#was the most fun part of writing this

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for an incredible 500 days of love and support. I offer you: answers to questions that no one has asked.

(As always, more can be found in the tags <3)

[highlordofkrypton]

Time for me to say ONE LAST THING on all this drama, but it's important to me.

art is a form of therapy

you do not know other people's trauma, and you sure as hell cannot know a person even if they posted everything about themselves on their blog

no one holds the right to say what is valid or invalid

The ACOTAR fandom has an exquisite way of policing trauma as well as character and ship enjoyment. the fans pick and choose who is deserving of community, kinship and basic decency.

I speak a lot about empathy on my blog because I cannot know what a person is going through on the other side of the screen, and though I don't always agree, I have enough decency not to go out and make rules excluding people, insult others, while calling myself a positive space.

Just because your trauma means that you prefer to avoid certain topics or characters does not make anyone else who enjoys said character a bad person. some people, myself included, work through trauma through art.

My writing has saved my life, and the compassion I choose to give to "fictional "abusers (btw, victimhood and abuse does not come in one absolute form and you CAN be both a victim and an abuser with a capacity to change) is intentional. I do not glorify abuse, but I understand that art and humans are nuanced.

I also think it's a real privilege to look at other people's traumas, especially intergenerational trauma which is extremely hard to overcome, and say that 'nah, that person is just an abuser'.

I think it's hypocritical to claim fight against abuse, and fight for victims of abuse while carelessly flinging 'abuse sympathizers' and other insults to people you don't even know.

You realize that's a form of abuse, too? Invalidating, gaslighting, etc.

But thank you, ACOTAR fandom for teaching me:

Thank you for teaching me my trauma is only valid if I act like the way you think a victim should

Thank you for teaching me that I do not deserve respect, even if I take extreme care to create nuanced and emotional art because you don't like the character

Thank you for teaching me that if I face my abusers through art, I, myself am an abuser

Thank you for reassuring me that your fav, who is closer to my abuser almost to a R, deserves redemption because you love him more, and he is more attractive

I have never used my trauma as a credibility card to judge and be dismissive of real people in fandom. If you want to police something, police your fucking content.

People aren't content for you to consume, and vomit your unfiltered opinions on. It's time people remember what community means, which remembers interacting with other people who are not your abusers. Maybe take a second and fucking learn about other perspectives, grow as a person or whatever the fuck you need to be a decent person.

If you plan to reblog this invalidating/arguing what I've said above because blah blah you're still upset about your fav or ship, please take a second to read the post again 'cause you've lost the plot.

Now, I'm done. Peace out ✌️

Additional note: You know what I fucking do with my trauma? I make beautiful shit for everyone to enjoy. You don't don't have to read or care about my stories full of depth and nuance, but if you laugh at my fucking memes that are for EVERYONE and you turn around and shit on people, you suck.

[averlym]

fairest of the fair

[measurelessdreamer]

Part II of my musings about my scogan kid fic idea (read part I here)

It’s very delicate. And Logan doesn’t deal with delicate. He can deal with force and dangerous and what-doesn’t-kill-you-makes-you-stronger. A four-year-old girl calling him “dad” is nowhere near any of these things.

And Summers must know how much of a deal this is because he’s quiet the whole time they walk to his office to talk, for which Logan didn’t ask but Scott offered anyway, without the typical stoic composure Logan was used to seeing on him.

Then they get there and neither of them can really sit down or start because where do you start after seeing something like this? After apparently living in a universe where time-travel is possible and it happens to be your damn luck that you have to live with its consequences?

And Logan realises that Scott could ask first. He wasn’t there when Logan talked about his timeline with Charles and as far as the little girl goes, calling Scott “papa” is on the same spot of “urgent” as calling Logan “dad” is.

But Summers speaks in the end and, surprising no one, he decides to be unselfish and asks Logan what he wants to know. Logan gives him a look that must speak for itself because Summers clenches his jaw but still waits and Logan hates him but not really and so he asks, “The girl. Who is she?”

And Scott says that her name is Kayla (because I happen to be a big fan of Wolverine: Origins and I always have been ever since I saw it when I was, like, thirteen, and despite all the sad stuff about Kayla, I loved the message of her words to Logan that he’s not an animal and I think it would be nice to have that message survive in a little girl who at some point learned to love him enough to call him dad because if that doesn’t say he’s not an animal, then I don’t know). It might warrant a reaction from Logan right away. He might know what the name means, the Logan of this timeline probably didn’t (but it’s possible he doesn’t know either).

So he asks who gave her that name, to which Scott replies that he chose it and Logan asks why they would let him and Scott says because he was the one who found her. There is something Summers isn’t saying, though, and although Logan can tell, he lets it go this time.

Found her? he asks next and Scott says I assume you’re familiar with the name “Stryker”, to which Logan lets out one of his claws, the middle one, akin to all those years ago on the Liberty Island and he doesn’t know what he expects, but the soft smile that graces Scott’s face before it is squashed down by the cold calculated look was definitely not it.

Then Scott reaches under his desk and unlocks one of his drawers and pulls out a thick file with the huge red stemp of “classified” written over it and he pushes it closer to Logan. It says “Weapon XII” on the front and Logan bristles and almost lets out all of his claws.

He doesn’t reach for the file and Scott probably didn’t even expect him to because he goes on, unprompted, and says that the project was meant to be a continuation of the previous one, of designing a mutant who would be able to hold and control multiple abilities at the same time. The previous project made them aware they could change one mutant. Now, they wanted to know whether they could fully create one and raise them to be their perfect soldier.

For that, they needed a suitable collection of DNA from mutants they knew existed because it turned out that not every ability was compatible with the rest of them.

When Logan asks how they found out, Summers says it’s in the file and then clenches his jaw when Logan just says he’s not reading it. Then Scott says there were multiple test subjects that were biologically engineered in different ways so they knew where to push their limits. At the time, Kayla was being referred to as “12.9” and she was the only one they found at the facility. The rest were defined in the file as “failed” and “closed” and Logan really feels slashing through something right now.

Scott says she was merely six-months old when she was found by them. They didn’t know who she was but the following days were a bit self-explanatory when she teleported a meter away right in front of their eyes and shot red beams from her eyes at a toy she didn’t particularly like.

Her powers were meant to manifest early so Stryker’s people knew if she could harness all the powers they engineered her with without dying. It was a long process of deciding which ones she had to have and which ones she didn’t. All of the children had Logan’s, though, and as much as there indeed is no adamantium in her body, it was the plan to put it into her once she grew up. Putting it into her now would prevent her from her natural development and result in her death. Logan says, “Don’t tell me they found that out the hard way,” to which Scott replies, “What do you think?”

So, what, is she a clone? Logan asks after Scott explains the rest and Scott says, Yes, in a sense.

What do you mean? She either is or she ain’t!

Clones are usually of “something” and are meant to resemble that something to perfection. She has so much of other people in herself that no one would be able to pin point what she is a clone of.

As much as it clears up a few things about her to Logan, there is a lot Scott doesn’t mention that day or the ones that follow. He doesn’t say that it was actually the two of them together who found her and not just Logan. He doesn’t reveal that her first days here were a pretty accurate depictions of hell and that Logan’s healing factor came especially in handy and she also sort of seemed to cry a lot less when she was in Scott’s arms compared to everyone else’s. And he doesn’t say anything about the fact that, yes, as much as her DNA is comprised of DNA of other mutants, the percentages vary and there are two sets of DNA she has more of than from others and there is a reason why her eyes are so blue and why she purposefully has weaker versions of all her mutant abilities aside from her healing factor and heightened senses.

Part III

[sutherlins]

♡ DOWN IN THE HEART ♡ ↝ SydCarmy | Rated: E mdni | Complete | Word Count: 170K+ | [READ HERE]

Summary: Post S3 Finale. After almost losing Sydney to Shapiro, Carmy is determined to make a change. Eager to rebuild their friendship, they decide to spend the day together at Carmy's doing some recipe development but an accidental peek inside Carmy's notebook changes everything for them. In the midst of navigating trauma, therapy, grief, and their new relationship, they try to keep their thing a secret from everyone else at The Bear for six months.

♡ any reblogs/kudos/comments are all so appreciated!! ♡

[optiwashere]

Huh, I didn't even realize it'd been a year since BG3 came out until I opened tumblr this morning. Kinda wild. I didn't think much of the game's release: I like Larian's games, and I like the BG series. I wasn't ever going to skip the game, but I didn't think I'd play it at launch because I was busy working on a novel in 2023 and not doing well financially.

Thankfully, circumstances left me with a little bit of extra money last year just before launch and it meant I could spend on a video game. I needed a pick-me-up after said 2023 novel failed to go anywhere, and BG3 was right there. Like most CRPGs, I played it in basically every moment of free time that I had and did as much as I possibly could in one playthrough.

It's so odd how these small happenstances can snowball into coming back to fandom, finding some friends I might've never met otherwise, and writing a lot of fanfiction along the way. I'll probably have something more interesting to say/share when it's the 14th, AKA when I sat down and wrote my first fic for this fandom.

Anyways, it's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to more years to come 💜

[carlyraejepsans]

Do you enjoy underfell? I thought you disliked aus /genq

i don't dislike the concept of AUs itself, I'm just not a fan of like... the subculture that spawned around them in the UT fandom specifically and how it eventually took over almost all canon content (especially when it limits itself to the bros)

i like aus visually! i am an artist at heart after all. it's just that, if I'm going to care about them as stories and not just fun design ideas, my bar is uhh almost impossibly high the further you move from canon lolol.

[ndostairlyrium]

A little preview of the pic I've done for @daflowerzine 👀

You need to keep an eye on that, because of the care and quality of the writing and the illustrative works inside 💛🌸

[bernardellinewsagency]

If I weren't already so busy with other fics, I would absolutely start a new one where Sunday joins the Stellaron Hunters after the events of the Penacony quests, except it's not told from his POV.

It's Robin's.

The story would progress through her having to resume her normal life, despite how upheaved everything has just been. She's supposed to tour throughout the galaxy, continue coming out with more music, star on talk shows and be seen by her fans, none of that can stop jus so that she can process things. She probably wouldn't even know that Sunday joined the Stellaron Hunters until someone else finds out, and surprises her with a question about it during an interview or something.

Sunday's story would be told through the scraps of information she can get, on how she closely watches the bounty that the IPC places on him and how it grows over time, scrambling for any hint of his continued presence in this world that she can find just to know that he's still doing okay. Her memories of him would be interspersed throughout, reflections of the kind and caring brother that she can't quite reconcile with the actions he took (but also probably wouldn't stop blaming herself for. If only she hadn't left, if only the Charmony dove didn't try to fly).

I love doomed sibling relationships in media and yes, I was reading Emily Dickinson's ""Hope" is the thing with feathers" and thinking of these two with the lines "And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard/and sore must be the storm -/that could abash the little Bird/that kept so many warm -" because I was imagining Sunday as the mentioned bird and Robin not understanding how anyone could be mean to him because she's the only one who could even come close to knowing him, she's his sister, she remembers when they were little kids and he made that stage and an audience of stuffed animals for the performance that she still holds closest to her heart. She remembers the brother who wanted what's best for the injured dove, and who agreed with her dreams of wanting to help people. He may have changed, but he will always be her brother, even if every time she hears news about him now she'll have to silently pray to Xipe that it's not going to be about his death.

[hulloitsdani]

i want to know your anna thoughts so bad hi.

Hullo! Sure I can provide some Anna thoughts! I have so god damn many. Some other characters are also going to work their way in here too, if you don’t mind. And buckle up, this is gonna be a long one. I got a whole short story for y’all here.

Without further ado, I present to you: The Commander Anna Post

Let’s have some fun, shall we?

So in the age discussion of the feh main cast from a while back, I mentioned how I accounted for Anna’s bizarre position in Askr’s military by making her a child soldier. She has been fighting since she was a young teenager and has logged a decade of combat experience at this point.

I want there to be some fun consequences for this. For example, Anna is rocking some very serious injuries that will likely be with her for the rest of her life. Most notable being her left shoulder. Just by looking at her in full commander regalia, it’s not obvious that there’s any kind of issue. But Anna can’t lift her left arm all the way anymore. Her armor does an excellent job covering up the inconsistency, as it doesn’t allow for that level of mobility anyway. But take the armor off and you can see her shoulder is an absolute mess. It is, and I quote, “the worst healing job I’ve ever seen” according to Veronica.

It’s a bizarre sight for the kid. It’s not the type of thing she expected to learn about an enemy commander. Perhaps THE enemy commander. But in this situation that hardly matters, as she is the group healer as they all trek deeper into the realm of the dead. And Veronica is tending to her wounds only to find the pitiful scarred skin, warped and uneven from a hastily rushed healing process. It’s from a long time ago, she explains. From when she was still just a foot solider. But that… doesn’t make sense does it? Was Bruno not her ally? He has the capacity to heal— he was the one who taught Veronica the little she knows. Even his worst attempts were leagues better than the work done here.

Anna can only shrug, a motion made mostly with her right shoulder. He didn’t reveal that he was a mage of any kind while he was with them. So, even if he wanted to, there’s a chance he could not afford to. Veronica doesn’t know what to say to that. There’s this… uncomfortable knowing between the two of them. They know now, in retrospect, that swallowing down the truth like that must have ate Bruno alive. Just another reason for his sorry state that they didn’t catch until it was nearly too late. Add that to the pile of tiny behaviors that now make sense, right? The intensity of his expression as he insisted Veronica learn how to heal despite her protests and the daggers he’d stare into the intricate scaring on Anna’s shoulder. Throw them all in. Every last piece.

Commander Anna looks at the princess and unexpectedly breaks the tension with a laugh. You see, it’s funny, because this is exactly how she started to figure out Zacharias was Bruno. Very few know about her shoulder. She’s not exactly brazen about it, nor do the people she interacts with have the medical knowledge to glean how serious it is. She doubts even Kiran knows, to be honest. The only person who knows without a shadow of a doubt is Zacharias, because he was there when it happened. He’s probably the reason why she survived that day at all. So, you must imagine her surprise, when a masked stranger targeted this weakness and forced her to fight left handed. It was the most bizarre fight of her life! Fighting someone who clearly knew her, but she herself could not place!

Veronica was not there, but she can picture the lunacy of it. Bruno fighting his comrade as the commander attempted to fight a stranger. She hasn’t really seen Anna entirely thrown off before, but knowing that her brother managed it brings her satisfaction. She deserves it after all the times her and the rest of these fools have done it to Veronica. Feels like comeuppance. She chuckles. They both do. Gods she’s having a moment with the enemy commander. What has the world come to?

Fjorm has a far less positive reaction to piecing it together. After the events of book 2, she knows her time is short. She… cannot face the remains of her family in this state. It would be a slow painful death to rot away behind castle walls and wheeze into soft silks. No, she would much rather die on her feet. Put her body to good use while it’s still able.

So she trains. She trains until she feels her bones threaten to snap. She must have been at it for hours before the commander offers to spar her. With how busy Anna normally is, it’s a rather rare opportunity to spar one on one. Fjorm instantly leaps for the chance.

So they fight, and Fjorm can see it. The way her left arm lags and the scarring that curls out from beneath her sleeve. Burns maybe? Possible electricity? Clearly an old injury from a mage. A weakness in her defenses that she can exploit, surely.

Anna makes no such thing possible. Maybe she learned since her fight with Bruno or maybe Fjorm isn’t fast enough to take advantage of it, but Anna easily evades any attempt to use this against her. Focusing her left just seems to earn Fjorm a swift jab in return. From there, the fight might already be over. Anna’s left arm might be lacking but her legs and mobility sure aren’t. She takes the opportunity to effortlessly bully her way into Fjorm’s space and renders her lance useless. It’s infuriating, but Fjorm is learning. She can do this— she has to. Ten losses deep is when Anna calls it. They put good work in and it’s time for lunch!

Fjorm is ready to throw her lance into the sun.

She insists she can keep going, but the commander is not budging. Still, she tries to push her luck. But once a look of annoyance makes a home on her features, Fjorm knows that’s it. Another disappointing loss. Damnit. She turns to find someone else to spar, but is very surprised to find Anna will not allow such a thing. They are both going to take a break, or Fjorm might find herself barred from the training grounds. She states that if Fjorm cannot be trusted to keep her own wellbeing in mind, then she cannot be trusted out here at all.

However, Anna provides her with a singular counter offer. This can all be avoided if Fjorm tells her what’s wrong. Because she isn’t stupid, something is clearly amiss. And Fjorm— at wits end and most definitely exhausted, dehydrated, and starving—flips her lid a bit. Begins to go off. She’s angry at Anna, and her stupid backswing with her axe, and her own inability to deal with it despite her inherent disadvantage with a lance, and how she keeps failing in front of the people here, and how weak she must appear, and how even the commander of an army in Askr is outclassing her as a warrior and leader, and how she can’t even hate her for it because Anna is just doing her job, and how that all means that the problem must lie within herself!!!

That’s, uh, wow. That’s more than Anna bargained for. She briefly internally wishes that Kiran or Sharena was here right now, as they’re far better at this type of thing. Maybe… she should just go for the most obvious one, yeah? Yeah! Anna isn’t a leader. Commanding people and leading them are vastly different skills. Complimentary! But different.

Look, on ledger, the order entirely under her name, but in practice it is run by four people. Alfonse, Sharena, Kiran, and herself. And it very much HAS to be. The order operates at such a large scale now that the division of labor was necessary. Anna is not so egotistical to think she could run this whole operation by herself, either.

This includes the actual leadership position of the order. Anna is very good at telling people what to do and when to do it, but actually rallying people to a cause? That’s wayyy above her pay grade. Hardly has the force of personality to pull that off. But the others do, and so does Fjorm. Hell, Fjorm has that is SPADES. Despite having lost just about everything, she managed to rally her broken beaten homeland against Surtr and Muspel through sheer force of will. That’s kind of insane, and it’s a little bizarre to the commander that the savior of Nifil can’t see that.

Besides, she’s not a better fighter than Fjorm either. She quite physically can’t be! Fjorm is angry that she couldn’t defeat her in less than ideal circumstances, but let’s be real, all she needs is a little practice. And maybe a full eight hours of sleep. And some food. And water. Can you see what she’s putting down here? The only real leg up Anna has on Fjorm is that she’s going to ask for help, despite the heavy hit to her ego. It’s why the order exists as it does, after all.

That conversation leaves Fjorm with a lot to think about. Both as a person and of her view of Anna. She apologizes for behavior and swears to do better. As proof of her determination, she takes her up on the offer of lunch, much to Anna’s amusement.

Much later down the line, Sharena learns— PROPERLY learns, within the realm of dreams. She’s not blind though. Over the years she has noticed the scaring and the favoring of her right hand. Soooo, Sharena makes an effort to cover her! Stick by her left! Her massive shield is more than capable of protecting her too! And that’s the routine they fall seamlessly into as they follow Peony through Freyr’s dream land and Freya’s nightmare.

Anna generally deals with the challenges of that place better than the rest, for the aforementioned reasons. She knows her limits, she asks for help, and she talks her problems through. The vulnerability may be uncomfortable for her at times, but it is not enough to prevent her from doing so in order to progress smoothly. It might hurt her pride a little as commander, but Sharena and Alfonse are her friends, no? She can say that now, after walking through literal hell and back with them. So she doesn’t mind if they are the ones to see the child she grew around to protect.

Rather angry kid, if you can believe it! Stubborn too. Getting split and copied throughout time and space as a result of Askr and Embla’s never ending war had that effect. And Sharena gets to see that little girl, stubbornly clinging to her axe, bleeding from a wound on her leg that she knows one day will scar over.

It’s from one of the first battles she was ever in, Anna explains. As a merchant, her dad saw it fit to train her in order to defend herself from bandits. And she had put those skills to use before— but not like this. Never like this. It was the first true fight for her life. Not very pleasant, as you can imagine! She still gets nightmares sometimes, as you can see. Happened a few times in the realm of the dead actually. But, luckily, it no longer haunts her as much as it once did. It’s just a scar on her leg now!

The sentiment doesn’t comfort Sharena much. This is, frankly, awful! She hates how scared she looks! A-and how large the wound on her leg is! She hates how… unaware of it she personally was! Why didn’t Anna tell her about this sooner? To which Anna can only shrug. Nobody asked, and if she’s being honest, she probably wouldn’t have told. Not the whole truth anyway. She can admit when she needs help but… she’s still human. It’s a lot easier to admit she had a nightmare than admit that she finds the very thought of bleeding out a worse death than drowning. Still gets her the help she needs, without being more vulnerable than necessary. Sharena rests her head on her shoulder.

“Are all of your scars like this?”

Anna… blinks. No. They’re not. Not even the one on her leg is all bad. She was saved by this elderly couple and their son, who saw the fighting and began dragging injured soldiers off the battlefield. They made awful puns the whole time they stitched up her leg and gave her the best tea she ever had. Anna has bought a lot of different teas trying to find it, but to this day, she has no clue what it was. Makes it better, to be honest. Sharena looks at her expectantly, waiting for her to continue.

Ah, story time then? Okay. Well. Uh, this line on the inside of her elbow is from a bandit. Rather nasty encounter, but she returned the favor by shoving an entire container of expensive makeup powder into his eyes. Her dad was so mad but god it was so worth it. And this scar on her thumb is from one of her first times cooking in the road. She was pealing a potato but one of her sisters slammed into her and nearly took off her finger. This nick on her clavicle is from the first battle she ever won. When the enemy finally retreated she screamed so loud that her voice was raw for a week. Then there’s this scar underneath her chin, which has to be the most embarrassing ones she has. Zacharias and her had some leftover money one week and decided to treat themselves to a drink or two or five. In trying to make it back to the barracks, they both fell. Hard. She walked away with this, but Zacharias fully fractured his wrist. Explaining what happened to the healers the next morning was dreadful. And… and then there’s the one on her shoulder. Anna was actually recovering from it when she met Alfonse and Sharena.

The princess sits up for that one. Really? Gods she didn’t show it. And it’s because, on some level, she couldn’t. It was from the last battle before the shaky truce was called between Askr and Embla. The one Veronica will inevitably break. And the truce was called for good reason. The battle was hell on earth. Anna… nearly died there. She should have died there, frankly. A point blank strike from a lightning mage with metal armor in the rain should have been the last mistake she ever made. But by some miracle, it wasn’t.

… In retrospect, she thinks it’s because of Zacharias. Things got hazy after she went down, but knowing what they do now, he must have used his own magic to kill the mage and heal her. She didn’t walk out unscathed, but it was enough.

Haha, gods, she will never stop feeling guilty about him, will she?

Anyway, the injury was pretty bad. Her shoulder never moved the same again. But seeing as they were both recently hired to be Sharena and Alfonse’s retainers, they couldn’t exactly let Gustav know how serious it was. Might cost them the job. So a truly comical level of shenanigans went into ensuring it was kept secret. Including this game she created where every time Zacharias accidentally touched her injured shoulder, he would pay up 10 gold. He was not a very touchy guy, but even Sharena knew that this was something he just did. A tiny reassuring shoulder pat to convey that he was listening. So this was, perhaps, the best money making scheme Anna ever came up with. His apologetic look would shift so quickly into one of so much instant regret. And Sharena, upon reflection, remembers this.

WAIT WAIT WAIT SHE REMEMBERS THIS. THATS WHAT THE NOTE PASSING THING WAS!!!! Alfonse had pointed out in one meeting that the new retainers were passing something between each other and Sharena insisted it must have been notes because of how boringgggg it was. BUT NO IT WAS GOLD. ZACHARIAS TOUCHED HER SHOULDER EARLIER IN THAT MEETING AND SHE WINCED. HE THEN WAITED A WHILE BEFORE PAYING UP TO NOT MAKE IT OBVIOUS. THATS HILARIOUS!!!

Anna starts cackling as Sharena begins to line up all the pieces. The nightmare fully dissipating as she shares in this silly secret. There’s a chance she would have died with it. Hell, we know of a world where she probably did. This is not a story she’d even give to her family of merchants, who despite being direct reflections of her, do not share the scars she’s littered with. Never had to be, and thus don’t quite understand. But, Sharena does. All her friends do. And it feels weird to say that because real friends have always been in short supply. But gods this is too good. How absolutely absurd it is, that they are in the realm of dreams trying to find their missing friend and defeat the goddess who took them, and Commander Anna of the Order of Heroes is about to pop a lung laughing as she tells Princess Sharena of Askr about the fallout from the time she nearly died.

It’s dumb! This is dumb! And it’s possibly the happiest she’s ever been.

[do-you-know-this-adhd-character]

Do you know this (noncanon) ADHD character?

Evidence below the cut!

can be pretty hyperactive, forgets things regularly (even important things, forgot he turned into a heartless in kh1), distractable, later on he seems to have some problems with emotional dysregulation. hes constantly called lazy by his friends but as soon as hes doing something he likes he has all the energy in the world, and also tends to dismiss his own intelligence despite actually being pretty smart, both of which are things that i think are decently common with undiagnosed adhd

[megamindsupremacy]

Stewjon is Space Scotland: Names and Naming Conventions

For context, I designed an entire naming system for my Stewjon is Space Scotland AU. I'm still trying to work out the cultural logistics of it, but the actual practical logistics I have down.

To break everything down:

Stewjon is a clan-centric society, with clans and clan names having a hugely important role in the culture. I therefore had clan names feature in both the first and last name of Stewjonis.

-The last name (Kenobi) is the family/clan name, and is passed down the family paternally. This is both because I'm from a western culture with a paternal naming tradition, and also because I liked how his parents names sounded when the last names transferred paternally but not maternally. "Ken" would translate to "Clan" (I don't know if this is accurate to Scots English or Scots Gaelic, but I'm working from canon Star Wars names and trying to worldbuild from nothing so work with me here), and then the clan name "Obi" is attached, so "Kenobi" translates to "Clan Obi" or "of Clan Obi"

-The given name (-Wan, but we'll get to "Wan" in a second) is one to two syllables. All of these names are (according to Wikipedia) actual Scottish names, which I picked from the list mostly based on how well they'd sound next to the clan name.

-The prefix clan name (Obi-) is the interesting part. All children are given the father's clan name as both their first and last clan name. Therefore, Obi-Wan Kenobi, son of Ito-Benneit Kenobi, has "Obi" in both his first and last name. However, upon marriage, the couple swaps their prefix clan names to signify the tie between their clans. Therefore his mother Ito-Ceit Kenito and his father Obi-Benneit Kenobi became Obi-Ceit Kenito and Ito-Benneit Kenobi upon their marriage.

-Originally I was going to do something with the fact that "Obi" means belt in Japanese, such as making the clan names signify professions in the same way "Miller" or "Smith" would in English surnames, but I gave up because Japanese is so different of a language from what I understand that I would have just made myself very confused and everyone who understands Japanese language and culture very mad. So I just went with a vowel-consonant-vowel pattern for all the clan names and called it a day.

-Remember how I said we would come back to "Wan"? Obi-Wan wasn't born Obi-Wan Kenobi. He was born Obi-Owen (Owen is a whole 'nother thing and I decided to just give myself a freebie on it), and his name was anglicized (basic-icized?) upon being brought to the Jedi temple. Not on purpose, but it did happen. So technically the chart above should have him listed as Obi-Owen Kenobi, but I already took the screenshot so this is what we're working with.

-Culturally, it's respectful to refer to someone by their full name (Obi-Owen Kenobi). The full name stands until two people are fairly close to each other, platonically or romantically. The informal, friendly version would be their full first name (Obi-Owen). So you wouldn't call your new friend "Obi-Owen" until you're quite close, even if you're social equals. Technically you could refer to someone by their given name only (Owen), but it's awkward and Stewjonis don't really see a reason for it. All of this highlights the cultural emphasis placed on clans and clan ties in Stewjoni society.

The Family Tree

THE KIDS

Starting from the bottom, we have the four Kenobi siblings. Obi-Conn is the oldest, and he marries Yana-Eóin Kenyana, becoming Yana-Conn Kenobi. None of this happens in the story but I wrote it in the chart anyways. Obi-Eóin is nonbinary, which is why their square is white instead of blue or pink.

Obi-Mór and Obi-Pál are twins and approximately four years younger than Yana-Conn. Obi-Mór is ambiguously disabled (she has some form of muscular disability, but the specifics weren't relevant to the story). Obi-Pál is just some guy and I love him for that.

Obi-Owen is the baby of the family. He's twelve years younger than the twins (16 years younger than Yana-Conn) and was definitely an oopsie-baby. I don't need to say anything else because he is also one of the major characters of the Star Wars franchise. You know him.

THE PARENTS

Obi-Ceit Kenito and Ito-Benneit Kenobi are the Kenobi siblings' parents. I don't have much to say here other than that Ito-Benneit shortens his name to Ito-Ben, to avoid the repeated "eet" sound in his full first name. I'm sure that doesn't affect Obi-Owen's future nicknames in any way!

It is Ito-Benneit fault, by the way, that I made clan prefixes instead of surnames to be switched upon marriage. Culturally, it would have made more sense for the more commonly used first name to hold your birth clan and your less commonly used surname to indicate your linked-by-marriage clan, but I needed Obi-Benneit to marry into the name Ito-Benneit so that I could shorten it to Ben. Goddammit.

THE GRANDPARENTS

Ito-Ben's parents are entirely irrelevant so they don't exist. Sad!

Technically I didn't have to name Ito-Lili Kenuna, but I felt bad having her up there as an unnamed person. Una-Owen Kenito, as you may suspect, is where Obi-Wan's name comes from. I really wanted to highlight his Stewjoni heritage in this fic, so giving him family ties through his whole name was important to me. Obi-Ceit names Obi-Owen for her father because Una-Owen was a strong fighter, and she wants to pass that resilience to her son. Which, uh. Well he sure is resilient to things trying to kill him!

Feel free to come yell at me in the askbox about Stewjon's worldbuilding!

[mbat]

i literally read the book of bill days ago but its only now kinda hitting me how fucked ford and bills whole thing was though cause ford literally talks about being so unable to sleep (to try to keep bill away), and when sleep inevitably caught up to him, he would wake up to his body abused and things messed with and he just couldnt seem to find an escape (and he literally didnt get to truly escape until 30 years later)

(also keeping people awake for unhealthily long periods of time is another tactic used to mess with and control people because of how it impairs brain function)

listing off the things we see in those few pages in the book of bill:

i mean, punching and scratching at a steel door for hours would be so damaging to your hands and probably hurt like hell for at least 2 days after. then bill says he was hitting fords head against a wall, though its said in a post-it as if its a joke, but he also isnt exactly above doing that, and honestly he says most things like its a joke.

i also dont need to say 'bill really doesnt know how to take no for an answer' because he makes that very clear in literally any interaction we see with him.

bill literally puts a venomous snake near ford while fords asleep, which could have killed him if he wasnt lucky+skilled enough to deal with it.

he nearly gives ford hypothermia, and in the same action actively threatens ford with the idea of making him jump off of a high spot, and like ford says, doesnt do it just so he can send a message to ford about how hes the one in control.

he gets ford in trouble with not only the law, but also with other people that are probably not very happy with him after. he mutilates fords body in several ways, and i dont think i need to go into detail on them because theyre... so ew. and he even exposes part of fords body to the world. like, its just taking his shirt off, but thats still showing off his body in a way that he didnt agree to or want

and then he attempts to (or purposefully fails to) call stan, using fords voice to threaten suicide and tell stan that ford never loved him.

and he punctuates it with a final power move, in a hallucination that he creates, hes messing with stans memories and making him feel like his body was basically about to implode

and like. okay, we all joke about toxic old man yaoi, and its a good joke and toxic old man yaoi is great and its an interesting ship, but holy fuck.

like. to say the absolute least, that had to be so, so deeply violating. its no wonder that when we see ford in the past, when he finally contacts stan, he looks like hes on the verge of shattering into a million pieces. he just went through, and still wasnt yet out of, some deeply abusive shit.

like... everything coming out lately both in this book and what ive heard is on the website, mixed with what we already knew from the show itself... the stans are both so, so fucking tragic dude. their whole lives were thrown away over things that really didnt even need to be the way they were, and then they both get into situations that are pretty damn screwed, and those situations follow them for the rest of their lives. its basically a miracle that things worked out in the end for them.

i dont really have a point, i just had to talk about all that. i read almost all of the book of bill in one sitting, and while i was really enjoying it, i was also getting kind of tired of sitting in one spot only doing this one thing for several hours straight. i still felt a lot of the emotional bits of it of course, but man this part specifically just really didnt hit me until now.

i mean, to say the absolute least, i know what its like to feel violated in a similar way, though not anywhere near to the extent of what he went through at all. someone get that man some therapy got damn

[secret-bug-pain-blog]

The fun part about stress is that when you're under a particularly large amount of stress from a single source, it's really hard to actually buckle under that One Thing. Even if it's a really, really big thing, that is threatening to ruin your entire life in one fell swoop, it's hard to fully get yourself to wrap your head around it. Big Things, in our experience, almost always take a good chunk of time to chew on and fully digest. You don't give way under the weight, you simply have to chew on it. Work through it. Maybe not directly work on it, but you don't really shatter from it. It just sort of hangs over your head, like a single massive weight.

The thing about these sorts of weights, of course, is that this adds to the stress from other things. You don't break down about the Big Things directly. When it happens, it won't be the Big Weight of, say, that cloying medical problem. It'll be the little things. That big weight is too big to really wrap your head around, too heavy to comprehend in one piece - so what gets you is, instead, the little things. The stuff that reminds you of it, in a way that's ever so more tangible.

Because you don't just think about, say, your future potential inability to financially support yourself. You go on with your life. You keep acting as normal. You work as you are, for as long as you can. And then that straw comes along.

You go out to a club with your friends. You think of buying drinks together. All of a sudden, you remember your bank account. Every penny spent on gin feels like a risk, a waste. You're irresponsible. You're wasting your savings away. How long can you sustain this? Everything you buy, and everything your friends buy, feels like abrasions on an invisible plane. Thinking about it makes you feel sick, and the more you stay, the worse you feel.

It's not spending two dollars on a beer, realistically, that's causing you the stress. It's the looming spectre behind it. The problem, showing itself in symptoms, so much more easily grasped. Your phone slips from your hands, and you think of the nerve problems that will only compound, and all of a sudden the mere idea of picking it up and dropping it again makes you feel sick. Your friend texts you something just north of warm, and all of a sudden you're spiralling worrying if your continuing problems have finally alienated them.

It's easier to grasp the smaller things, you see. It's easier to have one little thing happen and realize that you'll have to grapple with that for the rest of your life than it is to go through the symptoms list, because it's simple and immediate. Thinking of your future is too big to wrap your head around, but thinking of having to rely on someone to hold your hand just to walk you to the bathroom, over and over for the rest of your life - that thought scares you, more than any thought of the underlying cause ever would. It's not she's dead, it's how will i water the roses without her? or what will i do on tuesday now that she's gone? or how do i ever care for her pets?

Small is easy to grasp. Easy to think about. Easy to worry about. Easy to have happen, and have the horrible, bleeding spectre of its underlying cause crash into you, and leave you shaking and struggling to pull yourself together on the floor. A forced windows update might not scare you, but the looming fear of forced obsolescence will, the horror of not even being able to choose to opt out on a should-be-optional update.

Which is to say: it's not being forcibly turned into a werebeast that really gets you. Not the blades at your heels, or the blood on the floor, or the immediate knot of emotions when you realize your teammate's just seen you behead someone without even meaning to do it. It's not the injury, or the inability to walk, or the burning like boiling oil trickling down your muscles hours afterwards. What really gets you, once everything's over and done with, is sitting down and realizing that your only pair of shoes has been slashed to ribbons because of your own cursed body's spur blades.

Because it might not be the boots, on their own, causing the problem. But that, in and of itself, makes it worse. Because even if it's not the core of the problem, it's still the part that you'll fixate on, because it's faster, because it's simpler, because it's so much easier to grasp than wrapping your head around all that's been done to you, and crying over something as horribly, horribly trivial as boots makes you sound - well, it makes you sound like an immature fool, doesn't it?

A cruelty, perhaps, that the emotional state at which you'll cry over boots isn't one where you can put the source of the problem together. But really, knowing that it's the werebeast thing doesn't make you feel any less stupid. Because now you're the kind of person who cries over boots, and stupid, material possessions, when you have so many more problems, when a slip of your sleeve could get you arrested. And that, more than anything, makes you feel a tiny bit more helpless than before.

They were good boots, too.

[galvanizedfriend]

Any chance for a snippet for the next chapter Yokan? Or any idea when the next chapter is is going to come out ♥️ I’m re reading the Wolf 3 right now and am nearing the end of the updated chapters lol 😭

Hii, friend! ❤️ I can't promise when the next chapter will come because this is turning out to be a monster. 🥲 I'm at about 80% now, and have been making decent progress, but editing this is going to be🙃 So I hope to have it finished soon, but I don't know when. But since you asked, I can give you a little snippet. 😁 This is a scene I had been working on earlier today, Kol and Eve having a 1x1. Don't know if that's the kind of thing you wanted from this chapter, but I was actually having some fun writing this. 😂 Bear in my mind that I have not edited anything, so this could all change. But I hope you enjoy it. 🥲

From TW4x03: "Hello," he greets her, only half her face visible from where she's hiding - quite poorly, mind you - behind the kitchen door. Eve blinks up at him, but stays remains quiet. "Cat eat your tongue?"

She abandons her cover, stepping fully into the kitchen now, all pink pajamas and pigtails.

She is... Big. Kol is definitely not used to following humans' growth spurts from up-close. It's perfectly normal, he supposes, but it still comes as a bit of an irrational shock to see how she went from a little baby to this fully formed mini-person. A mini-Niklaus, nonetheless. Though with none of the malice and aggression and the annoying hubris ingrained into every line of Niklaus' body after a thousand years of living in pure rage. That aside, the similarity is uncanny. It's easy to forget there was once a sweet boy somewhere before the moody tyrant took over.

"My mom says I shouldn't talk to strangers," she tells him as though reciting words she's heard countless times before.

"Ouch. Out for blood, are you?" he retorts flatly. Her wariness doesn't bother him as it seemed to bother Niklaus earlier. In Kol's experience, it's smart to remain watchful around this family. "I'm not a stranger, though. I'm your coolest uncle. My name is -"

"Kol," she finishes for him. "I know."

He smiles. "See? You do know who your coolest uncle is."

"I don't really remember you, though."

A frown appears on her little brow, as though she's straining to remember, sweeping through her admittedly short tapestry of memories after any moments the two of them might have shared. The fact that he knows she won't find any does cause a bit of a pang, he must admit.

Kol doubts he would've spent much time around his niece anyway, seeing as he was always trying to free himself of his family's clutches, but the reasons why he didn't are still a sore spot. Niklaus didn't even trust him enough to tell him about his daughter at first. And when he finally did, Kol ended up murdered by another one of his brothers before he could even be properly introduced to Eve.

"Yes, well. A sore shame if you ask me. I'm rather delightful," he remarks, detracting from the bitterness. "Isn't it a bit past your bed time anyway? Are you up to no good, by any chance?"

"What are you going to do if I am?"

Kol coughs up a laugh at her unexpected show of defiance. "That depends," he bargains. "Are you planning on putting a frog under your uncle Elijah's pillow?"

Eve giggles. "No."

"Filling Rebekah's pillowcase with flour?" More giggles. "Oh, I know! You're going to spread spicy pepper on your father's toothbrush."

That gets a full-out belly-laugh from her, blue eyes twinkling with delight at the thought of playing pranks on her family. Kol likes her more and more by the second.

"That's mean!" she exclaims in-between waves of laughter.

"You say that because you haven't seen his face. Then it's just hilarious. But if anyone asks, I never told you that." He punctuates it with a wink.

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

Chapter 24

why did this chapter kick my ass?? damn!!!

SEE HERE FOR GENERAL WARNINGS AND FIC SUMMARY

Some pre-chapter notes:

soz for the unexpected delay i was moving + starting a new job + lost my grip on byakuya's slippery psyche

playing with my own headcanons for hiro and his backstory actually. bc. well. the original just is not very good at all now is it

tyyy @digitaldollsworld as always!!

Content warning tags: blood, mention of razor (not in intentional self-harm context), minor injury, nausea, panic attack, toxic obsessive stalker Toko, insecurity, mentions of self-starving

< previous - from start - next >

Byakuya drops his straight razor, and it splashes into the basin of his sink. Followed by a few droplets, hot and ruby-bright as it tracks down his jaw, vanishing almost instantly upon contact with the water.

For a moment, he doesn’t move, frozen, one hand still half-raised to his face, still curved in that loose grip. Then he braces his hands against the porcelain edge, knuckles tensing as he tries to keep them from shaking. The cut on his jaw stings, still slowly welling blood; his razor, silver and distorted, warbles in and out of sight with the water’s ripples, his eyes struggling to track its shape. He makes no move to fish it out of the water.

This was his second attempt at shaving. The evidence of his first attempt still throbs on the opposite cheek, near his ear. Despite moving glacially slow, other hand pulling the skin as taut and still as he could manage, the hard edge of the sink digging into his hip as he leaned as close to the mirror as he could, it was still proving to be a fruitless effort. The elegant blade that his mother’s family had gifted him, that he had been using since he became heir, was now simply too large and awkward for him to use. A task that should have been easy after all of Pennyworth’s guidance was now fraught with pointless danger.

…Maybe it’s not worth the trouble, he thinks, numbly. But the hollow, shattered defeatism that comes with the thought is so unfamiliar that it makes him grit his teeth, and then reach slowly into the tepid water to pull the razor out. His stubble was patchy already, especially near his jawline, and any more delay would almost certainly warrant someone commenting on it - maybe Hagakure, who couldn’t seem to keep anything to himself, or Celeste, who would delight in pointing it out while masking it as polite concern - but, at the rate he was going, he was going to draw more attention with a bloodied face.

His fingers scrape the basin, searching at a glacial pace until the edge of his thumbnail taps against the handle. He draws it out gingerly, shakes off the stray droplets, then wipes the blade with a silk cloth. Drying it carefully, meticulously - as Pennyworth had taught him, ‘it’s as good as useless if it rusts’ - before folding it and replacing it in the cupboard behind his mirror. He dries his face with the towel hanging around his neck, ignoring the way the Turkish cotton scraped against raw skin.

I could always just try again later, he reasoned with himself. Not so much as a surrender as it was a tactical retreat; and the results were bound to be better when he was calmer, more composed. He could still do it - he just needed some time.

And as for anyone who might notice it…

…Well. It wasn’t like he was spending much time around anyone else these days anyways.

—

Even if he wasn’t trying to seek out anyone else’s company, he couldn’t help but take note of their own routines, how they settled into their lives after feeling the world shake around them. 

It doesn’t surprise him that Celeste and Yamada have continued on as if nothing had happened at all. Celeste still maintains her airy simulacrum of a mysterious princess, occasionally inviting Byakuya to tea or dinner or a game of Othello, which he declines each time. Yamada, when he wasn’t offering himself up to be bullied and ordered around by her, would be in the newly-opened art room, and Byakuya could occasionally pass by to hear sounds of shuffling paper and the scrape of pens, and the harrowed, heavy breathing of a man possessed.

Ogami and Asahina are similar, returning to their athletic routine, though clearly more affected by the deaths of their classmates. They were attached at the hip before, but now Byakuya never saw one without the other, always in each other’s company, often holding hands - if Ishimaru were here, he might have decried it, ‘No PDA in the hallways!’ in that annoyingly shrill, school-bell voice - once, Byakuya had even overheard the two of them occupying the bathhouse together, when he had passed by with the intention of checking on Alter Ego’s laptop.

(He’d left quickly when he realized what they were doing, leaving the locker unchecked, his face hot and uncomfortable. It was all well and fine for them to cope how they pleased, but couldn’t they have some more decorum about occupying a public space? He was almost beginning to miss Ishimaru.)

…Speaking of Ishimaru. Even Mondo had found something to occupy his time with, these days.

It seemed that after that night with Alter Ego, something had shaken loose inside him, and he was an entirely new person. In some ways, he was even more troublesome than when he was depressed and languishing; loud, piercing, and always appearing when he was least expected, or at least it felt that way to Byakuya. Somehow materializing nearby, demanding to know what you were doing, why you weren’t adhering to some vague, obscure rule that he might’ve made up on the spot. An overgrown hall monitor that acted like every little infraction could mean life or death.

(It was all in the name of protecting the AI, but it was also getting on everyone’s nerves, and it almost made Byakuya regret ever involving himself in the biker’s business in the first place.)

Makoto and Kirigiri were doing whatever it was they were doing. Byakuya rarely saw them, and when he did, he never made any attempt to speak to either of them. It didn’t make much of a difference from his previous dynamic with Kirigiri, but with Makoto, it was almost like a repeat of what had happened just after the first trial. But this time, Makoto never made any attempt to approach him.

Which was perfectly fine by him. Regardless of Makoto’s intentions, his betrayal was unforgivable. There was no reason to associate with him any longer.

And lastly, there was Hagakure.

It’s not clear if the self-proclaimed clairvoyant had given up on Mondo, given the overnight change in personality (at the very least, there was no more need for a suicide watch anytime soon), but he seems to have latched on to Byakuya, for no clear reason. Frequently calling out to him whenever they crossed paths, dogging in his steps like a very determined stray. Chattering incessantly, even when Byakuya refused to deign any of his ridiculous stories with a response, often trying to herd him into the cafeteria so they could “lunch together, bond, maybe share a cup of joe? Even rich guys like joe, right?”

“...Did you mean ‘coffee’,” Byakuya replies in a flat, deadpan tone that was more resigned than irritated, during what must be the dozenth time that Hagakure had intercepted him, and maybe the third time he conceded to the other man’s insistence; if only because Hagakure had been particularly persistent recently, and would probably end up following him and broadcasting to Fukawa or Monokuma or anyone else exactly where Byakuya was seeking refuge, when not in his room.

(Not to mention that he was a little hungry himself, though he could only imagine the kind of common swill someone like Hagakure might consider coffee.)

“Hey man, to-MAY-toes, po-TAY-toes, right?” Hagakure just shrugs, and half-guides, half-pushes Byakuya by the shoulders into the cafeteria.

It’s midday. The place is empty, with even Celeste missing from her favored spot at her table. Hagakure shuffles him into the kitchen, tells him to wash his hands, and then-

-shoves two things at him. One, round, pale brown and still damp, with a slight papery texture beneath the moisture. The other, a piece of smooth, green plastic shaped like a ‘T’, with something silvery running parallel to the top. He skates his thumb lightly over it, and finds the edge of it sharp; a tiny blade.

“Whoa, careful! Don’t hurt yourself!” Hagakure tugs the tool back out of his hand, inspecting his fingers. “Like, come on. I even gave you the vegetable peeler, this is easy mode.”

“...What?”

Hagakure doesn’t explain right away, instead occupied with rolling up his sleeves, tying the brambled mass of his hair back with a strip of white. Arranged on the kitchen counter is a selection of tools, a colorful assortment of vegetables, and a hunk of something dark and pink, occupying the cutting board. There’s already a pot on the stove, and Byakuya watches Hagakure’s hand fiddle with some dark, invisible button across the top of the oven, and a telltale blue flame clicks to life. “We’re making gumbo! And you’re my assistant for the day.” He announces, with the same cadence of a cooking show host. He’s beaming, as if he hadn’t just said something utterly, completely insane.

“...What.”

It’s hard to make out, but he swears Hagakure rolls his eyes at him. Which would be infuriating enough to comment on, if he wasn’t also holding out the aforementioned vegetable peeler out, handle first, towards him. “Gumbo. It’s kinda like, curry I guess? But it’s a lot more soupy.” Apparently not put off by Byakuya’s unresponsiveness, he pushes the peeler into his slack hand. “I mean, I guess I’m not surprised you haven’t tried it. It’s not Japanese, or like…fancy, rich guy food.”

That snaps him out of it. “What,” He repeats, emphatically, with feeling. “Do you think you’re doing?”

“Um, like I said, making gumbo-”

“No, I mean-” Byakuya waves the objects in his hands, and feels only a little ridiculous in doing so. “I’m not- using these.”

Hagakure winces at that. “...No offense, Toga, but, uh…” He hesitates. “It’s…not exactly a good idea to give you a knife right now, you feel me?”

Byakuya can imagine his eyes tracing down his face, to the still-pink line on his jaw from this morning, and feels his face grow even warmer, with nothing to do with the open-flame stove not a meter away from him. “That. Is. Not. The. Point.” He hisses, emphasizing each word. “And - don’t call me that - you said we were here to get coffee.”

He spits these words like they’re poisonous, and Hagakure is still for a moment. He thinks that he’s managed to get his point across, but:

“Aww, Togster…you really did wanna get coffee with me?” Hagakure sounds genuinely touched, one hand pressed to his chest. Byakuya was about two seconds from throwing the stupid root vegetable in his hand against Hagakure’s equally stupid head. “We can have coffee after we make food. Besides, aren’t you sick of the meals we’ve been doing recently? Like I’m not a picky guy, but ramen and bread every day for the past few days is getting kinda…bleh, y’know?”

The worst part of this was that Byakuya agreed with him on that front. Even with his newfound habit of only eating when there was no one else around, or when Alter Ego threatened to stop reading for him until he took a meal, the selection was paltry to begin with and had only grown more unappealing with time.

“Your job is easy,” Hagakure continues, and grabs something hanging off the handle of a nearby oven, and drops it over his face, obscuring his vision for a moment. He jerks backwards in alarm as it settles to hang around his neck, only to realize that it’s an apron - a pale, mint-green thing that’s one size too small, with some still-visible stains splattered across it, and Hagakure had somehow gotten behind him and tied the thing in place already  - “You just gotta peel the potatoes, and I just gotta cut everything up. The roux’s already done, so all we gotta do is dump the ingredients in and let it do its thing.”

Byakuya is still reeling a little from being forced (though, there wasn’t much he could’ve done in protest, with both his hands occupied) into an apron. The things in his hands are so unfamiliar to him that they may as well be OOPart pieces in the making.

Besides him, Hagakure was whistling away, chopping meat with the silver blur of a large kitchen knife. Completely oblivious to anything around him; and Byakuya realized, he could leave right now if he wanted, and it wasn’t like the fortune-teller, of all people, could stop him.

He’s about to do just that when the other man looks up, knife stilling. “Something wrong?” He asks, with a tilt of his head. And before Byakuya could explain that, yes, there was something very wrong with this entire situation: “D’you need help?”

“No.” He says automatically, and immediately kicks himself for it.

“Oh, then-?”

“I don’t-” Byakuya says at the same time, and frowns sharply at the interruption. “I. Don’t do this sort of…thing.” It comes out a lot less assertive than he would like, and sounds a lot more pathetic than he means it to be.

“Oh. Well, yeah, I figured.” Hagakure shrugs, as he scoops up the mess of pink on the cutting board with the edge of his knife and drops it into a metal bowl. It lands with a loud, wet slap, and the bowl rings as it shakes against the counter. “No time to learn like the present though, right?”

Byakuya feels his eye twitch. In some ways, talking to Hagakure was more frustrating than negotiating with most white-collar businessmen, and more akin to arguing against a very enthusiastic wall. “I’m not supposed to do this kind of thing,” He tries again. “I’ve never had to prepare my own food in my life.”

It echoes what he told Makoto, that night he dragged Byakuya to the kitchen to prepare him a meal. But this time, it feels much less like a boast, and more like an admission. Like he couldn’t even do this much.

If Hagakure noticed the grimace passing over his face, he made no comment. Instead, he plucks the items out of Byakuya’s hands. “No time to learn like the present, my man.” He twirls the peeler between his fingers, and it spins, a foggy green circle. “It’s like a pattern, you pull the peeler down, turn it again, and repeat.” He demonstrates, hands moving quickly, with practiced ease. “Don’t worry if you miss anything. We don’t need it to be super clean, we just need most of the skin off.”

And he offers the peeler back to Byakuya, a gleam of white teeth on his face. Deceptively kind, poisonously pleasant. “Think you can handle that?”

Byakuya shoves his hand away, his patience thinning to a thread. “Take the hint,” He snaps, reaching behind himself to try and undo the knot. “I’m not doing this.”

“What? But it’s easy!”

“I don’t care,” He yanks at the ties, feels them come no closer to being loosened, and feels his face reddening with frustration, humiliation. He needs to leave, now. “I’m leaving.”

“Aw, Toga, come on-”

Byakuya reaches for the knife, left abandoned on the cutting board, and there’s a clatter as Hagakure backs himself against the ovens. “O-okay, okay, sure! Sure, jesus, okay!”

Byakuya rolls his eyes at the overreaction, already tuning him out, then starts awkwardly maneuvering the knife to try and cut the apron off. Arms twisting awkwardly to catch the bladed edge against the side of the knot. It’s not easy - he could swear, the blade seemed sharp enough when Hagakure was using it to dice meat, but now it slides clumsily against the twisted cotton, dull as a stone -

“Jesus,” Hagakure says again, but less panicked now that it was clear his life was under no immediate threat. “Okay, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“I am not-”

“You totally are, man. Just - don’t slash me, please, and hold still -”

Hagakure gives him a wide, cautious berth, as if still worried he would suddenly turn into some violent, knife-swinging killer, edging until he’s out of Byakuya’s peripheral and standing behind him. A slight tug around his midsection later, and the apron is flapping loosely against his stomach.

To show his thanks, Byakuya sets the knife down before he pulls off the apron, not so much as handing it over as simply dropping it in the other boy’s direction.

He makes to leave, but Hagakure stops him - or tries to, throwing one hand out while scrambling to catch the apron with the other - “Wait, wait,” He still sounds jovial, but there’s a thin edge of nervousness to it now, residual after the earlier scare. “Listen, you don’t hafta help if you don’t want to, but like…can you just hang out? Here?”

“...You want me to stay. In the kitchen.” Where it was overly warm with a pot of water building into a steady boil, heavy with the smell of various condiments and spices, and pervaded by a general stickiness on the tile. “Why?”

“U-um, well…”

Byakuya sighs. He’s wasted too much time already. The coffee he was promised earlier was looking like a lost cause, and frankly, he wasn’t interested in eating anything anymore either. It would feel too much like accepting undue pity, somehow.

Apparently sensing his impatience, Hagakure finally blurts out: “Because-! I’m, um, scared! To be alone! So…”

Byakuya only stares. Even with his hair tied back, the shape of Hagakure’s head is still a round, dark splotch, albeit smaller than usual. And it bobs up and down like a dandelion as he ducks his head, hands clasped in an exaggerated plea. “Please, man, I literally can’t ask anyone else,” He begs. “Mondo’s all psyched-out and freaky serious now, Hifumi and Celeste were weirdos to begin with, and I’m sick of third-wheeling for Hina-chi and Saka-chi! And there’s no way I’m hanging out with Toko!”

He doesn’t mention Makoto or Kirigiri. Which, Byakuya assumes, makes sense, so he doesn’t bother to ask about it. “How do I know you aren’t trying to kill me,” He says instead, deadpan. 

Hagakure snorts. “Have you seen me?” And then immediately winces. “I mean - shit, sorry - but seriously, I’m pissing my pants every time Monokuma shows up. And at every crime scene, and every trial. You really think I could get over myself to off someone?”

“None of Monokuma’s motives struck a chord with you?”

“Well - I’d be lying if the first one didn’t make me nervous,” He nods. “But I divined how my parents were doing a bunch of times, and they were always alright, so that didn’t worry me too much. And the thing about secrets; well, mine is that I’m actually on the run from this yakuza boss I accidentally pissed off. I owe him a debt of eight million yen.”

Byakuya is certain he doesn’t miss the way Hagakure glances at him then, based on the way his ponytail twitches as his head turns imperceptibly. He decides to ignore the obvious bait, and moves on: “Fine, then. Then what’s your reasoning that I won’t try to kill you?”

“Oh.” Hagakure pauses. “...I didn’t, uh…think about that.”

Right. Byakuya can’t find it in him to be surprised about that either, though some bruised-up part of his pride does rail against the implication that he wasn’t dangerous. Like being blind meant he was harmless, helpless, defanged - he struggles against the implication, but only sickens himself more with the truth of it.

“I mean…do you want to kill me?”

Byakuya snorts. “I want to leave,” He leans back against the counter, feeling the hard, smooth edge of the marble dig against his back. “Obviously, I’m not crazy enough to spend the rest of my life here, waiting to kill or be killed.” He pauses. “And…I’ve been looking into possible causes for my…circumstance, and it’s looking more and more like it would require the work of a trained doctor, using specific equipment to resolve. Which this place,” He gestures around him. “Isn’t exactly equipped to handle.”

The other boy scratches his head. “Um, yeah. I mean I know that much. We all wanna get out and all, but like…do you want to kill someone to make that happen?”

Not in the slightest. He probably held responsibility for the deaths of multiple people at this point, but he had never had to kill them himself, nor witness the moment of their end. Dirtying his hands with someone else’s blood never appealed to him, and it was far more sophisticated to orchestrate someone else handling the messy work.

But his answer must show on his face, because Hagakure nods, satisfied. “Well, there you go! Also, I ran a divination on whether one of us would die today, and it’s not in the cards or the stars or divine intention, so we’re good!” He claps his hands. “Anyways. If you don’t wanna help, that’s all totally cool. All you gotta do is stick around.”

“You can’t be serious.” He scoffs. But he was getting sick of the earlier conversation - sick of talking about himself, sick of thinking about himself - so he stays where he is, crossing his arms as Hagakure busies himself with the ingredients. “How do your divinations even work, anyways?”

“What, you interested?” Hagakure flashes another white smile, and even through the haze Byakuya gets the impression that it’s a salesman grin. He could practically hear the cartoonish chime of a register. “My current going rate’s ten-million yen a reading, but for you I’ll throw in a buddy’s discount of twenty-percent!”

Byakuya gives him the most unimpressed look he can manage. “I’m not interested in wasting money on frivolities.”

“It’s not frivol-anything, man. They’re a hundred-percent legit! …Thirty-three-percent of the time,” He amends, sheepishly, at Byakuya’s withering stare. “But when they’re real, they’re real! With a hundred-percent accuracy!”

As he talks, his hands blur, moving with practiced ease. The small pile of potatoes changing from brown to pale yellow, to small, misshapen chunks, the green stalks of celery disintegrating under a knife, sharp-smelling and darkening the wood beneath it with its moisture. There’s a steady, fluid grace to it, and Byakuya watches on, feeling a sense of deja vu - faintly envious, partly entranced - the last he felt this way, he recalls, was being a child and watching his mother work in her studio, hewing faces out of stone.

He hasn’t thought about that memory in years, and he clicks his tongue sharply, irritated. Hagakure jumps at the sound. “M-maybe it’s more like a ninety-eight percent accuracy?” The fortune-teller tries, hurriedly. “Uh, it depends on how clearly I can convey it, I mean. Like how good the client is with understanding me…dialect differences and all that, though my English is pretty solid-”

“Why fortune-telling, anyways?” He cuts off Hagakure’s rambling. “I can’t imagine it’s an inherited position. You don’t seem the type to be taking up someone else’s legacy.”

“Oh! Well…” He turns to the pot, scrapes a bowl of brown slurry into its bubbling contents. “It was my dad who got me into it - not that he was a fortune teller or anything - but he knew stories about fortune tellers and priestesses and stuff, from where he grew up. It was pretty interesting, and I guess that’s what got me started.” He stirs, sniffs, tosses a handful of green shapes into the mix. “He actually bought me my first crystal ball, though it was just a cheap souvenir thing. I couldn’t’ve been older than, like, six or something.” He laughs. “Wow, I haven’t thought about this stuff in forever.”

“Am I dredging up bad memories?” Byakuya drawls, and Hagakure shakes his head.

“Nah, just old ones. But I got super into it; started begging my Ma to read me divination textbooks for bedtime, she thought I was going crazy. Dad just said it was normal for little kids to be a little crazy about something they like, though.” He shrugs. Another sniff, a sprinkle of red seasoning. “He was the first person I did an accurate divination for, actually. Like a real divination, not just for pretend.”

He goes quiet for a moment, wooden spoon scraping against the inside of the pot. Byakuya frowns. “And what did you ‘see’?” He asks, though only about half as sarcastic as he intended.

“Saw him in the hospital. And then leaving.” He replies simply. He turns, and scoops up the chopped ingredients in his hands, tossing them in with a hiss. “It was clear as day in that little glass ball, like I was watching a TV screen, except also kinda…I don’t know, wiggly? Like a dream. But I got shook up so bad I dropped it and broke the damn thing, and the next day my Dad went to the doctor for a check-up, and they shipped him to the hospital right after. Some genetic, hereditary thing, they wouldn’t even tell me what it was. I think Ma thought it’d freak me out if I knew, but I was just more freaked out not knowing.”

He reaches blindly behind him, searching hand patting at the counter, the cutting board. Byakuya hesitates, then grabs the bowl of chopped meat and passes it over. Its contents splash into the pot. “Thanks. Anyways, the weirdest thing was that I wasn’t, like, scared he was gonna die, or anything. For some reason I knew he was gonna make it, but I was more worried that he was gonna…hurt? Get even worse?” He pauses. “I kept on doing divinations afterwards with a tarot card set, just to see how he was doing, and each time it told me he was gonna be fine.”

His voice sounds a little thick, indistinct. Byakuya was beginning to regret bringing up this topic; he would hate it if he was suddenly expected to have to comfort a grown man. But instead of bursting into tears, Hagakure leans to the side, tucks his face into his elbow, and sneezes, gunshot loud. “Phew! Jeez, the paprika.” He sniffs, and Byakuya’s unease turns back into a comfortable sort of annoyance. “Anyways. Where was I…?”

“...Your father.” He hesitates for a moment. “When he passed away.”

“When he-?” Hagakure turns fully away from the pot to stare at him, mouth open, before breaking into a laugh. Doubling over so and wheezing like he just got punched. “Dude! No way, are you- did you really think that?!”

“What? Am I wrong?” Byakuya feels his face heating red again, with nothing to do with the steam. “Shut up. The way you were talking about it, you were acting like he kicked the bucket,” He snaps, and Hagakure stifles another laugh. “It’s the logical progression of things. You saw him get sick and die, and then-”

“No, no, dude, I said I saw him in the hospital, and then leave - oh, yeah, I guess I can see how you’d think that now.” He stands up straight again, swiping a hand across his face. “Oh man. No, I meant ‘leave’ as in literally leaving, like at an airport? He got better and swung back around, but got a job offer overseas right after, so he never really came back to settle permanently in Japan.” He turns back to the pot, turning the heat down low. “He sends postcards for me all the time, and he and Ma vacation together every year around the holidays.”

So that was it. Byakuya feels an irrational surge of exasperation, as if all his previous pity had just been wasted. “What does he even do? Your father?”

“He teaches quantum mechanics.” At Byakuya’s stunned expression, he snorts. “What, I’m not kidding! He test-runs all his lectures and speeches and stuff to me, and now I know way more about that stuff than I think most people ever need to!”

‘Prove it’ is on the tip of Byakuya’s tongue, but he holds back. He probably would never recover if Hagakure did somehow manage it and make him look like a fool. Hagakure stirs the pot in silence for a moment longer, before asking: “What about you?”

“What?”

“Your parents.” A shot of cold immediately runs down his spine. “Like, I know your dad’s a big rich unmarried bachelor hotshot, but what about your mom? Ah- ” Hagakure presses hand to his mouth. “She…is she, like…?”

“She’s not dead, if that’s what you’re trying to ask.” He replies, stiffly. “We’re estranged.”

“O-oh. Um. I’m sorry?”

“It’s fine.” He pauses, looks down at the tile floor. It was a mutual disavowment, around the time he made the decision to try for Togami heir. She was relieved to be rid of him, he was sure, and he was glad to be out of her house full of stone statues and hollow eyes. “I haven’t been in contact with her for several years. We’re as good as strangers.”

He really should just leave it at that. There’s no reason to elaborate any further, nor does he want to; he glares down at his feet, trying to count the tiles, and watches as the dark lines dividing them squiggle and disappear the moment he loses focus. And finds his mouth moving against his will. “My mother is Genevieve Delasol.”

“Cool.” A pause. “Wait, what!?”

Byakuya scowls and looks away as Hagakure turns back to him. “Like, the Delasol?! World-famous artist lady? With the sculptures? Miss Modern Michelangelo?!”

“Don’t call her that.” She had always hated that stupid nickname that the press forced on her, and so did he, though not for her benefit. It was a tasteless, and frankly disrespectful moniker. “But yes. Her.”

“Dude…” There’s awe in his voice, as if it were something impressive. “That’s crazy.”

“It’s not. She birthed me like any other human.”

“Still! Like, they talked about her in my elementary school art class. Her stuff is so-” He splays his fingers near his head, puffs his cheeks to mimic the sound of an explosion. “Like, I remember seeing pictures of her stuff for the first time, and it freaked me out. One of the older kids in the neighborhood told me she was freezing people into rock, that’s how real her stuff looks.”

“She’s a good artist, but she was an awful mother.” Byakuya says flatly, immediately draining the rest of Hagakure’s enthusiasm. “We’re not continuing his conversation.”

“Right, right. Um. Sorry.” He taps his fingers against the spoon, ladles some of it into a little dish to taste. “Okay, um. Could you pass me some dishes? From that cabinet in front of you - to the left - yeah, thanks.”

The concoction he scoops into the shallow dishes Byakuya hands him is…unappealing. At least visually - a muddy brown sludge that glops thickly off of his ladle - but it smells good, spicy and warm. One of the bowls is passed back, and there’s a conflict of sensation as Byakuya tries to decide if he’s hungry enough to risk it, something that he couldn’t even clearly oversee the process of making.

“You’re surprisingly well-versed in the kitchen.”

“Yeah, well. I get into hot water a lot when my fortunes don’t work out, especially with my, uh…higher class clients, so I had to get used to taking care of myself. Didn’t wanna bother my parents with it, ya know?” He flicks off the stove, covers the pot, and reaches to the right for the rice cooker. Opens it with a sharp smack to the lid. “Like, I don’t think I’ve seen my dad face-to-face in…it feels like two years. Maybe longer.”

He holds out his hand. Byakuya passes over his bowl, and he plops some rice into the center of it, before handing it back.

“I can’t finish this much.”

“Sure you can, you’re a growing guy.” There’s the roll of a drawer being pulled open, then a clatter before a spoon is being dropped into his bowl as well. “You better eat all of it, by the way. Every grain of rice has seven gods, so you gotta eat them all so you don’t get cursed.”

“...What kind of saying is that?”

“Dunno, but my Ma used to say it all the time. Come on, let’s go into the caf-”

He halts suddenly, halfway to the door. Byakuya nearly runs into his back, and just barely keeps from spilling his bowl. “What-”

“Um. Hold on.” The previous casualness of his voice is gone, and there’s a hard thread of unease running through it again. “Uh…wait out here for a moment, okay?”

“Why-”

“Dude, please. Just for a moment.” He sets his bowl down on the counter. “I’ll be right back.”

And then he’s out the door before Byakuya can make any protest, leaving him alone in the kitchen, now uncomfortably quiet without the soft hiss of the stove. He stands there, stunned, feeling a little bit stung - no, irked - at the sudden dismissal.

He wasn’t about to take orders from Hagakure, regardless of whatever weird pseudo-symbiotic-relationship the other boy thought they had going on. He walks towards the door, moving to elbow it open-

“I’m telling you, just leave him alone.”

He freezes, ducking his head down. Hagakure’s voice is high and scratchy with nervousness, but firm despite that. “For the last time-”

“I-I-I-” Someone else stutters. The voice is familiar, and Byakuya feels his gut drop in recognition. The last he heard it, it was seething with malice, spit like venom at his feet. “I j-just wanna l-look at him…”

Hagakure lets out a long-suffering sigh, indicating that this wasn’t the first time he’s had to deal with this. “Seven hells, Toko, I really don’t get you,” He grumbles. “You said you hated him, right? I mean, you said so at the trial, and you did…all that.” He coughs. “He wasn’t interested to begin with, and there’s really no way to turn it around after that.”

“I-It was t-to prove that we’re th-the same!” Fukawa shrieks, trigger-sudden and indignant. There’s a sharp thump as she stomps her foot, hard enough to rattle some nearby furniture. “If I d-didn’t do that, he w-would’ve never a-accepted what h-happened to him!”

Byakuya frowns at that, and sets the bowl aside in favor of sinking into a half-crouch, ear pressing up against the door, beneath the tiny window. What was she talking about? Not accepting my own condition? Don’t I know myself better than anyone else?

“That’s not up to you to decide,” Hagakure starts.

“I-It’s not up t-to you to p-protect him either!” She spits back. “Y-you’ve been keeping him a-away from me recently, wh-what’s with you? D-did you have some k-kind of awakening, or something?!”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that my type is none of your business - and anyways, ain’t it logical to wanna keep away from you?” He grumbles, then yelps. “C-calm down-! I just mean - you know, you…you don’t exactly give off warm and fuzzy feelings about hanging out with people!”

Toko barks a laugh, shrill and mirthless. “Wh-which makes him perfect for me,” And Byakuya feels disgust roll down his back. “I-I know I’m m-miserable, a-and unfriendly and unloveable,”

“Hey,” Hagakure says, a little more gently than before.

“B-but s-so is he! H-he’s just b-better at hiding it, p-pretending to be a, a perfect, white-horse prince,” She spits the words vehemently. “I-if he was p-perfect, th-then maybe, I c-could just be s-satisfied with - with being n-near him, with b-being used…”

She trails off. Byakuya fights the urge to physically cringe at the mere suggestion, instead gritting his teeth, nails scratching lightly against the door’s tacky surface. “B-but, he’s not perfect. S-so, that means I c-can reach him - i-it’s possible for someone l-like m-me to actually be with him,” She giggles, and the sound is far too childishly delighted to suit her mouth, and far too chilling to have innocent intentions behind it. “I-I dragged him off his p-pedestal, s-so now I can actually touch him.”

It’s vile, listening to her. The sound feels like a filth that clings to him, sliding into his ears, contaminating him from the inside out. Poisoning him, paralyzing him.

He’s only vaguely aware of his body sliding down lower, unable to maintain the awkward pose, curled over and unable to brace himself properly against the swinging door. He sinks into a squat, ears straining.

“...Um, ew.” Hagakure mutters succinctly. “Okay, first of all, no you can’t. Pretty sure Monokuma would have some problems about that, he’s all gung-ho about decency and stuff. Second, Toga’s still not gonna be into you. You blew that chance when you, uh…”

“When I w-what? S-strung up Chihiro?” She snorts. “H-he would’ve done the s-same if h-he was a-actually as perfect as h-he said.”

The contamination sinks deeper, claws curling cruelly into his chest. I would have never, He thinks through the tinny, lightheaded hum in his skull, but there’s a sickening sense of dread that twists in his stomach as he realizes he can’t even be sure of that. He might have. He would’ve had no use for Chihiro if he wasn’t blind, he would have barely even hesitated if the opportunity was there - to defile someone else’s corpse for nothing more than his own self-righteousness.

He’s probably had this realization already, but it’s revolting to hear it come from Fukawa. He should go out there, tell her to shut up, to leave him be-

“-a-and anyways, y-you still didn’t t-tell me why y-you’re so obsessed with p-protecting him.” She’s still saying, distantly, and it feels as if the door is suddenly several times thicker than it was previously, muffling the sound dramatically. “Y-you don’t have a-anything in c-common, I don’t s-see why you’d want t-to be near him, u-unless…y-you’re doing it for someone else, aren’t y-you?”

Hagakure doesn’t respond. Makes no sound to confirm or deny it. Byakuya waits, ringing intensifying, disease festering into his lungs. It was getting hard to breathe. His pulse thrums in his ears, too loud to think, not nearly loud enough to drown their voices out.

“I s-saw you with Makoto,” She continues, and the confirmation of Byakuya’s suspicion does nothing to make him feel better. “He- he asked you t-to do this, right? To protect him, h-how nice,” She snarls, disgusted. “L-looking out for his p-precious boyfriend, when he won’t d-do it himself-”

“That’s…that’s not it,” Hagakure protests, but he doesn’t sound convincing, voice so hesitant and soft that Byakuya barely catches it. “Mako-chi’s just…busy, right now-”

“Y-yeah, too busy trying to g-get out of here so Byakuya c-can get fixed, so he can s-stop f-feeling guilty - h-he doesn’t want to have to look at him, b-but he can’t help s-sticking his nose in anyways, he’s s-so sweet it makes me sick.” Byakuya legs shake, cramping, but he forces himself still, keeps his ear flattened to the door despite the nausea building in his gut, the light-headedness in his temples - “B-but it’s too much work t-to comfort him or drag him a-around, s-so he has to get s-someone to do it, right?”

He wouldn’t, is Byakuya’s immediate thought, but it’s weak, even in his own head. Makoto hasn’t sought him out all since that night in the bathhouse because Byakuya had requested it; had demanded that he leave him alone with as much vitriol and firmness as he could muster, and as with so many other things, Makoto had obeyed. But while Fukawa’s words are acerbic and biting, they’re also painfully, terribly logical.

He wonders now, how he must have looked to the others. Slowly falling apart, barely eating, rarely showing his face. So utterly different from how he tried to portray himself at first, an ill-fitted facsimile of how he used to be, how he should be; it’s no wonder Makoto would go behind his back to take care of him. Between disobeying him again and trying to keep him alive, the choice must have been easy.

The fact that that choice had to be made at all, however, made Byakuya want to…

There’s a thud as his legs finally give out, his knees smashing against the tile, but he hardly notices. Not while the sickness spreads, a physical decay in his torso eating away at him, swift and insatiable. He’s not hungry anymore, but he feels emptier than he’s ever been. 

The door swings open suddenly, bumping against his shoulder, and he sways, unsteady. Hands reach out, catching him before he can fall over.

“Whoa, hey,” Hagakure sounds muffled, underwater. He hooks his hands beneath Byakuya’s arms, trying to pull him upright, and only then does Byakuya realize that he’s not really breathing. Probably hasn’t been for the past few minutes. “Toga- I mean- you okay?” 

Of course not, he wants to snap, but talking would mean opening his mouth, and that would mean breaking down into tears like a petulant infant, so he clamps his mouth shut and tries to get as much oxygen as he can through his nose. Slow, stuttered, wheezing breaths, teeth sinking into raw, just-healing skin and breaking it bloody all over again. He leans away from Hagakure’s grip as much as possible and tries to brace himself against the wall, shaky hands against the cool bumps of the tile. Trying to count them, one by one.

“I,” He manages to grit out when he was marginally more calm, ignoring Hagakure’s worried clucking. His voice quavers, and he swallows hard around the shrapnel lodged in his throat. “I’m going to go.”

“Dude, come on-”

He lurches forward, clumsily dodging Hagakure’s attempts to support him, and walks as steadily as he can out of the kitchen. The moment he crosses the open space of the cafeteria and into the hallway, he breaks into a sprint for his room. As far away from prying eyes as he can manage.

__

(When he opens his door later that night, he finds a plastic container and a spoon sitting by the threshold, its contents long cold.)

(He eats it anyways and scrapes it clean, and leaves it sitting empty outside of his door again.)

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