#which ive never actually filled out but certainly i have enough experience

[orcelito]

Gonna also get my license soon. This time for real.

Need to find that sheet of the driving times... hmmm

[drifting-wreckers]

See the Light, Chapter 1: Many a Rat I've Befriended

Cardinal Copia/Papa Emeritus IV x OFC: romance, drama, NSFW, 18+, MDNI, sort of doctor/patient

The sound of his boots echoed around him as he walked the familiar stone halls of the abbey. His right hand gripped a towel that held pressure to a laceration on his arm as he muttered curses at himself. The red cassock swayed around him as he approached the door to the infirmary and awkwardly knocked with his elbow. He could hear some rustling behind the closed door and caught sight of a shadow through the frosted glass which proclaimed “Infirmary” in a gothic font. He winced as the hooded and robed figure opened the door, the eerie, traditional plague doctor mask greeting him not for the first time. Despite the complete obstruction of her face, he knew she was smiling as she spoke.

“Cardinal…what can I do for you?” Even as he sighed and lifted his arms, her chin tilted down to take in the bloodied towel.

“Eh, I’m so sorry Signora Dottore, I know you are closing for the day, si? But I, uh…find myself in a bit of a…predicament.”

Immediately her slim, gloved hands reached out, deft fingers gently prying his hand away from the bleeding wound to get a quick glimpse before guiding his hand back to hold pressure with a cluck of her tongue. The look she gave him through the mask felt very pointed and his chin dropped slightly in shame as he exhaled. The church’s mysterious physician successfully painted the faintest flush across his cheeks once again.

“Do I even want to know, Cardinal?” she chuckled before opening the door fully and guiding him in as he laughed awkwardly. “Come on in, you know by now I will never turn you away.”

Indeed, it was not his first venture to the infirmary since she had started as the physician for the clergy. Sister Imperator had announced the filling of the position and presented this petite but somehow imposing figure who quickly had more-than enough business given the antics of the Siblings of Sin and their leaders. No one knew her identity, and Imperator had made it painfully clear that no one was to push and she was not to see patients without her mask as tradition dictated. Copia had been intrigued at first, indeed finding some old law within the tomes of the library about the church physician initially wearing the masks for their own protection but then maintaining anonymity due to the secrets they were to keep. The old punishments for the physician giving up their identity or any information regarding their patients were certainly as antiquated and brutal as the regulation, itself.

…of course, he had only spent time researching this out of pure clerical curiosity and absolutely not because there was something about the polite physician with the soothing voice that had intrigued him since her arrival.

Copia would not say his visits were frequent, but regular enough that Papa III – Terzo – had started to give him grief about it. She provided him some assistance with sleep and the occasional injury from some clumsy thing he managed to do, like this time. Each visit was littered with pleasant conversation and a growing, easy familiarity. He might consider them friends at that point, and it seemed she may have felt the same. The soothing greens of her growing collection of plants and the warm sunlight through the perfectly placed windows had created a pleasant experience that had led her to offer her little reading nook to him, which he had started to take up more and more. No one looked for him there; he could actually find peace as she busied herself either reading, as well, or tidying up and reorganizing the clinic space.

“Please take a seat, Cardinal. I’ll get some things to clean and stitch you up.”

He did as instructed and slid onto the paper-covered exam table as he watched the black-robed doctor glide to a cabinet across the way. “I’ve told you, Dottore, you are more than welcome to just call me Copia.”

There was something about her laugh that made him squirm. “Oh, of course…Copia. I’ve seen you injured enough I do think we should be on a first name basis,” she teased. He chuckled awkwardly and shrugged.

“È quello che è.”

The robes tightened about her waist as she muttered a curse and leaned farther forward into the cabinet and he swore he got a glimpse of a feminine curve that made his brow raise.

She spun, victorious in her search for a packaged tray and sterile gloves and Copia couldn’t help but feel like he’d been caught being a lech even though he hadn’t exactly seen anything obvious…

Did he really need to get laid that badly…?

She grabbed her tray table with her equipment set neatly on top, rolled it closer to her patient and then grabbed her chair with the toe of her boot to bring it close enough to take a seat and settle. She pulled off the leather gloves she wore and set them aside, revealing slender fingers and tidy fingernails that flit to open the packaging. He swallowed drily, something about that glimpse of smooth skin of her hands just felt illicit, somehow.

Behind the mask, Evelyn glanced up from her work to quietly observe the cardinal she had found herself becoming quite fond of. He was confident in his sermons, confident in his stage presence when he performed with the band project in his form-fitting suits…and yet somehow, in private, this awkward man lost that confidence. Admittedly, she had noticed that confidence steadily improve the more he performed with the band project; she would also admit to herself that watching him perform was a treat in a…number of ways. He was always so polite, apologetic, and yet seemingly genuinely curious about her though he managed to tread that line carefully lest Imperator find out he dare ask her questions that may reveal any sliver of her identity. Why the elder insisted on keeping so tight-lipped and strict to some ancient rule was far-beyond her scope.

She gazed up at him through the dark lenses of her mask, and suddenly that heterochromatic gaze met hers and her breath caught unexpectedly, though she couldn’t know that the angle from which he saw her actually gave him a glimpse through to her almond-shaped eyes that seemed to be…brown?

It was her turn to blush. Copia had always seemed to come in at the end of the day, leaving her unhurried to finish his appointments and with plenty of time to just…chit chat. She enjoyed that time more than he would ever know, happy to discuss any manner of things with the quirky cardinal, particularly as not many people wanted to actually spend time with their masked doctor. Not to mention all the times she watched from the corner of her eye as he studied his various tomes, muttering to himself in Latin as he would occasionally take notes. It was that habit that had convinced her to buy an end table at the perfect height to add to that little nook by the window. He was endearing, to say the least.

Their conversation picked up as she drew up some lidocaine before cleaning up his wound. She apologized as he hissed a string of presumed curses in Italian when the needle first bit into his skin. Conversation resumed shortly after that, his hand occasionally flexing in discomfort.

She was giggling quietly at something he’d said and there was a certain aura of pride in the cardinal’s smile as she finished the last suture and cleaned his arm one last time.

“Well, then, Copia, all cleaned up,” she announced, carefully wrapping the sutures with a clean dressing. “Just clean gently with soap and water, and come back in around a week and I’ll remove them. And let me get you a goodie bag so you can keep it dressed, too.” Evelyn pulled off her gloves and rose from the stool to go back to the cabinets once again.

“Grazie ancora, cara,” he said on reflex and found himself pinned by that masked stare as her head tilted and she asked an otherwise innocent question.

“I’m sorry, my Italian isn’t exactly great,” she admitted with a laugh as she approached him once more. “I got the thank you part, but what is the rest?”

Suddenly, he was a bit flustered again as she approached. “Oh, uh, perdonami, is, uh…term of endearment, si? Thank you again…uh…I believe direct translation is…dear?”

Evelyn quietly cursed the warmth in her chest that shouldn’t have blossomed over something so simple, so innocent. There was a pause as they stared at one another and she glanced downward. Copia was worried he had overstepped, apologies for being disrespectful on his lips before her bare hand raised in the space between them with the bag of supplies.

“…Evelyn.”

He blinked. “Che cosa?”

“If you insist on my calling you Copia, then you should call me Evelyn…” It was Copia’s turn to warm. “…just don’t tell Sister Imperator. She is…quite obsessed with my anonymity…but it would be nice for someone to at least know my name.”

He couldn’t help but catch her hand after taking the bag, the warmth of her skin on his spurring him to draw her knuckles to his lips. “Il tuo segreto è al sicuro con me…Thank you…Dottore Evelyn.” That white eye of his pierced through hers, her cheeks flushed as the skin of her hand burned with the warmth of his lips.

…Evelyn knew she was playing a dangerous game. Copia, however, was polite and a high-ranking member of the clergy, so clearly was trustworthy to a significant extent. He was also one of the only high-ranking members not to have come to her for certain little blue pills, some assistance with a Sister “problem”, or with a “suspicious rash”. Perhaps it was that combined with their frequent visits and conversations and a growing need for somebody, anyone to know who she was and see her as more than just the doctor. It was…lonely, even for someone who had grown accustomed to and took pride in appreciating solitude.

She had wanted a friend, but as he straightened from her hand with that slightly flustered, awkward smile and she stared at those green and white eyes, too-aware of the lingering sensation of his lips on her knuckles, she was struck by the unsettling feeling that she would be in over her head.

~

AO3 Link

[kookingtae]

falling into you (pt. 8) PREVIEW

pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3 | pt 4 | pt 5 | pt 6 | pt 7

→scenario: Jungkook’s innocence is like a breath of fresh air in your wild life, and though you know you’re toxic for him, you just can’t seem to stay away.

→genre: college au, slow burn, mutual pining, shy/nerd jk + bad girl oc (mature themes)

→a/n: so i’m not finished with pt 8 yet, since it’s such a climactic chapter it’s taking a bit longer than i anticipated unfortunately BUT i dont want u guys to think ive forgotten about it!!! i know u all are waiting so patiently, and i cannot thank you enough from the bottom of my heart <3 i hope this preview keeps you excited for what’s to come!

Jungkook could never face Y/N again.

God, how could he, knowing that he’d not only finished in five minutes like a pubescent teenager, but also in his pants while she was on top of him?

Embarrassment didn’t even begin to describe the mortification he felt. He’d never wanted the earth to swallow him whole as much as he did in that moment. Sure, he was aware of his slight social anxiety, the way he was constantly looking to bolt from uncomfortable situations—but this was different entirely. This was new territory for him; he’d never done anything remotely sexual with someone else, period, much less with the girl who hung the stars, moon, and sun in his eyes. What was he supposed to do? There was nowhere to escape to in his own bedroom, no running away from his problems that made him uncomfortable. No, he had to stand there with his head down and his crotch dripping wet while he practically begged her to leave. He had never been so ashamed of himself. He had never felt so pathetic.

But then Y/N surprised him like she never failed to do: she’d given him reassurance, another kiss even, while telling him that she actually enjoyed the experience—went so far as to say it was the best in her life. Now he knew she was lying to spare his feelings. Of all the men Y/N had been with, there was no way a virgin cumming untouched in his pants was the best of them. She was cruel to make him believe otherwise, to give him false hope.

He wouldn’t allow himself to think any differently. He couldn’t allow himself to get hurt.

Which was why he made it his mission to avoid her at all costs—something he’d gotten very good at over the past few months, and the past few weeks, specifically.

But in the same way he’d learned from the patterns of her daily routine and used them as a means to remain hidden, she’d also learned his and utilized them to her advantage as well. It was the only explanation as to how he was turning a corner inside the art building (about to take the rear exit, since she usually waited for him out front) and suddenly she was standing right in front of him.

He instantly skidded to a halt, heart rate shooting to astronomical levels and eyes widening on their own accord. “Y-Y/N,” he stuttered out involuntarily, the sight of her causing every single detail of their time spent together to come rushing back to him like a tidal wave ready to wipe him out.

As if he needed another excuse to think about the moment they shared that had changed him forever, about the way her moans sounded in his ear and her body felt on his lap and the way she touched his cheek, his neck, the way her lips felt on his skin, god help him—

Already he could feel the beginnings of a blush start to rise to his suddenly hot cheeks, and he cleared his throat and shifted his weight from one foot to the other to keep from springing yet another boner in front of her.

He slid his books in front of his waist, just in case.

While she usually approached him with the natural ease of self-confidence and charm, today she seemed worried, unsure. She chewed at her lower lip—something he didn’t think she really ever did, as he would certainly remember the way it stirred within him—and looked up at him beneath delicate lashes that framed her eyes.

He didn’t have it in him to keep from outright staring at her beauty.

“I… I missed you,” she finally murmured, and he felt the breath physically whoosh from his lungs to join his butterfly-filled stomach all the way at the floor.

It had been a few days since he’d last seen her, since she’d been in his room that night where they opened up about their past and confessed how they truly felt about one another and shared the most life-altering moment he’d ever experienced. He missed her too, god he missed her. He missed everything about her the moment she left his side—would picture her face in his mind as soon as she left his field of vision. But for some reason unknown to him, she was too kind to him, spared his feelings despite knowing what little experience he had. There was no way he’d be able to satisfy a girl—mentally, physically, emotionally—who could have anyone she wanted. Perhaps she pitied him. Either way, if she wouldn’t put a stop to it, then he would.

Or so he’d try, but alas, nothing ever went according to his plans where Y/N was concerned. And here she was, three simple words mumbled into existence and he couldn’t even remember his own name, much less why he’d been trying to fight this.

She seemed to expect he would say nothing—either that or she’d grown used to his silence—because before he had enough sense in him to even think about responding, she was speaking again. “How have you been?”

The question was asked with deliberate, genuine curiosity and concern; she really wanted to know if he was okay, how he was handling things after what had transpired between them. And no matter how hard Jungkook tried to fight this, fight her, fight himself, he was only human.

And so he stopped fighting.

“I– I missed you too,” he breathed out, and it was like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders and relocated to his gut. He tensed at his confession, mentally berated himself for his words even though she’d been the one to say them first. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, what with the way his throat locked up.

Though the second he witnessed the smile that sprang to her tantalizing lips, he felt as light as a feather floating in the breeze.

“You did?” Her eyes lit up, sparkled under the fluorescent hallway lights that still managed to capture all of her beauty despite the unflattering lighting. He didn’t think it was possible for any scenery, not even that of a dull and stuffy university building, to make her appear any less breathtaking than she always was.

“I was so worried after I left last week,” she continued without prompt. The mention of his premature finish had him stiffening in dread, though she didn’t let enough silence fester between her words for the anxiety to claw its way up his throat. “I didn’t want you to beat yourself up. I’ve noticed you tend to be too hard on yourself sometimes.” She glanced up at him with the hint of a sheepish grin dancing on her lips.

Her expression said it all: that’s an understatement.

And this shocked him to his core, because she was absolutely right.

Just how well had she gotten to know him in their time spent together over the last few months? And how? And why?

The last question would always boggle him until the end of time; he would never understand why she was interested in him. Why was he the one she had feelings for, when she claimed she never had feelings for anybody? Though he supposed he could ask himself the same thing: why did he feel things for Y/N that he had never felt for anyone else in his life? And the answer was quite simple, really: because it was her.

He didn’t know what about himself was so special to make him stand out in her mind, and as a result he still couldn’t help but be skeptical, even after her confession. But it wasn’t like he had any choice in the matter on what to do with that skepticism—not when his heart kept leading him back to her.

At some point after her accurate description of the inner turmoil that’s been plaguing his mind, his mouth had fallen open slightly. He couldn’t hide the surprise from his face even if he tried; he was speechless.

Y/N gazed up at him, not seeming in any hurry to rush the conversation along, and for that he was grateful. He’d never met somebody so patient and understanding before—just another reason to make Jungkook’s heart flutter with endearment. And it was no secret to himself anymore that he yearned to be in Y/N’s presence for as long as possible whether he was aware of it or not.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed, you know,” she continued as if she could read his mind, and that was when he realized the way his eyes avoided hers and the fact that his skin was the color of tomatoes must’ve been dead giveaways. “I meant it when I said that was the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced.”

Jungkook balked, practically choking on his spit at her forward, shameless words. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the way she spoke her mind so openly without any fear holding her back. She’d gone through so much in her childhood, in her life—Jungkook not even knowing the half of it, he’s sure—and yet she was still so strong and brave and everything he wasn’t. He couldn’t help but admire the person she was today, despite all the prejudice and judgment he’d held for her when they first met.

He realized now that he was too quick to judge her, to write her off based on rumors and first impressions. He realized now that he was too quick to do that to a lot of people. Just how long had he closed himself off from others based on his skewed, morally righteous perspective? His whole life, if he had to say.

The epiphany that she was physically prying open his third eye with a crowbar, that he was now self aware and changing for the better for her—for himself—hit him all at once.

It was the most frightening sensation of his life, the introvert in him wanting to crawl back into his shell where it was safe and comfortable and dull. But deep down he knew it was also for the best.

“W-why?” He heard himself asking before he knew what he was doing. “Why do you keep saying that?”

He had to know why she insisted on standing by her statement that his mishap was not only hot, but the hottest ever. Why did she insist on lying to him, on giving him false hope? She spoke her mind in every other situation, or at least that’s what he assumed; why did she insist on sparing his feelings in this incident? Was he really that pathetic? Did she pity him that much?

She simply blinked at him once, twice, before: “Because I really like you, Jungkook.”

As if in slow motion, you could visibly see his eyes expand to the size of saucers at your words.

You would’ve found the sight comical had the situation been any different. But the way he continued to disbelieve that you could have feelings for him, that you could be attracted to everything about him despite who he was, despite his inexperience—it made your heart break in your chest. You now knew from where this inferiority complex stemmed—he’d told you himself about his family situation—and if anything, it made you want to rebuild his confidence that much more. He needed to see himself the way you saw him.

But you also didn’t want to overwhelm him, either. And you were more than willing to walk that fine line with Jungkook no matter how long it took.

“So are we on for a study sesh tonight?” You continued nonchalantly, wanting to return things to normalcy for him as much as possible before he ran away mid-conversation as he’d done so many times before. You wanted to ease his self-doubt so he’d stop avoiding you—like he’d been doing the past few days—as much as possible.

Jungkook blinked as if trying to adjust from the whiplash of your subject-change. “U–uh… if you want?”

“Of course I want to,” you replied without missing a beat, not caring how desperate you seemed so long as he didn’t question where you stood. You took a step forward, unable to help the intangible, magnetic draw you felt to him as you gazed up at him beneath your lashes. “That is… if you want to.”

You watched in agony as a gulp slowly raked its way down his throat.

“I–” his voice was hoarse before he cleared his throat. “I uh, can’t tonight. I have to study for math.”

You weren’t even sure how one studied for math, but you weren’t about to question the expert. “That’s fine! We could… do it tomorrow?”

Jungkook chewed at his bottom lip, an action he always did when he was internally struggling with something before he finally nodded his head yes in a slow, hesitant manner. “N–not in my room though,” he added as an afterthought, and when your gaze snapped to his he had a pleading expression in his eyes.

A mix of emotions rolled through you. On one hand, you were horrified at the possibility that he thought the only reason you wanted to study again was so that you could get in his pants. Which—okay, you’re not going to lie, you would love to have a repeat of last week—but that definitely wasn’t why you wanted to see him. He meant more to you than just a means to get off, which was what you’d thought of flings in the past. You didn’t want him to be just a fling, though.

You didn’t want to think of the meaning behind that fact right now, either.

But on another hand, you understood where Jungkook was coming from. Maybe it was because you’d studied him enough over the past few months to learn some of his behavior (for once you finally saw the appeal of studying), so you knew that level of intimacy was probably extremely overwhelming for Jungkook and he needed a moment to step back. Hell, it was even overwhelming for you, and that was saying something. Never had your senses, your heart, your body, your soul been attacked like that with such an abundance of emotional pleasure, and you hoped with all your might that Jungkook was feeling the same—that that was the reason he needed a breather from being alone with you, and not the fact that he just didn’t want to be intimate with you.

Unless…

Oh god, had you misread the situation entirely? Had Jungkook hated everything about that night?

Suddenly you were feeling sick to your stomach. The thought of you misunderstanding his confession—or worse, him changing his mind completely—made you want to escape to a dark and desolate stairwell and cry in the hidden nooks of the windowsill again; the irony that not only would you be pulling a Jungkook by escaping mid-conversation, but that the stairwell was also the place the two of you had your first real conversation, wasn’t lost on you.

“M–my roommate is staying in, studying for finals.” The sound of Jungkook’s voice was like a breath of fresh air whooshing into your lungs after almost drowning underwater. You blinked out of your inner turmoil, focusing on him. “So he’ll be there, i–in my room, this whole week.”

And suddenly your heart was warming with relief, hope, appreciation, like flowers blooming in the spring after a torrential downpour. Just when you thought you had him figured out, this enigma of a boy continued to surprise you. It was usually easy for you to hide your emotions—you’d been doing so for years, always wore a mask around others so that they couldn’t see the real you—and yet somehow, Jungkook must’ve sensed them anyway. He sensed the doubt, the pain, the fear that you vowed never to cage you crawling up your throat and threatening to consume you whole, and he eased it. He didn’t want you to misunderstand him. He wanted to reassure you.

If anything, that was just a testament to how Jungkook had broken down your walls—how much you had let him in, how well he was able to read the emotions you wanted to keep hidden. Your mask had begun to break, the real you showing through the cracks, and Jungkook was still standing here. He hadn’t run away.

You fought the urge to grab him and slam your lips onto his.

“Not in your room, then,” is all you managed to breathe out beneath a fluttering smile.

[vs-redemption]

Crime is Common. Logic is Rare. (Ch.23)

Chapter Twenty-Three: Commence Procedure (HawksxGN!Reader)

From Cindy: This chapter is almost twice the length of the others and I apologize for that. I also apologize for the lack of Hawks. I’m planning on focusing the entire next chapter on him and the reader though, so look forward to that!

Plot summary: You thought your hands were full as a regular quirk geneticist, but then you meet Hawks and things get even more exciting!

Warnings:  

⚠️This story contains spoilers from the manga.

⚠️Some events and plot points have been altered from the original manga

⚠️ This chapter mentions medical stuff like needles and seizures

Tag List: @gayforkeigo @marshmallow-witch @redflannel @toyo-shiro @elsasshole @astronomyturtle @iambashfulperson @omiwashere

Next Chapter : Chapter Guide

“Today is the big day!” Dr. Garaki announces the next time you’re in the lab. Thankfully, Shigaraki hadn’t made a move to kill you when you arrived, so you assumed the meeting with the Hero Commission had been a success and that nobody knew you had divulged so much sensitive information about the doctor’s plan to them. “Shigaraki, are you excited?”

“Let’s just get started already,” the villain groans impatiently. “I’ll be excited once this is all over and all the heroes are dead.”

“Actually, I’m a little concerned about something,” you speak up before things could progress any further. The doctor hadn’t given you any prior warning that Shigaraki’s procedure would begin that day, but you weren’t surprised. He’d probably kept the exact date from you on purpose as a safety precaution.

“Oh?” Garaki eyes you curiously, “What is it?”

“I’d rather talk to you about it in private,” you admit while glancing warily over at Shigaraki, who predictably began to throw a fit. His red eyes, which were filled with suspicion, bore into you as if he believed intimidation alone would be enough to get you to confess to plotting something behind his back. Luckily for him though, your business with the doctor had nothing to do with schemes to do him any harm.

“It’ll only take a minute,” you add the promise just to try and put the villain at ease.

“All right,” The doctor nods. “I have to check on the high-ends anyway, so you can come with me and tell me once we’re in there.” Shigaraki lets out a sigh of annoyance, but the situation couldn’t have gone any better for you. If the doctor was allowing you to accompany him into the second lab, it would give you the chance to get another look at the nomus. You knew that any information you could pass along about the high-ends would be appreciated by the Hero Commission.

You and the doctor made some small talk as you walk through the dimly lit tunnel, taking care not to trip or step on any of the tangled up tubes and wires lining the floor, walls, and ceiling. The place used to creep you out a bit, but nothing really compared to the unease of working under the watchful eyes of Shigaraki. Once you arrive in the second lab and the door is securely shut behind you, Dr. Garaki finally turns the conversation to business.

“I wanted to let you know that the Hero Commission finally gave me permission to see the high-end from the Kyushu incident,” you tell him even though he should already know. Hawks had been present for the conversation for the very purpose of having the villains listen in. Of course, you hadn’t really gone to the Commission’s lab that day, but the president had still begrudgingly released the information they’d gathered on the nomu so that you’d be able to make the story more believable when talking to the doctor.

“Really?” The doctor pretends to be surprised. He looks at you curiously before beginning the walk through the giant liquid filled glass chambers where the high-ends sat dormant. You weighed the pros and cons of activating your quirk to record as many details of the room as you could in your mind for the Hero Commission. The doctor knew the exact length of time you could use your quirk though, so if he asked you to use it today and you were missing a minute or two he would certainly start asking questions.

“That high-end was killed by Endeavor’s flames,” you say. “Its body was burnt to a crisp from the inside out, but didn’t that nomu have a regenerative quirk?”

“That’s right,” The doctor nods before setting to work running some diagnostics from his computer. When the screen lights up with valuable information about each nomu, you know you have to risk using your quirk. You had no idea what small tidbit might mean the difference between a hero living or dying.

“I’m just a little worried,” you admit. “If that high-end wasn’t able to heal fast enough to keep up with the damage it sustained from Endeavor’s flames, there’s no way to be sure that Shigaraki won’t have the same problem.” The doctor glances over his shoulder at you to show you’d caught his interest, so you continue.

“Sure,” you shrug while trying not to make it obvious you were looking at his computer. “All for one’s quirk might be stronger overall because we’re using a living host with DNA fused much more completely than the nomus, but that still doesn’t mean Shigaraki can’t get overwhelmed.” You take the chance to glance around at the high-ends. Even knowing the build of their bodies could give insight to what they were capable of.

“We don’t even know if Shigaraki’s DNA samples ever stopped needing to regenerate either,” you continue your speech. “We just know that the rate of regeneration reached an equilibrium. If Shigaraki’s DNA isn’t truly fused, and it’s just in a constant state of regeneration, his whole body might start to break down the moment he’s in any kind of physical distress.”

Dr. Garaki turns to give you his complete attention after that. “Are you trying to get me to delay Shigaraki’s procedure?”

“No,” you give your answer confidently because it was the truth. “It’s been made quite clear that we don’t have the luxury of having more time for testing. I just didn’t want to jump head first into this thing without all possible outcomes being laid out on the table. This procedure is meant to give Shigaraki more power, but it could very well backfire and make him completely defenseless.”

“I didn’t know you cared that much about Shigaraki,” the smile on the doctor’s face looked a bit more manic than you were used to. Surely he didn’t think you were actually starting to sympathize with the villain’s cause?

“I don’t,” you tell him bluntly. “Not really. At least, I don’t care about him any more or less than I would anyone else. I just want both of you to have a fair warning. You are more reasonable than he is though, which is why I’m telling you first.”

“Shigaraki can be rather melodramatic at times,” The doctor concedes. “You don’t have to worry about him though. Even if his body won’t hold up well in a fight, it’ll still be an advantage for him to have All For One’s quirk at his disposal.” The ominous smile on Dr. Garaki’s face intensifies. “Besides, Shigaraki will never be defenseless. He has plenty of resources to rely on for protection, the high-ends just being one of them.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” You say while finally deactivating your quirk. You were reaching your limit even after the boost you’d gained from eating a handful of almonds with your breakfast that morning. “That makes me feel a little better I guess.”

Of course, you didn’t really feel better. You knew the resources the doctor was referring to. Shigaraki had more than just the high-end nomus and the massive army of civilian soldiers that had rallied behind him. He also had a fiercely loyal follower with some sort of monster quirk that the Hero Commission still had no real specific information about. All they knew was that this guy was huge and strong. Hawks had actually seen him a few times during the time he spent working with the villains. The rumor was that the giant man could sleep for ridiculous amounts of time, and only ever acted on direct orders from Shigaraki. He sounded terrifying and you really hoped the heroes could find a way to take down the league without ever needing to get into a confrontation with the giant villain.

“Let’s keep your concerns about the procedure to ourselves though,” Dr. Garaki shuts down his computer and gestures for you to follow him back to the main lab. “There’s no reason to get Shigaraki more nervous than he already is. We’ll be able to monitor his condition once the procedure commences, and we can make alterations as needed.”

“All right,” you agree to his decision while heading back to where Shigaraki was waiting for both of you to return.

“That was much longer than a minute,” the leader of the villains snaps once you emerge from behind the secret panel that hid the tunnel.

“I apologize,” The doctor tells him with his normal smile back in place. “You won’t need to wait a moment more though. Let’s get you set up and comfortable so we can get begin the procedure.”

Shigaraki made a stink for a moment about wanting to know what you’d needed to talk about behind his back, but the doctor managed to placate him with some random excuses. After Shigaraki calmed down, you led him over to the hospital bed that had been brought down for him. You managed to get him to lay down and set up with IVs while Dr. Garaki prepared the serum.

“Are you ready for the anesthesia?” you ask Shigaraki while holding up the vial. “Once this is administered, you’re going to fall asleep really fast and we won’t be able to wake you up again until the procedure is finished.”

“Yes, I’m ready.” There was a slight hesitation in his voice, making him appear more human in your eyes for a moment. Even though you were meant be staying neutral, it still upset you to be doing such a dangerous experiment on a living person. There was a chance Shigaraki would never wake up, and even though he was already responsible for so much death and destruction, you couldn’t help but feel bad about whatever life he’d lived in the past that had brought him to this point.

“Okay,” you hand the anesthesia to the doctor since he had the proper training to handle that and you prepare yourself mentally for injecting the serum. You watch Shigaraki’s face relax and after a few seconds his eyes drift closed. Your eyes dart to the machine monitoring his vitals and everything looked normal.

“That was the easy part,” Dr. Garaki tells you before gesturing at the syringe in your hand.

“Yeah,” you let out a sigh to release some of your own tension, then shake your head before reaching out to take Shigaraki’s arm and inserting the needle. After the serum is injected, both you and the doctor wait silently for a moment to see what would happen. Things seemed okay for a moment, but then Shigaraki’s entire body started to convulse, setting off an alarm on the device monitoring his vitals.

“That’s not good,” You turn to the doctor who looked extremely concerned that things were going this poorly already.

“Get him on his side,” Dr. Garaki orders and you quickly jump into action. You put your hands under Shigaraki and roll him over as gently as possible, trying not to restrict his movement too much. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much you could do for him except wait for the episode to pass. Once the shaking stops, Shigaraki’s vitals go back to normal and you roll him back over so he’s lying flat again.

“That was a stronger reaction than we anticipated,” your eyes scan over Shigaraki’s unconscious form, suddenly wishing you had more of a medical background.

“I’d like to run a few brain scans to see if there’s anything noteworthy going on in his head that might have contributed to the seizure,” Garaki scratches at his mustache, still on edge from what happened. “Can you take a blood sample and check how the DNA merging process is going?”

“Sure,” you go to gather the supplies you need. When you get the blood sample under the microscope, you’re frustrated to see that most of the chromosomes aren’t attempting to fuse at all. The few that do move and bind together look more like that of a nomu than a person. You report the findings to the doctor right before Shigaraki’s body starts to have another violent reaction.

“At this rate, we’ll have to keep him under twenty-four hour surveillance,” The doctor had a light sheen of sweat on his forehead now. Things were not going well at all. “I still want to do those head scans though.”

“Yeah, okay,” You nod your head. “I’ll stay as long as I can.”

“I appreciate that,” Dr. Garaki says, even though you got the feeling he wouldn’t have let you leave anyway with Shigaraki in such an unstable state. Hopefully, you’d find a way to get the villain under control soon though since there was a limit on the amount of time you could keep the information from your quirk inside your mind. You had to play your role diligently though, even if it meant helping keep Shigaraki alive at the risk of losing every scrap of information you’d gathered for the Hero Commission.

It was well into the early hours of morning before Dr. Garaki finally allowed you to go home and rest. The sun had long past set and was already on the rise again as you rode the train back to your apartment. Shigaraki was still having random fits, but they seemed to be coming less often and with less intensity as before. The doctor would be able to manage without you for a little while. All you wanted to do when you finally got home was sleep, but everything you’d seen in the second lab would be gone just as soon as you closed your eyes for too long. You put on a pot of coffee, grabbed a notebook, and began to scribble down everything as fast as you could before the exhaustion inevitably took over.

[chickensarentcheap]

Best Part of Me -Chapter 88

Warnings: none

Tagging: @tragiclyhip, @innerpaperexpertcloud, @c-a-v-a-l-r-y, @alievans007

The final attempt at sleep had been successful. Although the road ahead of him is destined to be long and extremely difficult -and no doubt agonizing- his brief moment of wakefulness had done wonders to life Esme’s spirits. That chance to speak to him; to see him open his eyes and know -with one hundred percent certainty- that he was able to acknowledge her. It wasn’t a drug induced incoherent rambling or hallucination. He actually saw her and was able to engage; giving appropriate responses and showing concern for her and the baby. Able to express how he was feeling and that telling her he loved her. No one could ever possibly understand how just incredible that small moment was, or what an enormous impact it had on her state of mind. She knows it won’t be easy. There will be weeks, even months, of healing; tremendous pain and more hard times than easy ones. A full recovery could take as long as a couple of years; countless rounds of physical rehab will be needed and most likely therapy for mental health and addiction issues.  But he’s already shown just how tenacious and strong he actually is; his will to live a lot more powerful than the agony he’s experiencing. With so much to live for, his desire to be with his family again is his main driving force, and she knows he’ll be willing to do whatever it takes to get back on his feet again.

Nathan may have been able to break his body, but he hadn’t made a dent in his spirit.

The burden she’s been carrying -the fear, worry, and uncertainty- had been lessened, and she’d been able to drift off; both body and mind allowing her to rest. So soundly in fact, that she’d only briefly stirred in the wee hours of the morning when Julie had come in while on her rounds. Merely lifting her head from the pillow; quietly observing as the nurse switched empty IV and medicine bags with full ones. Then she’d simply rolled over, pulled the blankets over her head, and easily drifted off.

Her sleep once again had been filled with dreams of the past. Millie’s first steps and how ecstatic and proud Tyler had been; never getting to experience many of Austin’s milestones because of deployments. How tearful he’d been the morning he’d walked into her room and Millie -who’d  been standing up in her crib, excitedly bouncing up and down at the mere sight of him- had called him ‘daddy’ for the very first time.  And the way he’d broken down in the delivery room when the twins had been born -even harder than he had when his daughter came into the world- and the nurse had given him TJ and said “Here’s your son”.   He’d lost his first, and getting that moment again -a baby boy presented to him- had profoundly affected him  A man that rightfully shouldn’t even have been alive. Who’d been given a second chance and at times didn’t feel as if he deserved it. There are still times he thinks that way. When the demons of the past resurface and play havoc on his brain; convincing him that the mistakes of a younger man and the amount of blood on his hands has turned him into a monster. It’s the nightmare of living with mental health issues and PTSD; those dark moments where he questions his mere existence and openly states that he doesn’t deserve the life he has now; a wife and children that love and accept him unconditionally.  

It’s hard for people to understand. How a man that is so big and so strong -and often intimidating- can have those kinds of thoughts and vulnerable moments. But they don’t know everything that he’s battled. His childhood is one of his best kept secrets; only her and Koen know the full extent of his father’s behaviour, the abuse inflicted, and the long term damage it has caused. It’s not something he readily talks about; even with her.  That toxic masculinity still gets the better of him at times. His father’s attempts at beating into him that a man -a REAL MAN- doesn’t show emotion; it means that he’s weak and there’s nothing more pathetic than being weak. And she’s tried to break him of it; years spent assuring him that he isn’t a weak man.  A weak man would have given up in that storage facility. In the same way he would have given up on the Sultana Kamal Bridge seven years ago.  And he certainly never would have survived the nightmare of his upbringing. Nor would he be so determined to be a better man; the kind of husband and father that a wife and kids can brag about and proud of. Who never have to live in fear of him ; cowering every time he raises his voice or even comes too close to them. Who know -beyond the shadow of a doubt- how much he loves him.

Tyler Rake is anything BUT weak. And he’d shown that the night before.  Somehow finding a way to battle his way through this thick haze of multiple medications; gathering the strength to not only open his eyes, but actually think coherently and communicate. He was right. He DOES do whatever he wants.

When she finally wakes, it’s to the patter of rain against the window and the sounds of hospital life trickling through the half open door. Doctors being paged, the shrill ring of patients’ using their call buttons to summon for help, the loud rattle of gurneys being pushed through the halls. It’s a harsh reminder of her current situation; stuck in the ICU of a private hospital in Dhaka, thousands of miles away from her children and the comforts and security of her own home.  She misses it. The sound and the smell of the ocean. The morning breeze and sunshine as she stands out on the back deck enjoying that first cup of tea, watching her husband as he helps Millie and the twins search -and dig, at times- for shells, rocks, and beach glass. Often wondering who is enjoying the quality time more; father or children. The  dinners cooked on an open fire down by the water; the smiles brought to their faces -and that unconditional love and immense pride in his eyes- as they watch their children play and listen to those little voices and musical giggles floating on the air. And those strong, protective arms wrapped around her from behind as she sits between his legs. Her head resting against his chest as they quietly marvel at the sky; painted vivid shades of orange and pink as the sun sets.  

It’s a life she had never even dared to dream about; a beautiful home in an even more even more beautiful place,  amazing children and a husband that is faithful and loyal and only has eyes for her.  All those things that she’d come to believe SHE didn’t deserve and had long ago given up on finding. How poetic in a way; two broken people coming together to make a slightly dented whole.

Sighing heavily, she rolls from side to back; eyes closed as she stretches and yawns The morning sickness has returned. With a vengeance. More than likely made worse by lack of food and the stress and worry that have accompanied the last twenty four hours. When she manages to quell the threatening nausea and brief spell of dizziness, she opens her eyes and sits up, finding a small paper bag sitting on the extra pillow beside her; name written on the front of it in black marker. And the contents bring the first genuine smile since yesterday morning; aside from Tyler’s brief period of consciousness. A bottle of prenatal vitamins, a small carton of chocolate milk, and an enormous blueberry muffin. Accompanied by a handwritten note from Julie; asking Esme to promise she’ll look after herself AND the baby, assurance that she’ll be back on in the evening, and her home phone number. The latter being offered as not only a ‘helpline’ if she feels overwhelmed and scared and needs someone to vent and cry to, but so she can give the nurse a list of some of her favorite foods. Julie vowing to bring a selection when she clocks in for her shift. It’s refreshing; having someone WANT to take care of her in that motherly fashion. Especially when her own has been anything but.

She shoves her feet into her sandals and climbs off the bed; returning  it to its couch form. “Hey baby,” she greets as she stands at the side of Tyler’s bed; combing her fingers through his hair and pressing her lips to his temple. “Good morning.  I hope you slept god. You didn’t snore, I know that much. That’s a first, huh? Me not complaining about your snoring? Must have been a really good sleep for you to be THAT quiet. You deserve it; that kind of sleep. Your face looks a little better, I think. Not as swollen. Pretty bruised though. And you’re going to have a couple wicked scars at the end of this.”

Her fingers gently touch the stitches below and above his eye.

“You’d probably joke about how it balances your face out; the right catching up with the left in the scar department.  I think they’re going to make you even sexier. Which should be illegal, if you ask me. One man being that sexy?  No wonder you’re a DILF. The thirsty ladies may drive me crazy, but I can’t really blame them. Right now I’m kind of mad at you though. I am so nauseous. And I swear, the bump is even bigger this morning...look…”   she pushes her fingers through his, then draws their joined hands through the safety railing and places them on her stomach.  “...bigger, right? You can’t tell me this is normal. None of the other ones were this size so soon. Not even Declan, and he was over ten pounds when he was born. And you better not be thinking multiples; one is all we can handle right about now.  Let’s not bite off more than we can chew, alright? Six is more than enough. And speaking of babies, I’m going to ask Ovi to bring Addie here. She’s tiny still, Tyler. She shouldn’t be away from us this long. Especially me. She needs to be with her momma. And I think it would do you some good, too; having at least one of them here. So that’s my decision and you’re just  going to have to live with it.”

She moves his hand back inside the confines of the bed, gently setting it on the mattress

“I love you,” she says, and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “You keep sleeping, okay? And I hope if you’re dreaming, it’s good things for a change.”

****

She gives a small start when she exits the bathroom and finds Koen sitting in the bedside chair. Sipping from a take out cup of coffee and freshly shaven;  his face bearing its own fair share of bruises and a handful of  butterfly bandages keeping small, superficial wounds closed.

“Morning, sunshine!” He cheerfully greets, and nods to the cup of tea and a bag of fast food breakfast sitting on the window ledge. “I finally get to see you in your sexy jammies.”

Esme gives a derisive snort. “You DO have issues if you find sweatpants and an oversized shirt sexy,” she says as she journeys over to the window “I was going to give you shit for scaring the crap out of me, but seeing as you come bearing gifts, I’ll let it slide.”  She peers into the bag, a grin tugging at her lips. “Either it was just a lucky guess, or you somehow know that when I’m pregnant, I always crave breakfast burritos.”

“There’s a lot I know about you. Someone talks about you. All the time.  Mostly about shit I don’t need to know.”

“Well I’m glad you listened. Because this is a very nice surprise. Thank you,” she lays a hand on his shoulder and presses a kiss to his cheek. “And what’s up with this?” She lightly taps a hand against the side of his face. “All cleaned up. Smooth like a baby’s bum.”

“I thought there might be some hot nurses walking around. Want to put my best foot forward. Maybe you can hook me up; put in a good word for me.”

“Why would you want to hook with someone here? You’ll be going home soon.”

“Exactly.”

“Ewww…” she grimaces. “...I don’t need to know that you’re a ‘pump and dump’.”

“Considering the things I’ve had to hear from you and him?”  Koen nods in Tyler’s direction. “What I said is tame. I’ve actually had to listen to you two….”

“I thought you were moving on from random hookups?”  Esme remarks, and she perches on the arm of his chair and delves into one of the burritos. “I thought you were getting too old for that shit?”

“Excuse me, who are you calling old?”

“I thought Tyler was rubbing off on you. That he was some sort of inspiration to you and Rata; convincing you two it was time to stop sowing your wild oats and settle down once and for all.  Didn’t you say it gave you hope? That if...and I quote…’someone can put up with the likes of him, that’s proof there IS someone out there for everyone’.”

“I did say that.”

“So what gives? Why are you looking for a random? You deserve more than that”

“Well if he was awake and could tell me where to find another one of you, I’d be all set.”

“Sorry. I’m limited edition. And I’ve already been claimed. A couple breakfast burritos just aren’t enough to make me divorce my husband and run away with you. It definitely takes more than that.”

“I knew I should have gotten you hash browns too.”

“That would have done it! Boy, did you ever blow that.  I would have for sure ran away with you. Right this very second.”

“You know, as much as I enjoy our little banter, I don’t think I could handle you.”

“Oh, you definitely couldn’t.  It takes a special breed of man, believe me. And I’m serious; aren’t you tired of NOT having someone to call your own? Someone to go home to at the end of the day? Someone that is your ‘be and end all’? Your ‘ride or die’?. You deserve to be happy. I WANT you to be happy.”

“I think Tyler took all the happy and didn’t leave any for anyone else.”

“When we get home, I am finding someone for you. I don’t care what it takes; I will put you on every dating site out there.”

“What about your sister? Or step sister. Whatever she is.”

“Riley? Are you serious? She’s twenty three!”

“And?”

“And you’re thirty years older than she is!”

“How old do you think I am?”

“I know you’re eight years older than Tyler. He’s almost forty two. So I lied; you’re only twenty seven years old than she is.”

“And?”

“And that’s fucking disturbing!”

Koen shrugs. “She’s cute”

“She is. You know who else finds her cute? Women. Who she is into. And she’s not a switch hitter.”

“Doesn’t take after her older sister, huh?”

Esme frowns. “He told you THAT, too?”

“He’s told me a lot of things, sunshine. You forget; he’s a chatty drunk. Until he’s a depressed and weepy drunk, that is.”

“There are many sides to him you don’t get to see. Sober sides. And don’t worry; my sister isn’t in contention, but I WILL find someone for you.   And speaking of someone, where’s your sidekick?”

“He saw something downstairs he liked.”

“Really…” she playfully wriggles her eyebrows. “...blond or brunette?”

“Something in the gift shop. For the baby.”

“He knows?”

“EVERYONE knows.”

“Yaz has a big mouth,” Esme grumbles. “We weren’t going to tell anyone until we got home and found how far along I am. It’s what Tyler and I wanted.”

“I could gather a guess. About how far.”

“Sure you could,” she mutters. “And why do you keep looking at me like that? Why do you keep staring at my crotch?”

“I’m looking at your stomach. Where’d that come from?”

“It’s been there. I’ve just been hiding it because no one was supposed to know! Now that everyone does,  I guess I don’t have to wear baggy clothes anymore.  And it’s big, right? The bump? Bigger than any of the others?”

“How should I know? I only saw you pregnant with Millie and Addie. Never saw  you with any of the boys.”

“It’s never been like this so soon! How big IS this baby?”

“Look at the size of the kid’s father. Maybe it’s taking after him. Or maybe there’s more than one.”

“Why would you do that? Why would you think it? Don’t put that out into the universe. There’s just one. That’s it. That will make it six. A nice even number.”

“Number six must be pretty damn big then.”

“You know what? You’re off my Christmas card list. There’s no way we’re running away together. You totally shit the bed. No second chances for you.

“What if I bring you chocolate?”

“Not even then. You just had to jinx the entire thing.”

Koen gives an over dramatic pout.

“Buddy, I have seen better pouts on a much bigger man. That won’t work on me. You have nothing on Tyler’s pout.”

“He doesn’t pout.”

“He sure as shit does. I’m going to prove it one day. I’m going to catch him doing it and take a picture. Then I’ll have the evidence. Tanner has the EXACT same pout; he mostly does it when he’s sleeping.”

“Speaking of pictures, I’ve got a little something for ya.”   Koen reaches into the side pocket  of his cargo pants, pulling out his cell and then thumbing through the gallery; choosing the image he wants and offering the phone to her. “Thought it would make you smile. The world’s a shitty place when you don’t. You got yourself a pretty nice smile.”

“You’ve been taking ass kissing lessons from the best, haven’t you,” she chides, then pops the last of her breakfast into her mouth and wipes her hands on her thighs. “Oh...my...god…”  she breathes, and almost squeals in delight at the sight before her. Her husband long before the hardness and weariness brought on by his time in the military, substance abuse issues, and the dangers of the job. Before all of those demons took hold of him and he’d yet to go under a tattoo artist’s needle and no scars marred his body.  Tall and lean; broad shouldered and bearing the start of the strong and solid physique of a soldier. A brush cut and a smooth, clean face; the smile -genuine and pure- making his eyes crinkle and sparkle.

“Back when he couldn’t even grow a proper beard yet,” Koen muses. “When he was still wet behind the ears. Nothing hard ass about that bloke in the picture, is there.”

“Where did you get this?” Esme can’t explain it; the tug at her heart and the emotion choking at her and the tears that well in her eyes. There’s something so surreal about it; seeing the person you love long before a hard and unpredictable life got a hold of them.

“Found a box of old pictures when I was going through some stuff back home. Meant to show it to him, but never got around to it. You mentioned before that you’ve never seen what he looked like before...well...before all of this.”

“I’ve only ever ever seen one picture of him. When he was five; with his mom on his first day of kindergarten.  He doesn’t have any other ones; he says it’s not worth the grief he’ll get if he asks his dad if he has any.   This is…I don’t know...it’s amazing. You have no idea what this means to me; seeing this. ESPECIALLY right now. This is everything. You can’t possibly understand what this does for me.”

“I think I do. I know how you feel about him. That you’re just as much a fool in love as he is.”

“I certainly am,” she smiles. “How old is he here?”

“Nineteen. Hadn’t been out of basic long; a couple weeks maybe. When he was a cocky little shit and as green as fresh baby shit.  Cute, ain’t he?”

“Very cute. It’s weird seeing him like this. I’ve only seen MY Tyler. The one I’ve spent seven years with.  I’ve never seen THIS Tyler. I know that sounds strange.”

“I’ve heard stranger.”

“Fourteen year old me would have had a huge crush on him.”

“What was fourteen year old Esme like?”

“Awkward. Geeky. Short as fuck and chubby.  I had braces and jet black hair and I dressed like a goth. Big old Doc Marten boots that went up to my knees and everything.”

“Now THAT I’d like to see.”

“I don’t even have pictures of ME when I was that young. Tyler’s never seen old photos of me, either. I think the youngest he’s ever seen me was when I was twenty-three and just got into the Corps.  It’s what happens; when your family is toxic and you’d rather not deal with them. Can you send this to me? I’d  love to have this. And I’d love to show the kids. Especially Millie. She’d like to see her daddy when he was young and cute.”

“I’ll send it to ya. And when we get home, I’ll bring that box down and we can go through it. I’m sure there’s more you’d love to have. “

“Thank you.” She can’t hold back the tears. “You have no idea what it means to me. Even just having one picture. And I’m sorry; that I’m a whiny bitch baby. I would like to be able to blame it on the baby and my hormones, but it’s not those things. It’s just me. I’m not exactly having the best twenty four hours. I miss my kids. I hate being so far away from them. Especially Addie. But I can’t leave Tyler here. I just can’t.”

“I could stay,” Koen offers. “He wouldn’t be alone, you know that.”

“And I appreciate it, I do. But I need to be here with him. I didn’t leave him seven years ago, and I’m sure as hell not leaving him now. It’ll be better; when he gets sent to a hospital back home. Closest one is an hour from the house. It’ll be better than.”

“Well I’ll stick around as long as you need me to. Sort of made a promise that I’d take care of ya. I ain’t breaking it.”

“You’re all heart, Koen. You can pretend to be surly and hard ass all you want. I’m onto you.”

“Yeah, well I kind of like that giant, dumb ass bloke you’re married to. And you’re growing on me. So I figure I might as well step up and take his spot and treat like you like the queen you are.”

“You smooth talker,” she teases, ruffling his hair and pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you. For the picture. You really don’t know how grateful I am for it. And thanks for being here; for both of us.”

“Anytime, sunshine.”

“And thank you for being with him yesterday. I could tell he was scared and in pain, and when I think what would have happened if he’d been alone…”

“Well he wasn’t. Alone. So don’t even think about that.”

“Thank you for getting him out of there. At least if he DID die, he wouldn’t have been left there. I don’t think I’d ever get over that; if I had to leave him here. I couldn’t cope with that.”

“Let’s not think about that, yeah? He got through it. He got out of there and it’s only uphill from here.”

“He really thought he was going to die, didn’t he.”

“Honestly? We all thought he was going to die.”

She releases a long, shaky sigh and blinks back tears.  “I’m glad you were there with him. At least if the worst happened, he wouldn’t have been by himself. That is my biggest fear when it comes to the job; that if it DOES happen, he’ll be alone. I don’t know why it bothers me as much as it does. I just don’t want him to be alone...you know...IF…”

“Can’t dwell on stuff like that. You’ll drive yourself insane. Or give yourself gray hair.”

“Bold of you to assume I don’t already HAVE gray hair.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“I appreciate you feeding my ego, but I know you can see it. And believe, every one of my gray hairs has Tyler’s name on them. Maybe TJ too. Go figure; the junior being a TRUE junior.”

“That kid is his dad through and through. Tough on the outside, all heart on the inside. And that Millie…”

“Female version of him.”

“Exactly. It’s fitting if you ask me; him having a girl first and her being just like him. Gonna have his hands full with her.”

“She called last night. Wanting to talk to him. She had a bad dream and he always makes her feel better after a bad dream. Daddy’s the one that chases all the monsters away. She has so much faith in him; she knows he’d never ignore her. She’s already questioning why she can’t get a hold of him. I have to tell them; I can’t keep lying to them. And I’d rather they hear it from me than someone else. They’ll take it better if it comes from me, I think.”

Koen nods in agreement.

“But on the bright side, he had a really good night. An amazing night, actually. He woke up. Twice. Once for the nurse, once for me.”

Koen frowns.

“What?”

“He woke up?”

Esme nods. “The first time, Julie...his night nurse…said he woke up and   wanted to know who the hell she was and that he asked for me. And he even told her he was feeling sick and she gave him some meds for it.”

“Hmm…”

“Second time, he opened his eyes and looked right at me. Told me to not cry. He said he wasn’t in any pain and that he was just tired. And he asked if the baby was okay and he said he loved me. It was amazing; to see him open his eyes and hear his voice.”

“Are you sure? That this happened?”

“What do you mean am I sure? Of course I’m sure. Why wouldn't I be?”

“Thought the doctor said they weren’t going to bring him out sedation for a few days? At least.”

“Julie said it isn’t uncommon; moments of wakefulness and some lucidity.  It’s just sedation, it’s not a medically induced coma  like last time.”

“He actually woke up? After everything he went through during the day? All the surgeries, the amount of meds they’re pushing into him? He opened his eyes and talked to you?”

“That’s  exactly what happened. Why are you questioning it? I wouldn’t lie about this.”

“I’m not saying you’re lying. Maybe you were dreaming. Maybe you were hallucinating from lack of sleep.”

“I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t seeing things. He woke up, looked at me, and talked to me. It happened. It was real.”

“Esme, don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe it was wishful thinking on your part and…”

“It happened,” she insists. “I was there. I witnessed it.”

“And I was there in that storage and in that van. I know what kind of shape he was in; I know how close he was to lights out. Permanently. And you’re telling me, after all the injuries, all the surgeries, all the meds, he just woke up? The same day?”

“I know it sounds crazy. And I wouldn’t believe it if someone told me either. But I SAW it. With my own two eyes. And you know how tough he is; how damn stubborn he is.   Does it really surprise you that of all the people who would fight THIS hard, it’s Tyler?  You know him; you know how strong he is.  You know he’d do anything for me and the kids. So is that big of a stretch that he’d wake up like that? Even if it was just to give me some hope?”

Koen sighs.

“He woke up AND he talked to me. And you know what? It was incredible and made me feel better; to know his brain is working and that he’s not giving up. I needed that; some kind of sign that he’s going to be okay And he gave it to me.”

“So why isn’t he awake now?” Koen challenges.

“Maybe he used up all his energy last night and he needs to build it back up again.”

“If he’s got it in him to wake up last night, he should be awake right now.  I’ve got some shit to say to him for scaring me as bad as he did. How come he’s not up now and talking to me?”

“I don’t know. I only know what happened last night. I only know…”

“Maybe I don’t want to talk to you,” Tyler’s voice -weak, groggy, and slightly slurred by the effects of medication- pipes up. “Now shut the fuck up. You’re given me a headache.”

“See!” Esme smiles triumphantly.  “I told you.”

****

When she returns from taking a much needed shower, she finds Rata outside Tyler’s room tightly clutching a gift bag from the shop in the front lobby and pacing at a near frantic rate. It’s odd to see him this way, clearly frazzled and nervous shoulders tense;  chewing on his bottom lip and occasionally stopping and peering into the room. Normally he’s the ‘life of the party’; clueless in an adorable way, always acting far less intelligent than he actually is  just to get a laugh. Possessing an air of confidence without an ounce of cockiness; quick with sarcastic comments and witty comebacks. The ‘uncle’ that always sits at the kids’ tables during Christmas dinner and then helps build lego sets and put together toy car race tracks instead of socializing with the adults.

“Hey you,” she warmly greets, and lays a comforting hand on his back. “You okay?”

He responds by wrapping her in a huge; strong, muscular arms noticeably trembling.

“You alright?” Esme asks, as she runs her hands up and down his biceps.  “You don’t look so good. What’s going on?”

“I don’t like hospitals much. Especially a place like THIS in a hospital.  Where people are really bad.  EXTRA bad.”

“He’s a lot better than anyone thought he would be. Especially so soon And he doesn’t look THAT awful, I swear. He’s even waking up for a little bits at a time. A person who is ‘extra bad’, wouldn't be doing that, would they?”

“I just don’t know if I can go in there just yet. I mean, I was there. Yesterday. In the van. I saw what he was like; how bad he was. And I’ve never seen Tyler like that. I’ve seen him shot a couple times during our tours in the Middle East, but those were nothing. Just flesh wounds, you know? But that? Yesterday? Those weren’t just flesh wounds. And by the time he got back home seven years ago…”

“He was already somewhat on his feet and in rehab.”

Rata nods. “He was almost back to himself. It’s going to be a long while before he gets back to himself this time.”

“Yesterday was pretty awful, huh?

He releases a small, shaky sigh. “Wasn’t so much how he looked. All the blood and what not. I mean, that was bad, don’t get me wrong. It was fucking awful. Pardon my language.”

“I hear and say worse all the time. You don’t have to filter yourself around me. You’ve met my husband, right? You can’t be easily offended AND stay married to him. It just won’t work.”

“It was terrible. A fucking nightmare. To see a friend of yours THAT messed up. But the worst part? It was what he SOUNDED like. When he was talking to you. I’ve never heard him sound like that. Ever.”

“Neither have I,” she admits. “Not seven years ago, not even the two times he tried to...well, you know.  He never sounded like THAT.”

“Like he was going to die.”

“Yesterday I tried telling myself he didn’t sound that way. That he was just tired and scared and in pain and he just needed it to end. I convinced myself that he didn’t sound THAT bad. Near death. Now I realize I was just trying to make myself feel better, know what I mean?”

Rata nods.

“He was a lot closer to it than I want to admit. I thought nothing could be worse than seven years ago. I was so wrong.”

“It was what he said to you. How he said it. He was pretty sure he was never going to see you again.  That’s the only thing he was really scared of; the thought of not getting to be with you anymore.  You and the kids. You’re his entire world. I didn’t think I realized how much he loves you all until I heard the things that came out of his mouth.   Opened my eyes; made me see him a different way. A good way, just different. He’s lucky. He’s got someone that loves him as much as he loves them. That’s something I think we all want but never seem to find.”

“Sometimes I wonder what I ever did right to deserve him,” she confesses. “And he’s here because of you guys. You and Koen. You did whatever you had to go get him here alive. So thank you. I know it wasn’t easy; what you had to see and do. I was there myself. Seven years ago. I know how hard it is.”

“I feel like such a dick. For not being able to go in there. Like a total pussy.”

“You’re not any of those things. People handle stuff like this in different ways. But you should go in there. He’s really not that bad. And he was awake and talking a bit to Koen. I don’t know if he still is, but I do know he’d like to see you. I know how much he appreciates what you did to help him. I’ll go in with you if that would help.”

“It would. A bit. But first,” he offers the gift bag. “ I have something for you. And the baby.”

“The baby won’t be here for months. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to. Just a little something.”

She reaches into the bag, smiling at the stuffed tiger that she pulls out of its confines. “How did you remember the tradition? Every Rake baby gets a stuffed animal?”

“Just something that stuck with me, I guess.”

“It’s adorable. Thank you. Better not let Millie get a hold of it. That girl and her stuffed animals, I swear.  You didn't have to do this. You didn’t…”  her voice trails off, fingers reaching for the familiar object tied to the ribbon around the tiger’s neck. Eyes narrowed at first, then slowly widening when the realization sets in it.   “Where did you find this? Where…?”

“I didn’t find it. Tyler gave it to me. Before we got to the storage place. He asked me to give it to you if something went wrong.”

“He did?” Esme unties the thin piece of fabric, sliding the ring off of it and then cradling it in her palm.

“He wanted me to make sure you got it. If he didn’t make it. Said it was important that you got it.”

“I thought it was lost,” her voice cracks with emotion. “I thought maybe he took it off beforehand and put it in his pocket and it fell out. Or that the ER staff misplaced it. I didn’t think I’d ever see it again.”

“I should have given it to you right away. Yesterday. Please don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying because of what you did or didn’t do. I thought it was gone. Forever. And I know it’s not much; it’s not expensive or fancy or anything like that. But it’s his. All the dents and scratches that he’s on it over the years. Sounds weird, but they all mean something.  I really thought I’d never see it again. And I didn’t think  I’d be as torn about it as I was. But it killed me inside; when I couldn’t find it. It felt like a piece of him was gone and I was just waiting for all the other pieces to disappear too. Thank you; you have no idea how much this means to me. To have this back.”

She hooks the handle of the bag around her wrist, then reaches around to the nape of her neck and removes the necklace -the custom made piece with the beach glass Millie had found- and slips the ring onto the chain.

“I’ll do it,” Rata offers, and steps behind her. Large fingers clumsy and struggling at first, but then manage to secure the clasp.

Esme lays a palm over the ring, firmly pressing it into her chest. Feeling the smooth, cool   metal with its many imperfections, the familiar weight of it against her. And the relief that simple piece of jewellery brings is profound, stifling sobs with both of her hands as she turns and tightly embraces her friend.

[sprnklersplashes]

heart of stone (6/?)

AO3

Janis ditches the tights and jean shorts by Wednesday. There’s a slight look of ‘I told you so’ on her mother’s face, but she spares Janis the lecture out of politeness. Janis never thought she’d miss them, but here she is.

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she scribbles another flower on the page, a twin for the one next to it. Not an exact twin, it’s thinner and its petals are more spiked and sharp than the one she drew before it. It’s less inviting, more dangerous. Angry, even. Like if she picked it up she’d cut her finger on it. She hadn’t intended for it to happen; in fact, she’d set out to doodle some pretty little flowers in an attempt to brighten up her sketchbook. But the pencil, as it often does, did what it wanted. She turns it on the side, trying to find a way to like it. It’s not bad work, not her best but certainly not her worst. Maybe she could like it if she had drawn it earlier, but she had really been hoping to get something nice into her book today.

With a sigh, she sets the book on her lap and swings her body around so that her feet dangle over the edge of her bed. Her next round of chemo isn’t due for a few hours, a long stretch of time to attempt to fill with activity. While she’s only been in the hospital for two full days, she’s decided that the worst part is the waiting around for the next thing to happen. Granted, much of that can be put on her as she’s spent more time in her room than she has anywhere else, distracting herself with TV and art and her parents and texting her friends every chance she can get. It all comes together and forms some kind of routine for her, one that’s built with as much familiarity and comfort as possible woven through it. The only downside to it is that the room’s been getting progressively smaller since two days ago and it wasn’t long before it started choking her.  

She left the door slightly open and peers into the hallway, the brightness of the walls striking against the cool tones of her room. She can hear the faint sounds of half-conversations that overlap with each other; nurses gossiping with each other while fiddling with IVs, the inhabitants of the longue talking and laughing about who knows what, doctors prescribing new rounds of medicine. The ward is much more alive than she had Janis ever thought it could be, a constant hum in the background of the day to day life keeps the place awake.

She taps her nails on the cover of her book, her swinging legs gaining momentum as she debates following the pull in her chest, compelling her to maybe leave her room for more than five minutes at a time and follow the sounds of conversation. Maybe talk to people who aren’t her medical team or her parents. Make some friends, because as everyone knows, cancer wards are prime social hotspots. She may not be here forever, but she’ll be here long enough to justify getting comfortable.

What’s the worst that can happen, logic had asked her that first night.

Literally so freaking much, she responded. Friends aren’t exactly her strong suit. Regina was a mistake, Damian was luck, and Cady was a gift. She could indulge her inner loser and tell herself it’s because she’s special and tailor made to a few specific people, but the thought of that makes her roll her eyes. So she faces up to the truth and all it entails; that she’s merely been unlucky in the friendship department, something that can be boiled down to one terrible experience and everything that came after it and lingers long after the smoke has cleared.

You’re being ridiculous she tells herself. If there’s a Regina George clone here, she’ll be thoroughly impressed. So she pulls her boots on and pushes herself off the bed, quickly explaining to her mom that she’s going to hang out in the longue for a bit.

“You need me to come with you?”

“I’m fine,” she says, a small smile on her face as she pulls on a cardigan. She nods at the intense competitive cooking show her mom has on the TV. “Tell me who wins. And don’t leave out any details.”

“Well we both know it’s not going to be Leticia judging by the look of that beef,” she says seriously. Janis clicks her tongue before turning and heading down, her steps smaller than normal and her sketchbook held against her chest like a shield. Her stomach twists uneasily, not from the chemo or anything like that, just from good old-fashioned anxiety. In an odd way, it’s a relief to feel ill in that way.

When she pushes herself past the open doors, all eyes turn to her and only look away to talk with other people. It’s far more populated than the last time she was here, people sitting in groups of two and three, most in pyjamas and some with hats. But all of them in groups, belonging with each other. Is this how Cady felt all those months ago, when she and Damian spotted her heading to the bathroom? Maybe her girlfriend had the right idea that day. A bathroom stall is a way better alternative to a room full of strangers.

Unfortunately, she knows better by now, and so she settles in an armchair as gracefully as she can, her legs tucked beneath her, and tries to shake off the discomfort she feels by opening her book and giving her hands something to do.

“You’re new,” a girl sitting on the floor states. She’s one of the few that actually has hair, dark brown and curly, and it makes Janis feel a little more at ease. Is that bad, she has to ask.

“Third day,” she explains, offering her a small wave. “I’m Janis.”

“Melissa,” she says. She leans back on her arms and exposes a little bandage inside her elbow. Janis pulls her own arm a little closer. Melissa doesn’t seem to notice, instead gesturing to her with her chin.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, this?” she asks, her cheeks growing warm. “Oh, just some drawings I do.”

“Cool,” she says. “So you do art?”

“Sometimes it’s like the art does me," she says dryly, earning a chuckle. “But you know how it is.”

“My best friend says that all the time,” Melissa sighs. “She says she wants to go to art college but I’ve watched her cry over trying to hand in assignments.”

“You sound like my mom,” Janis replies. “Literally every time I bring up doing art in college she tells me how stressful it is.” She shrugs lightly. “She’s not wrong, but it’s the only thing I want to do.”

“Is your mom here?”

“Yeah, she’s back in my room,” she explains. “I left her watching some cooking show on TV.”

“Wow, and you’ve only just here. I’ve been here for a month and I only just got my mom to let me out of her sight,” she sighs, a resigned smile on her face and her eyebrow raised in a silent ‘you know how it is’. “Want to play some Scrabble? We’ve started keeping a scoreboard so we can add you in. We have a whole tournament going.”

“Sounds fun,” Janis says, pushing herself off the chair. “Although I should give you warning, I’m dyslexic, so I kind of suck at it.”

Janis follows her across the longue, slipping her hand into her pocket when she thinks she sees the other girl reach out to her. There’s a pang of guilt in Janis’ chest even though Melissa doesn’t seem to care, and she does her best to work through it. She exchanges names and smiles with other kids, all introduced by Melissa. It’s an odd feeling; she’s not used to being the one who’s introduced. She’s either known people so long she doesn’t need to or she’s the one making the introduction, but today her mouth feels dry and her tongue tied so much that all she can do is say ‘hi’ and try to keep up with the rest of the little group. But despite this, and despite the fact that she does supremely suck at Scrabble, they aren’t half bad. They welcome her in with no problem at all, asking her about school and life and art as they set up tiles and she knows the right questions to ask them. She laughs at their jokes and nods along to the conversation, even adding in her own take now and again as it builds into a steady flow.

It’s not entirely perfect; she can’t help but feel slightly on the outside when they bring up a nurse or a patient she doesn’t know and she’s much more quiet than she’s used to being, unsure which, if any, topics are off-limits, where the lines are. But she’s enjoying herself enough to drown out her earlier worries even if it can’t make them fade entirely, and her mood only picks up when she hears someone behind her say (squeal) her name, followed a flash of pink and rainbow appearing in her vision. How times change when a pink sweater can make her smile instead of grimace.

“Maddie!” The younger girl leans into her side, eyes bright and sparkling, and Janis puts an arm around her shoulders. “Hey kid, where have you been?”

“Where have you been more like,” she replies. “I haven’t seen you since Monday.”

“Been busy,” she says. No one presses, likely because they all understand.  They’ve all been where she is before. “And now I’m busy losing at Scrabble. Badly.” Maddie chuckles and when her arms wrap around Janis and chin rests on her shoulder, she can’t say no to it. There’s nothing uncomfortable about such a gesture and it almost feels as natural as hugging Damian or when Karen rests her head on her shoulder, despite her only knowing the girl for two days.

“Oh hey, did they tell you about the photography thing yet?” she asks.

“That what now?”

“Oh it’s this thing the cancer centre started,” Melissa explains. “Basically they want us to take pictures of stuff that matters to us. Us doing hobbies, us with our friends, the whole shebang. It’s meant to be about our cancer not defining us or whatever.” She gives a casual shrug. “It’s fun anyway. You should do it. Especially since you have your art thing.”

“Sounds like fun,” she says before poking Maddie in the ribs. “Now come on, kid. Help me make a word out of these.”  

And maybe it’s Maddie’s presence or just time passing, but Janis suddenly finds herself a lot less anxious. She even gets to the point where she trades playful insults with another kid, a boy around her age, and form a team up of sorts against him with one of the other girls. They can’t replace her real friends and she wouldn’t try to, the bonds she’s formed with Damian and Cady are too important and were put through too much to be replicated, but she suspects that they could quickly become new friends.

What’s more, treatments and diagnosis come in and out of the conversation with unexpected ease, and when Janis talks about her own, it’s the same. She hadn’t realised how much of this she’d held back, even in her texts and calls with Damian and talks with her mom. And while she feels bad for it, it also feels so, so good to talk to people like this. People who aren’t her parents or her doctors. People who are, well… like her.

And as it turns out, her next round is scheduled the same time as Melissa’s, and so they head down the hallway together. While Melissa continues to make conversation, Janis’ responses dwindle the closer she gets to her room. It doesn’t take long for the good feeling from the longue to fade, and the image of the needle in her vein becomes sharper in her mind.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Janis asks suddenly.

“Sure.”

“Does it…” She swallows past the lump in her throat. She finds a loose thread on her cardigan and toys with it until the question comes out. “Does it ever get easier? All this?”

“Well…” Melissa stops in their tracks and Janis almost trips as she does the same, immediately regretting asking. The other girl bites her lip, searching for the right answer. It feels like hours before she says “I don’t really know. I can’t speak for you. We’re all different here.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “I mean… I guess you get used to it. So it starts getting less scary, I guess.”

Janis only nods and then Melissa reaches out and taps her arm.

“It doesn’t stop sucking,” she sighs. “You just get used to it sucking.”

“And then we all bond over it sucking?” she asks, smirking.

“You get it,” she replies with a laugh. “See you later, Janis.”

“Bye.”

After Melissa leaves, she lingers in the hallway for a minute, pressing her finger into the spot where her IV goes. The problem is exactly what Melissa said-you get used to it. And she really, really doesn’t want to get used to it. Getting used it to means that she’ll be here for a while, that something else replaces her old life. Especially now, after the year she had last year, she wants to get used to good stuff, not stuff that ‘sucks’. The idea of this, medicines and hospitals and doctors, becoming normal to her sends a shiver down her back.

But she learned a while ago how to live in reality, even when it’s not what she wants. And it’s with that attitude she walks into her room, where she finds not only her IV set up, but a text from Cady detailing something funny from her math class and how much she misses her.

Even if she gets used to everything else, she knows she’ll never, ever get used to missing Cady.

                                                                                               *****

Friday morning, she wakes later than she normally does. It’s a slow process at the start, sleep pulling her in and begging her to stay, the hospital-issue sheets softer than soft around her and forming a cosy cocoon that she’s so tempted to remain in.

That is, until she remembers what day it is, and then she’s jolted awake.

Friday. Or as she’s called it, Damian-and-Cady day.

It was an unspoken agreement that the two of them were visiting her in here. Just like her father, they were insistent on coming over every moment they could, with Damian jokingly suggesting he could hide under her bed and they could have a sleep over (which they had considered in seriousness and attempted to plan). But thanks to a little thing called school, and another thing called distance, today was the first day she could see them, which is why now she’s wide awake, bright eyed, bushy tailed, everything. Because she’s finally seeing them again and filling the hole in her soul being away from them had carved.

“Morning, kid,” her mom says cheerily, entering the room with a cup of coffee in one hand. “They’re still serving breakfast downstairs, or if you want it brought up to you-”

“Sounds great, Mom,” she replies, only half paying attention. She turns on her phone, her leg bouncing anxiously as she waits for it to load. Has it always been this slow at turning on? She swears it hasn’t been. It takes an eternity for her lockscreen to come up, the time written across it in thin white numbers.

“Ten thirty?” she reads out loud before her head snaps up. “Mom, why didn’t you wake me up?”

“Why would I?” she asks. “You need all the rest you can get, and you’ve still got time before you’re due a round.”

“I know,” she sighs, rubbing her eyes. “But Cady and I text good morning to each other and it was my turn this morning. I don’t want her to think I forgot.”

“Well, I’m sure Cady understands. You know, with all that’s going on, maybe she’s not expecting good mornings right now.”

“Course she is,” she replies quickly. In what universe would Cady not wait for a good morning from her? “It’s our thing. Didn’t you and Dad have a thing?” She types out the message and sends it quickly, although Cady probably won’t see it for at least another two hours.

“Oh, you think we did good morning e-mails back in those days?” she says, laughing a little. She sits on the bed next to her on the bed. “So are you getting some breakfast? Someone can bring it up if you don’t feel up to going down, I’ll just tell them what you want-”

“It’s fine, Mom.” She reaches under the bed and pulls on a sweater before slipping into her boots and raking a brush through her hair. “I might as well go down. Someone might take the last yogurt while I’m down there.”

Truthfully, she doesn’t really feel like eating. Not anything bad, she’s just not hungry, but it’ll put her mom’s mind at ease. Just as she thought, the tension fades from her mom’s shoulders, and when she pats her shoulder, there’s more relief in her smile than just breakfast warrants.

She eats in her room, with the TV on, like she does when she’s sick at home. She could eat in the dining room, but despite the new friends she’s made she prefers eating in private, especially away from the buzzing nurses. As she flips around the channels, her phone buzzes on the plastic table, the screen lighting up to show her a new text that makes her smile and roll her eyes at once.

‘Good morning, babe. Can’t wait to see you today. Also, ik I can’t really change it now, but what do we think of the outfit?’

Beneath the message is a picture of Cady in her bedroom mirror, clad in a black vest and blue flannel shirt with white skinny jeans, her hair held back in a high, loose ponytail, soft curls framing her round face, her eyes looking up at the mirror as she gives an open, toothy grin. And Janis can’t help it, she squeals. God damn it, her girlfriend is cute.

‘Love it, love it, love it. You’re the queen of cuteness. And apparently, texting during class. Stop doing that. If I get a text from you between now and lunch I will not cuddle you later.’

‘I’m not texting during class, it’s study hall.’ Wow, what on Earth has happened to the ever-studious, rule following Cady Heron? Not even Plastic Cady texted during study hall. ‘Besides, you have to cuddle with me. It’s legally required and I’m deprived of Janis cuddles.’

‘Only if you be good and don’t text during school hours.’ She fires back, chuckling under her breath. ‘And you remain that freaking adorable.’

“Well someone’s in a good mood.” She looks up and sees Doctor Wiley standing in the doorway, and her smile dips a little, the perfect bubble she was sitting in with Cady ruined. Not enough to ruin her mood, nothing could do that, but it shakes it.

“It’s her girlfriend,” her mom explains.

“How do you know that?”

“Your smile,” she says. “It’s your ‘Cady smile’.”

“I don’t…” Her voice trails off and her mom simply shrugs. Well look at that. She’s that girlfriend now.

“Well, that’s nice to hear,” Wiley says, striding towards her. Under the table, Janis crosses her fingers that this is a normal good morning visit. She’ll take bad news on any day that’s not Damian-and-Cady day. “So, Janis, a lot of us on your team have been talking and we’ve decided to ask if you might want to get a port inserted.”

“A what?” she asks.

“Think of it like a little reservoir put underneath your skin,” he explains. “Just to make receiving the chemo easier on you. A lot of patients have one put in.”

“Oh, wow.” Way to bring the mood down, Doc, she thinks. Sometimes she envies the younger patients who have their parents making all the hard decisions. Still, one word sticks out in all that. “It makes it easier?”

“Quite a bit easier,” he agrees. “For one thing, it’s a lot more comfortable than an IV.” There’s a plus. “And a lower risk of your medicine leaking out-”

“Sounds cool,” she interrupts quickly before he can bring up an image she doesn’t want. “Um, can I think about it? I mean, is it urgent?”

“No, of course not,” Wiley replies with a stiff smile. “I’ll let you and your mom discuss it.”

He leaves them after an uncomfortable silence, nodding to her and her mom and reminding her that he’s around if she has any questions.

“So what do you think?” her mom asks.

“I don’t think.” She picks her phone back up and jumps off the bed. “Where did you put my clothes?”

“I put everything in your bag, it’s under the bed,” she replies. Janis pulls out her bag, sorting through the mass of denim, cotton, plaid and leather, all while her mom hovers behind her with anxious eyes that drill into her back. "Janis, you should consider this.”

“And I will,” she sighs. She pulls out a shirt she’s always liked and throws it on the bed. “Just not right now.” She shakes her head, trying to clear some of the smoke in her brain. Still sitting on the ground, she looks up at her mom and sighs. “Mom, I just want to not think about cancer stuff right now. I just want to see my friends and think about that.” She toys with the shirt in her hands and bunches it into a tight ball, her arms tense and shaking and her grip tight. “Is that okay?”

Her voice sounds impossibly broken on that question. And while it wasn’t intentional, it works on her mom, who nods and comes over to pat her hair.

“Okay, sweetie,” she says, and that’s the temporary end of it.

The day passes even slower than it normally does in hospital-time. Hours stretch on and on with no end in sight and she can’t distract herself no matter what she tries to do. She can’t focus long enough to read or settle on one TV show and even games in the longue can only get her so far. She tries checking her social media when on her IV, but she’s hardly there a minute before her anxiety peaks again after seeing pictures of her friends. Besides, it’s mostly dry now, everyone else is in class.

Finally, finally, it comes to the afternoon and it’s close enough that she can justify beginning to get ready. She stretches, grateful for the little power nap she took earlier, and fishes her make-up out of her bag. It’s not everything, but it’ll have to work, as will the tiny mirror in her bathroom.

“What’s going on in here?” The voice makes Janis jump six feet, even though it’s the honey-toned voice of one of the older nurses. “Little makeover.”

“Just wanted to look nice today,” she explains as she unscrews the foundation. She’s a little bit surprised to see that she’s not out of practice since she’s been bare-faced for well over a week now. Bigger priorities and all that.

“Her girlfriend’s coming over today,” her mom says in a low voice.

“It’s not just that,” she says, even though it might be. “Damian will also be here.”

“Oh you kids and your relationships,” the nurse chuckles as she takes the empty bags out. In the mirror, Janis sees her point sternly in her direction as though she were her mother. “Just remember Janis, if she really cares about you, she won’t care how much muck you have on your face.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says as she applies a coat of eyeshadow, deep indigo and sparkling under the low lights. She adds a generous amount of purple lipstick next, a shade that’s always been a favourite of hers, and four coats of mascara. Some say that’s overkill, she disagrees. Bigger, bolder, better after all.

She takes a second before looking at herself properly, and when she does it makes her happier than it has any right to be. She looks like herself again. Not a girl with cancer. A girl who is perfectly healthy and happy, the dark circles around her eyes and the pale tint to her face deliberate. Not only that, she feels stronger, even though she hadn’t been aware of any weakness before. She can breathe easier now. She’s herself again. A little winded but it was worth it.

When she’s done, Cady and Damian should get out of school in about ten minutes. They worked it all out; they’ll get the first bus from school up to the hospital, which should take about twenty-five minutes. She offered to pay their bus tickets and her mom had offered to pick them up, but neither one of them would hear any of it. Damian in particular would die before accepting money from anyone.

So she has just over half an hour. Maybe closer to forty minutes when factoring in waiting for the bus and various stops…

She probably should have left the make-up to later just to give herself something to do.

No, it’s fine. The last thing she wants is them walking in on her doing her make-up. Besides, there’s plenty to do for half an hour. She’s waited this long after all. She checks her outfit again, first in the bathroom mirror, by bouncing repeatedly, and then by using the camera on her phone. This morning she was sure about this outfit. Now she’s not sure about this skirt. Maybe if her mom had woken her up earlier she’d have had more time to plan it. The shirt is fine, it’s something Cady loves, so she won’t trade it, but the skirt… it’s not working. She grabs more stuff from her bag and lays it out on the bed, debating each one carefully. There’s a pair of studded shorts that she doesn’t think looks right with the shirt, a pair of jeans that would be far too uncomfortable, and a dark grey skirt that she’s not worn that much and is a little short-

“Holy crap,” she sighs. She shakes her head at herself. She hasn’t obsessed this much over her looks since middle school. “You’re insane, Sarkisian. You’re fine.”

They’ve both seen her look worse, surely.

She forces herself to sit on the bed and just watch some freaking YouTube like a normal person. She gets a text from Damian telling her they’re on their way, and she takes a deep breath and sends a response. She then has one eye on the phone and one eye on the window, all the while counting the minutes until they should be here.

Twenty five minutes. One video later, it’s twenty one. Another video, eighteen. Another video, plus a sip of the coffee her mom got her, fourteen. Another video, plus re-checking her make-up, ten. Another video, six. Another video, three.

And now they should be here. They probably are; they’re probably walking through the lobby. Maybe the elevator’s a little slow, maybe they got lost. This is a big place and they don’t even know where they ward is. Do they? Did she tell them? She grabs her phone and checks their groupchat, scrolling through the week-

“Janis?” Her name is accompanied by a soft knock on the door, and when she looks up, Cady is standing in the doorway, looking even more beautiful than she did that morning with a breathless smile and dimples in her cheeks. And everything else she was feeling melts away.

Janis doesn’t care about dignity, she runs over and throws her arms around her. As Cady hugs her back just as fiercely, Janis fights the urge to pick her up off the floor.

“I missed you,” Cady whispers into her shoulder.

“I missed you more,” she replies, certain that she’s correct.

“Well I’ll just go then,” Damian jokes. “If you two need a moment alone.”

“Don’t even think about it,” she tells him seriously, jumping into his embrace. He runs his hand through her hair and even rocks her and everything about his embrace feels right.

“Got you these,” he says when they eventually pull apart. He presents her with a bunch of white flowers wrapped in silver paper. The scent is just like the gesture; so sweet it makes her well up.

“Oh you losers,” she says. “I love them.”

“Hi kids,” her mom greets from her chair in the corner. To be honest, Janis had actually forgotten her mom was there. So her mom has watched her run across the room and tackle-hug Cady. Nice. “How was school?”

“It’s fine,” Cady replies. “You know… senior year….”

“Oh I’m sure it is,” she says fondly. “I’ll give you kids some alone time.” She gives Janis’ shoulder a squeeze before heading out, and then Janis can hold Cady’s hand as tightly as she wants and pulls the two of them to the bed, utterly giddy at having them at her side again.

Even if it won’t last a voice in her head whispers.

“So come on, what have I missed?” she asks. “Other than you two, I mean. Tell me everything. Spill all the tea. I crave gossip!”

“It’s been a week, Jan,” Cady tells her, grinning and swinging her legs as her feet don’t touch the floor. “But, you do know that you’re talking to the newest captain of the North Shore Mathletes.”

“Come on then.” Janis digs her elbow in her girlfriend’s ribs. “Tell me everything.”

That’s all the incentive Cady needs.

She babbles on about her plans for the new year as Captain, how she’s already getting new recruits and she’s even allowed to invite freshmen and create Junior Mathletes, how she’s sure that membership is going to be double what it was last year (at which point Damian reminds her that there were only three people on the team last year), and about how they’re already starting to put together teams for a few contests, more than last year, and of course, how she’s ready to defend their state champion title. With each word, Janis’ heart grows warmer, the sense of security she’s craved all week settling and wrapping around her like her favourite blanket, and their hands lie intertwined on the bed a though they’d never been apart.

“So that’s my life…” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. She shakes her head and covers Janis’ hand with hers. “But what about you, what’s it like in here?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she scoffs. “I’m always fine.” Cady’s smile dips, not enough, but Janis notice and let out a sigh. “I mean it’s not the ideal situation. But I’m… coping?”

“I do not like that inflection,” Damian adds, leaning back on the bed and raising an eyebrow.

“You wouldn’t,” she says. “Like, it’s not too bad. You know… the food is actually pretty good, we have some cool stuff in the longue, they know how to keep us occupied. The doctors are all great. Including one hot med student I’m considering setting Damian up with.”

“Consider my attention grabbed,” he says. “How hot are we talking here?”

“Like… Okay I’m not into dudes, so I’m not that great at guessing, but he’s a solid 7.5,” she explains. “Would be a 9 but he stabbed me several times while trying to find a vein.”

“He did what?” Cady squeals, making the two of them jump. Her eyebrows shot up her forehead. “He stabbed you?”

“Woah, yeah.” She grasps Cady’s shoulder and silently bites her tongue. She rubs it in circles, bringing her back down. “And it hurt for a few seconds and I was slightly annoyed by it. And then we laughed about it.” She strokes Cady’s cheek carefully. “Nothing bad, Caddy.”

“Okay.” Cady lets out a breath and shakes out her hands. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, love.” She plays a kiss on her cheekbone, the tension fleeing Cady’s body as she does so. She tangles her fingers in her hair. She even missed her hair. “It’s cute that you worry so much.”

“I always worry about you.” At that moment, Damian turns his attention to the window, and Cady rests her head on Janis’ shoulder and Janis wraps her arms around her. This, the fearful looks and causing anxiety to her, this is what Janis wanted to avoid in the first place.

Damn Cady Heron and her unflinching loyalty.

“You’re feeling okay though?” she asks quietly. “Right?”

“Okay’s a bit of a relative term these days,” she says. “I’m feeling a bit bleh. But it’s fine.” Cady murmurs something she guesses is an agreement and nestles closer to her. Janis rubs her hand up and down her arm. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” She presses her cheek into her head and closes her eyes, only for a moment.

“Anyway, enough of that stuff,” she says, bouncing and turning to Damian, beckoning him back over. “There’s got to be more that I’ve missed. Come on, spill.”

“Well…” Damian begins, spinning around to face them with a grin stretched across his face. He’s been waiting to tell her this, she can tell. “They’ve announced that the musical this year will be… drum roll.”

She can Cady drum their hands on their legs, the sound bouncing off the walls and making the room tremble with anticipation as it gets higher and faster until-.

“Cabaret!”

“No way!” she gasps. Damian nods excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet and clapping his hands together. “Stars have aligned, mon amie. Stars have aligned.”

“Which means,” he goes on, throwing himself down on the bed with such gusto that it bounces. “I am going to be the greatest Emcee that North Shore High would ever wish to have.”

“Damn right!” The two high five, their glee double that of the slightly out of the loop Cady. “Emcee has been one of Damian’s dream roles ever since middle school.”

“Ever since I came out of the damn womb!” he exclaims. “I cannot tell you how much I screamed when the drama club announced it.”

“I can,” Cady adds. “It was loud and long and he got several death glares from everyone else.”

“That’s the only appropriate way to react,” Janis chuckles. “We watched the movie way back when and that’s when he decided he was going to play the Emcee or die trying.”

“It’s also when Janis became gay for Liza Minelli.”

“I’m gay for myself,” she corrects. “Liza was just the object of young Janis’ affections.” She rests her chin on Cady’s shoulder and smiles at him. “I’m helping you prep for this. I don’t care if I have to break out of here with an IV in my arm, I’m helping you.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” he replies. “Also the drama club is devastated you can’t do the set this year.”

“Who the heck says I can’t?” she says indignantly. “Those morons they have won’t last five minutes without my guidance. And I will not have your shining moment ruined by a subpar set.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “We all know who really runs that drama club.”

“Oh really, madame,” Damian scoffs, turning so his leg is folded beneath him. Janis keeps smiling, despite the feeling that its being tugged down and the weight settling in her stomach. Of all the times he had to do Cabaret, why did it have to be now?

“Everyone really missed you at school,” Cady tells her.

“Bet it’s not everyone,” she says, half joking. “Not one person in particular.”

“Hey!” Cady slaps her arm. “Be nice.”

“I promised to play nice to her face,” Janis reminds her. “Not behind her back.” Cady huffs out a laugh, her face slightly scrunched up. “But how’s the most important thing; LGBT+ society?”

“Well, we’re having our first welcome back meeting on Wednesday,” Damian says. “And Gretchen is taking over your stall at the fair. Sonja’s going to help her out though,” he adds. “And Sonja’s taking over your spot on the committee too.”

“Good choice,” she says. Lovely as Gretchen is most of the time, Janis isn’t sure she could handle the pressure of running her stall. And Sonja’s the perfect choice to take over her committee spot, smart as a whip, decisive and funny as hell.

So why does the idea make Janis so uneasy?

“Yeah, why don’t we turn this TV on?” she says, grabbing the remote. “It apparently has Netflix, although I’m not entirely sure how to operate it. There’s a load of DVDs in the longue as well.”

“A DVD. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” Damian says.

“I don’t think they have Cabaret though,” she sighs. “Which would be perfect for us right now.” She’s telling half-truths, because there’s a substantial collection of old movies, including musicals, but she doesn’t really want to brave the longue now, or to take them in there. The longue is probably her favourite place in the hospital, but it’s bound to be full right now. And for now, she wants to keep her cancer world and the real world separate.

So with some fussing, they manage to find Netflix and learn how to work it. Cady is insistent that Janis pick the movie, since it’s her room and she doesn’t know half of them and has already watched the other half. At the start of the summer, Janis had made Cady a list of every movie she needed to watch, and by the end of August they’d almost made it to the halfway mark. The best part wasn’t the movies themselves; it was the movie nights. Huddled under a comforter and surrounded by pillows, Cady’s body pressed against hers and the lights down low, buttery popcorn and sugar-covered candies keeping them going until one (usually Cady) fell asleep.

Now they make do with the thin hospital bed and the near-plastic sheets. At least they can adjust the height of it, and Janis positions Cady against her and Damian sits in the comfiest chair to watch The Parent Trap. It’s none of their favourites, but it’s familiar and good enough and while it wasn’t on the list, Cady hasn’t seen it yet. Besides, Damian can make any more fun.

And really, Janis can’t take any more of the back and forth debate.

The more the movie goes on, the more normal Janis feels. She runs her fingers up and down Cady’s bare arms, her girlfriend’s jacket discarded across a chair like she would in her house. The conversation is light and easy and full of giggles even at the stupidest, silliest thing, Damian quoting along with the movie and Cady hopelessly lost, especially at around halfway through when Janis decides to tell her that Annie and Hallie were played by the same person.

“No way!” she declares. “I’m not believing you until I see proof.”

“Google it,” she says. “Damian?”

“Way ahead of you.” He pulls up the page and shows her the cast list, with one little Lohan billed as the two twins. Cady’s mouth falls on the floor, her shoulders shaking in a silent, disbelieving laugh.

“Jesus Christ!” she says. “How did they do that all the way back then?”

“Movie magic,” Janis replies, wiggling her fingers for effect. “It’s okay, Caddy, we all felt betrayed when we first found out.”

“Didn’t she go off her rocker a bit?” she asks, pointing to the screen. “I know that much. Regina told me.”

“A little,” Janis agrees. “But I kind of feel bad for her, you know?”

“I guess.”

“Oh. Oh!” The camera pans up, revealing the striking and scary figure of Meredith Blake, and Janis squeezes Cady’s arms. “I hated this bitch.”

“I hated her more,” Damian adds, his tone not 100% light. “When I first watched this I had this soon-to-be stepmom, because my dad was back in the dating game, and she was…” He gags and points down his throat.

“Real mature, Damian,” Janis jokes. “I mean she absolutely was, but still. Mature.”

“Okay, missy,” he laughs. “Nah but I used to try to get inspiration from how to deal with her from this movie.”

“Shh!” she hisses sharply, covering Cady’s ears. “Spoilers!”

“I can still hear you,” Cady tells her. “And I could sort of guess. All the movies about step parents do that kind of thing, don’t they? Bratty kid gets wreaks havoc on the step parent?”

“Are you saying thirteen year old me was a brat?” Damian asks.

“Seventeen year old you is also a brat,” Janis teases. Damian gasps and grabs the cushion from the chair, aiming it at her head. Part of her is completely sure he wouldn’t, not in a hospital, part of her is completely sure he would because of course he would.

She doesn’t find out either way, because their gathering is interrupted by her medical team, and the weight in her stomach comes back with a vengeance.

“Not getting in the way are we?” Nurse Lucy asks.

“Not at all,” she says. Before she stops herself, she’s already pushing Cady off her. Heat rises in her cheeks. “That time again?”

“Unfortunately so,” she replies as Cady slides off the bed. “Is it okay if Jackson does it this time?”

“Yeah, sure.” As she rolls up her sleeve, her friends catch on to what’s happening, and Damian rushes to Cady’s side.

“I promise I’ll find the vein this time,” Jackson jokes.

“Oh this is the one you said-” Cady is cut off by Janis making a small ‘cut it out’ gesture with her hand. She then raises an eyebrow at Damian, whose small smirk tells her everything she needs to know.

She takes a look at her IV and her bare arm before turning back to them. She still hates this; shockingly, she hasn’t gotten used to it in under a week. Her stomach still drops a hundred feet when she looks at the needle and her chest tightens even if she’s only thinking about it.

“You guys don’t need to watch this,” she tells them. “It doesn’t hurt. But if you need to look away, it’s fine.”

“I’m fine,” Cady tells her. When Janis looks down though, she sees how tightly she’s holding Damian’s hand.

“Okay,” she says.

This time around it only takes Jackson three tries to find her vein before securing it with the bandage. Good for him. He’s learning.

“You know the drill by now?” Lucy asks.

“Two hours, stay hydrated.” She gives her a two-fingered salute.

“Two hours?” Cady echoes, and Janis has to chuckle at it. “This takes two hours?”

“That’s what she said the first time she found out,” Lucy says, gesturing to Janis. “I can see why you two like each other so much.”

“No but… two hours,” she says again as they leave. “What do you do for two hours?”

“I just… sit here I guess,” she answers, looking up at the medicine. “You know, there’s TV. I have books. I draw. Sometimes it knocks me out and I get a little surprise nap, so that’s fun.”

“Is that… should we go?” Cady asks. “If you’re going to-”

“Oh no.” She shakes her head firmly. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Completely.” She’s such a liar it’s a wonder her tongue hasn’t turned black and crumbled. “Come on. Let’s finish the movie at least.”

Cady lays beside her rather than on her, and Damian stays on the other side of the bed, away from her IV. She catches him once or twice, watching the drip instead of the movie. His gaze is unreadable, and since she’s always been able to know his thoughts without him speaking, it unsettles her.

It’s not long before that familiar tiredness descends on her, clouding her mind and pulling her downwards. And she fights it; she keeps her eyes open despite how they itch and shifts her body when she finds herself too comfortable lest she start drifting off. It’s a challenge, not just because of the medicine’s effect on her, but because of Cady’s warmth next to her, promising security and comfort and being there when she wakes up.

And she must have given into it at one point, because she opens her eyes after a blink and the movie is over; Nick and Elizabeth are together again, Annie and Hallie stay with each other forever, happy endings all around.

“What time is it?” Janis asks.

“Nearly five,” Damian explains. Visiting hours don’t end for another two hours. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” she asks. “I’m fantastic.”

“You sure?” Cady’s hand is on hers, slowly linking their fingers together. Janis squeezes her hand, clarity coming into her mind by her own will.

“Of course I’m sure.”

They don’t have to be home for another hour. Home for dinner, that’s the rule. That doesn’t really change. Damian tells her that his mom is thinking about her every day and was beside herself when she heard the news.

“She’s started following more baking blogs,” he tells her. “So prep yourself for a lot of baked goods on your doorstep.”

“I can’t object to that,” she says. “Especially since Val always bakes with love.”

At some point during the hour, Janis pulls Cady into her lap again, or Cady crawls into it, or both. Her head is under her chin and her back against her chest, slotting into place perfectly. Like if she holds her this close, she won’t have to leave.

Wishful thinking, she knows, because when it gets close to six, Cady picks up her jacket and her backpack and there’s nothing but empty air against Janis’ body.

She wishes she could lead them to the door, but her IV catches on everything, so they say their goodbyes where they are.

“Don’t miss me too much,” she warns them teasingly.

“I hardly ever think about you,” Damian replies, his voice thick.

“And you,” she tells him. “Better run lines with me. When’s auditions?”

“Next Thursday,” he tells her. “So I’ll call you tomorrow?”

“Perfect,” she says. “I have treatments at 11, at 2… You know what? I’ll text you them.”

“Okay. And you were right by the way. That med student is a snack.” They laugh, and then there’s a moment of silence before he folds her in his arms, her face burying itself in the crook of his neck and his hand cupping the back of her head. “Take of yourself, okay?” His voice is so soft, so desperate, that it sounds like a plea.

“I will,” she says. “I always do.” Knowledgeable as always, he gives her and Cady space to say goodbye themselves. She rubs her hand on her shorts, nervousness gripping her body in a way she hasn’t felt in a while and she thoroughly dislikes.

“I’ll text you the second I get home,” Cady says. “And can I call you tomorrow?”

“Of course you can,” she says. “As long as you get some homework done tonight, kid.”

“I will,” she says. “I didn’t get the top grade in Norbury’s class for nothing.” Cady takes in a deep breath, her hand fidgeting around her backpack strap and her hair half-hiding her face. Janis reaches out and pushes it back and if she notices her shaking hand, she doesn’t say anything.

“Caddy-”

Janis actually wasn’t sure what she was going to say there, but it doesn’t matter, because Cady steps up and kisses her. It’s not perfect; it feels clumsy and awkward and they bump against each other, but it’s everything Janis needs. So much so that when they pull away, she doesn’t even attempt to hide the blush on her cheeks.

“Okay,” she whispers, grinning. “I’ll see you soon.” She steals another peck.

“See you later, Janis,” she whispers. They don’t stop holding hands for as long as they can and Janis is still looking at her until she’s out of view, walking back down the hall with Damian, maybe getting lost again. Down the hall, to the right, into the elevator and out the double doors. Bus stop down the street, next stop home. They ride together until Damian gets off and Cady stays on. All the while she stays here, IV in arm and her phone buzzing, talking to them until she falls asleep.

[ladylynse]

Part IV of Down the Rabbit Hole for the lovely @lumanae​, even though they’re currently drowning the Merlin fandom. *grins* Sometimes distractions are needed, right?

Wirt had heard a lot of stories about college, but somehow, he still wasn’t prepared for one of his roommate’s crazy friends to smuggle a hatchet into their dorm room.

(Previous) Also on FF and the AO3.

-|-

Wirt knew Danny wasn’t in the washroom, but he stepped inside and looked in every remotely feasible spot anyway, including the medicine cabinet that sat above the toilet which would be hard pressed to hold a small child.

He just…. He didn’t know what else to do. There wasn’t anywhere else to go. It’s not like Danny could have crawled out the tiny window, and he definitely hadn’t slipped past Wirt and out into the hallway. It was like he’d gotten sucked into the same black hole as most of Wirt’s socks, except obviously that didn’t exist, but—

Wirt pulled out his phone and started to type a message to Jazz, but how could he tell her he’d lost her brother? He certainly couldn’t explain it. He had no idea where Danny was. Or how he’d gotten there, wherever there was.

Wirt half-hoped Danny would text Jazz and Jazz would text him, but he never heard anything, and he couldn’t find the words to say anything about this to Jazz. He’d find Danny first. Then, if Danny hadn’t already told Jazz, he could pretend this had never happened.

He could get a proper explanation from Toby after he figured out what the heck had happened to Danny.

Wirt locked the room behind him and set off at a quick walk, looking around and weaving past anyone he saw without slowing. Danny couldn’t have gone that far. If he had somehow slipped past him—

Maybe this was a prank. Danny liked pranks. And Jazz had as good as warned him not to leave Danny by himself.

Except Danny was gone, disappearing as easily and completely as the ghosts he had apparently grown up surrounded by, and Wirt couldn’t see a sign of him anywhere.

He did, however, find Wendy.

Sitting cross-legged under a tree in the shade.

Apparently doing nothing except enjoying a cup of coffee.

Wirt slowed to a stop in front of her. “Hey,” he said, though he already had her attention since she was looking up at him with a smile. “Have you, um, seen Jazz’s brother anywhere?”

“Danny? Never met him.” Wendy rose to her feet in one smooth movement. Wirt rather envied her gracefulness; he certainly couldn’t do that, at least not in the shape he was in now. “Jazz has a psych exam today, though. You won’t see her till it’s over.”

“No, I…know that. She’s out now, anyway, but still busy.” Probably. Maybe Danny had texted Jazz to get her to text him, and she just hadn’t because she was catching up with some other friends of hers after the exam. She had to have other friends, right? They could have ambushed her right after she’d texted him and Danny. “What about Toby? Have you seen him?”

“Should I have?”

Wirt bit his lip. “I just saw him and Claire.”

“Claire’s visiting?”

So Wendy didn’t know either. Not that that meant much. Claire’s visit might’ve been unexpected. Or maybe Toby had told both of them and they’d been too busy to listen? He could believe that of himself more than so Wendy, who had a surprisingly good memory. At least compared to him, who was hard pressed to remember what he’d had for lunch the day before. Or what day of the week it was. Or what he’d been doing five seconds before, when things got really crazy.

Wirt just nodded. “Yeah. She came to help with costumes for Toby’s play. Do you know when it is?”

Wendy raised her eyebrows. “Since when was Toby in a play?”

“He’s in drama….” Wirt didn’t add isn’t he? but he was pretty sure Wendy knew it was there.

“Uh huh.” Wendy sounded like she didn’t believe it, but what other explanation was there? If it was cosplay, Wirt definitely wasn’t familiar with the source material, and he couldn’t think of what else it could be. No one went around in a getup like that just for the heck of it. And it’s not like Toby would think he needed to lie about making a cosplay for something. He already knew Wirt thought he was weird and didn’t judge him for it. He thought that was funny.

For that matter, so did Wendy and Jazz.

It was one of the reasons Wirt was so convinced they were involved in some giant conspiracy to troll him. Because they’d kill themselves laughing over it. They’d find it hilarious, and they knew he’d be laughing in the end, too. Assuming he got to the end of whatever this was.

And assuming he could find Danny.

Seriously, how he could have lost Danny?

Maybe he was in on all of this, too. Maybe—

“Earth to Wirt,” Wendy said, waving a hand in front of his face. “Did you hear me?”

“Um…no? Sorry.”

“I wanted to know if Toby’s talked to you yet.”

“About what?” It couldn’t be the play if Wendy hadn’t heard of it.

Wendy rolled her eyes. “Please tell me you’re just playing being clueless or you will die if we reach an apocalyptic situation.”

“Uh…pretend I was living under a rock and fill me in?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Wendy muttered. Louder, “Something’s up. You know that, right?”

Was she finally admitting that they were playing a massive prank on him? Good. It had taken long enough. Wirt nodded, and Wendy relaxed. “Great. Then you’ll understand why I’m absolutely certain that Toby’s not actually in drama?”

Or not.

“Uh….”

“Seriously, this isn’t a game. College might not kill you, but there’s stuff out there that will if you’re not careful.”

The hatchet in his dorm room could technically kill him, but Wirt was pretty sure Wendy would just dismiss that if he brought it up. Or nag him about his nonexistent self-defence skills, since he hadn’t signed up for a class despite her not-so-subtle suggestions.

Wirt glanced around, but no one was close enough to overhear their conversation. That was probably Wendy’s plan. He met her eyes again, seeing no trace of a smile behind them. “You’re my friend,” she said, “and I don’t want to lose you.”

She might lose him as a friend if she kept on like this. He could only be expected to put up with so much, right? If she really believed this, maybe she needed to talk to someone. Someone who could actually help her. Which wouldn’t be him. He had zero training in that area. He’d think Jazz would be ideal if she weren’t encouraging this. Whatever this was.

“Okay, look,” Wirt said, trying to get a handle on this situation again, “if you want to be serious for a moment, why don’t you just tell me why you’re so wrapped up in all of this? Why you think I’m wrapped up in all of this?”

Anger and hurt flashed across Wendy’s face before she schooled her expression again, and Wirt knew she felt that was uncalled for. “Because I’m not stupid,” she said, her tone carefully even, “and because this isn’t my first rodeo. And because whatever you want to pretend, that Unknown of yours isn’t just a story. You wouldn’t care about all of this so much if it were, and I don’t need Jazz to tell me that.”

“You’re back on that again?”

Wendy frowned. “Fine. Keep pretending. But you can’t ignore the truth forever, Wirt. You have to know that. And even if you think it’s just to humour me, it’d be nice if you played along and prepared yourself for the day you can’t.” She pulled a small notepad out of her pocket and held it out. “Dipper transcribed some relevant spells. At least take a look at them before you throw it out.”

Wirt knew better than to ask if she was kidding. He pocketed the notepad without looking at it, and Wendy turned away without saying goodbye. He felt like a fool, but what was he supposed to do with that? If she was delusional, telling her the Unknown was real wasn’t going to help matters.

And if she wasn’t delusional….

He didn’t want to think about what it would mean if she wasn’t delusional.

He didn’t want to think that there might be more out there than what he’d faced in the Unknown, that that experience hadn’t been a fluke, that finding out Jazz had grown up hunting ghosts wasn’t going to be the strangest thing he discovered about his friends.

He didn’t want to lose the control he’d have if it turned out the Unknown was only a tiny piece in everything that was unknown.

And now he felt horrible for what he’d done to Wendy.

Sighing, Wirt pulled out his phone and dialled Toby’s number. If he could at least find out more about this play while he looked for Danny, it would prove that the world wasn’t going crazy.

XXXXXX

Toby didn’t answer.

Wirt actually walked into the drama building, poking his head into any room that didn’t have an ongoing class, and found nothing. He even tried looking around education, in case the rehearsals were in that building instead, and he couldn’t find so much as a poster advertising a play—or at least not one that would require fanciful armour.

Danny, of course, never turned up anywhere.

Wirt circled back and checked the food court, thinking Danny had probably found it and bought himself a snack, but no matter how he scanned the shifting crowd of people, he couldn’t convince himself that Danny was there.

Why hadn’t Jazz given him Danny’s number? That would have made finding him so much easier. He should have asked for it, but it hadn’t occurred to him that they’d get separated when he’d been asked to spend time with Danny.

Maybe this was just one of Danny’s practical jokes. Jazz had said he was a joker. Wirt couldn’t really think of any other way to explain his vanishing act.

Although, considering where he had disappeared from, Wirt wasn’t sure even being some kind of magician-in-training would explain Danny’s disappearance. It’s not like he happened to be in the one dorm room that had a secret passage hidden somewhere in the bathroom. There was no trick to it. And he couldn’t imagine how Danny had gotten past him, even though he must have.

Wirt couldn’t remember which building Jazz’s psych class was in, so he couldn’t see if Danny had gone to meet her there. Not that that would help him much, since Danny and Jazz would probably be long gone if they had met up, but he was getting desperate, and Jazz hadn’t texted him to ask why he’d ditched Danny—or whatever story Danny might’ve told her about what happened. He did check his dorm room one more time—in the vain hope that Danny would be hiding in there, maybe sitting on his bed with a big grin on his face, waiting for Wirt to come back and realize Danny had never left—and then went to Jazz’s. He rang the buzzer.

“Yes?”

Wendy. “Um, it’s me.”

“Danny’s not here, Wirt. Neither is Jazz. Do you still want to come up?”

“Uh, no, thanks.” He wasn’t ready to face her yet. He figured he’d read whatever Dipper counted as spells before talking to her again. Granted, knowing Wendy, she’d just do a phenomenal job of pretending the conversation had never happened, and he’d feel like even more of a fool.

“Good luck with the search, then.”

Now he really felt like an idiot. Wirt headed back to campus, not even sure where he should look next.

He walked through the food court again, standing on his tiptoes in the hopes of spying Danny among the shifting crowd of students, and eventually gave up. He checked his watch again, his stomach churning as he realized he’d been running around for over an hour. He should just phone Jazz and tell her to phone Danny and find out where he was. He could swing by and pick him up and then meet her. And then be done with this.

Of course, that would mean admitting he’d managed to lose her brother in the first place.

Hopefully, she’d just chalk this up to Danny’s love of practical jokes.

After more dithering, Wirt finally made the call. Jazz picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Jazz, um, I’m calling instead of texting because this is kinda an emergency? I might’ve, uh, lost your brother, and I don’t—”

She let out a sigh. “Don’t worry about it, Wirt. I’ll text him my location and he’ll find me. He has a bad habit of disappearing sometimes. And if he pulled this on you…. We should really talk. Meet me at the library.”

She hung up without waiting for an answer, not clarifying which library, but that was fine, because Wirt knew exactly which one she meant. And he didn’t plan to blow her off after what he’d done. Should he be flattered her brother felt it appropriate to pull a disappearing act on him? Did he only do it with family friends? She’d sounded exasperated enough that it really couldn’t be uncommon, but….

Jazz was at her favourite table in the library when Wirt arrived, the one off in one corner and half-hidden behind the shelves to the point that was hard to find if you didn’t know it was there. He slid into the chair opposite her, and she frowned at him as her eyes flicked over him. “Do you remember everything that happened? Can you tell me?”

That was…an odd first question. But this was Jazz, and she asked weird questions. And if Wirt tried to figure out why, he’d somehow wind up in a deeper hole than whichever one he was going to dig for himself anyway, so he decided to just go with it. “Yeah? We were in my dorm room. Surprised Toby and Claire— Did you know that she was in town? Or that he’s in a play?”

“My question first, please.”

Wirt blinked. “Um, right. Well, we surprised them, I guess. Toby must’ve cut class because Claire was in town to help him with costuming, and then they went to show everyone else in the group. And then Danny, uh, said he had to use the bathroom, except he didn’t come back out, and when I finally checked it, it was empty.”

Jazz rolled her eyes. “Of course it was,” she muttered. “Because that’s not at all suspicious.”

“Um.” She thought it was suspicious, too? What did that mean? “I, uh, never saw him leave, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t sneak by me. I mean. He must’ve. Because he wasn’t in there. And it’s not like he could go anywhere else from the bathroom.”

Jazz just nodded. “Well, I didn’t know Claire was in town, or that Toby was claiming to be in a play, but I suppose I should’ve guessed it earlier.”

“That he’s secretly a drama nut and didn’t want any of us to know?”

“No. That he might be the one I need to worry about more than you.”

Wirt raised his eyebrows. He knew Jazz was a worrywart, but that was ridiculous. “Are you kidding? He’s at least passing Wendy’s weird apocalypse classes with flying colours.”

“Which is what should’ve been my first clue.”

“Clue to what?”

“That he’s involved in something.” The answer came from behind Wirt, and he jumped. He caught a fleeting look of Jazz’s thoroughly unsurprised face as he twisted to look at Danny. How long had he been standing there? “Jazz, uh, we should talk. Not here.”

“It might have to be here, Danny. Wirt’s Toby’s roommate.”

“Uh….” Chances were Danny was right and he didn’t actually need to be here for whatever the impending conversation was going to be. Chances were—

“Yeah, but does he even believe in ghosts?”

—it would just make him feel like the only sane person in the entire world. Which he knew was an exaggeration. It just felt like an appropriate exaggeration.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Wirt burst out. Seriously, was Danny as crazy as Jazz? Okay, he probably was, but still. This obsession with ghosts was weird, even considering their parents studied it. And it’s not like Toby was involved with drugs or something bad. It was just a drama club or something like that. Wirt was planning on going to see the play, whenever it was, once he got the date and time and place out of Toby. To support his roommate.

He was really thinking he shouldn’t ask Jazz to join him. Maybe not even Wendy.

“Shh. Library, remember?” Jazz said as Danny sat down next to Wirt.

“I hate this,” Wirt muttered. He didn’t mean it, but was it too much to ask to have a couple of normal friends? He had a few acquaintances from various classes, but no one he hung out with beyond Toby and Wendy and now Jazz.

…Greg was right. He really needed to get out more. He got stuck in his own little world too often to make friends easily, and he didn’t want to think what it said about him if the only people you were friends with tended to be remotely like-minded. Becoming friends with Toby had been inevitable, and it was through his association with Toby that he’d wound up friends with Wendy and Jazz—almost without realizing it.

Except that Wendy really hadn’t given him a choice in the matter.

And he was pretty sure he still counted it as friendship now even if their first few interactions had seemed more like he’d been coerced into it.

“That’s a no, isn’t it?” Danny asked, looking between Wirt and Jazz. He rolled his eyes and turned back to his sister. “Why do you, of all people, think this is a good idea? You were pretty much skeptic of the year when we were growing up until I, uh, until Phantom started showing up regularly.”

Jazz just crossed her arms and stared at her brother.

Wirt didn’t know what that meant, but obviously Danny did. “C’mon, Jazz. He’s not overshadowed. I checked. I don’t think he’s…involved.”

Involved? In what? And what did Danny mean by overshadowed? How the heck did he check for that, whatever it was? When did he check for that?

“And Toby?”

Jazz should not be treating this like a normal conversation. It was not a normal conversation.

Danny shook his head. “Not a ghost thing. The hammer, the armour, whatever it is. That’s…something else.”

“I’ll have to check with Wendy and see if she knows anything about it,” Jazz murmured. Wirt decided against telling her that Wendy also said she hadn’t known anything about a play. Mostly because he didn’t want her to phone and invite Wendy to this conversation when it would mean explaining everything to Jazz about how he’d acted and she’d psychoanalyze him or something. As if this weren’t bad enough.

“But the girl—Claire, I guess—has a staff. Not like Freakshow’s, so don’t panic, okay?”

Wirt didn’t want to ask. Well, he did, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t like the answer, so he thought it best to keep his mouth shut. Why would Danny panic about the prop Claire had been holding for Toby’s play? It was just a prop. And he didn’t even know them.

“I caught her using it. It makes portals, Jazz. Into or through the Ghost Zone. I didn’t follow them because I wasn’t sure I’d make it back and I still can’t do that, but….” Danny shrugged. “I could check with Frostbite and Clockwork. Frostbite might have heard of it. Clockwork would know, but he might not tell me.”

“Check with Dora, too, if Frostbite doesn’t know anything.”

Fine, now Wirt was tempted to ask. “What you mean by portals?” Jazz had told him about the Ghost Zone, but a staff that was capable of making portals to the afterlife or whatever didn’t make sense.

Of course, neither did the fact that an entire town had wound up there.

Wirt really wished that had been a joke newspaper, but—

“Doorways,” Danny said flatly. “Holes in the fabric of reality. Exactly what you’re picturing.”

He shouldn’t have asked.

“Um, why do you think the staff does that, exactly?”

Danny stared at him. “What part of ‘I caught her using it’ did you not understand? I saw it with my own eyes. She’s either skipping into the Ghost Zone whenever she wants—risking Walker’s wrath and whoever else’s—or she’s taking a shortcut through it somehow, like a condensed version of the Infi-Map that she can actually control.”

Okay, he was going to pretend this conversation wasn’t completely insane. “How do you know it’s connected to the Ghost Zone?”

He expected one of them to say something along the lines of ‘what other dimensions do you know?’ or something that would make it very clear that they figured the Ghost Zone was it. Instead, Danny said, “I just know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I can feel it, okay?”

He could—? “That’s even less of an answer!”

“No, it’s not, and keep your voice down. I am not about to be kicked out of my favourite library.” Wirt groaned but held his tongue as Jazz asked, “You’re sure it’s the staff and not something else?”

Danny nodded as if that were the most normal question in the world. “I don’t know how she got her hands on it, but yeah. If I can get some of Mom and Dad’s tech to Tuck, he might even be able to make something that’ll pick up on where she’s been using it. We could figure this out that way.”

Right. So now Danny and Jazz were completely convinced that Toby’s friend Claire was some dimension hopper. Like it was normal for people to jump through dimensions.

This definitely explained why all his friends kept bringing up the Unknown. They really didn’t think it was just a story. But he’d sound like an idiot if he changed his story now, right? He could at least wait until they brought it up again. He didn’t have to volunteer this information right away. Especially not when Jazz’s brother was around—because even if he would clearly believe it, he didn’t need to know everything.

“How did you get past me in the dorm?” Wirt asked.

For once, Danny looked uncomfortable. He rubbed the back of his neck and slouched. “I just sneaked out when you weren’t looking,” he mumbled.

“I was still standing in the hallway when you went into the bathroom,” Wirt said, “and then I went into the room and closed the door and you weren’t….”

“I’m…good at illusions?”

It wasn’t even a good lie.

“I ducked around you when you weren’t looking. I used to do it to Jazz all the time before she left for college. It’s not a big deal.”

Wirt expected Jazz to chime in with support, but she didn’t.

He swallowed and looked at her. “The truth’s gonna sound like a story, isn’t it?”

“A story for another time,” she said by way of agreement.

He would’ve preferred silence. What the heck was really going on here? What was Toby involved in? What was Danny not saying? If the Ghost Zone and the Unknown were somehow connected, and he definitely didn’t know if they were, and if Claire and Toby could access it, why would they need armour? The Unknown might’ve had one room schoolhouses and paddle steamers and stuff, but it wasn’t so far off their own time that anyone required medieval armour.

Not that Wirt actually knew if it was supposed to be medieval armour.

Not that he was completely abandoning the idea that Toby was really in a play, either. Because he certainly could be. That would make so much more sense than all of this. He couldn’t believe he was going along with this. He shouldn’t be. And yet even Wendy had said—

Something’s up. You know that, right? This isn’t a game.

You can’t ignore the truth forever.

“I don’t know if Wendy knows anything about Toby and Claire,” Wirt said slowly, “but she definitely knows something.”

This time, Jazz read something in Danny’s expression that Wirt missed and shook her head. “She’s not overshadowed. I’m confident in that much or I would’ve had you check her out, too.”

Wait.

Wirt pointed at Danny. “Is that why you wanted me to babysit him?”

“You weren’t babysitting,” Jazz said at the same time Danny exclaimed, “I don’t need a babysitter!”

“So you’re not denying that the entire reason you wanted me to hang out with him all day was so he could check me out for whatever this overshadowing thing is?”

“Wirt—”

“What did you even do?”

“Library,” Jazz hissed, and Wirt rolled his eyes.

“Just tell me the truth! Then I’ll be quiet.”

“You want the truth?” Danny asked. “When you aren’t even telling them the truth?”

“Seriously? Is there anyone you haven’t told about that stupid assignment?”

Jazz narrowed her eyes. “Yet you’re the one who keeps mentioning it, Wirt. Not me.”

Right. He’d walked into that, hadn’t he? Fine. “You want to pretend it’s not just an assignment? Then let’s pretend it’s not just assignment. Let’s pretend it’s real. I went to the Unknown with my brother. It’s another dimension. I faced demons and made friends and nearly died trying to get home. Your turn.”

Jazz’s expression didn’t change. Danny looked around, maybe to see if anyone was looking their way after his earlier outburst. Jazz’s favourite little nook was fairly secluded, but there were tables nearby, equally as hidden, and the seclusion was more artificial than anything else. Still, apparently they hadn’t disturbed anyone, since Danny was grinning when he faced Wirt again. “I’m the tragic victim of a lab accident,” he said. “Safety wasn’t exactly our parents’ highest priority, but like I said, it was an accident.”

Wirt raised his eyebrows. “So?”

“So that’s how I got past you earlier. And that’s how come I know you’re not overshadowed. And that Claire’s staff has ties to the Ghost Zone.”

Wirt glanced at Jazz, but her face betrayed nothing. Danny was a lot easier to read. He was having fun with this. There was a definite note of sarcasm in his tone. But he also looked perfectly sincere, even though Wirt had no idea how a lab accident was supposed to explain all that. “So you, what, burned yourself on a Bunsen burner? Accidentally smashed a couple of test tubes of chemicals and stepped on the glass? And that made you the annoying prankster you clearly are?” He could think of several more choice words to call Jazz’s brother, but it was safer to stick with Jazz’s words. If Toby really was wrapped up in something, Wirt didn’t intend to burn all his bridges before he could help his friend.

Jazz snorted.

Danny’s grin widened. “Not exactly,” he said.

And then he disappeared.

He just…disappeared.

Wirt was staring at him, and then he was just gone. He didn’t move. There was no distraction to catch Wirt’s attention while he ducked under the table or hid somewhere in the stacks. He was just there. And then he wasn’t. And this was a bloody library; it didn’t have mirrors or whatever else would’ve been needed to make an illusion. And Danny had pulled out the chair to sit down, so it wasn’t some kind of high-tech hologram, and—

“I’ll call Wendy,” Jazz said, “and warn her that we’re going to reconvene at our place. You can think of exactly what you’re going to say as we walk over.”

-|-

(see more fics | next)

[district7]

A Mockingjay Joniss AU - pt. 1: i’ve made up my mind (i’m never going back)

11.11.19 

A Mockingjay Joniss AU - pt. 1: i’ve made up my mind (i’m never going back) 

A Mockingjay AU WIP where Katniss reevaluates whether her best future is a path she had never considered. After Johanna fails the Block, it occurs to Katniss that her future is not pre-destined, that she’s done enough, and that she doesn’t owe any one, or any cause, a suicide mission. 

A/N: There are no promises of quality assurance. Also, I make no promises about updates. (If I add that sort of pressure on myself about it, I’ll end up loathe to work on it.) This will likely hold a lot of things in common with other Mockingjay Joniss AUs, namely a return to District 7 instead of District 12, and an emphasis on the pair helping each other recover set against a backdrop of quasi-homesteading. I make zero assertions POV and tense will stay consistent across updates. This is an adventure in pantsting with a general goal in mind, rather than something I’m pre-plotting.

Feel free to send me constructive witticisms, requests, asks, comments, trolling, whatever.

_______________________

District 13 - Medical

Johanna’s limbs twitched, body emitting a mix of grunts and whimpers. Katniss guessed she was fighting in her sleep.

Or maybe running. The morphling line in her IV was a rifle with vicious recoil. Awake, it tricked you into believing pain was farther away and anxiety quieter than they actually were. Helpful. Maybe. Asleep, it made it harder to wake from the nightmares.

“Jo...” 

Katniss nudged her shoulder with a knuckle, leaning forward out of her visitor’s chair only far enough to breach the edge of Johanna’s medical bed. Best to keep out of the way of swinging arms, if Johanna woke up fighting. “Johanna, wake up.”

In response, Johanna’s grunts and twitches ratcheted in intensity. 

Katniss guessed at what she was dreaming. Maybe fighting mutts while they tried to pull her under water. What kind of mutts might the Capitol design for that? Giant fish with fiery eyes, men’s arms, and children’s hands?  Eels with multiple tails which encapsulate you while the monsters drag you deeper into the pressing blackness, down until you finally have no choice but to gasp in water and drown yourself?

The Capitol and its mutts. 

Katniss tried again to wake Johanna, but she only rolled in her hospital bed, tangling herself and her IV line in her bleached, too-white sheets while letting out a sleep-garbled plea.

Maybe not Capitol mutts, Katniss thought. This happened in The Block, the Rebellion’s own customizable mini-Arena. So, Rebellion mutts. Coin and her well-oiled machine could squeeze and fracture a person every bit as well as Snow and the Games could a Tribute. Less horrific and premeditated, definitely. Better justified, absolutely. Without the evil intent, hopefully.  But they could still do it, all the same.

What was it Peeta had said in that interview? 

Once you’re in the arena, the rest of the world becomes very distant. All the people and things you loved or cared about almost cease to exist. As bad as it makes you feel, you’re going to have to do some killing, because in the arena, you only get one wish. And it’s very costly. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people? It costs everything you are. So you hold on to your wish.

His wish had been for Katniss to live. Katniss’ had been for him to. And here they were. Everyone, except for Cinna, who she’d gone into the Quarter Quell caring about was somehow, miraculously, still alive. Prim. Her mother. Gale. Haymitch. Effie. Peeta might still be mentally disordered, but at least with her staying away, he was progressing well enough to decorate a wedding cake. 

A wedding cake. That image made Katniss grunt. Finnick and Annie.

It wasn’t just those she cared about before the Quarter Quell who were still alive, it was also those she newly cared about. Those two. Beetee.

Johanna.

Johanna, for whom Katniss had experienced the impulse to volunteer as roommate. The one she’d sidled up to as a training partner. The one whose nightmares and traumas she’d been ready-fit acquaintances with. And also the one whose crass, doesn’t-give-a-fuck facade had gone from infuriating Katniss, when they’d first met, to actually making her laugh.

She sat on the edge of the bed and made one last, forceful attempt to stir Johanna, managing to cajole her onto her back and into wakefulness enough that she blinked with hazy recognition.

“Shit. Can’t a girl sleep without being molested?” Johanna was mumbling, voice rough.

“You were having a nightmare.”

“I can see your face, so clearly I must still be having it.”

“Funny.”

Johanna’s lids drifted shut.

“Have to be good for at least something, brainless, or else these wonderful District Thirteen people might decide it’s not worth the cost-benefit to feed me.”

“You’re good at lot of things,” Katniss joked. “Or at least that’s what you’re always going on to everyone about.”

Still with eyes closed, Johanna’s face pulled a smirk. “And wouldn’t you be lucky to experience every last one of those things, Everdeen.”

Katniss snorted and rolled her eyes. “You’re incredible.”

“Most wait ‘till after to tell me that.”

“You know what I meant,” Katniss corrected, refusing to fall prey to the attempt at embarrassing her. She started untangling the sheet from around the IV as something else to focus on.

Johanna peeked open one eye to watch, then wiggled the rest of her arm free from the bedding as soon as Katniss was done, purposefully floundering it through the air until she thwacked her palm against Katniss’ cheek. She pushed her face away with token force, punctuated by a complaining groan.

“Go a-way. Your sickening goodness makes my ass itch. How’s a mentally disordered person supposed to sleep?"

Katniss managed to huff like she was offended, but when Johanna’s hand didn’t move away from her face, she pulled it down to her lap and held onto it, frowning.

“They’re re-classifying you as that again?”

Johanna’s hand twitched in Katniss’.

“What? No. It’s nothing.”

“Johanna...”

“I’m fine, leave it.”  She yanked her hand free. “Aren’t you supposed to be prepping for an assassination mission right now anyway? Why are you here?”

Katniss frowned again at the abruptly acerbic tone, but she’d built up some resistance to it over time, and was tired herself, so she chose not walk into the trap. She was about to lay her own, anyway, after a fashion.

“You mean the suicide mission?” Her voice was a whisper, and she said it only after looking away from Johanna and picking her cuticles for a few long moments.

“What?” Johanna shimmied up into a sitting position, eyes wide and body instantly tense. “What are you talking about?”

Boggs’ words from a group meeting with Coin weeks before had been revolving through Katniss’ mind for the previous twenty-four hours.

Even if we’re careful, we can’t guarantee her safety. She’ll be a target for every-

He hadn’t gotten to finish, because Katniss herself had interrupted him. But she could definitely fill in the blank herself.

“Think about, Johanna. Because since the Block, I’ve certainly been thinking about it. At best, it’s a mission doomed to fail. At worst, it’s a death sentence. I think I’ve slept less than you in the last forty-eight hours.”

“You promised.” Johanna and pulled her arms tightly around her shoulders to make herself smaller. Triggered into a minor episode, she shook her head non-stop, as if doing so could change the reality of what Katniss had said. “You promised you’d kill him for me. I need him to be dead!”

Katniss sighed loudly and stared up at ceiling, fighting her own frustration as well as Johanna’s. Fighting to keep her voice calm.

“I know. I know I did, Johanna. And he will.“ She put a hand on Johanna’s knee to calm her, only to have Johanna swipe it away. But she went on. “We’ve breached the Capitol. We have forces there. Everyone wants Snow’s head. The Rebellion has come too far to stop, and Coin is going to make sure he ends up dead one way or another. But think about it. I’m not a trained assassin, I’m barely a solider. I don’t have an anonymous face. What chance do I really have? I’m a girl with a rifle and a bow. In the middle of a city decked out with Gamemakers’ traps, thousands of peacekeeper who know my face, and tens of thousands of Capitol citizens ready to raise an alert.” She gave Johanna a grim smile. “Those odds are way higher against than we faced in all of our games combined. And my target? One man on the far side of a war zone, almost certainly sealed away in a well-guarded bomb shelter.”

Katniss gave a weak shrug. “Boggs is right. He didn’t call it a suicide mission out loud, but he knows it is. I’ve been seeing it in his eyes, the hoping that I'd see it for myself.”

“Fuck,” Johanna hissed. “I’m so fucking tired of all this SHIT!”

The sudden screaming brought in the medical staff. Johanna shouted wild curses at them, alarming them all the more, but Katniss eventually talked them into leaving. It took long minutes, but Johanna’s shaking slowly evolved to despondent rocking. And then her chin sank to her chest, followed a moment later by a sniff, and then her dragging an arm across her face to wipe at it. Finally, she gripped her skull and let herself fall back flat onto the bed.

“Jo, I don’t know what kind of a life you want to have when this is over, but I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going back. I’ve done enough. We’ve both done enough. We don’t owe anyone. It’s not selfish: We’ve reached the point where we’re no longer necessary. Coin and the other District Leaders can duke it out; it doesn’t need to be Mockingay business. The only thing I want is to live a quiet life where I know Prim is safe and I can shrink out from under the spotlight. That’s what started this for me. That’s the promise I need to keep. The one I made to her on Reaping Day. That I’d live and come back to her.” She added, “You can’t tell me that at least part of you isn’t interested.”

There was more sniffling, and more face wiping. And a few ragged breaths before there was an exhausted response.

“Do you really believe that’s possible?”

“I think Coin will give it to us. She needs popular Victors around after the Capitol falls like a bear needs bees stinging at its nose when it wants honey. At this stage, my quiet exit might be as tempting for her as it is for me. And face it, from her perspective- If I’m right- if I do go, at best my death makes a good propo, except that it comes at the cost of the Capitol claiming credit for killing me. But if I actually succeeded, she risks me having an even bigger voice in Panem’s future. Considering how we’ve butted heads already, that’s not something she’s likely to want. And that puts not just me, but everyone I care about right back in danger.” Katniss had risked sneaking that train of thought into a whispered conversation with Boggs over that morning’s breakfast.

The look he’d given her had been answer enough.

“For once, I’d like the chance to choose my own fate instead of being manipulated into one.”

Johanna continued to stare up at the ceiling.

“You’re serious about this.”

“I have the bone-chilling feeling I need to be.”

“And so what,” Johanna struggled for the energy to push herself up on her elbows, glaring, “this is you asking my blessing to beg Coin to send you, your family, and lover boy back to Twelve so you can have a guilt-free happily ever after?”

Katniss gave herself time to cycle through a slow breath. Being about to say it aloud made it feel more like killing someone than letting them go. But Johanna was impatient.

“I’m sick of this visit, Katniss. Just say whatever it is and get it over with.”

“Fine.” Katniss sucked in a breath. “Peeta’s a long way from being able to go anywhere without a counselor. Maybe things could be different. In the future, after time passes and he’s better and I don’t feel constantly conflicted over what I should be feeling and how much of that is me over what people keep telling me I feel. And-”

“There goes your self-righteous we-really-love-each-other act, princess.”

“Shut up, Johanna! It’s complicated and you know it. And like I said, maybe things could be different. None of us knows that, though. But what I do know is that neither he or I need that sort of pressure right now, and right now is when I need to make a decision for the people who are still within my reach.”

Johanna relented, begrudgingly.

“If you go back to Twelve, you realize he’ll just end up back there at some point. If you go home, he follows. He won’t be able to help it.”

Katniss hesitated, but then nodded sadly. “I know.”

“Is that what you want?”

Katniss didn’t respond. Instead, after some quiet, she reached over to the nightstand for Johanna’s pine bundle, laying it on the bed. Her fingers lingered on it briefly before withdrawing.

“This was on the floor when I came in. Decided you didn’t like it after all?”

“Probably fell out while I was sleeping.” Johanna picked it up and took a sniff, then kept it at her nose to breathe the scent.

“Had you wanted to go back to Seven when this was all done?”

“I...” Johanna’s shoulders slowly sagged. “I don’t know,” she said simply, expression carefully neutral. “I don’t have anything there. Haven’t for a long time. And I haven’t even been able to picture a world that’s that normal enough to even try thinking about it.”

“Well, do. At this point, the three us of would rather go to Seven with you than back to Twelve.” Johanna narrowed her eyes, surprised. Perhaps suspicious. It didn’t phase Katniss. “Haymitch and Finnick have both agreed to help me make the argument to Coin for us.” And when Johanna only continued to study Katniss, without voicing an objection, Katniss hazarded some levity, "And anyway, you’re practically required to say yes: Prim insists she wants to adopt you into the family.”

“I’m not a fucking pet,” Johanna responded, eventually, but without real heat.

“Whatever you say, lumber-woman.” Katniss chuckled at the dirty face Johanna made at that, before standing to leave. “I think we both know Prim's pretty good at getting what she wants.”

“It should be illegal to be that fucking adorable.”

“Yeah,” Katniss agreed, to be polite. “Okay, well, I’m going to go talk to Haymitch. You aren’t laying a string of profanity down on me, so I’m going to run with it.”

Johanna pulled her knees to her chest, making herself small again.

“What is it?”

Johanna shook her head.

“Come on, Johanna.”

“I... don’t want to get dragged there and then dumped, if you guys don’t like it.” A tear raced down her cheek, then another, which Johanna cursed even as she wiped them away. “I... Fuck, I can’t believe I’m saying this. If you tell anyone, especially that stupid head doctor, that I'm saying this, I’ll rip your spine out.”  The tears were still coming. “But I don’t think I can handle having people and then losing them again.”

Again. The weight of that word settled on Katniss’ shoulders.

She struggled with how to respond, in the end climbing onto the bed and letting Johanna curl into her side.

[bulletproofscales]

Is there a chance we could get a really gassy Jungkookie w any member? Like, Jungkook was so stuffed and was drinking soda and couldn’t stop burping? Love your blog❤️❤️

--SOO,, u mentioned anymember so i took the liberty of making this a hOPEKOOK FIC!! Ive really wanted to write somethign about them and experiment with their amazing dynamic. It was so HARD!! i tried to balance them exploring their relationship and feelings for eachothr (since its such an uncommon ship) whilst trying to stay on track with your reuqest... I really hope you enjoy it!!-- 

---

By how fun the director had made the commercial sound, this Coca Cola promotion was truly: a drag. Of course, no promotion could be entirely fun, Jungkook likes to keep it professional; so he never once complained, and tried to be as collaborative as everyone else was. Besides, it wasn't all bad, look at all the free soda they were giving them! Ok. Perhaps Jungkook was drowning his boredom in Coke. But, he didn't notice until he felt a strain of discomfort.

He tried to maintain a straight face as best as he could, they were still in the middle of the recording. In his mind trying to remember how he got into this state in the first place. It slowly came to him, the unconscious need to have a bottle in hand during the whole pre-recording, make-up, and rehearsal. Trying to keep count he stood in disbelief when he remembered his tenth Coca Cola. In fact, he could still perfectly remember the feeling. His stomach getting harder by the bottle, but i'm only being automatically motivated to more. He peeked down discreetly and there it was: his taun stomach pressing firmly against the white t-shirt they had dressed him in. Just the thought of how careless he had been about his surroundings, made the boy blush a deep shade of crimson. Luckily enough, all his hyungs were much more professional than him and were way too concentrated on what was going on in the recording to notice, this time...or, any of the... other times.

If he had to come clean, Jungkook had sometimes had the habit of, overdoing it; whatever it was. He never really understood the reason behind this actitudes; thought to himself he had the courage to acknowledge: he liked the way fullness felt. It felt safe, warm and fun. And as mysterious as its reasoning was, or the vagueness behind what it was that he liked, reall; the maknae still knew nobody had to find out about this. If it was so confusing to he himself, he couldn't imagine trying to explain it to someone else. However it was so consuming, so inviting; he couldn't bring himself to stop. He figured if done every once in a while in the privacy of his locked door, nothing bad would come from it. 

But this was certainly not the place. All this time he'd been spacing out the director was giving corrections for the next shot; which was by far the most fun out the bunch. For Jungkook's bloated stomach though, it was going to be only insufferable pain. Of course, he already knew what he had to do; even with his incautious behavior now, he had studied the scene before even coming into set. That made him dread this scene even more; he could barely walk without having his midsection send a wave of pain coursing through his entire body, let alone jumping excitedly into a pool. He put himself in his position, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared himself for the discomfort he was about to feel. 

"Everybody! Take five!" HIs eyes snapped open and look like they were about to fall of his skull. He took no time bothering in explaining anybody why he pathetically waddled or attempted to run to the toilet.

When he finally got there, he noticed it was a one person only bathroom, which in a way brought him some sense of comfort. Knowing nobody else would be there. He knocked almost excitedly on the door, just to check before locking himself in. Promptly sitting on toilet, JUngkook couldn't help the relaxed sigh that escaped his lips. He peaked down like he had done back in the recording, fearful of what he might find at the bottom; with anticipating undertones. Except this time, he could keep staring in awe. 

His stomach has ballooned enormously, to the point where the waistband of his swimming trunks were interfering with his hardened dome. With slightly shaking hands he reached for said wasteland, and began pushing it down slowly; mesmerized by the continuously skin being exposed. Flesh taunt with gas, pushing outwards like he had swollen a melon. Once they were all the way down to his crotch, Jungkook was still struck with his own body. The way the enormous amounts of liquids had been able to fade away almost every sign of muscle that was there not too long ago. Or the way his stomach now was big enough to cover some of the view of his lap. HIs large hands left their resting place on his muscular thighs and grazed above the hardened flesh tentatively. Slowly, they descend until placed on top of the bloated midsection. Without any force, Jungkook began moving his hands around the dome with care. Not pushing enough to press the gas ou, but he didn't want that; he wanted to stay like this for as long as he possibly could. His eyes still strained to the exposed skin he stayed there caressing himself for what felt like an eternity. Nothing mattered now, not the recording, not the five minute break. This moment was only for himself- There someone banging on the door. 

 When Jungkook had come into BigHit as a trainee he was well accustomed with the fact that he liked men as well as women; so seeing not only Hoseok, but all of his other members as handsome young men wasn't a surprised. However, nothing had prepared him for the dancer's caring and outgoing personality, that would become the one thing helping Jungkook out of his shell to the others. Back in the day, Hoseok was the only people he felt comfortable with. It didn't take long for a crush to appear. 

Throughout the years, Jungkook has had to suffer through cuddles and forehead kisses from the man he's been crushing on for years. It is hell. To know Hoseok is filled with love and needs to express it even without it being romantic really hurt. But he couldn't even be mad about it, it was Hoseok's way of being and it was endearing to say the least. Eventually he stopped asking him for touch and affection, Jungkook reckoned that if he did he was probably taking advantage of Hoseok's loving personality. Recently, he older had caught him off guard, asking him if anything was wrong; he really didn't know what to answer, so he didn't. Needless to say, things were conflictive between the two at the moment. 

"Jungkook, is everything alright? Can I come in?" You could feel his tone becoming more stern, but the care was always there. Guilty, the maknae thought about how he shut Hoseok out the other day. And how, as embarrassing as this was, he couldn't bring himself to do it again. So he inhaled deeply, feeling his stomach push out even more it even stung a little. Exhaled, and opened the door into the stall. Hoseok walked in, and stared at the younger intently. The compromising position made Jungkook's entire body warm up with shame. He immediately felt the need to explain himself. 

"I-It was an accident! I didn't notice how much I had drank until my stomach was all bloated, and I tried to keep it professional, but it had started to hurt so I came in here..." He wouldn't dare to look at the older man in the eyes, he knew if he did his voice would shake even more than it already was. The silence was suffocating, so he continued. "I was about to take care of it! Y-You don't even need to be here, it's-fine I got it." He explained quickly when he saw the dancer kneel before him.

"Let me help." He sounded so gentle yet so determined. All those times he had stuffed himself as to be taken care of, he had had always wished of having Hoseok be the one to pamper him, and soothe him. Regardless, he was going to protest, but the older beat him to it. "What where you going to do?"

"Um, well... I usually rub my stomach, to help me get the burps out... You really don't have to-?"

"Can I?" He interrupted. To which Jungkook, taken aback, nodded slowly. 

Hoseok's eyes were fixated on the large expanse of skin before him, his dainty fingers slowly reaching for the hardened dome.

"The break is over! We need you on set!" Somebody abnged n the door and yelled from the outside. 

"Just a minute!" Hoseok exclaimed happily as if nothing strange were happening inside the stall. When his eyes came back to Jungkook they had changed; they didn't have that caring and gentle aspect they had before, now he looked determined. 

Without any warning, he placed his hands firmly on Jungkook's stomach; the younger man gasped at the feeling. Hoseok's hands were smaller than hid, making him feel a lot bigger than he actually was. And without waiting another second he began kneading the skin with strength and speed. 

Without any warning, he placed his hands firmly on Jungkook's stomach; the younger man gasped at the feeling. Hoseok's hands were smaller than hid, making him feel a lot bigger than he actually was. And without waiting another second he began kneading the skin with strength and speed. The maknae's eyes widened at the sensation, the hands pushing in and out of his taunt flesh had him feeling all sorts of things. Although weird, he couldn't help but think of how intimate this situation was, freeing butterflies inside his stomach. Wait, no. It's a burp. 

Loud and gurgly, it resonated on the ceramic walls. Jungkook's face grew even redder. But when he looked at the dancer for his reaction, satisfied smile was not what he was expecting. The older moved his hands to the very bottom of his stomach, urging all of the has to come out. Even if dainty, Hoseok's hands were massaging the flesh like his life depended on it. Groping tightly, squishing between fingers urging the gas to come out. And it did, repeatedly so. Jungkook felt his body relax form the tension in his stomach leaving, however he could not bare with the embarrassment that the he felt; using his hands to cover his face and burping through them. 

"Do you feel any better?" He asked with care, to which he nodded, head still buried deep in his own hold. "Ok then, let's get out, they are waiting for us" The older man stood up and offered a helping hand for Jungkook to do the same. He took it and together they walked out of the stall and into the set.

Luckily the wait hadn't even been that long as they had feared, it took a little bit of the guilt but it didn't change the fact that this was horrible, this felt horrible. Jungkook had never felt more disgusting and appealing in his life, feeling the silent judgement form his crush out of all people. Of course, he wasn't showing it, yet it was only natural to judge someone under such bizarre circumstances. How was he supposed to talk to Hoseok after this? He might as well have confessed and be let down, at least that's a normal way to ruin a friendship. 

The recording went by smoothly, although he couldn't help but go into shut down more. He cooperated throughout but he did not want to speak to anybody; it was especially hard pretending to be enjoying yourself and having a blast, but somehow he managed. In moments like this, Jungkook truly felt completely unaware of his surroundings; he didn't know how much time had gone by, the people talking felt like faint background noises and all he could hear were his own thoughts resonating inside his head. Eventually, it was over and they could go home. 

The ride home went smoothly, the rest of the group chatting animatedly about the recording. He chose to pretend to be asleep; he knew that if any of his hyungs saw him even slightly upset, they wouldn't let it go. He walked to their dorm, stilll faking his tiredness but slowly becoming real, and walked into his room. He laid there, drowning in self pity.

Beer. That's what he needed. He quickly changed and headed for the door, some of the other members were there. He reassured them he was going out to get something to drink, he would be right back. As he gto outside, Jungkook considered actually going to a bar or rather buying the beer and drinking it in the comfort of his room. The latter sounded better.It was already dark so the streets were not nearly as packed, a beanie and a mask should do it. Living in such an exclusive part of Seoul, he had to actually walk for a couple of minutes to get to the first convience store. However, he needed the walk, think about everything by himself; his feelings for Hoseok, what had happened today, the odler's response, his own reaction. It all seemed like such a mess, and mostly like he has put himself on this position. He was the one who took advantage of Hoseok to the point where it damaged their relationship. He got out of the store almost as soon as he walked in, the only difference was that now he had two large packs of beer inside of a bag and was determinedly or almost excitedly walking back to their shared apartment.  He sprinted trying his best not to shake the dozens of cans he was carrying with him to his room. He went by so fast, that nobody really had the time to process nor worry about what the maknae might be up to; they were all really tired form the recording and they recon even Jungkook might appreciate the space alone. 

He sat in his desk, and turned on his computer, looking for the playlist he truly wanted to listen to at a time like this. Once he heard the soft tunes begin to play, he physically relaxed into his chair, closing his eyes and letting a long sigh escape through his parted lips. And without further ado, he began to drink. 

 It was so easy to get lost in what he was doing, the movement of the can form the desk to Jungkook's mouth almost automatic, the feeling of fullness engulfing him little by little. The warmness in his stomach growing alongside the dizziness in his head.The music playing making it seem like time had stopped for just this moment, but time did go on and soon all the other members were heading to sleep; further immersing him in this atmosphere he had created. He placed the hand that wasn't holding a beer on his slightly rounded out stomach, the gas already begging to expand his midsection, and rubbed there gently. Just to feel if it was actually real or not, he didn't know through how many cans he had gone through but it was hard to keep track of what sensations were real and which ones he was imagining for self indulgence. 

He imagined Hoseok was here with him, helping him drink, help him grow. He imagined sitting on his lap and difference of size between them, and growing heavy with the liquid he was chugging down. Hoseok's dainty hands making feel even bigger. Hoseok's lithe frame making JUngkook feel massive, his thick thighs over his slim ones. Hoseok's breath on his ear, encouraging him to go on, hot breathes against his body only making him thirstier and eager to continue. The determined look on Hoseok's dark eyes when he helped him today, the memory of his hands being all over his body. Hoseok. He needed Hoseok. 

He stood up too quickly from his chair, the world swirling slightly around him. he didn't have time to check how many cans were actually left as he clumsily waddled towards his phone; partially because of the alcohol, but also because of the sting in his stomach from the gas stored inside it. He grabbed his phone and quickly sprinted towards his chair and sat on it with force; the slight noise it made sent shivers down Jungkook's spìne. Uncoordinatedly he dialed Hoseok's number, without any real awareness of what he was doing. 

"Jungkook?" A very tired but mostly confused voice answered on the other side.

"Hobi I-" A loud burp interrupted him mid sentence, he now realized he hadn't really opened his mouth since he began drinking.Without any shame he continued. "I-I need you Hobi."Another gurgling noise left his throat after the needy confesion. "Need you hands, here with-with me." His voice was shaky with desperation.

"Jungkook, are you drunk?" His voice was stern. 

"Please come?" A deep sigh was the only thing he said after a long minute of silence.

"I'm going, stay where you are." Waiting for him to arrive Jungkook looked down at himself, with his stomach ballooned his shirt had risen up and he had undone his pants to make more room, he didn't remember doing so in the first place.

"You came!" He exclaimed drowsy. 

"Kookie, what is going on?" He didn't sound as stern as he sounded on the phone. "Getting drunk on a weekday? Alone in your room? Is everything ok?" He slowly approached Jungkook's chair, ignoring completely the compromising position the maknae was in; slightly disappointing the younger by doing so. 

Even if drunk, Jungkook knew that confessing his feelings on this scenario wasn't ideal, not for him nor Hoseok. But, on the other hand , he didn't want to keep lying, specially when the older man was right in front of him demanding to know what was wrong. He had to say something. 

"I just...I keep looking for this feeling of being full and, and I never told anybody. But now you know and, I don't know...I'm scared, I don't know why I do this, I wanted you here." It doesn't really answer all of the dancer's questions, but it wasn't a lie either. And more importantly, it seemed to work on Hoseok. His face softened at the younger boy as he walked and sat at the end of his lap. 

"You didn't finish all of your beers." He mentioned eyeing the bag beside them.

"Want one?" Jungkook offered with a playful smile. 

"Well I suppose one beer won't hurt." That's a lie, especially coming from Hoseok, but he didn't argue against it. He took the beer and began drinking it quickly. "So, you said you were 'looking for this feeling'. What do you mean?" Hoseok made talking, even in the most uncomfortable situations, like it was nothing. 

"This. The feeling of being full. I don't know what it is about it...It makes me feel, safe? In a way, it's more like I put myself in position where I need to be taken care of. And it feels... amazing." It was weird finally saying all that stuff out loud, yet somewhat cathartic. 

“But…” Hoseok began tentatively, “Has there ever been someone, to take care of you?” The maknae blushed, even though the question didn’t imply anything; or that's what he tried to convince himself of. 

“Well, it has been more of a treat yourself thing.”He laughed pitiful. Warmth re appearing on his face as he remembered how desperate where his urges of Hoseok's care. “But I can imagine.” He stated carelessly, the effects of the alcohol finally affecting his common sense. 

“Oh yeah? What do you imagine?” It was getting hard to read what the older man’s tone meant. But he could see him leaning closer from the end of his lap, eyes intently watching the maknae with a glint of something Jungkook couldn’t describe. It was difficult to pay attention as his eyes closed, drowsy and wasted; Hoseok’s insinuating questions only made his long time fantasy more vivid. Before he could control himself he spoke. 

“You, mostly.” The statement should have been terrifying but he couldn't find it in himself to care at this point, so he continued. “Your pretty little hands all over me, you would take such good care of me, hyung. I can’t stop thinking about it, since today I’ve been wanting it for so long I-” Once the truth was out, Jungkook filled in the silence with only more exposing honesty, though his rambling was cut short by a tentative hand on his muscular thigh. His eye shot open wide. Ant there he was, dainty hand settled comfortably over his thick leg, the older man leaning forward with an expecting look in his eyes. A serious expression made Jungkook shiver, he looked so, demanding. It felt like he was asking for an explanation, and the maknae was about to give it to him, but he beat him to it when he said. 

“You didn’t finish your beers.” He stated simply. An innocent look as he leaned down to grab one from the bag next to the chair. He slid himself forward on Jungkook’s lap, now sitting mid thigh where his hand had once been. The maknae’s eyes widened if possible even more, as Hoseok opened the can and eyed him expectant for a complaint whilst bringing the can to the younger’s lips. Jungkook took it in an obedient began to drank as the older held the can delicately to his lips. Although his adorable demeanor, the maknae still found an authority in Hoseok; but rather than having to fear it Jungkook felt like he was at the dancer’s care, yet still feeling the need to please him as well. His eyes were glued to his drinking lips, so he took the chance to look at the older properly. 

Hoseok had his eyes half lidded and soft exhales where leaving his parted heart shaped lips. With both hands on the can to make sure nothing spilled, he was leaning slightly towards the bloated stomach; which was beginning to make itself noticeable to both men. Giving it a light pressure, not enough to get any as out, but enough to make him squirm. 

The time their conversation ahd taken hadn’t been enough to sober him up, and the extra beer sliding easily down his throat wasn’t helping either. It was becoming hard to process the situation for Jungkook. Of course he knew this wasn’t just a friendly and platonic encounter, but neither had it been the one in the bathroom earlier that day. It was hard to imagine what Hoseok felt for him, let alone this whole stuffing scenario; all the maknae had was his reactions to guide himself on. He had let all his intentions out there, but Hoseok hadn’t mentioned a word; which wasn’t a surprise for the younger. Attentive of others feelings but neglective and fearful of his, yes, that sounded like Jung Hoseok alright. Lost in thought he hadn’t even noticed he finished the can already, it wasn’t until the can was slipped out of his reach that he snapped out of his transe. 

“Just two more.” There it was again. That authoritative tone on Hoseok’s voice. Not stern but strong, motivating, addictive. Jungkook felt within him the strong urge to comply to whatever it was he asked; so when the older man brought yet another beer to his lips, it was impossible to refuse. Even with the growing discomfort on hi middle section. 

Still in doubt of Hoseok’s intentions behind this entire situation, Jungkook raised his hands from the arm rests of his chair; tentatively hovering over the older’s waist. He didn’t want to cross a line and for this to end, but this whole scenario already felt like a line was being crossed. With his mouth full, he tied eyeing at Hoseok looking for some sort of permission; but the dancer’s eyes were glued to his lips. Intently watching the younger drink, as to make sure if he wanted to stop or not. It didn’t take much for Jungkook to decide on gently settling his hands at either side of Hoseok’s waist; gently urging him closer.  The older man slides across his lap, until his slim stomach was pressing firmly against Jungkook’s firm dome. Soon enough the second large can was finished as well, and the maknae was truly feeling the expanse of his midsection pushing against the shirt he was using. It was uncomfortable. But he knew that the more he drank, the more time Hoseok would have to spend taking care of him; so in the end it didn't take much of him to eagerly begin to drink the last can left. 

This one he wanted to get over with, needed the older’s hands on him somehow. He reckoned Hoseok knew that already, yet he pretended to be concentrated on the can on his lips instead of the bulging firmes growing on his stomach. He gulped aggressively as an attempt to finish it as fast as possible, horrible idea. HAfter slightly choking on beed, he was actually grateful Hoseok’s entire attention was settled on him drinking.  

“You are doing great.” He reassured taking the can away from his mouth, his voice sounded gentle and less authoritative than when he first commanded him to drink. “You only have half a can left, you can do that right?” A teasing and challenging mansour taking over the last question, as if darin Jungkook playfully. This made it clear that Hoseok indeed knew what Jungkook was eager for, but wasn’t willing to give to him until the last beer was finished. The maknae hummed determined and the can was once again brought up to him. Patiently he worked his way through the gazzy liquid. He could feel his face scrunching up from the discomfort in his abdomen, the strains of pain making it hard to continue drinking. He found distraction in his hands around Hoseok’s middle, stroking gently; feeling the skin through the fabric, slightly tightening his grip when feeling especially filled. It seemed like forever, but it was finally finished. 

“Amazing.” Hoseok’s voice was quiet and tender. His face inches close of his own; Jungkook wondered if his deep exhales of air smelled like beer, but it didn’t seem to bother the older man. “You did amazing, Kookie.” Their noses were grazing each other with the slightest of touches, and so were their lips. Jungkook froze, petrified by the others bold actions. With a gentle smile, he brought their lips together. Softly the older man began to move his lips.

The maknae was on a spiral, the alcohol only enhancing his feelings for Hoseok and all of the sensations he was feeling. The gas in his stomach, gurgling and roarin within him, the tingling sensation on his lips moving in sync, Hoseok’s thin fingers sliding form his jaw to his neck to his chest to finally settling on the top of his ballooned stomach, pressing lightly against it. Jungkook’s jaw dropped at the sensation, deepening the kiss. On the hardened dome, Hoseok’s hands began to massage strongly; the sensation so pleasing the maknae was opening his mouth again to let out a moan. He wished he’d take that action back, but it was too late. 

A clear burp erupted from his parted lips almost as soon as he had chosen to open his mouth. 

“Hobi! I’m, shit I’m really sorry, all the beer it just-” He began explaining,m petrified by his own actions. Somehow, he had forgotten what stuffing himself usually lead to. Though his ranting was interrupted by yet another burp escaping past his lips. He stayed there petrified, the ashamed warmth taking over his entire body. A quiet giggle erupted from the older man.

“It’s okay, Kookie.” He spoke reassuringly with a tender tone and even softer voice, their faces still centimeters apart. “Just let it all out, I’ll help you” Although it has started with an authoritative Hoseok, this was one Jungkook war most accustomed to: the Hoseok who helped and cared for everybody; even through embarrassing situations. But, how could he be sure he was just doing it for pity of a wasted maknae and not because he actually felt the same way?

His worries were soon vanished, as the dancer continued not only to rub firm circles on the top of his stomach but continued kissing the younger man. He parted their lips and began nibbling softly on his jaw; Jungkook’s hands on the other’s waist tightened at the sensation. Hoseok’s hands over his stomach felt like magic, dainty but strong; he could feel them moving the gas around him. As a result of his miraculous kneading, a string of various burps came out of the maknaes mout like it was nothing. Sure enough, it felt humiliating, but the older’s encouragement was getting him through it. 

“Yes, keep going.” He mumbled lips pressed to his neck. 

“You are doing amazing.”

“Let them out, just like that”

He mewled at the praise, only for it to blended with another burp. Hoseok’s hands had began to travel along the expanse of taut skin. Groping the sides with force; Jungkook’s jaw fell open, his face scrunching up for pleasure. Earning a burp as its consequence. He could feel himself deflating form the gas leaving his body, thought there was still much to go, and Hoseok was determined to get it out. The older man kept on roaming as much as they could, finally doing so underneath Jungkook’s shirt. The dainty hands settled at the bottom of his stomach, pressing slightly. His automatic response came from his hips, pushing forward against Hoseok’s. It was only then he noticed how aroused this situation was making him. He was hard. The older man had shown his awareness, answering through groping of the lower half of his hardened dome. His burps were become softer and quieter, and it seemed like the could finally begin to focus on the maknae’s other issue. 

Jungkook thought about it for a minute, his long term feelings for Hoseok; is this how he wanted it to happen? Drunk, without a clue if this were going to happen again or not? Suddenly, the smooth movement of the hips from the man on top of him seemed unappealing. 

“Wait!” He exclaimed shyly. The dancer stopping entirely, surprised; his attention completely on Jungkook.  “This is not how I want it to happen.” He stated. “I-I’m sorry if I lead you on, but-”

“Hey, we don’t have to do anything.” He reassured with a smile. “How about this, we go to sleep and we can talk it out tomorrow.”

“That does sound nice.” He confirmed drowsy. 

---

Jungkook rose the next day by the excruciatingly loud alarm on his phone. 6:30 am. Right. Work. The memories of last night were blurry, and all his mind could care about at the moment was to finish preparing for the long day ahead of him; whatever it was that they were doing, he couldn’t recall. HOwever the memory of him and Hoseok having to talk made a spark of an indescribable excitement rise in his stomach. Wait no, that’s the hangover.

[glitchrpgmain]

                      WELCOME TO THE UNDERWORLD.

congratulations MARIE ! you have been accepted into underworldfm. the role of PERIDOT will be portrayed by NADEZDHA CORVINUS. LINDSEY MORGAN is now taken. please submit your blog within the next 24 hours & be sure to follow the guidelines outlined in our checklist.

we can say with confidence that we both absolutely fell in love with nadezdha when we first read through her app. the way you detailed her inner struggle, her conflict, the moral crossroads she is stuck at due to the experiences that shaped her -- it’s amazing! we really love the detail you put into her and you have shaped her into such a strong but hesitant character at the same time! we’re excited to see her interact with the rest of the crew!

IC.

character. i’m applying for peridot! 

name. nadezhda aleksandrovna corvin(us).

age. 499 years old (and very excited to celebrate her half-millenium soon enough).

gender & pronouns. cis female, she/her pronouns.

BIO.

i. 

you were born at dawn. ominous, considering your species — but that was never how your father saw it. his first-born child, entering the world at dawn. to him, it held a different meaning. the dawn of a new era, the next generation. maybe it wasn’t the most creative metaphor, but it surely stuck. not to add that of all things, your name also meant hope. 

                          ( really, dad, what is it with these tropes? )

you were, to vampires, essentially the crown princess — and you were surely raised as proudly as one. descended from the originals themselves, arrogance was practically in your blood. power, beauty, riches, all were laid at your feet. maybe you were a little debauched every now and then, maybe you were just a little wilder than the rest, maybe you indulged a little too often. who could really blame you for it? you wore a crown, not a set of shackles. 

perhaps this is where your reputation started, in the earlier decades of your life. for others it would be chalked up to reckless youth, but as aleksander’s heir, you should have been taught better. though you’d never say it to his face ( or anyone’s face, for that matter ) in part, you think your father is to blame. 

since you could understand, you were told about the horrors of lycans, how those despicable monsters were trying to destroy everything you held dear, your very legacy. you hated them, truly, wholeheartedly hated them. 

but then again, it’s very easy to hate that which you do not know. 

ii. 

in a way, you were coddled. 

you were taught to hate lycans, to see them as abominations. you were taught how to kill them, too. a direct descendant of the originals might be powerful, but it also made you a target — so knowing how to defend yourself was one of the first things your father made sure you knew. 

          ( you also kind of enjoyed it, the training, the fighting. you rarely took                                       anything seriously in those early decades, except for that )

but for all your flaming hatred, for all the ways you knew how to use your silver blades and drive them home, you had never, actually seen a lycan, much less fought one. pampered, that’s what your father’s advisers called you. scoffing, you turned on your heel and complained to your mother — because that, is definitely not what pampered children did. 

looking back, even centuries later, you feel somewhat embarrassed at that youthful arrogance.

iii.

something had started nagging at you. before, you did not notice the disappointed stares some of the older vampires gave you. the way a lot of them did not take you seriously. the raised eyebrows and whispered comments. you were too caught up in your own hubris to recognize how maybe, just maybe, they did not see you as the golden-crowned heir you thought you were. 

“she has never even seen a lycan,” was one of the most common whispers you managed to overhear. annoyance turned to anger — and when someone thought lesser of you, you could not help but prove them the opposite. 

you convinced your mother to take a trip with you. quality time was your reasoning to her, but that piece of gossip you heard about a lone lycan in the area was most definitely involved in the decision. the death dealers had bigger problems to worry about to bother, but not you. 

this was when you realized they had been right all along. arrogant, pampered, stupid, even — if you were being really honest. 

there were six lycans, not one.

they damn near ripped your throat out.

your mother was left in so many bits and pieces after they finished with her, there was barely enough left to put in a casket for burial.

iv. 

at the age of sixty-seven, you were responsible for your mother’s death. for a human, that is an incredibly generous age to lose a parent at — but for an immortal… well, it was a tragedy to say the least.

you barely spoke the first few months after she was killed. they assumed you were innocent in the whole affair, that this was an ambush by the lycans to strike aleksander where it hurt most, they even praised you for managing to kill four of them by yourself. you let them. 

where you had been so fiercely, wildly alive ( as much alive as any vampire can be, that is ) before, there was now an empty shell. you were to blame for what happened and that was something you could not shake. the others mistook your guilt with a need for vengeance and suggested you join the death dealers. even your father encouraged it, though then again, a man who had just lost his wife might not be in the soundest state of mind. 

you accepted their offer. you hoped that killing those monsters would fill the gaping hole inside your chest. that it would make you feel better to brutalize them in the same way they did your mother.

and for a while, it did.

v. 

death is easy, living is the hard part. 

when you killed one of them, it was always easy. not the actual fight towards that kill, though you quickly learned your way into that as well, but the act of taking a life. you saw them as a stain on this earth, and why should that not be eradicated? your ancestors certainly thought so. 

with another two siblings joining the mix, your father had his attention elsewhere. you started to indulge in life a bit more again, to take the edge off, but never like before. you had learned your lesson there. 

no one knew you well enough to see that smiles never reached your eyes, kisses were rarely genuine, and even blood didn’t satisfy you at times. 

maybe you were still seen as more of a warrior than a future ruler, but there was a bit more respect for you in the coven now. you seemed to have dedicated your life to destroying the monsters that haunted them, the bare start of a legacy that was worthy to follow up your father’s. 

                            ( but nothing is ever that simple, is it? )

vi.

you fucked up again. this time, you managed not to endanger or cause the death of anyone else, but still found yourself in a situation that should have meant the end for you. 

trapped in a lycan nest, where a pack of twenty roamed all around, you found yourself alone, without any silver weapons and enough poisoned bites that you were delirious enough to hallucinate your dead mother — you know it’s bad when you hallucinate your dead mother. 

that was supposed to have been your end and you knew it too. preparing to go out in a blaze of glory worthy of the corvinus line ( nothing less was to be expected, you could not shame your father, even in death ) you found a hand clamped over her mouth, just before you were about to out the smart ass comment that introduced your death scene. always so dramatic.

it was a lycan who had silenced you. captured. a much more anticlimatic death than you had wanted, that was your first thought. 

but instead of taking you over to the other flea-bags to be tortured for the next couple hours, he pointed you towards the exit.

vii. 

your view of lycans has always been very simple: 

they were monsters. 

that’s what your father had always told you. that was what your entire life was built around from the moment you could understand what others were talking about. that was what they affirmed when they killed your mother. they surely did not have feelings, they should not even be capable of mercy. that was what monsters were, that was how they lived. 

so why did one of them save your life?

viii.

in the end, the experience changed you enough that you quit the death dealers. your reasons were simple, because like hell would you tell them about what happened. but the heir putting down her sword to focus on the other facets that came with leadership? that seemed understandable enough. 

                     ( it wasn’t even a full-on lie, you did pick up an interest in politics,                                                                   in history — in the art of being a ruler )

but really, when the monsters you’ve always seen as soulless, capable of nothing except evil, save your life, that’s bound to shift a person’s worldview. confusing was an understatement for your feelings back then. you learned more about lycans, things not always taught by your father or tutors, things that made them seem almost… human. 

scared of what this revelation brought, you hid it in a little corner of your mind, rarely ever a focus, ignored, even. instead, you put your energy into something you had always put off because it was boring. studying. you wanted to stay true to your excuse, that you wanted to become a better heir to your fathers’ empire — and it didn’t turn out to be that awful.

ix. 

you never really knew what the catalyst was to bring back your doubts. 

after your stint as a death dealer and actual starting interest in being a proper first-in-line to the great aleksander corvin, there was a more serious, authoritative air to you. plenty vampires still saw you as the arrogant, reckless youth you were in your first century of life, but you knew better now. 

for the most part, anyway.

so what made you so quiet when the others spoke about those dirty fleabags? why do you flinch when you hear a death dealer discuss their kill of a young lycan pup? what causes that hollow look in your eyes when someone mentions blood traitors, such as your adopted sibling?

did it start when you ended the life of a lycan prisoner before they could torture him to death? was it maybe even kyanite, when they were banished and you lost someone you didn’t even know you had been relying on?

you can no longer fully ignore what you know to be true, it tears you up inside.

x.

you were born at dawn. 

your father saw it as a sign that you would break in the dawn of a new era for your kind, he named you hope for that very reason. the question remains on what that new era will be like. do you hold onto your bloodline, your father, to all that your legacy is supposed to be? or do you cast off the bloodshed, all the centuries of death and destruction at the risk of losing everything?

it seems you have a choice to make.

[yuckitup-jwd]

Historical people answer the question - Why did the chicken cross the road?

Douglas Adams: Forty-Two

Earnest Angsley: To be HAYELED! in the name o'Jayeeezus!

Marcus Antonius: The evil that chickens do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.

Any Philosophy 101 Professor: Why not?

Any Calculus Professor: The road, if expressed in the form (y2-y1)/(x2-x1) is approximate for cases where lim(y2-y1)/(x2-x1) as (x2-x1) -> 0, is represented by the derivative, or rate of change, of the road with respect to the chicken, such that the value of the chicken may be assumed equal to the value of (y2-y1)/(x2-x1), for small values of roads.

Jane Austen: Because it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single chicken, being posessed of a good fortune and presented with a good road, must be desirous of crossing.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Neil Armstrong: One small step for chickenkind, one giant leap for poultry.

Arthur, King of the Britons: What do you mean? African or European chickens?

Paul Atreidies: What name have you for the chicken shaped stain upon your road? That shall be the name that you shall call me!

Lord Baden-Powell: Because as a Chicken Scout, it needed the Road-Crossing Merit Badge.

Bilbo Baggins: Oh what I wouldn't give to back in my nice, warm Hobbit-hole! I hope I never have to lay eyes on such a thing as that chicken again!

Baldrick: It had a cunning plan.

The Band: To take a load off....

The Bandit, in The Treasure of The Sierra Madre: "Chickens? Chickens? We don't need no stinkin' chickens!"

Clive Barker: He was drawn to the road, and he didn't so much cross the road as the road crossed him. And once across, the chicken entered into a frightening void, filled only with the screams of a thousand agonized souls. The hands of doom reached out of the blackness, strangling the chicken, smothering him, suffocating him. He could not escape, as no one who crosses the road can escape. He was now a prisoner of the Cenobytes, doomed to an eternity of pain.

Roseanne Barr: Urrrrrp. What chicken?

The Beatles: To be free as a bird!

Lavrenti Beria (ex-head of the KGB): This is a State Secret -- we have informants everywhere.

Bill The Cat Ack. Thpppbt

Blackadder: Queenie: Because I told it to. Percy: To acquire a hunk of purest green Lord Flasheart: To DOOOOOOOOO IT!

Lucien Bouchard: So that it could be SEPARATE!

Ben Bova: To be reunited with beautiful grey-eyed Athena, the woman he has loved for all of time

Brisco (Law and Order): For A Bagel

Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce and Bruce: To grab a Fosters and get away from the poofters!

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Archie Bunker: I don't care what them there chickens do, as long as they stay on THEIR side of the street!

Bugs Bunny: What's up, cluck?

Robert Burns: Fair Fa Your Honest Sonsie Face Great Chieftain O' The Chicken Race The blackened road 'ahind ye said Ye best run quick ere ye be deid!

George Bush: If it did it was out of the loop

George Bush: (again) It could see the thousand points of headlights....

Rhett Butler: Frankly my dear, it didn't give a damn!

C3PO (1): Sir, may I remind you that I am fluent in 6,000,000 forms of communication and this chicken has not... shutting up, sir.

C3PO (2): Sir, according to my calculations, the odds of a chicken successfully navigating a road are 3,750 to 1 against.

Caesar: It came, it saw, it crossed.

Joseph Campbell: In primitive cultures, we can find many such examples of the chicken motif that cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. For instance, I am reminded of an old Navajo legend in which a buffalo crosses a stream to "come" to the other side -- an obvious negative language devised to prepare tribesmen for a transcendental experience. Similarly, the Hindus believe in savanaya, or a sacred cow that leaps over a chasm on Thursdays. Through metaphorical interpretation, we are led to realize that all examples suggest an attainable higher state of consciousness like that of Nietzsche's ubermench, or superman, as outlined in his novel "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."

Albert Camus: Seeing that an indifferent world lied on all sides of the road, the chicken knew it would be absurd not too cross, and for that moment, the chicken knew what it was to really be alive. It was if the bird had been asleep its entirely up until this choice was put before him. So, with a newfound determination and a smile, the chicken valiently crossed the road only to be put out of its mercy by an eighteen wheeler.

Candide: To cultivate its garden.

Johnny Carson: Let me tell you, it was so cold at that farm... Ed McMahon: How cold was it? Johnny Carson: It was so cold, that the chickens were mugging the sheep to get wool for sweaters!

Raymond Chandler: Across these mean streets a chicken must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete chicken and a common chicken and yet an unusual chicken. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a chicken of honor - by instinct, by inevitability, withough thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best chicken in his world and a good enough chicken for any world.

Charlie X: Because it didn't want to STAY....STAY....STAY....STAY....STAY...

Cheech (or Chong): Just to be there, man.

The Chicken: I am crossing the road to block traffic as a protest against ..." (thump).

Commander Chikotay: I'm not sure but I can find out. That chicken is my animal spirit guide.

Noam Chomsky: To manufacture consent

Tom Clancy: The Mark 84 gargleblaster that the chicken carried, at the heart of which was an inferior ex-Soviet excimer laser system, had insufficient range to allow the chicken to carry out its mission from this side of the road.

John Cleese From Fawlty Towers: Manuel from Barcelona: "Que?" Basil: "You know, a chicken crossing the road...." Manuel: "Que?" Basil: [looking it up in a dictionary], "Un Pollo..." Manuel: interrupting, "No, No we out of chicken.." * WHAP!!*

John Cleese: Because it was very silly.

John Cleese: (again) This isn't a chicken license, you know! It's a dog license with the word "Dog" crossed out and "Chicken" written in in crayon.

John Cleese: (#3) This Chicken is no more. It has ceased to function. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It's a stiff. If it wasn't nailed to the road it'd be pushing up daisies. It's snuffed it. It's metabolic processes are now history. It's bleeding demised. It's rung down the curtain, shuffled off the mortal coil and joined the bleeding Choir Invisible. This is an Ex-Chicken.

Bill Clinton: What?

Bill Clinton (again): The chicken was persuaded to cross the road by the Democratic congress. It is now returning to the middle of the road

Joseph Conrad: Mistah Chicken, he dead.

John Constantine: Because it'd made a bollocks of things over on this side of the road and figured it'd better get out right quick.

Alastair Cooke: Good Evening, and welcome to Masterpiece Theatre. Tonight, we present the epic British drama "How The Chicken Went," based on the 1843 novel by Herbert T. Poultry, and adapted for the screen by Joanna Drumstick. Starring Susan Hampshire as the Chicken, and Anthony Hopkins as the evil and unrepentant diner, Borstrom, this elegant period piece explores the mores and morality of a society in which ordinary chickens had to face their destiny of crossing the road to meet their fate at the hands of the monied upper classes, regardless of their own ambitions or desires...

Shiela Copps (Deputy Prime Minister of Canada): BECAUSE I SCREAMED AT IT REAL LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sheila Copps: Okay, I know that the chicken promised it would cross the road if the Liberals failed to eliminate the GST, but it was a stupid promise to make and the chicken deeply regrets ever making it. However, the chicken will not be crossing the road because to do so would cost tax payers $500,000.

Sheila Copps (a few days later): Alright! Alright! The chicken will cross the road like it promised. But it'll be right back again. Now leave me alone.

Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecendented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Jacques Ives Cousteau: Zee cheecken, unaware of zee dangare beehind heem, crosses zee street. Weezout warning, zee Porsche strikes, and zee balance of zee nature ees maintained.

Stephen R. Covey: When the chicken and the road can work together for the win-win, the result is synergy!

Jean Cretien, Prime Minister of Canada: "It wasn't a chicken, you know, it was an Inuit carving of a loon. But the RCMP should have been there anyway..."

Aleister Crowley: Because it was its True Will to do so.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Stephanie Daniels: It was the turtle's day off.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Commander Data: I do not know. Although I have compared all of my 437 billion data points relating to chickens and roads, there is no possitive correlation between the two.

W. Edwards Demming: But is one chicken crossing one road of statistical importance? Only once we have established an historical baseline of chickens with respect to roads, with calculated upper and lower control limits, can we make that determination.

Arthur Dent: Are you sure the chicken is from Beetelgeuse, and not from Gilford after all?

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Rene Descartes: It had sufficient reason to believe it was dreaming anyway.

Descartes (again): The chicken was merely a machine and was crossing due to the deterministic nature of the universe.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Bob Dole: Do you know that before that chicken had gotten across the road, its cellular phone was ringing and there was a lawyer on the other end asking if it would like to sue the city for not putting up a traffic light.

Bob Dylan: How many roads must a chicken travel down, before they call him a man?

E.T.: Chicken, phone home

Ecclesiastes (1): For every fowl, there is a season. A time for garlic, a time for sage...

Ecclesiastes (2): This bird is meaningless.

Wyatt Earp: Well, chicken, are you gonna do something, or just stand there and bleed?

Eeyore: If it did. Which I doubt. Not that it matters.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends on your frame of reference.

T.S. Eliot: It's not that they cross, but that they cross like chickens.

Harlan Ellison: Because he had no beak and must scream.

Emergency Medical Holographic Doctor on U.S.S. Voyager: Maybe it was trying to state the nature of a medical emergency.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Epicurus: For fun.

Basil Fawlty: Oh, don't mind that chicken. It's from Barcelona.

Sybil Fawlty: BASIL! Why is there a CHICKEN in my hotel?

Dr. Johnny Fever: To escape from the Phone Cops!

Fiver (from Watership Down): Don't you see it? The sky has turned to blood, the field has turned to fire... THE CHICKENS! DON'T YOU SEE THE CHICKENS?

Gerald R. Ford: It probably fell from an airplane and couldn't stop its forward momentum.

Sigmund Freud: The chicken obviously was female and obviously interpreted the pole on which the crosswalk sign was mounted as a phallic symbol of which she was envious, selbstverstaendlich.

Robert Frost: To cross the road less traveled by.

Barney Fyfe: Now Andy, let me tell you a thing or two about chickens. Chickens cross roads in those other counties, but not here in Mayberry. No chicken crosses no roads in Mayberry without Deputy Fyfe knowing about it!

Gandalf: O chicken, do not meddle in the affairs of roads, for you are tasty and good with barbecue sauce.

Bill Gates: For the money

Frank Bunker Gilbereth: To minimize its therbligs

Jim Gillis: The chicken crossed the road to show the gophers it could be done.

Newt Gingrich: To get to the RIGHT side of the road.

Newt Gingrich (again): The chicken had to cross the road, because, bogged down by the incredible debt burden, it was no longer able to fly.

Newt Gingrich (III): It was safety pinned to one of those damn punk rockers!

Ira Glasser (ACLU): The chicken maintains an absolute privacy interest in information as to whether or why he or she may have perambulated the thoroughfare.

Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Sir Charles Grandiose: As surely as the golden hairs turn to silver, as surely as the sands drift silently through the slender neck of the hourglass, the last sunny days of summer flee soundlessly under autumn's chilly embrace. And with those last days of that warmest and most joyful of seasons, left the road's edge the sprightliest young chicken ever a Baronet did see

Hercules Gryptyppe-Thynne, (All-around Public-School Cad): That's not a chicken! It's a clever disguise, inside of which is Count Jim "Thighs" Moriarity.....

Gary Gygax: Because I rolled a 64 on the "Chicken Random Behaviors" chart on page 497 of the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Hamlet: Because 'tis better to suffer in the mind the slings and arrows of outrageous road maintenance than to take arms against a sea of oncoming vehicles.

Thomas Hardy: The road was black, the sky was white (and so were the feathers) as the bright red mark on the top of the chicken's head gleamed in the twilight. It was a pure chicken and it was doomed.

Mike Harris, (Premier of Ontario): Like evrything else in this province, it was facing the axe.

Paul Harvey: And now... page two... a chicken... attempts to cross... the street... yes... the street... and is... run down by a... Buick! The Buick Roadmaster with it's powerful perfomance and elegant style! Yes... that poor chicken... hit by the Buick... it's true... it's... true... and speaking of true... your local True Value Hardware Store...

Hegel: Only through the synthesis of the dialectical chicken and road could the spirit transcend the experience of crossing.

Robert Heinlein: Because with the freedom the chicken was given, it was the chicken's responsibility to do so.

Robert Heinlein (again): The more widely dispersed chickens are throughout the Universe, the better the long-term prospects for the survival of the chicken species.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Doug Hofstadter: To seek explication of the correspondence between appearance and essence through the mapping of the external road-object onto the internal road-concept.

Sherlock Holmes: It crossed the road because it was going to catch a train at Victoria Station at 3:15, to Edinburgh. And how did I know that? Observe, Watson, the patina of dust on the chicken's feathers, which indicates that it had been spending time in a library, reading about Scotland. And observe also that it was humming "Bonnie Lassie" as it waited to cross. Finally, and most important, observe the train ticket marked Edinburgh, stuffed under one wing, and the fact that Victoria station was where the chicken crossed the street, and finally that the only train to Edinburgh this afternoon is the 3:15....

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Lee Iacocca: It found a better car, which was on the other side of the road.

Dr. Jack Van Impe: Well you see, here's the really exciting part, if we were to look at Revelation 17:3 we will see that the Whore of Babylon rides on a scarlet beast. A scarlet beast! What this means is a Rhode Island Red. And the truly glorious thing is that this beast, this Rhode Island Red, this CHICKEN has crossed the road EXACTLY as was prophesized in the Bible and this is all a sign, Revelation 17:3, that we're living in the End Time. Hallelujah! And if you would like more information on the significance of this chicken crossing the road as all part of God's great plan then send me $50 and you will recieve this set of video tapes along with a copy of my recent book "Chickens: fowl beast, or foul beast?".

John Paul Jones: It has not yet begun to cross!

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gesalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Franz Kafka: Dieter, now in the form of a chicken, was running from the government's torture machine. The machine, an instrument of death, slowly obliterated the souls of its victims. Dieter was alone. He was running for his life, his insignificant life.

Immanuel Kant: The pure transcendental concept of the road, having been deduced a priori and without dependence on intuitions, is given in the mode of the chicken as an end in itself, while crossing the road as a hypothetical imperative, namely, as acting towards some end allowed by Reason.

Casey Kasem: And now here's a hot new number from a hot young band whose drummer was so tragically killed in a freeway accident, it's The Hen House Flock singing "When You Gonna Crow?" hitting the charts at number 23!

JFK: The chicken chose to cross the road in this decade not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

Obi Wan Kenobi: To follow old obi wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade.

Jack Kerouac: The chicken hipster, high on tea and the soul groves of Charlie (the bird) Parker, strolled aimlessly on the road looking for his dharma.

Soren Kierkegaard: The chicken is dead. The road is nothing.

Colonel Kilgore: "I love the smell of chickens in the morning"

Martin Luther King: It had a dream.

James Tiberius Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Ralph Klein: Because we gave it a one-way bus ticket to B.C.

Mark Knophler: How come Chickens got Industrial Disease?

Mark Lane: There is new, irrefutable evidence that the chicken did not act alone.

Gary Larson: Don't ask me. I am retired. Stan Laurel: I'm sorry, Ollie. It escaped when I opened the run.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

John Le Carre: Because it knew, at the core of its being where none could ever reach, that its only course of action now that its cover was blown wide open was to try and slip away into the grey, foggy, bleak evening before Smiley came, accompanied by his silent shadow Peter Guillam, asking questions for which there could never be answers.

Dr. Hannibal Lector: So I could eat its liver, with some fava beans and a nice chianti .......thththththththth.

Leda: Are you sure it wasn't Zeus dressed up as a chicken? He's into that kind of thing, you know.

Foghorn Leghorn: To get to that damn Dawg, Boah!

Gottfried Von Leibniz: In this best possible world, the road was made for it to cross.

Vladimir Lenin: It is not the chicken's road. It is the PEOPLE'S road!

David Letterman: And the No. 1 reason - fricasee!

Rush Limbaugh: Beacuse of those damn bleeding heart liberals, trying to save one stupid bird while thousands of jobs are being lost. Dave Lister: Because of the smegging space corps directives.

Any Late Evening News Anchor: The chicken crosses the road. Film at 11:00.

Abraham Lincoln: Fourscore and seven eggs ago, our forefeathers...

Logan (Law and Order): To buy a plaid tie

Jack London: To answer the call of the wild.

H.P. Lovecraft: To futilely attempt escape from the dark powers which even then pursued it, hungering after the stuff of its soul!

George Lucas: Because the Force was with it.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Marvin (the paranoid android): "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and you ask me why the chicken crossed the road? I could tell you, but I really don't think it's worth while."

Marvin the Paranoid Android: Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and what do they ask me? Why did the chicken cross the road? As if their pathetic cerebelums could even comprehend my answer. Chickens, don't talk to me about chickens... they're SO depressing.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Karl Marx (again): To escape the bourgeois middle-class struggle.

Groucho Marx: Chicken? What's all this talk about chicken? Why, I had an uncle who thought he was a chicken. My aunt almost divorced him, but we needed the eggs.

Groucho Marx (again): This morning I shot a chicken in my pyjamas -- and lemme tell ya, that chicken ran out of my pyjamas in a second!

Jackie Mason: Whaddaya want, it should just stand there?

Perry Mason: Cross the road you say? But how can you be sure? No one else would have known the chicken crossed the road except for the real killer!

Dr. McCoy: How should I know? Damnit Jim, I'm a Doctor not an ornithologist!

Marshall McLuhan: The Road is the Medium. The chicken is the Message!

Gregor Mendel: To get various strains of roads.

A.A. Milne: I imagine that if I thought very hard I shouold come up with a reason. (also applicable to Winnie the Pooh)

John Milton: To justify the ways of God to men.

Indigo Montoya: It too pursues a man with six fingers on his left hand.

Michael Moriarity: To annoy Janet Reno.

Jim Morrison: To break on thruough to the other side, I am the chicken king

Ralph Nader: A chicken on a road is unsafe at any speed

Sir Isaac Newton: Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross the road.

Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Col. Oliver North: I do not recall any such events. I had no knowledge of these occurrences.

Peter Norton: It was a virus and it saw me coming...

Richard Nixon: That part of our conversation was accidentally erased.

George Orwell: Because Big Brother was watching to make sure that it did cross the road, although in its heart, the chicken never did.

Thomas Paine: Out of common sense.

Michael Palin: Nobody expects the banished inky chicken!

Emporer Palpatine: Foolish chicken! Only now, at the end, do you see the head-lights!

Dorothy Parker: Travel, trouble, music, art / A kiss, a frock, a rhyme / The chicken never said they fed its heart / But still they pass its time.

Patsy: Oh, F*&% the chicken. Run it over and lets have a drink.

Gen. George S. Patton: To get those yellow bellied chickens outta here.

General George S. Patton (again): The way to win a war is not to cross a road for you country. The way to win a war is to make some OTHER poor chicken cross a road for HIS COUNTRY!

Wolfgang Pauli: There already was a chicken on the other side of the road.

Frank Perdue: How the heck do I know? Do I look like a chicken to you -- don't answer that.

Marlin Perkins, on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom: Watch, as the chicken mauls Jim yet again...

H. Ross Perot: I'm crossing. I'm not crossing....

H. Ross Perot2: Crossing the road is that chickens primary concern! PRIMARY concern!

H. Ross Perot3: Chickens and roads, I'll tell ya what it means! It means 4 trillion dollars of dafficit, it means the end of our infrastructure, it means... look at this chart!

H. Ross Perot4: Let me tell ya, it's all about NAFTA. This chicken represents your job, and this road represents the Mexican border...

Jean-Luc Picard: To see what's out there.

Jean-Luc Picard (again): Because it's shields were down and it had no other options left...

Piglet: Because ch-ch-chickens are such very s-s-s-small animals.

Plato: For the greater good.

Edgar Allan Poe: Quoth the chicken,"Nevermore!"

Emily Post: When a chicken is confronted with a road, it is only proper for the chicken to stand erect, turn to face the road, look both ways and cross... remembering to send a sincere thank you letter within one month of the event.

Elvis Presley: You aint nothin' but a chicken, crossin' all the roads!

Psalms: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no road!

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What Road?

Monty Python: For Something Completely Different

Dan Quayle: "chicken" C-H-I-K-E-N "chicken"

The Red Queen: Who cares? Off with it's head!

R2D2: beep bleep be deep birp whirrrrrrrrr!

The White Rabbit: It was late!

Ayn Rand: The chicken crossed the road in order to get away from the flock that is stifling his creativity.

Ayn Rand (again): If not for the intransigently independent vision of that first chicken, none of the other chickens would have been able to cross the road. And they condemned him for his acheivement!

Ronald Reagan: I don't recall. What was the question?

Georg Friedrich Riemann: The answer appears in Dirichlet's lectures.

Pat Riley: The chicken crossed the lane in less than 3 seconds, so a "fowl" should not have been called.

Rimmer: Aliens!!!

General Jack D. Ripper: To maintain the purity of its precious bodily fluids.

Geraldo Rivera: Stay tuned as a panel of chickens reveals the shocking truth.

Tom Robbins: Well you see, that chicken was a special chicken who was a descendent of a parrot family that once built pyramids for tourist pharohs. This chicken liked the other side of the road whose shamanic whispers beckoned Anastasia, the parrot, like the popped cherry of a ritually consumated white wedding. That's the meaning of it all, baby!

Oral Roberts: He couldn't raise the $10,000,000.00 so God called him home.

Oral Roberts (again): And I said to the chicken: "Put your claw on the screen! Put your claw on the screen, upon the hand of Brother Oral, and you shall be healed. Make a love offering of $50 or more, and then touch the screen. And that chicken did put his claw on the screen. And the power of God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, flowed through me and out through that television set, and that chicken was healed *PRAISE GOD!*. And then that chicken, stricken for so many months, rose up and walked across the road. But, since he had forgotten his love offering, God never warned him about the 30 ton semi barreling down on the crosswalk...."

Carl Sagan: To see the billions and billions of stars.

Col. Saunders: It Ran, Suh! I offered it a coating of 11 herbs and spices and it ran, Suh! So I shot it, Suh, shot it while it was trying to escape, suh!

Sappho: For the touch of your skin, the sweetness of your lips..

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: It was going back...

Mr. Scott: 'Cos ma wee transporter beam was na functioning properly. Ah canna work miracles, Captain, wi' no dilithium crystals left to speak of!

Agent Scully: There simply must be a rational, scientific explanation. Chickens don't just "cross roads"

Neddy Seagoon: WhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatwhatWHAT?

William Shakespeare:

1: This is the road of chicken's discontent, Made ignoble abbatoir by this half-ton truck... (Richard II)

2: Bring me no more reports, let them fly all; 'Til a chicken remove to other side of road I cannot taint with fear. What is this chicken? Was he not born of hen? The spirits that know All fowl consequences have pronounced me thus: "Fear not, MacNugget; no chicken that's born of hen Shall e'er lay beak upon thee." (Macbeth)

3: If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly: if the crossing Could scoot across the dotted line, and catch, Beyond passing car, sidewalk; that but these feathers Might be the be-all and end-all here, But here, at this corner of street and avenue, We'd cross at the light to come. (Macbeth)

4: To cross, or not to cross? That is the question, Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The wheels and axles of the city's mass transit Or to take flight against a sea of motorists And by opposing, end me? To cross, to peep No more! And by that peep to say we end The chickhood and the thousand fender-shocks That chicken is heir to. 'Tis a perambulation Devoutly to be wish'd. (Hamlet)

Homer Simpson: ohhhhhhhh Chicken.....

Bart Simpson: It's outta here, man!

Mrs. Slocum: Now look what you've done, there's chicken all over my pussy!

Kenneth Starr: In view of President Clinton's dealings with the Tyson Poultry Company, the matter of the chicken crossing the road is under investigation for its possible connection with the Whitewater affair.

George Steinbrenner: Because I offered him a $4 million contract.

George Steinbrenner2: Because I fired him!

George Steinbrenner3: Because he's now my new manager.

George Steinbrenner4: Because I fired him again!

Dr. Suess: See the end of this document for the full Dr. Suess version.

Sisyphus: Was it pushing a rock, too?

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Mr. Spock: It was not logical for the chicken to do so, but I have frequently observed that the behaviour of chickens is not logical

E.E. (Doc) Smith: Your humble narrator can barely do justice to this climactic event that rent asunder the fundamental ether of space itself, as the chicken, embodying all that is good and hard and straight and keen in the Avain world, fearlessly approached, bridged, and conquered the road for Civilization.

Socrates: To pick up some hemlock at the corner druggist.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Joseph Stalin: It was clearly a conspiracy. Take all the chickens out and shoot them. At Once!

John Steinbeck: The road baked in the relentless summer sun as the chicken, looking about, began to cross. It stopped occaisionally to peck at a grass seed that had become lodged in a crevice in the cracked macadam. The chicken reached the other side, then began making his way to the Salinas, which lay muddy and turgid in the July afternoon, all the while thinking of the cool shade by the river and how good the can of beans in his bedroll would taste tonight.

Ben Stone (Law and Order): Because the defendant made it, sir.

Oliver Stone: He went back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the..

Dr. Strangelove: Because it could not afford to be caught on the wrong side of the road-side gap.

John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

Grand Moff Tarkin: Fear will keep the chickens in line, fear of this thoroughfare!

Tim "The Toolman" Taylor: This here bird'll cross that road in no time flat, now that I've made a few "special modifications! We've added the Binford 7100 Multi-Purpose power unit, which I've souped up by adding a United Aircraft PT-6 jet engine - Urrgh urrgh urrgh! Heidi, bring out the chicken, please....

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: So that it could sail beyond the sunset.

Old Testament: And rooster and hen were married. And rooster did begat chicken. And chicken did cross the road.

New Testament: He among you who has not crossed roads, let him cast the first egg!

Margaret Thatcher: There was simply no alternative!

Theodoric of York, the Medievil Barber: Because of an imbalance of bodily humors caused by an elf or small toad living in the chicken's stomach. What this fowl needs is a good bleeding. Dylan Thomas: To not go (sic) gentle into that good night.

Hunter S. Thompson: Why the &*%$#@ not?

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Tiggr: Because that's what chickens do best!

Tiggr: (again) That's the wonderful thing about Chickens, Chasing Chickens is FUN FUN FUN, And the Wonderful thing about Chickens Is that when crossing streets they RUN!

Tim, the Enchanter: It's got wings that... and a beak that... good god man, look at the bones!

Brian Tobin (new premier of Newfoundland): It followed the cod....

J.R.R. Tolkein: The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow- white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black eyes. Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which count- less tires had worked their relentless tread through the ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes of the great highway too numerous to give name.

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Anthony Trollope: Why, to avoid Mrs. Proudy and Mr. Slope, of course.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Darth Vader: Because it could not resist the power of the Dark Side.

George Washington: I cannot tell a lie. I was going to chop it with my little axe, so it crossed the road.

Mae West: 'Cause I invited it to come up and see me sometime.

Jerry White: Why does a chicken cross the road only half-way? So she can lay it on the line.

Walt Whitman: To cluck the song of itself.

Robert Anton Wilson: Because agents of the Ancient Illuminated Roosters of Cooperia were controlling it with their Orbital Mind-Control Lasers as part of their master plan to take over the world's egg production.

Major Charles Emerson Winchester, the Third: What do you two-bit quacks know about chickens? Did you learn about them in medical school, or did you just read the comic book?

Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road," and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Wittgenstein #2: There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

Wittgenstein #3: What we cannot explain we must pass over in silence.

Tom Wolfe: Kesey, muscles rippling under his shirt, a mysterious smile on his face, surrounded by the Merry Pranksters, placed the chicken at the road's edge. The chicken paused at the edge of the road, looking this way and that, and then rending the air with a tremendous, "ba-BAAWWWWKKK!" bolted across the road, its disheveled wings flapping uselessly about, leaving a trail of feathers and dander that, whenever two-ton chromium steel, 300 horsepower tail-finned symbols of Detroit's and America's supremacy passed, would swirl in a miniature version of a cyclone like the ones Mr. and Mrs. America see on the TV news every evening when he's come home from work and she's setting the table for dinner, both only half paying attention to the cyclones that devastate midwestern cow towns on sweltering summer afternoons. And the heat, dander, tornados, asphalt, tail-fins and the sweat of Mr. and Mrs. America as they move mechanically in their daily routine like the figurines in one of those huge medieval clocks on some cathedral in some European town, moving in the same way, every hour on the hour, it was all summed up by the "ba-BAAWWWWKKK!" of a scampering chicken accompanied by the "skritch, skritch" of its feet.

William Wordsworth: To have something to recollect in tranquility.

Mr. Worf: I do not know, Klingon chickens do NOT cross the road.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Yoda: Crossing the road makes not a chicken great

Henny Youngman: Take this chicken ... please.

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.

STAR TREK CHICKENS CROSS THE ROAD TOO

Chakotay: Whatever its reason, whatever its goals, we should respect its right to cross the road and seek its own spiritual awareness.

Neelix: Actually, Captain, I'm not really familiar with the chickens in this system. But--if you can catch it, I can cook it.

Riker: I don't know why, but I do know how: with pleasure, sir.

Garak: To get to the other side? Of course not! Do you realize how ridiculous that is? I'm sure it was a simple matter of its farmer expelling it from the coop for...embezzling eggs.

Odo: I don't have the slightest idea--and I don't particularly care...but then, I've never understood you ornithoids' need to engage in such pointless behavior.

Quark: Now really, why would I have bribed him to do it so I could make a tidy profit in the station pool? Besides, all I know is that chicken tastes just like tube grubs.

Q: Wouldn't you like to know? Too bad your puny human brain wouldn't be able to comprehend the answer.

O'Brien: Well, it's nothing a good pint or two won't fix.

Uhura: Shall I open hailing frequencies so you can ask it, sir?

V'Ger: To join with the Creator.

Sulu: To get back to San Franciso; it was born there.

Troi: It was running...running away from...no, escaping...oh, Captain, it was fleeing from such -pain-!

Kira: I bet those damn Cardassians were after it!

Picard: Dammit, that's not for us to answer! It's his fundamental right as a sentient being to determine the time and manner by which he travels towards his goals!

Dr. Bashir: I suppose it wanted to play some darts.

The Grand Nagus: Stupid chicken! You don't cross the road all at once! You sneak across it quietly, without anyone noticing! (Inconceivable!)

Sisko: I don't care -why- it was crossing the road! All I want to know is -why- it left the coop! So it wanted to "get to the other side"--there is only -so far- that my tolerance will go!

Barclay: Uh, chicken?!! Where?!!! C-c-c-ommander, did I ever mention my problem with small feathered things?

Gul Dukat: Well, that's a very interesting question...I'm sure we can work out some kind of arrangement to obtain that information that will be to everyone's satisfaction.

The Borg: Crossing the road is irrelevant. It will be assimilated.

Hugh the Borg: Maybe it wanted to be my friend.

Geordi: Well, wherever it's going, I'm sure it'll be there in an hour or two--but any later, and it'll be absolutely impossible for it to make it.

Jake: To check out the babe that just came off that transport!

Gene Roddenberry: To boldly go where no chicken had gone before.

Kes: It was remembering back to the times when its ancestors crossed roads all the time! They lost those abilities because they stopped using them!

Wesley: I'm not sure, but I can figure it out if I reroute these systems and reconfigure the warp field and run a complete internal whootchacallit on the computers and...

B'Elanna: I'm sure it felt suffocated by all the [BEEP] regulations of [BEEP] Starfleet and just couldn't stand it any longer!

Worf: I don't know. KLINGON chickens do NOT cross roads.

Spock: Fasincating, Captain, it seems driven by a beam of pure energy.

HoloDoc: How should I know? No one tells me anything around here! I didn't even know we added chickens to the crew! All I know is that it would have been nice, BEFORE the chicken went off to the cross the road, if it had remembered to turn me off!

Data: The chicken, in observing that it was on the opposite side of the 20th century Terran paved roadway, was aware that its immediate goal should have been to traverse the distance without interception by an kind of combustion-propelled personal transport vehicle, but I am unclear as to why any kind of domesticated fowl should desire to perambulate upon a conveyance normally reserved for the usage of...yes, sir.

Sarek: Sometimes my logic fails me where chickens are concerned.

Dax: To get to the other side. Kurzon might have disagreed with me, Tobin I'm sure wouldn't have had a clue,and then there's...

Tuvok: That's not a question we'd prefer to hear from a senior officer. It makes the junior officers nervous.

Dr. Crusher: Maybe since he couldn't make the other side to get to him, -he- had to get to the other side....

Dr. Soran: His heart just wasn't in it. (Scenes of chicken torture with nanoprobes have been edited out.)

Scotty: Because she couldna take much morrrrrre.

Charlie X: Because it didn't want to STAY...STAY...STAY...

Kirk: You chicken bastard, you killed my son...YOU chicken BASTARD, you killed...my SON...you CHICKEN bastard....youkilledmy...son!

Bones: Dammit, I'm a doctor, not an ornithologist!

Tasha: That depends...was it fully functional?

Chekov: It must have been on its way to assist in saving my life for the billionth time..did I scream this time?

Khan: With my last breath I spit at the chicken...

Harry: I don't know, it's my first mission.

Paris: Well, I think that...say, that's a lovely shirt you're wearing.

Harvey Mudd: Chicken? I don't remember any chicken. No no no, there's been a terrible misunderstanding.

Crewman in red suit: "Captain, this chicken seems to have crossed the AAARRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!"

Nurse Chapel: Oh, Spock, I fixed you your favorite Vulcan plomeek and chicken soup!

Lwaxana: Oh, Jean-Luc!

Janeway: Its primary goal was no doubt to get back to the Alpha Quadrant...and it probably misses its dog.

Dr. Suess:

Would you, could you cross the street On your two small chicken feet?

I would not, could not cross the street On my two small chicken feet. Across the road I will not scram Even though a fowl I am.

Would you cross it in Japan To flee Godzilla and Rodan

Not in Japan Godzilla and Rodan I would not, could not cross the street On my two small chicken feet. Across the road I will not scram Even though a fowl I am.

Would you cross the road and cluck And jump to avoid the speeding truck?

Not with a cluck to avoid a truck Not in Japan Godzilla and Rodan I would not, could not cross the street On my two small chicken feet Across the road I will not scram Even though a fowl I am.

Would you hop across the road As though you were a garden toad?

Not across the road as though a toad Not with a cluck to avoid a truck Not in Japan Godzilla and Rodan I would not could not cross the street On my two small chicken feet. Across the road I will not scram Even though a fowl I am.

Would you cross it in the night Lit by passing car headlight?

Not in the night With car headlight Not across the road As though a toad Not with a cluck To avoid a truck Not in Japan Godzilla and Rodan I would not could not cross the street On my two small chicken feet. Across the road I will not scram Even though a fowl I am.

Please dear chicken give it a try For across the road you can not fly.

Alright! Alright! I'll give it a try For it is true, chickens can't fly. Hey! It's not bad, infact it's neat! I truly love to cross the street. Across the road I LOVE to scram. I cross the road, a fowl I am.

[heysawbones]

Congratulations, Me; You’re Slow

Surprise, me! You’re literally slow. As in, your processing speed - the rate at which your brain takes in stimuli and makes sense of it - is below average. Quantitatively. The average is 100. Yours is 94. 

Three years ago, I was given a cognitive battery. I’ve had an unusually high number of these in my life. Most people will never have even one. I’ve had four; one to assess for the Gifted and Talented program in kindergarten, one to reassess for the same when I changed school districts, one to assess for ADHD, and yet another, the latest, to assess for the same, as the prior records were lost. ADHD runs in my family, but I seem to have been one of those kids who compensated really, really well. Was I organized? Not even a little. Lose things? Constantly. I procrastinated like a motherfucker, too, but it was usually easy to make up the work in class before it was due. I would drive hard to complete the GT project-based assignments at the last minute, and always did fine. Better than fine, even. Sure, I used to obsessively braid yarn or draw in class, but nobody had any reason to suspect I would have issues with things like maintaining attention or executive function later on. If they did, I never heard about it. Even today, it’s not obvious; people associate a certain flightiness with ADHD and that isn’t me. People associate a lot of things with ADHD that aren’t me. This has been so much of an issue, in fact, that despite meeting diagnostic criteria over and over, as admitted by clinicians, people have been hesitant to give me the diagnosis. The argument deployed tends to be: you have all the symptoms, but you also have chronic depression, which has the same symptoms, so we’ll just go with that one. The underlying rationale, the unspoken answer to “why can’t it be both? they often co-occur” seems to be: you are too articulate and self-aware to have ADHD. It boils down to you’re too smart to be slow. 

This is unfair to me, and demonstrably untrue, besides. I recognized this long ago. I am the one who has to figure out some way to compensate for the symptoms. Yes, the symptoms of depression and ADHD overlap (especially if you are depressed for a long time), but the treatment of those symptoms is not the same. I have been in treatment for depression for over ten years. Am I better than I was? Unquestionably so. 

Do I function at a level sustainable for an adult not on disability? Can I get places on time? Can I catch a plane without showing up 14 hours early, lest I show up 14 hours late, or at the wrong airport entirely, instead? Do I remember things people told me yesterday? Can I go to Target without the possibility of getting caught up in a weird cognitive trap where I want bananas, but am too guilty to buy them unless I do the rest of my grocery shopping, which I don’t have the mental energy for? Do I remember enough of my meds when I go on trips? Can I stop persistently putting things in places that make no sense, and then having no idea that I’ve done it 15 seconds later? Can I manage an adult’s schedule? Can I remember to pay bills on time? Can I remember what I’ve spent money on in the last week? Can I remember what I ate this morning? Can I hold down a job that is, honestly, below my abilities in many ways?

The answer is, of course, sometimes yes. Distressingly frequently, it is no. Where travel is concerned, it is always no, and somehow, I have managed to show up at the wrong airport entirely more than once. 

Yes, I recognize that these are problems all people have, to some degree, at some time in their lives. If people are willing to act on the belief that I am too smart to be slow, why is it that when I account for my concerns and attempt to articulate the impact they have on my life, I am suddenly not self-aware anymore, and am only overreacting to what obviously MUST be the same degree of these problems that other reasonable adults experience? Why am I credible in other areas, but not this one? If I am so smart, why is it assumed that I’ve failed to account for my own emotional bias when gauging the difficulty I am experiencing? Why is it more satisfying to assume that I am not trying hard enough, then it is to accept that a smart, self-aware person may, in fact, have some kind of Brain Problem that, really, there is no logical contraindication to, and much evidence, for? When I do the responsible thing and insistently pursue all reasonable options to address my mental and neurological health, with the goal of being a functional contributor to society, why is this so persistently reduced to a fetish specifically for an ADHD diagnosis? I’m smart when it’s convenient for others, but not when it comes to the ability to draw cause and effect relationships from my own behavior, and make comparisons between those and the behavior of others? If I got treatment that worked, I wouldn’t care what the diagnosis was. Come the fuck on. I’m tired of this.

-----

Anyway. I sat down with the results of that three-year-old cognitive battery. I’ve read the summary before; it’s peppered with lines like

“There is also considerable other evidence in this testing consistent with a diagnosis of ADHD”

“In my experience, some individuals who are very bright are able to compensate for some of their disability”

“this distribution of index scores is very typical of individuals with ADHD”

“Many of the behaviors she describes are certainly typical of individuals who suffer from ADHD. Unfortunately, the coexisting history of chronic major depression and PTSD make that differential diagnosis based on history alone difficult” 

When I first read that last year, I was shocked because the therapist who requested the cognitive battery, only expressed surprise that I was “very smart” and said that my “scores were fine.” When I later confronted him after having read the summary myself, he merely admitted that some of my scores were “lower than others”. He never entertained the possibility that I had ADHD, which in an of itself, wouldn’t have been a problem if he’d been willing to just try the treatments for it, since clearly the two industrial-strength doses of antidepressants I was already on, were not cutting it. Alas, he was not, and it wasn’t until after he retired that the issue was addressed again.

Surprisingly, I was not the person who addressed it. When my therapist-MD retired, I needed at least a primary care provider to manage my medications. Since the appointment was for psych med management, I had to fill out a bunch of related intake forms - you likely know the kind. While looking them over, my new doctor peered up at me and asked, “Has anybody ever suggested that you might have ADHD?” I was taken aback by the question and wasn’t sure where to start. Them? Asking me? if I have ADHD? She asked me? 

I told her that I’d had two full cognitive batteries done, and that both of them concluded roughly the same thing: yes, all the symptoms are there, no, we do not know if it’s ADHD because there’s too much background noise from other psych issues. Without skipping a beat, she said the most amazing thing to me: 

Well, whatever it is, you have the symptoms, so let’s treat them.

God. Why didn’t someone say that years ago? Diagnoses are human constructs; we use them to group symptoms that tend to occur together, when they’re thought to have the same causes. Depression and ADHD have many (but not all) of the same symptoms, but the overlap doesn’t qualify as a diagnosis because the causes are assumed to be different. I think we often forget that diagnoses are containers for commonalities that we use to make talking about medicine easier, not necessarily biological phenomena unto themselves. If you remember that they are containers - a sort of conceptual shorthand - then it follows that if one treatment for a set of symptoms isn’t solving the problem, you ought to try a different treatment often used for the same symptoms, even if the minutiae of diagnosis means you aren’t sure you can apply the diagnosis typically associated with that second treatment*.

I am now on Vyvanse. Does it magically solve my problems? No. Does it help? Yes. I am in a much better position to actually address the bad habits and coping mechanisms someone like me builds up over the years. The notable insomnia should wear off over time, and besides, as a person with an existing sleep disorder, having fucked up sleep isn’t new. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.

-----

Anyway. So I sat down with the results of that three-year-old cognitive battery, because I had to dig them up for my new therapist. Instead of reading the summary, I dug into the raw numbers: the related tests are the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale IV (WAIS-IV), and the Weschler Memory Scale III (WMS-III). I couldn’t find sufficient guidance on interpreting the WMS-III, so I’ll stick with the WAIS-IV scores:

At first inspection, these scores do look “fine”. Anything within 10 points of 100 in either direction qualifies as “average”, even if 100 is “the average”. But on further reading, both in the summary and out: 

-Examination of these results reveals considerable significant variability between various functional capacities, with VCI of 141 a full 3 standard deviations above PSI of 94.** Problems with both working memory and processing speed impacted her overall IQ considerably, bringing her Full Scale IQ down to 120 (from 133). 

-A significant difference among subtest scores can suggest a problem in the particular skill being tested; this might underlie a learning disability. A significant difference among standard Index Scores might also indicate a learning disability, ADHD

-when I see a difference in IQ scores such that the verbal and nonverbal scores are far superior to the processing speed score, I try to discern what could be causing the discrepancy.

-LD diagnoses are also reliant on score discrepancies. On the WAIS, a gifted individual with ADHD may look like this.

Verbal comprehension - 132

Perceptual Reasoning - 129

Processing Speed - 97

Working memory - 101

Absolute scores aren’t the only diagnostic tool. Relative scores are also important. For example, average scores across the board wouldn’t be indicative of a working memory or processing speed issue, whereas great discrepancies between those parameters and others, is - even if the working memory and processing speed scores themselves are the same in both examples. What I’m saying is, it’s right there. It’s in the numbers. There’s no wiggle room. My old therapist saw these numbers, and not only did he choose not to act on the information, he pointedly refused to do so. If he hadn’t retired, I’d look into suing for malpractice. It’s in the god damn numbers, my dude. I don’t care what you want to call it, the deficit is right. there.

What did I ever do to him? Did he just... not believe ADHD is real? More to the point, did he think I somehow, without knowing the ins and outs of the WAIS-IV, faked the deficits or something? Really, guy, what the hell?

-----

Do I feel bad about being slow? Honestly, no. I might have if I found this out 10 years ago, or in circumstances wherein that reality didn’t perfectly explain aspects of my experience that other people have been prone to downplay, or dismiss entirely. Instead, it’s the closest I can get to scientific verification that I’m not just losing my shit over nothing over here; that something has, in fact, gone awry, and may always have been awry. I couldn’t compensate forever (though the ways I’ve done it are many, and in retrospect, interesting) and now I’m on the other end of it, trying to rebuild. I am, as I like to say, building an exoskeleton - something that will hold me up when my brain insists on faceplanting. I’m just grateful there’s someone out there who isn’t too caught up in the semantic navel-gazing of diagnosis, to help.

*There are obvious exceptions here, such as when the two diagnoses have causes whose treatment is contraindicated in the other diagnosis. This is not the case with depression and ADHD.

** You see that Percentile Rank of 34? That means I performed better than 34 percent of people my age, at least according to the test sample. That’s. Not great.

[blancheludis]

A/N: @iron-man-bingo square: Power Swap

Fandom: Marvel, Avengers Characters: Thor/Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, JARVIS Tags: Power Swap, Pre-Relationship, Wise Thor, H/C, Angst, Magic Words: 4.775

Summary: It would have been too easy if the spell only made Thor an expert on nuclear phsyics and Bruce able to swing Mjolnir. Instead, Thor is turning green, battling with the Hulk stuck in his body, and Bruce cannot touch anyone without shocking them with the electricity flying from his fingertips. Meanwhile, New York is living through the longest thunderstorm in recorded history. Nothing is ever simple where the Avengers are concerned. 

---

The full extent of the spell does not become immediately obvious, which is a small miracle, considering the instant panic that breaks out when the Hulk goes down with a roar in the blinding light, and Thor crashes to the ground like a marionette with his strings cut.

It all happens so suddenly that no one can tell exactly what happened. They did not even know the guy in the funny hat they were fighting could wield magic until he started attacking them with coloured lightning bolts from his hands and turned nearby stones and objects into animated suits of armour fighting for him. If magic were not one of Tony’s least favourite things in the world, the guy would have gotten bonus points for his imaginative attacks.

Even before the light from the magic explosion has faded, Tony directs a small grenade at the two animated suits of armour he is fighting and launches into the air to check on his friends. Possible danger aside, they just saw two of their strongest fighters go down. Two of their friends. He trusts the rest of the Avengers to take care of the battle so long.

“They’re alive but unconscious,” JARVIS tells him, scanning the debris before Tony has a visual on them.

Tony finds Thor first. Lying on the ground, he looks fragile despite his massive form. Despite JARVIS’ reassurance, he kneels down and, retracting the gauntlet on one hand, checks for a pulse. He finds it immediately, strong and steady, appearing almost angry in its intensity.

“Come on, buddy,” Tony mutters as he reaches out to shake Thor’s shoulders, “wake up.”

There is no reaction. On the first glance, there is no visible wound either. No blood, no broken bones, not even a dent in the armour.

Just unconscious, Tony thinks to himself as he studies the vitals JARVIS brings up helpfully in the HUD. That is certainly not good but nothing Tony can do anything about right now. Further answers have to wait until Thor wakes up.

“Keep an eye on him,” Tony says to JARVIS before he turns around and goes looking for the Hulk.

Anyone able to take down the Hulk is a more serious opponent than they first thought. After only a few steps, Tony finds something even more worrying than that.

In the rubble, unmoving and mostly naked, is Bruce instead of the Hulk. The Hulk has taken hits before that knocked him out shortly, but never has he transformed back into Bruce this suddenly. They really need to have someone more versed in magic than Tony to look Thor and Bruce over.

First, Tony repeats his procedure with Bruce, checking for a pulse and trying to wake him. He is not actually relieved to find Bruce in the same condition as Thor.

The air is filled with an almost palpable tension, like when Thor is furious, causing storm clouds to gather around the tower. Tony hopes that means Thor is regaining consciousness.

“They’re unconscious but according to JARVIS not in immediate danger,” Tony informs the rest of the team over the comms. “We need to wrap this up quickly.”

And, surprisingly, they do. It is almost as if the wizard has lost all interest in the fight once he managed to take out two of the Avenger with his big ball of light. He laughs and taunts them, but does not create any more guardians for himself, and when Clint and Tony double their efforts to take him down, he vanishes with a twirl of his cloak. The way he is cackling makes Tony believe that this is not the last they have seen of him.

For now, though, they have more important concerns. They need to get their teammates home and make sure they are all right.

 ---

Thor wakes up screaming. Something is terribly wrong with him. His skin feels like it belongs to someone else, like something is scratching at it from the inside. His mind, too, is so full all of a sudden that he can barely grasp a single thought.

He hears voices talking over each other, some of them familiar, but some seem to come from inside his head.

Before he has a chance to collect himself, his world erupts into green.

Bruce comes to in a hospital room. That in itself is such a familiar sight that he merely sighs long-sufferingly, wishing the Hulk would not control his life to such an amount that, even when he is withdrawing into Bruce’s skin, it leaves him exhausted to the point of passing out.

When he sits up, intent on getting back to his room to get some real sleep, he notices he is not connected to the heart monitor. Not even an IV line is sticking out of his arm. No matter how often he told the doctors here that all of that is unnecessary – ignoring the fact of the Hulk’s sheer existence, nothing is actually wrong with him that means he needs to be supervised – they always insist on the whole shebang.

It is strange that they would have refrained from doing so all of a sudden. He tries to think back to what happened, but all he remembers is the Avengers alarm going off and then just flashes and a sudden, blinding light. Then nothing.

Frowning, Bruce makes to get out of bed when he notices that the metal railing, even left down as they are, are wrapped with blankets. That, frankly, does not make any sense at all. Even if he was thrashing around, which sometimes happens after a transformation, he was in no danger of hurting himself with them.

A sudden noise has him looking up. Tony stands in the doorway, untypically reserved. Normally, he would have already come in and jumped onto Bruce’s bed, chattering either about the fight or some experiment he is working on. Tony Stark does not just hold back.

“How are you feeling?”

Bruce’s frown deepens. That, too, is strange. Tony cares a lot about all of them, but he is usually not this direct about it. The question has enough weight to it to really make him think about it, too.

“Calm.”

The moment Bruce says that, he realizes it is true. A stillness has taken hold of his mind that he has become utterly unused to, leaving all his thoughts to echo without an instant response.

The Other Guy is a constant presence in his mind. Sometimes, after a fight, he is muted when they are both exhausted. This utter silence, however, is frightening in its intensity. Bruce never thought the absence of his constant struggle to keep the upper hand against the Hulk would trouble him this much.

“What happened?” Bruce asks, his hands clenching around the bed sheet. He is frantically searching the recesses of his mind for the Hulk’s presence – and finds nothing.

“It’s all right, Bruce,” Tony says, holding out his hands in a calming gesture. He still does not come into the room, though. “Don’t panic. It’s –”

“What. Happened.”

Thunder crashes outside, making both of them flinch. Bruce would not have paid it any mind, if there was not plain worry written all over Tony’s face as he glances out the window. The sky outside is black, roiling clouds surround the tower as if it is their epicentre. It looks close to what it does when Thor is raging.

“You need to take a deep breath,” Tony says in a deceptively calm tone, still looking at the window. “Everyone’s safe. I’d come closer but you’re only going to shock me again if I do, and I don’t think my heart would like that.”

Tony is talking nonsense. He looks frazzled and tired, making Bruce wonder whether the battle was more taxing than what he can tell from the few snippets he remembers.

“Shock you?” Bruce echoes, even though that is not his main concern by far at the moment. If someone developed a weapon or method to temporarily – or permanently – take out the Hulk, Bruce needs to know. Although he is not sure what he would do with that information, not while he is on the verge of panic at not having to struggle against the Other Guy. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Sighing, Tony runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up worse than before. The rings under his eyes appear to get darker by the minute.

“You and Thor were hit by a spell,” Tony says, then falls abruptly silent. It has new worry shooting through Bruce. What if something serious happened to Thor? What if the Hulk did something to him? Before he can voice that, Tony continues, dragging each word out as if he would prefer to swallow them back down. “Now he’s very much green all the time and you have an electricity problem.”

Bruce cannot do anything but stare. He is sure he has misheard or that Tony is making a very bad joke. His face remains serious, though, even though none of this makes sense.

Looking down at his hands, Bruce notices for the first time the tingling in his fingertips. Cautiously, he reaches out for the bedrails and pulls the blanket to the side. A spark flies immediately from his index finger, travelling through the metal rail with a hum. He does it two more times, reaching the same result.

That is one hell of an electricity problem. Once that realization hits, Bruce is reminded of what else Tony said. He is not nearly ready to process any of what is happening right now. All he knows is that sparks are flying from his fingers and that his head and body, for the first time in years, are completely his own.

“Thor is what?” Bruce asks, deceptively calm.

Tony, to give him credit, looks right into Bruce’s eyes. “Thor is battling the Hulk.”

“As in the two of them are fighting somewhere or –” He trails off. None of this makes sense. The Hulk is not a separate entity, not in the way that he can just jump out of Bruce’s head into the real world without taking Bruce with him. They are one. In a way, Bruce understands that now although he has always refused to believe it before.

“Or,” Tony says like that is an acceptable answer. He looks decidedly uncomfortable. “Somehow you can call lightning, and Thor is housing the Hulk in his body.”

For a moment, everything is still. Neither of them moves, while Bruce’s mind is as empty as it has not been in forever. Then, all at once, panic hits.

“Where is he?” Bruce jumps to his feet, almost yelling. The thought of someone else having to carry the burden of the Hulk is unbearable, especially since there is no way of forgetting how much destruction Bruce wrought before he managed to get the slightest bit of control over the Hulk. “We need to sedate him. They might just tear down the whole tower and –”

“Calm down,” Tony cuts through his worried rambling. He finally takes a step into the room but comes to an abrupt halt, grimacing. There is a crackling tension in the air, Bruce notices that only now. “Thor has turned green several times in the last hour, but the only thing they’ve destroyed until now are Thor’s clothes. Their fighting is a purely internal thing. If that makes sense.”

It does not. The Hulk’s only purpose is to destroy. There is no reasoning with him, no getting the upper hand.

“Take me to them,” Bruce demands. He walks forward but stops when the air keeps crackling. He clenches his hands, hides them against his hospital gown, but it does not get much better.

“Thor has sent us all away. Roared it really,” Tony says and looks apologetic about it, almost as if he is afraid how Bruce will react to being kept away from the Hulk.

He should be rejoicing or, at the very least, be glad to be rid of the Hulk, however temporarily. He does not wish this burden on anyone else, though, much less a friend. And that is ignoring the pain and destruction they can cause.

“We need to take care of your sparkling problem first,” Tony continues when Bruce does not know what to say, what to do. “I brought you gloves.”

With automatic movements, Bruce catches the gloves out of the air when Tony throws them at him. They are surprisingly modest for something obviously coming out of Tony’s workshop. He pulls them on, not wanting to think about what they are made of or why he needs them. If he has shocked people just by them coming too close to him, it is no surprise why he was not attached to any of the monitoring devices and why no one dared to stick a needle in him.

Gathering his thoughts as best as he can, Bruce nods. “Now,” he says in a tone brooking no argument, “take me to Thor.”

Tony wants to argue. That is what he does. In the end, though, he merely shrugs and steps back to let Bruce through the door. They walk in tense silence for a few minutes directly towards Bruce’s lab and the safe room built into the back of it. Bruce is not sure he can stand the sight of someone else locked inside there.

“What’s with the storm outside?” he asks, mostly to distract himself, although he supposes the answer is not something he actually wants to hear either.

“That’s all you,” Tony says, less boisterous than he would normally have. “God of Thunder, remember. It’s been brewing since you began to wake up.”

Great, Bruce thinks, not only are they going to let the Hulk loose on New York, it is going to be during an unnatural thunderstorm too. He has seen first-hand the damage Thor can do with the lightning he calls, and Bruce would definitely prefer it if he did not accidentally burn down the whole city because he does not know how to control his new gift. Control has never really been his thing.

When they arrive in the lab, Bruce’s eyes fall immediately on Thor. He is sitting with his back against the wall, a blanket pulled over his naked form to allow him at least some privacy. His eyes are closed and his knuckles are white where he has clenched them around his knees.

Bruce’s heart immediately goes out to Thor. Nobody should have to experience that. The first transformations were the worst. Each time, Bruce thought he could fight it, could stave it off. He never could, and the more he fought, the worse it hurt.

“Thor,” he calls out without thinking, going up as close as he can. “You need to calm yourself. You need to –”

He would have rattled off all the useless advice people have given him over the years, mind tricks and mantras, none of which ever helped. In the face of his friend’s suffering, he feels helpless enough to try, though.

That is when Thor looks up, eyes falling directly on Bruce. They are gleaming green, the way Bruce has seen in the mirror far too often. Suddenly, Thor’s skin seems to ripple, and Bruce has the questionable honour of seeing someone transform into the Hulk for the first time. He feels every second, every bending of joints and stretching of muscles, as if it is happening to him, the pure agony of being ripped apart and stitched back together again wrong.

Then the Hulk is standing before him, mouth opened as if to roar. His eyes are still on Bruce, wild but strangely conscious at the same time.

“Banner,” Hulk roars and jumps forward, hands banging against the transparent wall separating them. His fists are bigger than Bruce’s head.

He truly is a monster, Bruce realizes as he takes an instinctive step back, unable to do anything more than to stare at the personification of his rage, suddenly all separate from him. This is the ugly truth of who he is.

Tony appears at Bruce’s side, hand hovering over his shoulder but never actually touching down. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Bruce wants nothing more than that. He needs to bring several walls between himself and the sight of Thor trapped inside the Hulk. “But I –” he protests anyway, although Tony thankfully cuts him off.

“Thor seems to have it under control,” Tony says, even though control looks very differently from this. “But the Big Guy reacted to your presence. Let’s give them time to settle.”

When Bruce turns towards Tony, he catches a reflection of his own eyes, seeing how wild they are even without the Hulk fuelling his inner fire.

“The Hulk does not settle,” Bruce argues, desperate for them to understand that. He has tried unsuccessfully for years. “He is made to destroy.”

Tony glances between him and the Hulk, obviously put off by the fact that they are actually sharing a place but not a body at the moment.

“Well,” he says slowly, “right now, he really wants to get to you. And since we don’t know what for or what that would do to Thor, I suggest we’ll give the two of them some room.”

Bruce has some ideas what the Hulk might want with him, none of them good, but Tony is right. No matter what this situation is doing to him, he cannot do anything that threatens Thor’s well-being. Not anymore than he already has.

“I can’t –” he says and trails off, unsure what to say, what to argue against.

“Come on,” Tony smiles, his whole face gentle, “let’s make your room electricity proof.”

 ---

Nobody sees Thor for a whole week. He remains locked up in his room or the Hulk cage and refrains from commenting on how he is doing.

Meanwhile, Bruce does not know what to do with himself. Without the Hulk, he feels strangely empty, helpless even. He cannot even work or do much research concerning the nature of the spell that switched their powers, since he cannot control the electricity flowing out of his fingers.

Outside, the thunderstorm does not stop raging.

 ---

The presence of the Hulk slams back into Bruce without warning, a sudden force pushing past his superficial thoughts and settling back in his mind with so much intrusive shamelessness as if it has a right to be there.

Bruce’s instinctive reaction is relief. Disgust at himself rises only moments later, but he cannot deny that this is the first time in over a week that he does not breathe with ever-constant panic constricting his chest. That relief is not even caused by the knowledge that Thor has to be free of the Hulk now. It is just that he is complete again, no matter how often that puts him at odds with himself.

Outside, the clouds are already dissipating as the first hint of sunlight hits New York underneath. Bruce does not even have to test touching something to know that he will not shoot any more sparks from his fingers. The constant tension and slight burnt smell that has surrounded him for the past week is gone.

Without thinking, Bruce gets up, intent on finding the rest of his team to tell them the curse is lifted, that they are back to normal. A sudden thought lets him pause in the hallway, though.

Shame fills him at the mere prospect of having to see Thor. How can they remain friends after what he put Thor through? How can they even keep working together? The Hulk is Bruce’s greatest failure, his greatest shame. He cannot stand the thought of having shared it with someone. Especially not someone he admires.

“JARVIS,” Bruce says cautiously.

“Yes, Dr. Banner?” JARVIS answers immediately. Once, Bruce had felt uncomfortable at that. By now, it has become just another part of normal, another safety feature in case he turns into the Hulk where he is not supposed to be.

“Could you please tell Tony that the spell seems to be reversed?” With some hesitation, he adds, “And that I don’t want to be disturbed? I think I need some time to deal with –”

He does not know how to finish his sentence, but it appears he does not have to.

“Certainly,” JARVIS says, sounding gentle. “Don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything.”

It is not even a complete lie that he needs some rest. Living with the Hulk is a constant struggle, even though the Hulk is suspiciously quiet at the moment. It is almost like he is humming, content to be home. The week of being free has apparently robbed Bruce of all his senses. Soon enough, they will fight against each other again. They always do.

 ---

Three days later, Thor’s patience runs out. JARVIS had announced several times that Thor was on his way to Bruce’s rooms, asking about his well-being, but Bruce had sent him away each time. Avoidance is never a solution, but he really does not want to have this conversation.

Now, though, Thor stands outside of Bruce’s room, having knocked and called for several minutes, showing no inclination of allowing himself to be ignored again.

“Bruce,” he says again, tone soft despite the booming of his voice. “I will not have you hide in your room.”

The alternative is to let Bruce, and therefore the Hulk, walk amongst them again. Surely, as someone who experienced the raw rage of the Hulk himself, Thor does not want that but is too kind to say it.

Taking a deep breath, Bruce decides to get this over and done with. He opens the door but finds himself speechless. This is definitely Thor standing in front of him, tall and magnificent, hardly changed, but Bruce cannot help but remember how it looked when he was torn apart to give room for the Hulk. The shame pooling inside his stomach is getting unbearable.

“You don’t –” he says, then tries again, “I’d understand if you want to stay away from me now.”

That is not what he wanted to say. He wanted to offer to leave to make it easier on all of them. Before he can correct himself, he is rendered speechless again by the sheer confusion on Thor’s face.

“Why would I want to do that?”

He sounds honest, and still Bruce cannot contain the startled and mostly bitter laugh falling from his lips. “You know what I am,” he says slowly, full of loathing. “You’ve felt the Hulk. You –”

“Know how strong you really are,” Thor interrupts him, no trace of doubt in his voice. “To live like this, with yourself split in two, I admire you. Fearing you would be an insult to both you and the Hulk.”

The thing is, Thor sounds honest. There is no mocking or scorn hidden anywhere in his tone or face. In a way, that makes it much harder for Bruce to believe him. He could have taken yelling or an outright fight. He could have packed his things and left like he has done a thousand times before. Instead, here he is, faced with an honesty he does not know what to do with.

“I’m a monster,” Bruce says, toneless but utterly convinced this will be it.

Thor frowns as if Bruce has displeased him. When he speaks, though, it is still not at all what Bruce expects.

“You are a man sharing a body with an honourable ally.” A smile tugs at Thor’s lips that looks almost fond, enthused with excitement. “The Hulk is not to be feared. He is –”

“You fought him,” Bruce cuts in, incredulous and certain he is missing something important here. “For an entire week, you were at war with that piece of me you got stuck with. So how can you pretend the Hulk is anything but to be despised?”

It is a miracle that nothing happened during this week, that Thor managed to contain the Hulk. Thor is much stronger than Bruce, of course, which is only partly due to him being a god. Still, it must have taken effort.

“He fought me,” Thor agrees with misplaced cheer, “because he woke up to find you gone.” He looks at Bruce for a long moment as if to make sure that he understood the words. “The two of you are tethered together. You are his safe haven. He naturally struggled against me. He –” Thor shrugs with a smile. “He called me a traitor for separating the two of you.”

No matter the conviction in Thor’s tone, Bruce cannot believe him. It is kind of Thor to try to make Bruce feel better about this, but Bruce has been fighting this for years. He created this demon sitting under his skin, constantly waiting for him to show some weakness.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce offers, unsure what else to say, how to make Thor realize that he is wrong.

“Don’t be,” Thor replies brightly. “We came to an understanding.”

With undisguised bitterness, Bruce mutters, “The Hulk doesn’t understand anything.” He truly is a creature beyond reason.

Shaking his head, Thor reaches out and puts his hand on Bruce’s shoulder, not withdrawing when Bruce instinctively flinches.

“He knows fear and love,” Thor says earnestly. “That in itself makes him relatable enough.”

Bruce wishes he had never opened the door. “I don’t – I’m sorry you were burdened with this.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Thor counters immediately. He is still standing in the open door, full of patience. “It led me to see many a thing I was blind to before, even though it was right in front of my eyes.”

His gaze is warm and heavy as it rests on Bruce, speaking of things Bruce cannot quite decipher.

“What do you mean?” he asks despite knowing better. Some questions are better off unanswered.

“When I call, the storm comes,” Thor answers without explaining anything, “you calmed it.”

Just when Bruce was sure they were getting somewhere, Thor has to say something like this. A smile tugs at his lips that tastes purely bitter on his tongue. “You might have missed this, considering you were busy fighting the Hulk, but the sky has been rumbling for this entire week.”

Thor nods as if Bruce has made a good point and one that is not at all contrary to his own argument. “My storms are meant to bring about the end of armies. Yet the city still stands.” He squeezes his hand around Bruce’s shoulder before taking it back. “The storm has not wrought the chaos the thunder promised.”

“What are you saying?”

Bruce’s confusion only rises. He just does not know what is happening. Only a few minutes ago, he was ready to leave the Avengers, certain that they are better off without him. Now, though, he thinks Thor is trying to tell him otherwise.

“You are worthy of songs being sung for millennia to come. Perhaps I will write a few of my own,” Thor declares with the air of promise. His lips turn up in a crooked smile as he amends, “If you are willing to hear them.”

The friendship between them is apparently not over as Bruce had feared. On the contrary, Thor looks at him with a warmth that has not been there before, inviting and certain in a way Bruce has never been about anything.

“Don’t make your decision right now,” Thor says before Bruce can reply – which is a good thing because he is not sure what is required of him here. “Listen to what your guardian has to say. I will await your answer.”

With that, Thor turns around, a spring in his step that Bruce has not seen before. He is still not entirely sure what happened, but begins to believe that it was not a bad thing.

What he notices too is the slight crackling of the air that disappears with Thor. It has become familiar to Bruce over the past week, the constant presence of energy waiting to be released. He misses it.

When he walks back into his room, he listens into himself, half expecting the Other Guy to rage at how close Bruce let Thor come to him. Instead, he is humming almost in approval.

Nothing makes sense, that is the only thing Bruce is certain about at the moment. What he feels, too, is the wish to hear the kind of song Thor would sing about him. He just has to work on being worthy of it – and maybe accept that Thor thinks he already it. 

[moistwithgender]

Monthly Media Roundup (June-July 2019)

Well, I neglected doing a post last month, and now another has passed. I haven’t done too much, about three games each month and not anything else media-wise, so let’s get it all done right now!

Little Nightmares (PC/Steam): 

These types of spooky “cinematic platformers”, like LIMBO and INSIDE, never really scare me or fill me with dread. Part of this may be that due to the trappings of cinematic platformers. Checkpoints are very fair, and nothing is too difficult because priority is on delivering the story. Little side challenges exist, like trying to light all the candles or break all the porcelain dolls in the short 3-hour run of the game, but these are also pretty reasonable, even if you’re in a chase sequence. I’m reminded of a youtuber I briefly followed who talked about how horror games aren’t scary anymore, and somewhat unintentionally delivered the point that as you become accustomed to the limits of a medium, and therefore are less likely to be surprised by it, you’re also much less likely to be scared by it. It’s a somewhat unfortunate and inevitable trade-off to becoming more invested in a hobby. When I was a kid, all games held infinite possibility, and so an NPC in Harvest Moon telling me that wild dogs came out at night led me to think that night time held the possibility of ENEMIES in a game without combat. What the NPC meant was that you should build fences. As an adult who has spent my life playing games, I can tell you that a game is almost never going to put you in a situation without the means to deal with it. If there’s going to be combat, you’re going to know how combat works before an ambush. If there’s an escape sequence, you’re going to be in an area that facilitates your escape (often a narrow space that leads you in a direction while also making it as harrowing as possible). Games are theme park rides, and while learning that can make seemingly difficult games more manageable and enjoyable, it also gradually disillusions you. Thankfully, there are always new things to learn if you keep an open mind.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS): 

2019 has been about thoroughly enjoying the games that I considered overrated in my young adulthood. I joked on twitter that 70% of my personality was disliking Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time, and honestly, it might as well have been. I earned a lot of undeserved respect in college through arrogantly spouting hot takes about “objectively good art”, and a lot of people reasonably assumed this must mean I know exactly what I’m talking about. The way I process art and media is much looser and more personal than it used to be, partially due to burning out and becoming too exhausted to deal with other arrogant people. I think a lot about how tiring I had to be for other people to talk to. Watching Tim Rogers bleed his personal trauma into his video series on the subtleties of FF7’s japanese script was the most instrumental in turning me back toward the game. When Square Enix revealed gameplay footage of the remake at E3 this year, I was hooting and hollering with the longtime fans.

But, this is about Zelda, not Final Fantasy. I had already played through OoT, as hurriedly as possible, just to say I had done it. It was the better part of a decade ago, at the urging of a then-girlfriend who had nostalgia for it. Frustrations with the Water Temple in the original version are valid despite it being largely well designed, due to some minor shortsighted-ness that blows up into nagging issues, but I think I had put myself in the headspace to dislike it from the get-go. Similarly, I didn’t want to do any collecting in the game as a whole. I had convinced myself that there was no joy to be found in collecting in games (a take bereft of nuance). When the point of Zelda games is to inspire the player to explore every nook and cranny in search of rewards, going in as a player and stubbornly trying to avoid any of that ensures that you’ll miss the point of the whole experience. I’m not sure what it was that made me want to go back. It might be that I wanted to prove my younger, cockier self wrong, and pave over my old evaluations with more nuance. 

It certainly worked out that way, as several previous opinions changed entirely. Ruto used to be annoying to me, but was now one of my favorite characters. Doing all the little minigames felt rewarding in itself, and in turn I was unexpectedly rewarded with important items (they really did bet everything on the entire world they’d made). The Water Temple, now tweaked for a bit more convenience in the 3DS version, was extremely interesting. The side quest to acquire the Biggoron Sword was easily doable, whereas I had grown up assuming it impossible. And the story which had never appealed to me (because I wouldn’t let it) now felt relatable in a way I hadn’t expected. Link intends to do good, but through unfortunate circumstances and honest mistakes becomes unable to take part in the world, and it spirals downward for years as he remains trapped in a room, aging but inactive. Something about that mirrors my own experiences with depression. Sure, Link, can travel back to his younger self at any time, but there’s still a powerlessness in the inability to affect the seven year gap. You can flash back, but you can’t change what you’ve lost.

Banjo-Kazooie (N64): 

You know, as a kid I probably would have just accepted that Grunty was evil, but as an adult it’s hard not to see her as a product of her environment. Obsessed with asking her cauldron who the objectively prettiest in the world is, she seeks out and kidnaps the younger girl given the title in an attempt to steal her youth. Every character in the game describes Grunty as ugly, rather than evil, and even her own sister shows up in every area to tell you how gross she is and how terrible her lifestyle is. I ended up sympathizing with her more than anyone else. I’ve only played half an hour of Banjo-Tooie, but it was a relief in multiple ways to see her pivot to straight up murder after rising from the dead.

Despite playing Donkey Kong Country multiple times growing up, I’d never really grown to love Rare’s in-house aesthetic of big-eyed cartoony animals. It might be hypocritical, but Smash Ultimate’s reveals for both King K. Rool and Banjo (and) Kazooie made me see the charm in these characters. Something about how Smash canonizes characters as essential pieces of game history always causes me to drop any negative pretense and adopt them as favorites. It’s a little intellectually hypocritical, but I can’t help liking what I like. After the trailer for B-K in Smash, I immediately started up the original game in Retroarch. Thankfully the core I used was advanced enough to play the game without issues (the same cannot be said for Tooie), as other alternatives were expensive or hard to get a hold of. While the slightly-mean humor and talking animate objects took a bit of getting used to, I get it now. I get the children’s show aesthetic they were aiming for, and I appreciate the feel of the physics and control of the interspecies friendship of the protagonists working in tandem with each other, even if the game is at times quite difficult.

Dragon Quest I, II, & III (SNES): 

Yes, I did play through three JRPGs in a row! And yes, you might notice that the hero of Dragon Quest XI (and VIII, and IV, and III) was also announced for Smash Ultimate. They recently released, as of this writing! A lot of what I’ve been playing has been influenced by outside forces, whether it be Nintendo news or friends, but I’m not bothered at all when otherwise I might not have the energy to play anything. The games I’ve been playing are also ones I’ve intended to play for a while, so the excuses have been convenient for me. Though, actually, this decision had less to do with the Smash announcement and more to do with the upcoming re-release of DQXI, which seems to be related to the original three games, known as The Erdrick Trilogy. I had heard that you can play XI on its own, but that there is an extra layer of appreciation to be had if you’ve played the original trilogy. Me being me, I naturally queued them up. I chose the older fan translations of the SNES remakes, and though I did finish them, I can tell you that they have their fair share of bugs (DQII even has a game breaking glitch I had to finagle through using save states across multiple versions, phew). Besides that, those old translations lack the modern localizations of the games, so if they namedrop something in XI, there’s a chance it’ll go over my head. Oops! If you want to play these games, the best versions are currently on mobile phones.

Around a decade ago I was in early college, with no friends except for those still in high school or at another university. I was very lonely and nervous. I started playing Dragon Quest V purely by chance, and it served as the perfect salve for that loneliness, with its lonely child protagonist traveling around the world accumulating found family. It’s one of the more poignant and cathartic JRPGs I’ve ever played, and for the next decade I would actually be bothered that the rest of the games didn’t live up to the catharsis of DQV.

In revisiting the roots of the series, and playing it through to see how it develops from title to title, it finally clicked with me, and continues to click with me, as I keep learning more about the series. Rather than comparing every entry to DQV, I should have been comparing them in order. This might sound obvious, but it really did make a world of difference to see that V’s narrative is placed on top of the foundation the previous games set, rather than a singular case of lightning in a bottle. And the games have always featured loneliness, but in differing contexts, and to different degrees. The hero of DQI is almost entirely alone through the full game. In DQII, the princess comes from lonely circumstances, and one of the princes comes down with a sickness that leaves him temporarily unable to help his friends. In DQIII you can make as many team members as you want, but you grow up with an absent father, and your own good deeds receive bittersweet resolution. They are all games built on simple settings and followed through with empathy. The series is at times disarmingly heavy, which is part of what makes the games as memorable as they are. You’re never quite as prepared for Dragon Quest as you think you are.

As of this writing I’m currently half-way through a replay of Dragon Quest IV, and I’m enjoying it a lot more. I’m looking forward to replaying V. I have no idea what VI will be like. I’ve heard it’s a lower point in the series, but that’s what I heard about II as well, and I ended up loving it, so who knows. Dragon Quest is good.

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Well, I managed to catch up. I didn’t get into the finer details of the DQ playthroughs, but DQIII is honestly so good I don’t want to spoil it for anyone (you should play these games). Maybe in August I’ll actually get back to watching and reading things. Maybe I’ll try to keep these things to a single paragraph per item, to make it more manageable to read. Let me know what you think, if you think.

[whatifididsomethingnew]

Take Your Medication

I’m a college freshman in my second semester. I’ve been struggling with depression and ADHD for who knows how long, but I was diagnosed(i think? idk if it was official) in my freshman year of high school and given medication for it sometime in my senior year.

I didn’t take the medication very often. I started off strong, taking the ADHD medication especially to get me through classes and make sure the dosage lasted me to sixth period, my worst class at the time. But over the summer I stopped because I decided that the positive effects didn’t make up for the side effects: a lack of appetite and dry mouth.

Below the keep reading is my experience with mental illnesses and medication. It’s long. tl;dr If you have access to medication, take it. It helps. And make sure the dosage is right for you

 I’ve never been a bad student. Aside from failing algebra 2 in freshman year (ive never been good at “advanced” math, it was an IB class so even worse, and even better students agreed that the teacher was awful), I’ve gotten at worst 1-2 C’s per year. But since middle school I’ve found myself unable to pay attention, preferring to think about the book I want to read or the game I want to play or even just something else I started learning about. I figured out how to get by with finished homework and average tests. But I took about 6 AP tests in high school and only passed one, because I couldn’t study well enough to retain all the information I learned and forgot over the course, or pay attention to the exam to finish the multiple choice, or have enough foundation in the subject to write an essay that mattered at all.

This point in my life has almost certainly been my worst, depression-wise. I only live about twenty minutes away from my parents’ house, and I go home every weekend so I’m not just alone in my apartment for three days straight, but I’m still isolated during the week. My friends that are still in high school are busy with classes and extracurriculars and meeting with friends they still see everyday and very few of them have their own cars to drive up to visit me, and my friends in college are all busier than ever, all going to school anywhere from 15 minutes to like four hours away. My bad days are worse and happen more often and can span into bad weeks. I tend to write at best 1 page of notes after about 2 1/2 hours of classes a week, and drain my phone battery down to the sixties because I don't pay attention in lectures on subjects I’m not interested in. 

In high school I couldn’t wait for college, because I could choose my classes and the times and had the opportunity to make friends! But I realized I’m bad at making friends; I made one friend in kindergarten, when times were simpler, and all my lasting relationships (aside from my online friends, whom I treasure dearly) can be attributed to that one friendship. (I actually made a flowchart during class when another student was presenting, and I had the energy and motivation because I actually took my meds today!)

All this personal information about my Bad Times™ is to make you understand how much I needed to take my medication. But I don’t have classes everyday, so I didn’t think that taking ADHD meds everyday was worth it, and I (incorrectly) recalled that taking the depression meds didn’t help me enough to validate taking it everyday, instead only when it got really bad, but that plan didn’t work because when my depression is bad I don’t even have enough energy to text back or walk like four steps total to get my laptop, let alone walk to the bathroom and get the pills. 

So I didn’t take it, besides from when I worked my first 8-hour shifts at my first job. And those side-effects were extreme, because my body wasn’t used to these meds that were incredibly high in dosage because that’s what I need. I felt nauseous and dizzy enough to faint and went to the back room like four times an hour for a drink of water and it was still way less than I wanted. And I still didn’t learn my lesson about how the side-effects would get easier to handle if I took them more, but worse if I only took them on worst-case bases. I was thinking more in the moment about how bad I felt then, rather than about how I could feel better in the future if I pushed through.

I had a series of awful days, just last week. I cried several tears with no clear cause, only my own thoughts and boredom and depression, which means a lot in relation to me because I don’t cry. I watched Dear Evan Hansen and The Prom live, both with the original cast, and only cried a total of five tears at most, despite how these musicals and their subject matters are very dear to me. It was a bad week that came out of nowhere, nothing extraordinarily bad happened. I did the same thing as always, if not more. But still, it was a very bad week, because I was experiencing the heavy depression and it didn’t go away after I fell asleep. I don’t have classes on Wednesdays this semester; I have a lab on Mondays, and three lectures in a row on Tuesdays and Thursdays because I learned last semester that having enough leisure time to chill in my apartment for several hours between classes only makes going to the later class way more tedious. I usually get picked up by one of my parents on Thursdays while whichever of them it is drives home from work that day. That week I was lucky to have my Thursday classes cancelled, so I got picked up a day early. 

Being home is good for my health, adding it all up. It makes me a bit insecure about being independent, but fuck that I’m only 18 and I love my parents, I don’t need to be completely independent yet. Being home only improved when @pointlessoressential moved in with me; having someone so similar to me in regards of being content sitting and doing our own thing without the expectation to have something to Do™  all the time. It’s good for me, to have someone around me so I don’t get too isolated, but also not too overwhelmed. I’m usually pretty open with my mom, too, so being with her during the weekend and being able to talk with her or watch some easy TV together is good. I’ve never been very good at opening up to people; my main characterization with friends I’m not as close with is sarcasm and puns and whatever other humor to distract both of us from personal issues. I’ve been trying to get better, with help and reminders from the aforementioned bee and mom, as well as my best friend (who yes my meeting of and bonding with can indirectly be connected to that kindergarten friend, if you were wondering) who is much more skilled at telling me about her feelings than I am. But I’m trying. So I told my mom about how I had been having a bad week, once I got home.

My mom has dealt with depression her whole life, too. Most of her life she thought she also had anxiety, but when I was diagnosed with ADHD, the psychiatrist who had prescribed me the medications I take explained to both of us that ADHD in afab people (I'd say women bc my mom is cis but I'm nonbinary, so afab people) can be misdiagnosed as anxiety bc it’s different from what TV shows it to be, and the reactive anxiety (as opposed to constant, causeless anxiety from an anxiety disorder) is a symptom of ADHD. She’s dealt with the same issues all her life, so I go to her often when I hit the wall.

She told me to take the medication. I said I didn’t like the side-effects. She bought me mouthwash that helps dry mouth and a box of Rice Krispies Treats so I can eat something small but filling when I lose my appetite. She reminded me that the side-effects would improve if I took the medication more often. I am privileged in that I had the opportunity to see a doctor for my issues and be able to afford (even if barely) my medication, and I should take advantage of that instead of taking it for granted.

This is a long post, sharing my personal story about having mental illnesses, and how medication helps. It may not feel like it took effect, but then it’ll wear off and you’ll realize the difference. It’s better to feel stable, to feel “normal” for most of the day, than to get used to feeling awful. I took my medication this morning before class; I’ve taken about five hours to write this whole thing, due to having begun it before one lecture started, then continuing it during another while also listening to my professor review the first five chapters of Return of the King and discuss it with us. And now I’m in my apartment, on my laptop, switching between ending this PSA and checking on due dates and reviewing my calendar and just being 10 times more productive than I ever am.

I don’t know if anyone will need this advice. I don’t know how many will even click the read more. But this is a blog site, and this is something I’m trying to learn and have it remembered. It’s something I needed to put into words, and now it is.

[mst3kproject]

1204: The Day Time Ended

Remember Charles Band and David Allen, who respectively directed and did the stop motion for Laserblast!?  Remember I mentioned they made more movies together?  Here’s one.  I actually had about a third of an Episode that Never Was written up for The Day Time Ended when the trailer came out, and I debated what to do with that. I could have used it on the 23rd, like I posted the review of Reptilicus just before Season 11 debuted, but I decided it was more in the spirit of Season 12 to do the episodes in order one after the other.

A family, consisting of Mom, Dad, daughter Jenny, teenage Uncle Steve, Grandma, and Grandpa, have just moved into their new solar-powered ultra-modern-for-the-70’s house in the middle of the desert.  There’s nothing like living a hundred miles from anywhere, alone under the skies without road noise or partying neighbours… until, of course, you’re besieged by aliens in the middle of the night.  I will bet you cash money there are people who claim this actually happened to them, except they would probably say they just got probed and dropped back into bed, instead of their whole house being transported to another planet.  What are the family going to do?  Is there anything they can do, or will they be killed by the monsters and aliens lurking outside, or even by the space/time warp itself?

There are quite a few honestly cool things in The Day Time Ended.  The tiny aliens that run around the house are cute, although not as charming or communicative as the ones from Laserblast!  The two monsters who fight outside the barn at one point are similarly well-animated and have a bit of personality of their own.  They look like something you might see in the original Star Wars trilogy.  Most of the UFOs are merely lights zipping around in the sky but the one that invades the house is fun, with several moving parts and an overall design that looks, as Jonah and the bots observed, something like a Betamax Roomba.  The final matte painting of the alien city is nothing special but the one that represents a sort of interstellar junkyard is detailed and blends well with the action.

The acting isn’t great, but it’s not terrible – most of these people were in something approximating a real movie once, and they do their best with what they’re given.  The innate hostility of the desert landscapes underscore the isolation and danger the family are in.  Aesthetically, The Day Time Ended works well and a lot of very good decisions were made.

It’s still a terrible movie, though.  I bet you’re wondering what MST3K cut from this film to make it fit the time slot.  I bet you’re thinking there must have been a scene like the one in Lords of the Deep where Chadwick tells McDowell about the aliens, or like the one at the end of Time of the Apes where EUCOM explains everything.  Something in which somebody speaks to Mom, Dad, and Jenny and tells them exactly what the fuck is going on and why they don’t need to be afraid of it.  Well, in the long and by now firm tradition of stuff MST3K didn’t cut… there isn’t.  Never once do we have even the slightest idea of why all this is happening.

Being as The Gauntlet is the first time I’ve watched an entire sequence of the movies in a row before I’d seen the episodes, I’m beginning to notice patterns, and one rather prominent one is how little I miss the stuff that didn’t make the cut.  It never interrupts the flow of the story.  It’s only afterwards that I find myself thinking “hey, wasn’t there a bit in the car where they talk about Eric’s teddy having new microchips or something?”  And there was, but it didn’t matter and it certainly wouldn’t have added anything to the experience if they kept it.  The only time MST3K ever seems to have cut a scene that would have been worth keeping was the bit where Vadinho tells Tony he’s the worst Pumaman ever.

Unfortunately, this leaves The Day Time Ended without anything that might remotely be considered a plot. This story has a beginning, in which strange events plague the ranch, and an end, in which they reach a place of safety, but there’s no middle to speak of.  The weird stuff going on escalates from lights to monsters to finally the entire house drifting through time and space, but it never even comes close to making sense.  Nobody in the family is ever able to come to any conclusions about these events or to really try to take any action, and none of the characters have an opportunity to grow.  We don’t even know if the little aliens caused the warp (perhaps to rescue the family from something even worse) or if they’re merely reacting to it.  I guess it’s supposed to have been triggered by the ‘trinary supernova’ they mentioned on the radio, but by halfway through the movie I’d forgotten all about that.

It’s not entirely true that none of the characters know what’s going on.  None of the characters we follow do.  We stay at the house with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Steve while Mom, Dad, and Jenny are all consumed by the vortex, and later we meet up again with the Mom who tells everybody else that there was nothing to fear.  Within the movie this is just frustrating, because she never actually explains, but it is a little interesting when we’ve watched it, as I did, immediately on the tail of Lords of the Deep.  In that movie, we were following Claire McDowell as she learned the truth about the glitter goo.  In The Day Time Ended, we are in the shoes of her colleagues, dealing with a nightmare and having only her gut feeling to tell them there’s no danger.

This could have been kind of a cool take on the ‘chosen messenger of the aliens’ trope, if only it had been used for that.  Jenny does, a couple of times, talk about the little aliens being her friends and seems quite unworried by the goings-on, but she’s five, and the adults have no reason to actually engage her in conversation about this.  The Mom could have filled this messenger role, but she communicates with the creatures too late to affect the story. She’s merely a sort of deus ex machina by proxy, swooping back in at the end to reassure us that everything’s okay.

Is this movie trying to tell us anything?  Possibly… Laserblast was supposed to be about how you can only push somebody so far before they start pushing back.  That was fairly obvious in the narrative, but I’m not as sure about The Day Time Ended.  I think it might be about how nobody can truly be self-sufficient.  The family in the movie believes they have everything they need to cut themselves off from the rest of humanity, but this only leaves them vulnerable when the universe throws them a curve.

The introduction makes a big deal out of the house’s self-sufficiency.  They have their own water supply, and with solar power they have their own electricity. They are therefore able to live far away from the noise, crowding, and lights of a city with minimal inconvenience to themselves, and they rejoice in this isolation.  Then the vortex, wherever it came from, moves in, and their isolation becomes their worst enemy – they are unable to call for help, and help, in the form of the Dad, is unable to get to them.  It seems like all will be lost until their unseen benefactors bring them all back together and guide them to exactly what they sought to abandon: a city.

Lucky them. The rest of us are stuck here on Earth while the ants enter Phase IV.

The thing that really makes me want to see dependence on society as an intentional motif is the bit where the Dad needs gas for his car and the man at the gas station goes out of his way to make sure he obtains it, despite the considerable obstacles presented by the weather and the power outage. He gets no reward for this help, he does it simply because it’s the right thing to do, and without his assistance the Dad would probably have never seen his family again.  Our fellow human beings are not enemies we need to escape from – they are allies who can save us when we are in need.

And yet I’m still not sure.  The house’s self-sufficiency may just be an explanation for why they can still turn the lights on when they’re trapped in the vortex.  The isolation may just be to avoid having to pay for a bigger cast or more sets.  The issue of where they get their food from is never addressed, and remains as their most obvious connection to the outside world. The family doesn’t really seem to be rejecting society, they just want to live a little closer to nature – the Dad even still has a perfectly normal office job.  When danger surrounds them, they don’t try hard enough to leave or to call for help, or even to think about how this situation would resolve differently in a city.

The total lack of plot and character development, with only the ghost of a possible theme, leaves us with a movie in which it feels like nothing happens even thought a lot of stuff actually does, because none of what happens is meaningful.  The strange events at the ranch have nothing to tie them together into a proper story, and as a result I find I can’t really remember them or what order they happened in.  The only part of the film in which it feels like something was accomplished was the father’s struggle to get home, which started with a goal and a reason for the character to pursue it, and ended in success.  The rest is just a muddle.  It’s a visually impressive muddle at times, but a muddle nonetheless.

In summary, I think Leonard Maltin would have to give this one only two stars.