#this whole year has also wrecked havoc on my plan to get better at emotional regulation improve my overall health

[sonicenvy]

I don’t want to think about tuesday, and everything after, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m really, really scared for the future y’all, and I don’t know what I’m going to if he wins re-election. I mean, what can I do? I’m broke as fuck (had an anxiety attack because the pharmacy denied my coupon for my meds and I had to pay full copay price today. Thanks american healthcare!) and have no real ability to go anywhere. I say this all the time, but I think I’ve been thinking it more and more lately as we get closer and closer to Tuesday: I hate, emphatically hate 2020. I mean, 2016-2019 also sucked for various reasons, but I think we can all agree that 2020 is the worst. The fact that Hillary lost in 2016 despite winning like, 3 MILLION more votes than Tr**p still infuriates the hell out of me. The fact that america is still incapable of voting for women for higher offices, no matter how qualified and experienced they are still infuriates me. Why, why, are we never, ever, ever, good enough? What is the point? I keep coming back to that a lot this year, which is not exactly the best place to be when I’m in a downer.

I want to be optimistic, because I think if I lose all hope, it will be much easier to slip back into being actively suicidal. I’m scared, and I’m sure a lot of y’all are too. I don’t really believe in any gods, but I don’t not believe in the possibility of gods I guess. I’m planning on lighting some candles and praying to the great wide somewhere that things get better, that biden/harris win, that Tr**p finally gets prosecuted for something. Maybe it’s a lot to ask of a seemingly unfeeling and indifferent universe, but I just want to believe that there is something, anything, good to look forward to. I cast my vote already last week, and I got the email from the BOE that they added it to the count pile, and I’ve been doing my best to make sure that all the people I know that can vote are voting, and are voting for biden/harris. All I can do now is wait I guess. I’m not all the way into melancholy or grief tonight, just, like, deeply maudlin thought amidst a drowsy haze.

tldr; Tuesday terrifies me, and I can’t stop thinking about it, even though it is making me anxious AF.

[nevertherose]

One Hundred Seconds to Midnight: Chapters 1-8

"All Roman wanted to do was take Logan on a Doctor Who LARP within the Imagination.

But with Thomas's Sides at their figurative breaking point after the disastrous wedding, the Imagination may just have a few ideas of her own..."

Hello, Tumblr fanders, it has been a while since I've poked around in here...mostly because, I've been writing another story!

Do you like Sanders Sides? Do you like Doctor Who? Do you like the idea of the Sides playing Doctor Who characters? If so, this story was written especially for you.

I found that the process of cross-posting Mahogany and Teakwood across three platforms, one chapter at a time, involved a lot of me spending too many hours squinting at html code. Not especially fun. This time around, I've only been posting on AO3 and Wattpad.

But I wanted it to exist here as well.

So! Today I'm going to post the first half (in two posts, because apparently Tumblr has a post size limit, who knew?), all the chapters that are up so far. Then, when the whole story is up on the other platforms, I'll post the other half.

Of course, you could head to either AO3 or Wattpad, if you want to read as the chapters go up.

But if you're like me, and like to read stories in nice, big, juicy chunks...here you go:

One Hundred Seconds to Midnight

Chapter 1- The Eleventh Hour

“Who are you?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m still cooking.”

Midnight.

The witching hour.

Or was that 3AM? Roman wondered. No, that’s the devil’s hour…damn it, Virgil! You had to get them all mixed up!

It was nearly midnight on the Imagination’s border.

Moonlight, pearlescent and brighter than it could ever shine in the real world, streamed feather-light through the tall windows on Roman’s side of the Dream Palace. It made patterns of light and shadow over the black marble floors, made nighttime caricatures of the white ivory statues that lined the corridor.

Roman’s heeled boots echoed in the silence; Logan’s dress shoes, in comparison, were whisper-quiet.

Logan himself had been uncharacteristically quiet since they entered this place, Roman noted, glancing back. Normally by now the logical Side would have asked a million questions, made a million plans, or be several bullet points into a lecture about palace construction or the history of measurement units or some other nerdy, obscure subject.

And Roman would either pretend to be annoyed, or would interject witty counterpoints to make Logan stop and bluster and…

But not tonight.

Maybe he’s nervous about being here, Roman told himself, smoothing a hand over his red sash. He’s only pointed out a million times that Logic and the Imagination are anathema to one another. Maybe I should have planned something else…

Or maybe he’s just annoyed at you for dragging him out of bed in the literal middle of the night, a more insidious inner voice whispered. When you know he likes to keep a consistent sleep schedule.

Roman pressed his lips together, lifted his chin…he might be a mere facet of a single personality, but he was also a Prince, and Princes do not listen to inner demons. However, he also looked back for the dozenth time to make sure Logan was actually still following.

That was the only reason Roman kept looking back.

It had nothing to do with the way the translucent moonlight caught the other Side’s dark, immaculately kept hair, or glinted off his glasses.

In the real world, of course, and whenever they manifested near their Source, the Sides all had precisely the same face and body as Thomas. But deep inside the mind, where physical appearance was an illusion anyway, the Sides exercised much more control.

Thomas remained their base template, but each Side also tended to portray himself with features that Thomas associated with their core function. Like Patton’s fluffy curls and childlike freckles, or Virgil’s anxious, ever-changing eyeshadow, or Remus’s abominable comic-book villain mustache.

Like Deceit’s…no, Janus’s very real scales.

Damn that snake. Why did I have think of him now?

Hopefully the lying bananaconda had better things to do than pop up and spoil things tonight. Because tonight, Roman was finally fulfilling a longtime promise to Logan, and taking him on a grand adventure.

The thought made his heart flutter in anticipation, and he looked back again.

Logan within the mindscape was leaner than Thomas, an inch or two taller, and his neatly trimmed hair and intelligent eyes were almost black in the low light. His face was narrow and intense, the nose more aquiline, and he had a habit of standing straighter than any of the rest of them.

(A habit which constantly showed off his trim waist and chest muscles…not that Roman paid any attention to that…)

Roman, by contrast, was a bit shorter, but his shoulders were broad and he was more muscular, due to all the questing and sword fighting he did here in the Imagination. He wore his hair in longish disarray that paired devastatingly with his clean, square jawline; hair that could be turned loose and wild on quests, or pulled neatly back as befitted royalty. His hands were strong; with long, artistic fingers, as skilled at wielding pens and paintbrushes as they were at wielding swords.

He liked to think he was handsome.

He was also painfully aware of how little it mattered when a certain someone…ehem…never seemed to notice.

“Roman, I confess to still being a bit lost as to the purpose of this journey,” Logan said at last, breaking the high-ceilinged silence. “You said you were taking us on a…’lark’? If so, why are we wandering around the Dream Palace?”

“LARP,” Roman corrected, flashing him a smile. “L-A-R-P. It stands for live action role play, Specs.”

Logan’s nose wrinkled at the words “role play”, and Roman’s stomach lurched. He hates it, he hates the very idea of it, you haven’t even started yet and you’ve already failed…

“Oh, don’t make the scrunchy face!” he added, a bit louder than necessary, and waved a hand. “At least wait until you’ve seen it.”

Roman had only been planning this for weeks.

“You know, when you promised to take me on one of your ‘adventures’,” Logan said, making finger quotes. “I was not expecting to be roused from bed in the middle of the night.”

“That’s because this isn’t your average adventure.” Roman gestured around them. “I constructed a special dreamscape to get all the details right, and we can only use the Dream Palace when Thomas is asleep.” He turned and dared a wink. “Only the best for you, my detail-oriented friend.”

Logan adjusted his glasses.

“Let it be known that I am indulging your antics right now because you have, on occasion, had some good ideas. You will, in turn, have to indulge my skepticism.”

“I have no idea what you just said, but I’m gonna pretend it was a compliment,” Roman said with a wink, which Logan rolled his eyes at.

“Ah ha, here we are!”

Roman stopped at a set of iconic blue doors, nearly vibrating in excitement as he waited for Logan to recognize them.

The nerd did not disappoint.

“Roman…” Logan murmured, stepping forward to touch the white PULL TO OPEN sign. “They look just like the doors to the TARDIS. The attention to detail is exquisite. But why?”

“Because I’m taking you on a Doctor Who LARP!” Roman exclaimed, flapping his hands. “All we have to do is step through, and the Imagination will make us Doctor and companion, and whisk us away through all of time and space!”

Logan’s face was a mixture of confusion and curiosity. “Again…why?”

“Because it will be fun?” Roman bit his lip, looking at his toes. “I…I know you aren’t into swords and sorcery and dragon-witches and whatnot. I wanted this to be something you might actually enjoy.”

Logan’s brow furrowed, as it often did when he tried to process something that didn’t fit neatly into his graphed, notated, logical worldview.

Usually, it was an emotion.

“But won’t us enacting such an intense scenario at this time of night negatively affect Thomas’s sleep?” Logan asked.

“That’s the genius of adventuring in the Dream Palace,” Roman explained. “You can do hyperreal, immersive stuff, and if Thomas does happen to remember anything, he’ll just think he had a weird dream. The worst that could happen is he might post about it on Twitter.”

“Hmm. I can see you’ve thought this through. I am…flattered that you went to all the trouble,” Logan said in a quiet voice.

Roman had to bite back an ecstatic giggle.

Not…not because of the way his nerves skittered below his skin when his gaze caught Logan’s black eyes and soft expression. No, Roman was merely…excited! That someone like Logan appreciated his hard work!

It wasn’t like he was trying to impress anyone, like some middle school boy with, you know, a crush or whatever. For the last, well…two years.

…and then some.

Ugh. There was little point in denying his feelings; he’d only accidentally summon Janus and his oily smirk, and if that happened, Roman would most certainly die of embarrassment and that was not a lie, thank you very much.

The truth was, ever since Thomas had placed that jar of Crofters into Logan’s hands and inspired him to sing…not just rap, or begrudgingly harmonize, but actually sing…Roman had fallen, and fallen hard.

How could he not?

Logan’s words and ideas had always challenged him, pushed him to be smarter, sharper, better, just to keep up. Logan was the grounding anchor to his sails, the clarity to his excess. It used to infuriate Roman, the way he and Logan always came at problems from opposite sides and fought, sometimes bitterly, over the best way to meet in the middle.

But now?

Now Roman relished the way they traded words in a good fight, like blades in the hands of expert swordsmen. Logan, despite his dislike for anything fanciful, was a natural wordsmith…and Roman was a great lover of poetry. Even better, it seemed like Logan was also starting to enjoy their verbal sparring matches…

And then these last few months had happened.

The Decision, and Deceit, and the way that snake had let Remus out of the shadows to wreck havoc, and then the disastrous wedding itself…and Roman knew that Logan, through all of it, had been feeling pushed aside.

Goodness knew the logical Side hadn’t deserved to be shoved to the back of a courtroom, or relegated to a pixel-y shadow of himself before being removed from the discussion entirely. Worse, in both of those scenarios, Roman had either done nothing…or actively made things worse.

Roman knew he was guilty of letting his mouth run wild in his zeal to solve Thomas’s dilemmas…or in desperately hiding his true feelings. He knew his nicknames often came with barbs, his insults sometimes hit too close to home, that he often ignored or dismissed Logan’s cool, much-needed perspective.

He knew he needed to be better.

I’ll make it up to him tonight, Roman told himself as he laid a hand on the rough wooden blue doors and glanced back at Logan. The logical Side nodded, giving Roman a tiny burst of confidence.

He’ll get to play his favorite character and be his best nerdy self. This is going to be great!

Roman took a breath, and shoved open the TARDIS doors.

Chapter 2- Human Nature

“It’s all becoming clear now. The Doctor is doing the things you’d like to be doing.”

The blaring of a dozen sirens burst in Logan’s ears.

He was yanked across the threshold, Roman’s hand practically a vice around his wrist. Logan inhaled the sharp scent of metal and warm electronics, and a million figurative lights went off in his brain.

Being the physical incarnation of Logic, this wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar sensation.

The TARDIS shuddered…wait, TARDIS? We’re actually on the TARDIS?…under impact. Lights flashed; reds and greens over an ambiance of steely blue-gray, and Logan knew exactly what to do.

He shook free of Roman’s grip and strode to the center console…console, how do I know this is a console?…flipping several switches and turning the green dial to precisely 3.56 degrees to offset the radiation sheer from the M-class star they’d just spun past.

Because naturally they happened to be careening through an asteroid field.

The time rotor rose and dipped, Gallifreyan symbols whirling overhead; Logan adjusted shields and dodged rocks, striding confidently from station to station. He guided his TARDIS around the last large asteroid, one that easily could have smashed his beloved ship to bits, and then they were clear.

The TARDIS chimed reassuringly under his hands, relieved to be in empty space again.

Roman screamed.

The sound echoed off the metallic walls, causing Logan to whip around and nearly lose his balance.

“What happened?” he said sharply, leaving the console. The creative Side stood near the railing, staring down at himself in obvious dismay. “What’s wrong?”

“Look at me, Logan!” Roman said shrilly and gesturing at his body. “Just look!”

Logan examined his fellow Side. There were no obvious injuries he could see, no blood, no bruising, nothing that would merit a scream. There was just Roman, unfairly handsome as always.

(He still wasn’t sure how Roman managed that feat when they all literally, at least some of the time, had the same face.)

“I…don’t see a problem?” Logan asked slowly.

“I meant, look at what I’m wearing, Calculator Watch,” Roman snarled, and turned to yell nonsensically at the ceiling. “Am I a joke to you? When I said I wanted to be a companion, this is not what I meant!”

Logan focused on Roman’s clothing, which had shifted rather drastically since passing through those doors. His normal princely attire was replaced by a denim cutoff skirt, overalls, pink leggings, and a tight pink blouse that clung to his muscular chest and arms...

“I look ridiculous, don’t I?” Roman murmured, scuffing a combat boot against the metal grated floor. The motion drew Logan’s gaze again to the way the cutoffs hugged his hips and wow, that skirt was really short, wasn’t it?

And those tights, the way they accentuated Roman’s legs...

Logan frowned, his face feeling unusually warm. Why did he keep noticing these things? Of course Roman was more fit than the rest of them.

Perhaps it was simply that Logan didn’t usually see the evidence of it so…plainly.

Stop, Logan told himself sharply. You might be gay and allosexual, but that is no excuse to be disrespectful.

He cleared his throat.

“If I may, Roman?” he said, approaching, and made a closer examination of Roman’s outfit.

“I gather from your earlier ranting that you instructed the Imagination to cast you as one of the Doctor’s companions for the duration of this scenario?”

“Well, yeah,” Roman admitted, “but I was thinking someone like Jamie McCrimmon, or Rory Williams, or maybe even Jack Harkness!”

“You know there is some debate over whether Jack Harkness would be considered a proper ‘companion’, as he was never full time on the TARDIS,” Logan argued absently, still eying Roman’s ensemble.

It was attractive but also familiar; he just couldn’t quite place it…

“Neither was Clara Oswald at first, but nobody had a problem handing her that label from the start!” Roman folded his arms and Logan had to look away because wow, short sleeves and arms…

“Just because she was a girl and the writers obviously intended for her to be a love interest—”

“A girl, of course!” Logan snapped his fingers. “Roman, you are a companion. Specifically, you are Rose Tyler.”

“What?” Roman frowned, smoothing the overalls across his middle. “I…Hmm. You might actually be right.”

“Of course I am right.”

The creative Side scoffed at that, but continued to frown.

“I think it’s a good choice,” Logan added. “Rose is arguably one of the most beloved companions in new Who; bold, kind, and intelligent in her own way. She was pivotal to the Ninth, Tenth, and arguably the War Doctor’s character arcs.”

He laid a hand on Roman’s shoulder. (To convey reassurance, of course. Not because he suddenly wanted to touch…)

“Hers are not the worst shoes you could be given to fill,” Logan said, “idiomatically speaking.”

“Only you would drop a word like ‘idiomatically’ in everyday conversation,” Roman grumbled, but some of the spark returned to his caramel eyes.

“But look at you!” Roman said in a brighter voice, gesturing. “All proper and Doctor-ish. At least the Imagination let you keep your tie, or, whatever that thing is around your neck.”

Logan glanced down at himself for the first time.

His sensible polo and jeans had become a clean-cut black suit, with a warm grey waistcoat, a crisp white undershirt, and a silver pocket watch. A navy cravat was knotted around his throat.

His knee-length suit jacket was also black, with a striking cerulean lining.

He retrieved a slender, metallic something from the jacket’s inner pocket: of course, the Doctor’s signature sonic screwdriver. Specifically, the Tenth Doctor’s screwdriver.

Logan chuckled, remembering all the times he’d ranted to Roman about how impractical and flashy Eleven’s screwdriver became, and don’t even get him started on Twelve’s, it was practically a lightsaber…

“Interesting,” he murmured, stretching his arms to turn in a slow circle, letting the jacket flare. “Fashionably, I appear to be a cross between the Eighth and Twelfth Doctors, which I appreciate, as they are the two most sensible dressers of the bunch. And by the way, Roman, this is a called a cravat, not a tie…”

He’d lifted hands to his neck but the words died on his tongue.

Roman had summoned a mirror and was, quite literally, checking himself out. He swayed his hips, tilted one toward and then away from the mirror, pouted, did a tongue smile, and…and Logan realized he had been watching for more than a socially acceptable length of time.

He swallowed hard and cleared his throat again. But he was saved from having to speak by a loud crackling at the center console.

Both Sides rushed over, Logan seizing the TV screen and pulling it down. Gray static skittered over the polished surface. He flipped two switches and turned a dial, trying to zero in on the signal.

“I meant to ask earlier…how do you know what to do?” Roman asked, tilting his head. “You were piloting before I think you even realized we were on a TARDIS in the first place.”

Logan froze in the middle of winding one of the cranks.

“I…I really do not know.” In fact, the more he thought about it, the less sense any of the controls made. “Now that you’ve drawn my attention to it, you are correct: rationally, I should not know the function of any of these…gizmos.” He gestured at the crank he’d been winding.

“Yet somehow my hands just…know.”

Roman leaned casually onto the console.

“When I built this LARP, I gave the Imagination quite a bit of leeway in how it wanted to construct our characters,” he said. “I’m thinking it took things a step further than costume changes, like making me the companion it thinks I most resemble instead of the companion I wanted to be.”

Roman bit his lip as though troubled, then clearly shook himself out of it.

“And it must have imparted some of the Doctor’s knowledge upon me.” Logan added, not sure how he felt about the Imagination having such a direct influence over his mind. He supposed if it didn’t get too invasive, and was confined to this one night, he could deal with it.

It had proven useful so far, after all.

Roman shot Logan a fierce grin.

“Indeed! So engage that big Doctor brain and let’s see who’s trying to call us. Allons-y, adventure awaits!”

“You know ‘allons-y’ is my line, right?” Logan said dryly.

He had to use his screwdriver on the screen before the picture came clear. The stream of static acquired the cadence of a voice…and then a disturbingly familiar face stared back at his own, looking equally shocked.

Roman, for the second time since entering the TARDIS, let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Chapter 3- The Witch’s Familiar

“If you’re going to take my stick, do me the courtesy of actually killing me. Teamwork is all about respect.”

Janus had just settled into his favorite chair with a mug of chamomile tea and a political science book when he was yanked…rather rudely, he might add…onto the deck of a spaceship.

He sighed, and dismissed his drink.

When one lived in the same mindspace as the literal embodiment of chaos, one unfortunately learned to expect such interruptions.

“REMUS!” he roared, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Did I not specifically ask to be LEFT ALONE tonight?”

Silence.

Deeply annoyed now, Janus took a moment to look around himself. This was not a normal spaceship; no windows, for one, and it was laid out in levels around a translucent column at the very center. His mismatched eyes followed the center rotor up and down, his mind almost placing it…

Something clumsily rose up from the deck with a clatter, causing Janus to summon his crook with a yell.

Only…the object that dropped into his hand wasn’t smooth wood, but a slender metal instrument just barely longer than his hand. A…sonic screwdriver? What the actual heck?

Well. It was what he had.

“Get back!” He pointed the instrument at the…figure…who still slowly climbed to its feet. It was an android or robot of some sort; humanoid, and the same kind of weirdly familiar as the ship.

“Janus?” the robot said, tilting its head.

Janus froze, all the scales standing up on his body. That was…that was Patton’s voice. Flat, mechanical, but unmistakable.

After all, Patton was the only Side who consistently called Janus by name.

“Patton?” Janus whispered.

“Oh, that was so weird-feeling! Thank goodness I’m not all by myself,” Robot-Patton said, putting a hand over his…well, where his heart should have been…in obvious relief. “But why are we both suddenly on the TARDIS?”

Janus drew in a sharp breath.

Of course, he should have recognized the stupid time rotor immediately. He’d never admit it to any of them, but he was as much of a Doctor Who nerd as Logan or Roman, sometimes going so far as to spy on them when they argued over episodes together.

To learn their arguing styles, of course.

Not because he had any desire to join those discussions.

And now, looking at Patton with a sinking feeling in his stomach, Janus deduced exactly what he was: a Mondasian Cyberman. They were older and cruder in design than the reboot versions…no wonder he hadn’t put a finger on it right away.

That wasn’t really the issue.

“REMUS!” Janus shouted again, more angrily this time. Bad enough his pleasant evening of solitude had been interrupted by…whatever this was. But putting the sweetest, most emotional Side into a canonically unemotional shell, a robot?

That was cruel. That was insulting.

It was too far, even for Remus.

“Janus, is everything okay?” Patton asked, coming closer. Janus shivered at the sound of that warm voice coming from a blank metallic face with empty eyes.

“Do you…feel all right?” Janus said in a hesitant voice.

“I’m a little chilly, but otherwise I’m in ship shape!” the other quipped, giggling. “Get it? Cause we’re on a ship?”

Is it…is it possible that he doesn’t know?

“Hilarious,” Janus deadpanned, but inside his thoughts spun.

He sensed they were in a dream construct within the Imagination, which meant this had to be Remus’s doing. Remus, who reveled in gore, despair, disturbing imagery, angst, and who was in charge of Thomas’s nightmares.

Remus could…and would, given the chance…recreate the experience of being a Cyberman down to the Last. Grim. Detail.

Maybe he hadn’t meant to ensnare Patton specifically to fill this role…Remus didn’t generally pull other Sides in for nightmares, come to think of it…but meanwhile, Janus didn’t want to find out what this might do to Patton’s head.

Worse, it was becoming clear that Patton was somehow oblivious to the state of his own body; he’d used his metallic hands to clutch at his metallic chest and found nothing wrong with either. He couldn’t hear the electronic rasp in his own voice, or the heavy clanging of his steps on the grated floor.

Should Janus say something?

Would Patton believe him if he did?

Ever since Thomas’s near mental breakdown after the disastrous wedding, Patton and Janus had orbited around each other in a state of tenuous truce. They talked now, sometimes, and those talks didn’t always end in arguments. Patton began to leave space for him by Thomas’s blinds when he was called up, and he…and by extension Thomas…occasionally actually sought his input.

But Janus, well.

Janus was still a liar.

The others still called him Deceit, either by accident (Logan) or out of spite (Virgil). Then there was Roman, who invented a colorful, wounding ego-jab for him every day, and Remus, whose fond nicknames tended to double as sex jokes.

Having no other real allies in the mindscape, Janus really, really didn’t want to screw up his tenuous alliance with Patton. Why sabotage his figurative “seat at the table” over one of Remus’s stupid nightmares?

Patton would assume Janus was slipping back into his old ways, lying just because he could, and Janus would never be able to prove otherwise. And later Patton would make that sour, pinched face he always made when he was disappointed, the one that made Janus want to crawl into a hole…

So.

Best to keep his observations close to the chest, for now.

“Do you have any idea what we’re doing here?” Janus asked, striding to the center console. True to dream logic, the controls made no sense and simultaneously made perfect sense.

Patton shrugged; a strange, clanky motion of his shoulders.

Janus sighed. “Although Remus has dragged me into dreams before, even he generally understands the concept of consent.” He casually flapped a hand. “And he always leaves you ‘light sides’ alone.”

“Honestly, this doesn’t feel like a nightmare to me,” Patton said, nearly making Janus choke. The Cyberman clanked over to stand by the console.

“It’s too clean,” Patton added. “Roman let me glimpse Remus’s side of the Imagination once, not long after he showed himself to Thomas, and it was…”

Patton trailed off.

“Fragmented? Chaotic? Disturbing?” Janus supplied.

“Sure, we’ll go with that,” Patton said quietly. “This,” he waved a hand around, “feels more like Roman’s work.”

“I suppose you would know.” Janus ran a thoughtful thumb over his face, tracing the ridge that ran from the corner of his mouth to his ear.

“And I would almost have to agree,” he added slowly. “If this was a nightmare, surely something ghastly would have happened by now. But my being pulled into one of Roman’s creations makes even less sense. He literally cannot stand me.”

“Maybe this is one of those dreams Thomas has sometimes after binge watching a show?” Patton suggested. “When there’s enough material in short term memory that the twins don’t get much input? Did Thomas binge a season of Doctor Who yesterday or something?”

And to think the others still view you as stupid, or slow-witted.

Janus bit back a smile.

“It’s a good theory, Patton, but no,” he said. “Thomas hasn’t really binged on much of anything lately.”

Patton ducked his head.

“You don’t…you don’t have to rub it in, you know,” he said lowly, the metallic rasp grating on Janus’s ears. “You and Logan have both made it pretty clear that I’ve been too strict with Thomas’s time.”

Janus fought to keep his expression neutral, but his stomach twisted.

Damn it.

Leave it to Patton to find guilt where none was meant. Even if Janus claimed he hadn’t meant it like that, Patton would probably not believe him.

Patton tilted his metal head as he examined Janus’s face.

“Did you know you have a mustache now? And a little goatee?”

“I have a what?” Janus felt at his face and groaned, his gloved fingers tugging at hair that most certainly did not belong on his face; with the scales, it probably looked hideous.

His entire outfit had altered in subtle ways, he realized. His usual plum tunic and trousers were now a brown suit and waistcoat ensemble, crossed with yellow pinstripes, with a black collared undershirt. A brown, knee-length suit jacket replaced his caplet, with subtle gold trimming. His yellow gloves were unchanged, thank goodness, and his hat…?

His hands flew up to his head and found something perched over his hair, sitting at an angle. Janus yanked down a screen at the console and stared. His beloved bowler had shrunk into a tiny, flat, rakish thing with a wide brim, festooned with a cluster of yellow rosebuds and black beads.

“What on earth, Remus?” he grumbled, turning his head from side to side. Well, if he had to be honest, pinstripes and a hatinator weren’t a terrible look.

“Well, if we’re on a TARDIS, I guess you’re supposed to be the Doctor,” Patton pointed out. “Which would make me your companion.”

Janus stroked his goatee and examined their surroundings in more detail. But am I a Doctor? he wondered. And if so, which one?

And whose TARDIS is this?

Because while it was clear they were on a TARDIS…what other class of spaceship had a time rotor?…he wasn’t almost certain this was not the TARDIS.

Every corner of the Doctor’s ship, no matter which face it belonged to, tended to overflow with bright, shiny, eclectic whimsy. By contrast, this one was plain, stark, with exposed metal beams and sharp angles.

Too dark, too full of shadows.

An awful suspicion rose up in his mind.

He crossed to one of the bookshelves, ignoring Patton’s soft inquiry, and his jaw clenched. There was the Necronomicon, shelved between the Liber Inducens in Evangelium Aeternum and The Black Scrolls of Rassilon, Book of Vile and its Black Appendix, The Ambuehl Lores and the Insidium of Astrolabus.

Janus finally looked at the sonic device he’d been holding all this time; seeing now that it wasn’t a screwdriver at all, and thanked every god he knew that he hadn’t tried to use it on Patton earlier.

It was a sonic laser.

Once again, even in a stupid, nonsensical dream, Janus had been cast as the villain.

His fist had collided with the bookshelf before he even realized he was moving, books falling to the floor. He punched it again, and again, until a cool rigid hand closed around his wrist and yanked him back.

“Janus, Janus, stop!” Patton yelled in his ear.

Janus wrenched his arm away and stalked back to the console, running gloved fingers over his scales, pushing them up and smoothing them down. The familiar sensation grounded him.

“You were right, Patton,” he threw over his shoulder. “This is definitely one of Roman’s dreams, and he definitely fucking hates me.”

Patton’s heavy footsteps clattered behind him.

“Language. And how do you know that,” he asked. “…Doctor?”

Janus whirled, lips curled in a snarl.

“I am not the Doctor, Patton, and we are not on the TARDIS.” He spread his arms to encompass them both, gesturing to the dimly lit spaceship. “Look around. Look at me!”

He turned, slowly, and eyed his mustached visage in the dark view screen.

“Clearly, I am the Master.”

Chapter 4- Nightmare in Silver

“You think he knows what he’s doing?”

“I’m not sure I’d go that far.”

Patton rested his arms against the console and sighed.

Once again, someone I care about is upset, and I don’t know what to do. I guess I should be used to it by now.

It didn’t help that it was so cold in this TARDIS. He folded his arms around his middle, which felt strange and heavy, to combat the chill that seemed to have settled deep in his bones.

Janus stalked past again, grumbling to himself.

“Of course the Prince would pull me into one of his little ‘adventures’ without my consent. He probably needed an antagonist. And naturally the slippery snake would have been the first person to come to mind!”

Patton opened his mouth…though he had no idea what he was going to say…but Janus drowned him out.

“Come on, Roman!” he shouted, throwing his yellow-clad hands up. “You’ve had your fun. Yes, I’m evil, I’m the villain, I’m the bad guy, blah blah. Let’s have our epic confrontation or whatever nonsense you have planned, as I would very much like to get back to my reading sometime tonight.”

Silence.

Patton didn’t know what Janus was expecting.

“Look, maybe we should just play along for now?” Patton said aloud, wincing when Janus turned his murderous expression on him. The deceptive Side had such deep, cutting golden eyes, the human one so much darker than the other…cynical eyes that were, ironically, almost impossible to lie to.

They’d see straight through it.

“It takes a liar to know a liar.”

The glare quickly softened, though, which in Patton’s opinion said a lot about how far Janus had come.

“And how do you propossse we ‘play along’?” Janus said, hissing his s’s in frustration.

“Well, we’ve kinda decided this is Roman’s dream, right? And since we’re in his part of the Imagination, we know he won’t let anything bad happen to us…”

Patton trailed off at Janus’s pained expression, reminded of just how badly Janus and Roman’s last encounter had gone.

“What are you, a middle school librarian?”

“Thank god you don’t have a mustache.”

And I just stood there and did nothing…no, I can’t dwell on that right now. Patton shook himself out of the memory.

It was surprisingly easy; even his emotions felt a little heavy and muted. He supposed he wasn’t used to being in a dreamscape; unlike Roman, who played in them all the time.

I know Roman, Patton reasoned. He might hold a grudge for a while, but he wouldn’t actually be out to hurt Janus.

Right?

“So, if we’re on a time ship, on some kind of adventure leading up to a confrontation like you said, the first thing we’d have to do is figure out where we need to go,” Patton finished, shrugging.

Janus pursed his lips…which looked downright weird with a mustache and goatee, almost making Patton giggle…and began pushing buttons on the console.

“You are definitely incorrect, Patton,” he said, pulling up another screen and flipping a few switches. “If I have been cast as the villain in this ridiculous charade, that means Roman is likely prancing around as the Doctor right now, on the proper TARDIS. Which, as the Doctor’s nemesis, I should be able to contact…ha!”

The screen burst into static.

“Doctor, oh Doctor, do you read me?” Janus crooned, and if Patton hadn’t known just how angry he was in that moment…well, he would have never known.

Janus had tucked it away entirely, in half a second's time.

That’s the scary thing about him, Patton realized uneasily. He’s smart, nearly as smart as Logan. Smart enough to run circles around me, that’s for sure. And he’s easily as good an actor as Roman.

Those attributes, combined with his naturally manipulative nature, made it difficult to trust him.

Patton was trying.

He’d been trying since the wedding, and well, since everything else that had happened. (Patton still cringed when Thomas encountered even a picture of a frog.) He’d done a lot of thinking and growing that day (in more ways than one!), and he’d come to a disturbing, but inevitable conclusion.

Janus wasn’t evil.

He never had been.

Just like Virgil had never been evil. Mean, sure; and sarcastic, and spiteful…but at his core, Virgil had wanted what was best for Thomas.

They all did.

And then there was the uncomfortable corollary to that: Patton, despite his best efforts, despite his core Purpose…Patton wasn’t entirely and automatically good.

Two weeks ago, Janus had proven beyond a doubt that Thomas needed him…ruthlessly, cuttingly, but no one could say he hadn’t made his point. It had been Patton who’d inadvertently pushed Thomas to the brink of a breakdown, and Janus who had to pull them all back.

Despite Patton’s unease, and the little voice in his head telling him that Deceit couldn’t be trusted, could never truly be trusted because it was in his nature to deceive…Patton remembered how they’d pushed Virgil so hard he decided to duck out, and how much of a tragedy that could have been if they hadn’t all intervened to bring him back.

With a pang of guilt, he pictured Thomas lying on the floor, crushed under the metaphorical weight of everything Patton needed him to do to keep from being a bad person…

He would not make those mistakes again.

If Virgil could learn to work with them instead of against them, so could Janus. If Patton could learn to recognize when his own Purpose did more harm than good, so could Janus.

Patton had to believe that.

He’d made too many mistakes lately to believe otherwise.

The screen in Janus’s hands cleared to reveal…

“What? Logan??” Janus exclaimed, as a scream echoed somewhere in the background.

“D—Janus?” Logan countered, then looked over his shoulder. “Roman, for the love of Archimedes, will you stop shrieking? I cannot hear.”

The screaming cut off and Roman’s fuming face squished into the frame with Logan.

“Deceit! I should have known you would show up to ruin this!” he managed to shout before Logan shoved him away.

“Ruin…I’m sorry, what?” Janus glanced at Patton, looking honestly confused. “Is he roleplaying right now? We assumed this scenario was Roman’s creation.”

Onscreen, Logan placed his whole hand against Roman’s mouth to prevent him from interrupting.

“It is. But to my understanding, it was only supposed to involve myself and Roman, and…wait. You said ’we’.” Logan peered around. “Who else is with you?”

Patton started to wave, but his view was blocked by Janus bending close to the screen to whisper something. Suspicion flared in Patton’s stomach; old, familiar, but after the talk he’d just given himself, he purposefully pushed it down.

I won’t assume he’s being shifty unless he actually gives me a reason to.

Lifting his chin, he crept forward until he was next to Janus’s shoulder.

“Hey, Logan,” he said brightly, waving.

“Ah…hello, Patton,” Logan squeaked after a moment, his eyes still wide.

“Wait, Patton’s there? With the snake?” Roman’s voice yelled from the background, and then there was Roman’s face again.

“Patton?” Roman said, narrowing his eyes. “But why are you—?”

Both faces disappeared for a moment as Logan yanked Roman out of frame. Patton thought he heard a rapid, hushed conversation. He glanced at Janus, who only shrugged, looking at puzzled as Patton felt.

Roman’s face reappeared, solemn and deeply annoyed.

“Patton,” he said, and hesitated. “D—Janus. You two…well, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Very reassuring,” Janus quipped.

“This was only supposed to be a two-person adventure: Doctor plus companion. I have no idea why the Imagination brought you both in as well; I certainly didn’t tell it to.”

“Aw, that’s okay, kiddo,” Patton started gently. “It’s not your fault—”

“Oh, sweetie.” Janus folded his arms. “I’m sorry, but that’s bull. Putting me in the Master’s shoes? Are we seriously going to pretend the Side who unashamedly hates me had nothing to do with that?”

“I didn’t!” Roman argued, his voice going high. “You really think I wanted you here, in any capacity?”

“Deceit…er, Janus, you are being unnecessarily antagonistic, and as such, unhelpful,” Logan cut in with his low, reassuring voice. “But Roman, it might behoove us to consider the role of subconscious influence. You may not have intended to pull the others in, and yet here they are.”

Roman looked at Logan, aghast, and Patton almost flinched at the raw hurt in his caramel eyes. The creative Side backed out of frame.

“So you’re on his side, too,” his voice said quietly. “Is that how it is?”

“I am not on anyone’s side,” Logan argued, raising his hands. “We are all currently in this situation together, and as such—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was cut off by another garbled transmission, taking over the screen and blocking out Logan’s face with crackly, purple static. A gray, snarling face flashed out of the haze, making Patton shriek in surprise and even Janus took a step back.

Then it was gone, dissolving back to static…and the sound of someone laughing filled the connection.

“Hellooooo, nurse,” a familiar sing-song voice crooned. “Did you miss me?”

Chapter 5- The Long Game

“You can’t just read the guide book, you’ve got to throw yourself in. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get charged double and end up kissing complete strangers. Or is that just me?”

Logan sighed.

He knew that voice; they all did. Even Thomas, unfortunately.

“Remus,” Roman hissed.

The mustached Side filled the screen, grinning madly. “Boo!”

“Get out of my scenario,” Roman said, his eyes flashing. “If you know what’s good for you.”

“Your scenario?” Remus echoed, faux-outrage in his expression. “Yours? The Dream Palace is my domain, too, brother, whether you like it or not.” He leaned closer, letting his nostrils and a single radioactive green eye fill the screen. “Did you really think you could keep me out?”

Roman made a sound of disgust deep in his throat.

“Am I to assume, then, that you are responsible for bringing in the other Sides?” Logan asked, careful to keep his voice even. Remus thrived on getting a rise out of people.

“Of course he is!” Roman snapped, throwing up his hands. “He loves to ruin things, especially my things.”

“Now why would having the others here ruin anything, brother?” Remus asked in a sickly sweet voice, propping his head on his hand. “Unless you intended for this nighttime romp between you and Logan to be private?”

Roman sputtered and glanced at Logan, red-faced, as Remus giggled.

“It was meant to be so, yes,” Logan supplied, unsure why Remus would find that funny…or why Roman would find it embarrassing.

“As amusing as this all is—” Janus’s crooning voice cut through the speaker.

“Great. You’re still here, snake?” Roman snarked, his arms folded around himself.

“We’re all listening, kiddo,” Patton’s metallic voice said.

Roman’s lips always curl into a pout when he is angry, Logan thought, eyeing him without turning his head, and he gets a little wrinkle between his eyebrows. Why…why am I noticing such things all of a sudden?

Maybe it was the stress, or the unfamiliar environment.

Or maybe it was the Rose Tyler outfit.

That skirt ought to be illegal.

Logan deliberately focused on the screen, his cheeks warm.

“So this is kinda new,” Patton went on, “all of us actually talking—”

“If Remus is responsible,” Janus cut in again, “then perhaps he would be so kind as to explain the objective of this late night group therapy session?”

Despite the biting sarcasm, Logan did appreciate Janus’s insistence that they get to the point, even if it did mean talking over Patton…

Speaking of, why would Remus have paired Patton with Janus?

Surely he should have grouped Patton with Logan and Roman, and put Virgil with Janus? Or…maybe not, given how Virgil hisses if Janus so much as enters the same room.

Ugh. Interpersonal drama. Logan was thoroughly sick of trying to keep track of who carried a grudge against whom, especially when it seemed to change from day to day.

And on top of that, why would Remus make Patton a Cyberman? None of these decisions make any sense…

“Right?” Roman agreed softly next to him, and Logan realized he’d said that last bit out loud.

“If anything, I should have been the unfeeling killer robot,” Logan murmured.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Specs.” Roman shot him a strange look, both warm and troubled. “And frankly I don’t give a stinky rat’s ass about my stinky rat brother’s sick thought process. What I want to know is why Deceit doesn’t want us to mention it around Patton?”

Logan, who was still mentally stuck on rodents and donkeys…Roman’s metaphors were always something else…shook his head slightly.

“There’s no logical way Patton is unaware of his condition,” Logan pointed out. “So I can only guess he wishes to protect Patton’s feelings on the matter, by not allowing us to talk about it in front of him.” He shrugged when Roman’s frown deepened. “Those two have been getting along much better these last few weeks.”

“I think you’re giving the snake too much credit,” Roman muttered. “Even after he impersonated you, Logan? C’mon. It has to be something else.”

Logan bit back a sigh.

He doesn’t understand, he thought guiltily. Because he doesn’t know what really happened…

#

“This is unacceptable, Deceit,” Logan snapped, flinging the crook away from his body. “I was in the middle of a discussion—”

“He won’t listen to you,” Deceit had said, and there was no sarcasm or snark in his voice.

“Patton asked for my opinion!”

“And he dismissed you from the conversation the moment that opinion went against his preconceived notions!” Deceit snapped back.

Silence.

Logan could hear the others still talking, out in the real world…without him…as the misty dregs of subconscious curled around their feet.

“You tricked him.” Logan folded his arms. “He was scared and off balance and you gave him an out.”

“I didn’t make him take it!”

Deceit sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Logan. You know he is wrong on this. You know what this is doing to Thomas. His unquestioning, black-and-white, juvenile morality; it’s not working anymore. Thomas needs to grow up, and Patton is not letting him.”

Logan bit his lip.

“Logan.” Deceit moved closer, dismissing his crook into mist and setting both gloved hands on Logan’s shoulders. Logan stiffened.

“Logic. Please. I am…no good at this.” Deceit dropped his head, his hat obscuring his eyes. “I operate through deceit because that is the only way I can make them acknowledge me.”

“They don’t acknowledge you because you operate through deceit,” Logan pointed out.

“A perfect catch 22.” Deceit let out a bitter laugh. “But a snake cannot change its scales and I don’t…I have tried everything I know. I cannot fix this from the shadows. I am out of ideas.”

A strange thought entered Logan’s mind.

“You care. You care what happens to Thomas.”

Deceit looked up, his mismatched eyes glittering with stinging intensity. “I am the literal representation of selfishness. Why the hell else would I go to all this trouble if I didn’t care?”

“Well…” Logan trailed off, troubled.

He’d let the others get to him, he realized in that moment. He’d let Roman get to him, with his talk of evil and Dark Sides and how they were always trying to tempt Thomas off the right path.

But…they were all part of Thomas, even the so-called “dark sides”.

Of course they wanted what was best for him…well, what Remus wanted at any given moment was debatable…even if they didn’t always go about it in the healthiest of ways.

Deceit had laughed then, high pitched and bitter.

“Really? Really? Even you think so low of me?”

“You are manipulating me right now.” Logan frowned. “You are using my concern for Thomas to make me trust you.”

“Yes! I am!” Deceit got in his face, fangs flashing. “I am a manipulative bastard because that is the lens through which my Source perceives me. But that doesn’t matter because you, Logic; you see through me, always have. And you know perfectly well that logically, any objection you have to my personality or my methods does not change the fact that I. Am. Right.”

He punctuated each word with a poke to Logan’s chest.

“Deceit—” Logan started.

“Janus.”

“What?”

Deceit sighed. “My name. My…real name. It’s Janus.”

Logan blinked. He knew the mythology, of course: Janus, keeper of doorways and thresholds, looking simultaneously to the past and future. Two faces. Seeing things from every angle.

Self-preservation.

“It suits you,” Logan said quietly.

Tension bled out of Janus’s shoulders, a stiffness Logan hadn’t even realized was there until it was gone.

“Thank you.”

“Why am I here…Janus?” Logan asked, glancing away. “What do you need from me?”

Janus looked at him intently.

“Let me speak to them as you.”

Logan raised an eyebrow, and Janus sighed, waving a hand.

“I know, I know, more deceit, more lies, but—”

“No, it’s…” Logan pressed his lips together. “You already pointed it out. They don’t listen to me, either.”

The bitter twist that accompanied those words was becoming an all too familiar sensation in Logan’s chest.

Janus snorted.

“Oh, they do. Eventually. They heeded your advice on how to deal with Remus.”

Logan shrugged uncomfortably.

“Look,” Janus added, “honest people know how to tell the truth, but liars…” he smirked, not especially nicely. “We know how to wield the truth to accomplish an end. I can pull Thomas and the others out of this rut, but they have to be receptive to my tugging on the reins.”

Logan pursed his lips.

“You won’t fool them. If you recall, you tried to impersonate me once already and barely lasted two minutes.”

“I didn’t have your blessing.”

Janus fixed Logan with his intense mismatched eyes again, and held out a hand.

Logan stared at it, torn.

This was Deceit, the master liar: Thomas’s entire capacity for deception condensed into a single, snake-faced Side. How could Logan possibly trust him to not make things worse, after all the falsehoods, the impersonations, how he’d manipulated them all in one way or another to get his way?

But…as much as Logan, personally, didn’t understand why that callback had been so important to Thomas…he could not dismiss the fallout Thomas had suffered as a result of missing it. The decision to attend the wedding had turned out to be a bad one.

Patton had been wrong to insist upon it over Janus’s objections, and over Roman’s.

Those were just the facts.

Janus sighed.

“I’ll unmask myself when an opportunity arises, if that would help,” he offered, and to Logan’s shock, slowly tugged off a glove. “I won’t…I won’t let it go on as long as it did with Patton.”

He offered his now bare hand to Logan again.

Out in the real world, Logan could hear Patton’s increasingly desperate and ridiculous responses to Thomas’s and Roman’s questions, and winced. Janus did the same.

“Please,” was all he said.

Logan sighed…it really couldn’t get any worse, could it?…and shook Janus’s hand.

#

In his TARDIS, Logan let out the sigh he was holding back.

He might have personal, concrete evidence that Janus wasn’t evil, but he also knew Janus had wounded Roman, badly, that day. The creative Side was simply not currently capable of viewing any situation involving Janus with any sort of objectivity.

Passionate, sensitive people like Roman tended to have an unfortunate habit of hanging onto grudges.

As Logic, Logan needed to remember that.

“Oh, all right,” Remus said, his voice crackling over the connection. “Since you’re all here—”

“Actually, Remus, we’re not all here,” Patton’s voice pointed out. “You all know perfectly well who we’re missing; we’ve done this before.”

Logan’s eyes widened. “‘Where is Anxiety?’” he quoted.

“You mean Tickle Me Emo isn’t with one of you?” Remus asked, looking delighted. “Oh dear, oh dear. Is he lost?”

“I mean, TARDISes are huge,” Roman pointed out. “He could be somewhere on one of our ships.” His voice dropped again. “I’ll bet Deceit stashed him away, because we all know how he hates Virgil.”

“Excuse you,” Janus’s voice interrupted, annoyed. “It is Virgil who hates me, not the other way around.”

“Let’s both scan our ships,” Logan suggested, hoping to head off an argument. Honestly, if Roman and Janus didn’t stop picking fights with one another, he was going to lose his marbles.

The scans pulled up nothing.

“Oh well,” Remus said with a shrug. “Guess the emo gets to miss out.”

Janus grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “lucky”.

“All right, here’s what’s going to happen.” Remus leaned close to the screen. “I’ve crash landed on a lovely snowbound planet that’s crawling with psychotic tin cans who like to roll around yelling ‘exterminate’.”

“Daleks? A snowbound planet, so not Skarro, but where else…” Logan narrowed his eyes.

“He’s on the Dalek asylum,” Roman said lowly. “That was one of the episodes I had in mind when I plotted this adventure.”

“Very good, brother.” Remus clapped his hands. “And up there in orbit is a ship full of people who’d really like to blow up the whole planet. Oh, woe is me, whatever shall I—”

“Save it,” Roman snapped. “You’d probably enjoy getting blown up.”

“Hmm, true.” Remus’s green eyes sharpened. “Think of the mess! Little bits of intestines floating through space, long pink ropey—”

“Or?” Logan interjected, before Remus gave Patton nightmares.

“Or you have to come rescue me!” Remus’s teeth flashed as he grinned. “Because otherwise it’s nighty-night for me and all the other aliens in the asylum.”

There was a beat of silence.

“As terrible as that sounds,” Janus drawled, sounding anything but worried, “given that none of this is real, and at least one of us would very much rather not be here at all…why exactly should your plight concern us?”

Logan secretly agreed, but felt his stomach clench when he glanced at Roman’s troubled face. None of this was real…right? Would something concretely bad happen to Remus if the planet he inhabited was blown up?

Surely not.

This was only a dream. Perhaps, then, Roman was merely upset that his twin had usurped his adventure for the night?

“Also.” Remus buffed his fingernails. “You should know that the Imagination will only release us if we complete the objective. In other words,” and he sneered, purple-shadowed eyes glittering, “we’re all stuck in this scenario until we’re all reunited.”

Remus giggled as Logan exchanged a shocked look with Roman.

“I don’t believe you. This was my dream,” Roman said darkly. “And I’ve just about had enough of all this!”

He stepped back and snapped his fingers with a flourish. Frowning, he did it again, and again, his face growing paler with each try.

“Roman, what—” Logan started.

“I can’t end it,” Roman whispered, still snapping. “He’s right. He’s…he’s sealed off the dream’s boundaries somehow. Remus!”

This he roared at the screen.

“Keeping Thomas trapped in a dream state is going too far, Remus!” he yelled. “I don’t care what kind of demented game you want to play with us, but we don’t bring Thomas into it.”

“Oh, you think I created an unbreakable dreamscape?” Remus snapped. “You let the Imagination have too much reign, my dear brother, and now neither of us have the power to end the dream ourselves. I estimate we have about ten hours before Thomas wakes up.”

For a moment, all Logan could hear was the soft whoosh of the time rotor, and Roman’s shallow, angry breathing at his shoulder.

“So I suggest you all pilot your ships to these coordinates,” Remus added, and a series of numbers and strange symbols flashed up on one of the smaller console screens. “And get started.”

The main screen blipped, and Remus’s face was replaced by an expressionless Cyberman and a snake-faced Side who looked extremely pale under his scales.

“Well,” Logan stated. “This is a problem.”

Chapter 6- Asylum of the Daleks

“You’re going to fire me at a planet? That’s your plan? I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it?”

“In fairness, that is slightly your M.O.”

“Don’t be fair to the Daleks when they’re firing me at a planet.”

The familiar wheeze of the TARDIS materializing filled Roman’s ears as he waited by the doors. Logan joined him a moment later.

“Ready?” he asked, smoothing a hand over his cravat.

He looks good as the Doctor, Roman thought, eying the slimming black and navy, the graceful arc that hand made as it adjusted a pair of glasses…

He shook himself out of his distraction. “Let’s do this, nerd.”

Logan opened the doors and the two stepped out…not onto the asylum, but onto a spaceship. Shiny copper terraces lined the vast walls in curving rows, leading the eye up to a domed ceiling with a clear view of black, star-studded space. Like a huge amphitheater, or stadium. Even Roman had to admit, the Imagination had really outdone itself on the realism.

Of course, given that the ship was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of Daleks calling for violence…realism wasn’t exactly comforting at the moment.

“Surprise, surprise, I don’t see my stupid brother,” Roman commented over the dull roar of the crowd.

“No. But I recognize where we are.” Logan waved a hand. “You were right about Remus’s location; this ship is from the episode ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, in Season 7. If we are following the basic plotline, Remus is likely somewhere down on the planet below, and we will be sent to him in due course. However…I am curious as to why all the other aliens are here.”

Roman looked around again, seeing that Logan was right. Daleks formed the majority of the crowd, but he also spotted Zygons, Sontarans, Silurians, other Cybermen, Ice Warriors…and quite a few aliens from older seasons he couldn’t remember the names of.

(Logan probably could.)

A second TARDIS materialized near their familiar blue box: plain, gray; a squat column of a ship. Janus emerged first, a silver instrument gripped in one gloved hand, followed by an old-school Cyberman…Patton. Roman frowned. Seeing that metal…being…and having to remember it was actually his friend was going to be difficult now that there wasn’t a screen separating them.

“Nice work, Roman,” Janus said, sidling up next to him and faux-clapping his hands. “A ship full of aliens who want us dead; always an excellent starting point for an adventure.”

“This is how the episode starts, Mr. Oh-I’m-Such-an-Expert-in-Doctor-Who,” Roman retorted. “Accuracy is important.”

“But this isn’t accurate,” Logan pointed out. “There should only be Daleks here.”

Roman folded his arms, stung.

Damn Logan and his damned need to be right all the time.

“I…well, I didn’t model this adventure after just one particular episode,” Roman admitted. “I wanted it to be a challenge, and it wouldn’t be if Logan and I already knew the ending. So no, I can’t exactly explain why all the other aliens are here, okay?”

Logan sighed.

“I was not criticizing you, Roman,” he said in a gentler voice. “As this has apparently become as much Remus’s and the Imagination’s handiwork as it is yours, it would be unreasonable to expect you to know what comes next.”

“THE DOCTOR AND THE MASTER WILL APPROACH THE SUPREME DALEK,” a grating robotic voice boomed across the ship, making them all whip around. A large white Dalek with an antenna on its shell loomed on a raised stage near the center of the amphitheater.

“They were expecting me, too?” Janus raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”

The lights on the Dalek’s head flashed as it spoke again.

“THE DOCTOR AND THE MASTER WILL APPROACH WITH THEIR COMPANIONS.”

The four Sides exchanged a glance, and weaved through the assembled Daleks to the raised stage. The White Supreme Dalek was not the only occupant; it was flanked by an Ice Warrior, an Emojibot (which made Patton giggle), and…

“Look, a Janus,” Roman chortled, nudging the snake-faced Side in the ribs and pointing out the two-faced alien.

“You are all nerds and my logo is a two-headed snake,” Janus complained, rolling his eyes. “I literally do not know how all of you missed that obvious clue to my name.”

“DOCTOR,” the White Dalek said as they climbed the dais. “MASTER. WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF THE DALEK ASYLUM?”

“I’m just impressed my rat-faced brother wasn’t lying about his location,” Roman grumbled, and sputtered when Logan placed a hand over his mouth.

“According to legend,” Logan said, “you have a dumping ground, a planet where you lock up all the Daleks that go wrong.”

“The battle-scarred, the insane. The ones even you can’t control,” Janus clarified. His voice dropped to a hiss. “No wonder they ssstuck Remus there.”

Roman covered his mouth to keep from snorting.

The snake would not make him laugh.

“CORRECT.” The Dalek pushed a button and a hole opened in the middle of the floor. A snow-covered planet lay below them, pristine from this high up.

“Ooh, that’s,” Patton started, and let out a metallic gulp. “That’s quite a drop. Do we, ah, have to go down the same way? Cause I remember that part, and—”

“How many Daleks are down there?” Logan asked.

“A COUNT HAS NOT BEEN MADE,” the white Dalek said.

“Millions, certainly,” a new voice chimed in. The tall, robed, dark-skinned Janus stepped forward, their front face addressing them. “But they will not be your only concern. The population of the planet consists of more than just Daleks.”

Roman exchanged a suspicious glance with Logan. This wasn’t in the episode. This is new.

“What do you mean?” Janus, their Janus, asked.

The alien Janus turned to a nearby monitor, pulling up some information. The backward-facing face continued to address them.

“Some time ago, the Daleks began noticing a curious phenomenon,” they said. “Random people, from all different races and species, started turning up on various planets in this quadrant of space, including the asylum. No ships, no technology, and no knowledge of how they’d gotten there. At first the imprisoned Daleks on the asylum simply killed them off as they appeared—”

Patton visibly winced, even with his metal body, and Logan’s eyes grew flinty.

“—but the new arrivals eventually became too many to exterminate,” the alien Janus went on, unconcerned. “By now we suspect the planet has a population of over a billion, far too many for its automated systems to handle.”

They turned their forward face to the four again.

“THE ASYLUM IS COMPROMISED,” the Dalek Supreme proclaimed. “IT MUST BE CLEANSED.”

“Hang on, you’re still going to blow the whole planet up?” Roman protested. “A billion people?”

“To be fair, that is what they did in the original episode,” Logan pointed out quietly.

“But that was just Daleks!”

Janus rolled his eyes. “Ah, so genocide is fine when it’s only the evil aliens getting blown up?”

“You know, somehow I’m not surprised to hear you defending the bad guys!” Roman snapped.

“That is enough!” Patton snapped in his robotic voice, stepping between them and raising both his hands. Laser pistols popped out of both of them, making both Roman and Janus step back in alarm.

After a tense moment, Patton lowered his arms again; the guns clicked and vanished into their casings.

“Uh, sorry kiddos, I don’t know what came over me,” he said in a sheepish, more Patton-y voice. “Can we please not fight? It…it kinda makes me feel weird and jittery when you do.”

Roman stared at Patton’s blank Cyberman face and armored Cyberman body and swallowed, hard.

Their Patton would never deliberately aim a gun at anyone, let alone his family. But Cybermen were created to eliminate…or rather, delete…anyone who got in their way.

Did Patton even realize what he’d almost done?

What would happen, if and when he was forced to confront the reality of his body in this realm? What if he didn’t figure it out until he accidentally did something terrible? It wouldn’t be real, of course, but to Patton…that wouldn’t matter.

If his Cyberman programming forced or tricked him into hurting someone, the guilt of it would devastate him.

All I wanted to do was take Logan on an adventure, Roman thought bitterly. A fun little dream adventure where he could play one of his heroes. Was that too much to ask, Imagination?

He folded his arms and glared around the Dalek ship, anywhere but at his fellow Sides.

Whatever the hell this has turned into, I want no part of it anymore.

“In order for us to destroy the planet, we will need you to disable the planet’s forcefield—” The alien Janus started, but Logan held up a finger.

“Excuse you,” he said sharply. “We have not agreed to do anything, least of all help you murder a billion people whose only crime is to have accidentally turned up in your prison. Have you even attempted to solve that mystery?"

"And why do you care what happens down there?" Roman added, sneering. "If the insane Daleks are armed—”

“DALEKS ARE ALWAYS ARMED,” the white Dalek proclaimed.

“—then why can’t they defend themselves?” Logan finished, shooting Roman a questioning glance.

Roman huffed, and looked away.

“At first they did,” the Janus explained. “But as I said, the automated systems cannot keep up with the influx. Wars are being fought over food and other resources as we speak. A starliner crashed on the surface mere days ago, and—”

“Ah,” Logan said slowly. “You’re afraid, with all the shifting alliances and new activity, that the mad Daleks will escape in the confusion.”

“We do not know who or what is behind the influx,” the Janus said. “But eventually, they will start coming with ships, or they will build them on the surface, or reach out to those who could attempt a rescue.”

“‘If sssomeone can get in, everything can get out’,” their Janus quoted darkly.

The other Janus nodded. “Even the Daleks agree, their mad brethren cannot be allowed to escape. We, of this assembly—”

They waved to the assembled crowd of aliens, who observed in eerie silence.

“—have decided that one planet must be sacrificed for the greater good of the universe.”

Roman slowly and deliberately drew his sword (which the Imagination had kindly left as part of his outfit). It rasped as it emerged, the sound hair-raising in the sudden lull.

Instantly every Dalek gunstick and alien weapon on the ship was primed and pointed at the four Sides.

“And if we refuse?” Roman said evenly.

“THE DOCTOR AND THE MASTER WILL COOPERATE,” the Supreme Dalek warned, its lights flashing balefully.

“COOPERATE! COOPERATE!” the cry was echoed by the other Daleks, filling the ship with a cacophony of robot voices.

The alien Janus shrugged, spreading their hands.

“You don’t really have a choice. If you want to live, that is.”

“Is that so.”

Roman tensed and sprang at the white Dalek, not giving himself time to think. He dodged a blast from its gunstick and leaped, bringing his sword down hard. This being the Imagination, the katana cut through the Dalek’s metal armor like butter, and it clattered to the deck in two pieces.

There was a shocked silence…but no retaliation.

“Well?” Roman shouted, spreading his arms and turning in a slow circle. “This is me, not cooperating. What are you waiting for? Are you really going to shoot us?”

If they all died on this spaceship…the worst that would happen is they’d be kicked from the Imagination, and that was what they wanted, anyway.

“Roman,” Logan warned quietly, pointing.

Roman looked.

The white Dalek’s shell was…laughing?

“Oh, Roman,” Remus’s crackly voice emerged from the fallen Dalek’s casing. “Roman, Roman, Roman. My poor brave brother who thinks he can solve all his problems with steel and bravado. Did you really think it would be that easy?”

Each word bit like sandpaper against Roman’s ears.

He growled, and stalked to the Dalek’s top half, snatching it up and quickly locating a tiny speaker.

“C’mon, Remus. End this stupid charade,” he said quietly, holding the casing to his face so he could speak quietly. “You’ve had your fun at my expense. Go back to your pile of severed limbs and gloat if you must, but end this. For Patton’s sake, if nothing else.”

“I’ve already told you, it’s out of my hands,” Remus responded; typically, annoyingly casual. “If you want to end the game, you have to come down here and find me.”

Roman exhaled, resting his head against the cold, bumpy metal for a moment. His eyes burned, but he was Prince; he wouldn’t cry, not here.

“Why must you make everything difficult?”

“Roman, in all seriousness,” Remus’s voice dropped. “I didn’t know you were taking Logan on a date tonight—”

“It’s not a date,” Roman hissed, glancing at the other Sides…one in particular.

“The Imagination brought me into this without asking, just like it pulled the others in,” Remus went on. “I am aware of what has to happen, but I did not cause this.”

“You’re lying,” Roman said tonelessly.

Remus’s whiny voice grew hard.

“I don’t lie, and you despise that about me. You hide so much shit from yourself that it baffles you when I refuse to do the same.”

“Look,” Remus added when Roman didn’t respond. “The Imagination is clearly trying to get our attention. Sure, it usually goes through one of us first, but it doesn’t have to. When it comes down to it, Thomas’s mind answers only to Thomas. ”

“How are you so sure?” Roman frowned.

Was Remus seriously suggesting the Imagination they both oversaw had gone rogue somehow?

“Because I don’t curate my side as meticulously as you do, brother.” Remus chuckled. “I listen. I let the Imagination do as she pleases, free from all those pesky ethics and morals and other boring boxes you always force her into, so that our sweet Thomas doesn’t fear the contents of his own head.”

“You expect me to believe that you know what’s going on because,” Roman let every ounce of disdain seep into his voice, “the Imagination talks to you, and not me…because you don’t make her behave?”

“You should try letting her loose sometimes,” Remus drawled, “or you’ll end up with a cane up your butt like Nerdy Wolverine over there.”

“Don’t call him that,” Roman spat.

“What you so-called ‘light sides’ always get wrong,” Remus went on, “is that the juicy stuff, the gruesome and grim, the ‘bad’ thoughts that filter up from the subconscious; they can’t all be locked away and ignored.” His voice dropped ominously. “Repression can be very bad indeed, you know.”

Roman’s reasonable nature knew that his brother, despite his infuriating attitude, was actually making some good points. Thomas had been dealing with a lot lately; the tension in the mindspace felt like a ticking clock, counting down to the next disaster.

But at that moment, Roman had no desire to humor his twin.

All he wanted to do was lock himself into his own room in the Dream Palace and spend the rest of the night writing sad poetry about love, or listing his mistakes to himself until he fell asleep.

“I just wanted to show Logan a good time,” he said aloud.

“And oh dear, apparently you couldn’t even manage that correctly,” Remus said, implacably. “So maybe you should use this opportunity to get your head out of your poopy ass, and reevaluate yourself.”

Roman slammed the Dalek shell against the floor.

It cracked upon impact, the wiring inside sparking and finally flickering down to darkness. He ran his hands through his hair, reminded, once again, why he hated talking to his brother.

Like looking in a funhouse mirror…

“Roman…” Patton sidled up behind him, laying a cold hand on his back. Roman shoved the metal arm away and stalked back to the others.

“Let’s just get this done,” he said in a low voice.

“You will need these,” the alien Janus said, pushing a button on a nearby console. A translucent vertical tube rose from a gap in the floor, holding three bulky black bracelets.

“Ah yes, I remember this,” Logan said, striding forward and taking a bracelet.

“They will prevent—” the Janus started.

“The nano cloud from converting us into Dalek puppets, yes?” Logan interrupted, snapping the bracelet onto his wrist and handing another to Roman.

The nerd is getting into this, Roman thought as he put it on. I guess that’s something.

“The cloud is only active in certain areas of the asylum,” the Janus warned them again. “And those change as different factions seize control of different areas and weaponize them.”

Patton hesitantly raised a hand.

“Um, Mx. Alien, I can’t help but notice that there are only three bracelets, and four of us?”

Logan frowned. “But Patton, why would you—?”

“I’m sure it’s because I’m part snake, Patton,” Janus interrupted smoothly, swooping in to grab the last bracelet and snapping it onto Patton’s arm.

Roman exchanged an alarmed look with Logan; that was the last bit of confirmation he needed. Patton really was unaware that he was a Cyberman.

But why on earth would Janus go to such lengths to keep him in the dark about it? Even leaving aside the fact that Patton was a walking weapon; being a machine, he didn’t need protection from the nano cloud at all.

Whereas Janus…probably did.

But when Roman opened his mouth, Janus shot him a look full of daggers and promises of pain, and shook his head. Roman rolled his eyes and mentally washed his hands of the situation.

Typical Deceit. Protecting his lies.

At least Patton would be twice-protected. If the snake wanted to risk his life for a lie, let him.

“The gravity beam will convey you close to the crashed starliner,” the alien Janus said, and then there were Dalek blasters being shoved into their backs, propelling them toward the hole in the floor.

“Oi,” Roman protested, “get your freaky little eggbeater appendages away from me, you AAAAHHHH!”

There was a push, and they were falling.

Chapter 7- Oxygen

“Look at this. Classic design. Pressure seals. Hinges. None of that ‘shuk shuk’ nonsense.”

“Space doors are supposed to go shuk shuk.”

“Are you gonna be like this all day?”

Janus was done.

He sat up with a groan, brushing snow from his jacket and vest, making sure his hat and gloves were still in place. Everything ached. Bad enough he never wanted to be part this stupid dream game in the first place; now he was probably going to literally turn into a Dalek.

All because the Imagination is being a dick and Patton doesn’t know he’s a killer robot.

Wind gusted around him, making Janus glad that the Master, like the Doctor, usually preferred long sleeves and a coat. He stood, turning in a slow circle as he took in the lay of the land. Nothing but snow and rocks; true to the episode, still.

The gravity beam had split into four as it hurled them at the planet, but Janus was reasonably sure at least one of the others had landed nearby.

He hoped it was Patton.

Not because he was concerned or anything. It was just that either of the others would be absolutely insufferable company, that’s all.

“Janus!” a metallic voice called, and Janus breathed a sigh of relief.

Patton’s Cyberman body clattered awkwardly down a nearby snowbank, sliding the last few feet to land in a heap.

“It is all kinds of chilly down here.” Patton stood, and waved rather nonsensically. “Hullo there, Janus, so ice to see you.”

Janus rolled his eyes. (He would deny to his dying day that the corner of his mouth twitched at the ridiculous pun.)

“If this scenario is consistent with its source material,” he said, gesturing to the closest ridge, “there should be an escape pod from that crashed ship nearby. Come on.”

He set off across the snow, Patton following in his wake.

“Say, what do snowmen call their offspring?”

Janus exhaled carefully. Hoo, boy, maybe Logan wouldn’t have been so bad…

“I haven’t the faintest.”

“Chill-dren!” Patton chortled at Janus’s grimace. “What did one snowman say to another?”

“St. Genesius spare me,” Janus grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What, pray tell, did one snowman say to another?”

“‘Do you smell carrots?’”

Janus quickly covered his mouth.

“You smiled,” Patton crooned.

“I most certainly did not.”

“Okay, okay, one more.” Patton scurried ahead and turned around, so that he was walking backwards. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” Janus said flatly.

“Snow.” Patton hooked his thumbs into the metal rim at waist, like one might on a pair of pants. Janus swallowed and looked away.

“Snow who?”

“Snow laughing matter, Janus, I don’t know why you’re smiling.”

Janus snorted before he could hide it, and cleared his throat.

“I am not smiling, how dare you.”

“That’s twice now!” Patton cackled, the sound coming out all distorted. “Admit it.”

“I refuse,” Janus said, drawing himself up. “You won’t make a liar out of….”

Liar.

He felt the joke fall flat and cringed. Even though Patton’s metal face couldn’t react, those metal shoulders visibly stiffened.

Too soon.

Liar.

Too much history between them.

Besides, you are a liar, his mind whispered. Lies of omission are still lies, Deceit, and you’re doing that right now.

Janus gritted his teeth. They topped a ridge; the expected escaped pod lay half-buried near another ridge, across a flat stretch of snow. The two Sides glanced at each other and continued their journey in silence.

Patton seemed disinclined to continue his little pun war.

Janus badly wanted to say he hadn’t minded the punning, but truthfully, keeping silent was easier. Patton’s baffling ignorance over the state of his own “flesh” was starting to wear on Janus’s conscience. He knew the longer he kept it secret, the worse the fallout would be when Patton finally learned the truth.

The urge to come clean was an unfamiliar one for him, and extremely uncomfortable.

Ironic, the master liar, conflicted about maintaining a lie.

The old him would have laughed, but…the old him hadn’t heard the sincerity in Patton’s voice, when he’d spoken Janus’s true name aloud for the first time. The old him had assumed Thomas would reject him forever…because of Patton.

And then, with Janus still smarting from the sting of Roman’s mockery, Patton had said his name.

Patton had trusted him to take care of Thomas in his stead, when the moral Side knew he had failed at it. The memory still made all Janus’s scales tingle and his heart beat a little sideways.

The new him…this him…couldn’t find it in his small, shriveled, but very much present heart to risk pushing Patton away.

They reached the pod.

Muffled shouts and something that sounded like blaster fire filtered up from inside, making them exchange another glance.

Janus set a hand on the ice-crusted latch.

“Remember, we’ll have to fight our way through a bunch of dead Dalek puppets,” he reminded Patton.

“That’s a lot of noise for just a few puppets,” Patton said softly. “That canonically shouldn’t even be awake yet.”

“I know, and that is strange,” Janus agreed. “Maybe someone got here before us. But we won’t know exactly what to expect until we get down there.”

Patton sighed, a cloud of frost puffing out of his small, rectangular mouth.

Janus pushed the latch, popped his head in, and was met with a scene of utter chaos.

About six or seven human-Dalek puppets, with stalks sticking out of their heads and blasters sticking out of their hands, were locked in a fire fight with a horde of robotic humanoids that looked like they came from the Fourth Doctor’s era, if Janus remembered correctly. Round, bulky shoulders and faces that looked like metal sunbursts.

Both puppets and robots were using the seats as cover, blaster fire zinging back and forth and exploding against the walls in little showers of sparks. Janus and Patton would be directly in the blast zone when they jumped down, a little closer to the robot side.

“Well, someone definitely got here before us,” Janus muttered.

He withdrew his head and studied Patton. Honestly, with his metal body he’d be in far less danger, and those guns in his arms would actually be useful in this situation…but telling Patton he was a walking weapon, now, would definitely not go over well.

“The hatch down into the asylum should be in the cockpit of this thing,” he informed Patton. “There’s a lot of blaster fire, though, so—”

“—don’t get cold feet and hesitate?” Patton finished.

Something in Janus’s heart twisted…something he didn’t dare examine too closely.

“Say, Patton,” he said softly, looking away.

“Yes?”

“What did the hat say to the scarf?”

Patton turned his black Cyberman eyes on Janus.

“What?”

“‘You hang around, and I’ll go a-head’.” Janus let a smirk curl his lips.

Patton was silent for a moment, but then he began to giggle, covering his mouth.

Janus pulled out his sonic laser.

He dropped into the pod with a swing of his legs, catching one of the robots in its metal chest. It fell with a screech, careening into another of its kind, but by then Janus had gained his feet and ducked behind a seat. Patton clattered down behind, with less grace and far more noise…and a random Tivolian tumbled in directly after him.

Patton caught the rodent-faced alien with a startled shout, immediately dropping them again when they screamed and struggled. Janus blinked; where the hell did they come from?

The Tivolian tumbled across the pod’s floor, only making it a few feet before getting cut down with blaster bolts. Janus saw Patton cry out, and caught the Side before he could leap out and draw more hostile fire.

“It’s too late!” he shouted over the noise.

“I should have hung on!” Patton, if he’d had a proper face, would probably be in tears. He hated death. “I don’t know why they were so scared of me!”

Janus could answer that…

“I’m more curious about where they came from,” he said instead, frowning. “They surely weren’t up on the surface with us. It’s like they just teleported in, but Tivolians don’t teleport. They don’t have the technology—”

A blaster bolt exploded across the top of the seat they were hiding behind, showering them in sparks and forcing them both to duck.

“Janus!” Patton snapped. “We need to get out of here!”

“Right.” Janus brandished his sonic. “We’ll just have to run for it.”

He leaped out, activating his weapon, and discovered that a sonic laser had a very satisfying range and kickback. Forget the Doctor’s screwdriver, he thought, blasting a Dalek puppet aside and ducking another gun blast. I wonder if the Imagination will let me keep this…

A cold, dead hand seized the collar of his jacket, yanking him back.

Then there was a yell, a clatter, and Janus turned in time to see Patton blast a puppet with a fire extinguisher. The moral Side chuckled at Janus’s shocked expression.

“I’ve seen this episode too, you know,” he pointed out.

Janus huffed.

The two dodged and fought their way to the cockpit; Janus used his laser to seal the door behind them. For a moment they simply stood there, catching their breath.

(Well, Janus caught his. Did Patton even breathe, in that form?)

“Unauthorized personnel may not enter the cockpit.” Remus’s high-pitched voice came over the speaker system. “Unless it’s an actual pit full of cocks, in which case, where’s my invitation?”

Janus was going to need something a lot stronger than tea, once they finally got out of this mess.

“Remus, for god’s sake,” he grumbled.

“God has nothing to do with my cock, but if that’s how you want to roll…” One of the cockpit screens flickered to life, and there was Remus in all his ruffly, sparkly, mustached glory. Clara’s warm, messy cove spread out behind him, reds and yellows clashing horribly with the green of his sash.

Janus moved so that his chest and shoulders blocked the screen, to prevent Remus from catching sight of Patton. If Remus saw Patton as a Cyberman, Janus would never be able to convince him to keep his mouth shut.

“All right then, where do we find you?” Janus said. “And where did the others land? Not to mention our dear missing ball of anxiety.” He leaned forward, putting on his trademark smirk. “Come on, Re. You must know. One Other to another, you can tell me.”

“Aww, Jan Jan,” Remus crooned, also leaning forward. “You care.”

“I most certainly do not!” Janus sputtered, and cleared his throat. “Patton was worried about Virgil, that’s all.”

“I was?” Patton asked from the other side of the space. “I mean, of course I am, but—”

“But surely you can at least tell us why this scenario isn’t playing out quite like the episode it comes from,” Janus interjected smoothly. He didn’t want Remus to notice the metallic quality of Patton’s voice.

“Sorry to disappoint, but I’ve already told you everything that I know.” Remus shrugged. “Roman really did give the Imagination too much freedom.”

Janus frowned.

“Then how do you know the scenario will end when we find you?”

“I actually don’t! Isn’t it great?” Remus crowed, clapping his hands. “I love stories where anything could happen. We could all get vaporized, or have our flesh eaten by—”

“Remus, focus.” Janus pitched the bridge of his nose. “So, given what we know of this particular episode, you’re assuming that our main tasks are to come get you, and to drop the forcefield on the planet so the Daleks can blow it up.”

“That’s the idea, Double Dee!”

Behind him, Janus heard Patton make a weird, choked noise, and grimaced.

“By the way, Roman and Logan are already inside the asylum.” Remus grinned, the whites of his eyes flashing. “So if you want to catch up, you’d better scute those scaly asscheeks along. Check the floor for a breach; that will be your way out. A breach, ha! Like a butth—”

Janus pointed his laser and fired on the screen, cutting the transmission and sending sparks flying all over the cockpit. An awkward silence fell in which he turned to face Patton, who of course wore no visible expression.

This, and all the reasons for it, annoyed him further.

“I swear if you ask one question about scutes or scales,” he warned, holding up a finger.

“I wasn’t…going to.” Patton held up his hands. “Logan kind of taught us how to tune out the more, er, naughty things Remus says. But I am wondering,” he added hesitantly. “Are you…feeling okay?”

“Fabulous. Peachy,” Janus said flatly, kneeling to feel around on the floor. “Fantastic, allons-y, geronimo, what have you.”

“It’s just, you seem a little angry,” Patton went on. “And you remember, that’s, that’s the first step in being converted. Maybe you should wear the bracelet for a while? We can trade on and off…”

Patton’s fingers went to his wrist, but Janus stopped him with a gloved hand on top.

Tell him, an inner voice whispered. Tell him now, before this gets any more awkward.

“That’s sweet of you, but no, I’m merely frustrated,” Janus admitted. “I would very much like to get out of here, so I can return to the pleasant evening I was having before all thisss.”

He gestured irritatedly around them.

Patton joined him on the floor and together they found a person-sized hole, with a rope ladder hanging down.

“Hey, Janus,” Patton murmured, as they were about to start the long climb down. “Can I ask you something?”

“Why do I have a feeling you’re going to ask no matter what I say?” Janus said wryly.

“Do you remember when that puppet attacked you in the main part of the ship, and I fought it off with the fire extinguisher?” Patton ducked his head.

Janus raised an eyebrow.

“They hesitated, when they saw me.” Patton’s unnaturally black eyes met Janus’s. “That’s why I had time to grab the extinguisher.”

Janus swallowed, his heart starting to pound.

“Well, I’m sure they aren’t used to anyone fighting back—”

“No, they hesitated like…like I scared them or something,” Patton pressed. “It was weird, Janus. Please. If there’s something you need to tell me…you know you can.”

Janus’s mouth compressed into a flat line and he looked away, bitterness welling up inside him.

“Can I, Patton?” he asked softly, holding up a gloved hand. A yellow indictment of everything he was. “Can I really?”

Patton sighed, long and deep.

“Touché.”

Chapter 8- Extremis

“Something’s coming. And I’m blind. How can I see them when I’m lost in the dark?”

Logan awoke to someone shaking him.

He opened his eyes to an expanse of blurry blobs and color splotches, and Roman’s sharp, frantic face very close to his. His eyes have amber flecks, his brain noted inanely. But why is he clear when nothing else is…?

Roman threw his head back and exhaled in obvious relief when Logan groaned, blinking rapidly to clear his vision.

“Singing chimeras, Specs, I was starting to worry.”

Logan sat up and touched his bare face. Ah, there’s the problem.

“Where are my glasses?”

Roman was quiet.

Logan leaned closer to the other Side, squinting. Bad eyesight was such an annoyance. If only Thomas’s developing brain hadn’t decided early on that “smart and logical” also meant “stereotypically nerdy”, and pigeonholed his own sense of Logic into actually requiring corrective eyewear.

“Roman?” Logan tried again.

“Um. About that.”

Roman bit his lip, and handed over a smashed set of frames. Logan’s stomach sank as he examined them; the lenses were shattered beyond repair.

“I found them next to you like that, when I woke up,” Roman explained. “I’ve been trying to summon another pair, but for some reason the Imagination won’t let me!”

Logan pushed down a growing sense of dread, that he’d have to navigate the rest of this adventure half-blind.

“My glasses getting broken is obviously not your fault. We did fall down a rather deep hole,” he pointed out. “But what do you mean, the Imagination isn’t letting you?”

“I mean it’s not letting me!” Roman threw up his hands. “I could summon things on the TARDIS just fine, but now…” He sighed. “I am Creativity, right?”

Logan tilted his head and frowned.

“Is that…Roman, that is a nonsensical question. Of course you are.”

“So summoning a tiny object in my own dream scenario should be easy.” Roman hung his head.

“How long have you been trying?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe?” Roman shrugged, still not looking at him. “All that time, and yet still I fail.”

Logan resisted the urge to point out that twenty minutes should be long enough to realize a thing might be outside of one’s control, and to start brainstorming other options.

Stubborn fool.

“Maybe it’s just as well we picked the wedding over the callback,” Roman added darkly, an uncharacteristic glower twisting his face. “When Thomas’s Creativity apparently can’t even control his own dreams.”

Oh…this isn’t about glasses at all, is it? Logan swallowed around an achy sensation in his chest; the one he always got when something was wrong and Roman made that face and he just…needed to fix it.

Native English speakers have a passive vocabulary of around forty thousand words, he thought, frustrated. So why, in situations like this, am I constantly struggling to find the right thing to say?

The resigned set to Roman’s jaw prompted Logan to try.

“Your inability to summon things may not be your doing,” Logan said, laying a hand on Roman’s knee. “Perhaps the Imagination is attempting to impose a sense of realism on this adventure.”

“Realism,” Roman echoed flatly. “In Doctor Who.”

Logan huffed. “You must admit, summoning objects out of thin air does defy even time-traveling alien logic.”

Roman’s face twitched in the tiniest of smiles. “So why did it work before, Teach?”

“Maybe it only worked on the TARDIS because the ship already defies every known rule of physics.” Logan shrugged. “I admit I cannot possibly intuit the inner workings of the Imagination; I can only theorize from what I have observed thus far.”

Roman chuckled softly to himself, and bumped Logan’s shoulder.

“Aww, Nerd, I’m touched. You’re trying to logic me into feeling better.”

“Is it…working?” Logan asked.

“Kind of?” An unreadable expression flitted over Roman’s face. “At least one of us is still grounded in reality.”

“Where else could one possibly be grounded?”

Roman laughed outright at this.

“Oh, Logan. Never change, okay?”

He stood up, and pulled Logan to his feet as well.

“Where are we?” Logan asked, squinting.

He could tell they were in some large, open space; all blacks and browns and dull grays. Blurry domes of copper were scattered amongst what could be bits of fallen scaffolding or machinery.

Logan was also hyperaware of Roman’s warm arm pressed against his, and his own hand clasped tightly within the Prince’s larger grip. With everything else blurry, physical sensations were all the more distracting.

“Don’t panic, okay?” Roman started.

Logan scoffed.

“You are fortunate that I am not Virgil,” he commented wryly. “Because starting a sentence like that would almost certainly have caused him to panic.”

“Well, it’s just, do you remember that scene in the Dalek asylum episode where Rory wakes up in the hanger full of dead Daleks who turn out to be not actually dead?” Roman said in a rush. “Because…yeah.”

Oh. Logan swallowed.

“So, I am guessing that those copper domes are actually Daleks?” he said softly.

Roman snorted.

“Copper domes? Jeesh, your eyesight sucks.”

“I am aware,” Logan said flatly. “Which means you will have to guide us out. If I remember correctly, as long as we are quiet and don’t kick any pipes on the ground, we won’t wake them up.”

Roman let go of Logan’s hand… and replaced it with an arm wrapped around his waist. Logan only held back a squeak because it would have been extremely undignified.

“Hey, relax, I got you, Specs.” Roman’s breath ghosted over Logan’s ear. The Prince’s shorter stature allowed him to fit snugly against Logan’s side; if Roman turned his head, he could comfortably tuck his face into the crook of Logan’s neck.

Not…not that Logan imagined him doing any such thing.

Roman drew his sword with a metallic rasp, prompting Logan to pull out his screwdriver, and they set off across the floor.

It was a strange, vulnerable sensation, Logan thought, being this close to another, being forced to rely on him for direction…or maybe it was just that Roman’s Rose Tyler outfit left so much more skin on display than his usual royal attire…

To be fair, Roman’s bare arms and short skirt and leggings were the only non-blurry things in Logan’s line of sight at the moment.

“You know, I am not sure how much good a sword will do against a Dalek now,” Logan said dryly (to distract himself). “Since it would seem that the Imagination is now attempting to be realistic.”

“It’ll be a lot more useful than a screwdriver,” Roman retorted. “Honestly, the War Doctor had a point. The later seasons really do start to treat the sonic like a weapon, and it looks ridiculous. There’s an oily-looking puddle to your left.”

They dodged around it.

“The sonic screwdriver is an ingenious, multipurpose tool,” Logan argued. “Fitting for a character who is, at heart, a pacifist. In the right hands, it most certainly could serve as a weapon. For example one could scramble a Cyberman’s circuits, short out fuses, or calculate the precise amount of blunt force needed to take down an enemy.” Logan waved the hand with the screwdriver around them. “All things that a sword could not accomplish.”

“Sure,” Roman drawled, leading them around one of the still, silent Daleks, “but you don’t point a sonic at an oncoming Dalek and expect to survive. Even the Doctor had more sense than to try that. At least a sword could cut off its blaster arm.”

“We don’t know how strong Dalek amor is down here,” Logan pointed out. “You could end up breaking your sword and then where would we be?”

“Better off than we’d be while you assembled a cabinet at them!”

Logan’s foot collided with a metallic something that made an awful CLANG and went skittering across the floor. Roman pulled them up short, his face going pale.

All around them, round blue lights began to flicker on, one by one.

“I kicked the pipe, didn’t I?” Logan said, his heart starting to pound.

“You kicked the pipe,” Roman confirmed in a sick voice.

“EGGS…!” a crackly Dalek voice next to them stuttered, making them jump. “EG-EG-EG-EGGS…!” Its twin lights flashed erratically as it spoke.

“Roman,” Logan started.

“‘Eggs, you may laugh and that’s great…’” Roman sang in a wavering voice. “‘Your smiles are what make my day’…”

The Dalek rolled toward them creakily. “EEEEEGGS!”

Logan’s breathing sped up. Another Dalek rolled in from the other side, causing him to stumble. All around them, mechanical creaks and groans and a chorus of digitized voices rose up…

“EG…EG-EGGS…TERM…”

“Roman, I believe we need to run.” Logan could see the Dalek almost clearly now, its eyestalk glowing, its gunstick rising up.

“…IN…ATE…”

Blurry, flashing lights closed in.

“‘My self-worth’s fragile like an egg,’” Roman sang. The hand gripping Logan’s middle tightened painfully. “‘When it breaks it’s tough to put together again…’”

“EX…TERM…IN…ATE!”

“Roman!” Logan shouted. “Get us out of here!”

“EXTERMINATE!”

A blaster bolt warbled past and exploded over their heads.

Roman shuddered and seemed to snap out of it, seizing Logan’s arm and pulling him so hard he nearly fell. Logan staggered, hanging onto Roman’s hand for dear life as they ran, and ran, and blaster bolts burst at their feet and shattered around them.

“This way, boys and boys,” Remus’s voice sing-singed across the room. Roman yanked them hard in that direction.

“REMUS!” Roman shouted as they ran, and Logan was impressed he had the breath for it. “Remus, you better open that door like you’re supposed to or we are DEAD!”

“Oh, keep your pants on, brother,” Remus snarked, sounding a little closer. “Although maybe Logan would prefer that you didn’t—”

Whatever else he said wasn’t audible over a hanger full of jabbering Daleks and firing blasters.

They reached a wall and Roman shoved Logan down.

“Straight ahead, crawl. Go, go, go!” he said, turning and brandishing his sword.

Bless that Prince and his stupid, stupid bravery.

Logan went, nearly tripping over his coat as he crawled under the barely lifted hatch door. Once he was past the threshold Roman flung himself under and through, knocking into Logan and sending them both sliding across the floor.

There was a hiss and a heavy thud that Logan hoped was the door shutting behind them, and finally, blessed silence. They both leaned against the wall for a moment, catching their breath.

Roman thunked his head back.

“Jesus Christ Superstar,” he muttered.

“Your welcome.”

Remus’s voice crackled through the hallway. Roman growled and sat up straighter, looking around as if his brother would magically appear.

“I did just save your lives,” Remus added. From the direction of the sound, Logan guessed he was talking through a speaker somewhere on the far wall.

“Yeah, and I’m still gonna whip your butt when this is all over,” Roman groused.

“Oooh, do I get to choose the instrument?”

Roman sputtered, but Logan grabbed his arm before he could yell back.

“You know he just likes to get under your skin,” he murmured, and raised his voice. “Thank you for opening the door, Remus. We are grateful for your help.”

There was a silence on the other end, with a quality that Logan would have described as shocked.

“Well. You two lovebirds better move along,” Remus drawled finally, shrill as ever. “Before the Silurian army shows up.”

“Excuse me, the WHAT?” Logan exclaimed.

No answer.

“Remus!” Roman clambered to his feet and helped Logan up.

Nothing.

Except now that Logan was listening for it, he definitely heard approaching footsteps and murmuring, heavily-accented voices. And they were getting closer.

“That dick,” Roman grumbled through gritted teeth.

“To be fair, I think he is trying to help,” Logan pointed out. “In his own way.”

“Don’t be fair to my brother when he’s just led us out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

“We are neither in a pan nor on fire, Roman; I have never understood that saying—”

The lights dimmed and flashed an eerie purple; Roman silenced him with a hand over his mouth. There was a voice…not Remus’s, not alien, not like anything Logan had ever heard. It chanted something, over and over again, before fading out.

The lights flared back to normal.

Logan waited, counting Roman’s shallow breaths against his neck.

Nothing.

“What was that?” he asked softly.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Roman responded. “But I guess that’s our cue to go. Stay close, Mr. Magoo.”

Logan grumbled, but allowed Roman to recapture his hand and lead them in the opposite direction of the approaching footsteps…which had resumed the moment the purple light vanished.

Next time Roman asked him to come on an adventure, he was bringing a spare set of glasses.

[ultravioletsoul]

Do you think deep down that Higgs wishes things were different? That he wasn't the way he was? I just really want to love the man and put the pieces back together for him :( I also like how Sam was all for just beating the shit out of Higgs and leaving it at that....

Hey there, nonny!!! Wow, that’s a complicated question that probably has no easy answer, as people may have different interpretations of Higgs as a character. Of course he’s done awful things, of course he’s an unapologetic asshole (which I like btw, that’s his role xD) and he seemed to be having a good time wreaking havoc all over the place.

First, I have to make it clear that I haven’t played the game (gaaah I’m on pc and I’d like to pre-order as soon as I can spare some money ;A;) so there are many details I still don’t know. However, I have watched the cutscenes and read Higgs’ journal and, boy, did it break my heart…

Long story short, and at the risk of bordering headcanon territory… what you imply may not sound so far-fetched.

Spoilers beneath the cut!

His dad died before he was even born, his mom died not long after his birth and he was left under the care of his uncle, his mom’s brother. Higgs described him as an ugly and violent man full of anger, and by the looks of it the man wasn’t right in the head and lived terrified of the monsters lurking outside. His uncle locked him up in an underground shelter, never allowed Higgs to go outside and told him it was a very dangerous place. He made his nephew believe that they were the only ones who had survived and only terrible demons remained. As a little kid, Higgs’ only glimpse of the world had been through a monitor screen. 

Heck, the first time Higgs even saw the sky and the mountains and felt the air on his face, was after his uncle died. Higgs was a kid who needed to leave that place, something inside him was begging him to get out of there because he felt that he would die in body and soul if he stayed any longer. So he planned his escape and hoarded supplies to take with him, but when his uncle caught on he gave Higgs a severe beating. It wasn’t the first time he subjected the kid to physical abuse, beatings were the norm for Higgs… no matter the reason. Higgs always tried to convince himself that was his uncle’s way to show he loved him and wanted to protect him from the evils of the world, but in some of his writings Higgs wasn’t too sure of it. In another entry, he compared his uncle to a saint and someone to whom he owed everything, his life and his powers, which obviously was just a coping mechanism for him.

However, that was the worst beating Higgs had received in his life. His uncle had lost it, he made their place a wreck and tried to murder Higgs by strangulation so Higgs was forced to kill him in self-defense by stabbing him in the neck with a kitchen knife. He probably was barely a teenager… and he had killed his uncle. No matter how abusive the man had been all those years, the experience was still very traumatic for Higgs and affected him deeply because that man was the only family he had, the only meaningful connection in his life no matter how messed up it was. But cutting him loose was the only way to leave that shelter that had been his home and prison for so many years, the only way to be free.

As you can imagine, growing up under recurrent physical and emotional abuse + social isolation + murdering someone at such a young age wasn’t a good combination and it surely caused some serious mental problems for him. Not to mention he also suffered of DOOMS which is a condition that, apart from chiral allergies, torments people with terrible nightmares about the end of the world. These dreams might have exacerbated the mental conditions he was carrying from childhood and we can’t forget his constant exposure to chiralium. His high level of DOOMS made him powerful, true, but it also worsened those issues turning him into a ‘homo demens’: a mad man, someone who has lost all sanity.

Higgs grew up longing to taste freedom, something he didn’t have as a child, and something he envisioned for America once he discovered there was a whole world out there waiting for him… a place where people could be free. Which is something that inspired him to try and unite the country by making deliveries and keeping people connected. At first it was because he was a kid who needed to eat, but in time he took some pride in the fact people had to rely on him and it might have given him a purpose, something to hold onto and keep him grounded. His uncle had always been against reconnecting again, he always preferred isolation and the idea of living in their shelter until the day they died, but Higgs wasn’t content with that. He tried to be something different from what his uncle taught him to be… he worked towards strengthening the community, he sounded genuinely worried and frustrated about the state of affairs and wanted to change the situation, aware it would take some big efforts before there were substantial improvements. But his intentions began to degenerate the more time passed and you can notice the megalomaniac shift in tone of his journals. In the end, in his own derangement and delusions of grandeur, he might have come to the conclusion that all was futile and it was better to just let the world go to shit in the next stranding because what good it was living like that. I may be wrong, though.

All things considered, and looking back at what he went through, I think it’s safe to say that deep down in some small corner of his mind he would have wanted his life to be different. Because being Higgs Monaghan never gave him a lot of happiness, no matter how many masks he wore to hide the scared and lonely kid that he tried to bury and forget.

Lmao that fight tho, they just beat the crap out of each other in a good old-fashioned fist fight. And when they were lying on the beach, covered in tar, and hurting all over, Higgs just laughs it off and makes some sarcastic remark like the lil shit he is. Sam was tempted to smile too XD

In another world, perhaps those two could have been good friends :’v 

I hope that answered your question nonny, and thanks for the ask!! Please, by all means, love this guy. There’s nothing wrong with that!! Don’t feel bad for having a special place for him in your kokoro, god knows he needs a lot of love.

Much love to you, too ♥♥♥ 

[whisqred]

I just watched 4x21 When the Levee Breaks, and it got really emotionally charged ahah, so I wrote out my thoughts and what happened to catalogue for myself and take some time to revel in the emotions instead of just breezing through thoughtlessly.

Castiel, after returning to Jimmy Novak’s body, (after being dragged back to Heaven) is a shell of the curious angel he’d been before ~ he now knows that he serves Heaven—not man—and certainly not Dean Winchester // he receives orders, and he follows them - almost like a certain season one Dean Winchester ~ all that remains now is for Castiel’s realization that maybe he ought to question before he acts (and coincidentally, I know that he will because I know Castiel will fall).

Anna confronted Castiel on the roof after he let Sam our, and she should not have been there—she is presumably taken to Heaven to be killed ~ because Castiel was following his father’s orders.

Sam thinks he is the solution to preventing the apocalypse because if he’s strong enough, he can kill Lilith before she breaks the final seal. He needs Dean to see things from his side because Dean can’t see past the fact that Sam will become a monster—the exact thing his father, his mother, and he himself tried to kill and get rid of—to see the potential plan. Because even if it works—Sam becomes a monster, kills Lilith, stops the apocalypse, what happens after? After the big bad demon is out of the way and all is (mostly) well with the world, what then? Because this isn’t just something you can turn on and off with a switch. We’ve seen that in the past... what the entire past season? Sam needs the blood already, and it’s bad enough dealing with Sam’s addition to the blood—what happens when he becomes it? Dean had promised his father—back in season one—that he would not let Sam become the monster he was fated to be. And maybe he’s still got a bit of that obedient little puppy trotting around in his brain, but he also believes in his own mind- in his own heart- in his soul- that Sam is better off Dead than a Monster. And we get that exact dialogue from Dean to Bobby.

Sam believes Dean isn’t trusting him, and honestly, he’s not. He locked Sam up to try to detox him, he kept secrets (well they both kept a lot), and he can’t see how Ruby is anything more than the demon who tainted his little brother. At the same time, Sam hasn’t completely trusted Dean either. The most obvious one is that he didn’t tell Dean about his blood sucking. And honestly, that’s understandable. He is Dean’s brother, and he knows him well enough to know that Dean would not understand and would act before thinking and mess everything up. But Sammy, trust is a two way street, sweetheart. You need to be honest, too.

Dean thinks he is the key to the prevention because the angels have told him so. He was the righteous man who spilt blood and broke the first seal, and he is the only one able to stop the start. He swore himself over to Heaven to be used in any way God sees fit. We don’t know how he is going to be used or how he will be able to bring the apocalypse to... not beginning. But he has sworn that he will. He told Sam that he was keeping him locked away — basically in a cage — in order to get rid of the monster inside of him. I can’t really tell if that’s all. He loves Sam. As mentioned in some other thread I’ve read, he loves Sam so much he doesn’t doubt his abilities to move things as a ghost, and he literally went to Hell for forty years for Sam- just to bring him back. So is he keeping Sam locked up to get rid of the monster? to keep him out of harm’s way? to keep Ruby away? to bring back his little brother?

Honestly what is the end goal for the demons? It seems like the whole plot is to get Lucifer to rise, but if that was the case, why allow that other guy to be in the competition when yellow eyes was running the joint? Season one we’re following a boy who has demon blood—he’s only part demon not full demon, so he can cross the devil’s traps and eventually open Hell’s gates. It’s important to open these gates so that most demons are let out to wreck havoc... but was the plan the whole time to break the seals and rise Lucifer? Because if so, how would they get that first seal broken if it hadn’t been for Dean Winchester—righteous man spilling blood? It’s been said many-a-time that it isn’t about them, and it would have been anyone, so I guess there’s that. But why did Azazel need to ‘infect’ so many people? What difference did it make who opened the gate as long as it happened? Also/ back to the point, what happens after Lucifer rises (if he even does. I mean the title of 4x22 is literally Lucifer Rising, but also, Sam and Dean are supposed to stop the apocalypse (as per memes) so...?)? Demons just run and place and it’s all cool...? Idk I guess I’m still just confused aha.

Oh well. I guess that was enough blabbering for one night... or morning. I liked this though. Gave me more chance to dissect and reflect.

[falaffles-mywaffles]

That 1890s Arranged Marriage Voltron Au Outline no one Asked for

So I normally keep my AUs to myself but because I got REALLY carried away with this one and I feel the need to dump it somewhere I’m just gonna leave it here under the read more.

Fair warning, it’s long and just a really informal outline because I can’t write worth for shit and I don’t got the patience or attention span for that

contains: Kidge, Plance, Allurance, Kallura

(set during mid 1890s)

Lance and Katie are childhood bffs.  Their families have a long history with each other due to business, friendships, marriages and so forth.

Both harbor a crush on each other but are too in denial, embarrassed, and worried to ruin their friendship by admitting it, so they spend their time causing havoc in their neighboring homes and enjoying each other’s presence as they usually do.

Both Lance and Katie are in the ripe age for marriage in the eyes of their families.  In fact, Lance has been set up on more marriage meetings than he can count (being two years older than Katie and having reached marring age earlier). However, his over the top flirtation and dankness tends to turn off any potential suitors.  Their daughters absolutely refuse to marry such a boy. And, it’s not like Lance’s family is the wealthiest family so the ex-suitors’ parents opt out to appease their daughters and seek a good marriage elsewhere.  It’s happened so often that it’s become like a running gag and inside joke for Lance and Katie.  But soon, Katie is set up on her first marriage meeting as well.

Lance tells her not to worry about it.  The meetings aren’t ever THAT serious.  I mean look he’s still single after two years!  In fact, he has one coming up in like a week.  Huh.  That’s a little coincidental.

Anyway, soon it’ll be over and then Lance can laugh at her failed love life like she does his and they can start sharing more marriage meeting nightmare stories like they usually do!  Katie hopes that what Lance says is true. Lance really hopes so too.  Both won’t ever admit to how dreadfully nervous each are for Katie’s upcoming meeting.

In fact, Lance becomes so worried that he keeps zoning out during HIS marriage meeting.  Of course, the times when he’s in the zone he’s his usual over the top, flirty self. But huh….this girl seems different. For one she’s like one of the hottest chicks Lance has ever seen.  Her names Allura apparently.  She’s the daughter to Alfor, the head of an aristocratic family living in some place called Altea that Lance has never heard of.  She has a funny and cute accent and also did he mention she was hot because like she’s really REALLY hot.  So Lance ups his ante and is even flirtier and dankier than usual.  And, unlike all other suitors before, Allura doesn’t seem out right repulsed by it.  Sure she is noticeably off put, but she sure knows how to maintain her manners. Good for her.  For a moment, Lance forgets about his worry over Katie’s marriage meeting, but soon his comes to an end and he’s back to his worrying and nervous self.

  On the day of Katie’s meeting Lance is sure that he’s going to throw up at some point due to his non-stop fretting.  He’s anxious.  Sure it barely just started about half an hour ago, but ANYTHING can happen in just half an hour!  Like a murder! Or worse.  An arranged marriage!  He’s so worried that he’s taken completely off guard when his mother wraps him in a bone crushing hug.  Needless to say, she’s very very excited to share some news with Lance, but she can’t do it here oh no, no, NO!  Absolutely not!  So she leads him to his father’s study where, upon entering, Lance is startled and greeted by the throwing of confetti on his face and congratulations from a couple members of his large family.  His father envelopes him in a hug and Lance is very confused as to what is going on. At this his father explains he’s just received a letter from Alfor—yknow the man from the marriage meeting? Allura’s father?  Yes him.  Well Lance’s father just received a letter regarding the outcome of the meeting and…

They have accepted to go through with the arranged marriage! Lance is officially off of the bachelor’s list now and his family couldn’t be happier (and very very relieved that Lance managed to pull it off this time).

Lance…..Lance needs to process this.

  Meanwhile, Katie’s meeting is going by smoothly.  I mean she hasn’t really said a word since entering and it’s mostly her father doing the talking, but uh hey maybe that’s a good thing ykno look disinterested and uninteresting maybe Keith will take a pass. Keith.  Keith, was the possible future fiancé.  I mean, soon to be ex-suitor.  Yes.  Optimism Katie, optimism.  Except….maybe he won’t mind the fact that she’s silent.  I mean, she hasn’t said much but compared to Keith, she may as well be a parrot.  The boy didn’t even verbally greet her but just did so with gestures.  She thought perhaps he was mute, but no he did speak exactly two words and that was to tell her father thank you for his invitation. Perhaps he’s selectively mute, who knows, Katie isn’t really inclined to find out.  The more distant she appears the better.  So when Katie’s father and a representative of Keith’s family momentarily leave to retrieve something from Mr. Holt’s office the short lone time between Katie and Keith is filled with awkward silence, vague attempts at light conversation, followed by even more prolonged awkward silence.  Well at least he’s handsome Katie will give him that.

Soon the meeting is over and Katie is finally able to breathe a sigh of relief.  She hopes that this meeting was as nerve wrecking and terrible for Keith as it was for her.  She needed to relax.  She needed to talk to Lance.

Upon exiting her house on her way to the McClain residence, Katie was surprised to see Lance on his way to hers.  Seems she’s not the only one needing a distraction.  They hang out as they usually do.  Katie talks to Lance about her marriage, mentions how awkward it was and how she thinks Keith will call it off if he knew what was good for him, and Lance laughs but can’t hide the distant look in his eyes. After a lot of prodding Lance finally tells Katie what’s on his mind.  He tells her that his last marriage meeting wasn’t as terrible as he thought and by this time next year Lance will be a married man.  Katie….Katie needs to process this.

Yes, a lot can happened within a half hour.

  The pair’s sodden feelings over Lance’s engagement only heighten when, within the next week, the Holt’s receive a similar letter in regards to Katie’s meeting.  It seems Keith wasn’t off put by the awkward silence after all.  Now Lance and Katie are engaged to be married.  To other people that is.  And their families couldn’t be happier.  So happy that they had a get-together to celebrate their children’s upcoming alliances.  Yes, it was a festive night.  All but for the two it was meant for.

Try as they might (which they really didn’t do) Lance and Katie couldn’t hide their personal displeasure to their current situation from each other. Neither wanted to get married, but no one else but them knew about that.  They couldn’t exactly call off their weddings themselves (they’ve had to have had a REALLY good reason seeing as the families they were marrying into were kinda important and would really help establish further security for both the McClain and Holts and they know it means a lot to their respective parents) (also, neither was about to admit their feelings for the other so can’t use the whole “but we’re in LOVE” trope to try to get their parents to end the engagement).  So Lance and Katie were in a sticky situation.  Unless they somehow found a way for Allura and Keith to call off the wedding without making it obvious by deliberately being rude or annoying to them--gotta maintain good relationships after all--they’ll be saying vows in the months to come.  But what lowkey way could Lance and Katie get rid of Allura and Keith? I mean it’s not like they could make them fall in love and end up marrying each other instead!

Oh wait….

That…..that wasn’t a half bad idea…..

Or so Lance and Katie thought.  And once these two schemers set their mind on something it was going to happen. So began Lance and Katie’s not-so-subtle-but-kinda-subtle attempt to bring Allura and Keith together, make them find love, and weasel out of any future marriages.

  Somewhat surprisingly, they don’t do a half bad job. Though it got tricky sometimes, convincing Allura and Keith to visit often at the exact same time wasn’t as hard as they thought it would be.  And once Lance and Katie started noticing that Allura and Keith were getting along swimmingly it became that much easier to hang out altogether.  So good was their plan that within three months Allura had fallen deeply for Keith and Keith seemingly had a crush on her too, much to the delight of Katie and……Lance?

Lance…….Lance didn’t look as happy as he should have been. And he had a sinking feeling he knew why.

  You see, though Katie and Lance managed a lot of get-togethers so that their fiancés could spend some time with each other, Lance and Katie were still expected to spend some alone time with their fiancés as well to get to know each other, ykno because they were supposed to be getting married and all. So while Allura and Keith got to have some moments to themselves, so too did Lance and Allura and Keith and Katie.

Katie, determined to make their plan work, tried to avoid having much alone time with Keith in order to keep his emotions focused on Allura and also to establish distance with her relationship with him.  And she’s been rather successful.  Keith knows more about her dog rover than he does of Katie herself.

Lance on the other hand, was a lover boy.  He’s friendly and likes to be friendly with everyone!  And it would be rude of him to ignore Allura while she’s visiting, after all she comes from a long ways away.  So during their moments alone, Lance is friendly with Allura and the two start to become close.  Allura finds that Lance isn’t as gross as she originally thought and is quite the contrary.  He’s funny, thoughtful, and kinda smart.  Lance well….he already thought Allura was a very attractive person, but it takes more than looks to have him falling all over himself. And well……Allura had a really kind personality, she could be snarky sometimes but was also very thoughtful, and she was super tall and her eyes would crinkle in the most cutest way when she tried to not laugh at one of his corny jokes and don’t get him started on her VOICE-

Fuck.

Lance might have actually fallen in love with is fiancé.

Way to ruin the plan, Lance.

  But he couldn’t say anything to Katie about his feelings.  I mean, just a couple weeks ago he was SURE that Katie was the ONE and yet…here he is….not….in love with Katie anymore. Or at least, not as deeply as he is with Allura.  But Katie really wants out.  He can tell by how excited she gets when she sees their plan working, how she talks about all the stuff she and Lance will do after this is all over, how much she hates going over marriage details and schedules with her parents.

Lance can’t do that to Katie.  He can’t actually MARRY his FIANCE.  That’ll be selfish of him.  So as Katie continues to make more situations where Allura and Keith can be alone together Lance merely smiles, plays along, and looks the other way.

  But this is Lance.

And Katie’s known him since they were in diapers. She could read him better than she could read herself.

So it doesn’t take long for her to notice that something’s wrong. Lance won’t budge which worries her more because that means something’s REALLY wrong.  She hasn’t had had to resort to snooping and becoming extra alert to her surroundings and of what Lance is doing since she was seven and Lance accidentally let her old dog out of the house, and it got hit by a fast moving carriage.

So Katie paid extra attention and…..she really hoped she was just imaging most of the absurd conclusions she was coming up with.  But after seeing Lance’s yearning and somber eyes while he watched Allura stroll through the McClain’s garden she couldn’t ignore her denial anymore.  Lance was in love.  And not with her.

But a part of her still wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.  And maybe, she hoped that he could dissuade her fears.  But when she confronted Lance with her conclusion, and Lance made a horrible attempt at pretending it wasn’t true, it was all that Katie needed to know just how correct she was.

 She cried herself to sleep that night.

  The thought of an arranged marriage was truly something Katie never seriously saw herself doing in her future.  Sure she knew that when the time came there was a high chance of it happening, but somehow she thought that…perhaps things would work out for her and she and Lance would get married and life wouldn’t be as soul crushing as it truly is.  Of course she knows now that that was a foolish thing to believe.  And finding herself engaged while her heart was in love with another was something very real and very much happening to her in the current moment.

Well. This sucks.

But what sucks even more is seeing Lance in misery.

You see, while Katie wasn’t feeling much better herself, she reasoned that there was still something she could do so that this mess could be slightly less messy for at least one of them.

  It came as a big surprise to Keith when Katie suddenly started to want to spend some more time with him—and no, she wasn’t just going to find a way to keep their talks short, they were going to have a honest and good ole’ fashion conversational bonding.

Though Katie might not be head over heels for Keith she can still give Lance the opportunity to end up with the person he truly loves if she lets Allura and Lance spend more time together instead of arranging for group outings.

That being said, Katie can’t help but feel sorry for Keith who seemed like he might have had a crush on Allura (though in all honesty she couldn’t really tell—he doesn’t exactly wear his emotions on his sleeves). Keith had the misfortune to get roped into this scheme and now Katie’s trying to take away whatever chance he had with Allura in hopes that Allura can come to love Lance as he does her.

God Katie’s a horrible person.  The least she could do is actually try to get to know Keith and I don’t know act friendly with him like a decent human being would do.  I mean they are still engaged.

So during their outing together Katie takes the chance to clean the slate and apologize to Keith.  Keith’s confused as to why she’s apologizing and though she doesn’t say the full truth (well you see I’m ruining your chances with Allura because I want Lance to be happy and this was not how our original plan of getting you guys to cancel the engagement was supposed to turn out but yknow that’s how life works apparently) she does apologize for not trying to get to know him and being distant.

Keith is a lot more understanding and forgiving than Katie gave him credit for.  But as she gets to know him more with each outing she realizes there’s a lot about Keith that she was really wrong about.  Sure he may not be the most approachable guy but once he starts opening up he truly is a caring, awkward, but very lovable dork.  Katie finds herself really enjoying their outings together and Keith…..Keith does too.

In fact, he didn’t think he’d enjoy spending this much time with Katie.  He figured that perhaps they just weren’t meant to have a close relationship, and their marriage was going to be strictly business, and he was…okay with that.

But my GOD is he happy that that is FAR from the truth, and that he and Katie can actually become close friends.  Really close friends.

They share a lot of interest, can talk for hours on the most absurd topics, both have a snarky sense of humor and for someone so small she really doesn’t back down from any sort of challenge.  And if Keith was completely honest with himself, Katie is a sight for sore eyes as well.  The way her eyes sparkle when she talks about something she really likes, her brown fluffy hair that he imagined felt like soft alpaca fur, the freckles that sprinkled her skin like constellations, God Katie was incredible.

And just like that Keith realized he’s fallen in love with is soon-to-be-wife.

Wow…..life…could actually be kinda nice sometimes….Wow….

  But while Keith is happy in his engagement the same could not be said for Lance and Allura.  While Lance has taken the opportunity of the sudden lack of group outings to get closer to Allura, try as he might it’s evident that the girl is still longing for Keith.

Knowing what he has to do, Lance feels he needs to have a meeting with Katie to discuss the current situation of their plan.

  However, with every growing moment Keith spends with Katie, Keith becomes more embolden to fully express how much he cares for her.  Until, finally, he does it.  It’s not as romantic as he’d hoped it would be but his emotions get across and now Katie knows that Keith only has eyes for her. Which makes the meeting with Lance so much more agonizingly painful for Katie.

Because, you see, Lance wants to continue their plan and finish it soon.  He wants Allura to be happy and he knows that could only happen if she’s with Keith. Lance finally comes clean about his feelings for Allura and tells Katie of all his reasoning.  While Katie admires Lance’s selflessness and tries to calm her heart down for believing that perhaps there may still be a chance for her to be with Lance (her feelings have yet to change), Katie knows Keith does not reciprocate Allura’s feelings.  And Katie has already meddled with Keith’s emotions as it is.  How cruel would it be for her to try to pair him up with Allura after he’s been so open of his love for Katie?

  It’s then that Katie realizes she’s reached an ultimatum: continue with the plan and HOPE that somehow Keith returns Allura’s feelings before any wedding dates come up in time to cancel them OR stay with Keith and get married to someone she deeply cares for but does not love….OR

…..break off her wedding herself, disappoint her family, and break Keith’s heart.

Katie finds herself thinking back upon how much life could really suck sometimes.

  She takes a few days to think about it….truly analyze ALL her options and various outcomes of each.  Then does it three more times for safe measure.  

But it’s only during one of her alone outings with Keith that Katie finally decides upon what she will do.

  Lance asks her why.  Simple. Keith loves her and she does not want to break his heart.  But does she love Keith back?

…..of course…..

Lance admits that he’s a little sad that Allura won’t have the chance to be with Keith, but he’s incredibly happy that at least Katie and Keith will have a joyful and loving marriage.  Lance wishes them nothing but happiness.

Katie feels a little numb.

  Katie wonders how Lance became so selfless.  He broke off the engagement with Allura, but offered his family’s help with her family and continued connection regardless of marriage.  Katie heard it whispered by a few workers that overheard the whole ordeal.  Apparently Lance would rather let Allura go to do and be with whomever she wanted to be with than stay and be unhappy.  Just because she couldn’t be with the one she loved (Keith) didn’t mean she had no other option.  Lance would always love her, he said, and if one day she finds herself to truly feel the same she’ll always know where to find him.  How beautiful.  It made Katie want to vomit.

  But now she finds herself in a wedding dress and it’s the most magnificent thing she’s ever seen.  She sure it outshines her in beauty, but perhaps that is for the best.  And the wedding.  OH the wedding!  It was AMAZING!  Though Keith’s family was small and the McClain’s and Holt’s external connections were limited there was no shortage in extended family members showing up along with their guests.  Never had Katie seen so many people packed into her backyard.  She was sure the food wouldn’t last beyond an hour.  The cooks were doing the Lord’s work.

Everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives.  Lance was there of course, being his usual dorky self.  And even Allura paid a visit to give the happy couple her congratulations (though she didn’t stay long, both Katie and Lance noted).

But the happiest person the whole day was undoubtedly the groom himself.  For a man who tends to repress his feelings, Keith’s happiness was quite easy to read for even a complete stranger.  Not exactly bursting at the seams but enough to know that this marriage was more than just an arrangement to him.  Even his family, who were all quite reserved in their own right, seemed quite content with the wedding.

  Yes, everyone was pleased.

As was Katie.

For when she saw the ones she cared for be happy then she was happy.

  And after the festivities were over and the newlyweds were enjoying some time together, Katie thought optimistically to herself that perhaps one day she could learn to love Keith as well.  That maybe this marriage will be more than an arranged marriage.  

And that maybe she’ll truly be happy one day too.

  Extra facts:

The reason why Lance and Katie haven’t been set up in an arranged marriage between themselves is because their families want to branch out and establish more connections to other families.  Though they deeply treasure the bond and history between the Holts and McClains and will always be the closest of allies the times have been hard on both families.  Businesses falling through, political tension, shaky economic status.  So, both families agreed it’d be best to try to establish connections outside of each other to further strengthen themselves and, in turn, their closest ally as well.  It’s a win/win for everybody.  Except Lance and Katie.

That’s not to say that their families would out right refuse a union between the two if they were to passionately be upfront with it, but seeing as neither Lance nor Katie seem to show anything beyond family love for the other (read: do a really go job hiding their feeling for each other), Lance’s overzealousness when it comes to marriage meetings, and neither’s refusal to do marriage meetings (they know of their families positions and wish to make outside connections so they feel a little obligated to do these meetings even if they hope none of them ever take ((and maybe someday they’ll be able to admit their feelings to the other and hopefully those feelings will be returned and they can get married and do away with all these silly meetings)) Lance and Katie’s families just assume their feelings are platonic, viewing each other more as siblings than anything else.

Katie is referred to as Pidge by Lance and her brother Matt.

The reason Allura accepts the arranged marriage is due mostly for her families’ financial crisis at the moment.  Though the McClains are not the richest folk they ARE still well off (at least doing much better than Allura’s family).  Coupled with the fact that this will give Allura’s family connections to an area in which they have none, Allura felt it be the right thing for her to do.

Keith’s acceptance of the marriage stems from the pressure his family puts on him to bear offspring to carry on the family name.  The number of members in his family has been dwindling and has reached critically low levels.

[stanathieluris]

The night Richie Tozier almost died

summary: in an attempt to cheer up Bev, Richie takes her and Stan to the roof during a house-party and things get Emotional.

author’s notes: characters are aged up (17/18 years old)

warnings: underage drinking, swearing

this took me an embarrasing amount of time to write i am so sorry... anyway, as i said before, english is not my first language so my writing can sound kinda off. if you squint you might see a bit of stenborough. enjoy! like! reblog! comments and feedback is v welcomed!

read part one here where Eddie blabbers about Richie and Bill is just #done with his oblivious friend

At exactly 1:47 a.m. of a very warm May friday night, Richie Tozier almost died.

And while he loved to tell the story in such a dramatic way, starting it with the sentence “Hey guys remember the party I almost died?”, the events didn’t happen in such manner.

The whole ordeal started when he saw his best friend, Beverly Marsh, crying in the kitchen floor of some kid that didn’t even like him or his friends. To be completely honest, they had crashed the party, being that the only way they had managed to get in any the past year.

The girl wasn’t bawling, but Richie knew her enough to know when something wasn't entirely okay with his fiery partner in crime.

“Bev, hey Bev, you okay there?” he asked, crouching so he could meet her eyes. Her face was buried on her hands, and despite the havoc wrecking around them, Richie could hear her sobbing.

“Beverly” he insisted, grabbing her hands gently. The girl looked at him with her translucent blue eyes, red-tinted and stained with black eyeliner “Hey, hey, Bevvie, girl, dude, buddy, you okay?”.

“Yeah, yeah” she mutters “It’s just, I was with Stan and he left to get… I don’t even fucking remember where he went… And I was alone and Greta and her fucking bitches came up to me and, shit, I know I shouldn’t let them get to me, but they were saying bad thing about you guys too and I just-”.

“Hey, Marsh, list- no listen” Richie interrupted the nervous blabbering of his friend “I know it fucking sucks letting Greta get to you, but don’t worry, you can’t help it if she’s a dumbass”.

Bev chuckled and freed one of her hands to wipe the tears from her eyes, smearing the black eyeliner even more, yet smiling.

“Tell you what, I brought my mom’s flask, wanna find Stan, sneak onto the roof, take some shots and talk some shit about them?” he asked with a half smile.

“You always know the way to my heart Trashmouth” Bev chuckled.

“Then let's go find Uris, Marshmallow” he said, standing up and offering the girl his han.

Bev rolled her eyes at the nickname, but smiled and took it.

"Fucking top that Uris!".

Bev had downed her fourth shot and looked straight into Stan's eyes. She drunk-giggled as she dropped onto the roof, sprawled, next to Richie.

"Way to fucking go Marsh!" the Trashmouth cheered, putting his arm around her shoulders and clearly not in a better state than the girl. He was the one who had taken the most shots out of the three of them, but, in Stan's words 'it isn't fun if you aren't a shitty lightweight like me'.

"Gimme that Beverly" Stan snached the flask, halfway through already, and took a long sip. The rum burned his throat but he didn't care.

"So" Bev started, dropping her head onto Richie’s lap "who are we dissing tonight?".

It was very common for the three of them, whenever they hanged out to gossip and complain about all the people who either bullied them or were straight up dumbasses at Derry High School. And the list wasn't by any means short.

"Oh my god let me start" Stan said, sitting cross-legged gracefully in front of his friends. Richie was surprised his friend still had that panache and flourished movements even when drunk.

"Spill! Spill! Spill!" Bev chanted, her face all smile and giggles. Richie was glad she wasn't crying anymore, he didn’t like when she had to go through stuff like that by herself.

"Remember Tommy whatshisname? Big dude, baseball team, blond hair?".

"Larson?" Richie asked

"Straight as a nail?" Bev added.

Stan snapped his fingers "Bingo. Well, guess who Bill caught staring at his ass last practice?".

"Oh my god" Bev laughed, almost delighted "Oh my God! Shut up".

"No fucking way" Richie exclaimed, joining the fit of laughter of the girl.

"Are you sure that Bill wasn't imagining things?" Bev asked, her words slurring.

"Who the fuck said I was done Beverly?" Stan smirked at his two friends.

"Drop the full name Stanley" she bit back. He winked at her.

"I also told Bill that he might be imagining things. I mean" he scoffed "you are in a locker room, it's a small space, full of boys, changing clothes, showering, ..." he drifted off, a light blush creeping on his cheeks.

"Uris! Focus!" Richie exclaimed, snapping his fingers and bringing him back to the real world “Holy fucking shit, I forgot how gay you get thinking about the baseball team".

"Not the whole baseball team" Bev smirked.

“Shut the fuck up you asshats” Stan brushed them off, but the blush from his face didn’t fade.

“Oh my god Rich, he’s blushing a fuck lot”.

“He indeed is my fair lady” the Trashmouth laughed, his fake cockney accent coming out slurred and disastrous.

“Whatever, I won’t tell you the end of the story then” Stan mumbled “It kinda concerns you Tozier”.

“Please tell me Larson asked for Richie’s number” Bev smiled widely.

Richie started to laugh, rolling on his side, his body approaching the edge of the roof precariously.

“I mean” Bev liked the little devious smile on Stans face as he talked “he asked Bill for a number, but not Richie’s”

The other boy lifted his head to look at his friend in the eyes, but before the Trashmouth could ask anything, Stan spoke.

“He asked for Eddie’s”.

Everything happened quite fast. One moment Richie was laying on the roof and the next he was standing up. Sort of. The alcohol had payed his toll on him and although he managed to get on his feet at the speed of light, he lost his balance and tilted backwards over the edge of the roof. His stomach flipped as he felt gravity pulling him backwards, but thankfully, two pairs of hands fell on him, Bev’s at his knees and Stan’s grabbing his hoodie.

“Fucking ass!” Stan bellowed, pulling him forward.

Richie fell on top of the other boy, and the both of them stumbled onto Bev, forming a very awkward pile.

“Tozier what the actual fuck!” Stan exclaimed.

“Holy shit don’t need to scream on my ear Uris”.

“You deserve it! For being a clumsy asshat!”.

“Richie what the hell! You could’ve fallen off the fucking roof”. Bev said, shoving the two boys off of her.

“Yeah dude, what’s gotten into you?” Stan asked, knowing the answer already.

Richie dumbly opened his mouth, closed it and opened again, but he was unable to give a direct answer.

“Did Bill gave Tommy Eddie’s number” Richie asked innocently. Was the night getting hotter or it was just him?

“Tozier, your crush is showing” Bev laughed, her worried expression long gone.

“What?! Me? A crush? On Eddie Spaghetti out of all people?” he scoffed, the red tint of his cheeks becoming more prominent. Yep, definitely just him. “What are blabbering about? I don’t have a crush on him? Why would I?”.

Bev and Stan gave Richie amused looks as he sputtered a cascade of excuses, but he realised his attempts to deny his feelings towards the hypochondriac were fruitless. He groaned and dropped backwards, still too close to the edge of the roof.

“C’mon Rich, you seriously can’t believe that we, out of all the Losers, wouldn’t notice” Bev said rolling her eyes.

“Not like the rest haven’t figured it out” Stan muttered. Bev smacked him in the back of the head “Jeez Bev”.

“And here I thought I was being sneaky” Richie sighed.

“Yeeeeah, people usually don’t gush about their best friend like you do” Stan laughed.

“Or look at him from the distance like he has hung all the stars in the sky” Bev added.

“Or sigh oh-so-dreamy in class staring at him”.

“Or, you know, stare at his ass like, all the time”.

“Or…”

“Okay!” Richie exclaimed “Holy fuck guys you make me sound like I am in love with him or something”.

There was a heavy pause, Stan and Bev staring at him brows arched.

“Whatever! So what, I think Eds is cute! Fucking sue me!” he exclaimed “Not that it matters honestly”.

“What do you mean Rich?” Bev asked.

“It’s just” he started, but groaned again, words getting stuck on his throat “Ugh! It’s nothing Bev, it’s shit, it doesn’t matter”.

Stan and the girl stared at their friend. The moment would’ve been full of uncomfortable silence if it wasn’t for the roaring laughters and ridiculously loud music from the party. Without saying a word, Bev crawled towards her friend, her movements slow and clumsy from the alcohol, and lied next to him. Stan looked at them before doing the same.

“You can talk to us Rich, ya know that right?” Bev spoke softly, making Richie smile. He held her hand and she squeezed ot reassuringly.

“Yeah, what Marsh said” Stan added, grabbing awkwardly the boy’s free hand. The Trashmouth half-scoffed half-laughed. He knew Stan spoke more through actions than words.

“I know guys it’s just…” he drifted again, the knot of his throat growing “I really like him”.

“Yeah no shit” he practically could hear the eye-roll on Stans comment “Ouch! No need for kicking Marsh”.

“Zip it Uris” she said “If you like him, tell him Rich” her tone softened and gave Richie another reassuring squeeze.

“That’s fucking easier said than done Bev” the boy sighed “He might, and he’ll probably, say no anyway”.

“Why would he say no dumbass?” Stan asked.

“Because I’m shit! Because, I don’t know, he can fucking do way better than the shitty no-good school punk!” he rambled, unable to stop “Someone with better parents and better grades and better plans for the future and clothes that aren’t ripped at every goddamn seam! Like, have you seen my jeans lately? They’re motherfucking trash! It’s embarrassing to wear them to school”.

His voice breaked the more he talked, and both Bev and Stan decided to ignore the half-sob that was forming of their friend’s voice.

“I’m like, white trash, and he deserves someone that has more than love to offer” he croaked, feeling truly pathetic.

It happened suddenly and Richie felt even more like crying. Both Stan and Bev wrapped their arms as best they could around him and held on tight. They stood there for a couple of minutes, feeling the vibrations from downstairs rumble on their backs.

“Never” Stan voice break the silence “Like, fucking ever, say that about yourself. I will beat you to fucking pieces with my binoculars if I ever hear you’re talking shit about yourself Richard Tozier”.

Richie chuckled, and more tears threatened to come out of his eyes. Hell, his glasses were already fogged, but he didn’t want to let go of his friends to clean them.

“Yeah” Bev muttered, sniffling “What Uris said”.

“Oh my god Bevvie, don’t cry” Richie said “If you cry imma start crying too”.

“Jesus fuck, we are getting way too emotional for being the stone-cold bitches of these god forsaken town”.

“You are the only one of us that looks like you’ve got a stick up your ass Uris” Bev joked.

“I bet he wished he had other thing up his ass” Richie added.

“And here I was, reassuring you and you pay me back by being a dick” Stan muttered.

They broke into light laugher again, the three of them teary eyed and holding onto each other as if they life depended on it. Lying there, Richie breathed every single aspect he could from that moment. Like the way Bev drew small circles on his knuckles. Or how Stan was still holding tightly to his hoodie, as if he was going to fall again off the roof. The way their feet intertwined, polished shoes, beat up sneakers and combat boots mixed together. The faded stars he could see through his misty glasses. How Stan’s curls tickled him on the cheek, the same way Bev’s breathing did on the nape of his neck. He felt like time itself had stopped.

“Rich” Bev softly spoke.

“Yeah Marsh?” he asked

“Ask Eddie out”.

“But-”.

“No but’s asshat” Stan scoffed “just do it”.

“But-”.

“I said no but’s!”.

“-what if he says no?”.

Kinda unlikely Bev wanted to say.

“Then he loses the best dumbass in Derry”.

“Jeez, thanks Stan”.

“No prob”.

Richie laughs, holding them even little bit tighter.

“Guys” Bev interjects “I don’t want to break The Moment, but we are literally an inch away from falling off the roof”.

The boys laughed, and moved away from the edge.

taglist : @richietoaster @turtleneckrichie

[luirlar]

HOLY SHIT. Kara has John, John has bombs attached to his chest, they have a virus of some sort. Flashbacks and present time events introduce a new big bad while sending off an old one. Everything looks very big and very bad in this episode, and it is great to watch. And I get a lot of John x Harold feelings, which is great to witness, I hope. This one is long but I am pretty happy with it. Buckle up.

I have watched the whole show before, so SPOILERS MIGHT HAPPEN. Big spoilers will be blanked out but references and irrelevant spoilers are going to be out in the open.

Last bits on POI: After months of looking for The Man in the Suit (I cannot ever overstate how ridiculous this nickname is to me), Donnelly finally catches on and catches up with Carter and Reese. He is ready to bring them to jail and then Kara Stanton rams a literal goddamn truck into the plot (and my heart), shoots Donnelly, and sedates John.

The episode opens exactly the moment where we left off. Carter’s phone rings: it’s Finch. Carter tells him that she thinks the woman who took John used to be his CIA partner, and just as she says this, Finch enters the latest number he’s received from the Machine: Kara Stanton’s. So what the hell is up? A fucking ride that awaits us in this episode and the mess that it triggers, which directly and indirectly carries on till the series’ end. It’s that big of a bad, friends.

John wakes up in a bus, next to Mark Snow (who we last saw warning Joss about a Big Thing “She” Has Planned), opposite to Kara, and he strapped to a bomb vest.

Kara: I know you don’t care about yourself, John, but you’ve got enough semtex strapped in you to spread a lot of misery around.

Gosh. Kara Stanton makes me melt every time she opens her mouth. So cold, so evil, so calm and certain about the absolute havoc she can wreck.

John: So what’s this really about? Kara: This is about three dead little spies in a brave new world. It’s about the afterlife, John, and us negotiating our places in it.

Well, that sounds like a good, wholesome time.

Carter is called to the crime scene where Donnelly was shot, where she was but isn’t telling. Fusco suspects something is up, but Joss can’t tell him squat. I always feel a special appreciation for Fusco. He knows the least about what’s going on at all times, and he knows people hide shit from him, and yet he always helps. He has faith in the team, and I love him for it. They all set out to find out more about Kara and what she might be up to, which is difficult, what with her being declared dead a few years back and all.

On the first stop of their #assassin #throwback tour, John and Mark are supposed to pick up a hard drive, but the sellers try to get smart about the payment, so Kara gives out a kill order. Both Mark and John hesitate, so Kara shoots the sellers for them. Wait, she was in the room with them? No, no. From a rooftop, across the street, with a sniper rifle. She gives no shits whatsoever.

*fans self*

[2010] We are taken back to a scene we’ve seen before, where Alicia Corwin and Mark Snow send Kara and John to Ordos to retrieve the laptop, and where Mark tells both Kara and John separately that their partner has been compromised and needs to be killed. We also get a repeat of the scene where John refuses to shoot Kara, Kara shoots John, and John connects the dots about them being set up. We again see John running away from the building just in time to escape the missiles sent to bump them both off, but then… we see Kara wounded, and being picked up by some sort of uniformed squad. She wakes up in a hospital-looking place, and an Ominous British Man (not yet named) greets her. He tells her that he knows who she is and why she’s there and he doesn’t need her to talk, and that they’ll get along great. Not creepy at all.

John and Mark’s second stop is knocking out some ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) agents and impersonate them. In what? A fake bomb threat in an office building. Because Kara couldn’t resist the joke, apparently. I too love joking around while strapping explosives to my former coworkers. John sends a text to Finch indicating he is carrying explosives, and the text allows Finch to know where he was, and who the phone belonged to.

Once inside the building, Kara tells the bomb bros to go to a super secured floor that doesn’t exist in the building’s public records. We know this because Carter, Finch and Fusco are good at detective-ing. Because the episode was not stressful enough, Kara informs us that the signal might be bad inside whatever super secured secret place the boys are headed to, so she puts a timer on their bomb vests.

[2011] We’re back in the hospital-looking place, but some time has passed (I hadn’t noticed the time stamp! This episode and plot point makes more sense to me now!).Ominous British Man babbles about the Titans – Kara’s bosses are the old gods, Kara is part of the new gods, the old gods wanted to eat her because they were afraid of her, or something – and Kara is done with his shit.

Kara: If I break your neck, can I go back to watching TV? She may be tired and is probably being tortured, but she can still sass people out like a champ.

Ominous British Man clarifies that he doesn’t work for any government, and that money is not his business, information is. He offers Kara the name of the person he labels as responsible for the state she is currently in, the person who sold the laptop Kara and John were sent for. (How badly did they psychologically torture and manipulate Kara for that to make sense to her, that the person responsible for her misery is not who gave the kill order, but the person who sold a laptop that she knows nothing about?! Anyway.) In exchange for what, Kara (and we) ask?

Ominous British Man: Do you remember how the Titans were finally killed? Before they could eat their youngest child, Zeus, he wrapped a boulder in his swaddling clothes, then watched as his father choked on it.

What the hell is this Brit on? It’ll all become clear in time (or not, I had to think really hard and read some wikipedia shit to get it, but I’m not a greek mythology buff so maybe you know exactly what this means right now.). He speaks in very obnoxious riddles. I wish Kara would have broken his neck to be honest.

Carter and Fusco are at the building where John and Mark are, but downstairs. John manages to quickly call Finch, and they both figure that since theyre basically in a DOD cyber weapons lab, Kara is probably trying to steal a virus that would shut down the entire internet, or specific networks, or something. She’s stealing something big, that’s for sure.

Unless… Unless John is the most predictable broody white knight in the world and Kara is a cold-hearted bitch who knows him too well. Kara knew John wouldn’t follow orders, would assume Kara wanted to steal something, and would erase all the drives with all the Very Bad Viruses.

Kara didn’t want any of the Very Bad Viruses, because she had a Very Very Bad one. Or at least, a very specific one that she needed to delete the others for. I don’t know how any of that works, can you tell? In any case, she unleashes the virus into the world, sets the timer of the bomb vests to 5 minutes, and skedaddles. But not before John tries his usual emotional “you don’t have to do this, we can hold hands and make the world better together” shtick, and Kara stares dead in his eyes with zero emotional response. Yikes, John, your white knight moves are starting to rust or something.

Mark tries to make a run for his life, with less than 5 minutes to do whatever he can. And then, then All Of The Feelings happen: As John is trying to head to the rooftop (cause his broody white knight redemption arc has to end in a fucking rooftop, right?) to try to hit as little civilians with his explosion as possible, Carter gets to his floor.

Carter: You don’t have to do this. John: You know I do. ‘Cause you’d do the exact same thing.

I mean, I mock his broody self-sacrificing shtick a lot, but it is absolutely the thing to do when you know you’re in all likelihood gonna blow up. And I think it’s because John’s character rarely shows emotions in his face, on purpose, but when he does, it cuts through my misandrist soul and makes me want to hug him and then punch him for making me Feel Things. Between that, and the amazing score as per POI usual, and Taraji’s always amazing performance, I am More than a Lil’ Stressed™. John heads to the rooftop, ready to die. Show’s over folks. But then again…

Finch: So I see I’m not too late…

So, you see, when John warned Finch over the DOD phone to stay clear of the building, what Finch actually heard was, “get as close to me and the building and the fucking bomb as humanly possible”. John tries to stop Finch by… pointing a gun at him? Which, for one, is rude, and more importantly, ridiculously useless in this context.

John: This is my past catching up to me. This doesn’t concern you. Harold: But this moment does. I’m not leaving you, John. So can we please stop wasting time?

Husbands that hang ’round bombs together, stay together. Unless their remains are scattered by the explosion. Sorry. Finch has 3 attempts at one of five combinations. Yikes. And the first one fails.

John: … Sorry.

In the meantime, Kara is making her way out of the building and calls Ominous British Man, who is still not given a name, a purpose, a boss, or a plan. Just a vague creepy Big Bad feel. He carries on speaking in riddles, making grand empty statements, and Kara cuts him off and asks for the goddamn name of the person who sold the laptop and indirectly sent her to Ordos, the name she went through all this trouble to get. Ominous British Man tells her a name is all he has, since this person apparently doesn’t exist in any known database. She jots down a name in a piece of paper. *INTRIIIIIGUE*

Back up in the rooftop, everyone is about to cry. Except me, I’m already crying.

John: I’m pretty sure I’d be dead already if you hadn’t found me. Harold: It’s hard to say. John: Not really.

This is a beautiful moment, except… why does Harold say it’s hard to say? It’s pretty straight forward to say, no? (Except… wait for it.) Harry looks like he is about to cry, which I guess one would if a bomb was about to blow up literally on the face. Goddamn, though, Michael Emerson is an acting champ. This is, on paper, a super contrived moment, but they make it work for me. In a completely unrealistic cliche moment that is only made bearable because the alternative would have been Captain America and his sugar daddy dying, Finch deactivates the bomb on the third and final try, 7 seconds before it is set to detonate.

We’re taken back to Kara’s car, and something is beeping. Her backseat. That has Mark Snow in it. He decided to do something positive (in-universe, negative for all Kara fans like myself) with his life for once, and take Kara with him to the sweet sweet afterlife. Goodbye, you sexy Big Bad motherfucker. John gets back to the library where Bear greats him happily, and John thanks Finch, all teary eyed. At the precinct, the FBI tells Carter that Mark Snow must have been the Man in the Suit, so they close that case. All’s good and right and there are no mysteries left to solve here. Ta-dah!

  What, you thought that was all? Sweet summer child. Did you forget Kara got the name of the guy who sold the laptop and started a whole trainwreck of events that brought us to this very episode, and in a way, brought this whole series into being? Maybe you don’t care. That’s fair. Who cares. Fuck The (Ominous British) Man.

Unless…

Mother of HECK. Yes, you read that right. Harold Finch! How? Why? When? What was that latop, then? (Sure, *now* you wanna know..!) WHAT THE FUCK?! *INTRIIIIIIGUE*

I know, I know. But the whole history of the laptop will not become clear until the second half of season 3, so you’d better get comfy with that unsettling feeling in your stomach. Aaaaand the virus Kara activated is set to go off in five months and change. *INTRIIIIGUE*.

  ** A note on Kara’s time with Ominous British Man: BIG SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4 AND 5 AHEAD ** Why do I say she was in all likelihood tortured? And that the time stamps make this episode make sense to me? Well, the first (and second) time I watched this episode< I wondered how come Kara turned so easily on her country – because remember, she always did her job, or said she did, for her country. Why would she do a job for a dubious mysterious man, a job that could endanger a lot of people? She asked zero questions for a man who was in no way her boss, or shouldn’t have been. I suspected some torturing or intense indoctrination might have taken place, but I didn’t think much of it other than “really? that easy?” But then season 5 happened. And we see how Shaw gets tortured and gaslighted and manipulated. On the one hand I’m glad we don’t get to see that, but on the other the blanks that aren’t filled make Kara seem like a godless spiteful easy traitor. Not because your bosses sending to kill you isn’t good reason to be vengeful, but it shouldn’t be for a trained, hardcore agent. Unless extreme measures were used, which they probably were. Anyway, I love talking about Kara Stanton and I love her.

Today I (re)watch: Person of Interest, 2.13 HOLY SHIT. Kara has John, John has bombs attached to his chest, they have a virus of some sort.

[foursprouthappiness-blog]

How Your Daily Routine Can Turn Into Your Biggest Enemy

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How Your Daily Routine Can Turn Into Your Biggest Enemy

Ryan Holiday Instagram

Routine and ritual are everything, including, if you’re not careful, a dangerous weakness.

A few weeks ago, I got a letter—yes, an actual letter—from an NCAA player who will probably go pro. His question was a simple one: Like many basketball players he was big on pregame rituals and routines, but he was worried that these patterns made him vulnerable to being disrupted. What if the team plane was late and he had to rush his usual warmup? What if his headphones were dead or he forgot to pack his gameday socks?

Would his competitive edge—the comfort and confidence he took from these practices—suddenly turn into a liability?

This is a perfectly reasonable concern. Because while rituals can be a source of strength to an athlete or a writer, they can also be a form of fragility. Take Russell Westbrook, who is famous for his pregame routine, which begins three hours before a game. It starts with him warming up exactly three hours before tipoff. Then one hour before the game, Westbrook visits the arena chapel. Then he eats the same peanut butter and jelly sandwich (buttered wheat bread, toasted, strawberry jelly, Skippy peanut butter, cut diagonally). At exactly 6 minutes and 17 seconds before the game starts, he begins the team’s final warm up drill. He has a particular pair of shoes for games, for practice, for road games. Since high school, he’s done the same thing after shooting a free throw, walking backwards past the three point line and then walking back to take the next shot. At the practice facility, he has a specific parking space, and he likes to shoot on Practice Court 3. He calls his parents at the same time every day. And on and on.

The point is, while this process is likely very calming and reassuring in an entirely chaotic and emotional game, it also reads like a recipe for how one might throw someone off their game. A teammate vying for Westbrook’s playing time, a competitor who will stop at nothing, or just Murphy’s Law could all wreak havoc on that system and get inside his head. All it takes is “accidentally” parking in the wrong spot, or the right insult right before a free throw to send the whole thing sideways. And what if the trainer is sick and can’t make the sandwich? Or what if the arena chapel is closed due to a leaky ceiling?

Any routine junkie can tell you what happens when your routine gets messed up: Your thoughts race. You get frustrated. You feel what is almost like withdrawals. I can’t do this. This isn’t right. Something bad is going to happen. You doubt yourself. Then all of a sudden you aren’t getting warmed up or falling into the zone as easily as you usually do.

This problem is compounded the more successful you get or the more you specialize in a certain feild, because you get used to and feel entitled to have things your way. People enable this dependence because they want you to be your best, which makes it all the more frustrating and surprising if the script is suddenly deviated from.

I came face to face with this reality with the birth of my son in 2016. A few months before he was born I was profiled for the New York Times, and as part of the article, the reporter had me walk her through my fairly extensive set of morning and daily routines (what time I got up, how I journaled, where I sat, what my workout was, etc). She remarked that it would be interesting to see how this would all hold up with a newborn. Confidently, I told her nothing would change.

Ugh.

But of course she was right—because kids are, if anything—wrecking balls for the carefully built order of our lives.

The first couple months of his life, I struggled. It actually wasn’t the lack of sleep that was the problem. It was the unpredictability of that lack of sleep. Some mornings I was up at 5am. Some at 10am. Sometimes there was a baby I was supposed to quietly take care of while my wife slept, other times we were all up, other times it was just me while they slept. Was he napping at 2pm or not at all? Did I need to get home early for his dinner and bath or was the whole schedule blown apart by something that happened earlier in the day?

All of a sudden quiet time every morning, not checking email, going for a long run or swim in the afternoon, writing from 8-12am every day—this was not possible. At least not possible to do in the same way in the same order each day.

I experienced something similar years before when my career took off. I was used to working at home and then suddenly I was on the road a lot. Lot of flights. Living out of suitcases. Meetings and events that I had to go to. But early on I could compensate for this by spacing the trips out, setting up camp in each city for a few days and approximating some version of my normal routine there. As the trips increased and I got older, this became less tenable (even more so after accumulating a wife and a kid), and my reliance on my capital-R Routine became a weakness. A couple days on the road would completely set me back. It would also make me frustrated—even though I had chosen to say yes to these opportunities.

In both cases, my cherished routines either crumbled or were blown apart. But I still had to do my job (writing) and if anything, the stakes were higher than before. Which meant I’ve spent a lot of time thinking routine ever since.

What I’ve come up with might not seem that profound but the impact has been enormous for me: It’s not about having a routine. It’s about having routines.

I no longer have a writing routine or a morning routine. I have several. I have a routine when I get up early on the farm (We go for a walk, then I write until breakfast, and then resume writing). I have a routine for when I am on the road (run or exercise early, slot writing/work in as the top priority between whatever the scheduled events for the day are). I don’t have one shirt I wear each time I give a talk, I have a set of 3-4 that I choose from. Depending on what city I am in and what time of year, I have different mornings and plans that I’ll do. When I fly, I either read, answer old emails from starred folder, or sleep. I don’t eat before I perform, but if I do, I eat the same thing. If I get interrupted and can’t journal the way I want for a morning or two, so be it—but I’ll make sure I quickly resume my old habit. And on and on.

Depending on circumstances, I have strategic flexibility. I’m not winging it, but I am not such a creature of habit that I am flustered when disrupted (or can I really even be disrupted since I am indifferent to Plan A, B, C, D, E). Think about musical scales—the notes themselves are fixed but they can be played in a limitless amount of combination. This allows the musician to improvise while still maintaining a base they can return to and derive confidence and comfort in. That’s how you want to be with your routine. Not so rigid that you can’t respond to the moment, not so free that you can do everything in the moment.

There is a line from the Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Walsh about how most individuals are like water, they naturally seek out lower ground. By that he meant that without discipline or order, we are not our best selves. Ultimately, this is what routine is about: creating practices and habits and rules that force us to be better.

Without a routine of any kind, Resistance is given too much room to operate. Doubt, chaos, laziness—if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. Routines are essential in that battle.

In creative or athletic or entrepreneurial fields, the uncertainty and stress of the endeavor makes us crave simplicity and dependability. When Russell Westbrook was asked the reasons behind his many specific, very detailed practices, he replied, “No particular reason. I just do it.” Actually there is a reason. The reason is reassurance. As a player, Westbrook is emotional, chaotic, intense. The game he plays is random, difficult and overwhelming. Doing the same things the same way at the same time, creates comfort and order as well as superior performance.

We can get addicted to that. In fact, it may actually take more discipline to be moderate in your discipline than to be insane about it. There is an interesting Michael Lewis article about the NFL kicker Adam Vinatieri who actually works at making sure he doesn’t wear the same socks twice or having too many rituals because of how easily this can descend into superstition and thus psyching oneself off. But without this work, we end up beating on ourselves for falling short.

It’s better to remember Marcus Aurelius’s line…

“When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better group of harmony if you keep ongoing back to it.”

In a way, this is what I’ve worked on most with my routines lately. Can I purposely disrupt them? What happens if I change things up? Am I still me? Am I still able to do what I do well? I want to be sure that the tail is not wagging the dog, that I am in control of the routine and not the other way around. Because the last thing you want to do is become ossified and unable to handle change.

Because life is change. Murphy’s Law is real, and you will drive yourself insane thinking you can simply outwill or white knuckle your way through the inevitable tendency for things to go exactly the way you’d rather they not go.

Discipline is a form of freedom, but left unchecked becomes a form of tyranny. So the key is the ability to rotate from routine to routine, discipline to discipline, according to the needs of the day and the moment.

Otherwise you’re not only going to be miserable…you’re an easy opponent to defeat.

Like to Read? I’ve created a list of 15 books you’ve never heard of that will alter your worldview and help you excel at your career. Get the secret book list here!  

[chesterfitness1]

Bad Fitness: Why You Do Not See Results From Your Workouts (or Diet Strategies)

33.

60.

92.

On the outside, the numbers mean nothing whatsoever. They could be a fitness center locker combination, a lottery amount, or the age when all men mature. But if you look closer, then these numbers are proof that gym programs aren’t functioning the way that they should. Or perhaps more accurately, bad fitness has come to be the standard.

Around 33 percent of the population is now obese or obese, and that amount is projected to climb

Over 60 percent of people who go to gym have trouble sticking with their program regularly for more than three weeks.

As much as 92 percent of people fail in their exercise resolutions at the close of the year.

Some may get these numbers gloomy. The truth is, the numbersare a sign of improvement and hope. Because while many experts continue to spend as much time stressing that the hunt for the workout regime or diet–research is finally discovering individuals struggle to get in shape.

And the reason is simple: an important factor is missing that impacts whether you see the kind.

Fantastic health and physical fitness books or great diet plans operate since they supply information that has been demonstrated to attain a specific goal, while it’s burning fat, building muscle, getting more athletic, or simply fostering general wellness.

So my people fail whether a training and diet program works is not. Diets work. Many types of exercise burn off calories. But certain apps are powerful for people because every man or woman can decode the code and find out how tochange behavior.

It’s time to flip the script to why Individuals are healthy and others fight to fit into their favorite pair of underwear.     It’s the key in the gym that few people address in which others fail, exactly why some people succeed on exactly the strategy, because many never grasp.

Past the calories in versus calories out equation, finding the ideal workout or number of repetitions or sets, the real breakdowns in body modification do not occur in the muscles or cells — that they happen in your mind.

Whether you understand it or not, your success is determined by your ability to stick to a number of behavioral changes which make it much easier for you to attain success on any type of program.

The two most Frequent explanations for why gym programs do not operate are:

1)   The exercise (and/or diet) was no good and filled with crap

2)   Your body stinks. Your genetics are awful. Weight can be lost by everybody and you can not.  

The truth is, the second reason–although legitimate (genetics do play a significant role)–is not a reason for your lack of success. Anyone transform and can change. Muscle gain and Weight loss are not limited to the genetically blessed.

The list of programs do not work is missing two essential elements Which Make It complete:

3)   You didn’t follow the program, were not compliant, and constantly made adjustments

4)     This program was delivered in a way that gave you no choice but failure.

It’s this fourth component which most folks overlook and never even consider, which is exactly why so many are frustrated as it’s possibly the reason for frustration and too little progress.

If you don’t inherently love eating and exercise great foods, changing to new habits requires a whole lot of mental energy. And if you do not take the strategy that is ideal, your mind can literally keep you from creating.

Rather than blaming your self, you can equip yourself with some fundamental knowledge which will make certain you mind is sufficiently powerful to haul your own body to its own new and improved look.

Bad Fitness 101: Do not rely on Willpower…

The very first rule of willpower is doing everything possible to never rely upon it. Willpower is a real thing, and it can be the reason why you head to the gym and eat meals rather than put on the sofa and eat ice cream, but it’s also the reason so many people have trouble adapting to healthy behaviours that feel overseas.

Than you would want to trust you see that you have not as much control over your behavior. That’s because anxiety and stress — emotions which are inevitable — may wreck havoc and make it difficult that you stay concentrated and push yourself to stay constant with behaviours that are new.

That is why it’s important when choosing a new strategy to know about the ways that your willpower may make it difficult for you to experience success. Rather than believing, “I must avoid all of the candy in my cabinet,” you will need to throw out all the food which you know you have trouble preventing and replace it with all the things you need to consume.

If you’ve discovered that you can not make it to the gym regularly, employ a coach and make a special request that they text you an hour prior to your session.

Willpower can be faulty, therefore building systems which direct behavior can make sure that when willpower breaks down failure is not the only option. The more structure and rigidity to the systems you build, the easier it is to plan your behaviour.

You can park your car 15 minutes if you feel that you will need to walk longer . Sure it’s inconvenient, but it is going to get the job done, right?

All too frequently we that producing change will be easy. Instead, expect that it will be difficult and simplify your job by making it easy for you to stick to your behaviours. After a while, you will change as a person, and the programs won’t be needed by you .

…But Creating More Willpower Will Help (Yes, it’s potential)

The most frustrating thing about willpower is that individuals have limited amounts available. The region of your mind that regulates your willpower is situated on your prefrontal cortex. You may remember that from biology directly.

It’s the exact same portion of your mind that helps you with all your day-to-day activities, everything out of your short-term memory (What exactly did my wife let me purchase in the store?) , figuring out even staying focused, and some jobs.

The point isthat that the cortex that is pre-fontal is occupied constantly. So whenever you take on a new behavior–especially one that is as big as getting in shape, exercising, and eating better–it’s like having a huge job dropped on your lap and being told everybody else in the office is too busy to assist.

The result is that desired activities–if new–could be quite (very) difficult to execute. In reality, it’s greater than your mind can handle, meaning you default to old or undesirable behaviours.

Here your mind could be. In a study in Stanford, two groups have been provided a number to remember. 1 group required to bear in mind a two-digit sequence, whereas the other needed to remember 7 digits (Both short term memory activities). The groups went for a walk. In the end of their walk, they had been offered a choice of bites: chocolate cake or Fruit. (This sort of difficulty might sound familiar.)

What happened? People who needed to bear in mind the 7-digit amount were two times more inclined to dig into the cake rather than opt for the fruit.

Researchers refer to this as “cognitive load.” The more space you are taking up in the prefontal cortex, the tougher it would be to make sure decisions. That’s why you need to prepare yourself so that you have sufficient willpower and prepare accordingly.

This is one reason why resolutions are such a idea. If you are attempting to change 10 behaviours in exactly the exact same time, it’s nearly impossible for you to succeed. Your mind will not possess it, and,  because of this, you will be more inclined to find yourself in December eating cake–and not because you are observing your new body.

Rather than just taking on too many projects or listing off objectives, break that down to habits and then it’s best to concentrate on one effort.   Researchers in Australia found that carrying a step-by-step approach, such as building one habit at a time helps decrease cognitive load.

So rather than saying “I need to lose 10 lbs” it’s best to schedule simple behaviours which can make this possible. This might be, “I shall have an accountability team to make sure I go to the gym.” The custom is simple–establishing a team–rather than something such as assuring that you will exercise for 60 minutes five days each week.

The lesson: Be mindful that your willpower is the worker on your brain. Make the job easier and you will see your habits change along with your physique.

5 Methods to Boost Willpower

In order to ensure willpower is created by you and do not undermine your efforts, here are 5 things that you will need to look at when trying take on a new diet or workout program to modify your body, or accept a new behavior.

Produce Hope

Most of us want to think that we are able to achieve our fitness objectives, but all too frequently “false hope syndrome” causes the process harder than it needs to be. You want to set expectations of who you are and need. This goes back to construction systems.

If you know that you fall prey do not tell yourself that you can control your self and those times are over. Odds are, you are lying to your self and these positive intentions–although good–could be harmful. That’s because the moment you slip up you will not only revert back to old behaviours (not terrible when it happens once in a while–hello, most of us screw up!) But it could ruin your self-esteem. And after that happens, willpower becomes helpless and you fall off the saddle.

It’s crucial that you start out confident, but be sensible with what will be easy and what’s going to be challenging. Create a record. Separate it to two aims (easy and difficult), and for everything that is difficult, strategy certain systems which will help make certain that you’re not placing too much strain on yourself.

Believe Little (But Still Dream Big)

You need to determine what areas of your daily life ought to be cautioned less, if you are serious about your fitness objectives. Proceed and realize that making these modifications will be tough; you wouldn’t be in this position in the very first place if they were not. So make certain that you have the ability to take on the job and be prepared for the days. You can simplify this process by:

Creating aims that matter for you. This will make it much easier to battle for them.

Preparing a strategy

Creating Milestones

Searching new ways of living

All four of these elements have something in common. They’ve found that our minds operate off of old memories when mind scientists have looked at MRI’s. It’s just like a taking a specific path to do the job. After a while, it becomes you routine. But in regards to behavior, oftentimes you simply try to tell yourself, “Do not go that way!” That’s a recipe for failure. You will need to find a new path. Do not attempt to “to not do anything;” that only reinforces a pre-existing behavior. Instead, make a new line of thinking, construct a brand new pathway, also choose that path enough times until it becomes your new custom.

Establish Certain Aims

This is a lesson for whatever in life: When you set goals, make them specific and miniature. You need to make it as easy as possible to be successful. Most of us are vulnerable to some concept known as learned helplessness; you come to expect failure and fail enough. This is the basis of fitness that is terrible. And yet, frequently targets are set the likelihood of failure increases. If you make your aims almost too easy to not fail, you are on the ideal path. Reinforcement is built by this. And in almost no time, a collection of small successes will have you feeling nice and making changes.

Set up An Accountability System

Talking of comments, having a team–if it’s family friends, a coach, or workout partner–pays dividends. In reality, research in the University of Chicago indicates that your likelihood of success is associated with liability and support. Yourself: do not convince you will need to go in this. Build. And the longer that team is spent on your goals–or are you willing to be a part of your trip.

Create Incentives

If all else fails, bad fitness can be offset by building a bonus system which hacks your patterns and forces shift. Studies have proven that rewarding behaviours–especially with a monetary value–may help reinforce actions (for instance, visiting the gym) which contribute  to long-term shift. Although it may be hard to find someone to cover you to work out, you can invest your own money (in a coach or gym) that can help make you less risk aversive. But if health presence shows you anything it’s that belonging to your gym is not reason.

Your Move

“What is essential to change a man is to change his awareness of himself.” —Abraham Maslow

Now that you are aware of your mind’s part in the exercise programs, it’s your choice to execute. Build your own structure and systems to help enhance the likelihood of success. Or find an option that believes those factors all.

Whether it’s internet coaching or some other tactic that is proven, you must begin with awareness and after that move to action and preparation. Develop a structure for support that is emotional. Doing so will change your thoughts, and shortly after your body will soon followalong with

Lose Fat…The Realistic Way

A weight loss plan doesn’t need to be a world of hype and false promises.

You can now join a proven weight loss program with a personalized part of support and accountability with personalized online training.

Here you will find out how to consume, the sort of exercise required, and the actual plans to point you in the ideal direction.

READ MORE: 

How to Defy Genetics and Grow Taller Mass at Any Age

Is Intermittent Fasting Right for You?

Wish to Burn More Calories? Add This to Your Fat Loss Plan

The article Poor Fitness: Why You Do Not See Results From The Workouts (or Diet Strategies) appeared first on Produced Fitness.

from chester fitness http://www.chesterfitness.co.uk/bad-fitness-why-you-do-not-see-results-from-your-workouts-or-diet-strategies/