#to those who sent asks in like. march. i'm sorry i love you i have some ideas and things i want to draw but | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

justagalwhowrites · 1 year ago

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Hello, i love your work omg!! I had a request for another Joel angst <3 I had an idea where reader decides to sell Joel's watch in the QZ and gifting him a new one (obv not knowing the meaning behind the watch) Joel gets angry and reader becomes heartbroken and decides to look for the watch and gets rly injured by gangs in the QZ and Joel gets worried/goes after her!

OMG Hi Bestie!

You sent me this forever ago but I'm in love with this ask and then went totally overboard and ANYWAY here's the angstiest ask I've ever had, I hope you love it as much as I love you!!

The Watch

You try to do something kind for Joel but things backfire in a way you never expected.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader

CW: SMUT! Canon-typical violence. I did almost no proofing on this so... ya know. Basically no age-gap, reader is 3 years younger than Joel. No use of Y/N. Minors DNI 18+ only

Length: 12.2k (LOOK I'M SORRY OK I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME EITHER.)

March, 2010

Sometimes, you weren’t sure you knew Joel Miller at all.

It was a strange sensation, when you thought about it. You’d known him for almost three years now. You’d first met him and his brother, Tommy, when they moved in a few doors down from you in the Boston QZ. Both handsome, both around your age - Tommy a bit younger, Joel a bit older - both beat down by what the world had become.

But the last thing seemed to apply to everyone in the QZ. Life now was hard. That’s just the way it worked now, as much as you wished that weren’t the case.

You’d managed to land a relatively good job in the grand scheme of things. You were a chef before, you ran part of the kitchen at a ritzy banquet hall in the city. You were used to feeding a crowd and FEDRA definitely had a crowd to feed every day, what with guards and all.

It wasn’t much like it was before. There was very little joy in it, the process reduced to the barest minimum: Feed people so they stay alive. But you liked trying to find ways to make the food good, different from day to day. You still took pride in your work, even as the overly long days threatened to wear you down. You still wanted to try to make people happy with your work.

Which is how you ended up getting to know Joel and Tommy in the first place. You showed up at their door a few days after they moved in with a few plates of food in hand, still hot below the tin foil they were wrapped in.

“Yeah?” Joel said, voice gruff.

“Hi!” You said brightly, not taking his attitude personally. Everyone was gruff here. You were used to it. You introduced yourself before pressing on. “I hadn’t seen you both around the QZ before so I thought you might be new and want a little something while you’re settling in, maybe stretch those ration cards a bit further…”

“What’s in it for you?” Joel cut you off, looking you up and down.

It was like he was finding every flaw you’d ever been afraid you had, his eyes raking over you fiercely.

“Nothing,” you smiled, even though it felt forced. “Just wanted to do something nice!”

“Bullshit.”

“Joel, you scarin’ the neighbors?” Tommy asked, coming alongside his brother and opening the door wider.

“Not at all,” you smiled, a little more genuinely this time.

Tommy introduced himself and Joel, who just grunted at you.

“I brought dinner,” you said, holding the plates out. “Just thought you might want a break after getting here is all.”

“That is real sweet of you,” Tommy smiled, taking the plates. He lifted one to his nose and breathed deep. “Smells real good, too. You a cook or something?”

“Or something,” you smiled. “I used to be a chef but now I just cook for FEDRA. This is better than that, though. Anyway, I hope you like it and welcome to Boston!”

“Thank you,” Tommy smiled broader. “Hope to see you around!”

You started coming back to see Tommy. He was kinder, he seemed like he was happy to see you. Which you appreciated. You didn’t have many people in the QZ, it was nice to have someone who felt like a friend who lived so close.

You’d come by twice more and chatted with Tommy for a bit the next time you saw Joel at all. You knocked on their door with a loaf of bread in hand and Joel opened it, frowning at you.

“He ain’t here,” he said before you had a chance to say anything.

“Oh,” you tried not to look disappointed. It seemed like that would be rude. “Well, I made a few loaves of bread today. I thought you might want one!”

You held it out, an offering.

He took it.

“Still not sure why you’re doin’ this,” he said, almost sneering. “You just never work? FEDRA jobs that kush?”

“No,” you frowned. There was the familiar pinch of tears at the back of your throat. “No, I work 12 hours a day six days a week, I just… I like to share.”

You turned to go before you started crying in front of him, like an idiot. You’d always been overly sensitive, too open-hearted your mom had always said. It didn’t serve you well in the apocalypse.

“Wait,” he said. You stopped but didn’t turn around, tears starting to slip down your cheeks. “Shit, I… Look. I’m not trying to be an asshole, OK? Just… Haven’t exactly had many people be nice for the sake of bein’ nice in a while. Feels hard to believe. Would… would you want to come inside? Don’t exactly got much at the moment but there’s coffee. Could make us some.”

You dried your eyes on the back of your wrists and hoped he didn’t notice.

“Yeah,” you sniffed a little before turning around. “Yeah, OK. Coffee sounds good.”

It was awkward at first. Joel was stiff, clearly not used to having someone else around who wasn’t his brother. It reminded you of when you’d adopted a dog from the shelter when you were in your 20s. You brought him home to your apartment and let him off the leash and it was like he didn’t know what to do. He could recognize that this was a home, that it had a kitchen and a living room and a couch. He just couldn’t find his place in it. An interloper. Something that needed a map to help navigate a new yet familiar land.

“How are you liking Boston?” You asked after a few minutes of awkward silence.

He shrugged.

“Fine,” he said. “Still tryin’ to figure out if it’s better than out there or not.”

You nodded slowly.

“I’ve wondered that, too,” you said. “But I’ve never been out there. I’m just not sure it’s worth it to try and figure out the difference.”

He was almost kind while you were there. Well, definitely kind by Joel standards, almost by anyone else’s. But you’d take what you could get. Especially since you imagined that would be the last time something like that would ever happen.

You were wrong.

When you made pasta a few days later - the sauce surprisingly good for something thrown together from leftovers from the guards’ mess hall - you brought plates a few doors down and Joel answered. He invited you in again, even as you tried to just leave the food and go.

The conversation was unlike anything you’d ever really had before. It wasn’t small talk - Joel seemed to find that sort of conversation excruciating - but it wasn’t anything personal, either. It occupied an nebulous third arena, deep and intelligent - discussing things like depictions of the end of the world in fiction and what they’d gotten right and what you thought might becoming because of it - but without offering a glimpse into the core of the other person.

You weren’t sure what to do with any of it. But you liked it. You liked Joel.

It happened a few more times over the next several months, you ending up in an obscure conversation with Joel in his apartment every other week or so, until, one day, things went bad on your walk home from work.

One of your cooks was too sick to work - which said a lot with FEDRA breathing down your necks - and you’d stayed late at the kitchen after, getting things reset for the next day.

It was raining and cold and miserable as you trudged home, looking forward to a hopefully hot shower and your bed, when someone stepped out of the shadows as you turned a corner. .

“Well well,” the man said, making you jump. There was a knife in his hand. You swallowed. “Look what we have here. A FEDRA bitch.”

You looked around quickly, about to take off back the way you came when there was something warm and large against your back.

“Don’t even think about it,” the man’s voice was harsh.

“I’m sorry,” you said, your hands shaking. “I’ll give you whatever you want, I have ration cards, you can have them…”

You felt the man behind you laugh.

“Hear that?” He said. “She thinks we want her ration cards.”

He sneered the last words, taunting you.

“I just…” you began but the man in front of you spoke now.

“We’ll take the ration cards,” he said, stepping closer. “Take a lot else, too. FEDRA killed my sister. Seems only fair we take a few of their bitches in return.”

“Please,” you said softly. “Please, they won’t care, I’m just a cook, they won’t even notice, I’m so sorry about your sister but I’m not…”

The one behind you grabbed a fistful of your hair, yanking your head back, making you squeal. The other punched you across the face, making you cry out in shock as much as it was pain.

“Then we’ll start with you,” he said. “And take a few others, too. We’ll just take and take and take until they have to pay attention. Won’t we?”

“Yup,” the man at your back put his mouth next to your ear so you could feel his hot breath on your skin. “We could get creative with ‘er. Know you wanted to gut her but now I’m wondering if I could make her choke to death on my cock…”

Your heart was racing, beating so hard against your ribs it felt like it should be bruising from the force of it.

“Please,” you were crying. “Please, I haven’t done anything to hurt anyone, I just…”

“You’re FEDRA,” the man in front of you said, curling his hand into a fist. “That’s plenty.”

You flinched from the blow you knew was about to land, tried to remember what you could about throwing a punch, when a sharp voice broke through the night.

“Hey!”

You opened your eyes just enough to see Joel stalking up.

“The fuck you think you’re doin’?” He demanded. The man at your back released your hair. Joel didn’t slow down. He just shoved the man in front of you back. “Think you can just fuck with whoever you want around here?”

“You FEDRA now, too, Miller?” He snapped. “Fuckin’ kill you too, maybe make you suck my dick first, too…”

Joel punched him, hard, across the face. So hard the man collapsed to the ground in one hit. The man at your back grabbed you and threw you to the ground and you landed in the mud as he lunged for Joel. He dodged the man easily, throwing a punch to the man’s torso before he grabbed a knife from his belt and thrust it into the man’s stomach. He gasped at it, his mouth agape in shock as Joel pulled the blade up through his gut to his ribs before shoving him to the ground. The man he’d punched first had managed to roll over, trying to get up. Joel held up the knife.

“Try it, Pickett,” he said. “Fuckin’ dare you.”

The man stayed down. Joel nodded, bending to wipe his knife on Pickett’s pants before putting it in the sheath at his belt. He pulled his leg back and kicked the man, hard, in the stomach, right where he’d stabbed the other one.

“She’s under my protection,” Joel snapped. “Tell your fuckin’ friends. I catch any of you fuckin’ with her, I’ll kill every last one of you. Understand?”

Pickett just groaned. Joel dropped to one knee next to the man and took his face in one hand, his fingers sinking harshly into the ruddy flesh of the man’s cheeks.

“Asked you a goddamn question,” he snapped. “Expect an answer or you’re too useless to leave alive. She’s protected. Fuck with her, you die like your fuckin’ buddy. Understood?”

“Understood,” the man managed. Joel freed his face and he slumped down into the mud as Joel straightened back up.

“Good.”

He left the man in the mud before kneeling next to you.

“You alright baby doll?” He asked, his voice weirdly gentle. You sniffed and nodded. “Alright, let’s get you up, get you home and cleaned up….”

He put his hands on you delicately. You realized suddenly that Joel had never touched you before. Even when you handed him food or he gave you a cup of tea or coffee, his fingers never even brushed your own. Now, his hands were fully on you, all overly large and delicate and warm, guiding you into sitting up and then standing. Once you were on your feet, one of those large hands gingerly took your chin and turned your face this way and that, so different parts of your skin caught the light.

“Fucker got you good,” he said, shooting the man who was still alive in the puddle another glare. “C’mon. We’ll get you home, get you all cleaned up. You’ll be OK.”

He tucked you below his arm, guiding you away from the carnage behind you. You turned to look at it, anyway, the still living man crawling through the mud and the rain to his dead friend.

“Don’t,” Joel said, voice oddly gentle. He delicately tucked your head against him, making it so you couldn’t look back. “Don’t need to see that. They don’t fuckin’ deserve it.”

“You killed him,” you said, hating how small and weak you sounded. “Joel, you killed that man, he’s…”

“Barely counted as a fuckin’ man,” he muttered. “Got what he deserved. Don’t worry about it. C’mon, almost back…”

You were strangely numb as you let Joel guide you back to your building. He led you up the stairs and to your apartment door, something that shouldn’t have surprised you - you only lived a few doors down from him and Tommy, after all - you just hadn’t thought he’d ever paid attention.

“Gimme the key,” he said, his arm still around you. You obeyed, your hands still shaking as you got the key from your pocket and handed it over. He unlocked the door and flipped the lights on. You were glad you’d picked your apartment a bit the day before so it was at least neat and relatively clean - at least by QZ standards it was, anyway.

Joel lowered you gently into a chair at your kitchen table and pulled up another one next to you. You frowned.

“What are…”

“Fuckers got a good hit on you,” he said, looking at your face in the light, frowning. “Should’ve just killed them both but that don’t work as well for sending a specific goddamn message….”

It seemed like he was talking to himself, at least in part. You just watched him examine you, his face drawn, eyes tracing over your skin.

“Go get cleaned up,” he said, sitting back from you. You frowned. “You’re covered in mud. Won’t do a damn bit of good to bandage you up now if you’re a mess.”

“Right,” you said, looking down at your body. You’d almost forgotten that part of it. “Um…”

“Be here when you’re done,” he said. “Get you patched up. Go shower.”

You took a last look at him, acutely aware of the mud dripping onto your carpet, before you went to your bathroom, stripped down and climbed in the shower. You tried not to think about the fact that Joel Miller was just… sitting in your apartment.

It didn’t make any sense. It was Joel. Why had he even bothered to stop? Why had he intervened at all? He seemed to think of you as little more than a nuisance but he saved you. Killed a man for you. Told another that you were under his protection, all but told him to let the whole of the QZ know it. And now he was just sitting at your kitchen table, waiting for you to get out of the shower so he could take care of you.

You stayed under the mercifully warm water longer than you needed to trying to come up with an answer. The best thing you could come up with was that he felt like he owed you for all the food you’d brought over the last few months - though murder seemed like a high price for some bread and dinners.

In your almost dazed state, you hadn’t thought to bring more clothes into the bathroom with you, a fact that occurred to you when you were still in the shower. You groaned. At least there was a robe in the bathroom so you wouldn’t need to dart across the hall to your bedroom while wrapped in nothing but a damn towel.

But when you stepped out of the bathroom in a haze of steam and wrapped in a terrycloth robe that went almost to your ankles, Joel was standing at the mouth of the hall. He looked up at you and blinked twice, frozen where he stood. You froze, too. You weren’t entirely sure why, if maybe you felt like prey under his gaze, a rabbit hoping that stillness would keep the wolf from gutting you, or if the heat inside you made you want to be cracked open wide to the very center of you and consumed.

“Better,” Joel said after a moment before jerking his head toward the kitchen table. “In here, where it’s light.”

“But…” you tried to protest, overly aware of your own nakedness below your robe.

“It’s fine,” he cut you off. “C’mere.”

You kept your eyes on him as you obeyed, moving slow and cautious for the kitchen table, never turning your back to him. You still weren’t sure why.

The seat you were in before had been cleaned, as had your floor, no sign of the splatters of mud. Instead, there was a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and cotton balls and gauze on your kitchen table.

“Sit,” Joel ordered. You obeyed without hesitation. He took the seat close to you again, reaching to the leg of your chair and jerking you forward, the wood groaning as it scratched across the linoleum of your floor. He took your chin in his hands again and examined your skin, his face close to yours. You could smell him, the rain water on his skin, the remnants of laundry soap, the bite of something wild that you couldn’t place but seemed to blend with his rough beard and flannel shirt. “Not exactly a doctor but don’t think you need stitches. Just gotta keep you from getting infected. Unless you’d rather go to the damn clinic…”

“No!” You said it quickly, probably too forcefully. You cleared your throat. “No, I… No clinic. I don’t want to cause any issues and I don’t want them to ask too many questions…”

You didn’t want anything that would tie the dead body that was going cold in the rain a few blocks away to you or Joel.

“Good,” Joel said. He dabbed the rubbing alcohol on your cut cheek, making you hiss in pain but you held still. His fingers were surprisingly gentle, even with the rough callus of them. “You’re doin’ good, baby doll. Almost done.”

You looked at him out of the corner of your eye, his brows drawn together as he concentrated on you before picking up the gauze and taping it over the injured skin.

He released your face when he finished and sat back in the chair. You crossed your arms over your stomach, watching him for a moment. You’d always known that Joel was handsome. That was a simple fact, anyone with working eyes could see it. But it had always been a somewhat neutral statement. He was handsome but he was also cold and gruff and seemed to barely tolerate you outside of the unusual conversations you had when you brought something by and Tommy was unexpectedly absent. Even then, you’d gotten the impression that he was humoring you for Tommy’s sake, not out of any kindness or affection toward you. He was handsome but you’d never had anything more than a passing attraction to the man because thinking about how he must look at you, see you, hurt.

But it was like a switch had flipped since Joel had saved you. Like the only thing that had been keeping you from looking at him and wanting him had been the idea that he wouldn’t want you in return. Some kind of protective measure meant to save you from getting attached to something hopeless because, at the end of the world, what was the point of attachment without hope?

“Thank you,” you said when you realized you’d been quiet for too long.

Joel shrugged.

“Anyone fucks with you again, tell me,” Joel said. “Idiots should know better now, but…”

You nodded slowly. Joel watched you for a moment before getting up and going to your kitchen. He got a towel from a drawer and filled it with ice before coming back and moving his chair closer to yours and pressing it against your bandaged skin. Your fingers covered his, meaning to take the ice pack from him, but he left his hand there, cradling it to your face. Your eyes met his, all dark and deep and wounded and you swallowed, hard.

“Why did you do that?” You asked, whispering more than fully talking. Like it was a secret you were asking at all.

“Didn’t deserve what they were about to do to you,” he said. His eyes were still on yours. You were closer to him than you’d ever been before. Your hand slid from his down his arm to his elbow, fingers twisting in the fabric of his sleeve. You watched his jaw tense for a moment. “Didn’t… Couldn’t see you hurt.”

You leaned into him. You couldn’t help it, drawn into his strength and warmth, the comfort of his safety and sudden kindness so overwhelming it was a force unto itself. It was almost a surprise when you kissed him, that his lips were on your own.

The kiss was only soft and gentle for a moment. Just long enough for Joel to drop the ice pack to the floor, his hand gently holding your bandaged face, ensuring he kept your mouth at the right angle. His other hand went to your waist, grabbing you almost roughly, pulling you sharply onto his lap with a surprised squeak. You were straddling Joel and damn near naked doing it, the only thing between you his jeans and the robe that was caught between your thighs.

You froze as his fingers tightened on you, his lips growing more insistent, the heat in you building and burning but you weren’t sure what to do with it all.

But he wasn’t slowing down or pulling away. His kiss deepened and the hand that was at your waist moved to the small of your back, adjusting you so that your core was pressed tightly to his growing length in his jeans. You moaned into his mouth, involuntarily rocking your hips against his hardening cock. Your arms went around his neck and you pressed yourself closer to him, dipping your tongue into his mouth to taste him. Joel’s hips pressed up against yours and you could feel his bulge against you, the heat of him making your core tighten and ache.

Joel’s hands left your face and your back, coming around to the knot on the front of your robe. He pulled his lips from yours and looked down at your body as he untied it. He looked you in the eye - a silent request for permission, it seemed - and you didn’t stop him as his hands slid inside the fabric and pushed it away from you.

Your skin was still warm from the shower and the shock of the cool air against you made you shiver. Joel didn’t seem to notice. His hands moved almost reverently for your waist, then your breasts, his callused fingers running over your soft, smooth skin, cupping the heavy globes of flesh, running his thumbs over your pebbled nipples.

“Fucking Christ,” he breathed before kissing you again, your tits still in his hands. You pulled him closer, tighter, not caring if you seemed like some kind of rabid whore as you ground your leaking slit down on his still clothed cock.

His hands ranged over you as he all but devoured your mouth, grip getting harder, kiss getting more desperate before he separated from you once more, panting for breath, pupils blown.

“Let me fuck you,” his chest was heaving. He didn’t say it like a question or even a plea. He said it like it was a foregone conclusion, that he was going to have you and this was a formality.

You could only nod and he shoved your robe to the floor before taking you in his arms and carrying you to your couch. He ripped his shirt over his head and cast it aside before hurriedly stepping out of his boots and shoving his pants and underwear down and off, his cock full and hard, making your eyes go wide. It’s not like you were a virgin or anything, you’d been in your early 30s when the outbreak happened, you’d had your fair share of men. You’d just never seen a cock quite that thick.

Joel looked down at you on the couch, one of his hands wrapping around his length and stroking it once, twice, before gathering the precome leaking from his head and spreading it over himself.

“Joel,” you swallowed hard as he adjusted your legs and climbed between them. “I don’t think…”

“It’ll fit, Baby Doll,” he was still breathless as he jerked himself. “I’ll make it fit. I’ll take care of you, don’t worry…”

You nodded, not really sure you believed him, but the gnawing need inside you was overwhelming any resistance you felt as he lined his fat, almost purple head with your weeping hole. You sat up on your elbows, watching where he was going to enter you - or try to enter you, at least.

“Already so wet,” he ran his head up and down your slit, gathering your slick. “Make you feel so good, fill you up so good, promise baby…”

He pushed himself inside you then, a grimace on his face until his head almost popped into your tight channel, pulling a shocked gasp from you. He was hardly inside you but you could still feel the burning stretch of him. His thumb went to your clit and brushed it at first, making you shudder, before working you in tight, firm circles. He fucked just the tip of him in and out of you, keeping the pressure on your sensitive nub as he did. You rocked your hips against him, you couldn’t help it, your orgasm already closer than you’d expected it to be.

“See?” He panted. “Told you I’d take care of you.”

With that, he thrust into you the rest of the way, making your eyes go wide and a high pitched whine leave you. You couldn’t look away from where he was filling you, the stretch unlike anything you’d ever felt before. He was so big you could see the outline of him between your hips, a foreign swell where he’d made space inside you to fill.

“Joel,” you whimpered below him. You could feel him twitch inside you, like he was inches away from orgasm already. “Fuck, I need a minute, you’re too big, I need…”

“Fuck,” he groaned, tipping his head back, his hands finding your waist. But he was still inside you even though you could feel that he wanted to fuck you hard and fast. Your body adjusted, the almost painful strain of taking him fading to an overwhelming fullness that had you starting to rock your hips against him, desperate for more stimulation. “Fuckin’ Christ, gonna lose it with you doing that, Baby Doll, I need to fuck you, I gotta, won’t hurt you promise I won’t…”

You nodded but you weren’t sure it even registered with him. His grip on your waist tightened and he pulled back from you - slow at first - before thrusting all the way back in, the force of it knocking the air out of you. You groaned as Joel started to fuck you, hard and fast and needy, his thick cock stretching you with every motion.

“Knew you could take it,” he panted. “Told you I’d make it fit.”

You just whimpered, one of your hands finding your clit, the other your breast, working yourself in both places as he pounded into you. Your channel grew tighter around him, your orgasm close.

“There you go,” he kept up his almost brutal pace. “Fuck yeah, make yourself come on this cock, come all over my fuckin’ cock while I wreck this little pussy, do it, fucking come for me.”

You couldn’t help it, you came so hard you cried out with it, your hands stilling as you pulsed over Joel and he fucked you through your orgasm. He never stopped, never even slowed. If anything, he slammed into you harder and faster and your overwrought pussy almost hurt with it.

“Fuck, can I come in you?” He asked. “Please… fuck… please, gotta come in you, need to come in you, fuck Baby I’m coming, gonna fill you up, fuck!”

He pressed himself deep and exploded inside you there before you had a chance to tell him either way, the hot ropes of his come coating your inner walls. He collapsed forward onto you, his head over your shoulder and pressed into the cushion of your couch as he caught his breath. You could feel him leaking out of your spent hole as he went soft inside you. You slowly, hesitantly put your arms around him, stroking his back for a moment. Part of you was unsure what, exactly, had just happened. If it meant anything at all.

“Fuck,” he sat up from you and pulled his cock from your body. He was glistening with the blend of you and him together. He looked down at you, still a little breathless, as you were splayed out before him. You remembered, suddenly, what it was like to look down at a chicken you’d split while butchering, all hollowed out, its only remaining purpose - to be consumed - laid bare. “Fuck, I… I don’t…”

You sat up on your elbows again and looked down between your legs. His come was leaking from you. You looked back up at him, acutely aware of your vulnerability but hiding anything from him felt wrong.

“It’s OK,” you said quietly.

“No,” he shook his head. “I… I’m sorry, I…”

He stopped and got off the couch, getting his clothes from the floor. He pulled his underwear and jeans on quickly before retrieving your robe from beside your kitchen table. He lowered it gently onto your stomach. You stared at it for a moment before sitting up and sliding it on. You cinched the tie around your waist.

“Are you…” he trailed off as he shrugged back into his shirt, his brown eyes ranging over you again and again.

“I’m fine.”

He nodded.

“Right,” he said. “Right, OK…”

He stepped into his boots, not bothering to adjust the laces. But then, he only lived a few doors down.

Oh God, he only lived a few doors down.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said quietly after he was fully clothed again. “I… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” you said, getting up and crossing your arms over yourself, thankful that your robe was long and covered most of you. “I… I wanted it.”

“Right,” Joel nodded. “That… we can’t do that again, OK? It’s not smart. Probably best if we…”

“Sure,” you just nodded again. “Yeah, OK.”

“Good,” he said, going for your door. He stopped to look at you. “Take care of yourself. Let me know if you run into any more trouble.”

“I will,” you nodded. “Thanks, Joel.”

He gave you a nod and just left you there, his come dripping out of you and his bandage on your cheek.

That was the first time you fucked Joel Miller.

It wasn’t the last.

You came by a few weeks later, almost positive that it would just be Tommy home but it was Joel who answered the door.

Once you got through the awkwardness of the hellos and the handing off of biscuits, you tried to leave, even though your core was tight and achy being so close to Joel again. Like he’d imprinted himself inside you, the shadow of him still there as a reminder. But Joel wasn’t having it. He grabbed your shoulder and pulled you around to face him before pressing you back into the wall and all but shoving his tongue into your mouth. He fucked you right there, against the wall of his living room, and when your thoughts weren’t blinded by orgasms you were just praying that his brother didn’t come home and find the two of you like this.

When it was over, he stepped back from you, his eyes wide as he panted for breath and said over and over that it couldn’t happen again. That it wasn’t smart, not when you were neighbors and you were all stuck here like this. That he didn’t want any kind of anything with anyone. That it was a waste of time.

It took until about the fifth time for Joel to stop saying it couldn’t happen again. For him to just accept it. He showed up at your door most nights now. He had for more than a year now. You weren’t entirely sure what your relationship actually was. You slept better when Joel was wrapped around you, even when he jerked in his sleep as nightmares plagued him. If you had an utterly miserable day, he sometimes listened to you vent about it before he fucked you silly. He brought you things he thought you’d like when he made smuggling runs outside the QZ, like a magpie who sought out books and baking equipment. You made him dinner and cut his hair when it got too long and didn’t ask questions when you bandaged up his knuckles at the end of a long day.

But Joel had never so much as told you that he liked you, let alone anything close to love. Even though you loved him. It had taken you some time to realize that you had. You’d become numb to a lot since the outbreak. Love was a risk, one that your subconscious mind seemed itching to keep you away from. Especially from someone as distant as Joel. You’d been fucking no one but him for more than a year now and you’d only learned within the last month that he was a contractor before the end of the world.

You wanted to do something nice for him. Something that might let him start to love you. At least like you as something more than someone to fuck, anyway. And you had the perfect thing in mind.

That day, Joel rolled you over in the early morning hours, kissing you deeply in the dark, enough to start to wake you up.

“Have a good day,” your words were slurred and mushy in your sleep but he seemed to get the picture.

“Think you’ll have an easier time of it, I’m on sewer duty,” he kissed you one more time, just a peck on the lips. “See you tonight.”

“Mmmm.”

You waited until you were sure Joel was gone for the day before you turned on the lamp beside your bed and found Joel’s watch on the nightstand.

He never took the darn thing off except to sleep. He always wore it, every day. Except the days he was on sewer duty. He left it at home or at your place then, the face of it cracked and the mechanism so broken it didn’t work anymore. But he still wore it every damn day. He’d never told you why.

You ran your thumb over the broken glass of the face for a moment before setting it back down and getting dressed in your kitchen uniform and pocketing the watch.

Your shift started in an hour and a half, giving you what you hoped was enough time to get the errand you’d been planning done. You had to venture most of the way across the QZ to do it, traveling to the black market shops where you knew a lot of what Joel smuggled in wound up. It was still early there, people setting out what was on offer, and you found the one person you knew of in the QZ who dealt in things like jewelry and watches. Even though he’d always struck you as slimy every time he’d talked to you when you’d walked by his stall when on the hunt for something else.

“Hey there pretty lady,” he smirked. “Finally coming to see me?”

“I was wondering if you could fix something for me,” you said, getting the watch out and handing it over. “It’s my… it belongs to my friend. The face has been broken forever and I don’t think it tells time anymore. Think it’s fixable?”

He took it and frowned down at it, turning it over in his fingers.

“Kind of a piece of shit to waste the energy on fixing it,” he said before looking back up at you. “Could find you something better, get you a deal…”

“I’d rather get that one fixed if you can,” you smiled. “I don’t mind the price.”

He nodded, looking back down at it.

“Well, it’s beat to shit,” he said. “But I’ll give it my best shot or find something good to replace it with, how about that? Even buy this piece of crap off you, I’m sure I can use it for parts. Give you a discount on the watch itself.”

There was a twinge in your gut at that, the idea of maybe trading Joel’s watch away. It must have sentimental value if he wore the broken thing that much. Or maybe it was just force of habit? He didn’t have one that worked but felt naked without it?

“Sure,” you smiled. “When do you think you’ll know?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Come back, see me. I’ll let you know what I can figure out.”

You walked to work excited to see Joel that night. You were sure he was going to like the watch thing. Maybe it could be the start to something new, something good. After so long of living in limbo with him, you sure hoped it was.

***

Joel fucking hated sewer days.

They paid the best but it was disgusting work. The only worse job, in his opinion, was burning infected bodies. At least the sewer didn’t have dead kids.

Otherwise, it was worse.

He went by his apartment first to shower and get cleaned up before heading toward yours.

Joel was reluctant to admit it even to himself - especially to himself - but he’d grown attached to you over the last few years.

He’d never meant to fuck you.

It had been an accident, the first time. Or, at least, as much of an accident as fucking someone could be. He’d always thought you were pretty. You were beautiful, truly. Beautiful enough that he couldn’t pretend that you weren’t. So he moved on from that fact. But you were also sweet and kind, nicer to him than he deserved. He tried to keep you at arm’s length but you’d somehow managed to insert yourself into his life in ways he hadn’t expected. He liked being around you, he liked to look at you, he liked to imagine what it would feel like to be inside you. Falling into fucking you had been easy, so damn easy.

It helped that you didn’t ask anything of him. That you put up with shit from him that he doubted you’d have tolerated in the before times. But you were lonely here, that much was clear, and Joel was someone. He took advantage of that fact, he knew. He knew he should be better for you. Try to be more. Try to be something at all. But he wasn’t sure he had it in him anymore, if it had ever existed for anyone but Sarah at all. It seemed like it would be cruel to both of you to try.

So he didn’t.

He was lucky that you seemed fine with that. Even if he really wasn’t.

He beat you to your apartment. Not surprising, sewer shifts started early and ended early, and he let himself in to wait for you, going to get his watch off the nightstand first.

Joel felt naked without it. Almost like he was betraying his daughter when he didn’t wear it, that he’d somehow decided the last thing she’d done for him wasn’t good enough anymore. But wearing it on sewer jobs was too big a risk. If it fell off there, he’d never find it again and he wasn’t sure he could live with himself if that happened. So he left it wherever he slept the night before - as likely to be your place as his anymore - and always put it back on the second he got cleaned up.

But it wasn’t on your nightstand. He frowned, looking on the bed - you made it every day, like that shit still mattered - but it wasn’t there. He got down on his hands and knees and looked around the nightstand, below it, under the bed. He ripped the sheets off and shook them out, took the pillows out of their cases. His heart was pounding. It had to be here it had to.

He went to the bathroom next, maybe he’d taken it off in there the night before even though he never had before but he searched there, too. He was taking all the cushions off your couch when he heard your key in the door. He kept searching as you came in, not even looking up at you.

“Joel!” He heard you drop your keys and your bag and then your hands were on him, pulling him back from the couch and making him stand up straight. He was breathless. He had to find it, it had to be here. Fuck, what if he put it on this morning and it fell off on the job and he hasn’t noticed? What if it was gone? “What are you…”

“My watch,” he said, looking around the room for where to search next. “I… my fucking watch, left it here this morning, almost positive I left it here but I can’t find it and I need that watch, Baby Doll, I gotta…”

“Joel,” you smiled a little, putting your hands on his forearm. “It’s OK. You did leave it here but… well, it was supposed to be a surprise…”

His stomach dropped.

“What did you do.”

You took your hands back, smile fading at his tone. Your eyes went a little wide.

“I noticed that it’s broken,” your voice was quiet. “And I thought it was something that might be fixable…”

“What the fuck did you do?!”

You shocked back from him. Joel had never so much as raised his voice to you before and he was screaming now.

“I took it to a man across town,” you said quickly. “He said he might be able to fix it or find a good replacement and…”

“I don’t want it fucking fixed!” He screamed, pressing closer to you and you flinched back. “I want it the way it was! I want it the way it was when my daughter fucking died!”

You stared at him for a second. He’d never told you about Sarah. He didn’t talk about her. It hurt too much to even consider it, he kept her to himself, her memory saved for quiet spaces where he could let it overwhelm him.

“Your daughter?” You whispered, reaching for him. He stepped back from you, couldn’t handle your fucking hands on him, not now. “Joel, you never… I didn’t…”

“She gave me that watch!” He wasn’t yelling now but there was a tremble in his voice, the barely contained rage slipping through. “She gave me that fucking watch and the day she died she got it fixed for me. It got fucked up by the bullets that killed her because I didn’t do my fucking job as her father, I didn’t protect her! That watch is all I have left of her and you…” He shook his head, his resolve cracking and yelling again. “You fucking gave it away! How could you be that fucking stupid? That fucking careless? What the fuck were you thinking!”

“I’m sorry,” you said softly. You were crying, voice shaky. “I… I didn’t know, I just wanted…”

“You think I give a shit what you want?” He yelled, towering over you. “Think I give a shit about you? You’re just some stupid fucking girl I use when I need to get off and you…”

You were cowering back from him and he knew he was scaring you but he couldn’t feel anything past the sharp pain of loss enough to care.

“I’m sorry,” your voice was so quiet he could barely hear you. “Joel, please…”

He glared at you with so much force it made you flinch and stalked out your front door, not bothering to close it behind him.

Joel took the stairs down to the street two at a time and set off, walking quickly as night fell and rain started in a steady drizzle over him. He could think of a few places you’d probably try to take the watch. If he could find it in time… with all the fucking smuggling connections he has in this godforsaken town. He had to be able to find it. He had to.

But he searched all night, went to every goddamn black market dealer he could think of. He was only able to find about half of them, some out who the fuck knows where, and none of them had the watch.

It was daylight again when he returned home, soaking wet and exhausted. He glared at your door as he passed, going to his place to shower and try to warm up.

But without the distraction of searching, the desperate drive to do something because he could, he was forced to feel while standing in the steam and the water.

The pain of the loss of his daughter was there, sharp and acute when he realized he may never again touch something she had also held. The permanence of that somehow making her loss more real than it had been in years. It was gutting. He’d rather be shot or stabbed or have the shit beaten out of him than feel this. At least that was tangible, something he could heal from and not this constant, consuming pain.

But there was also you. You, who had become the only bright spot in this goddamn place. You, who held him when he woke up in a panic and told him that he was safe and that it would be OK. You, just about the only thing that had made him smile in years and who looked at him like he was something worth wanting. Looked at him like there was still a point to him at all.

You’d tried to do something nice for him. You hadn’t known any better, he knew that. He’d just never let you in. Never even told you Sarah existed let alone about the way that she died. How he’d held her, how Tommy had to drag him away from her body, how all he’d wanted to do was join her and he couldn’t even do that right. He’d never told you any of it. He couldn’t blame you for that, not when he was already afraid of how much he cared about you. He was even more terrified of what he knew he could feel for you if he just let himself. It wouldn’t even be hard. Not feeling it was like fighting against gravity. It would only take one slip and he’d fall into it, he knew that.

He got out of the shower and sighed, trying not to think about the watch. About the things he’d said to you. He’d been so panicked, so angry. He had tried to hurt you. Said things he knew were cruel because if he was hurting he wanted you to hurt, too.

But he wasn’t proud of that. He didn’t want you to hurt. He wanted to take care of you and protect you. You were kind and thoughtful and this fucking place hadn’t chewed you up and spit you out yet. He wanted to help you stay that way. Instead, he’d tried to hurt you.

He sighed and got dressed before going to knock on your door. It was your day off, he expected you to be home. Probably reading or baking something. Because apparently cooking all day during the week wasn’t enough, you had to do it on your day off, too.

“Hey!” Your next door neighbor came outside but her face fell when she saw Joel. “Oh, sorry. I thought you were…”

“I’ll tell ‘er you’re looking for her,” Joel said, looking back at the door, waiting for you to answer. But he didn’t even hear you inside. He frowned. He had a key, it just felt wrong to use it after the way he’d spoken to you but maybe he’d need to…

“Thanks,” your neighbor smiled, a plate in her hand. “She’s always making things for my daughter, I finally had enough extra to return the favor but I haven’t seen her since she left last night and…”

“Last night?” Joel’s frown deepened. “What do you mean, when last night?”

“Kind of late,” she frowned back. “After dark, I was just coming back home when I ran into her. Seemed like she was in a big hurry, looked like she might have been upset. I told her I had something for her and she said she’d be back later. I don’t think I missed her but…”

Joel’s heart sped up and he shoved his hand in his pocket, finding his keys. He tuned out the neighbor and had to fight to keep his hands from shaking as he opened your door.

Your apartment was still torn apart from when Joel had been searching it, couch cushions still all over the floor, coffee table askew. He ignored it, half walking, half running to your bedroom.

“What happened?” Your neighbor hovered in the doorway. Joel ignored her, too. He looked in your room, still in total disarray but empty, your uniform on the floor where it hadn’t been before. Your bathroom was empty.

“Fuck!” Joel smacked the wall. You’d left, gone somewhere and not come back. But you’d planned to come back, you’d told your neighbor that you were going to be back later and you hadn’t come home. He went to the woman in the doorway, her eyes still a bit wide as she took in the mess he’d made of your apartment. He took her by the shoulders and she blinked up at him in surprise. “Where was she going? Did she say? Tell you anything at all?”

“N-no,” she stammered, frozen in Joel’s grip. “She didn’t, I’m sorry, I don’t…”

Joel released her, running his fingers through his hair for a moment. Had you gone to try to get the watch back? He’d been so upset, so cruel… You must have. It seemed like something you would do, immediately go to try to fix it. He turned back to the woman, cursing the fact that he didn’t know this about you, that he had kept his distance from you so he wouldn’t know things about you and fall into you in the way that was so tempting to do.

“Know what markets she goes to?” He asked. “Especially for any contraband shit?” She just blinked at him for a moment and he resisted the urge to yell at her. That’s what got him into this situation, losing his fucking temper at someone who didn’t deserve it. He took a deep breath, keeping his voice calm. “I think she went to look for something but I need to know where that would be so I can go find her. Do you know?”

“Yeah,” she nodded after a moment. “Yeah, there’s one across town, in the south end. I’ve run into her there before…”

Joel was out the door before she finished talking. It was one of the places he’d gone the night before but hadn’t found anyone to talk to. He certainly hadn’t seen you there. But it was at least a starting point. He’d find you. He had to.

***

You stared at your open door for a few minutes after Joel left, in too much shock to move.

Joel had a daughter. A daughter who died. The watch had been from her, of course he wouldn’t want it fixed, of course he would wear it every day. And you’d given it to some slimy guy in the contraband market.

After a while, you could make yourself move. You closed your door and went to your room. Joel had turned that upside down, too. Of course he had. Because he was desperate and you’d made him that way.

You got changed quickly, leaving your uniform in a pile on the floor, grabbed a handful of ration cards in case you needed to buy the watch back, and headed out.

“Oh, hey!” Clara, your next door neighbor, almost ran into you on the stairs, her two-year-old on her hip. “I was just going to pop over, I made…”

“That’s so sweet,” you cut her off. “But I’ve gotta run, I’m so sorry. I’ll be back later and should be around tomorrow…”

“OK!” She called after you as you took off. “Be careful out there!”

You moved as quickly as you could manage toward the market, hoping that you could find the man, that he hadn’t started doing anything to the watch, that everything would be OK. Even if Joel hated you now, he shouldn’t lose the one thing he still had from his daughter because you hadn’t thought to ask him about the damn watch.

You breathed a sigh of relief when the man was still there, closing up shop, when you ran up.

“Why hello again,” he smiled, a smile that was smug and lecherous. “Haven’t been home to check my stash for parts yet, pretty girl, but if you wanted to come back with me I bet I could find a way to give you an even bigger discount…”

“That’s OK,” you said, a little breathless. “I actually just want the watch back, just the way it is…”

He frowned.

“It’s still pretty useless…”

“That’s OK!” You said quickly. “Just… please. Please say you still have it.”

He sighed and opened a box, rifling around in it for a moment before pulling it out. But he held onto it, running his thumb over the face of it.

“I was expecting something for fixing this,” he said, glancing up at you before looking down at the watch. “Had plans for those cards…”

You pulled a few ration cards from your pocket and held them out.

“Please,” you said. Even though he hadn’t done any work. You didn’t care. “The cards are yours, just give me the watch.”

He looked almost surprised that getting cards out of you had worked but he took them and gave you the watch. You looked at it for a moment, the broken glass in the face, the time frozen at 2:15. You tucked it in your pocket, the fist that had been clenched around your heart loosening.

“Thank you,” you smiled. “Just… Thank you.”

You started at a more reasonable pace back for your apartment. You’d go to Joel’s, return the watch, apologize again and hope that he wouldn’t still hate you once you fixed it. At least you hoped he wouldn’t be hurting as much, he didn’t deserve that, not after everything he’d been through. You could fix that for him, at least. You had to.

You were so relieved at getting the watch back that you weren’t paying close attention to your walk home. Yes, it was dark and raining and late but you knew the way and, since that day more than two years ago when Joel had saved you, everyone seemed to know you were protected. That you weren’t someone they messed with and expected to live. In hindsight, it made you feel like the QZ was safer than it was. So safe that you were fine walking home alone from a shady corner of town, far from FEDRA guard posts and people you knew.

It was a stupid mistake. You realized that when you heard a voice in the dark.

“Well well.”

The sound sent a chill down your spine. You recognized that voice, the voice of the man who had tried to kill you once.

You froze, eyes wide, an animal caught in a trap.

“If it isn’t Joel Miller’s little FEDRA bitch,” Pickett emerged from the shadows, his hands in his pockets, a few men at his side. Your eyes darted between them. There were six of them that you could see. There was no way you could fight off that many. Hell, you probably couldn’t even fight off one. You��d never been a fighter. “Awful far from home aren’t ya?”

“Heading there now,” you said, voice shaky. “Joel’s expecting me…”

“Well that’s too bad, isn’t it?” He prowled closer. “Guess you’ll have to keep him waiting just a bit longer.”

“You don’t want to do that,” you finally were able to make your legs move, backing away from him. “You know what he said…”

“But he isn’t here, is he?” He smirked. “And he’s the one who left his little toy out for just anyone to take. If you mattered all that much to him, don’t think you’d be out here all alone at this time of night.”

Your eyes darted, looking for the best way to run, but your mind was distracted. The man was right. You didn’t matter to Joel, he’d told you as much, that you were just some stupid girl he used when he needed it. You were just some stupid girl and you were going to wind up dead in the shitty part of the QZ and he’d never get the watch back, the one thing he had left of his daughter, because you’d been too stupid to ask about it. For some reason, that part hurt more than the thought of dying. There wasn’t much to life in the QZ, certainly not much that made life worth living. Joel had become the one thing you looked forward to. It was hard to mourn your own destruction when there wasn’t anything left that was really worth living for.

You tried to run, slipping in the mud as you went. But you were turned around, too panicked to look at street signs or pay close enough attention and, when you wound up at a dead end, you were cornered, the men closing in on you as you backed into a wall.

“Please,” you whispered. “It won’t make a difference to him or to FEDRA, if you want to hurt them, I’m not the way to do it and…”

“Maybe not,” Pickett smiled in a way that was more like the bearing of teeth than an actual smile. “But you sure will be fun.”

Your eyes were so glued to his that you didn’t even see it coming when the first blow sent you to the ground.

***

Joel made it to the market in record time, out of breath and bones reminding him that he was in his 40s now and he’d spent his life breaking his body to survive. He scanned the stalls quickly, finding the man who was the most likely one you’d have gone to, watches and jewelry out on a table in front of him. As if anyone could afford that shit now anyway.

“How can I help you?” The man asked, smiling up at Joel from his seat behind the table. “Looking for something special for a lady friend, perhaps?”

“Looking for my…” he paused. Technically, you weren’t anything to him. “My friend. She would have come here yesterday with a watch…”

“Oh,” he laughed. “Yeah, I know her. Such a pretty thing, a little disappointed she only decided to give me the time of day when she needed something…”

“She was here?” Joel asked, brows raised.

The man smirked.

“Answers are gonna cost you.”

Joel ground his teeth for a second before shooting his arm forward and roughly grabbing the back of the man’s neck, shoving his head down and slamming it into the table, the man giving a yelp of pain when his nose crushed against the wood.

“Fuck!” He swore as Joel pressed his face against the table. He squirmed but Joel held him down. “Jesus Christ, man!”

“Was. She. Here.” Joel’s teeth were clenched, his chest heaving.

“She was here!” The man cried out and Joel released his neck. He panted for breath for a moment and sat up cautiously, cradling the back of his neck. “She was here, last night, she came by, wanted the watch back, she seemed desperate.”

“Where’d she go from here?” Joel demanded.

“What?”

“Where!” Joel screamed, hand curling into a fist, ready to beat the answer out of him.

“Back the way she came!” He covered his head with his arms. “Same place you came from what I could see, please!”

Joel stepped back.

“When was it?”

“Late!” The man said quickly. “Late, she came by late. Right at the end of the day, I was closing up shop, it was dark and raining…”

So you’d made it this far. You just hadn’t made it back home.

“Anyone who runs around here who would give her trouble?” Joel asked. “Keep her from comin’ home?”

“Plenty of people,” the man looked at him like he was insane. Joel glowered at him again and he flinched. “But most likely, Pickett’s gang, saw a few of them last night prowling around, they’ve been causing trouble around here lately. If she ran into trouble, it’s probably with them!”

Joel nodded slowly. Pickett. He knew him. That was the man he’d saved you from before, the jackass had been building up a following of FEDRA hating idiots who seemed bent on causing trouble and hurting people as a way to feel strong by being cruel.

He knew where to find them.

Joel ran there, a crumbling building FEDRA hadn’t done anything with yet that he and Tommy had run drugs to a few times. He pulled the knife he kept at his belt free before he pushed the door open. Whether you were here or not, these were men he wouldn’t care about killing.

The first one was just inside the door. Probably meant to be standing guard but not paying attention, flipping through an old Playboy instead. Joel caught him off guard. He wrapped his hand around the handle of the knife and used it to bolster his punch, the blow landing so hard the man fell backwards off his stool. Joel kicked his gun away and kneeled on the man’s chest, putting the blade to his throat.

“Your boss bring a woman here last night?” Joel asked.

“Not your business, is it?” The man sneered. Joel ground his teeth, covering the man’s mouth to muffle his screams before taking the knife in his hand and thrusting it into the man’s shoulder. Joel waited until he quieted some, gasping below his palm, before he spoke again.

“Scream and I’ll gut you like a fuckin’ fish,” Joel snarled. “Now I’m just about done askin’ nicely. Did your boss bring a woman here last night?”

“Yes!” He said, pleading. “He did, she’s still here, I think she’s still alive, they’re on the second floor, please…”

Joel freed the knife and thrust it into the man’s throat. He didn’t need him anymore. He picked up the gun.

It was easy, finding you then. He shot men as they approached, only half a dozen or so between him and you. But none of them were Pickett.

He found the room he was sure you were in, two men stationed at the door who fired at him when he came around the corner. He ducked out of sight, readied his stolen weapon and exposed himself just enough to shoot. He dropped them both before they could land a shot on him. He took their ammo and changed his clip before listening at the door for a moment. It was quiet.

Joel opened the door slowly, cautiously, but he didn’t need to. You were the only one inside, on the ground in an unnatural looking position. He holstered the gun and ran to you, kneeling beside your prone form. There was a rattle in your breath and you’d been beaten to hell. Even in the dim light, he could see the cuts on your skin, the parts of you he could see swollen and discolored. They’d savaged you, your body broken and bleeding, and you’d only been out here because of him. Because he’d been so angry at you for something that wasn’t your fault. Fuck, you were the only thing left he cared about besides Tommy and you were bleeding because of him. If you died because of him, if he’d failed you the way he’d failed Sarah…

“Please,” you rasped, trying to lift your head but giving up, your eyes closed. Your voice surprised Joel, he hadn’t expected you to be conscious. “Please… I don’t…”

“It’s OK Baby Doll,” Joel said, his voice thick. “It’s me, you’re OK now. Gonna take real good care of you, you’re alright…”

“Joel?” You lifted your head and managed to open one eye. The other was swollen shut. “Joel, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

Before he had a chance to stop you from moving, you reached a shaky hand into the pocket of your jeans and pulled out the watch. You held it out to him, your fingers bloody.

“I don’t think it’s any more broken,” you winced. “I tried to protect it, I’m sorry…”

He took it from you, your blood on the face and the band, a tightness in his throat he was struggling to breathe around.

“S’OK Baby Doll,” he said, putting it on his wrist quickly and reached for your head, to try to brush some bloody hair back from your skin, but you flinched away from him. “Nothin’ to be sorry for, it’s not your fault, none of this is your fault.”

You took a deep, shaky breath like you were going to argue with him, but you didn’t get the chance.

“Look who it is.”

Joel stiffened, getting to his feet slowly, turning to face him.

“Almost expected you to not show up,” Pickett smiled. “She seemed damn sure she didn’t mean anything to ya, swore up and down that you wouldn’t even notice she was gone.” Joel’s stomach twisted. “Took you so long I was starting to believe her.”

Pickett prowled closer.

“Course I’d hoped she’d be enough to draw you out,” he said. “Getting tired of tip-toeing around you and your fuckin’ brother. But if she wasn’t, at least she was fun. Didn’t even get a chance to let my guys have the real fun with her yet, though. Figured I’d see if we could knock her teeth out first, bet she’d suck real good then. But looks like you took care of them, so I guess she’s off the hook.”

Joel roared and lunged for Pickett, swinging for him as he did. The other man had either underestimated Joel or overestimated himself, because he tried to dodge him and failed, Joel’s shoulder catching him in the chest and sending him sprawling to the ground. Before he had a chance to even get his bearings, Joel was on top of him, screaming as he pummeled him, raining the blows down on his face again and again and again.

For the first time since you’d disappeared, Joel felt like he was really doing something. This man had taken you, hurt you, was going to do more to you. Joel was doing what he was supposed to do. He was protecting you. He felt it in every blow he landed on the man’s face, in every collapsing structure below his skin, in every splash of blood. It wasn’t until he had stopped breathing and the blood had stopped pouring from his open wounds that he stilled, panting for breath as he looked at the mangled face of the man below him.

He stood, flexing his hand and looking at it, the split open knuckles, the mix of your blood and his own and Pickett’s on the watch. He wiped his hand on his shirt and went back to you, kneeling again.

“Joel,” you whimpered.

“He’s dead,” Joel said, his voice thick. “They’re all dead. Warned ‘em. Told ‘em what would happen if they fucked with you.”

He watched you work to swallow around your damaged throat as you nodded.

“You’re safe now,” he said softly, fingertips gently tracing your face where you didn’t look battered. You flinched at first but relaxed. “Need to wait a bit to take you home. Too bright outside right now, FEDRA fucks would stop us…”

“Don’t need to worry about me,” you struggled to sit up for a moment before giving up and going limp on the floor. “It’s OK. Already did more than you should have. Go home in case FEDRA comes poking around and…”

“Not leaving you here,” he said gruffly.

You winced as you swallowed and fought to open the one eye you could.

“Don’t put yourself at risk for me,” you managed. “I’m not worth it, you know that and…”

“You’re worth it, Baby Doll,” he said softly, his hand on your face. “About the only thing in this fuckin’ place that is.”

You flinched as you frowned.

“No,” you shook your head a little. “No, you said…”

“Don’t matter what I said,” he cut you off, trying to ignore the stabbing guilt in his chest. Fuck, the things he’d said to you. “I didn’t mean it, didn’t mean a fuckin’ word of it. I was pissed at myself, I was hurting, I took it out on you and I never should have said or done any of it, Baby Doll, never. I didn’t mean it, not a word of it and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I wish I could take it back, I wish I could take all of it back…”

He lay beside you, delicately holding your face, his eyes tracing over you. He memorized the damage done, the signs of all the pain he knew you were in. All because he hadn’t told you about Sarah, because he’d hurt you, because he’d failed you. He wouldn’t do that again. He was not going to let you suffer because of him again. You tried to move closer to him but he put his hand on your hip and held you still, instead moving toward you. You winced as you pressed against him but it didn’t stop you. He held you gently, feeling you breathe against him.

“I’m sorry, Joel,” your voice was muffled. “I didn’t mean to, I promise…”

“Shh,” he hushed you, tears stinging his eyes. He’d done this to you. Made you feel like, even this broken, it was your fault. “It’s not your fault. None of it. I’ve got you, Baby Doll. Gonna take care of you. Gonna take such good care of you if you let me. Please let me.”

You were quiet, passing out against him. He held you like that, letting himself feel for you, letting himself fall into that dangerous place with you. He stopped fighting the gravity of loving you until it was dark enough to safely carry you home.

He got you cleaned up, patching you up as best he could before giving you some pain meds from a stash he hadn’t traded away yet and carrying you to bed. He held you there, too, his body curved around yours, shielding you from anything that could hurt you and promised himself, silently, that he’d never see you like this again. Because he was going to take care of you. He was going to protect you, he was going to love you, until there was nothing else left of him and he was dead and gone.

He ran a gentle hand over your head and pressed a kiss to your hair, the glass of the watch reflecting the light of the moon, sending fractured splotches of light on your wall. He wasn’t going to fail again. That much, Joel knew.

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #kit answers #send asks #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #smut fic #joel miller x oc

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laura1633 · 3 months ago

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I don't normally answer asks like this because I feel that it is unnecessarily rude. I normally just block. I have taken a screen shot and answered like this as it still gives me the option to block.

I can't really work out what you are going on about anon. I am assuming it relates to the poll I put up to decide which of the prompts I am going to write next. However, I quite clearly stated on that post that the prompts I am writing are not limited to those five and that I am going to get around to as many as possible. I also quite clearly stated on the request for prompts that they were going to be written between December and March, we are still in December!! I also clearly stated that I can't promise I will get around to all of them but I will get through as many as possible in that time. I am not going to rush them out and not be happy with the result, what would be the point of that?! I would prefer to get through 10 and give them the time they deserve rather than rush through 20 of them!. Also, ideas are never wasted, people can send them to other authors who are requesting prompts or write them themselves if they think I am taking too long, I am not gatekeeping people's ideas!

I'm not sure if you are aware but I write for fun. I have a full time job and a life away from this. I opened prompts because I thought it would be nice to write a handful of them for people. I didn't do it 'to get people's attention' or to 'get compliments'.

I can't work out if this is related to one of the other asks I have received questioning why there is no bottom Charles in that poll. Maybe that is what you are getting at as it sounds like this is a follow up to another ask?

The poll specifically did not have any obvious bottom Charles in it because I thought it would turn into a bottom Charles v bottom Max vote. This was just one poll to help me choose the next one to finish!

Anyway, thanks for making sure that this was the first message I woke up to this morning! I am going to continue writing the prompts over winter break as promised because people have sent in some lovely prompts that I can tell they have taken time over but things like this only make me want to delete my ao3 and Tumblr and never write another word again. Although maybe I am just saying that for 'attention' and 'compliments.'

Sorry to everyone else who had to read my rant 😂 I did the poll because I am struggling a lot with my adhd at the moment and I hoped it would give me a little direction and something to focus on to get me back on the right track with my writing! <3 <3

#laura1633 asks

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echoingvoids · 2 months ago

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ARYLL'S IN THIS ONE! Sequel to 5: Curl

@zelinktines You can read all the oneshots on Tumblr, Wattpad, or AO3!

Zelda visits Link's sister.

Modern royalty AU

\^_^/

It was his day off. He had gone home to visit his mother and sister for the day. Although Zelda hovered at the back of his mind, and he was constantly worrying about her safety, he did admit it was nice to take some time to relax.

He was making dinner, with his sister, Aryll, sitting on the counter. Their mother was gone right now, working at the local restaurant down the street, and wouldn't be back until late. Hence Link was making dinner.

Aryll had been asking him a million questions, most of them pertaining to Princess Zelda. "So you have to spend all day at her side, right?"

"Mostly."

"Huh. Is she even prettier up close than she looks on TV?"

Link had to be careful with this one. "I'd say so."

"Well that was an unsatisfactory answer. Sounds like you don't even mean it."

Link fought a smile as he rolled his blue eyes. "She is very pretty, Aryll."

"Prettier than Princess Mipha?"

A long moment of contemplation. "Yeah."

His sister gasped dramatically. "Do you like her?!"

"What the-?! No, Aryll, not like how you're implying!"

"Are you sure? I mean, you're close to her all day, she's pretty, and you did say she's super smart. You always liked smart girls."

"Aryll, you don't know what I like."

She smiled. "Never doubt a woman's intuition, lest you make a grave mistake."

Link couldn't help but smirk and shake his head. That quote was one their mother loved to say and it wasn't like it didn't hold some truth to it. He resumed stirring the sauce in the pan, pausing as their broken doorbell chimed disjointedly through the house. "Were you expecting anyone."

"Nope."

"Huh. I wonder who it is."

"The princess, maybe."

Link chuckled, passing the spoon to her. "I doubt it. Keep stirring this; I'll go see who it is."

She slid off the counter with a sigh, beginning to stir while Link made his way to the door. Maybe it was door-to-door salesmen, or maybe their creepy neighbor Mr. Rupin. He liked to bother them from time to time. Link brushed his bangs aside as he calmly unlocked the door and froze.

Across from him, accompanied only by Impa, was Princess Zelda.

"Zelda?!" He didn't understand. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm sorry for just dropping by without notice," Zelda smiled apologetically, tucking a bit of loose hair behind her ear. "Especially on your day off. But I remembered you saying that your sister would--"

"IS THAT PRINCESS ZELDA?!"

Link winced, turning to face his sister. She stood there the pot of sauce in one arm, the spoon hanging slack and dripping tomato sauce onto the tile in her other hand. Zelda peeked around Link with a smile. "I am Princess Zelda. Are you Aryll?"

"Y-yes! Yes I am!" Aryll's manners kicked in a she shoved the spoon back into the pot before dropping into a clumsy bow. "Its a pleasure to meet you, Princess!"

Impa was eyeing the red puddle the spoon had deposited on the old tile and Link fought a sigh. "Aryll, please go put the pot back on the stove and set the table."

Aryll nodded, marching back into the kitchen. Link turned back to the Princess with an apologetic look, scratching the back of his head. "That's my sister."

Zelda laughed a bit. "She seems delightful. Although I wish I had sent you notice. Maybe she wouldn't have dripped sauce on the tile."

"Its alright. I'll clean it up," There was a long moment of silence. "Would you want to stay for dinner? We're just having sauce and spaghetti but I assure you, the sauce is good."

"I'd love to stay, if I'm not intruding."

Link nodded. "I'll, uh, check on my sister."

He disappeared into the kitchen. Aryll had put four plates on the table and was setting out their great-grandmother's silver forks. "I wish we still had the silver-rimmed cups from grandpa. Those would be good to have here."

Link nodded, draining the spaghetti water. "Please remember your manners, Aryll."

"I will!" She jumped a bit, lowering her voice. "You're right, she is even prettier in real life! Her hair is like pure gold!"

Link sighed and smile, grabbing a paper napkin and returning to Zelda. She was looking at the some of the pictures on the wall, turning her attention to him as he dropped down and began wiping up the sauce. "Sorry, Princess."

"No worries, Link. Thank you for taking my surprise visit in stride."

He nodded, straightening again. "Please follow me."

He led her to their smile dining area, where Aryll stood next to her chair, beaming. Impa gave her a critical look that she completely missed, while Zelda stopped next to the chair on Aryll's right. "Is it alright if I sit here?"

"You may sit wherever you like." Link replied, grabbing plates and scooping pasta onto them. He put a generous amount of sauce on Aryll's and his, and a moderate amount of Zelda and Impa's. Aryll was staring at Zelda the whole time, even when they began to eat.

Link was worried she was going to disturb the princess, but Zelda took it well and started a conversation. Link and Impa sat quietly while Aryll basically quizzed Zelda about castle life, answering eagerly whenever the princess asked her something.

Link was secretly happy that Zelda had come and taken the time to meet his sister. He remembered her words before they had gone into the ballroom several weeks ago, and it made something stir inside him knowing how much she cared.

Aryll talked about the visit for weeks after, both to Link in texts and everyone who would listen. Of course not many people believed the crown princess had actually visited Link's family, but that never deterred Aryll.

To her, Zelda's visit was something she'd treasure more than gold and silver

#legend of zelda #breath of the wild #link #zelink #zelda #modern royalty #modern royalty au #zelinktines #zelinktines 2025 #zelink oneshots #loz aryll

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kangals · 11 months ago

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way back in 2014, probably a few weeks or months after you posted that picture of boone with the stick on his head, i checked your blog out and so dearly enjoyed all the dogposting that i followed. i think you were the first dogblr blog i actually followed at the time, but it's been ages and my memory is bad, so i'm not fully sure. it wasn't long before then--2012 i think?--that i had gotten a new dog of my own, a border collie. iirc he and boone were just about the same age.

in 2018 i lost that blog i'd followed you with, and a lot of connections with it. i didn't return until 2021, and when i did, i didn't refollow most of the old blogs; i don't think i even really went looking for them. it took me a while to get back into the swing of using tumblr.

last september, my border collie had a sharp health decline, and i had to say goodbye. it's not the first time i've had to put a pet down, but i think it was the hardest. i'm still not over it. even just typing this now, i feel raw.

then in march or so, i made a new fandom friend who knows you, and i enthusiastically recalled following you before and how much i enjoyed it. i didn't even know about stellina, and now there's kep too! but... i also didn't know you'd lost boone. i followed because i still really enjoy your blog, and i love your collies too. and butters!!! so glad she's still here!

idk what made me look tonight... maybe because i talked about my old border collie with someone today. i went looking for the posts immediately around when you lost boone, because i guess some part of me wanted to know what happened. i spent the better part of an hour (maybe longer?) reading posts from the weeks before the decline, and then the loss, and then the deluge of old boone pictures after, and i've been crying pretty much the whole time just reading your posts and tags about him.

and this is a long and windy way to get to saying thank you. i'm glad you shared your grief, though that seems like a weird thing to say. there's something cathartic about crying over someone else's dog when you still hurt about your own, and knowing you're not alone in that kind of sorrow. boone was such a beautiful boy. i'll never forget that silly post that made me check your blog out in the first place, or the years of posts i stuck around for after. i wish i'd remembered to follow sooner, but the archive is still there, and it's so fun looking through all those old posts about him and his quirks and antics. he was amazing.

sorry for the length of this, i just... really wanted you to know that he touched yet another life, i guess. and i've been so deeply enjoying your posts about stellina and kep. i know it'll be a year soon... i hope there's some peace in how things have gone since he passed, and i hope the anniversary isn't too hard on you. thank you for sharing him with us.

i've been on tumblr for 14 years and this is, genuinely, the nicest ask i think i've ever been sent.

thank you - sincerely. there's been a lot of times over the course of this blog that i've felt like i was oversharing, or talking about pointless things only i cared about. i still so frequently start typing out a post only to stop mid-sentence and delete it because i can't help but think "no one cares about this." possibly it's why i like to talk about my pets so much - they're not me, but i'm the one who knows them best, so i get to say "hey look at this" and ramble and have people say "i'm looking" back. when boone passed, i lost that filter and i poured my grief out into this blog because it was the closest outlet i had. and to have hundreds of people not only acknowledge this but to commiserate, to reassure, to share their own stories - that helped healed me more than i can put into words. it's exactly as you said: there's a catharsis in grieving together.

i am sorry you also had to say goodbye. i wish i could say it gets easier, but i think that would be defeating the point of grief. your grief is your love and damn it if there isn't any act more loving in the world than choosing to say goodbye to an old, loyal dog. you think of how dogs were domesticated tens of thousands of years ago, of how human society and dogs have developed intertwined, of how we have records of ancient greeks and romans carving loving epitaths on their dog's graves, of how a prehistoric dog's skull was found with a bone placed in it's mouth after death, and you wonder if grieving a dog isn't one of the most consistent experiences in the whole of human history that there is.

i'm glad to know that this could bring you some comfort, in some way. it's incredibly touching to know that you kept me and boone in your thoughts for all this time. i am doing ok - i've been reflecting a lot as we approach the one-year mark. i'm not sure if i'll be able to condense those thoughts down into coherent words, but i'll do my best. i hope that my silly little pets continue to bring you some happiness, and that you've found peace with your own grief.

thank you, again - this is extremely touching and means a hell of a lot to me.

#i know exactly what you mean about reading posts about other peoples loss and grieving in camaraderie with them. i do that too #also mayhaps i am nosy sometimes and want to intrude. i cant help my nature to be a looky-loo #which is to say: you should never feel like you are intruding for doing so back to me.

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headingalaxys-spicy · 8 months ago

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Hello! Anon Who sent the spicy Alpha Canada ask! I'm so happy you loved it and I absolutely adore the spicy scene you wrote for Matthew and his Omega darling. I am wondering if you'd consider making a prequel to that ask that takes place when Alpha America captures Matthew's darling and when he gives her to Matthew as a "gift". I love your writing and your Omegaverse world and I'm curious to see what you come up with. Thank you again and have a great day! ~Anon who's WAY too thirsty for APH Canada

OH BOY I FINALLY HAVE AN ANSWER FOR THAT. I hope you enjoy it’s kinda violent and has some lore and world building in it.

link to da spicy Canada x Omega reader here and if you’re curious to know about how (R2C) works in this universe

Request to capture: For (First Name) (Last Name) Date: September 20th, 20XX

Style : Battle Arena

Your breathing had slowed steadily again, even though your hands continued to tremble greatly. While you held onto the paper that spelled out your damnation. An R2C was slipped under your door this morning. You only had a few minutes left before the clock struck 15:00. That’s when the beginning of your demise would begin.

14:45 is what your digital clock in your bedroom had read.

“No. No. No. No. No. I only have 15 minutes left of freedom?” You paced your room back and forth. Wishing for an easy solution to get out of this but none would appear. You knew that. That is why you absent-mindedly put on your sturdy hiking boots, thickest jeans, & oversized sweatshirt that was dark. Maybe it could help you blend into the environment and assist you in escaping.

There was a slim chance, but you would try anyway as you finished tying up your heavy boot strings. Your mind wandered to the butterfly knife you could hide beneath your clothes. You grabbed it quickly, and as you did so, your fluffy white cat ears perked up at the sound of multiple Peacekeepers' hefty boots marching up to your apartment doorway.

They didn’t bother to knock. Your door was flattened down with a battering ram. It came down with a thunderous thud.

“Shit!” You quickly hide yourself beneath your desk. You prayed that you would somehow blend and vanish within the wall.

No such luck existed for you.

“(FIRST NAME! LAST NAME!) YOU’VE BEEN SUMMONED TO THE ARENA UNDER R2C! YOU CAN NOT DENY THIS ORDER!” A seasoned Alpha Peacekeeper barked out. The sound of his commanding voice made your ears lower, and your fluffy tail move further beneath you. You buried your face between your knees.

They soon came to kick your bedroom door down. You jumped at the sudden sound of them entering. Of course, they found you quickly cowering under your desk. You flailed around and begged not to be taken.

“No! No! Please! I have a life I want to live! I don’t want to go!” You tried to kick one of the peacekeepers in the face. It almost landed until he caught your leg & stabbed it with a tranquilizer. It only took seconds for you to become numb & fade into the abyss of the dark.

To your sealed fate, you go.

By the time you’d awoken from your drug-induced nap, you were in a holding cell with an Alpha who’d been assigned to keep an eye on you until the start of the game. Her scowl was ever-present & framed by her wavy, bright red hair. Her brown orbs were soft like those of concerned moms.

“Are you alright & fully awake?” She gently placed her hand on your shoulder. The grip wasn’t meant to be demanding but supportive.

“Ye..Yes….” trembling and your tail proceeded to cover your legs in a form of self-defense.

“Don’t worry. It’s not me you have to worry about. Jones is the sadistic motherfucker who summoned you here. I’ve seen things and…” She reached into her back pocket to pull out tiny bombs shaped like cockroaches. She also handed you a tiny circular detonator so you could set them off.

“But…..you’re not-”

“Do your best to survive, kid.” Her brown eyes radiated with sadness and regret. “And, I’m sorry….” She turned away from you so she wouldn’t soak in more guilt.

The gate to the area had opened, and the countdown to face off with Alfred had begun. The arena was a thick forestry area with traps for you to set off. The announcer came onto the loudspeaker.

“The next R2P match-up is between the pretty Persian Kitty Omega & everyone's favorite darling Hunter, BIG BAD JONES!” The crowd erupted in cheers. This fuels Alfred's ego. A wide, devilish smile spreads across his face.

“I’m doing this for my sweet little brother Matthew! He’s going to LOVE having her as a surprise!” He lets out a hearty laugh. Alfred prepped his hunting gun and rope. Alfred even had enough influence to let the organizers give him bear traps to be set up in the forest and high-pitched whistles to hurt your ears. Alfred is downright giddy, and he gets to play matchmaker. But he’s got to ensure you’ll behave & this is the best way to do it. Break you into submission so that you’d be the perfect kitty cat for his sweet Alpha of a brother. Since it’s been over six months, he still didn't have the nerve to approach you.

He put on his gloves and cracked his neck. He was ready for the battle. As the timer went down, he had already stepped out to begin. He didn’t have to wait—not at all. He was a lead Alpha. The standard rules didn’t apply to him.

Your head was still pounding from the drugs that had been injected into your system earlier. You clenched the cockroach bug bombs and put the detonator in your pocket. When you felt your leg you were surprised that you still had your knife on you.

‘They didn’t take it from me? Could it be that one or more of the Peacekeepers in the group could possibly be…..’

A bullet dart whizzed past your head.

“The FUCK!?!?! I still have 30 seconds on the timer!” Your eyes glanced up to the huge timer in bright red that read 0:28 before the start.

“Bwuahahahaha! Not really sweet lil fluffy cat~” He stalked towards you through the trees. You could see his form getting closer to you. You booked it beneath the protection of the denser part of the forested area. You had some hope to take cover and just maybe not get caught by the sadistic omega hunter. While on the run, you dropped all of your cockroaches on your path deeper into the forest.

Alfred moved slowly without a real care in the world. He even had time to wave at the crowd & soak in the cheer. The horn to finally start had just rung out through the arena. Alfred’s grin was wide as the drone cameras eagerly followed him.

“Who's ready to watch me win again and assign this perfect kitty darling to her proper mate!!!” The crowd burst into cheering once more. He breathed it in like an addictive drug one more time and dashed off to where he’d seen you run.

Alfred was going to make quick work of you.

You’d made it across the river by the time your senses heightened to know that Alfred was hot on your tail. Once your ears had perked up to hear that Alfred had made it to the spot where you’d left the detonation bugs, you swiftly pressed the detonation button.

At the very least, that sweet Alpha peacekeeper had bought you some time.

*BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* *BOOM* numerous flashes of bright, blinding light and explosives went off on Alfred. Smoke and fire had blinded and stunned him temporarily. You looked over your shoulder to see the miraculous gift given to you by the rouge peacekeeper. You kept running to find a hiding spot to evade Alfred for however long these stupid battles were supposed to last.

“AUGH!” Alfred had been dazed from the miniature blasts of light and fire.

The crowd gasped.

“How did she get something like that?”

“What the hell? Is this game rigged?”

“MY HERO IS HURT!!!!”

“Oh no! What’s going on???”

Many other chatterings of the alike spread like wildfire amidst the crowd. Alfred had recovered himself from the ground within a minute or so. Once he was, he was pissed. He dusted himself off and cracked his knuckles at his neck.

“Don’t worry, your hero is A-okay!” More praise was given to him. He pulled out a red button of his own. A high-pitched frequency that only dog and cat omega could hear pierced your eardrums as if bunches of needles were going through them.

You yelled out in absolute agony from the place that you’d managed to hide yourself. You’d found a mossy log where you managed to hide your huge poofy tail. You had to get away from the speakers. You’d already given away your location with your screams. It felt like your head was going to crack like an egg. As you wiggled yourself out and started to run, you’d seen your nightmare come closer to you.

“FUCK! FUCK!” You spat out your right hand and began to reach for your butterfly knife. As you tried to concentrate on where you were going while combatting your headache….

“CHOMP!” The closing of a loud metal contraption closed on you like a ravenous alligator had taken over one of your legs. You let out a blood-curdling shriek. Music to Alfred’s ears, in his opinion. Your screams cries, and harrowing battle that you were not meant to win were broadcasted for the crowd's enjoyment.

“Get her HUNTER ALFRED!”

“WOOOOOOO!”

You could hear the gleeful cheering. You knew it was futile but you still wanted to try. You had to.

Alfreds footsteps were only three feet from you. The high pitched screech had subsided at least. Your right hand prepared itself. Your tail stood up straight and fluffed out.

“Awwwww poor sweet kitty. It’s your time. Give up will ya? I’m here to save you!” He crochet down to look at your tired and angry face.

You lunged at him since he was close enough with your butterfly knife in hand. You’d managed to give him a small scratch against his face drawing a few droplets of blood. He briskly grabbed your wrist and snatched it from your hand.

“Looks like I have some peacekeepers to investigate and punish later.” He had a dark smile that painted his face. He puts your knife in his pocket and carried you to the center of the arena and raised you above his head as if you were a prized trophy lion he’d caught.

Volcanic applause exploded from the crowd. They chanted his name in unison. “ALFRED! ALFRED! The greatest darling hunter Alfred!”

*************************************************************************************

During all of this Canada was watching the whole ordeal.

“Oh no poor girl. What the fuck has my stupid brother done???” His eyes filled with tears as the bear trap was still on your leg letting blood drip onto Alfreds head like a light rain.

*************************************************************************************

“Jenny! Jenny! Miss Peacekeeper Jenny!” A small voice called for the grumpy brown eyed Alpha with wavy red hair.

“Yes, Lady Leictenstein? What are you doing here?”

“Heat is going to be on you soon. I assume you only have an hour.” She grabbed her hand and ran towards a secret area of the massive arena. “I have your change of clothes & supplies you’ll need. We’ve got to get you to the undergrounds.”

#hetalia #hws america #hetalia omegaverse #headingalaxys spicy #ヘタリア #yandere hetalia #headingalaxys writes stuff #alfred f jones #matthew williams #hws #world building #there is LORE to this one

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namgyunation · 14 days ago

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I'm not the anon who sent the ask abt nam-gyu crying but I did send an ask abt nam-gyu and addiction (so plz feel free to put this with that one if it's easier for you, im just a yapper), and talked abt how we have has some similar experiences and now I saw that other ask and gurrrrlllll not you hitting me in the feelings with the things you think would make him cry being the things that make me cry aka death, abandonment, and insecurity (I had a severe eating disorder growing up and still fight against my inner monologue abt my appearance to this day). Those are the things I could see making him cry too ngl. And I have the same headcanon as you that his childhood was harsh/his family relations are probably strained or they're not in contact. (And that kind of thing can really factor into addictions)

I actually do have a question for you now though lmao sorry to yap moreee but I hc him as bisexual as well, I don't even have a specific reason, it just feels right for me. (I hc thanos this way also tbh) and I see that you do as well and I'm excited because I didn't see anyone else hc him as bo, only gay. My question: do you think he is OK with that or do you think he has a physical attraction to thanos and is aware of it and mad abt that too because he hasn't accepted his sexuality?

<33 hello again!!!!!! plsssplspls yap to me omg i love yappers <3333 :]

ik you sent this back on march 2nd but i hope you're still around to see this reply... pls feel free to hmu again if you do <3

i'm glad that we share a lot of the same headcanons and that you enjoyed that post i made!!!! stick around bc i really wanna write out more headcanons about what i feel like his home life growing up would've been like for him. and completely agree that that kind of thing really factors into addictions. not gonna get into it too much in this post (feel free to dm me / send more asks if you wanna discussm more headcanons), but i totally believe by the time the games roll around, he is no longer talking to any of his family members / is estranged from his family. drug usage is so extremely stigmatized in korea (even just weed), and nam-gyu is out here doing everythingggg. no way dude has a support system or family looking out for him

and omg YAYYYY more bi nam-gyu truthers!!!!! i swear, there's definitely way more people out there that hc nam-gyu as bi. ppl r just more quiet about it bc ik it's rather popular to hc him as gay or say something like "i couldn't possibly see nam-gyu with a woman" or "he hates women so much he wouldn't be attracted to one" etc. etc. anyways.

"My question: do you think he is OK with that or do you think he has a physical attraction to thanos and is aware of it and mad abt that too because he hasn't accepted his sexuality?"

but yes yes to get back to your question, i view him as bi, and if he were to be bi fr, i think he would 100% be closeted. i'm gonna try to not let my own headcanons and bias leak in here while i talk about my rationale lol and just to try to stick to what little information we're given in canon.

so again, in canon, we clearly see that he desperately wants to be perceived in a certain way by others. he wants to fit in, doesn't want to be seen as weak. that's like a reallyyy big thing about him. won't go too deeply into it again bc i think i've done that like 100x in all my other posts where i talk about his character, lmao.

and to clarify, what i'm gonna say here about sexuality and gender is not indicative of my own views, just how i'd feel nam-gyu would view it based on his character.

obligatory acknowledgment to everyone reading that these are all my own interpretations, everyone pls have fun and headcanon what you want. nam-gyu is not real

CW: mentions of internalized homophobia ahead; if that upsets you don't read this

anyway, nam-gyu seems like the perfect image of 'toxic masculinity.' quick reiteration of something i said in another post, but like. he's so overly aggressive for no reason and is always going after and trying to assert himself over min-su, someone he perceives as weak: quiet, shy, timid, nervous. he refuses to let himself cry after watching thanos bleed out, despite that being a very valid reason to, and he gets extremely snappy, sensitive, and defensive the second se-mi makes even the slightest comment that pokes a hole in the confident, strong, tough guy image that he tries to build up in front of the rest of the team during the pentathlon.

with how insecure he is and the fact that this extreme insecurity is such a big, emphasized part of his character, i really do not see him being open and honest with others about his sexuality if he were to be anything other than straight. tbh, i wouldn't even see him wanting to be honest with himself lmao.

he's full of so much resentment and is constantly repressing his true feelings and trying to mold himself to appear a certain way to others. because of this, i think that in the hc of him being bi or gay, realistically, he would be extremely repressed. i could even see him having a lot of internalized homophobia, frustration, and anger towards himself and repressing that part of his sexuality. every time we see him, he's so extremely hateful to everyone around him, even thanos to an extent, as we see the resentment he feels towards him rise bc of the continued disrespect lmao (though he keeps that inside bc he wants thanos to like him). i could see him directing a lot of that hatred at himself, too. he's also sooo hyper-aware of how he's being perceived by others all the time, as well.

with how emotionally constipated and insecure he is, i barely even see him admitting his sexuality to himself, let alone be open about it. i don't think he'd want to accept that part of himself, or at the very least, like you said, be extremely mad and frustrated at himself for it.

also repeating something i've said before, but with how nam-gyu acts, bro likely did not have a warm, supportive, and communicative home life. i think it's a safe assumption to make that someone that acts like that: mean, angry, resentful, with a history of "being disrespected his whole life" likely did not have many people close to him that he could trust or be vulnerable with a topic as sensitive as that, especially considering how extremely stigmatized it is to be lgbt in korea and how normalized it is to be openly hostile towards gay people over there, which is further emphasized in the show itself, seeing how the prejudice hyun-ju faced for being a transwoman was shown repeatedly throughout s2.

so. nam-gyu hates the idea of being seen as weak, hates the idea of being associated with / being friends with people he views as weak (shown by his bullying of min-su and aggression when min-su tries to "talk to him like they're friends" in that one scene in mingle), likely holds the idea that women are naturally weaker than men (a belief that we see is held by a lot of the men in squid game, including both main and side characters from s1 and s2; such as sang-woo and deok-su when making teams for tug of war and one of extras in s2 gi-hun's huddle before lights out. with nam-gyu specifically, this is shown in his reluctance to recruit se-mi without knowing if the game would require strength).

with all that, i don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that nam-gyu is the type of dude to think of femininity = weakness.

also, quick side tangent, but with the femininity = weakness thing, that's also partly the reason why i'm not the biggest fan of how he gets feminized when put into a relationship with thanos. not that there's anything wrong with having fun and making jokes, and obv the "omg he's my malewife princess cunty diva queen i'm gonna get him pregnant <3" thing is a fandom joke that's been around forever, so i'm acknowledging that. but with nam-gyu it just feel like it straight up just goes against a big part of his character and personality, to the point where i'm like. okk he would not do that, and the character isn't even nam-gyu at that point. i think this is also present in how people treat gi-hun as well, but i will not go there lmao

based on his behavior throughout s2, it's clear to see that he has the constant desire to come off to other people as this big, strong, confident, intimidating dude. i just think it's highly unlikely that he'd wear anything feminine or allow himself to publically do anything that he thinks could make him come off as weak, feminine, or just stand out to others in a way that differs from the norm that puts him in a position to be judged negatively. i could really see him thinking that femininity is synonymous with weakness, and his whole thing is that he HATES being seen as weak.

nam-gyu is a disrespectful, resentful asshole that exhibits toxic / fragile masculinity throughout all of s2. i find it extremely plausible that he'd be the type of dude to hold the problematic view of inherently associating homosexuality with femininity (despite gender expression and sexuality obviously being two completely different things), and thus, weakness, especially considering homosexuality is commonly considered to be a deviation from traditional masculinity. i just can't see him being out and open about that part of himself if he were to experience that kind of attraction. i think he'd hate himself for it.

does all that i said make sense lmfao.... it's midnight and i'm tired, but i'm just gonna post this lol. i honestly think i deviated far from what you asked and just started talking about why i hc him as closeted no matter if he were to be bi or gay.

and just to touch on the thanos part of your ask really quick: i'm acknowledging my bias here real quick, because i personally prefer to see them as bros. however, idk it can be interpreted both ways lol, i think it's just up to the viewer at that point to determine if nam-gyu was physically attracted to thanos or if he was just fanboying and clout-chasing after this cool celebrity that he clearly was a huge fan of.

no matter how it's interpreted, i personally think that if nam-gyu were to be romantically attracted to thanos, he'd be mad at himself for it and try to ignore it.

tdlr: i hc nam-gyu as bi, but 100% closeted. he exhibits a lot of toxic masculinity and fragility through his actions and things he says. he's always trying to maintain a certain strong, confident image of himself to others, and is hyper-aware of how he's perceived by others. because of that, i really don't think he'd allow himself to publically deviate from the 'norm' of what's considered masculine. this, plus taking into account how normalized it is to be openly critical of lgbt people in korea (something that's highlighted in s2), if he were to be bi / gay, i doubt he'd be honest about it to anyone, let alone himself. just look at how angry and repressed he is about everything, how he bullies the living shit out of min-su for being 'weak', for not fitting what he deems as 'masculine'. i think nam-gyu'd be mad at himself for it and refuse to admit it. he's not okay with a lot of things about himself and the people around him. i personally do not see him being accepting of his own sexuality, either.

ANDDD quick disclaimer. this is how i hc him but IN THE SHOW / in my own personal namgyuverse in my head. in a fanon, having fun and writing fics and making art and memes sense, WHO GAFFFFF.

also!!!!! i will answer the first part of your ask separately :) thank you for the kind message and taking the time to send me it, seriously!!!! hopefully i don't take too long again </3

#COME BACK TO ME ANON #tell me ur still out there....#anon #inbox #i haven't written a long nam-gyu post in forever omggg #tired af will add to this in the morning

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never-not-ever · 1 month ago

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The theme today was abandonment and death and core beliefs that I'm a bad person, there is something inherently wrong with me, why am I not good enough for people to stay.

Whenever I've talked about this before I'd bring up my mother losing custody of me when I was 2, my Aunt who raised me dying when I was 19 and most recently my relationship ending with my ex.

But today I brought up my old best friend K and I actually got really emotional. She lives right around the corner from me, probably a 3 minute walk. I don't remember what grade we started becoming friends but I know it was definitely by 5th grade because I have this clear memory of us talking about which middle schools we were going to.

We must have become friends at an after school program cause I know we weren't in the same elementary school. We went to seperate middle schools (6th-8th) but ended up at the same high school.

We were together through so much. She was also raised by her Aunt and she had a complicated relationship with her parents. In highschool she lost 3 people in the span of months. Her grandparents and a different Aunt all lived on the floor below her and all 3 of them passed away. Her Aunt was an unexpected death and her grandparents passed away from old age.

My Aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was in middle school. She would go into remission and then it would come back. This happened a couple times. By my freshman year of college it had returned and to her brain. My best friend K lived at home and commuted to college freshman year. I wanted to get out of the city and so I moved an hour and a half away. I was already planning to transfer home the next year cause I hated living at school but my Nana told me she was going to tell me to come home anyways because the doctors told my Aunt she didn't have much time left.

My Aunt passed away in April 2012. K was there for me during that time. During the next 5 years my mental health would decline and get better and decline again and get better, just like a rollercoaster.

I saw my first therapist in March 2013. I remember K had said to me "are you being honest? you need to actually tell them what's been happening". I started binge drinking at home, alone and my self harm started to get worse. It wasn't always like that, it usually got worse during winter.

Then in March 2014 I got drunk and had planned to overdose on a bunch of trial and error meds that I had subconsciously been saving. I sent out a text "I'm sorry" to K, another close friend, my therapist and psychiatrist at the time. It was the middle of the night but K walked to my house right away. This is so gross but apparently I had gotten sick and was making "snow angels" in it. She cleaned it all up and stayed the night.

The next morning my therapist informed me that I had to go to the hospital or else she'd call my grandmother. So that became my first inpatient stay. A week later I discharged, went home and "finished what I had started the night before I went inpatient". I waited until after taking everything before sending out another text to those 4 people. It was a little cryptic. I still have a screenshot of it even though it's been memorized in my head. K called me but I didn't answer. She then called my house phone and talked to my Nana. My bedroom was on the 3rd floor and my Nana's was on the second. She called up to me and asked if I was okay and I yelled back down that I was fine and just taking a nap. That was the last thing I remember before waking up in the ICU days later.

K was there for my suicide attempt. She was there for the many inpatient stays after that.

I forget how old we were when she started dating her boyfriend. K was a very quiet person, didn't really express a lot of emotions but she was the most supportive, fun, loving, caring friend I could have asked for. She didn't express much but you could feel how much she cared for you. When she started dating F she was quiet and reserved about their relationship. It took a while before she let me meet him. I can't quite explain it. Back then I was a little offended that we didn't all hang out together and that she didn't tell me much. But she was a private person and looking back there's nothing wrong with that.

In January 2017 I started dating my ex. I was visiting my Aunt and Uncle in WV and I had started making dating profiles. At the time I was straight and honestly every single message from guys disgusted me. I don't know why but I changed my settings to interested in both and started questioning my sexuality. When I started talking to my ex, a girl, I had to explain it to my friends and my Nana. I told everyone that I didn't want to label myself, that I liked "people" and that was that.

There was never any kind of romantic feeling towards my friend K. I don't know if because my ex was a girl it was more threatening to our relationship when I started hanging out with my ex and having to split my time up. But when I started dating my ex that's when my friendship with K became rocky and then ended.

Back then K was a florist manager at a supermarket that we both worked at and she had been transferred to a different location. We stopped talking and that was that.

A year later I got promoted to full time and was transferred to a different store and became the florist manager there. It was temporary to cover that managers medical leave. When she returned I became a "float" and I would basically go to different stores in the district and help out the florists based on who needed help. In 2019 I had to go help out K at her store and so we sort of broke the ice, and caught up with each others lives. I was only there for like a week and after that I'd text her if I had a question about flowers/work but it never became anything like before.

Because she lives right near me I've seen her occasionally if I drive by her house. I've thought about reaching out to her... I said this to my therapist today, that I don't want it to look like I'm reaching out because I ended things with my ex. Because that's why our friendship ended in the first place and now that the problem is gone I want her back? It's so complicated.

There's more I have to say about her, something I was thinking about after therapy but I'm going to put it in a different post cause this is too long and also it's sort of a different topic.

#personal #too long to proof read

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foxgloveinspace · 4 months ago

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hi hi hi!!

i feel like it’s been so long since i’ve stopped by

i am here to share that i have been blessed with the stupidest possible dreams with the sleepy t boys lately

1) glad to have them back in my brain like this it’s always fun and 2) wtf brain could we not do the dumbest situations?

the first one was from today and omg. so i dreamt that i went home to visit my dad and his family was down because it was christmas? guess i’m looking forward to the holidays lol. anyways my dad somehow found a documentary on sleep token on tv and put it on because “hey my kid likes them” and for some reason it was filmed/presented like a true crime doc? and straight up exposed all the boys. names, faces, interviews. and my whole family made fun of me the whole time because i tried so hard to not have their identities spoiled even with this stupid documentary on 😂 and i succeeded! somehow! although i do remember this- iv’s accent was so fucking bizarre i’m not sure i could ever tell you where my brain pulled it from. and someone was named nat but i have no idea who lmaooo

the other dream was that the band for some reason came to my city? (idk why, this place is ass and we have no venue big enough for them) and for some reason i was tasked with like, showing them around and helping them acclimate to the city. so what’s the first thing dream-exie does? take them to buy weed and go to their favourite local bar for a show 😂 we got absolutely blitzed outside the bar and then went in and had an absolute rager to some local bands. and now i want that to be real so bad… (and also shotgunning the joint with iii🙈… iii was a menace and dream me was all too willing to encourage. lmao i feel so weird admitting that my brain made that up because it feels too horny lmao)

anyways. that’s what my head has been up to! other than aura migraines lmao. i hope you’ve been well!!! 🩶🩶🩶

Exie!!! I thought I answered this, I'm sorry!! Thank you for telling me about these dreams, they are so great, lol. I really haven't even had any memorable dreams, much less sleep token ones. Would love to have a sleep token dream again. I wonder if your one with the documentary was inspired by the recent Instagram vids lmao, those crack me up??? found footage sleep token, lmao. I also love that you got to show them around to your favorite places. (no comment on the shotgunning besides like, what I would be like irl, which is a big thumbs up, lmao)

This next bit got... long. Sorry for my ADHD fingers and ramblings about migraines, I only realized I've had them my whole life last May, so. I give all my tips lol.

Sorry to hear about your migraines, I actually had one when you sent me this ask off. I read your post about it, I've only had mine completely block my vision once, but it was because of some bad smells. I completely lost my vision, but it was still purple, not all black??? My visual impairments/visual aura's are splotches of neon purple and green, moving in my vision like waves. sometimes they can be gold and black, but it's usually the green and purple.

I find fast acting/extra strength Tylenol works really good for migraines. I also keep liquid IV in my bag, cause that helps too (if you have a migraine you want to avoid artificial sweeteners, and liquid IV has cane sugar in it, while most other electrolyte drink mixes do not.)

I find that using a wet washcloth on my forehead/point of pain works way better then an ice pack cause you can keep flipping the washcloth over and the side not against your skin will keep cooling off, where an ice pack will melt.

I have seen some videos/read about putting your feet in hot water when you have one, and that supposedly helps??? I have yet to try it, but it sounds soothing.

Sorry this became me info dumping about migraine stuff. Just don't want you too be in pain/I have tips. Mine have been pretty bad this year, tbh. I had one for 2 weeks back in March, and I probably should have gone to the doctor, but I realized I just.... can't binge video games anymore after it was gone, oof.

#hihi!!!#friend Exie!!#hope your doing ok tonight.#<3 <3 <3 #oh and the reason i thought I got to this and didn't is cause when I was reading it my brother and sister in law got home #for the early thanksgiving on Friday so. I got busy... oof.#it wasn't a bad visit just... oddly draining?? and my sister agreed but..... nothing bad happened??

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vanyafresita · 1 year ago

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MUTUALS HEY pspsps mutuals pspspspspsss

it's been a while since i've sent any physical letters to anyone and i kinda miss it... SO, if we're mutuals and don't mind giving me your address, i'd love to send you a physical letter <3

you don't have to send anything back btw ! this is simply something i enjoy doing ^^

[more details under read more]

on the written letter i'll send, i'll talk about a random number of things and maybe gush about the media im most interested at the moment (tho if you know we share a fandom (no matter how old or dead it is, even if im not actively going crazy about it rn) and u wanna hear my thoughts on that specifically, please let me know !!)

_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._

along with the letter, i'll send too:

a surprise recipe of something sweet or salty that i like (i'll modify the recipe if necessary in case of allergies, diets or ingredients dislikes)

a tea bag (i have quite a bunch of tea flavours, so you can pick one or i'll send a random one !)

a traditional drawing of anything you want ! (yes, anything !)

2 postcards + a few stickers and stamps

a friendship bracelet (lmk 3 colours you like !)

optional: if you want to send a letter back, but you're unsure what to write about in your letter, you can request me a list of questions so you can reply them and go off about anything else ^_^

_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._

extra notes:

i'm currently living in europe, but i'll send stuff worldwide, wherever you are !!

this is completely free ! unless your country has some weird ass laws that make you pay for receiving packets (????), this should cost you nothing at all (if u're forced to pay to get the packet, i'll send u the money !)

along with your address, i'd advise giving me a phone number too (some countries require me to give a phone number, sorry u_u)

you do NOT have to send me anything back !! and if you decide to do it, it does not mean you have to send anything else apart from a letter !

even if we have never talked/interacted directly at all, you're very much welcome to ask for this !!!

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if you're interested, dm me ! we can sort out the details and i'll start right away ! :]

this will be valid until march 31st ! EDIT: closed ! i got more requests for this than expected and i can't really get to more people, so im ending this after one day !! lol i'll try to do this again by the end of the year in case someone missed it !! <3 thanks to those who reached out !

#smiles very big #i like writing physical letters and yapping !!!!!!!!#im full of thoughts and i like sharing them !!!!!!#but i dont really have a lot of friends sooooooo......#vanya strawberry flavored

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katnissdoesnotfollowback · 2 years ago

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In your opinion, please rate thg movie series with 1-5 scale.

(1 = I hate it, 3=neutral, 5 = I love it.)

1.The Hunger Games :

Things that you like :

Things that you don't like :

2.Cathing Fire :

Things that you like :

Things that you don't like :

3.Mockingjay

Movie 1 :

Movie 2 :

Things that you like :

Things that you don't like :

Thank you 😊

@curiousnonny

So let me preface my ratings here by saying that I really think these books are already so well edited in terms of necessary content that making a movie version of any of them is a mistake. Maybe I'm biased and greedy, but I honestly feel like 99% of the scenes in the books play a crucial role in either plot, character, or theme development and removing them waters down the story too much, in my opinion. I would much rather have seen a series version on screen than a movie. Not to mention, Collins made her name as a writer in television, and you can SEE IT in how she writes her novels. It's structured like a TV series so it should've been shot like a TV series. Anyways. So my rankings are gonna be... kinda low for the movies. Sorry not sorry.

But also... my thoughts on this are fresh. My youngest was supposed to read The Hunger Games with his 6th grade class. The teacher sent home a form requesting parents' permission to do so. I signed it gladly and sent it back, but apparently there were a lot of parents who sent it back with complaints instead of approval. Enough that the class read the first Percy Jackson book instead. I'm fine with that too, lol, especially since my kiddo really liked it and is now on book five of that series. I've been trying to reread along with him and will hopefully be catching up to him this week, lol.

After his teacher switched books for the class reading, he and I decided we'd read THG books together once he's done with PJO, but then, my oldest skipped a field trip he really didn't wanna go on and wound up staying at school and watching... The Hunger Games and part of Catching Fire. He came home with QUESTIONS, which immediately sparked a "Hey, not fair!" from the youngest and prompted a movie marathon. We made it through all four movies back in March, and I'm still not forgiven for not warning him about Finnick btw...

Okay enough story time. *cracks knuckles*

The Hunger Games

Ranking: 2/5

Things I don't like: Ugh where to start? The removal of Madge and therefore the significance of Katniss's mockingjay pin as a symbol of wealth and power bestowed by the Capitol only to be flipped on its head and turned into a symbol of rebellion. Also, the implications of removing Madge in terms of how they tried to make Katniss into STRONG BADASS WO-MAN while dulling some of her softer edges and dependencies on other people. See also: leaving out the gift of bread from D11 to Katniss.

The dialogue is shit. Sorry, those are my thoughts. You already had really good dialogue in the book why change that? Also, the gutting of the dialogue results in the gutting of both Katniss and Peeta as characters. The first movie turns them into The Watson character, i.e. the character whose purpose it is to ask questions so that the audience can learn about the setting/plot/other characters/whatever. The first movie made Katniss and Peeta look naive and dumb about the Games and the very world they inhabit, which makes no sense for their characters. I get it. It's a storytelling technique to quicken up the process of world building and make up for the fact that we don't get to be in Katniss's head where she tells us what we need to know about her world. BUT their characters suffer for it. Katniss and Peeta are sixteen. Anyone who has interacted with a teenager knows that at that age, we usually have #OPINIONS on things, so in the books, both already have developing opinions about the Games because they are by necessity and by exposure aware of how the Games and the government essentially work. They've lived in this world long enough. They've started to develop opinions and world views, and they act accordingly. The first movie loses this completely from the books.

Do not get me started on the dialogue in the cave scenes we will be here until the next century if we go there.

Buttercup. Christ how hard is it to cast a yellow/orange cat?!?!?! Not that difficult. And granted, this is a minor detail in terms of symbols but at the same time... it's a minor detail. The fact that they didn't even bother showed a lack of caring about the details. Also see: Rock Peeta.

The stakes of almost everything are lowered, from the bread scene (we don't realize until MJ2 that she's literally starving and knocking on death's door in that scene) to the berry scene (and here it's Peeta knocking on death's door and Katniss is desperate to save him, enough to put POISON BERRIES IN HER MOUTH and risk her own life too)... the movie lacks the desperation for both of those crucial parts.

Peeta's leg Peeta's leg Peeta's motherfreaking amputated leg!!!!!!

Things I liked: The sound and sound editing. It's such a small thing, and I have a story to go with this okay? When I saw it in theaters, I disliked a lot of things, but one of them was something I could not put my fingers on. It bugged me for weeks until the movie came out on DVD (yes, I'm old and also saw it at the veeeeeeery end of its theater run where I live... like it was a $5 special...). Anyways. Mr. Kdnfb is an electrical engineer by education and is suuuuuper picky about our sound system in our house. So when I watched it at home, the Thing clicked in my brain. The SOUND. It had been Waaaaaay Off in a way that was awful in that theater for some reason. And once I watched it at home, there was just something about the way they did the sound that made a lot of what I had hated become less of A Thing to me. The more I've watched it, the more I've realized the sound and sound editing was excellent, and I put this as things I liked because my story goes to show how such a tiny thing can really screw up a movie.

Catching Fire

Ranking: 3.5/5 (Omg I'm gonna get barbecued for this one.)

Things I didn't like: See my caveat at the top. Okay, so. One of my biggest problems is just how much got cut to adapt this one to screen. Sooooo many scenes. Finnick "hanging" himself in training, "someone else can get the stupid goat knocked up," all the hullabaloo about the wedding is talked about but that doesn't happen in the movies, the setup for the existence of D13, the plant book and Peeta caring for an injured Katniss, training like Careers, scaring Peeta with the medicine, Katniss really starting to come around to the idea of a rebellion even before the Quell announcement, "Poor Finnick. Is this the first time you haven't been pretty?" Just so much cut for the sake of time and results in the story feeling rushed and sloppy ugh.

While the cast and crew for this one did a much better job adapting the dialogue to the screen, there are still a few crucial bits of dialogue that make me itch with hives. The post jabberjay scene and the death of the morphling mainly. Good lord. You finally let movie!Peeta be as eloquent and convincing as book!Peeta in D11, why not give him the space to do it in the arena, too?

Things I do like: The casting. Hear me out. After the first movie, I was still not entirely sold on Jennifer, Josh, and Liam for the roles they were playing. Really, the only main characters who live through the first movie that I was happy and 100% on board with with were Donald Sutherland, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, and Stanley Tucci. Catching Fire is where I accepted Josh's portrayal of Peeta a little bit more, mainly because of the process of film making and what they put forth with CF showed me that he could nail the part if only they'd give him the dialogue and choose the cuts that best showed what he could do. I have no idea what sort of dialogue they were given or how much free reign they were allowed to improvise, but I do know that they will shoot a scene multiple times with multiple different delivery styles and slightly different dialogue. Which means that the actors really don't get a say on which version of their performance makes the final cut. But when the dialogue was spot on in the final version, I felt like Josh pulled off Peeta very well. I also think the way they shot CF allowed Jennifer Lawrence to put forth a better overall performance as well, although I'm still not in love with her as Katniss.

But really it's the Quell Victors/Tributes that I loved about CF. I went in unsure and came out convinced. My caveat here is that I tend to think of the movies as their own thing. The movie versions of the characters are their own iteration and I try really hard not to let them bleed into how I see or think of the characters in the books. That doesn't always happen, but I do try.

Okay this one is kinda not the fault of the first movie, but the increased budget for CF is apparent in several of the things that I liked, namely the costumes, the staging, the special effects. Much better all around.

Mockingjay Part 1

Ranking: 3/5

Things I did not like: Gale. MJ1 finishes off the complete removal of any depth Gale had as a character, a process that started with him rage rushing Head Peacekeeper Thread in CF and culminates here with him condemning Peete's words as a TORTURED PRISONER OF WAR rather than him not only intuiting what's probably happening, but explaining it to Katniss, then trying to protect Katniss from it, like he does in the books. The reason why book!Gale is so much more compelling to me than movie!Gale is because Gale's anger and fire and indignation has REASONING behind it in the book. It is chillingly easy to see the lines his reasoning could possibly take. As in... I've worked in weapons development and I have worked with real people who think like book!Gale or Beetee. Whereas movie!Gale is basically just RAWR!!! fury.

The rescue scene. I could write an entire essay on what's wrong with this, but it all boils down to they tried to shorten it by overlapping the video of the rescue with Finnick talking. Which makes zero military sense btw why the freak would you broadcast helmet video of your team going in on a stealth mission and risk someone intercepting it or noting the presence of an encrypted signal and figuring out what was going on holy hell you would NOT. You'd be freaking SILENT and just waiting to find out!!!!!!! And yes yes, but we need to see it. Okay, but you've already shown scenes with Snow and Seneca talking, Seneca and Haymitch talking, Snow and Plutarch talking, Snow and his granddaughter!!!! cuts from D11 and so much more that Katniss would not have seen, so play this like that. You can still show the audience but clearly keep Katniss and everyone back in D13 in the dark. The way it's shot is nonsensical and also pretty much waters down the horror of what Finnick went through and the impact of his words.

And while we're on this topic, they somehow used that overlapping and ridiculous video feed to try and shorten the scene, but wound up making it interminably and unbelievably long with the layers upon layers upon LAYERS of rooms the rescue squad has to go through and also the Skype Call of Inanity. The whole debacle is so freaking long that I no longer feel tense by the time it's finally over. It's so obvious that the Capitol is letting them take back Peeta, Annie, and Johanna because of how long a stealth mission (which should be almost too fast to process) takes that it becomes stupid for D13 to not suspect something. There's no desperation or high stakes for me with this scene because it's too long and too messy, makes no sense tactically and basically just erases all the emotional depth and pacing of what's in the books ugh. Seriously. You could've spent that time on the torture of the prep team or some of the Boggs and Katniss or Katniss and Finnick content we miss out on. Delly. Gale's siblings. Literally anything that you cut out. Rant over.

"He's gonna kill Peeta".... um no actually it's that Snow won't kill Peeta but keep dangling him in front of you, Katniss...

Things I did like: The sets. District 13 is... perfect. Sterile and drab and utilitarian. Zero luxury or any real sense that humans live there. There are zero personal touches in any of the spaces. No connections to art or joy or life.

Effie. I really wish we'd still gotten the prep team in D13, because it's an avenue through which we see how brutal and lacking in compassion D13 really is, but if it's Effie there with her for the movies, then Elizabeth Banks did a stellar job with what she was given to do. I do wish they'd allowed Finnick to keep his line: "They'll either want to kiss you, kill you, or be you." And if not that, then don't freaking cut the "Why, do you find this distracting?" scene. But overall, Effie in D13 works for me in terms of the movie universe.

Mockingjay Part 2

Ranking: 2.5/5

Things I didn't like: Facepalm worthy wigs and dye jobs. Dude. You are the final chapter of a big budget blockbuster franchise. I understand that the dye jobs have taken their toll and wigs may be just more practical for the actors at this stage, but DO BETTER with the money you have.

Just how much of Johanna they cut out of this part and what that does to Katniss's development.

The ending. It's so lackluster in so many ways. One of the things that I loved about the theme of the ending is how it shows that with the right kind of care, a life can be lived and be worthwhile even after the worst kinds of trauma. We get this through the sheer beauty of Katniss's final words in both the final chapter and the epilogue. To me, the movie ending felt just... blah. And I get that maybe they were aiming for a sense of calm and peace, but instead it came off as blah, we're broken and just going through the motions. Which makes sense right after the war ends, but not as the ending continues into the "Real" scene or the epilogue.

Mahershala Ali is highly underutilized in this movie. Let the man play the freaking part. He's already good with what you let him do. Let him unleash the acting chops and make Boggs sing as a character. And part of this has to do with what they cut from the film, like him carrying Katniss to the hovercraft in D8 and her vomiting on him. Same with Julianne Moore. Coin was not nearly cold or controlling enough nor did she convincingly clash with Katniss enough leading up to Peeta showing up in the Capitol.

The omission of the heartbreaking silence Katniss puts herself into and how they turned the sadness of the final breaking of her friendship with Gale into "Goodbye Gale." Ugh. I laugh at it, but it's not a good change. Like we can't allow a Strong Wo-Man Character to be sad or hurt about this, why not????

Burn. Scars. Burn. Scars. Burn. Scars. BURN! SCAAAAARRRRRRRSSSSSS!!!!!

Things I did like: The music. Odd pick I know, but even though the ending is not well done for me, I almost always start bawling the second Katniss starts singing the meadow lullaby as the credits roll. And that's just one weird instance of me liking the music for this film.

How they brought the hijacking to life. I can't even explain why this works so well, but it does. My only wish is that they'd given more time for the Real/Not Real game to develop on film and included more of Peeta's dialogue that shows both the struggle and him regaining parts of himself -- the cafeteria scene, his words to Pollux and Tigris for example.

And there you have it, @curiousnonny. My super long answer to your question. ;)

#thg thoughts #curiousnonny #anonymous #look at that ask

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aelfgiure · 10 months ago

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I remember waking up, small and cold. My brothers sleeping soundly as the rains pounded against the durasteel, thunder grumbling. We were all alike, all clones, all built to be soldiers.

It was my first time wondering who I was, what I could be if I ever had a choice. Honestly, I've never stopped.

Not that I said anything out loud, mind you! Clones that didn't work out were 'decommissioned.' To be blunt, they killed my siblings for being too curious, too slow to learn, colorblind, moody, difficult. Any reason that one of us would stand out was reason enough to get us decommissioned, so I learned to fit in.

Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm CT 1313, or Lucky. It's nice to meet you.

Now, where was I? Right, fitting in. The Mandalorian trainer caught on to my difference, but he had me trained as a medic, to 'best utilize my skill set', as he put it. Maker bless, that man saved my life. Gave me a reason to hang back, be wary. To observe everything with caution and, yes, curiosity. I loved learning everything I could. I still do, honestly.

The War? Oh, kid. You don't want to hear about it from my point of view. Seriously. It was horrors, and death, and too damn many of the vod sent... well, nu kyr’adyc, shi taab’echaaj’la. Not gone, simply marching far away. Because of kriffin' course the best leaders for this galactic conflict were the pacifist wizards - *ahem*

There were good generals, of course. Skywalker led from in front, no matter how hard his troops tried to hold him back, hah! Plo Koon, others.

Oh, Kenobi? I was honestly jealous of my vod in the 212th, once I met the man. He and his commander had something special between them, the way they communicated and worked together. It was good. Solid. Yeah, it became a quiet goal of mine for after the War. Find someone, settle down, build a life. A family. Maybe someone like Kenobi, kind and snarky, someone who could understand what it was like to be a soldier.

The turning point for me, well, I was badly injured doing my job. Field patch up, covering the trooper so I could get him back up and fighting. He made it out okay. I had a kriffing battledroid explode on me! Not my idea of a good time. It was fortunate that my trainer was there at the time, he got the mandalorian militia to do a hot extraction, take me to mandalore for treatment.

That ended the War for me. They found the chip when they were repairing my brain, but didn't have enough time to ask about it when that bastard activated it. It took us a hot minute to figure out what the hell happened to my vod, oh Force, were the Mandalorians pissed off!

It took some time but they got unchipped, and we got adopted into the clan. You know how the War ended. I heard Kenobi's emergency message, not ashamed to admit I bawled like a rancor baby listening to it. Yeah, the jettiise could be annoying bastards but overall, they were good wizards. Some of them were vod, in spirit if not body, right?

When we got word of the slaughter at The Temple, my clan made plans. Next to the jetti, mandalorians were the largest group of independent badasses in the galaxy. The Empire was going to come gunning for us next, I knew it. So, we went our own way.

It's not well known, but during the destruction of Mandalore, those of us who lived off planet did rescue missions. They were messy, brutal things, it tore me up inside. They were my brothers, those clones, and that sick bastard mind wiped them and used them like they were droids! Mindless and expendable, and by damn we were not!

Sorry. Well, no. Not sorry. It still hurts, thinking about what might have been. My covert joined the Rebellion, somehow I ended up in charge of one of the medical frigates. Okay, okay, it was my ship in the first place but really, I never thought of myself as officer material. That's for natborns.

Anyhow, the Evaar'la Vercopa has been dropping out of hyperspace to give aid wherever it's needed for... damn, I'm old, about 30 standard years now. No wonder I'm slowing down, right?

So, that's my story, Commander... yep, I'm getting old, I remember your call sign but not your name! Anyhow, RedFive, nice to meet you, and I'll be glad to help you out however I can.

You were born to a brood of hundreds, your siblings all hopelessly mindless and brutal, yet you somehow were born with sentience, now you have to find your own way in a world of monsters and monster hunters.

#the clone wars #star wars #writing prompt s #my scribbles

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numinously-yours · 9 months ago

Note

Thanks for responding to me and I understand about the timeline there's no present at all, you don't owe us anything I wanted to make sure, and I am sorry if I am sent too many

m 🏵️

Thanks for your patience. I am going to touch on all three in this reply if that's okay!

First:

You had asked to clarify about feelings vs reaction of your person when they see you for the first time. When I channeled, those reactions were what I was feeling. I can try to be more specific here, but I am not sure how to better differentiate, unfortunately. Confidence - bravery Bold - excitement Determination - urgency Curiosity & Awe I'm not sure have another feeling attached. Not in a single word at least. These just have their own sort of overarching feel for me that I'm not sure how to describe with other words.

Second:

I really want to know where will I meet my future husband?( At this point I am believe they are just my significant lover)I feel in a place to have a good relationship and really want to start putting my energy into getting one. Although I would under if that person is not in the right energy right now, (would love to know if this is the case)I just want to know when can I expect are union to happen?

For this, I asked the cards 1) where this person is energetically 2). where you are likely to meet, and 3). a timeline for this union.

1). Where are they energetically? The Tower & the Queen of Wands

I think this person is in a whirlwind of energy right now. Something big has happened. It feels like the rug was ripped out from underneath them and they are still waiting to land on their feet. The Queen of Wands in the deck I'm using for this is holding a telescope (which is not found on all queen of wands' cards). I do think they want to find you and they had been looking until this tower moment happened. Whatever happened to cause the Tower is just very heavy. They want to make sure they are in a good place before searching again.

2). Where you are likely to meet? Knight of Cups & The Chariot

I can't narrow down a specific place, but the vibes I am getting is that it will be somewhere that you were nervous about going to but you decided to go anyway. This could be an event, a vacation, or even online dating/forums. There may be others around you trying to convince you not to do it (go to this place or join an app) but you listen to your gut and take the plunge anyway. The two of you may meet due to your common creative interests. If it's an event, maybe you meet at ComicCon or a karaoke night. If you meet online, you might match with each other because you each posted about your love for the topic.

3). What is the timeline? Ace of Pentacles, Five of Cups, Page of Wands

With these cards, as of right now, a time frame presenting itself is five months to a year. Next Spring (northern hemisphere) is really coming to the forefront - particularly Aries season (March-April). If you are travelling anywhere during that time, that could be a significant place. There may be drinking and hangovers involved lol I always make note that timelines can change based on energies, road blocks, and other decisions.

Third:

I had a dream today where I had asked a man (big, Black hair, built, beard) to "kiss me". I guess we were jud talking about something and he walked across to behind me to keep something and I turned and I just asked him to kiss me. He just looked at me with big eyes. His expression looked very neutral, (I don't think it was negative) because in that moment I was just thinking what I was feeling. And the thing is I wasn't even attracted to that person, but just wanted him to kiss me. I wasnt nervous about it or anything, nor uncomfortable. My question is what does this dream signify? I don't work as closely with dream interpretation, so this may be better suited for anyone who does them more often. However, I usually believe that dreams signify something going on in our subconscious. You are probably longing for closeness to a person and are ready to take those next steps. I did try to look at it through a tarot perspective. I asked if this person in the dream was your future FS and then asked for any other information the cards could give me about the dream.

Is this your person? Eight of Cups

The Eight of Cups leans more toward "pessimistic" feelings, so I am going to say that this wasn't your specific person. This card signifies being disappointed and feeling like something is missing. I think that refers back to my original thought that you are longing for this type of connection and in your dreams, you can make it happen more easily.

Other information? The Devil reversed & The Star

The Devil in reverse calls you to confront your fears and release self-limiting beliefs. The Star calls you to renew your faith and believe in your purpose. Something that may be important to take from your dream is knowing you have the courage inside you to make movement toward this kind of relationship. Whether you make the first move or not, you can walk away knowing that you can reciprocate if someone makes the first move for you. The Devil reversed can also talk about dark thoughts. I don't sense these being like scary, unhealthy thoughts. I pictured them more as "this is something I would never do. Am I a bad person?" and getting a bit low. It made me think of the big & dark qualities of the person in your dream. Since it's unlikely your person, it could signify these thoughts and being ready to get rid of them and move forward.

Thanks M!

#tarot #tarot reading #REQUESTS ARE CLOSED

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ratralsis · 10 months ago

Text

This is probably the last I'll be posting about Tina, at least, for now. So if you're tired of reading about my old dead cat, then, hey, no worries, bud. I get it.

I wanted to see if I had any way to get to even older photos of Tina than the ones I posted yesterday. Obviously, I didn't take any photos of her before those. I couldn't have. They were the first photos I took of her. That's sort of how those superlatives work. Nothing can be earlier than the earliest. But I hoped that, maybe, my mom did.

My mom, you might recall from how I mentioned that I didn't take a day off of work when she died, is dead. She died in November of 2021. It took me until August of 2023 to realize I no longer missed her, but that is a story for another day. What's important is that my mom used to take tons of digital photos, and she was fanatical about backing them all up. After she died, I bought a bunch of flash drives and I copied all of the photos and documents I could from her computers (plural) and her phone (singular) and her various camera memory cards (plural again) onto them all. Well, by that I mean that I bought flash drives that were large enough that each could fit all of them. I kept one for myself. Then I transferred all of the photos onto two others, one for my dad and one for my sister, though I took out some of the photos that were ones I'd sent to her myself. My dad and sister didn't need those. I sent those to my mom so she could have them, not share them around. Then I took a bunch of old photo albums that my mom had kept and I scanned them, and I put all of those photos onto each flash drive, too, including the ones that didn't have any other photos on them, and I gave the ones that only had the photo album photos on them to my mom's surviving relatives.

I think, in total, there were about seven flash drives? I forget. One for me with everything, ones for my dad and sister with everything except photos I'd sent to my mom myself, and ones for my mom's relatives.

Hidden among the folders on the flash drive that I have, and hopefully only on that one, though I'm not sure, was a folder labeled "Ratralsis's Kitten," though, obviously, it was my real name, not Ratralsis. If you've followed me long enough, you know my real name, and if you haven't, then fuck you, I'm not gonna write it here. I'm not even sorry!

It had photos from February and March of 2006, and, given that I adopted Tina on February 14, 2006, that meant these were the first photos taken of her after she was adopted. It's possible that her previous owners took photos of her before they gave her away, but I doubt it, and if they did then I will never know.

This is the very first photo of Tina, from February 15, 2006, the day after she became my cat and got the name "Tina" from me.

And here are a couple others from that same day. I really and truly could fit her in the palm of my hand. That wasn't a joke. She had a big personality even then, as you can see from that lucky photo that shows all of her perfect little pointy teeth as she makes her opinions to me known. She also already had those beautiful green eyes, though they weren't fully green yet. The green was still working its way out from her pupils. And she had giant ears, which she never fully grew into.

The cat I had before Tina used to climb onto the bed with me at night and lick my ear. She'd either lick my earlobe or the top of my ear. It seemed random. She'd do it for so long that she'd rub the skin off, and I'd wake up with scabs from where she'd made me bleed. I didn't like it, but I didn't know how to make her stop, so I just tolerated it. That was the price of having a cat who loved me, I supposed.

I have no regrets about that. My only regret regarding that cat was how I watched her die over the course of a month, and I believe I've already written about that.

The first night that I had Tina, she didn't have a name. I sat with her that evening and wondered what I should call her. I asked her what she thought of a bunch of different names. "Tina" was one of them, and as soon as I said it, I knew it was hers.

"What about Tina?" I had asked her, exasperated.

"Okay," she'd told me, in her cat way. "Tina's my name, then."

"No, no," I had said. I had wanted to backpedal away from that name. "Tina's a stripper name. We can't call you that." I remember having that thought very specifically.

"My name's Tina now," she had told me, this six-week old kitten, and it was the truth. Her name was Tina from then on.

When I went to bed, she slowly walked her way up to the side of my head and licked my ear in the same spot that the previous cat had. She'd died a couple of months before I adopted Tina. She died within days of Tina being born.

I cried when Tina did that. It reminded me too much of the previous cat, whom I loved terribly. I haven't found any good photos of her in my mom's collection yet. If I do, I may share them.

I found some bad ones. I found ones of her when she was old and tired and her fur was matted. She had longer hair than Tina did. Here's the best one I could find, which shows her face, and you can see some of her matted hair, because she needed to see a groomer and never got to, and her green eyes. I guess I have a thing for cats with green eyes. Max has green eyes, too, though his have more yellow than Tina's.

But when Tina licked my ear that night in the exact same way as the previous cat, I cried, because I knew in that moment that she'd won, and she was going to be my cat forever, and I was going to love her for every minute that I could, and I would be there for her when she died, however far off that would be.

I was right. I was there, eighteen years and just shy of four months later.

Tina never liked being held. She would growl and complain if I held her for too long, and I would tap her on the nose if she tried to attack me. It was the only bit of training I ever successfully gave her: she learned to never claw or bite me when I picked her up and held her. Even if I held her on her back, like a baby. She would growl. She would even hiss, sometimes. And she would certainly yell. But she never attacked me, because she knew I would never actually hurt her, and that I'd put her down before long. I always did. I tried very hard not to abuse the poor girl.

The first year of her life, one of her favorite things was to attack her own tail. I would pick her up, flip her onto her back, and her tail would flip up and between her legs to cover her belly. Then she would see her own tail and attack it. I was fine with that. I encouraged it. I loved seeing her grab and bite her own tail. I would sometimes grab her tail and move it around, and she'd have so much fun attacking her tail.

The first time I brought her to the vet for a checkup, when she was less than a year old, the vet expressed concern about Tina's tail. She wanted to know why Tina's tail looked like the fur on the end had been trimmed. I said I didn't know. I did, though. I knew why.

Tina went into heat once, and only once. I panicked when it happened. It happened earlier than we expected. I was so upset. I worried that it made me a bad owner. If you spay a cat before she goes into heat, it lowers the risk of health problems, like certain cancers. I spent the rest of her life knowing that if she ever developed cancer, it was because I'd failed her when she was only a few months old.

She never had cancer, as far as I know.

It's memories like those that I want to hang onto most of all. Memories from when I first had her, from when she was young, and I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and she was surrounded by other cats. I forget exactly how many other cats lived with her back then. I think five or so. When I took her from that house with me to the city I live in now, she went from being one of five or six cats to being the only cat. She was the only cat for about a year.

She had one close friend while she was with my parents. A big male cat, who was neutered by the time she was born, of course, but who she desperately wanted to mate with the one time she went into heat. I caught him awkwardly trying to mount her a couple of times and eventually locked her in my room. Obviously, it wouldn't have resulted in a pregnancy, but I genuinely disliked that cat and didn't particularly like the idea of him fucking Tina whether he had working balls or not.

As far as I know, Tina died an 89-year-old virgin, which is probably the best that a cat like her can hope for, I guess.

But Tina lived as the only cat in my small apartment for a year, and then I adopted Max, and she hated that. I did a bad job of introducing him to her. I should have, it turned out, spent at least a day or two with them in separate sides of the apartment, gradually getting used to each other's scent. I didn't do that. I couldn't do that! The apartment was fucking SMALL, alright? What was I supposed to do, lock Max in the bathroom?

Tina hissed and growled and lost her damn mind when she saw him for the first time. She never got used to him. She always saw him as an intruder. She hated him for the entire time we lived there.

Then we moved to a new apartment, not much bigger but certainly much nicer, in a nicer part of town where there weren't roaches that I had to take care of myself or floorboards that were sinking into the apartment below and revealing nails under the kitchen cabinets or people literally being shot and killed in the building across from mine in drug deals gone bad. It wasn't a great place!

When Tina and Max were both moved to a new place together at the same time, Tina could no longer see Max as an intruder into her home. That last apartment had been hers and hers alone. Max was just some asshole who showed up. But now she was just some asshole who showed up, too! Suddenly, they were on equal footing.

She still didn't like him, but she had to stop growling at him and being angry with him at all times. She calmed down. Max was happy about that, too, I think. Suddenly, he could try to play with Tina and not be immediately attacked as soon as she came into the room.

They never once shared a sleeping spot. All those cute photos of cats cuddling together and sleeping wrapped around each other? Tina and Max never, ever did that, even once. The closest they came was when they both slept on different parts of me at the same time, which was still really wonderful.

But I wondered if I'd done her a disservice in adopting Max. I wondered if I'd done Max a disservice in adopting him, too. But given how many thousands of dollars I've spent keeping Max alive as long as I have through his various troubles, such as his multiple surgeries for everything from the removal of a large lipoma (kind of like a tumor made of fat cells) and a urinary blockage (mucus plug in his bladder that made it impossible for him to urinate and would have killed him in under 24 hours), I doubt he'd have found someone else who'd have kept him alive as long as I have. Whether that's a favor or not is up to you to decide, I suppose. And maybe God, if God cares about that kind of thing. I'm not entirely sure God does.

In any case.

Those are the memories of Tina that I wanted to share tonight. I've now shared photos from the first week I had her and the last, and told more stories than I had any business telling.

But I had Tina longer than I had Tumblr. Longer than I ran @megatownac, or even played Animal Crossing on the 3DS. Remember, the 3DS launched in American in March 2011. I was actually living in Virginia at that time, and Tina was living with my parents. She was five years old.

When I was getting my Bachelor's degree, I lived on campus, because campus was a 90-minute drive from where I was living. I could go home on weekends, or at least every other weekend, and I would, of course. I'd do laundry and shop for groceries and things like that, then come back to my dorm (or apartment, my last year and a half) with a hamper of clean clothes and bags of food to last me until the next time I could go home.

Tina would always act very cold to me when I came home to visit her for at least one day. If I came on a Friday, she'd wait until Saturday night to be friendly to me again. If I came on a Saturday, she'd sometimes wait until I was about to leave on Sunday before she'd approach me to let me pet her again.

From September of 2008 until March of 2009, during which she turned three years old, I lived in Japan as an exchange student. My life-changing trip to Japan happened after I adopted Tina. That's how long ago it was that I adopted her. I finished my Associate's Degree, started and finished my Bachelor's degree, got a job that I kept for five years, lived in two different apartments, bought a house, and made it through a global pandemic.

Eighteen years. People born the same day Tina was are old enough to vote now. I thought about that a lot when she turned 18. If she'd been my actual baby instead of my fur baby, she'd have been an adult. Instead, she was an extremely old and frail woman dying of kidney and thyroid problems. One whom I could pick up in one hand and carry around and make fun of.

"There's my horrible, stinky old woman!" I said to her, two days before she died, as she emerged from under my recliner to demand that I give her dry food as a treat. I picked her up and raised her high. She hung there and stared at me, her tiny paws dangling and idly swinging at my face. I held her close and smelled her. She smelled bad. I pet her, and then I put her down, and I gave her the dry food she wanted.

I don't plan on writing about her any more. This is enough, I think.

I'll always miss her, but writing about her like this has honestly helped. There were a lot of happy memories I went through in these posts. In the end, that's what we have in our lives. Memories. I'm glad my memories of Tina were good ones, overall. I hope I gave her as good a life as she could have gotten. I really do hope so.

#ratralsis writing #ratralsis cats #death tw #tw death

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