide behind Jester, but she stepped out of the way. "Yeza, this is Caleb."

Yeza stared at Caleb his mouth agaped. "A human. Oh, sorry, I'm Yeza, Nott's husband. She's been telling me a lot about you. She's been worrying about you."

Nott poked an elbow into Yeza's ribs. "No need to tell him that," she hissed. She placed the box of clothes at Caleb's feet. "I collect clothes, so there's probably enough here to hide you."

"Danke," Caleb said. "You really don't have to do this."

Nott waved away his concerns. "It's nothing. I don't have any use for these anyways. They’re much too big for my family. It's better if they're used by someone who needs them."

Jester rifled through the clothes with a frown. "I won't be able to make him look pretty with these, but I think we can make these work." She pulled out an oversized coat and forced Caleb into it.

"Is this a particularly monstrous style?" Caleb asked. It looked like a normal brown coat to him.

"Nah, but it covers you and no one can tell how thin you are," Jester said.

Caleb frowned. "Am I too thin for a monster?"

"Not really, I mean you could stand to put on a few pounds, but this will make you harder to recognize." Jester went through the bags and grabbed out a hat.

It was huge and sat low on Caleb's head. "I can barely see."

"We can hold hands then." Caleb didn't need to see her to hear her smile.

Caleb quickly became grateful for the hat as it hid his blush. The end of a scarf stuck out of one of the bags. It was blue and shabby and had seen much better days, but it was Caleb's favorite color. He wrapped it around his neck.

Jester frowned. "It's kinda ugly, but you're hidden. No one would ever think a human would wear anything that ugly."

Caleb rolled his eyes. "You haven't met a lot of humans then."

"I'm glad I haven't then if that's how they dress," Jester said playfully sticking out her forked tongue.

"We should be going," Caleb said. Nott's face fell, but she tried to hide it. "One thing first though." Caleb crouched down in front of Nott. "Thank you. For everything."

Nott blushed looking away. "Oh, it was just some old clothes I had lying around. They didn't even fit us."

"No, I meant for everything. For helping me escape and being my friend afterwards." Before he could change his mind, Caleb gave her an awkward one armed hug.

Nott threw her arms around Caleb's neck and squeezed. "Stay safe," she whispered.

"Ja, I will. You stay safe too," Caleb said softly.

Nott released her hold on Caleb and took a step back. "You take care of him, Jester. He's not very good at doing it himself."

Caleb's cheeks turned red. "I'm not that bad." Though she may have had a point there.

"I will," Jester said. She took Caleb's hand. "Come let's go."

"Where are we going?" Caleb asked.

Jester grinned. "To the safest place I know; the Lavish Chateau."

[stardustdaemon]

Always meant to be - Sourin

Guess who’s had sever writers block but also started watching Free! again. This is just something to try and break down the wall so, enjoy!

Ghost/Soulmate AU

Rin knew he was never really alone. He always had Haru and Mako. Rei and Nagisa. His mother and Gou.

But sometimes, led awake in the dead of night, staring at his ceiling and praying for sleep to just take him he would feel oddly alert, almost aware of some kind of presence, always lingering just a little out of reach and out of sight.

He chalked it up to stress, eventually growing used to the oddly comforting presence that would follow him wherever he went. Maybe it was his dad? Or maybe it was nothing, just a tired mind with too much creativity and little restraint.

So when he took a break from his post practice run, sitting on a bench and pushing his hair back, he nearly fell backwards off the bench when a figure appeared in front of him, eyebrows drawn down in confusion before he heard a sharp laugh. Rin stared, hands fumbling still to get ahold of the metal bench. He wanted to clutch his heart, to yell at the stranger who clearly had no idea what personal space was. But most importantly...

“The hell are you laughing for?” Was what left his mouth, a bite to his tone that usually caused others to shrink back. The tall stranger in front of him just shrugged, head tilting to the side in an almost playful way.

“At you. Slipping of a bench, spilling water down your leg. All manner of things really.” The other replied, voice weirdly soothing to Rin. But this wasn’t the time to be admiring the guy, no matter how broad and handsome he was.

“Right. And can I ask what on earth you want from me?” Rin asked, calmer this time as he stood from the bench, glad when the stranger took a step back, eyes wide. Rin rose an eyebrow, watching the confident and cocky man before him turn shy and almost embarrassed?

“I... Um. I think you dropped this? Maybe?” Rin looked to the strangers hands and back up, gently taking a bright pink hair clip with a small bunny head on the side.

“You think I dropped this?” Rin asked, lips quirking up no matter how hard he willed them not to before he laughed, pocketing the hair clip before shaking his head, exchanging a few more words before turning away to head home.

When he heard footsteps behind him he wondered if the guy was going the same way, wondered how awkward it would be if they had to travel together for the next ten or so minutes after Rin just finished saying his goodbyes.

Five more minutes passed, continuous footsteps echoing just behind him and Rin was starting to wonder if this was the day that he died. He felt his heart start to race in his ears, trying to remember exactly how fast he was walking, glancing for any quick turns or routes to lead him to safety.

After a while, fed up of both the nerves and being followed, he spun on his heel, startling the other into a small stumble and Rin waited for the collision.

It never came.

Instead, Rin was yet again faced with the gray gravel beneath his feet, the darkening hues of the sky. Until he turned around.

The stranger was stood perfectly behind him, shoulders hunched forwards in an almost defensive, afraid manner and Rin was honestly starting to wonder if he was sleeping.

Did that man just phase through him? It would make sense with how fast he appeared earlier, but ghosts? Weren’t you only meant to be haunted by those you knew? Oh come on Rin, like you believe in Ghosts.

Apart from at the moment, Rin was honestly considering it. He cleared his throat, tapping the strangers back, refusing to notice how much his own hand was shaking.

No words were exchanged as Rin’s hand met thin air, all but confirming what he never thought to be true. He withdrew his hand as if he had been burnt, stumbling slightly before clutching his heart.

The boy turned around then, eyes wide and skin pale. Neither spoke as they just stared at the other, the air between them eerily calm.

“Y-You... You’re a ghost?!” Rin asked, voice a hushed but frantic whisper. The other sighed, posture drooping in defeat.

“Yeah. Not really what you’d expect, huh?” His voice sounded resigned, shoulders lifting in a gentle shrug as Rin finally managed to steady his breathing before stepping closer, finding that in the wake of the initial shock, all he felt was a calm sensation.

Something familiar and intimate.

“Wait. Are you the one who I’ve been... feeling since I was younger?” He asked softly, not wanting to hurt this boy anymore than he clearly had been. The other just smiled.

“Sousuke.” The other introduced. Sousuke.

“Rin. Though you... probably already know that.” He mumbled, hand stretching out to try to grasp Sousuke’s before he remembered, instead reaching to rub at his hair. They moved to a different bench, silent for a while before Sousuke spoke up.

“When I was twelve, I was walking home from a trip with some friends. The train warnings were faulty that day, though I had no idea. I blindly ran across the tracks, barely registering the horn of a train before everything went black. When I woke up I was terrified, looking everywhere for my mum or dad, even more scared when all I saw was an unfamiliar home. That was about eight years ago now. Since then I’ve found I can’t stray too far from you, nor was I ever able to make any contact. So, my apologies for just kind of, following you around.” He finished a little sheepishly, looking away again as Rin took it all in.

This boy had died as a kid? And instead of being with his family he was with a stranger? He really hoped he’d wake up from this dream soon.

“I’m.. Really sorry to hear that but... why me?” Rin asked, finally turning to look at Sousuke. The other was staring up at the sky, brokenly sad smile dimming his features.

“I heard this weird thing when I was younger. That my family are... Blessed and cursed at the same time. We have a connection to somebody and we’ll feel it either once we’re born or they are, depending on the situation. We’ll either live our lives and be drawn closer and closer to that person, until we become a part of each others lives, but for some of us, if we die before we have that first meeting, we’ll spend the rest of their lives watching over them. I always thought it was a myth, something my grand parents said to entertain me. But, the eight years I’ve spent intertwined quietly in your life, I think they may have been telling the truth.”

Rin couldn’t hold back the tears now. What was previously a gentle push on his chest was now a wave, crashing down on him and forcing any emotion out. Sousuke turned to him in shock at his first outburst, eyes quickly softening as he moved closer to Rin, centimetres apart and yet miles away.

Rin didn’t even bother to hide his face from the other, instead just let his head hang low. Sousuke was meant to be his soulmate? Somebody who was meant to come into his life no matter what and bring him happiness and love? And Rin was meant to be a person Sousuke was to search for? He’d heard stories of soulmates before, vivid images of Haru and Makoto setting into his brain, but he never imagined that such a bond could exist so strongly, let alone be connected to him.

It took a while for Rin to calm down, cautious looks from the few passing people on their way home from work enough to get him to quiet himself, since to them he was sat on a park bench alone, bawling like a child.

“So, all thoses times I felt like somebody was there, somebody was comforting me and watching over me, keeping me safe, it was you?” Rin chanced a glance at Sousuke, seeing the other nod as affirmation before he sighed, hand running through his hair. This was all too much to take.

And then suddenly it hit him like a tonne of bricks.

“Come on Rin, if you don’t hurry we’ll miss practice!”

“I know! Just give me a second!” Rin called back to his friend, waving them ahead as he dropped to one knee to tie his shoe. He felt the wind blow softly as he stood up, almost crashing into another boy about his age.

“Ah, I’m really sorry! Are you okay?” He asked, reaching out a hand in case as the other just smiled, blue eyes crinkled slightly in kind, already moving past him, an echo of an apology all that was left of him.

Later on that day, Rin had felt his heart constrict in a way he never thought possible, the pain causing him to double over in the pool and clutch onto his chest with both hands, eyes tearing up and before he knew it, the pain was gone as quick as it came.

“You... Over there... We ran into each other didn’t we? The day you... died?” Rin asked carefully, head nodding towards the bench Rin was sat on before as Sousuke nodded, gentle smile on his lips.

“Yeah. Which would be why you can see me now. The place where our original paths crossed was revisited, meaning we now have a physical connection. Atleast, I’d assume that’s how it worked.” Sousuke shrugged, gazing softly at the other. Rin felt his cheeks heat up, wondering just how many times Sousuke had seen him upset. Excited, Heart broken. Victorious. Falling Apart. On the road to recovery.

It was a lot to take in, the knowledge that somebody was put on this earth to love him and only him, only to be ripped away before they could even meet properly. He swallowed back more tears, taking a deep breath.

“So... Do you think the gods or... whoever put this curse on your family made the right move?” Rin asked, question open and gentle, with a hint of humour to it. Sousuke grinned, tilting his head to the side.

“I’d say they definitely knew what they were doing when they placed me with you. I’m glad I got to see so much of your life, Rin, even if it wasn’t how I would have preferred it. Already being in love with somebody before you have a chance to talk to them or touch them, it’s hard. But you’re a joy to watch, to observe. I’d often talk or sing to you on your bad days, watch and laugh with you and your friends. Cheer for you whenever you had races.” Sousuke smiled, glancing down at Rin’s hand before gingerly laying his over the top, skin almost touching. Rin looked down too.

Sousuke was tanned, skin slightly translucent but dark enough to see the distinct contrast to his own pale skin. He turned his hand over, palm facing up, and willed himself to believe he could feel the warmth and weight of Sousuke’s palm in his.

“Thank you. For looking after me and loving me when I wasn’t even aware you were there. As weird as this is, my heart is fluttering slightly at the thought that I’ve always had somebody by my side who loves me, no matter what and wants to see me happy. I feel like I’ve missed you and only just gotten you back. Strange huh?” He murmured, head tilting to mimic resting on the others shoulder, all nerves and fear washed away by the mere understanding of the others existence and presence beside him. Sousuke hummed in agreement, eyes closing.

They stayed that ways for a while, quietly talking about things they missed, Sousuke catching Rin up on his favourite moments to be beside him and Rin sharing stories of the times who knew somebody was there, keeping him calm and safe.

Before they knew it, the sky was turning dark and Rin stood, smiling at Sousuke as they made the walk back to his apartment.

They spent the night led side by side on Rin’s bed, laughing and talking, poking fun at the other whenever they could and Rin realised that Sousuke really was perfect for him.

The tears came during the early hours of the morning, when the realisation that they could never touch  

crashed down on Rin. Curled into the others chest as best as he could manage, Rin blamed it on over tiredness.

Sousuke let him believe it worked.

Before Rin fell asleep, he asked himself so many questions; of how they could make this work, of how different his life would be knowing that Sousuke was always going to be there. Even found himself briefly thinking that if he died he could atleast hold the others hand.

“You know, I want you to live your life right? Achieve your dreams, stay happy, meet people.” Sousuke interrupted and Rin startled, looking up at the other boy before smiling softly.

“I know. And I plan too. But first, I want to learn more about you, make up for the eight years that were stolen from us. Maybe I can track down your family too, see if they have any record of this happening. And if they do maybe I can ask them if the deity that hates them could maybe just... give you back your body, obviously fully grown.”

“Obviously. Sleep, you’re starting to sound delusional.” Sousuke laughed, a soft and deep sound, making butterflies fly within his stomach.  

“Am not, you’re the delirious one.” Rin yawned, curling up more in the direction of the other.  

He closed his eyes, feeling his breathing slow down and his heart rate relax, one last thought slipping from his lips.

“Promise me you’ll be here when I wake up?”

“Of course.”    

[katurrade]

Secrets and Sins Epilogue

This is not your normal TRR story. This is a complete AU. A mobster AU. It’s also written in a reader format, not a MC format. (Y/N = Your Name. Y/L/N = Your Last Name) Enjoy!Description: You flee from an abusive situation and find yourself on the other side of the country, creating new friends and possibly finding new love. But will you be able to escape your past? To truly move on with your life? Or will everything come crashing down around you in the blink of an eye. Catch up HERE.

Word Count: 4,120 ish.

Pairing: Mobster!Liam x Reader.

Rating: 18+

Warnings: Violence. Drinking. Curse words. Possible NSFW content in later chapters. Flashbacks of abusive behaviour, and moments of abuse. Possible triggering thoughts and feelings. Probably more warnings to come. A/N: *throws canon out the damn window* YEET.

This is it guys and gals, the final piece to the Secrets and Sins series. I adored writing this story and was so overwhelmed by the love it got from you all. Thank you so much for joining me in this fun and crazy ride! I’ll be finishing off CBM sometime this week and then will be jumping head first into the next TRR AU series! So stay tuned! And enjoy S&S’s final chapter!! Oh! Also, if any of you writers or readers have the urge to write a Mobster AU, pleeeeeease dooo it! And tag me in it! I adore them and want—No! Need! I need more!!!

You woke up to the sun shinning in through the giant bay bedroom window. You slowly opened your eyes as they adjusted to the world around you. Or rather, the handsome blonde sleeping in front of you. You both were on your sides, facing each other, with his arms around you, holding you close. Your eyes traveled his face, he looked so calm, so peaceful. Your mind drifted back to the events from a year ago, and just how far you both had come...

1 year ago.

The morning after the gala and the amazing first night you spent with Liam, you both woke up to a bunch of knocks at the bedroom doors. Liam groaned then climbed out of bed, grabbing his shirt off the floor and handing it to you before pulling on his sweats. He waited till you put the shirt on and covered your lower body with the blankets then he opened the door to find Drake on the other side. Drake looked passed him and his eyes widened for a second then a grin formed on his lips. He looked back at Liam and wiggled his eyebrows.

Liam groaned again and racked a hand down his face “What do you want, Walker?”

You and Drake laughed then he spoke up “Well, I now have new questions but we will revisit those later.” He waved it off and smirked as he pushed passed Liam into the room.

Liam sighed then shut the door “Yes by all means, please come on in, Drake.” He said exasperatedly.

“You’re gunna want to hear what I have to say, Boss.” Drake replied as he reached the foot of the bed and turned to face Liam, he was all business now.

Liam straighten up instantly at Drakes change in tone “What is it?”

“Last night, while you were putting Y/N in the car, I overheard Madeleine on the phone. At the time what she said didn’t mean anything but I quickly clued in later on, when Y/N called you.”

“What did she say on the phone?” Liams voice was deep, dark even. You figured he was piecing things together now, just like you were. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to clue into where Drake was going with this.

“All I heard was ‘She’s leaving now.’”

You watched as anger flashed in Liams eyes and his jaw clenched tightly, then he walked around the bed and picked his phone up off the nightstand. Quickly typing something, your guess was a text. He looked up from the phone and locked eyes with you, you could tell he was still tense but looking at you seemed to calm him, just a little.

“What is your plan, Liam?” Drake asked hesitantly.

But before he could respond his phone pinged in his hand. He broke the eye contact with you and looked down at his phone again. A vengeful smirk graced his face and it sent a chill down your spine. You would have never wished in a thousand years to be Madeleine, the thought had never even crossed your mind. But in this exact moment it did, and you were fucking thankful you weren’t her. Whatever Liam had planned, it was not going to be pretty. That much you knew.

“You’ll see.” He finally responded to Drakes question “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we both need to get dressed.” He ushered Drake out if the room before he could say anything else, closing the door behind him.

“Liam..?” You softly asked, not sure if you even should. He turned and walked back towards the bed, sitting on the edge of it staring at the door “She is the reason he was here, the reason he was able to find you last night. To attack you.” He turned to look at you “I can’t let her get away with that.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“What I have to. What she deserves.” He said firmly, unwaveringly.

Your eyes widened “Please tell me you’re not going to kill her!?” There had been enough death around you in the last 24 hours and even though you hated Madeleine, more then really anyone else now, she didn’t deserve to die for being a petty little bitch. Even if her being gone would make your life much easier. Would guarantee your safety even more. But you had Liam, you knew he’d always protect you and there wasn’t really much Madeleine could do to you now.

“It’s what she deserves, Y/N.” he growled out then paused and took a deep breath, clearly not wanting to take his anger out on you. He levelled out his voice “She almost got you killed. I can’t allow her to continue living.” He shook his head “Not if it risks your life.”

Then you had an idea “What if there is another way?” You asked.

“I don’t see how there could be?” He raised a sceptical brow at you.

“Just hear me out...”

Later that night.

Liam heard the front door open and someone entering the foyer. He left his room and began down the stairs, his demeanour was calm, collected. As to not give away his true emotions. His eyes landed on her, Madeleine, now standing at the bottom of his stairs. The grin on her face almost broke his resolve, but he fought through it and smiled back at her. It was fake, but she’d never be able to tell. “Madeleine, thank you for joining me.” He said as she descended the final steps towards her.

“I was so happy to hear from you,” she mused then her head turned as she looked around the home, or at least at what she could see from where she stood. “Where’s Y/N?” She asked innocently.

What Madeleine didn’t know was that the night before, Anton had failed at kidnapping Y/N. Bash had gotten Mara out of the car and off to the hospital, with the help of Sam. While Drake and James dealt with the 4 bodies and Antons truck. They had managed to keep everything quiet, and out of the news and gossip circles. Buying Liam the time to lure Madeleine out so he could deal with her. So as of now, Madi was oblivious to what was coming her way. But she’d learn pretty damn fast. “I don’t know,” He shrugged nonchalantly as he reached the bottom of the stairs “She wasn’t in her room last night.” He added, it wasn’t a lie. “Not sure where she went.”

“Oh,” she tried to fake shock, but failed “I’m sorry to hear that, Liam, but most woman just aren’t cut out for this lifestyle, I guess.” She shrugged as well. “You need someone who is.” She smirked, wickedly.

“It’s funny you should say that,” He started to lead her down the hall, to the right, towards his office “because I was just thinking the same thing.”

“And do you have someone in mind?” She cooed as they reached his office door.

“I do.” He said as he opened the door and walked in, Madi following close behind.

The second the door was closed he moved quickly. He spun around on her and his hand went to her lower throat as he pushed her up against the wall, pulling the hidden gun from the back waistband of his pants. He always kept one there, just in case. He pointed it in her face and the anger was now written all over his. “And it’s not you.” He growled “How fucking dare you. You think I wouldn’t find out you were behind Anton being here!?” He yelled “You think I don’t know what happens in my fucking city, Madi?”

Her eyes were so wide it looked like they were about to burst out if her head “L-liam, let me explain!” She quickly stuttered out.

“Too late for explanations, Madi, you betrayed me. My trust. And now you will pay for it. I can’t allow you to continue living. Not now.” He seethed and shook his head “You brought this on yourself.”

“W-wait!” She put her hands up in surrender “J-just hear me out!”

“Too late.” He clicked off the safety but then the door burst open, slamming into the wall with a bang and Madi damn near jumped out of her skin. Both of them turning there heads to look at you.

“Liam! Wait!” You yelled as she abruptly entered the room. “Please don’t kill her Liam. Please.” You pleaded, as you stood just in the doorway hands up in front of you, in an attempt to calm him.

“She deserves to die for what she did to you!” He spat as he turned to look back at Madeleine again.

“She doesn’t,” you shook your head “I can’t condone you killing her for me. If anything I should be thanking her, she helped me eradicate Anton from my life, along with the bounty.”

“She betrayed my trust.” He growled.

“So?” You stepped closer to him, cautiously “Did you actually ever trust her to begin with?” He looked at you for a moment before he narrowed his eyes and flicked them back to Madi, who had stayed completely silent this whole time. Her eyes still wide and shifting between you both as you spoke. Then he shook his head “That doesn’t matter, you can’t betray the fucking King of New York and live.”

“I understand that,” You reached out your hand, slowly and placed it on his wrist, urging him to lower his gun “but she wasn’t doing it to betray you. She was doing it, in her mind, for you.”

His eyes looked first at your hand on his wrist, then darted up to lock onto yours. After a few intense seconds he sighed and lowered the gun. But his hand remained on her lower neck, pinning her to the wall still. “Then what do you think we should do with her?” He asked calmly though the frustration and anger in his voice was still evident. You thought it over for a moment then answered “Send her away. Kick her out of New York, never to be allowed to return. She may not deserve to die, but she doesn’t deserve to stay here either.”

Madeleine looked at you and you could almost see the relief in her eyes at your words then she looked towards Liam. He shook his head “She’d never stay away, I can’t risk her trying to harm you again.” He lifted up the gun once more and pointed it at her.

“Please Liam—“ you started to beg but then Madi spoke up “No! No, I promise.” She quickly spat out “I-i’ll leave. I’ll never come back. Y-you won’t ever hear from me again!”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Because I don’t want to die,” She shook her head “you have to believe that. I know you believe that.”

“Then how do I know you won’t just hire someone to kill Y/N.”

“You don’t,” she said honestly and Liams grip on her neck tightened “but! But,” she quickly added hands up in defence again “She could have let you kill me, however, she didn’t. If you let me walk away, I’ll owe her my life. I won’t send anyone after her, I swear it on my life.”

The whole time she was talking, his eyes stayed glued to you. Just as yours did to him. After a very intense moment, Liam looked back at Madi and released her from his hold. Lowering the gun and setting the safety again before tucking it back into the waist band of his pants. Madeleine collapsed to the floor as you moved towards her, to comfort her.

Liam straighten up “Madeleine, I hereby ban you from the state of New York, you have 12 hours to get out or I will kill you.” He turned and walked towards his desk as you helped Madeleine up and started to walk her towards the door but you both paused as he spoke up again “Oh and Madi, if you ever step foot in my city again, or if harm ever comes to Y/N because of you, it will be a instant death sentence. I will hunt you down and finish what we started here today.”

She looked from you to him then nodded her answer and that she understood what he had told her. You walked her down the hall and to the front door “Thank you.” She whispered.

You turned to her and shook your head “You don’t need to thank me, I don’t believe anyone deserves to die because of me. My life is not worth more then another’s.”

“Not many people would hold the same sentiments as you. So I do need to thank you. I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for you.”

“Well I’m glad you aren’t and I hope you can find a new, peaceful life for yourself out there. I truly do.”

She smiled at you, and for the first time ever, you believed it was a real one. A true smile. Then she nodded “I better get going before he changes his mind or my 12 hours are up.”

You smiled back and opened the door for her. Then with that she left. You didn’t know it at the time but that would be the last time you’d ever see her again, the last time you’d ever hear from her. She’d keep her word to you both. You closed the door then turned around and headed back to Liam’s office.

You walked in to find Liam leaning on his desk, arms crossed in front of him. “I think she bought it.” You said as you smirked. Having to be nice to Madeleine was fucking difficult but you had to make her feel indebted to you. Like she owed you and this wasn’t all a giant act you and Liam had planned out.

“Thanks to your surprising acting skills,” he laughed as he pushed off the desk and walked towards you “You actually had me fooled for a second there.”

You laughed “Says the guy who actually had me thinking he might just kill her anyways. Regardless of our plan.”

He smirked “I always stick to my plans,” He grabbed a hold of your waist and pulled you gently towards him “at least the ones involving you.”

You rested both hands on his chest as you looked up at him, one eyebrow now raised “Oh, is that so?”

“Yup.” He mock growled as he leaned down to kiss you. Both smiling like fools into the kiss which then caused you both to burst out laughing—

Present.

“You’re staring again,” His sleepy voice pulled you from your thoughts. His eyes were still closed. “It’s creepy.” He added, though you could tell he was messing with you. It wasn’t creepy at all, he secretly loved it.

“I can stare at you all I want,” you lowered your voice now to sound like his. Or more to mock how he would always says this next part to you “Because you are mine.”

His eyes opened and he glared at you, which made you burst out laughing. “Are you mocking me?” He asked.

“Me? Mock you?” You feigned ignorance and innocence, then gasped “Never!”

He narrowed his eyes at you “I think I’ll need to punish you for this.” He threatened and you instantly went to jump out of bed to get away from him, knowing what this ‘punishment’ would be. But you weren’t fast enough, his large hands grabbed your hips and pulled you back into the bed. Pinning you under his much larger body, then he started to tickle you. Your biggest weakness. Fucker knew you too well. Even after only a year.

You squirmed and screamed as you tried to get away from him, though he was way stronger then you so any efforts were futile at best. There was only one thing you could do to stop him. Or rather, distract him. You reached up and grabbed the back of his neck, catching him off guard and pulled him down to you. Your lips crashed into his and his attack instantly ceased. His eyes widened for a second then slammed shut as he melted into the kiss.

You now had him right where you wanted him. So before he could even react you flipped both of you so that you were now on top. Granted, probably not for long, but it was all about the small wins. You pumped your fists in the air in mock victory “I win! I win!” You joked.

He just stared up at you then started to laugh “I let you.”

You arms dropped instantly “Pffft. Please! I won this one fair and square.”

“Oh, you think so?” He shook his head “You cheated.”

“I did not!” Your hand flew up to your chest as you feigned outrage now “I just simply used your weaknesses against you, just as you did to me!” Then you smirked down at him “You’re just sad I bested you.” You taunted.

You saw his eyes darken then screamed in shock as he flipped you both, so he was now on top, once again. Then he just looked down at you, or rather his eyes travelled over your face. Then he whispered something that sounded a lot like ‘Marry me.’ Your brows knitted together as you couldn’t have heard that right “What did you just say?” You asked breathlessly. He smirked then jump up and off the bed, quickly disappearing down the hall to the master bathrooms and closets. You propped yourself up on your elbows in bed and watched as he did. Even more confused now.

After a moment he came back into the bedroom, one of his hands behind his back. You raised a questioning brow at him as he came over to the bed and the hand not behind him reached out for you to take. You just stared at it then up at him, he laughed then wiggled the hand he had out to you, as if urging you to take it. You did, cautiously, then he gently pulled you up and out of bed to stand.

Once you were, he stood there for a few seconds just looking down at you, he seemed ...nervous? You’d be lying if you said you weren’t also nervous. Then he took a step back and lowered onto one knee, still holding your hand. “This isn’t exactly how I wanted to do this,” he paused “Or how I had planned it.” He laughed nervously “but then again, our relationship has never been a conventional one.” You both smirked at just how true that statement was. He then cleared his throat “Y/N, I have never met anyone like you. I have never felt this way about anyone before. I think,” he paused “I think I have loved you from the first moment I met you, when you tried to awkwardly run in the opposite direction from me, or maybe even from the moment I first laid eyes on you, entering that club. I don’t honestly know, but either way, I know that you are the only woman for me. There will never be anyone else. You have changed me in so many ways, in such a short time, and I strive to be worthy of you, to deserve you. To make you happy and keep you safe,” the hand behind his back moved to in between you both but your eyes stayed locked to his. You knew were this was going, but in this moment all you cared about was watching him, memorizing his face, his words, his beautiful blue eyes, every part of him in this moment. The one where he would ask you those 4 little words that would forever link you to each other. “Y/N, I love you with all that I am,” he released your hand then fiddled with what you could only assume was the ring box between you, but you refused to break eye contact with him, not yet, you didn’t care what the ring looked like. You already knew your answer. “Will you marry me?” He asked, FINALLY!

You felt the tears well up in your eyes instantly, upon hearing those 4 little words “Yes! Yes! A million times yes!” You practically yelled out in excitement then you pushed his hands out of the way and lunged towards him, damn near knocking him over as your body slammed into his. You wrapped your arms around his neck and crashed your lips to his in a frantic and messy, yet passionate, kiss. You felt the tears streaming down your cheeks as you did. His arms wrapped around you and held you tight to him as he kissed you back. He pulled away reluctantly after a moment, and you felt his hands moving a bit behind your back then the slow sound of something hitting the floor. He then took hold of your left hand and you finally looked down and watched as he slipped the beautiful diamond engagement ring onto you ring finger. You took a second to admire it then flicked your eyes back to his, finding them just watching you. Silently.

“I love you, Liam.” You whispered.

“I love you too, Y/N.” he whispered back as he kissed the tip of your nose. Then he smirked and growled out “Now, let me show you just how much.” He scooped you up bridal style then stood up, he deposited you on the bed and you giggled with excitement as he crawled on after you.

A few amazing hours later you both finally emerged from the bedroom, in search of food. He offered you his arm and you happily took it as you both made your way down to the kitchen. Finding the whole gang, including Olivia and Hana, hanging out in the kitchen. Hana had become close with everyone when she started to spend more time here after you’d officially moved in. She was here almost any day she wasn’t working. Today being one of her days off, clearly. And Olivia ended up moving into the house a few months after you did, things with her and Drake were going just as well as things with Liam and you were.

They all went quiet and looked at you both as you entered, then Drake spoke up “We were wondering if we’d ever see either of you again.” He smirked. Olivia removed her hand from her growing baby bump to swat him in the arm “Shhhh,” she hissed before whispering “Look at her hand.” As she nodded with her head towards you. Then everyones eyes darted to your left hand, every face breaking out into a huge smile once they saw it. “Holy shit!” Drake gapped “He actually did it.” He whispered. Everyone burst out laughing at Drakes obvious shock then one by one they congratulated you both.

Mara came around the island and pulled you into a deep hug, since that horrible night you and Mara had become close, damn near inseparable. She was like the sister you never had but always wanted. Hana, Olivia, Mara and yourself had all become really close, actually. The boys had jokingly nicknamed you all the ‘fantastic four’ whenever you were all together. It had started as a joke but you all loved the nickname and decided to keep it.

The guys all congratulated Liam, as Mara stepped back and Hana rushed over. She wrapped her arms around you then happily bounced in place as you both giggled. She was literally vibrating with excitement. And lastly Olivia walked over and hugged you awkwardly over her baby bump. Then the friends all switched, the girls congratulating Liam, and the guys all hugging and congratulating you. Drake was the last one, he wrapped his arms around your waist and spun you around before lowering you back to the ground and whispering “Thank you for making him the happiest man alive,” then he pulled back and look over at Olivia for a second before turning back to you “Or, at least the second happiest.” He smirked. You burst out laughing “No thank you needed, he makes me just as happy.”

You looked passed Drake to see Liam watching you. You stepped around Drake and wrapped your arms around Liams waist, tucked under his strong arm. You looked up at him and smiled, he smiled back then he looked towards all your friends “I think a celebration is in order.”

“Fuck yeah!” Most of them said in unison.

In this moment you realized this was exactly where you were meant to be. That everything, good and bad, that had happened in your life had been worth it. Had led you to this exact place. To where you truly belonged. Around these amazing people you now called your family, and tucked under the arm of this amazing man, you now called your fiancé.

You were safe. You were secure. You were loved. And from this day on, you always would be. You were his and he was yours. Forever.

Masterlist HERE.

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[h-styles-babes]

Harry Styles Blurb/Request #8

After a long time and a lot of asking, here is part II to the awkward dancing blurb I did a while ago. Hopefully this kinda makes up for the lack of updating for Bad Habit and What About Us? I have writers block when it comes to those two, and it’s driving me crazy lol 

You can read Part I here :)

Anyway, enjoy, my darlings!

Part II

What the fuck had that all been about?

Y/N made her way from the ballroom that the reception was being held in to the lifts that would take her back up to her room, where she was hoping to take a shower and fall into bed. She hadn’t had a lot to drink that night, but the few glasses of champagne she’d had she could feel still bubbling in her veins, giving her that weightless quality she found she got when she was pleasantly buzzed. However, the usual good mood it brought along with it was nowhere to be found after her odd encounter with Harry just a few moments prior.

It had just left her confused and a bit downtrodden, if she was honest. She could have sworn that he was about to say something really profound and life changing, but he’d just brushed it off like nothing was amiss. She wasn’t quite sure why she felt so disappointed by his avoidance, since it was a typical Harry trait, but she was. Usually there wasn’t anything that was kept secret between them because of how often they were together, not only for work but for leisure as well. She thought they were beyond keeping secrets from each other, but apparently she’d been wrong.

She was waiting for the lift to make its way to her, she heard footsteps approaching behind her. Figuring it was someone else from the wedding or even another guest from the hotel, she didn’t pay them any mind, her eyes watching as the floor number above the doors counted down.

An arm snaked around her waist, and she jumped in surprise, whipping her head to look at the ballsy bastard who decided he was within his rights to put his hands on her, fully prepared to kick his arse if it came to it. However, she relaxed when she saw that it was Harry, his brows slightly furrowed in what she could only assume was apology. He turned her into him by the lax grip he had on her hip, his eyes tracing over her face before he spoke.

“Can we talk?”

“About?” Y/N asked, fully intending on playing off their whole awkward encounter from before. She wasn’t really in the mood to revisit whatever exactly had happened, and from his behavior before, Harry wasn’t either.

“About what just happened back there. I think I need to explain,” he told her.

The lift dinged before she could answer him, the doors sliding open to an empty compartment. With Harry looking at her expectantly, she nodded her head toward the open lift, and Harry got on with her, pressing the button for her floor.

They road up the twelve stories in silence, Harry’s arm still around her waist, causing every inch that he was touching to tingle. They’d hugged and embraced before, seeing as Harry was a touchy lad in general, but they’d never stayed like this for any extended period of time, and never with so little of a barrier between them. Y/N’s dress was made of a thin satin material that left so little to the imagination that she’d had to forego panties in order to avoid lines showing through. Needless to say, she could feel his body heat through the material as if he was touching her bare skin, and while it wasn’t unpleasant by any means, it wasn’t something she was supposed to be enjoying either.

By the time they’d made it into Y/N’s room, which was their silently agreed upon ending place, Harry was nearly bursting at the seams with all the things he wanted to blurt out to her. He hadn’t meant to upset her by refraining from telling her the thoughts that had been going through his mind earlier. He thought it would be better to keep his thoughts to himself, but all he’d managed to do with that was make her walk away. That was the opposite of what he’d wanted to occur. There were things he wanted to say in order to hopefully remedy the situation.

Y/N went about her nightly routine, having to give up that hot shower she wanted to originally have, removing her jewelry first before taking the pins out of her hair that had been used to keep it in a complicated up-do. Harry took a seat on the edge of her bed and watched her place all these pins on the dresser next to her earrings and necklace, seeing all the tendrils of hair fall into their natural state.

She saw him looking at her with such concentration from the corner of her eye. He hadn't said a word since he’d insisted that they needed to talk.

“Yeh just gonna continue to stare at me, or are yeh actually gonna talk about whatever it is that yeh wanted to talk about?” she asked, raising her eyebrow at him as she removed the last of her pins. She ran her nails over her scalp to soothe the slight ache she’d gotten from having it pinned up for so long as she waited for his answer.

“I uh…” Harry started, “I wanted to apologise—”

“I don’t want to hear your apologies, H,” she cut him off. “I want you to be honest with me. We’re both adults. Just say what you were gonna say.”

Harry had previously taken a seat on the edge of her bed when he first entered the room. He extended his hand to her and he was grateful when she closed the small distance between them to accept it, allowing him to pull her closer to stand between his legs. The thin satin gown she was wearing was soft against his fingers as he rested his hands against her hips. Y/N rested her own on his shoulders. She could see his throat bob as he swallowed, and she wondered fleetingly what he had to be so nervous about. She was the one that was on the edge of her seat, here. Figuratively, obviously.

“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful,” he told her, his grip on her hips tightening infinitesimally. He could see Y/N open her mouth with a furrowed brow, surely ready to questions why that statement was such a big deal. “You’re so fuckin’ beautiful and everythin’ about yeh is everythin’ that I want, and I realise I probably shouldn’t feel that way about my stylist, but fuck if I can help it. I don’t know how I’ve made it these years without completely burstin’, because bein’ around yeh drives me crazy in the best way possible.”

Harry waited with bated breath for what felt like hours before a small smile started stretching across her face. One hand reached up into his hair, brushing a bit back that had fallen over his forehead. Harry nearly purred when her fingernails trailed onto his scalp, lightly scratching.

“Now was that so hard, Styles?”

[xoruffitup]

Just want to flail over Adam’s parts? People, I AM HERE FOR YOU. Here’s a time-stamped cheat sheet of Adam’s comments and generally precious moments. (Basically Round 2 of my overall flaily recap of this panel right after it happened.)

I start the video and my heart freaks out remembering when he first walked on stage. Get me a paper bag before I pass out... His little ‘Hello!’ and one-handed wave when he walked out I was already deceased.

1:35 - Everyone please just watch this adorable tall man awkwardly sit and fidget and bite his lip and make his oh god public attention face

11:25 - Adam makes no judgments about his character’s morality. He empathizes more with Ben Stiller’s character in the While We’re Young film than with his own, but recognizes that his own feelings about the character are irrelevant; as are his feelings about his own performance. 

“It’s not about me feeling it, it’s about an audience feeling it.”

I’m constantly struck by his humility and maturity in always thinking of himself as only a small part in every film project, regardless of how large his role might be. He’s hyper-aware that none of it is about him, and becomes uncomfortable when people try to make it so. Although he explains here that he relates to the “debilitating” pressure to play a role correctly or authentically, and we know that he constantly over-thinks and scrutinizes his own work to the point of not being able to watch himself on film; He also recognizes his personal gratification with his performance comes second to the overall story being told. Internally, he might hold himself to high personal standards, but he never presumes those standards should be projected on anyone else. He finishes this answer with “Who am I to say if they’re right or wrong?” (If audiences respond to a less authentic version of a work.)

I would love to hear him answer this same question about Kylo’s character.

27:50 (One of the moments when I had to physically restrain myself from flailing in my seat because he’s so damn presh) - The moderator tried to “bring back Adam” because he’d hardly spoken so far, and Adam goes “I’m good, I’m good.” Ben Stiller interjected, “Can I just say something about acting with Adam?” and Adam immediately shakes his head and waves his hand in a silent “Please no”, but then very magnanimously tells Ben to go ahead, even while squirming in his seat a tiny bit while Ben talked about him. 

29:00 - Adam says Noah’s writing is very “theatrical.” I did find it interesting how he talked here about a whole range of different potential meanings within the same words of a script, depending on how they’re delivered. I also love when he talks about working in theatre, just because I have a soft spot for stage actors. 

(Watching this whole video back makes me realize Adam really did quite effortlessly and unconsciously charm the audience (not just me), even speaking so little compared to the other panelists. I remembered clearly when he had his ~showdown with the moderator towards the end the audience was 100% on his side, clapping for him, but generally there are so many audience laughs for the little self-deprecating jokes Adam mixes into all his answers.)

31:10 (Alert alert, fangirl moment) - Perfect capture of how he fiddles with his fingers and listens so attentively. 

33:28 - THAT L A U G H

35:08 - My other favorite funny/presh moment! “There’s humor in doing the same things in life and still trying to make them more efficient... Like I still don’t think I’ve ever gotten into a car the right way.” (Confused audience laughter?) Then Adam gets serious with chagrin right away like “...that was a bad example...” (Audience continues laughing with him even though most people probably don’t get it.) He made a last-ditch effort to explain himself by saying “the Tesla” - but didn’t quite get to fully explain that he was referring to the uber-modern Tesla car that was driving him around the island over the weekend. Regardless, everyone found it amusing and I was there like I stan a man who can’t get into a car right WHAT A GEM

36:27 (Alert alert, another fangirl moment) - Everyone please just watch him take a drink of water. Why every single damn thing he did was totally mesmerizing to me I don’t know, but you’ll thank me later. 

46:13 - The moderator mentions Paterson screened at the Nantucket Film Festival several years ago. Adorable moment where he goes to start listing all the famous people from Paterson and has to give up with “...and a bunch of other people I can’t remember right now.”

47:10 - Hilarious moment but first strike against the narrator. Ben Stiller had to ask Chris Matthews if Paterson was the first movie he’d seen Adam in because yeah, he’d kind of been neglecting Adam a bit (not that Adam minded, clearly), but Ben went “...he’s also in Star Wars,” and the whole place cracked up. 

49:10 - Non-Adam moment, but I was really intrigued with Noah Baumbach’s comment here, talking about developing his dialogue and how “there’s communication, and then there’s talking.”

50:10 - THIS IS IT, FOLKS, THE GOLD MINE OF ADAM CHARM AND SASS. THE LEGENDARY MOMENT IS NEARING. Watch Adam’s life flashing before his eyes in a panic when the question “Who is the most influential person in your life” is suddenly thrown at him. He wasn’t ready for this!! (Although great question, Rea, so glad it was asked!) Then after he says he’ll pass on the question, you can see him basically flying to Mars in his head pondering. Then the cuteness and laughter when he announces he does have an answer!! He was 1000% the whole audience’s darling by this point. Then his answer is basically, “Listen to how insightful my wife is because she’s the best.” Then after boasting about his wife it’s right back to his modest self: “On to the next question and then I’ll finish this monologue...”

LOOK, okay he wasn’t even talking for that long! He’d given what, 3 answers before this during the whole hour-long panel?! The moderator himself blabbed at least twice as much. I was loving this monologue because it was the first time Adam was actually talking for an extended time. But apparently we can’t have nice things becomes here comes Mr. Rude-ass, Clueless Moderator...

(Also, Ben and Noah were 100% engaged with what Adam was saying so literally this was only the moderator’s problem...)

52:32 - The moderator audibly sighs into his microphone in the middle of Adam’s “monologue” and I’m SO glad Adam unpretentiously called him out: “.....Are you bored by my answer?” The whole audience laughed in sympathy with him because it was so weird and rude? Then Adam went on to be even more of a clever QT like: “You were thinking about another question? That’s what I was doing during your answers...” And the man is so straight-faced about it you genuinely can’t even tell if he purposefully meant that well-done, five-course ROAST. 

I cringe so hard at this memory I can barely watch it back, but ughhhh queue the moderator interrupting Adam’s attempt to resume his answer, with some bullshit about Jeff Goldblum... What even? Jeff Goldblum was mentioned once in the panel previously, but wtf how does your mind go there when Adam Driver is giving a painfully earnest, precious, and over-thought monologue for you???

52:50 - “...SO STAR WARS.” BOOM. In three words Chris Matthews has been KO’d. omg look at the almost proud look on Noah’s face like yeah you tell him bb and Ben’s cracking up, and the whole audience flips out like DAMN, SAVAGE!!!

(Also for ~context reference, walking out from the auditorium afterwards, I remember overhearing two guys saying to each other “Chris Matthews was like one of those old guys who just blurts whatever’s going through his head.” “Yeah but you’d think when you’re talking to Adam Driver you’d be more respectful and reign it in.” and in my head I was like DAMN RIGHT. Watching this whole thing back, Matthews gets on my nerves basically the whole time. He seems to enjoy hearing himself talk so much that he forgot what a moderator’s actual job is.)

58:40 - Adam’s advice to aspiring filmmakers about the usefulness of going to school, getting a firm foundation in your craft, and having the insulated space to fail and build yourself. 

Just so I can ~complete my revisiting of this whole experience~, I’ll add this photo taken by @wherethepastaat aka Rea aka https://twitter.com/cosmicreas in the parking lot outside after the event. I love her for asking the incredible question that gave us a world-class #SassybutClassy Adam moment, and also for snapping this A+ covert photo documenting the referenced Tesla car that caused Adam so much stress about how to get in it correctly. (Joanne’s getting in before him.)

I also owe her my firstborn because she inadvertently GOT ME IN THE PHOTO WITH ADAM!! That shoulder in the pink tank top directly behind him? THAT’S ME. THAT’S ME AND ADAM. IN THE SAME PHOTO. DEEP BREATHING, OKAY. Now I can always prove that I really was that close to him! (He came by even closer when he walked down the sidewalk. No, a month later I still have not gotten over it even .00001% percent.) 

Admittedly, there have been brief moments where I berate myself like ‘ugh why didn’t you ask for a photo?!’ but A) I was frozen in awe for the 10 seconds he was in front of me (pretended to be on my phone so I wasn’t overtly staring, lol) and B) You can see in this photo that there were a bunch of people milling around. If I’d asked him to stop, he probably would have gotten stuck taking pics with lots of people. I did the right thing AND got to witness more wholesome Adam moments as he was leaving!

Once again, Rea I owe you a gift basket because I am SO glad I got to witness when you/your brother called ‘Bye!’ to Adam from your car and your dad called “Hi Kylo!” and ADAM RESPONDED, smiled and waved and said ‘Hi Thanks!’ back. IT WAS SO PURE I CRY AT THE MEMORY.

All in all, despite the fact that Adam didn’t actually talk that much on the panel, it was still a 100% Quality Event and I still think about it daily. :’) My Adam crush has morphed into an all-consuming real-life thing that I do my best to control but look, a girl can only do so much in the face of THIS. I AM ONLY HUMAN, ADAM.

[krysalla-archive]

crimson - chapter 1

over & over

relationship: matt murdock x reader word count: 1.9k warnings: mentions of death, language a/n: I decided to rewrite this when I read it again after like a year-long break from writing it and realizing it was so bad and inconsistent. And I didn’t really have much of a plot in mind, but now I do. So, if you see another fic titled this with the same elements it's probably mine.

preview: You feel like a stranger when you sit on the bed, your bag at your feet and the familiar creaking of the bed frame welcoming you. Your hand runs over the comforter, the stiffness making you grimace. It feels wrong to come back to this.

previous part

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ko-fi

Staying in one place for too long was never an option for you. It's like it's coded in your DNA from the years you spent moving from place to place because of your father's job after your mother died. Years of your life, stability almost nonexistent, were wasted packing and unpacking boxes. You didn’t realize though, that that was normal for other kids your age, to move around so much, even ones that were children of military parents. You can’t remember staying long enough in one place to finish a full year of school. Must have been before your mother died. But even as an adult, it seemed the habit, the procedure and order of packing, stuck with you. 

You'd only stayed in one place long enough to get a teaching degree.

After you graduated, you were off. Buying a ticket on the fly to wherever seemed most appealing in the moment and applying to jobs at the schools in the area, most times you didn’t get the job, but that’s okay, there was usually some desperate diner that needed another waitress, or a nursing home on its last legs looking for more kitchen or laundry staff.

You toss and turn all night, something in the pit of your stomach churning, keeping you up despite the fact that your eyes and brain were demanding that you go to sleep. The day had been long with everything that could go wrong going wrong at work, wearing and stretching you thin beyond your capabilities, because you were the only competent employee. Maybe not competent, but levelheaded, thinking clear despite the pressing situation and the cook yelling in your ear about a situation you couldn’t control.

Maybe it was time to stop, to actually become serious about teaching. You’d spent years getting your damn degree. Why the hell weren’t you using it? You actually like kids, you like teaching, you like the environment of school. Nothing made sense to you about your current situation. 

You bite your lip, staring at the crack in the ceiling, making a shape that you couldn’t quite make out. It looked like a cloud, or maybe a dinosaur, you could never settle on which it was.

Your phone buzzing gives you a distraction from the whirling in your gut, something you’re thankful for, up until you see the time. Three o’clock. Fuck. What the hell were you doing up all night? You’ve got another shift in five hours.

What’s even more confusing is your sister’s number on your screen. Isn’t it six where she is? You’d never known her to get up early.

“Hello?” you hope that she can’t tell your tired, she’ll only mother you. Since she adopted, she’d become more smothering, combined with the fact that she’s your older sister, always trying to look out for you.

“Hey, I know it’s early for you-”

“I don’t think early is even the word to describe three in the morning,” you push yourself up and rub your eye, “What’s up?”

“He’s... Dad’s dead,” your sister’s shuttering gasp, you know it all too well. This was just the prelude, “He died an hour ago.”

“Oh,” you’re breathless and unable to respond properly, “I... I’ll buy a ticket.”

You hang up unprompted, too shocked with yourself and your words. It’s not like you had much of a connection with him anymore. You hadn’t seen him since your high school graduation. You’d packed your bags immediately and went to stay with your sister that summer.

You don't know how to feel about it. You want to be sad, you should be sad. He is- was your father. He raised you and your sister but he was never there, not fully anyway. He was never the same after your mother died, he never recovered from that. And neither you nor your sister did either, but you could still function, you had to. You don't remember what had happened when your mother died, you were only six when it happened. It's not like you knew exactly how she died. Being the youngest, even as an adult meant you were kept out of family affairs, and maybe it was your fault- a little- you’d taken off as soon as you could and only talked to your sister, and she was always so concerned with protecting you after your mother died. 

He was a shell of his former self, taken further in with the combination of what he’d seen and done in the Army. And maybe it isn't an excuse for you to not feel sad, to still hate him. Maybe you could have forgiven him or found some sympathy had he not taken up drinking, or at least drinking more than he already did. 

Your chest hurts, taking away from the churning in your stomach. You’re not sure if you can go home, but you know you have to. For your sister. 

You turn on the light next to your bed, averting your eyes from the sudden brightness. You chalk your slowness to get up, to walk to where your laptop sits on a desk, to tiredness, to laziness, not to the hesitance you feel. Going back to New York sounds like hell.

It’s easy enough to find a flight to JFK Airport, but you can’t find it in you to buy it. You let the cursor hovers over the purchase button.

You had never wanted to go back there, that’s what you told yourself and other people. But a small part of you did want to go back; Hell's Kitchen was your home, the first place you knew. But it didn't last for long. Six years there, your home and your life, the only thing you had known, and you had been uprooted, packed up and gone to the other side of the country.

"That's where the jobs are, baby girl," he had said, lifting up a box that was filled to the brim with your toys while you sat on the edge of your bed, legs swinging and your favorite stuffed animal in your arms, hugged tightly to your chest, "We'll come back one day. Besides, you'll like Nevada."

You had felt tempted to go back after you'd graduated from college, wanting to relive a part of the past that had been idyllic, before shit had hit the fan for your small family. See the sights and revisit parks you had frequented. But when you had heard from your sister, the night before you'd bought a ticket for New York, she had called to congratulate you and it had come up that he had moved back to Hell's Kitchen when you left for college and cut off contact with him.

He moved back into your childhood home and you had felt a surge of anger because how dare he do that. He had no right to do that. Not after what he’d done. Your sister said that he’d wanted to be closer to your mother, feel that connection with her again. He didn’t deserve that.

It’s hard enough to look over the flight information, but to spend money on it, to commit to it makes you want to double over. You confirm the purchase without a second thought, trying to get over with soon so you don’t have time to make yourself flee from the situation. You shut your laptop, heart speeding up at your actions and anxiety rising.

You’ll need to pack again.

You get out of a cab that smells of burnt out cigarettes, stale alcohol and vomit and it's just like coming home from school and finding him passed out on the couch with beer bottles littered around him. 

You readjust the strap of your bag on your shoulder and look up at the small building, nestled between two nicer ones. Vines grow up the sides of the discolored and chipped bricks, making it into the grout, making it impossible to tell brick from brick. The staircase railing and fire escapes have rusted from the pearly white you remember to an ugly copper, chipping and falling, gathering on the concrete along with broken glass and garbage spreading out from the alleyway.

He'd bought the entire building, trying his hand as a landlord, which didn’t end well.

Your sister sits on the steps, her leg bouncing up and down and her phone clutched in her hands. Despite looking exhausted, she’s just as beautiful as ever and she looks almost relieved when she sees you standing there.

"You came. I almost thought that you were lying," she chuckles weakly and stands up, arms open for you. Her eyes are red and puffy, lips chapped. She looked the same after her first serious girlfriend broke up with her.

You just nod and stuff your hands in your pockets, "I said I would be here."

She puts her arms down when she realizes you won't hug her and looks awkward for a moment before grabbing your suitcase, putting on a big smile on. She looks so much like your mother. It had made you jealous at one point, so much so that you tried to cut her hair when she slept, just to take away the similarity. Somewhere in your mind, you thought it was how her hair framed her face that made her look like your mother. Your sister caught you before you could go through with it. You just cried, dropping the dull scissors on her pillow and she picked you up and tucked you into the blankets with her.

"C'mon, let's get you settled."

It's like he'd tried to trap himself in time in the apartment. It looks exactly as you remember it. The furniture- some having been replaced- were put in the same position. Pictures littered the walls, both old and new. Your mother seems to be the center of it all. Most of the pictures had her in them, smiling widely, her favorite red lipstick always gracing her lips, but there’s a sadness in it that you notice. You can see some, the later ones, where she doesn’t look present, like something had sapped the energy out of her, draining and taking and draining her some more. 

You turn away from the pictures. This place, your home, feels haunted by her like she’d never left, and maybe a part of her didn’t because there’s evidence of her everywhere. Nothing is out of place. Maybe she possessed your father and set everything straight for him. 

Your sister turns to you, smiling weakly as she leads you to your old bedroom. Her hand is warm against yours; it’s sickly almost how sweaty it makes you. If there’s one thing you didn’t miss about Hell’s Kitchen is the humidity.

As hard as it is to, the breath is knocked out of you and your hand flies to the base of your throat, fingers splaying across your skin. It’s like something out of a dream or a memory, to stand in your old room, decorated how you remember it when you were a child. 

He’d decorated your old shared room the exact same as it had been when you were six and she was sixteen. The room split almost exactly in half with the different paints. Your side a soft, calming pink, befitting for a six-year-old girl; her side was a harsh purple, decorated with posters of her favorite bands and movies. The newest edition would be how the edges are frayed and your bedding fresh, crisp, never been wrinkled, unlike your sister’s side. She must have stayed over often toward the end.

You feel like a stranger when you sit on the bed, your bag at your feet and the familiar creaking of the bed frame welcoming you. Your hand runs over the comforter, the stiffness making you grimace. It feels wrong to come back to this. 

You can’t wait to leave.

@pyppenia @katiehawkeyebishop @hhawkass

[arplis]

Arplis - News: Two years ago, but it seems closer to ten, a nice deputy editor for a new publication approached me to write a piece

He had been reading me forever and was working for this company with a bunch of money invested in it, could pay pretty well and expose me to some new readers not only on the web but a print magazine he compared to Rolling Stone. I said yes and we were going back and forth about what my first piece should be, and then my mom died. Freelance gigs are usually a little stressful and all-consuming for me, but for some reason I still wanted to do it. Looking back at my emails, I was literally trying to schedule around the days off I had other than the one for the funeral. I agreed to write about the Halloween series, in conjunction with the upcoming David Gordon Green sequel. I watched all ten existing movies (including remakes) and came up with this piece that ties them all together thematically, at times addressing the grief and fears I was dealing with at the time. I took longer than I was supposed to and ended up with twice the agreed upon word count and I was so unsure anybody else would be interested that in my email I said, “If you don’t want it I understand, just let me know and I’ll use it on outlawvern.com and we’ll come up with something else for me to work on for you.” Then the magazine (you will never see this coming) ran out of money, all the editors resigned, I don’t believe I ever got paid and the article could only be seen on the Wayback Machine. But I got no regrets because working on this helped me in a tough period of my life and gave me a better understanding of my relationship with the genre. So I’m proud to repost it here. (I’ve kept their edits, so you’ll notice some British spellings in here.) THE SHAPE OF EVIL: Confronting darkness through the ‘Halloween’ series 26 October 2018 08:59 John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) was, in its time, the most successful independent movie ever made, and its influence still echoes through cinema four decades later. It cemented many of the hallmarks of the slasher subgenre: unstoppable masked killers, murder sprees tied to holidays, a troubling connection between sexual activity and death. And it became one of the most enduring brands in horror history, spawning a series of eight sequels so far (including a new one this month), undeterred even by a 2007 remake that had its own sequel. Some may wonder why, in these dark times of mass shootings, human rights abuses, corrupt regimes, collapsing institutions and impending environmental catastrophe, anyone would want to watch ten movies about an escaped mental patient stabbing people to death. Personally, I found catharsis in revisiting them all this month while grieving over the loss of my parents to long, cruel illnesses. If you look at the series as a mass-market treatise on humankind’s struggles against death and evil you can focus less on the horror of being stabbed and more on the possibility of getting away. In the opening scene of Halloween, as well as the closing of part four and other moments throughout the series, our viewpoint is from behind the mask of the killer. Lesser Halloween sequels, particularly the sixth and eighth entries, try to further implicate us in the evil by creating victims who ‘deserve it’ in cinematic terms – an abusive husband, an obnoxious shock jock. But, for the majority of the series, we identify with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and the other protagonists who follow her, rooting for them so we can survive by proxy. We watch the masked killer Michael Myers in movies to face our worst fears in a forum where they can never get us, can never truly win. Being a fan of more than one Halloween movie is more complicated than it may sound. It requires canonical decisions, like some Video Age equivalent of ancient scriptures. It would be easy to recognise only the original Carpenter productions, Halloween and Halloween II (1981), with or without the narratively unrelated Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1982). Some fans who came up in the Eighties may also acknowledge Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Dwight H. Little, 1988) and Halloween 5: the Revenge of Michael Myers (Dominique Othenin-Girard, 1989), but the cliffhanger of 5 demands the resolution of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Joe Chappelle, 1995), which many reject due to its out-of-left-field retconning in of a cult that has been controlling Michael since the beginning. Even those who accept that twist have to decide between the theatrical version and the drastically different ‘Producer’s Cut’, once a semi-legendary bootleg, now an official release. ‘Halloween’ (John Carpenter, 1978) To enjoy them all you have to accept multiple realities, because the timeline expands and contracts like an accordion. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (Steve Miner, 1998) erases everything after II. Laurie faked her death and went into hiding, which could explain her absence in 4-6, except that now she doesn’t have a daughter named Jamie (Danielle Harris). Personally, I like the H20 continuity as long as I can disavow Halloween Resurrection (Rick Rosenthal, 2002), which turns the ending of H20 on its head so that Michael survives and Laurie doesn’t, like some shocking cinematic Supreme Court ruling. And now David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), a sequel, not remake, of John Carpenter’s movie of the same title, will tell us that there is only John Carpenter’s Halloween. It even erases II – which continued on the same night and was written, scored and reshot by Carpenter – so Laurie and Michael are no longer siblings. (Which means the TV version of the first film is also out.) Like Michael’s body at the end of the first film, all those sequels were there just a second ago, and now they’re gone. They could be anywhere, or everywhere. But through all its repetitions and resets, the series keeps performing the same ritual: hiding a pure, unknowable malevolence behind a rubber human face and sending it into our civilisation to see if we can survive its wrath. In all but one of these films, that force of evil is Michael Myers, who at the age of six put on a clown mask, stabbed his sister Judith just moments before their parents got home, and never spoke again. Since Michael saw Judith fooling around with her boyfriend before the murder, people often interpret some sort of prudish anti-sex judgment behind his actions, something that became a cliché in the wave of slasher movies that followed in Halloween’s wake. But I think we only assign an explanation like that to protect ourselves from our fear of the inexplicable. There is no cause or motive. Even by the eighth film, so little is known about Michael that the producers of a live webcast from his house have to plant fake props to imply ‘something that might explain why Michael Myers went bad’. After his first murder, the kid and his parents look equally dumbfounded. They have no idea why it happened. So grown up Michael Myers and his mask represent the unknowable and the incomprehensible. To keep him extra-mysterious, his head stays out of frame while he stalks the neighbourhood during the day; even though, with close examination, you can see enough to tell that he’s wearing the mask. It’s worth noting that we actually can glimpse his face when he’s stealing the car at the beginning of the first film and can see it clearly when Laurie pulls off his mask at the end. His expressions reveal so little emotion or intelligence that it’s easy to forget those shots and think of the mask as his true face. He’s as much an automaton as the zombie-like gangsters in Carpenter’s earlier Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). His psychiatrist of 15 years, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence), gave up on Michael’s humanity in 1972 and considers him a personification of evil, as in, ‘He’s gone, he’s gone from here. The evil is gone!’ He says that ‘what was living behind that boy’s eyes was purely and simply evil.’ He refers to him as ‘it’, instead of him. He tells the sheriff that ‘Death has come to your little town.’ None of this seems like an appropriate way for a doctor to talk about a patient, but it belies Loomis’s diagnosis that this man in the mask is no longer whoever (or whatever) Michael Myers was before he snapped and killed his sister. Tommy Doyle, the kid whom Laurie is babysitting, calls Michael ‘the boogeyman’, a description that Laurie eventually adopts. Not even the end credits consider him to be a person anymore – they call him ‘The Shape’ (a tradition repeated in 2, 6, H20 and the 2018 sequel). And though 4 and 5 are chapters that credit him with his human name, 4 has a preacher who tells us that ‘Apocalypse, end of the world, Armageddon – it’s always got a face and a name… you can’t kill damnation, mister. It don’t die like a man dies.’ And 5 emphasises Michael’s Death status by having him wield a scythe like the grim reaper. He finds it in a barn, and uses it to kill a more watered-down personification of evil: a partygoer in a sexy devil costume, armed with a legitimate farmer’s pitchfork. There’s a popular notion – fuelled by the theories of Randy in Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), themselves inspired by the ‘Final Girl’ concept in Carol J. Clover’s book Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film – that Laurie survives because she’s a virgin or a goody two-shoes. The latter is disprovable: Laurie shares two joints with Annie in the car. But I don’t see it as Laurie being rewarded for her good qualities. I see it as her having to go through all this because she’s the one that always has to deal with this shit while other people are out screwing around. That’s her personality and her lot in life. She runs errands for her dad’s real estate business, babysits to save up money, and takes care of Lindsey so that Annie can have fun with her boyfriend. Twenty years later, she’s the headmaster taking care of the rich people’s kids, and even then she stays behind and gets attacked by The Shape while most of the school has fun on a field trip. ‘Halloween II’ (Rick Rosenthal, 1981) A working title for Halloween was The Babysitter Murders, and though shifting the emphasis to the holiday setting was an ingenious hook, giving the heroine this societal role was also crucial. It’s this strange stage of growing-up where she’s not treated as an adult, yet trusted with the sacred task of protecting someone else’s children. Dr. Loomis held a related role – to understand young Michael and help him heal – but he has long since failed. Now his mission is just to tell everybody: Hey, this guy is evil, there was nothing I could do, now it’s your fault for not listening. His superiors pass the buck as well, declaring ‘I’m not responsible, Sam!’ Loomis wears a trench coat and carries a pistol, a self-styled warrior, a ‘good guy with a gun,’ our society’s prescription for murderers, terrorists, and other evils we don’t know how to understand. Not until part five, when he spends time with Jamie in a hospital, does he act like a child psychiatrist again. And he ends up yelling at her and being rightfully reprimanded by a nurse. In her status as a deputised adult, Laurie tries to console Tommy by telling him that there’s no such thing as a boogeyman. But after having been attacked, having shepherded the children to safety, and been rescued by Loomis, she breaks down and she and the doctor agree that that was the boogeyman that just came after her. The Shape has destroyed the comfort of her worldview. It is an evil that undermines belief in objective truth. When Halloween’s story continues in II, Laurie’s lacerations seem superficial, but she’s in such shock that they have to carry her out of the house on a stretcher, and she finds herself bed-ridden at Haddonfield Memorial. She has lost all agency, unable to even stop them from giving her a shot. The babysitter, having fulfilled her duty and returned her charges safely to their rightful guardians, now has no choice but to hand herself over to society’s official healers and protectors. But they are fallible. Sherriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers) wasn’t there to protect his own daughter, and has to end his shift to mourn. Some of the hospital staff are fucking around and don’t have their eye on the ball. The security guard is killed by the Shape, and a nurse who hasn’t been trained to use the walkie-talkie misses his message to call for help. Even safety regulations fail them – there is no way the sauna should be able to get to a temperature that’s actually labelled ‘scalding’ on the meter! The Shape repurposes that and other medical equipment (syringes, IVs) for killing, the opposite of their intended use. The Shape stalks his victims from where life begins, the maternity ward, across the medical facilities where we fight off death. The turning point comes when Laurie realises that she can’t count on the protection of society and must make a run for it. Loomis does protect her (by heroically blowing himself up with The Shape), and only after disobeying direct orders from the governor. Though III is the only Shape-less chapter – producer Carpenter’s once infamous, now generally appreciated attempt at an anthology series – its themes have much in common with II. Once again, the story begins with a victim taking refuge at a hospital, but this one is murdered by a killer who, rather than being burned up by Dr. Loomis, goes ahead and sets himself on fire. In the tradition of Loomis, Dr. Challis (Tom Atkins) is an MD who, upon witnessing bizarre happenings, abandons his role as a healer to become some sort of undercover vigilante detective. But it’s not always wise to take justice into your own hands. In 4, the old-timers at a bar form a posse and end up shooting an innocent man. And guns can’t really stop The Shape anyway. The sheriff later gives one to his daughter’s dumb boyfriend, but The Shape pulls it out of his hands and impales him with it. One admirable citizen is part three’s Good Samaritan gas station attendant (Essex Smith), who brings an injured man to the hospital. In one of the series’ very few hints of racial tension, the poor man is convinced that he will be blamed, but fulfills his duty anyway. He’s setting a good example for Laurie’s neighbours in the first film, who, when she comes screaming for help at their door, just turn the lights off. (To be fair, the neighbours who try to help Loomis’s nurse Marion in H20 end up getting killed.) In the original Celtic tradition, 1 November was the beginning of winter, and the night before – marked by the festival of Samhain – was when the barriers between the living and the dead were thinnest. You’d wear a mask to protect yourself from the spirits of the dead by causing them to confuse you for one of their own. ‘Halloween III: Season of the Witch’ (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1983) In a sense, The Shape reverses that concept. He is Death, but wearing a mask allows him to blend in with other holiday revellers. In both 5 and Resurrection he’s mistaken for pranksters disguised as him. Conversely, other people’s similar masks cause them to be mistaken for The Shape – in II, Ben Tramer is run over and set on fire in a case of mistaken identity. In 5, Spitz pranks the police and his girlfriend with a mask. If you think bringing Druids into this is a stretch, talk to Loomis, who brings up Samhain and fire rituals in II. Or talk to parts three and six, which both bring religion into the equation through contemporary cults building from ancient Celtic beliefs. In 6 we learn that, all along, Michael had been chosen by the regressive Druidic Thorn Cult to ritually sacrifice his next of kin on Samhain, when a certain constellation is visible. In the opening they have Jamie on a gurney, she’s about to give birth, and, as they roll her through hallways, the hospital decor gives way to torches and stone walls – they plan to take her baby for either a sacrifice or a recruit. In other words, they’re violating Jamie’s reproductive freedom, forcing their religion on her body. Rites before rights. In III – a story about deadly Halloween masks – cultists are forcing their backwards beliefs on us through capitalism. In this sense, the cult works less as a metaphor for religious zealotry than for the differing needs of a corporation and the community that surrounds it. Santa Mira, California is a company town, home of Silver Shamrock Novelty, the proto-Silicon Valley behemoth creating a high tech, mass-produced product that is heavily advertised to and coveted by children all across the country. The opening scene victim is basically a whistleblower, killed for trying to warn the world of their plans. Their CEO Mr. Cochrane has enough clout to spirit a woman maimed by one of their products to their ‘most marvelous facility for emergency treatment’. That treatment literally turns workers into automatons – biomechanical drones filled with clockwork and slime, willing to kill whistleblowers for the boss and very professionally self-immolate when the job is done. It’s unlikely that they unionise, or need vacation time or bonuses. The ideal employee. This is the trouble with allowing corporations to become too powerful – they pretend like they share the values of the community, but often they don’t. In this case, they follow ancient Celtic occultism and are creating masks equipped with special chips that, when activated by a special Halloween TV broadcast, will cause their wearers to melt into piles of goo and bugs and snakes. Which there should be regulations against, but the FCC is so compromised these days. I have family in broadcasting, and recently toured a building housing several different radio stations. It was the weekend and all the studios were dark, their shows playing from monitors and lights dancing up and down on the boards, but we didn’t see a single other person in the building, not even a janitor. I bring this up because of the climactic scene in which Dr. Challis calls the TV stations from a pay phone, begging them not to play the deadly broadcast. I always thought it was ludicrous that he manages to get two stations shut off that way. But if it happened now, obviously, there wouldn’t even be that slim chance. No-one would be there to answer the phone. Maybe you’d have to @ them on Twitter. In Resurrection it’s a start-up that tries to profit from evil, a webcam feed called Dangertainment that hypes up a live broadcast from the Myers house, where most of the participants are murdered while home viewers laugh and cheer, thinking it’s fake. And in the sequel to the remake it’s Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell) who profiteers, cashing in on his psychiatric failure in order to sell books and speaking engagements. His crassness is criticised by the father of Laurie’s murdered friend Lisa, by Sheriff Brackett, and even by his own publicist. ‘Halloween’ (David Gordon Green, 2018) But the thing about true evil is that there doesn’t even have to be money involved. Death doesn’t need to get paid. In II, 4, 5, 6, H20 and Rob Zombie’s 2007 and 2009 films, Laurie, Jamie and Jamie’s baby are all marked by their familial connections. Halloween protagonists are comforted by non-genetic family – friends, adopted parents and siblings – but doomed by their actual relations. They can’t control who they were born to, but they’re cursed by it, worrying that their brother/uncle will find them or, in some cases, that they will inherit his evil. This is the Shape that haunts me most: the spectre of a hereditary disease that killed my dad, and could come for me some day. Even those who survive The Shape – like any form of violence or trauma – can be marked for life. In Rob Zombie’s Halloween II (2009) his version of Laurie suffers from intense Michael Myers nightmares. She lives with Annie, whose face is covered in knife scars, but who seems less psychologically damaged. In the director’s cut the two constantly fight, but in the theatrical cut they have a sweet bond as fellow survivors. When Laurie finds out that she’s related to Michael and takes it out on her friend, it separates the two right when they need each other the most. Laurie ends the movie smiling to herself in the sanitorium, and it could be explained as a genetic inheritance, some sort of supernatural transference, or as the result of extreme trauma. In 6, grown-up Tommy Doyle (now played by Paul Rudd) is still tormented by the memory of Michael Myers. He lives in a boarding house with a deranged woman who claims to have been Michael’s babysitter on the night he killed his sister. In 4, even Laurie’s daughter Jamie, who was not alive during the attacks, has nightmares and visions about The Shape. In 5, having been stalked and arguably possessed by him, she’s lost the ability to speak. In H20, Laurie has tried ‘12 steps, self-help, group therapy, shrinks meditation. Everything.’ Her cabinet is full of pills for dealing with her nightmares, and she’s labelled ‘a functioning alcoholic’ by her son, whom she keeps under lock and key. She constantly imagines Michael in reflections and shadows. Until she decides she can’t run anymore. When Laurie chases Michael Myers with an axe, to her it’s her brother who killed her friends and ruined her life. But to us it’s also The Shape, and The Shape is the inexplicability of random violence, the inevitability of death, the neglect of civil responsibilities, the failure of institutions, the intrusion of regressive beliefs on our lives, the inescapability of family ties, or traumatic memories. So – just as the character of The Shape is repeatedly resurrected by a succession of rights-holders, filtered through the worldviews of new storytellers, all working towards a more accurate reconstruction of that original mask – any attempt to explain or understand him has failed to demystify him enough to stop him. The forces he represents are forever. As Tommy Doyle says in 6, ‘You can’t control evil. You can lock it up, burn it and bury it, and pray that it dies, but it never will. It just… rests awhile. You can lock your doors, and say your prayers, but the evil is out there… waiting. And maybe, just maybe, it’s closer than you think.’ And yet, doesn’t it feel good that, forty years later, Laurie too has come back from the dead, and we’re still here with her, and we’re not too scared to face him again? Evil is eternal, but so too are its opposing forces. For every Shape there are a whole town of babysitters and doctors and sheriffs and orderlies and responsible gas station attendants, and most of us will get the chance to last a while. If we just try our best to keep the kids safe and answer the door when the neighbours come knocking, maybe we’ll be okay. The post The Shape of Evil: Confronting darkness through the ‘Halloween’ series appeared first on VERN'S REVIEWS on the FILMS of CINEMA. #Slashers #BlogPost(shortForWeblog) #JohnCarpenter #Halloween #Essays

Arplis - News source http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Arplis-News/~3/4K31kNiQ7cc/two-years-ago-but-it-seems-closer-to-ten-a-nice-deputy-editor-for-a-new-publication-approached-me-to-write-a-piece

[jonathanalumbaugh]

Weekly Digest

January 7th, 2018, 6th issue.

A roundup of stuff I consumed this week. Published weekly. All reading is excerpted from the main article unless otherwise noted.

Read

Teen birth rates hit a new low in 2016, Boston has joined other cities in banning single-use plastic bags, Tesla restored electricity to a children's hospital in Puerto Rico after it was hit by hurricanes in September, the FDA cleared an earpiece that may help block symptoms of opioid withdrawal, 13 states saw record-lows of unemployment this year, Support for allowing same-sex marriage is at its highest point in 20 years, Vice President Mike Pence said in October that the U.S. "will return...to the moon not only to leave behind footprints and flags but to build the foundation we need to send Americans to Mars and beyond," a man in North Carolina has started the non-profit ChemoCars, a service that provides cancer patients with free rides to and from their chemo treatments, Uber partnered with the charity Whizz-Kidz to give those who use wheelchairs in the UK free rides to polling places this summer.

— 9 things America is getting right

This is not some “lite” version of Civ stripped down for touchscreen, mobile implementation. It’s the whole game.

— Civilization 6 on iPad is a marvel

First comment in thread: I keep seeing this referred to over and over, even TV Guide is calling the bad Cooper by the name BOB! In my opinion, this is something that people have been confusing for 25 years.

— Clarification: Cooper is not possessed by BOB

I got married two weeks ago. And like most people, I asked some of the older and wiser folks around me for a couple quick words of advice from their own marriage... Almost 1,500 people replied, many of whom sent in responses measured in pages, not paragraphs. It took almost two weeks to comb through them all, but I did. And what I found stunned me…

They were incredibly repetitive.

— Every successful relationship is successful for the same exact reasons

Explaining #Meltdown to non-technical spouse. “You know how we finish each other’s...” “Sandwiches?” “No, sentences. But you guessed ‘sandwiches’ and it was in your mind for an instant. And it was a password. And someone stole it while it was there, fleeting.” “Oh, that IS bad.”

— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman)

January 5, 2018

— Explaining Meltdown with parallel worlds, libraries, and a bank heist

TED Video: How to make stress your friend

— How to make stress your friend

A user visits a website, registers an account, and saves the data in the password manager. The tracking script runs on third-party sites. When a user visits the site, login forms are injected in the site invisibly. The browser’s password manager will fill out the data if a matching site is found in the password manager. The script detects the username, hashes it, and sends it to third-party servers to track the user.

— How web trackers exploit password managers

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP was negligent in connection with one of the biggest bank failures of the financial crisis, a federal judge has ruled, opening up the Big Four accounting firm to the potential of hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

— Judge Says PricewaterhouseCoopers Was Negligent In Colonial Bank Failure

Whether we see an LTE version of the Nokia 3310 in the US is still a major question, as is the release date of this phone — not the mention the battery life, which took a major hit when it added 3G support.

— An LTE version of Nokia’s 3310 may be coming

The Big Five... has produced results that can be shown to remain largely consistent across a person’s lifespan and that can be used to predict at least some part of a person’s likely academic achievement, dating choices and even future parenting behavior. It has also been validated cross-culturally to some extent, Soto told me.

— Most Personality Quizzes Are Junk Science. I Found One That Isn’t.

"Neither [Iraq] nor while I was in the military did I actually hear anyone ask whether we should be doing some of the research we were doing. You know, some of it was a little scary -- I don't know that it was necessarily unethical -- but nobody ever asked the question." -General Robert H. Latiff

— Nobody's Ready for the Killer Robot

If you are a low-wage worker who cuts your expenses to the bone in order to sock away $500 a year, on which you earn 8%, you will still not go more than a year in retirement without starving to death.

— Oh Damn, 401(k)s Aren't Magic

Ever stood at an intersection and prodded at, leaned on, elbowed and otherwise palm-slapped the ever-living hell out of a crosswalk button and wondered to yourself if the thing actually does anything at all, really? Well – chances are, it doesn't.

— Placebo buttons do absolutely nothing, and they are everywhere

Meanwhile, Pete is convinced the Log Lady stole his truck. But wait! It wasn’t the Log Lady. It was Windom Earle, says Cooper. How does he know? Well, look at the map up there. Duh. Try and keep up, people.

— Revisiting ‘Twin Peaks’ Season 2 Finale: An Appointment at the End of the World

In an interview with radio host John Catsimatidis in New York, Cohen said that it was clear that President Trump — like former President Obama — did not want to approve a plan to provide the new arms to Ukraine, but decided to do so in an attempt to shirk allegations that he has acted as a "Putin puppet."

— Russia expert: US decision to supply arms to Ukraine a 'mistake'

Scopophilia or scoptophilia (from Greek σκοπέω skopeō, "look to, examine" and φιλία philia, "tendency toward"), is deriving pleasure from looking.

— Scopophilia

The fatal swatting case started Thursday when a man called the 911 center in Wichita, Kansas, and said he'd shot his father and was holding his mother, sister and brother hostage inside a house, authorities said.

— Swatting case poses legal challenges for police, prosecutors

The IRS lets you claim investment-related losses on your tax return as long as you sell the money-losing investment at some point during the year. You can then use the resulting capital losses to offset any capital gains on other investments that you might have.

— Tax Loss Harvesting: Don't Wait Until Year-End to Save Thousands

Tesla was on the cover of Time magazine in 1931 but died a poor man in 1943 after years devoted to projects that did not receive adequate financing. Yet his most significant inventions resonate today.

— Tesla the Car Is a Household Name. Long Ago, So Was Nikola Tesla.

More than a century ago, in New York City, Paul Strand began creating some of the earliest candid street photography. His goal was to capture people as they act in public, unaware of the observing eye.

— Theater of the Streets, Shot On Google Glass

In 2016, psychologist Danielle Gunraj tested how people perceived one-sentence text messages that used a period at the end of the sentence. Participants thought these text messages were more insincere than those that didn’t have a period. But when the researchers then tested the same messages in handwritten notes, they found that the use of a period didn’t influence how the messages were perceived.

— There’s a reason using a period in a text message makes you sound angry

My beach wedding in Diani, Kenya, was supposed to begin at 4 p.m. It started two hours later. The reason: The photographer was late. He shrugged it off, blaming traffic. "I am here now and that is what matters," he said. Grrr, "Kenyan time."

That is what they call it in my homeland.

— Under 'Kenyan Time,' You're Expected To Arrive ... Oh, Whenever

The year 2017 was really successful for Vue.js. Even though the goals are partly fulfilled, I think that most of the goals are somehow achieved or getting more traction. Vue.js is spreading and a lot more companies are using it now, including: Behance, Adobe, Chess.com, GitLab, HERE Technologies, Car2Go, IBM, and many chinese companies like alibaba, ele.me

— Vue.js review of 2017

In 2007, Warren Buffett entered a million-dollar bet with the fund manager Protégé Partners that the S&P 500 would beat a basket of hedge funds over the next decade.

— Warren Buffett has won his $1 million bet against the hedge fund industry

Earlier today, Twitter published a five paragraph answer to the loudly, repeatedly-shouted question: “Why won’t you ban Donald Trump, a man who has actively used your platform to threaten nuclear annihilation against an entire country?”

— What Twitter's New Statement About Not Banning Trump Really Means

In South Carolina, for example, people hoping to buy a Siberian tiger to celebrate the new year are likely to be disappointed: As of Jan. 1, it is illegal in the state for typical residents — that is, if you're not a zoo — to buy or own exotic animals for pets.

— What's New In 2018? Here's A Brief Tour Of State Laws Now In Effect

Why people believe what they believe is a wide topic that many psychology professors investigate. And while Peterson’s lectures certainly do tend to focus on the idea of “pushing back,” the contents of them raise questions about whether the bad ideologies are the ones he’s rejecting or the ones he espouses.

— Why Is Monsanto Inviting This Alt-Right Hero to a Fireside Chat on Farming?

The danger is that such detailed, sensationalized coverage of suicide can prompt copycat behavior — a phenomenon called suicide contagion. “Suicide contagion is real, which is why I’m concerned about it.”

— YouTuber Logan Paul's video of a dead body put his own audience at risk

Then there’s the matter of how Uber treats its drivers. You know it’s not great, but it’s not as though competing services are much better. Before Uber, taxi companies were notoriously terrible employers. Lyft, like Uber, hires its drivers as independent contractors—they don’t get benefits or minimum-wage protection—and has cut their pay to make fares cheaper for riders.

— Are you a bad person if you still take Uber?

Forecasters are warning people to be wary of hypothermia and frostbite from the arctic blast that’s gripping a large swath from the Midwest to the Northeast.

— http://metro.co.uk/2017/12/30/niagara-falls-freezes-sharks-freezing-death-atlantic-7192401/?ito=cbshare

[liesandarbor]

you mentioned you had a theory about bloodraven a while ago in one of your posts, but I can't find it anywhere on here. is there a link

Ah!!! I actually haven’t posted it up on here, but let me get you a copypaste.

Intro

Before I delve too deep into this, this little diddy relies on the very popular (and …pretty much canon) theory that in The Mystery Knight, Maynard Plumm, a hedge knight camped out by Whitewalls, was actually Bloodraven, disguised using a glamour. There are many textual references to infer from but here are the ones that sold me:

This close, there was something queer about the cast of Ser Maynard's features. The longer Dunk looked, the less he seemed to see. – The Mystery Knight

Dunk whirled. Through the rain, all he could make out was a hooded shape and a single pale white eye. It was only when the man came forward that the shadowed face beneath the cowl took on the familiar features of Ser Maynard Plumm, the pale eye no more than the moonstone brooch that pinned his cloak at the shoulder. . – The Mystery Knight

Where else do we see a glamour in ASOIAF? Let’s turn the page forward to ADWD for a minute.

The wildling wore a sleeveless jerkin of boiled leather dotted with bronze studs beneath a worn cloak mottled in shades of green and brown. No bones. He was cloaked in shadows too, in wisps of ragged grey mist, half-seen, sliding across his face and form with every step he took. Ugly things. As ugly as his bones. A widow's peak, close-set dark eyes, pinched cheeks, a mustache wriggling like a worm above a mouthful of broken brown teeth. – ADWD, Melisandre I

Jon Snow turned to Melisandre. "What sorcery is this?" "Call it what you will. Glamor, seeming, illusion. R'hllor is Lord of Light, Jon Snow, and it is given to his servants to weave with it, as others weave with thread." – ADWD, Melisandre I

Interesting. So on both sides we have a gemstone (Plumm’s moonstone, Mel’s ruby), a lack of ‘focus’ upon looking at the person, and cloaked in shadows. But wait! I’ve noticed something that I’ve bolded above, so let’s revisit that.

He was cloaked in shadows too, in wisps of ragged grey mist

I see a grey mist risin!’

Wisps of ragged grey mist. Grey mist is a very specific mist, very specific indeed. And, it turns out, grey mist is utilized in the text pretty often, and especially when a certain great bastard of Westeros is involved.

How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have? the riddle ran. A thousand eyes, and one. Some claimed the King's Hand was a student of the dark arts who could change his face, put on the likeness of a one-eyed dog, even turn into a mist. Packs of gaunt gray wolves hunted down his foes, men said, and carrion crows spied for him and whispered secrets in his ear. Most of the tales were only tales, Dunk did not doubt, but no one could doubt that Bloodraven had informers everywhere. – The Mystery Knight

In fact, in the Mystery Knight, right before Bloodraven descends onto Whitewalls, we are given another reference to grey mist.

Beyond the field, grey mist was rising, sending ghostly fingers up the pale stone walls to grasp the castle battlements. Many of the wedding guests had vanished during the intervening hours, but those who remained climbed the viewing stand again and settled themselves on planks of rain-soaked pine. Amongst them stood Ser Gormon Peake, surrounded by a knot of lesser lords and household knights. – The Mystery Knight

So, with the knowledge we have that Bloodraven can turn into mist; specifically, a grey mist, we can assume that any time grey mist is mentioned in text (regular mist is not quite as specific, though I wouldn’t doubt some of the mentions involve him, grey or not), Bloodraven is either interfering or watching this moment.

Sweet Dreams are Made of These

The first mentions of Grey Mist that we as readers receive in the main ASOIAF series come from no other than Bran chapters in A Game of Thrones.

The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there. Even in dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. You always woke up in the instant before you hit the ground. And if you don't? the voice asked. The ground was closer now, still far far away, a thousand miles away, but closer than it had been. It was cold here in the darkness. There was no sun, no stars, only the ground below coming up to smash him, and the grey mists, and the whispering voice. He wanted to cry. – Bran III, AGOT

Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over bones. Had he always been so thin? He tried to remember. A face swam up at him out of the grey mist, shining with light, golden. "The things I do for love," it said. – Bran III, AGOT

Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he plunged toward the earth below. "What are you doing to me?" he asked the crow, tearful. – Bran III, AGOT

The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the grey mists shuddered and swirled around him and ripped away like a veil, and he saw that the crow was really a woman, a serving woman with long black hair, and he knew her from somewhere, from Winterfell, yes, that was it, he remembered her now, and then he realized that he was in Winterfell, in a bed high in some chilly tower room, and the black-haired woman dropped a basin of water to shatter on the floor and ran down the steps, shouting, "He's awake, he's awake, he's awake." – Bran III, AGOT

But Bran isn’t the only Westerosi visited by Bloodraven via dream, and not the only one watched, either. In fact, after doing a little counting, there are 23 instances of grey mists in POV chapters in ASOIAF that can be assumed to have Bloodraven meddling in them. 13 of these chapters are Stark chapters, interestingly enough. While not every moment shrouded in grey mist is a pivotal point in the story, they are definitely some interesting moments to explore.

The king's pavilion was close by the water, and the morning mists off the river had wreathed it in wisps of grey. It was all of golden silk, the largest and grandest structure in the camp. Outside the entrance, Robert's warhammer was displayed beside an immense iron shield blazoned with the crowned stag of House Baratheon. – Eddard VII

While nothing of extreme importance on the surface, I find it interesting that Bloodraven would possibly be watching Ned. Perhaps the mention of Robert’s Warhammer in the same paragraph is what he was looking for in this moment. But that isn’t the only time BR watches Ned. Chapters later, we get something that fits in with the dream motif above.

He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed of blood. In the dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life. Proud Martyn Cassel, Jory's father; faithful Theo Wull; Ethan Glover, who had been Brandon's squire; Ser Mark Ryswell, soft of speech and gentle of heart; the crannogman, Howland Reed; Lord Dustin on his great red stallion. Ned had known their faces as well as he knew his own once, but the years leech at a man's memories, even those he has vowed never to forget. In the dream they were only shadows, grey wraiths on horses made of mist. – Eddard X

Ah, Ned’s fever dream of the Tower of Joy. An ASOIAF Classic. Just when you thought you couldn’t possibly pull any more information from the Tower of Joy, there’s a bit more to it. Many theorize and believe, as both Show and Book have pointed to, that Brynden Rivers can hop into dreams, moments in time, etc., and this is an instance of it. Grey wraiths of horses made of mist- is this Bloodraven, implanting the Tower of Joy dream into Ned’s memory?

The mists of evening had begun to rise, sending grey fingers up the walls of the buildings that lined the old canal. "He promised he'd be back," Sam said. "You heard him too." – Samwell III, AFFC

We’ve heard almost this exact line- if you head towards the beginning, you’ll blink if you miss it- in the Mystery Knight. (grey mist was rising, sending ghostly fingers up the pale stone walls to grasp the castlebattlements) Bloodraven was almost certainly watching Samwell after he and Gilly meet Coldhands- that much is evident.

But we don’t only see the grey mists in our beloved Starklings & Friends POVs. We even see grey mist in King’s Landing, in none other than a dream from the Queen Regent Herself.

"The only breath we smell is yours," said Cersei. There was a jar of some thick potion by her elbow, sitting on a table. She snatched it up and threw it into the old woman's eyes. In life the crone had screamed at them in some queer foreign tongue, and cursed them as they fled her tent. But in the dream her face dissolved, melting away into ribbons of grey mist until all that remained were two squinting yellow eyes, the eyes of death. –Cersei VIII, AFFC

W o a h. Bloodraven’s in your dreams, messing with your head, Cersei, that’s for sure. A thousand eyes, and one.

And now we turn to Westeros’ favorite little squid-traitor. Our crickcracklykraken. Theon Greyjoy.

"Then do the deed yourself, Your Grace." The chill in Asha's voice made Theon shiver in his chains. "Take him out across the lake to the islet where the weirwood grows, and strike his head off with that sorcerous sword you bear. That is how Eddard Stark would have done it. Theon slew Lord Eddard's sons. Give him to Lord Eddard's gods. The old gods of the north. Give him to the tree." And suddenly there came a wild thumping, as the maester's ravens hopped and flapped inside their cages, their black feathers flying as they beat against the bars with loud and raucous caws. "The tree," one squawked, "the tree, the tree," whilst the second screamed only, "Theon, Theon, Theon." –Theon, TWOW Sample Chapter

Many theorize that Bloodraven and Bran are watching Theon through the godswood in Winterfell, and lo and behold, we what do we find in ADWD The Prince of Winterfell? More of that dang grey mist. In fact, 6 mentions of Grey Mist in Theon's chapters, almost half as many as Stark POVs in general.

He had never seen the godswood like this, though—grey and ghostly, filled with warm mists and floating lights and whispered voices that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Beneath the trees, the hot springs steamed. Warm vapors rose from the earth, shrouding the trees in their moist breath, creeping up the walls to draw grey curtains across the watching windows. –The Prince of Winterfell, ADWD

yo! In summary!

What can we grasp from these passages and the visual of grey mist? Pretty much any time you see grey mist in the story, it’s referencing Bloodraven, or the magic he utilizes to get around people’s dreams, memories, and present moments. We don’t know the cause, we don’t know if it’s ‘traces’ of the magic, we don’t know WE DON’T KNOW BUT

Grey Mist = Bloodraven 

And an added bonus, something I found humorous while reading up for this: When Ben Plumm says he has a drop of the dragon blood in himself, he doesn’t know just how much dragon blood he had in him. In fact, he had a whole dragon glamoured in his bloodline for a hot minute!

"I have me a drop of the dragon blood myself, you know."

[lanadelreyfiles-blog]

Dreams Unwind: Lana Del Rey in conversation with Stevie Nicks Lana Del Rey muses with collaborator and self-proclaimed 'witchy sister' Stevie Nicks about the forces that shaped her anthemic new album—and her very own lust for life. Pre-order V108 here. "It's just time," whispers Lana Del Rey on her end of the telephone. "Time has brought me here." When Del Rey returned with 'Love' this year—the first song from her fifth album, 'Lust For Life', out July 21—a tonal shift was immediately apparent to anyone familiar with the singer’s notoriously dark discography. Beginning with her first record, 'Born To Die', Del Rey’s previous four releases have been rife with references to ill-fated romance, tragedy, and betrayal. This song, however, resonated with a new note: hope. In the accompanying video, Del Rey serenades a generation of kids who are quite literally reaching for the stars, cooing lines like, “The world is yours and you can’t refuse it” and “Don’t worry baby” (the latter being a nod to the 1964 Beach Boys song) as she beams from ear to ear. Time itself is an ever-present theme in her work, though how she interacts with it has changed on her new album. With 'Lust For Life', she revisits sounds and visuals from her early work with a mature perspective while bridging the past and the present both personally and politically. “Coachella—Woodstock in My Mind,” a song that draws parallels between two musical gatherings set against times of conflict, is a perfect example of this. It is only fitting, then, that the inquirer on the other end of the phone line is Stevie Nicks, fairy godmother to Del Rey’s genre of enchantingly romantic pop rock, who was on her way to becoming the voice of her own generation when Woodstock took place nearly five decades ago. As it turns out, time—and a series of seemingly unrelated events throughout the courses of their lives—is also what brought these two kindred spirits together.

STEVIE NICKS: Helloooo? Is this you? LANA DEL REY: It's me! SN: How are you from your little perch in the 'H' of the Hollywood sign? LDR: [laughs] Oh, I'm good. I'm sitting comfortably up here. It's a clear evening, so I can see what everyone is getting up to down in the City of Angels. Thank you for asking. SN: I was wondering, do you think that maybe I could rent the 'W'? LDR: You know it is so crazy that you're asking me that because I was thinking you would actually love to move into the 'O'. SN: Well, the reason I picked the 'W' is so that I could have an A-frame place, with a big, high ceiling. So, now I've decided that if I'm going to live in the 'W', then we're going to be like witchy sisters, so I have taken on a new name: Marina Del Rey. But wait, it gets better! You know the little Yorkie we brought to the studio? Her name is Mana. She's gonna be our witchy Yorkie and her name is gonna be Mana Del Rey. LDR: [laughs] Oh my God. It wouldn't be right if we didn't have a little witchy guard dog. SN: So, let us start here on your new record. But let us first touch on the fact that your first record was called 'Born To Die'. Now this [record] is 'Lust For Life'. In between that, what is it that affected you enough to go from 'Born To Die' to 'Lust For Life'? Because 'Born To Die' is pretty dark and 'Lust For Life' is pretty light. If you have a lust for life, that's a pretty strong statement. LDR: Yeah, they're complete opposites, and it's funny because when I chose the title, I didn't think about it right away. It was the title of the first song I wrote for this record. But there are so many things that have gotten me to the point that I'm at now. One of them is just time. And because I do write everything myself, I just wanted to chronicle how I was feeling honestly, in the moment, for each record. So, I had a lot of stories that I wanted to tell that I hadn't told yet up until this point. And now, through the last four records, I got out a lot of those stories and a lot of those feelings, and for the first time, I've caught myself up to real time. And now, I'm at this place where I feel like I'm really present, and when I'm reading the news, I'm really reading it, whereas before I was a little bit in my own head. So, there's definitely been a feeling of freedom and lightness being in the present moment. That brings on that lust for life feeling, when you don't have all of those feelings about the past weighing you down. I remember an interview that you did once where you said, "Around every corner there's an adventure waiting to happen," and I'm kind of in that zone right now. I just feel like whatever each day brings me is something that I need and I want. It's just time. Time has brought me here. SN: The way that we write is like we're writing a diary as our songs go. If I listen to all the songs from 'Bella Donna', and then I listen to all the songs from 'Wild Heart', all the songs from 'Rock A Little', and then I get to 'The Other Side Of The Mirror'...I was just thinking about this one song called 'Doing the Best I Can (Escape from Berlin).' It goes [begins to sing] "It's all right, baby, I'm doing the best that I can." I named it that because of this idea of escape. Something horrible was going on in Berlin, and I was also finding my way. I was in a drug-filled fog at that point, fighting for survival. I look back on it and go, You were really trying to survive in 1989. And then I actually went to rehab in 1994 to get off that horrible tranquilizer, Klonopin—from there, I start watching my life come back around, starting with a record I did called 'Sweet Angel', which was about the aftermath of rehab and coming back into the real world. And from then on, my path started to go up. And if I had not written all those songs, even reading all my journals from that time, they wouldn't have really told the story, but the songs really told me the story of how bad that whole thing was. And I could watch, through the songs, my life start to come back to me. I think that we put out this running commentary on not just what's going on in our lives, but what's going on in the world at the same time. It's a parallel thing. So, I see you doing the same things I did. LDR: It's a delicate balance because you're chronicling your own story and then you're also reflecting back what you see. It can take work not to let your world get too small, so that you're still in both worlds. You've got your world with your own inner dialogue and your own narrative and the way that you write, and then there's everything else. It's funny, it's been a minute since I've gone through my records, but I did do it recently and I hear so much of my own self and my own stories, but I don't  get as much of the outside world as I thought [I would]. This record is really different. When there were the women's marches, I was writing about that. There was enough space in my mind to really absorb everything. I think I was very much in the mix of culture in California over the past five years, but it feels good to feel more connected to a wider world. SN: I think we're all much more connected with what's going on right now. LDR: That's true. Regardless of where someone is at personally, the current landscape jolts you into being present, if you're not crazy. If you're a normal person, you're suddenly aware and watching everything. SN: And you're getting up every day and waiting to find out what new thing has happened. I have never been that way before, ever, until the last two and a half years. LDR: It's a very different time for everybody. Because there is something new every day that you read and you're like, Oh my God, is that real? SN: My mom used to always say to me, "You're on a mission here. People out there who are hurting or are sad or have something horrible going on in their lives, when they walk into your house of love or your house of music, you are going to take them on your own little adventure that's going to pull them out of their life for a minute. And hopefully, when they leave you, they're going to take a little bit of you with them and they're going to feel better the next day." LDR: I love that. SN: I think as songwriters right now, there's a lot of songs I'd like to write that wouldn't be very nice songs, but I'm not going to do it because we're not going to help anybody by doing that. Then we're just going to be in with the masses and we're not going to be above the fray. Write your songs, but remember that we're the ones that are here to lighten, to lighten life, to light the lanterns and the little fairy lights, and try to keep people going. We have to have hope. We have to believe that this will all end up okay and that we'll all end up okay. Because we don't do it, then who the hell is gonna do it? LDR: You're right, there's no other way. As far as I'm concerned, there's really not another way to sensibly think about it. I was never a huge self-editor—I wrote songs and then I felt like, Okay, well that's that. And now, I've found in the last two years that I've really been editing some of the language of some of the songs in light of the political landscape, [because] I don't want to be a part of anything that adds to that negativity. SN: And your record, do you have favorite songs? Do you have ones that have your biggest messages or ones that you think are the most helpful to all the people that love your music? All the old women like me and the little girls who are listening? LDR: I knew that the first song I wanted to put out was 'Love' because of everything you and I have been talking about so far. It's just the age-old thing: love is all there is. And I really was feeling that way. I made a lot of records for myself, chronicling my own stories, and I've played so many shows now, I've seen all the same kind of kids and grown-ups coming to the shows, and I really wanted to make a record for them. And then, I've been friends with Abel [Tesfaye] from The Weeknd for a long time, and I knew I wanted to put the title track, 'Lust For Life', out second because we have so many mutual fans and I knew they would love it. And then 'Coachella—Woodstock in My Mind' I wrote on my way home from Coachella when things were getting hostile between North Korea and U.S., and all those failed missile launches, which happened the day after the first night of the festival. I feel lucky to be able to speak my mind through music right in the present moment. I think one of my favorite tracks on the record is called 'Yosemite.' The chorus is [begins to sing] "We did it for me, we did it for free, I did it for you, you did it for me, we did it for the right reasons." SN: I love it. LDR: And that's been the theme of my record: being in touch with what it takes to do things for the right reasons. All the actions that you need to take beyond just all the words and all the decisions I knew I wanted to make this year. And that song is special because it's really a song about surrounding yourself with people who put their art and love first, who did it for the right reasons, not just the money. And I have a couple of songs like 'God Bless America,' and another song called 'When the World Was At War We Just Kept Dancing,' which is about what we've been talking about: trying to stay positive and just believing that things are going to be okay. And if it feels like they're not going to be okay, we'll try to make them okay individually and then together. SN: I have not heard all these songs. LDR: I want to play them for you the next time I see you! And I'm so proud of the song that we did, 'Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems.' I just love your performance on it. The people reading probably don't know that you know my longtime producer Rick Nowels from high school, basically. SN: I've known your producer since he was 13 years old. LDR: He loves you so much, you know. SN: I do. It's because we've been through so much together. My friend Robin [Anderson] died of leukemia and her brother got this terrible brain tumor, so Rick, Lindsey [Buckingham], and I are the survivors of those five people. And then, Rick went on to be this totally famous producer and songwriter. He started with me in 1985 on 'Rock A Little,' when Jimmy Iovine dumped me and the record into Rick's lap and said "Goodbye, good luck." LDR: Which is so full circle because he ended up being the head of Interscope, which I'm signed to. There are so many full circle moments. SN: I think all of these little things, in a really fairy tale way, lead me to you and lead you to me in a strange witchy way. It's set up, like all of these things that happened with my friend Robin, and her brother, and Rick, and everyone moving down here, me being Jimmy Iovine's girlfriend from 1980 to 1984, then him giving the record and me to Rick, basically saying "Here, take them both and go." All of this led to me meeting you and singing on your record. The butterfly's wings flap in Africa and something is achieved by that butterfly across the world. That's this story started, I think. LDR: I don't know if you said it in the same interview I mentioned earlier, but at some point you said that sometimes you wonder, Does anyone even notice? Sometimes you wonder when you put something out, Does anyone even notice? But it all matters. Every little thing that each person does in their individual life, even when it feels like it's not a big decisions or not a big move, matters. Just being open to beautiful things happening creates them. SN: That sentence was about how sometimes over the last 10 years I would say, "Does anybody really notice that I'm a really good singer now? How much better my voice is than it was 20 years ago?" You have a beautiful voice and I've already learned things to add to how I sing from you. Working on your song has changed me forever because I've learned from you. We are witchy sisters and that's it. That's where 'Beautiful People, Beautiful Problems' comes from, because we are trying to ride above all the problems and have hope in everything else, but it's still a world filled with problems no matter how hard we try to change it. LDR: That's what the song is about. It was such a special moment. It just goes back to my favorite song on the record, 'Yosemite,' and doing it for the right reasons. Here we were in the studio, and when Rick and I were talking about who the other singers should be on the record, you were the only person we could both think of because of your intention and [how] that always comes through in all the music. That really closed the door on the record in the right way. It was the perfect last moment, so thank you for that. SN: Well, I am so happy that the butterfly wings flapped at the perfect time and it made it happen because I think that, in our lives to come, we'll be able to work on many more songs together, because you know I don't just want to sing with anybody. I just want to sing with the people that I think can make me better and make something that's better than both of us singing by ourselves. That's the only reason for solo artists to sing together. LDR: Amen to that. SN: You know, I think I told you this, but as I travel around the country [touring], I do get to sit down in between [shows] with my friends and hold their hands and laugh about the past, and my one friend that I wrote my first song about—the 'I've Loved and I've Lost' song I told you about—his name is Steve. I always dedicate the song to him because I was so crazy about him when I was 15 and a half; my parents gave me this guitar and I wrote this little song about him. And I can honestly say that I was as in love with him as I have ever been in love with anybody. LDR: That's such a beautiful thing to say. I feel the same way. Obviously when you're at different stages in your life, things hit you harder, or just in different ways, but the way I love has always been the same. I don't know if that's just wholeheartedly or maybe you're only attracted to a certain kind of person, so when that type of person comes around, you really feel it, but when these 15- and 16-year-olds are going through heart break, I really feel for them, because it's real. SN: It's totally real. And what I was going to say to is that it's funny, because this guy knows it, and I know it, and his wife knows it, and it's fine because it doesn't mean anything except that real love never dies. LDR: It's making me smile hearing you say that. Because that's what makes life beautiful. Just having that open heart and letting it be exciting in the moment, just having that energy between two people. SN: Every time I see this guy he goes "You need to come and visit us because we don't have a lot of time. We're both in our 60s, and time doesn't go on forever." So I'm living in the moment. I just jump on a plane and I go and do this, and I go and do this, and I come back and I do this. And I'm like, Why don't I get a day off? But the thing is, if you stop, you stop. LDR: I know. It's such a big decision when you decide to become an artist because once you're in it, you're in it. And then there is a certain level of momentum that you want to keep. SN: It's a very big commitment. You know, Lana, my dad used to always say about me, "She's never going to get married." And I'd look at him—I was in my 30s—and I'd go like, "Why would you say that, Dad?" And he'd go, "What you do is too important to you. And you are never going to be the kind of girl to have somebody say 'You can't,' or 'You're not going to go back on tour, are you?'" LDR: Do you think that the fact that he said that switched something in you and made you think, I'm not going to get married? SN: I think that my dad knew me really well. And for me as an artist, I was always going to want to follow my muse. And that muse was writing songs and going on tour. And so for me,  I tended to say, "Well, I'm not going to be able to [get married]. I will have love affairs and I'll meet many great men in my life, but I probably won't commit to a relationship." Look at me. I'm 68 years old and I just finished 48 shows—two-and-a-half-hour shows—which were preceded by 220 three-hour Fleetwood Mac shows. What kind of relationship could somebody like me have? LDR: You know what, though? There's billions of people in the world, but there are a handful of people that have that special, strong relationship with their own muse. For some people, it's the biggest part of their life and the biggest relationship: following that energy, that muse, and the serendipitous twists and turns of life. The amazing thing, too—and not just with romantic relationships—is when you find other people who know exactly what that life looks like, you know? That it's just not going to be straight and narrow. It's such a blessing when you run into people who don't color within the lines, that do the same things you do. SN: I want to add, having said all that, I would never believe that it is not possible that coming right around the corner is the man of my dreams, at 68 years old. It's possible, and I accept the possibility of that completely. LDR: A hundred percent. And you know, life is short, but life is long, too. And there are so many things for everybody that have yet to come. SN: Because after everything we've talked about, if we can honestly say that love never dies, if my heart can still flutter when I see my boyfriend from when I was 15 and a half, I cannot honestly say that there is no chance for real love in my life somewhere in the next 15 or 20 years. Because I believe that there's always that possibility. I never want people to think that I'm some cold woman who thinks that love may have existed all those years ago when I was younger, but doesn't exist in my dreams now, because it does exist in my dreams now. But I'm also really good not having it because I'm not lonely, I'm not bored. I have so much to do that I can hardly get three hours of sleep. LDR: You have a beautiful relationship with yourself. SN: I do. And I never get tired of it. I know people who are bored stiff, and that'll never be me. I could never be bored in this world. Because of what we do, whether you have a relationship or don't have a relationship, you balance it. I have to say that there have a been a few men in my life that have liked what I do, and have liked my friends, and have liked the fact that I like to stay up late and sit at the piano and light the candles, and were happy to lay on the couch with a book while I was doing that. They were few, but they were there, they did exist. And sometimes, I thought that the great loves of your life are the ones that just make you crazy, and say they're coming to your house and don't show up, and the phone doesn't ring, and you just want to kill yourself. And then there are the ones who actually just dig what you do and who you are, and you put them in the second category of great loves. And then the nutcases of your life are the ones that were in the first category of your great loves, but they're the ones you could never have lived with! LDR: Absolutely. There are two different types of lovers. There are the crazy ones and then there are the ones who are really there. SN: Exactly. And I still know all of my loves—all of them. I'm like Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger with all the vampire boyfriends. LDR: [laughs] I can't picture you getting into a relationship with someone who, on some level, doesn't have an extremely strong connection to you or a strong commonality that wouldn't span decades or eras. I'm still dear friends with my first boyfriend, and we didn't have it all in the moment, but he was the world's nicest guy and he's still in my life. And that's been the same with a lot of my boyfriends. I feel like, for me, it wouldn't make sense to get involved with someone who I didn't think could be either some type of really close confidant or someone who just really got me on some level. SN: I think you'll find, as years go by, that some of those men will matter to your more down the line, because they're the ones who really seem to know you. So, it's good. Lana Del Rey, I think we've filled up their entire magazine by now. LDR: You're amazing and I can't wait to see you. Maybe it'll be when you move into the 'W'. SN: That's definitely going to happen soon, like next week. LDR: That's the dream. SN: That is our dream and we make dreams come true, so it's going to happen. I can't wait to see you, too. I hope when people read this interview they know that kindred spirits find each other along the way and that love never dies.

[obscureations]

so i actually started my konmari cleaning a while ago, but never got around to posting about it until now. 

the first step in her method is to clear clothing, by gathering every piece of clothing owned in one place and sorting through them, only keeping what sparks joy. relatively speaking, while my closet can be messy, i did have a good order to it all this time and only was not proactive in putting stuff away. the photo is a bit messier than it normally was, because i had put some other stuff there to make room elsewhere. i have two closet areas, one is more for hanging clothing while the other is for putting away things in drawers. my hanging closet has always been pretty full of hangers, that it was hard to get clothing out of it.

i moved all my clothing into my brothers room (which has more floor space than mine). it was surprising to see exactly how much i owned though! i always imagined i didn’t have that much clothing, but when i really moved everything to one spot, the actual pile surprised me.

i first started with winter clothing, as the season i am in now is the end of summer beginning of fall time. winter is relatively long where i am, so i broke it down into long sleeves shirts, and then jackets/sweaters. it was relatively easy to sort through these piles, because i enjoy wearing long sleeves even in the summer, making it simple to choose what sparks joy. i based it off what i could remember myself wearing over and over, because i felt that if i tend to wear an article of clothing over, that was what made me happy to wear.

jackets and sweaters (and hoodies) was a little harder to go through. i have a huge collection of hoodies because that’s what i like wearing the most, but when i was really looking at the hoodies, i realized out of my collection there were only a few that i wore multiple times. however, it felt a bit hard to part with some of the others, because i prided myself in the colors i had chosen, so this is where thanking the clothing for the good they had done for me really came in handy. originally, i wasn’t sure if i could do that, but after trying to say it out loud, it did make me feel slightly better about discarding it.

moving onto short sleeve shirts, this went by fast as well, because of how i was able to distinguish what i wore more often than not. i used to have a lot of graphic tees that while i enjoy wearing, in the end hardly did anymore, so after thanking them, it was easier to part with them. goodbye to the witty slogans on my tees - as much as i enjoyed them, i wanted to make my wardrobe less “childish” to say the least? because even if i am still slightly childish at heart, i have also matured a lot, something i wanted to reflect in my clothing.

this meant keeping more of my dress shirts as well. i bought a bunch when i was in japan, thinking that if i start a more professional job i would need them. i… haven’t, but also discovered i like how i look wearing button downs.

moving on to pants, i only kept about three pairs of jeans, because while i never had that many to begin with, i only really wore the same two pairs over and over. i actually discarded some jeans that were slightly frayed and discolored around the knees as well, because i never liked how they looked worn out. and i finally got rid of old pants with holes in them that i had always told myself, “i’ll sew it together again!”

some article of clothing i had trouble deciding included; this pair of overalls i had, one dress shirt, and band t-shirt, some old school t-shirts. i ended up keeping the dress shirt, telling myself that if i don’t wear it after a while i will discard it later on. the band and school t-shirts, i put to the side to go through when i move onto sentimental items, and the overalls i tried wearing out to a concert and realize i like them a lot.

the final step was undergarments. i got rid of some older ones that were worn, and found out i had some unopened packages in my closet as well. after clearing out all my clothing, my pile had decreased dramatically.

i folded up the shirts using the konmari way of not stacking by putting them upright, and it was seriously a life changer! i used to fold my shirts with the japanese style of folding (not konmari’s), which had been quick and efficient but meant that they were stacked on top of each other. however, changing it to upright meant not only were they not stacked, but i could actually see all the clothing. since then, it’s been easier to pick clothing out in the morning for sure. i hung my winter jackets and dress shirts, but because i had more room in my drawers, i could put my hoodies in there instead, meaning that my hanging closet was not as jam packed as before. i also put my undergarments into small boxes i found, so that i wasn’t just throwing them all into the drawer at once. a slight deviation from the konmari method, but i divided my drawers into one for summer tees, one for winter tees and one for hoodies, because this had always worked well for me before. i like to re-wear clothing a few time before throwing it into the wash, but before i hung them so that they kept being pushed back more into my closet. i put an old hanger on the rack so that now, i could face them all sideways, allowing me an easier time to see what i have still hanging around to wear. i’m hoping i can find some sort of stick material for this purpose, but if not, i’ll cut up the hanger so it fits better in my closet.

after folding it all away, i took a slight break for dinner, and came back to tackle accessories, bags and shoes (which i decided to do separately).

i had always been a collector of snapbacks, so it didn’t surprise me as much how many i had, nor the fact that i didn’t wear about half of them anymore. those went into the discard pile pretty fast. i also had a lot of fashion gloves from when i was obsessed with them, but haven’t worn since… high school maybe. those also were discarded.

bags were pretty simple, since i kept only those that i used still. i had trouble with this one bag - it was very tattered and worn through, but it had always been special to me (i used it all throughout high school for almost everything). however, i ended up discarding it - after giving thanks to all the hard work it has done for me! i ended up hanging my snapbacks on this hanger i always had but never used, and put all my winter accessories into a drawer for when winter comes. my bags are still in a corner of my room, because i need to clean a bit more to figure out where they can go. 

i never realized how many shoes i had until now, which was the biggest shocker of the day. i found a few pairs that i hadn’t worn in quite a while, and a whole brand new pair of sneakers! i do think i will need to revisit this section again, because i was a bit tired after cleaning all day, and may have kept a few extra shoes that i didn’t really need to keep. i keep a few of the specialty shoes (ie, bowling shoes, and some dressier shoes for parties) upstairs in my room, while the rest are in our shoe closet downstairs. this also happened to be the first time where i forgot something when gathering it all together, meaning i bid farewell to a pair of boots hidden away in my room.

aftermath;

it did feel somewhat liberating to get rid of so much clothing. i was always pretty diligent in donating old clothing, and my closet was never so jam packed with clothing, but after going through it all at once, it made me realize i had so much that i never used. i had been slowly bringing them to h&m to donate for a 15% off coupon, which - while great to get the coupon each time - meant that the clothing still sticks around in my house, unfortunately meaning i rescued some pieces i had originally discarded. i also did what konmari said not too, which was downgrading some clothing to loungewear. however, i didn’t have time to go buy proper loungewear (not to mention, that goes against the whole reducing the amount of buy), and some clothing, while i didn’t find joy in wearing out, did work better as pajama clothing. i do hope to go buy a new pajama tee, hopefully my workplace has some on sale when i go in next. i also kept this old dress of mine, only for the sake of hopefully being able to sell it. if i don’t get around to it within the next few weeks however, i will be giving it to my cousin.

since cleaning my closet out, it has been much easier to find clothing, and also easier to put them away. before, it wasnt as easy to fold clothing and put it away, and they always ended up piled up somewhere. however, maybe because there is so much less now, i find it easier to put everything away, because they all have specific places for each clothing as well. i have only purchased a few new items of clothing since then, some new bralettes because i realized how worn my old ones were - no longer sparking joy but instead bringing me discomfort, a pair of dress pants to wear with my dress shirts - because i felt pairing the dress shirts with black jeans was a bit of distasteful to them, and a new t shirt from uniqlo which i was idly browsing the other day and found i really liked (it was only 3 dollars too!). I am hoping to find another dress pants and a new sleep shirt soon, but for now, i am pretty content with my closet and what i have.

next up; books!

[gwyvian]

Heart of the Forge

Chapter 6: Dappled in Shadow

Ryder breathed in deeply, feeling the comfortable weight of Akksul’s arms shift slightly on her, speculatively studying the warm glow of the heat lamp bathing the coolly glowing tiles as if to battle the inexorable bleakness that was coming from below. She had been watching that mesh of light and shadow since waking long minutes ago, finding comfort in being aware of her surroundings for the moment; she would have taken much more comfort in the unexpected closeness that had developed between her and Akksul, she wanted to, but he still slumbered and she was much too uncertain about what his feelings would be when he woke. It was easier to rest in his arms and just imagine that all was well for the moment, so long as she didn’t think about it too hard.

Still, there was only so much she could do to ignore him, pressed to her as he was, and watching the light-dappled chamber didn’t chase away the awareness that the life had drained from this place; blushingly she finally turned her head to stare into Akksul’s face. Anxiety warred with fascination as she imagined the possible scenarios: maybe he would blame her for seducing him, even if he had been the one to steal the first kiss, or perhaps he would declare it a mistake… or maybe he would accept it, and she would spend her final days despairing for what might have been; but then, she was convinced that there was no circumstance other than facing certain death alone and trapped that could have instigated intimacy between the former Roekaar leader and an alien such as herself in the first place. It was meant to be this way.

How do I feel about that? she wondered. Fretting gradually turned into a quiet study of how he breathed and the contours of his wan, angular face in the peaceful embrace of dreams, and she found herself wanting to be near him; not just for the comfort of another living soul, but because of some inexplicable magnetism that she had been struggling against without realizing it. Absently she touched her lips with her fingertips, remembering that first kiss. Sense had been very far from her mind in that moment, but it had felt like a desire fulfilled on his part, hungry and savoring, before it turned impatient for more; dared she hope that he had similar feelings for her?

Suddenly Akksul stirred and Ryder froze, at a loss as to how to act or what to expect. Slowly blinking away the sleep, he rolled onto his back and sat up, gradually gazing around as if to make sure that everything was where he had last seen it, until his eyes fell on her beside him an unreadable expression crossed his face before he hastily looked away again. As if his gaze had been the trigger to release her from a spellbind, Ryder also sat up, pulling her clothes closer to cover herself, but abruptly Akksul’s fingers were on her wrist, preventing her from doing more than hugging the wrinkled shirt to her chest. He didn’t seem to be able to decide what to say, though some of what he thought was plain enough on his face; there was, of course, anger and resignation, but there was also a surprising amount of uncertainty and interest. Ryder waited patiently for him to arrive at some sort of conclusion. If he wanted to delay the inevitable conversation, that was fine by her, particularly because she didn’t know what she wanted to hear.

“I… dreamed of you,” Akksul said finally.

“Just now?” Ryder asked carefully. His tone was so serious, she was afraid he would retreat into himself or lash out if he mistook her tone or expression for mockery, though she was convinced he could tell her heart was racing with apprehension. Her eyes flicked down to his hand gripping her gently; maybe he really could feel it, at that.

“Then, too,” he replied, looking away and frowning. “I do not understand it.”

“Understand what?” she asked hesitantly. “Your dream?”

“It is as though you have invaded my mind, since…” he cut off, taking a deep breath. “You are so different than anyone I have ever known,” he continued.

“You mean I’m an alien,” Ryder said slowly. Well, it wasn’t as though she didn’t expect this reaction. Still, she wished he would release her wrist so she could get dressed; she wasn’t sure she could face this conversation unclothed.

“You are,” Akksul nodded. “Yet, you are not like them.”

“The kett?” she asked, confused.

“Like any of your kind… or the kett,” he added judiciously.

Ryder frowned. “So I am an exception, but not the rule.” Akksul’s fingers finally released her, but she did not continue dressing; instead, she pulled her knees up and hugged them. Was he really trying to justify what had happened between them with such weak reasoning? She tried to smother feelings of disappointment and focus on the work at hand; if it was the last thing she did, she would change his mind about her and the Initiative.

“You are… exceptional,” Akksul said a little warily, eyeing her. Perhaps he realized that she wasn’t going to let him explain it all away. Still, it was nice to hear that.

“In what way?” she asked, holding his gaze with hers.

Akksul floundered. “You… saved my life.” Ryder waited. Finally, he grimaced and continued. “You want me to say that I’ve changed my mind about everything I’ve said about your people – but some scars just go too deep, Pathfinder. Do not expect me to sing the praises of the Initiative, it is as flawed now as when I first encountered it, splintered and festering. Your people are not a culture I can embrace.”

Ryder looked away. “Yet you would lay with me?” she asked, trying not to let too much bitterness suffuse her tone. “Were you just looking for a… distraction? Forget what is to come as much as forget who and what I am, and…”

Akksul turned her face back to him with gentle fingers. “No,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I say what I mean. You are… I do not have words,” his eyes studied her face, brushing her cheek, her lips, her neck, before he lifted a lock of her hair, letting it slowly slip through his fingers. “It feels just as I imagined it,” he murmured. “Only softer.”

Blushing, Ryder tried to tear her eyes away from him, gather her wits about her, but the part of her that yearned to hear those things wouldn’t let her do it. She just trembled from his touch and felt both tears and laughter swell in the back of her throat. Somehow she had managed to break through his anger, but it was all for naught; they had days, perhaps only hours, before the water would drown them and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She closed her eyes to keep the few tears that had escaped her control from falling, but apparently she couldn’t quite hide the misery she felt because a moment later Akksul’s fingers pulled away.

“I have upset you,” Akksul said, startlingly concerned, yet somehow managing to sound unapologetic.

“I don’t want to die,” Ryder said softly, opening her eyes and peering towards the entrance, shivering as she imagined icy water surging through to smother them.

He grimaced. “Wanting something has never mattered,” he observed.

“With some exceptions,” Ryder glanced at him, smiling faintly – he certainly had wanted something from her with that kiss – forcing her anguish down and burying it deep. As she saw it, she had a choice about how to face death; whimpering and wallowing was not how she wanted to go out.

Akksul shrugged a little uncomfortably. “You leave a lasting impression,” he said dryly, and somewhat cryptically, but this time Ryder decided not to pursue it, not when she had a chance to really make a difference in his mind.

“What happened to you?” she asked softly. “After the Forge, I mean.”

Akksul sighed, silent for a long moment before speaking. “I was lost. I wandered into a daar and found myself unwelcome among my own people… they knew my face, knew who I was. I returned to the Moshae for a little while, but she said I was still too angry.” His eyes, filled with memories, seemed hollow as he revisited those feelings, but traces of a snarl was indication enough that the Moshae had probably been right about that. “Those people… I protected those people and when I needed them, they turned their backs on me.”

“You also took many of them away…” Ryder said gently. “Some of them didn’t go home.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgement. “I did right by them. And their families. I made sure their families would want for nothing…”

“That is little comfort to someone who lost a daughter, a brother, a mother. I understand fighting the kett, but many Roekaar could have done so much more against them, instead they fought us,” she said. “They know that, the Initiative came to your planets in peace and everywhere we have gone we have helped as much as we can.” She didn’t want to break the spell of his confiding mood and she was afraid that any criticism from her would make his walls go up again, but it was her honest response and that was what she stood for; if he was to hate or love her, it should be for herself, not for what he wanted to hear.

“Would reasoning and parlay have kept your exiles from slaughtering angara?” he asked, hot-eyed.

“That is only really relevant on Kadara and Elaaden – not anywhere near your staging grounds,” she pointed out. “Nor are the exiles a part of the Initiative anymore. It is unfair to judge all of us by their actions when we have no control over them.”

Akksul grimaced. “Because your people lost control.”

“Much of our leadership was wiped out by the Scourge, nothing was as it was supposed to be. But I have been fixing things, restoring relations with our people – all the Roekaar have done is antagonized everyone.”

“The Roekaar gave their lives to protect our people,” Akksul said sharply.

“And now they are trying to kill the Moshae, and who knows who else,” Ryder retorted.

He looked away again, not replying. There really was nothing to say, nothing they could do. Finally she dressed; it was clear she wasn’t going to charm her way through this conversation and she wasn’t really sure if she could have gone through with that tactic anyway. Akksul watched her, an unreadable expression on her face, but she knew regret when she saw it; it took the edge off her irritation and she settled back down close to him, though she stopped herself short of taking his hand. There was still too much tension between them for that. She left her armor off, though, seeing no point to it other than symbolically walling herself off from him completely, but she didn’t want to do that.

“Do you have any regrets?” Ryder broke the silence. She was genuinely curious, but partly she asked because stillness was the last thing she wanted to listen to in this place, especially knowing what was coming.

“Regrets?” Akksul asked.

“Something you wish you had done differently… or done, or not done at all, for that matter,” she explained.

“Do humans spend a lot of time in the past?” he asked dryly.

“How else can we learn?”

Surprisingly, he nodded in agreement. Then again, he had been a scientist studying the distant past before his life as a Roekaar. “Regret… I regret that I failed the Moshae,” he said quietly.

“I gave her the best protection I could,” Ryder said consolingly, but he shook his head.

“I don’t mean that. She wanted me to change. To become who I was… I could not, cannot ever, there are too many memories… but I could have done better.”

Ryder was silent for a moment. “Do better now by honoring that wish,” she said finally.

Akksul studied her. “I regret not learning more about you.”

She smiled. “You still can.”

Wordlessly he turned her face towards him again with warm fingers and bent to kiss her, slipping his other arm around her waist to pull her closer. Ryder lost herself in his embrace, still stunned by the impossibility, the thrill of being close to him like this. A part of her was filled with sorrow that they had such short time to explore their feelings and that she couldn’t do more to heal the wounds he carried, but for the moment she was content to enjoy his affections and indulge his curiosity. There was no other word to describe his experimental kisses and touches, though he seemed to gain as much pleasure from the experience as she did. It did not last.

Intense, hot pain flashed through Ryder suddenly and she gasped, hands convulsively gripping Akksul’s shoulders, body arching away from the ground; the world seemed to darken and she was sure she was going to pass out, but instead she drifted somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, the agony keeping her anchored enough in reality to realize she was breathing hard and Akksul was keeping her from falling flat on her back to writhe on the stone. He seemed to be saying something, but when her eyes opened everything swam nauseatingly and she couldn’t reply.

Path— SAM’s voice! Ryder’s heart felt like it would burst from relief and she laughed, despite feeling her every nerve was on fire. For the first time in days she was certain that they would escape and she forced herself to focus on Akksul to share the wonderful news; her laughter died abruptly as her eyes met his, looking at her with a mix of curiosity and worry. Only then did she register just how close he held her; the pain was subsiding and her mind cleared a little more with each passing second, but with clarity came painful realization.

What would happen once they rejoined the world on the surface? Ryder thought about the incredibly fragile relationship that had blossomed between them; it had been despair and a need for comfort that had driven them together, but if she had learned anything over the days they had spent trapped down there, it was that she was more than a little drawn to Akksul in a way she couldn’t imagine with anyone else. Out there, though, part of him was still very much the leader of the Roekaar – and she was the human Pathfinder. Those two identities did not mix at all, no matter what cracks webbed through his convictions. Looking at him, though, she knew that the importance of stopping whatever they had unleashed outweighed anything else, but if that wasn’t enough, her responsibilities to the Initiative – not to mention saving the Moshae’s life – were far too important to ignore. Still, a selfish part of her wished she could face herself in the morning and stay here until they died, in his embrace as she was right then.

Extracting herself from his arms, she woozily sat up facing him. “SAM is back,” she said simply, and held her breath.

Akksul’s eyes lit up immediately and he scrambled to his feet. “Can he get us out?”

“I don’t know yet, the link isn’t strong enough yet I think, but I think he will be,” she said, forcing a smile.

“We can save the Moshae!” he said, laughing in relief.

“And stop whatever it was we unleashed,” Ryder added. She hoped he didn’t see the grief building inside, spilling over the walls she tried to surround it with; he didn’t seem to realize, or perhaps care, that once they returned to the outside world they would probably be enemies again.

“Come on, let’s try the well,” he reached a hand down to her to help her up.

A little startled at the gesture, Ryder took it and stood, carefully donning her remaining clothes and armor before retrieving her weapons and the few other possessions she wanted to take with her. Not that they had much to take; most everything in the camp had been tossed after them by Zivrel to keep them alive and would only encumber them once they were in Havarl’s jungle. Akksul also dressed hastily, but she noticed that he hovered near her several times when she hadn’t been sure her knees wouldn’t buckle under her and unceremoniously deposit her on the stone floor, but other than that, he gave no indication that he was aware of the effort it took for her to just move. Finally though, there was nothing left to do but make the attempt.

Ryder followed Akksul to the controls. “SAM?” she asked, looking inward.

Ryder, connection… SAM’s voice spoke in her mind again, but still fuzzy. Attempting… secure… well now.

“Good enough for me,” Ryder said, biting her lip determinedly. Her hand went over the controls and she tried once again to feel the tech and bring it to life.

A hum spread through the floor and a brilliant blue swelled in the depths of the controls, and abruptly the whole room seemed to shudder to life. It was still a painful effort to hold the flow and keep it going, but Ryder was certain beyond a doubt that SAM was much more connected to her than when they were first trapped. She laughed in delight, her hand shaking with the effort while with her free hand she hastily wiped away tears clinging to her lashes and she looked over her shoulder to Akksul. His expression mirrored her own, almost as if he was hesitant and eager all at once.

“I don’t know how long I can hold it, be ready to jump if we need to,” she said.

He stepped close to her and gave her a nod. “I’m ready,” he said simply.

Ryder released the flow and sent them surging upwards. Light seemed to spread through the columns as if racing them, pulsing with that same frosty blue light that she now recognized as the infection, whatever it was; abruptly the lights began to sputter and die, fading back down and to her dismay, Ryder felt the energy surrounding them shudder and vanish in pockets. Looking up she could see the lip of the chasm and just as the gravity well’s power disappeared completely, she made a desperate grasp and caught the edge, grunting in pain as the force of her bodyweight strained her arm, but she didn’t waste time contemplating it. Laboring to pull herself up, she barely registered Akksul doing the same next to her, putting all her attention into what she was doing until finally she rolled over the edge and away, breathing hard and staring into a clear sky, the night breeze chilling the sweat on her face.

“We made it,” she said finally.

“We don’t have time to waste,” Akksul replied, though he, too, sounded short of breath.

“Right,” Ryder rolled onto her side painfully. “SAM? Can you hear me?”

Yes, Pathfinder, SAM’s voice said, still crackling, but it was much clearer than down below.

“Good. Where is that blasted dampener?”

Your scanner will sh—

“Got it,” Ryder sighed, wincing. Every time SAM tried to speak her brain seemed to throb, but she ignored it as best she could and scanned the area. When she finally found the device Zivrel had used to cut her off from SAM, she unholstered her weapon and fired an entire round of ammo into it, until the thing began to smoke and spark, making guttural noises as its system fried.

“What is that?” Akksul asked, stepping up beside her to frown down at it. “I think you destroyed it.”

“That,” Ryder said grimly, “was what kept SAM cut off from me.”

Almost instantly the change was noticeable. The pain ebbed away, leaving behind only a vague ache to remind her of the pain and she could feel subtle changes in herself that she could best describe as just feeling right again. But one ache didn’t subside and it took her a moment to realize the tightness in her chest was emotion, not a physical expression of the rift between her and the AI. Her eyes met Akksul’s and she saw a change in the way he looked at her; there was uncertainty in his expression and she sensed that he had pulled back into a guarded place inside himself. Perhaps all he needed was space, but somehow she knew that wasn’t the case.

Pathfinder, SAM’s voice spoke in her mind and it was truly clear for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. There is significant trauma in your body from manipulating Remnant technology while the implant was disconnected, however there is no permanent damage. The link has been reestablished to its full extent. Ryder closed her eyes briefly, relieved to hear it, but she didn’t feel like she would be alright.

“We need to get to the port, I have to contact my people,” Ryder said briskly.

“Where did they take the Moshae?” Akksul demanded. “We need to find her immediately, Zivrel has had days to make an attempt on her life.”

“They took her to one of your daars here on Havarl,” Ryder replied, grimacing. Not ten minutes since they escaped and already he was sliding back to his cold, arrogant self. “I don’t know which, that was part of the plan in case something happened to me, so we have to talk to my people first.” That was one of the few precautions they had taken that she had thought prudent considering the dodgy quality of that message she now knew had come from Zivrel.

“Lead on, then,” Akksul said impatiently, but then he hesitated, locking eyes with her. “Please – I need to save her.”

Ryder opened her mouth to reply, but finally she just nodded and turned on her heels, only pausing long enough to get her bearings. A dream is a beautiful place, but like with every dream, eventually you must wake… she thought sadly, before ruthlessly shoving aside the mix of feelings churning in her heart and focusing hard on their mission.