#yes I want violence done to anti

[leobashi]

You cannot underestimate him. He may be tiny, but he is still stronk 💪

[hardlyinteresting]

Love, Guilt and Other Wounds

Aaron Hotchner x female reader

When Aaron and his partner are taken hostage, he has to break her heart to save her life.

Warnings: angst, hurt/comfort, a little bit of domestic fluff, mention of blood, injury (non-graphic), hostage situation, knives, cannon-compliant themes of violence, non-detailed discussion about religion (Christianity), themes of childhood abuse, please let me know if you want me to add anything else.

Word count: (less than I expected, sorry) 3.7k  Request here! | Masterlist

"Of course, I���ll hurt you. Of course, you’ll hurt me. Of course, we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence". - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Aaron isn't sure if he believes in a God or a higher power. He was taught to read scripture; and spent Sunday mornings perfecting his posture in church pews-- starched shirts and neckties pulled too tight. The preacher's sermons left him wanting-- wondering how this man of God could stand over his congregation preaching every week, and not see all the lies they were holding back. How could he not see the secrets Aaron seemed to read so clearly? At just fourteen Aaron knew who was having an affair and with whom. He could see which children feared their fathers. Every pew had another story, another family growing together, or falling apart. The hypocrisy of it all drove him mad, and he imagined standing from his seat to shout it, overwhelmed as he realized he had unintentionally become the keeper of everyone's secrets. He learned that everyone in that church was a liar in their own right, and he hated it. But, when he left for college, his mother called to ask if he was still going to church on Sundays, and he lied and said yes. 

He should have paid more attention. Maybe then he'd understand how he ended up here. Perhaps it's some sick retribution. A cosmic evening of the scales; his penance for his sins. He just wishes you weren't here with him. How dare he think he could love someone when all he's ever done is punish those who love him? His hands are stained with blood; he taints everything he touches. 

Very early on in his career, Aaron learned he couldn’t take cases personally. As devastating as it was to have another victim show up while hunting a killer, it wasn’t a personal failure. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. He repeated the process again and again. Logically he knows that he is not responsible for the actions of the aggressive sociopath who is now holding the two of you hostage; but, he blames himself for not keeping you safer, for bringing you with him, and for putting you in harm's way. He knows he will not recover if you don’t make it out of here. He won’t forgive himself. 

The profile said this man would be anti-social. Physically, he’d be small in stature. It was clear he’d been sneaking up on his victims. He had been taking couples, knocking out the men with a blow to the back of the head, and then the women. It’s a method that the team had seen before, common for UNSUBs without the social ability to lure their victims, or the physical strength or confidence to attack head-on. But they had not profiled that he would escalate to taking out his targets with a taser. 

After six days in San Diego, the team finally had a lead on two rental properties in the UNSUB’s comfort zone. One was an old tyre factory, listed as a multipurpose warehouse and storage space; the other was a large storage facility in an industrial neighbourhood. Both units had been paid for in cash, both offered the privacy and space required to hold and torture two people for days at a time. The team split up, Hotch and you arranged to meet the owner of the factory space to find out more about who the renter was and gain access to the property. With no response from the owner of the second property, Morgan, Prentiss, and Rossi headed over to check it out. 

The two of you had only been on the property for five minutes before Aaron had been incapacitated and taken out. He had foolishly made his way into the building while you ran back to the SUV to grab your jacket. Out cold, there was nothing Aaron could do to stop you from meeting the same fate. 

It’s not his fault. But he feels like it is as he watches you shiver from across the room. He can’t be certain how much time has passed, but it feels like hours. He can only hope that you’re being kept in the building you were attacked in, that the team will connect the dots and come and get you, but until then you’re stuck. He watches, nauseated as your eyes flutter open, and then shut again. You’re concussed, he doesn’t need to be a doctor to know that. His ears are ringing, and he’s sure the blow he took to the head has at the very least temporarily worsened his hearing. 

“Doesn’t the FBI have rules against fraternization?” The UNSUB wonders out loud, waving a knife around as he walks towards you. 

“What makes you think we’re a couple?” Hotch asks, as he tries to work his hands free from the rope that binds them behind his back, “She’s just a colleague”. 

It’s a lie. But it needs to be said. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. Buy time, shift the UNSUB’s interest away from the two of you. Ruin the fantasy.

“I think I’ve been doing this long enough to know a couple when I see a couple, Aaron,” the man taunts, obviously proud of himself. He’s feeling emboldened having taken two FBI agents, but that works in your favour. He’s getting cocky, too full of himself. It’s a level of confidence he isn’t used to having, it just gives him a higher height to fall from. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. “I think it’s time we wake your girlfriend up,” the man says, his hand gripping tightly at your hair, your head tugged back without remorse. 

Aaron resists the urge to cringe as he hears you groan, your face twisted with obvious pain as you’re rudely awakened. “She’s pretty. What’s she doing with you?” 

“I told you. She’s a colleague”. 

Your eyes are unfocused, scanning the room trying to make sense of what is going on. 

The man raises the knife, holding it to your throat. This time Aaron blinks, desperate to control his expressions and micro-expressions. In this scenario, the less he cares about you, the safer you are. 

It’s the burden of being tied to him. Time after time his love destroys people. 

The blade presses closer to your throat. Aaron controls his breathing. 

“Impressive agent Hotchner. But I’m still not convinced,” the UNSUB moves the blade but pulls your head back further. Your eyes meet Aaron’s, “Do what you’re going to do, he doesn’t care,” you say. You’re speaking to the man with the knife in his hand as much as you’re speaking to Aaron. He weighs his options, his heart pounding as he watches you hold your breath, willing the tears to leave your eyes. It’s the permission he needs but doesn’t want.  Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. He knows you’re doing the same, telling him to break your heart to save your life. 

“Please, Hotc--”. 

He doesn’t let you finish, “Just shut up for once. Please,” he thinks the words cut through him more than they cut through you. Knowing his cruelty is a lie does little to soften the blow, and it breaks his heart to be the one throwing it. 

But this is all he’s good for, isn’t it? Letting people down. Surely it’s not just coincidence that so many of those who have dared to love him end up damaged. One way or another he destroys people. Who is he to say that he’s the one who is suffering when it’s he who does all the damage? 

Even as a child, he couldn’t help it. He thinks perhaps he inherited his sharpened tongue and lack of patience from his mother. She loved him in her own way but could never show it without first tearing him apart. Her biting words, and regular beatings. Prentiss had been right when she once said he was distrustful of women-- unfairly so. Not all women carry the hateful, spiteful heart his mother had. Very few had ever turned their rage at the world and their shortcomings into a personal and violent rage against him. He grew weary nonetheless. Better safe than sorry.

 At a young age, it became clear to him that there were few things, if anything, as important to his mother than appearances. On Sundays, she fussed over his clothes and his posture. She lectured him on table manners from the moment he could hold a fork. His room had to be spotless. His grades had to surpass average. Long before his brother was ever born, he learned how to live up to her expectations. But still, there was always something she could find him lacking in, an excuse to take her open fist or wooden spoon to his skin, a reason to send him to bed without dinner. He remembers crashing into the china cabinet trying to escape her one night. She was mortified on Monday when he had to walk into school on Monday with a cast around his arm. “Make sure they know this was your fault,” she told him. Perhaps I was built to fail, he had thought. She loves me and I embarrass her. I will only ever let her down. God, how disappointed she would be to see him now.  

Seconds feel like hours as the UNSUB leers expectantly. The man's mouth twists into a smile when he sees the tears forming in your waterline again. Aaron watches your fist clench presumably to distract yourself from the migraine that matches the pounding in his head, just as much as it is to pull your attention away from the hurtful lies he's about to weave. 

“You were supposed to have my back,” Arron spits with faux vitriol. “You had one job and couldn't even manage to do that”. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. 

“From the moment you showed up I knew you'd be a problem”. 

He continues to try to work his hands out from the binds. He can feel the knot loosening as he continues to buy the two of you time. “Aaron,” you beg, tears slipping down your cheeks now. 

“Following me around with some school girl crush. Look where we are now,” Aaron breathes. 

He can feel his father’s rage resting on his shoulders, as heavy as his hands were when he used to pat him on the back. It’s a quiet burning, far more silent than his mother’s anger, but it’s there and threatening him all the same. A silent shame; a fear induced by the knowledge that he’s failing but not being able to stop it. His father lived like a ghost in their home, just as Aaron has learned to haunt his life. He only ever raised his voice when he drank, but even then his hatred was self-directed. A sorrowful self-pity. A cry for help. The affairs, the gambling, the drinking; the man punished himself, stumbling home to a house with a vengeful wife, a silent boy, and a crying baby. It was a heart attack that finally killed him, but Aaron never doubted his father had stopped living long before that. 

Aaron breaks his own heart as he delivers each verbal blow. He hopes you understand. He prays that just maybe your concussion might leave the memories of this moment blurry. Selfishly, he begs you to forgive him, because he won’t forgive himself. 

He can see the way your wrists strain against your restraints. The UNSUB adjusts his grip on your hair as you struggle to distance yourself from him. Your eyelids flutter and he knows your vision must be swimming but you don’t give up. With a sadistic grin, the UNSUB wipes at the tear stain on your cheek with fake sympathy, grasping your jaw roughly he forces you to look straight at Aaron, “Poor girl… guess boss man doesn’t care about you after all. What a waste,” he sighs his breath heavy against your cheek, as he moves to hold the knife to your throat again, “She’s so pretty,” he directs his commentary at Aaron this time. 

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve slept with her. How couldn’t I when she was practically throwing herself at me?” The words taste bitter on his tongue as he speaks them. His stomach churns as he continues, “But what we have certainly isn’t love”. 

It couldn’t be further from the truth. Aaron grounds himself choosing to remember the quiet morning you two had shared only a few days earlier. Waking up without an alarm but with Jack sneaking in to jump up on the bed. As he watches you cry now he recalls how you had smiled so brightly at the little boy, ruffling his hair and cuddling Jack into your side. He had watched with a smile of his own as you bargained with his son, promising pancakes in exchange for ten more minutes of sleep on your shared day off. 

You crept into his heart so slowly he had hardly noticed. Until one day, he looked up from the bright pink sticky note you'd left on your recent report, reminding him not to work too hard; he knew, without a doubt, he was in love with you. 

For so much of his life, Aaron conditioned himself to expect a fight around every corner. He learned to make sacrifices from his happiness in fruitless attempts to keep peace. For the first time in forever he's been feeling like maybe, just maybe, he's enough. You’ve been more than patient with him; understanding his hesitance to open up to people again. You don't get upset with him for working late, but you scold him for not getting enough sleep and skipping meals. 

He smiles more. He cracks jokes the way he used to. You've helped him see the forest from the trees--  healed parts of him he didn’t know needed mending. He's tried to do the same for you. He's watched you open up and trust the team more. He's seen the way your confidence has grown and he can't take credit for your growth, but he's enamoured by the transformation just the same. 

You deserve better. You deserve better. You deserve better. The thought echoes in his head the same as it does most days. But now, it’s louder. The voice in his head matches the volume of the ringing in his ears, and the rushing sound of his pounding heart. Compartmentalize. Use logic. Move forward. He fights to remind himself, but the UNSUB is laughing now. Taunting you and your emotions, and there’s nothing Aaron can do but sit there and watch. He struggles to feign indifference, watching as you continue to make yourself smaller. It’s only then that he notices that you too are working your hands out of the rope that restrains you. The UNSUB was stupid enough to tie your wrist in front of you.

Aaron’s eyes focus on the bandaid wrapped around your index finger. You cut yourself making dinner last week. He could have sworn his heart melted when you turned to him holding your hand out, blood beading already. “Aaron, where do you keep your first aid kit?” you’d asked. Your brows furrowed, and your lips pouted. “In the bathroom, the cabinet under the sink,” he’d answered with no intention of letting you go off and tend to your wound alone. Instead, he guided you down the hall, his left hand looped in a gentle hold around your wrist, his other hand on your waist. 

Once you were sat on the countertop he took great care, making sure the wound was cleaned before he bandaged it. “My hero,” you teased, leaning in for a kiss. 

A simple cut he could manage to fix. Jack promised you could use as many of his Star Wars bandaids as you wanted while you healed as well. A little love and patience could make it better, a philosophy he adopted to heal Jack’s scraped knees, and schoolyard bruises. But the sight before him now is far worse than any kitchen mishap could be. 

Your nose is still bleeding. Bruises have already begun to form, red marks turning deep purple with every passing minute. He knows that your concussion is something you'll recover from. The contact burns from where the taser touched your skin will become new skin someday soon. The cuts and scrapes will scab over and then disappear. 

Aaron worries the damage he's done can never truly be ameliorated. Your compassion is unmatched. It’s what makes you a good agent, a good partner, and someone Jack can turn to. You are forgiving. God knows you've excused enough of his behaviour. But, he doesn't deserve to be absolved of this guilt. He will carry this day around in the darkest corner of his heart; the same place he holds the memory of Haley and how he failed her. The words “what we have certainly isn't love,” will linger uneffaced by time or kind words. 

The squeak of an old door opening piques Aaron's interest. The UNSUB doesn't react. Seemingly only interested in tracing the tear tracks on your cheeks. Your eyes are closing again. It's over now, he wants to tell you. He wants to hold you; comfort you; to apologise because you deserve to hear it anyway.

“Paul Simpson. FBI,” Morgan’s voice booms, “drop the knife and put your hands where I can see them”. Prentiss and Dave come to stand next to Morgan, their guns trained on the newly identified perpetrator. Aaron bites his tongue so hard he can taste blood-- it's all he can do to stop himself from bursting into a fit of bitter laughter. We win, he wants to say. 

Disarmed and handcuffed, Paul is escorted outside by Morgan and two members of the local police. Prentiss and Rossi make quick work of untying you and Aaron. 

“Aaron?” he can hear you mutter, breathy and quiet. 

“Yeah, I’m right here,” he promises kneeling at your side. Your eyes are glazed and unfocused as you nod and tip forward. Unconscious, your entire body falls forward into Prentiss’ arms. Aaron’s voice joins Rossi in calling for a paramedic. 

The doctors assure him that you’ll wake up soon. They dealt with his injuries quickly. Bruised ribs are the worst of his injuries. A cut at the back of his head and the taser burns were patched in only a few minutes, though he’ll readily admit he was far from a good patient. Too anxious to keep still much to the nurse’s dismay. 

You’re still asleep. A major concussion will have you out of the field for much longer than he knows you’ll be happy with. He makes a mental note to start setting aside some extra paperwork for when you inevitably start hounding him for something to do. With the lights in the room dimmed, and a comfortable silence settling he allows himself to indulge in the illusion that everything might be alright between you. 

With your hand in his, he breathes deeply trying to focus. He prays to a God he’s not sure he believes in. And when the quiet starts to get to him, he speaks out loud, as silly as he thinks he may look. He tells you about the phone call he had with Jack earlier and lets you know that Jack has a new painting he can’t wait to show you when you get home. Your hand squeezes his, encouraging him to keep talking.

“Aaron?” your eyelids flutter as you adjust to the light. The nurse had them turned to the dimmest setting but it’s still far more than you feel immediately capable of coping with. 

“Yeah, honey,” he affirms. You release the breath you’re holding your brow relaxing.  

“I love you,” you tell him. Your voice is steady and steadfast. Your resolve is impressive, unwavering and determined as you focus on making eye contact with him. “It’s not your fault,” you promise. He’s sure you don’t expect the weight on his shoulders to lighten instantaneously. You’ll tell him every day that he’s not to blame; intent on chiselling away at his guilt, shrinking it down before it manages to consume him. 

“I love you,” he swears. He knows it won’t squash any of the doubt he’s planted. Aaron knows there will soon be days that the niggling insecurity threatens to break what you’ve managed to build together; when the worry that you aren’t enough seems louder than it ever has before. He won’t blame you if you decide it isn’t worth the pain of staying with him. But, he’s hell-bent on loving you through it. He can only hope that it’s enough. 

[screamingfromuz]

Hi there! I am reaching out because someone sent me a question about how to help Gazan civilians without accidentally helping Hamas or spreading more hate against Israelis. I honestly feel lost on this myself, but as far as I can tell you are someone who has done real activism in Israel. Do you have suggestions for diaspora Jews who want to help fight for peace?

So a small disclaimer to the Gaza problem. We have 2 main problems with getting aid into Gaza, the first is the limited amount of aid that is allowed in, sending more money cannot make it go in faster. Problem number 2 is that much of the physical aid ends in Hamas's hands or in the black market and there is nothing we can do with that. I have heard recommendations to wait and see who opens a field hospital on the Rafah border crossing, and donate to them. Despite that, here are some charities to help Palestinians both in and out of Gaza.

I will admit, most of my activism is focused on deradicalization on the Israeli side and solidarity work, so I had to ask around for some of those charities. Some of the groups I know of do not currently have an international donation link, so if I get more good ones, I'll make another post.

Gaza:

Medical aid for Palestinians-

Anera-

Doctors without borders-

Palestinians outside of Gaza and Peace movements:

Palestinian red Crescent- they also work in Gaza, but as the main source for Palestinian ambulances in the WB, I put them here.

mistaclim (Looking the occupation the the eye)- this group is helping to protect Palestinians from the illegal settlers

Keshet- this is a big one. they support Bedouin communities in normal times, and now they are working on getting bomb shelters to the unrecognized villages, and providing a mental health first aid line.

standing together- totally biased, as I am a member of this organization.

Women wage peace- a feminist based solidarity group

Haqel- they represents Palestinians in cases related to land ownership and access. there work is still ongoing even during the war

Center for Jewish non Violence - a diaspora org that also does a lot of work in the South Hebron Hills.

[pranabefall]

⠀⠀THE DEVIL'S ANESTHETIC. ⠀⠀⸺ ⠀⠀blade.

syn. you were just a doctor, at the start of it all. then came the chaos, the knife, the bits and pieces of madness and coming horror. and in the center of it all, stood him ( a gentle cruelty ).

TW. ⸺ yandere + smut and dark content ahead. reader is south asian coded, blade is a little fucked up and inevitably fucks the reader up a little too. murder, corruption arcs, medical terminologies i only half know, breaking of medical ethics, the reader is a pathetic wet cat, gang violence, death, manipulation, angst, acts of murder and mentioned dismemberment, suicidal ideation, dub-con, non consensual kissing, hatefucking, blade having violent thoughts, the reader is not daijobu, blade getting off on being killed.

LOG. ⸺ this is another repost of this fic after my old account got deleted on accident. this work has been marked mature for containing smut & dead dove content. readers below the age of 18 / ageless blogs and antis, do not interact. PLEASE READ THE WARNINGS BEFORE PROCEEDING.

"you can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid."

— FRANZ KAFKA.

I. DEATHBED

“We have another one.” The receptionist echoes out from the front desk.

Another one. The words still the twitch in your muscles, the incessant cleaning and arranging and scrubbing away blood from medical chairs and forceps that should not be here. There are thoughts in your head. They’re dangerous ones, lingering in places that are grimy and soaked in something tarred. They should not be there.

Another one and that’s enough to coat your stomach with ugly, stifling coldness. You don’t reply, keep your eyes down and let the man walk in.

There were never any faces to your clients. They had hands, ringed, tattooed, scarred. Some had suits. Some stank of iron. And they all had guns, or bats, or rusty crowbars and attitudes that were knife edged and brutally coarse. This one is much like the rest. He tells you he was shot in the waist and his voice is static and white noise and discord leaking out of your ears in droves till —

“— will you get moving?! It fucking hurts.”

“Yes.” you choke out. “Yes of course.”

It comes easily to you now, after months of repeating it over and over with varying degrees of perfection and prompt. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the shrapnel, pull it free, clean the wound, suture it. Find the —

( Your thoughts unravel and they’re a mess in your hands like several bits of coloured petals. The scent has washed away. They almost seem to wither, bit by aching bit. )

You step away. “Done.” you tell the suited man and ask for no payments. Your receptionist does not either when he strides outside and it’s smart because patience was a whim when you reeked of viscera. That brazen naivete was drilled out of her a long time ago ( and you too ) and the rules were set forth, rules that must never be broken. You’d seen too many zipped up body bags scattered in the gutters to dare to. You do not want to be one of them.

( Coward, that spiteful half of you snarls and you know it’s right. )

Only he does reach in and throw some loose notes against the counter. You shuffle up to her, nails crusted with brown and red and count fifty kaas. It’s peanuts. It will do.

You were a doctor.

Or at least you’re certain you were. You’d spent the better part of your decade rooted within a small university where standard IPC dialect was taught as a secondary language and the fans hadn’t been replaced for the last thirty years. It was torture during the summer and the hospital adjacent had patients who spoke in tongues you didn’t quite understand. But you manage. You tried, you graduated.

You were a doctor. Your license reads you specialised in paediatrics. Children were all you needed to deal with, some too loud to listen to their parents' chides for silence. Some so young they were small enough to fit in your desk drawer. Some of them liked to talk too and ask questions during checkups and vaccine appointments ( nerves, you reason and you answer the questions ). It wasn’t much. It was peaceful. It was alright. This is your clinic, something you'd built from sleepless nights and mountains of referral literature.

Then you’d see less children and more of those suited men as the streets grow with a cacophony you can’t call safe after this. The carpet was worn down by blood and heavy footfalls, over the thread work and your mother’s faded name in the bottom.

You weren’t treating children anymore.

Still, you hold it together. This is yours, all of this. This is yours and it's a feeling locked away in your beating heart.

When the man returns — and you know it’s him because the birth mark on his hands were hauntingly similar — he brings company. The company in itself would have seemed unassuming, and they were, lingering by the doors speaking in words too fast to comprehend till the gunfire rang out and the windows shattered.

A part of you is thankful that it’s so late, where the streets are silent and the bustle is calm. The files you were rearranging fall to the floor. You duck beneath your desk and stay there, enclosed within tumult, within chaos, within something you wanted no part of ( and you grip your hands tight, quietly wondering if that persistent cat would be fed, if your father would care to know what happened to you ).

You hear glass break, fall, fall and hit the floor with a sadistic sort of tinkling.

You hear frantic footsteps thundering up by the door.

You hear the screaming.

( You hear your heartbeat. You want it to stop. )

Something crashes into the storeroom. It was large, heavy, clothed and it let out a strangled cry before iron clogs up your nose and heat and cold fizzles up and hammers into every crevice and pore and turns your chest inside out. The man tries to shift, to get up and out of the way, shoulders knocking against the shelves in panic that feels painfully palpable. He’s crying. You see that when you bundle into a corner, eyes burning.

His body jerks and is dragged to the door.

“Don’t,” he begs till the desperation chokes his reasoning and it meters into panicked threats. “You’ll be torn apart by this, I swear, you’ll be hunted down — ”

He’s pulled at again, his limp form slipping out of sight. You hear a sick sound — a squelch, the dripping of blood and viscera and the gamey crack of bones. Your teeth dig into your cold fingers. The stinging is numbed, dim and distant, while you press against the wall and try not to wail.

There is only a single set of footsteps now. It paces like a starved animal, like a caged beast. Leave, your thoughts scramble and correct themselves. Just leave. And it repeats, over and over like a maddening chant. Please leave, leave, leave. The footsteps stop at the door followed by a slow scrape against marble. A shadow falls over the doorway. That’s when you see him.

You think he could have been pretty. But there's terror beneath that veil of frozen numbness. You don’t think he’s pretty now, when he’s stalking into the room, bloodied sword in hand ( it’s mired and cracked and mended like kintsugi but twisted and terrible ). He walks like a man who’d been broken and sewn together and he reeks of death and a sickening sweetness.

His gaze meets yours for that fleeting moment.

( it felt like that throbbing helplessness. Of everything going wrong. )

One of the suited men had not died. Not yet, in some inane act of stubbornness. He’s tackled down immediately and you flinch back and finally scream, watching the writhing pile of bodies smack each other down with ease. The swordsman ends it. There’s a chilling disparity in strength with how his bare hands tear into flesh and rips his opponent’s arm off. He’s laughing, laughing like a madman and the insane hysteria sparks a primal instinct nestled in your mind.

You’re moving before you realise it, when you spot his fingers twitch for his fallen sword. Your hands close around metal. You’re surging forward, taut at the edges. That part of you screams into the void, stripping away morality, reason, the simpler parts of shame that could have stopped you then and there.

When your fractured mind pieces together and lets the spinning room rest into clinical stillness, you’re aware of the hysterical laughter that man trembles into. He slumps against your legs, weighted, boneless. He’s still laughing, like the world had whispered a funny joke into his ear and left him to rot.

The dislodged pole slips out of your hands. You watch him crumple down onto the floor, staining the tiles. A swing, a hit to the back of his head, a break to the vertebral artery, a medullary haemorrhage, a stroke, neuron death —

You spend the next hour tucked away in that storeroom, watching the swordsman’s body convulse, then his breathing still and his body run cold.

II. NEWLY DECEASED

Once upon a time, you told yourself that you could get by. You could get by and let yourself think you were a good person despite the ugly cracks tucked away and the bated disappointment breathing down your neck. It’s the human experience, a conditioned way of convincing yourself, a way you wish to live in the quieter corners of you.

It’s a lie. A lie. A lie.

The body does not move, as dead bodies usually do. As a frame of reference, dead bodies don’t do much to begin with. You stand back up and feel nausea coat the back of your throat, then wordlessly stumble to the man. Your fingers press against his pulse. Nothing.

A part of you wants to laugh at yourself for hoping.

The police take it all away. They don’t know what you did. Or maybe they do and care so little they swat that detail aside. Death is so natural here, so common and where is the sympathy for the damned when the damned were everywhere and your kindness wears thin?

( You’re left to pick up the pieces. The cracked photo frames, the toys and magazines salvaged, the bowl of tamarind candy tipped over. Bits and pieces gathered together and sewn back together. There was a heart in these walls. The pain was always there, but a dogged part of you loves this place. )

You answer what questions were asked and let them walk away, knowing they’ll do nothing about the situation to begin with. They never do. Most policemen were tucked up in the pockets and played dogs to gang members. Some lost themselves to apathy. Money could buy loyalty in droves. It was an open secret.

You get back home and let the hot water run into your bucket. You feed the visiting cat. You wipe the counters down and unearth some food from the previous night. You turn the water off. You bathe. You eat.

( “I’m fine.” you lie to Aleena when she calls you, frantic, scared. More frantic and scared than you present yourself to be. You don't tell her you’re a murderer.

“I don’t think you should go back tomorrow. I’m not saying this to get off of work or anything but after all that?” she falls silent.

“Maybe. But I need to keep the income coming in somehow.” )

Walking into the bedroom feels harder than it should. Lead bleeds into muscle as you patter along and try to keep yourself steady against the walls. For a moment, you stop and lean your forehead against it and tell yourself not to cry ( because cowards cry, and idiots cry and it was a pointless endeavour anyway because nothing — nothing about this would change ). Your degree falls into your line of sight, framed up against the wall.

You are a doctor. You are a doctor. You are a doctor.

That guilt knocks you in the knees. The guilt, the disgusted guilt that comes from killing a man.

( It’s engulfing, like tar and cloth pressed up against your face. The breathlessness, the storm rattling against the window, the messiness of it all. You’re screaming at the pillow. You’re clawing at it. You swipe till your arm bleeds and the cacophony dies down. )

The veneer shatters and the frame is clenched and thrown to the floor. The casing cracks. You heave, look at the mess at your feet and think to yourself :

What were those eight years for?

You killed a man.

You killed a man.

You killed a man.

A gasp tears through. It's painful, heavy and it's glass and shrapnel. The voice in your head whispers. Nothing. It's all for nothing.

Another one crackles through the muffled distortion, straining and rattling. A clear “I told you so.” grating past the chaos, disappointed, smug, knowing.

You shut your eyes and dream of jasmine and marigolds.

( You listened to Aleena when you passed the register and took a day off in the end. It’s the one kindness you let yourself have.

You did not eat for most of the day. Your gut gnaws. Your limbs feel weak. But food, as delicious as the thought seemed, invoked a visceral response. Of corpses and blood and things that you thought yourself too far removed to disgust you. A caved in skull did all this. A caved in skull made you retch and empty your stomach out into the toilet.

You think you deserve it. )

Your watchman stops you when you head back out again a few days later for a grocery run. "Are you alright?" he asks, peering through sleep. The cat curls round his legs and he gives it a gentle pat. You can hear the content purr it lets out from where you stand, and you venture a little closer.

"A little." you reply, smiling a little. The watchman tilts his head in consideration. You'd lost count of how long he's been here. Some of the older tenants mention he'd settled in over a decade ago, when the building still had four floors instead of five and a little more space to park out back.

"You still seem scared is all." he glances over at you again. It's the worry in his furrowed brow that makes you give pause. He reminded you of your grandfather then, strong jawed, stern eyed before that softness pervades through when he'd let you scoot over next to him to sneak a look at the newspaper ( cricket scores and stock prices were all he looked at. And the Sudoku ) .

You shift in place, tugging at the hem of your jacket. "It was a little jarring. The sudden attack, that is." you admit. You don't tell him about the death, the way deceitful monsters do.

The watchman shakes his head. "Horrible thing to go through, I agree. Especially for one as young as you." The cat slinks pat his legs and under the bed. he leans forward, tire heaving at his bones and his joints. A decade. One would assume he'd retire at this point given his age. "Try not to let it wear down on you, is all."

"It's easier said then done." You mumble.

"It is." the watchman snorts. "I told my daughter about you though. She's taking medicine too…Oncology. I scraped together every Kaas I had to pay her tuition fee off." he flexes his arthritic hands. You keep listening, that sliver of curiosity winning out. "She hasn't met you…but she knows about your clinic. the children your helping…suited men aside. It gives her a bit of spark at least. So you keep going too."

You feel gutted, eyes stinging a bit. He puts too much faith in you, you realise. But there is a small touch of warmth against the rattling cold. "Thanks…" you nod. The watchman leans back.

Keep going. What a mess, really.

You return to your clinic, the day after. You decide it's the last time you'd let reckless hope bar the instinctive tearing in your gut.

There is a woman sitting on the waiting room chairs with a dangerous smile. She’s dressed well, like those elegant omen-bringers or dapper businessmen. She’s dressed like the coming consequences and it’s there, that sadistic delight, hidden behind that lazy tilt to her head.

“Good morning.” she greets, like she hadn't broken into your clinic. “Hope we’re not intruding.”

You look to her companion next to her.

The dead man ( and he was dead. He was supposed to be — you were certain ) stares right back.

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“There’s a coffee machine…”

“Hm, never mind. I was never too fond of the instant stuff. What do you think Bladie?”

'The man named ‘Bladie’ does not respond. You’d have laughed a little — if your nerves weren't frayed. You’d have laughed over a silly, inconsequential nickname slapped onto some scary looking man, then gone on your way. But the scary looking man was a murderer. And you were certain, so certain, that he was dead.

( His blood coated your hands days ago. You can’t have imagined it — not something so innately ingrained within your psyche like some sadistic firebrand.

How is he alive? How is he alive?! Why is he — )

“I could pick up some tea.” you suggest, because playing meek was the way of a coward and you were that in the end. You still had to open your clinic in another half hour. There are still parts of the storeroom that need cleaning and a window that needs replacing. The woman laughs. She looks at you like you were an adorable specimen. A pet…or perhaps a bug to be stepped on.

( It’s a cruel sort of beauty that edges her face. You’d hate to admit you were staring a little longer than you should be. )

“There’s no need for that.” she looks to the side for a moment. “Bladie was here a few days ago, you know.” you flinch, perhaps knowing the ugly scene to follow. “Got into a bit of a tussle. Of course, I wasn’t worried…he’s got a knack for seeing things through, you know…” She’s staring straight at you now. “And he’s good at not dying, one could say.”

“That’s nice.” you mumble, shifting uncomfortably. Your cheeks are cold. Don’t look at me, you try to tell the should-have-been-dead swordsman. Like that would have worked ( he keeps staring ).

The woman continues. “It's funny though. After that affair at your clinic, I had to pick Blade up at some hospital’s morgue of all places. Quite the detour if you ask me.”

You still.

She knows.

Fuck. She knows.

“I…I see.” you play into stupidity, wring your hands a bit and force a far away smile. “I wonder how that happened.”

“Yes.” she nods, solemnly flicking dust off of her velvet coat. The playful lilt to her tone is back, delicately poking and prodding away and you feel the walls close in bit by bit. You can see the man tilt his head. You want to disappear. “I’d think you know though…so how about you tell us?”

You don’t look at her. You can’t, with that horror filtering through and spotting your vision.

“Now….listen to me.” she stands, saunters up to you and you stay rooted. Your mind fogs over with cotton wool and the aftertaste of wine blooms through your mouth. There is consideration there, her pointedly dragging her eyes across your figure and taking a sick pleasure in the fear that trembles at your fingertips. A tiny part of you that still remains too torturously aware recoils. “Were you the one who killed Bladie?”

“Yes.” you reply and it isn’t you. You wouldn’t have said that. You wouldn’t have.

Her lips curl. “How did you kill him?”

“I hit him on the back of his neck.”

Her face glows. “Good girl.” she pats your cheek. “We have a favour to ask you. How about you hear us out?”

She gives your shoulders a squeeze and you’re gasping for air. “That wasn’t so hard.” she grins. The cotton wool strangles and is caught at the edges, whisping, grasping, stubbornly trying to stay. You still pull at it incessantly while you back away from her touch. It burns. What did she do to you? What did she fucking do to you —

You’re pulled closer. It’s just a tug, a simple coil of her fingers round your arm. “I’m sorry.” you blurt out. “I’m sorry. I never meant it.” There are cracks against the surface, a spiderweb and it keeps going and going and going the more you talk ( you need to shut up ).

“There there.” She coos. “How about we sit down, hm? Bladie, think you could make some space?”

You don’t want to sit down with them. You try to pull back, to run because that’s what you should have done in the first place; instead of entertaining a pair of strangers with that stupid, naive hope of safety. She pulls back. Bladie catches your wrist when you try to squirm free and you’re half dragged onto the seat between them. “Honestly. A drink would have been nice. Oh don’t worry. I could hardly blame you for that.”

The woman fixes her sleeve. “I take it you don’t know who we are?”

“No.” you admit.

“Ah. the IPC influence here isn't as deep, huh? I heard there was an overhaul a few decades ago. The revolt drove most of them out…I wouldn’t count on it staying that way.” She passes you a measured flash of her teeth. It’s all good manners and etiquette you can’t return. “But we’re not here to talk politics. I’d like you to babysit Blade for a while.”

Blade seems to be expecting it. He does not mirror your dismayed shock.

“Why — ”

“Can’t say. It’s all a part of some very important work.” She holds a finger to her lips. “Would you be a lamb and do it?”

You grip at the metal armrests hard. The room is a blurred scape, a watered down stain ( ink tracked against damp paper ). “I won’t.”

“Come now. After that stunt you pulled with him, it’s the least you could do.”

It settles hard. “I told you I didn’t mean it.” you snap. “I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to kill you.” Your unravelling seeps into something dangerous. You try to step back. To keep it together. It tangles, knots, frays and snaps and tangles again and the foundations crumble. You cannot think despite the clarity slowly creeping and the fog metering out. You cannot think because the man you killed is alive and right next to you and dead men don’t just come back to life.

The woman forces you to turn her way. “You didn't mean it?” she repeats, inquisitive, amused. “Doctor please, any normal person would have gone for the head. You made a very calculated move there…and I'm sure that pretty little brain of yours knows the consequences that come with it.”

It’s a coveted part of you that dies there, withering, burning, clipped away and cast aside and you shake your head as you’re retrained. “Don’t touch me!” you scream. “Don’t touch me!”

Because humanity despises the naked truths in the world. They’ll deny, deny, deny what stares them in the face for those fleeting, selfish little comforts skewed in ignorance. Better the downy coverlet to the thin blanket, better the sweeter lie that bitter sincerity. You’re no different. Not really. You’re not different at all.

And that woman was not a liar.

III. DISTENSION

Aleena doesn’t take well to a strange man lurking within the backrooms. Her eyes always flit to the doors and her shoulders stay tense as she directs a few straggling patients to the waiting room and updates their details into the salvaged computers. “I don’t like the look in his eye.” she whispers hurriedly. “Doctor. Have you seen him?”

“Yes . I have.” you reply simply. “Could you pull up the files from a month ago? We have a follow up due today.”

She hums, and you nod to the messy clattering from the keyboard. “He’s not from here, is he? His clothes aren’t local.” her voice dips. “Is he an outworlder?”

“Yes.” You flit through a case history. The ink has run a bit, the edges flicked a dirty red. Bile and acid sears the edges of your mouth. You don’t think throwing up here and now would be professional. And your receptionist has a very nice shawl on. “Have the police called?” you add, helplessly rubbing away at the browned stains.

“You know they won’t.” she clicks her tongue, wrinkling her nose to the injustice of it all. You bite back your tired humour. She might descend into an angry little ramble then curse those men in three different tongues. You were guilty of listening in ( it’s amusing, and she had plenty of anger for the two of you, and then some more for the smaller things ). “They’re too busy sipping cha at the local angadi.”

She keeps tap tapping away. “Do you want me to send a soft copy? Or will you directly look into the logs?”

You cease flipping through the files. “Just send me a PDF.” you mutter. “You still have a few cases to input from yesterday right? I won’t hold you up.” Another report is pushed your way. Two more patients, two more medical histories to pore over. The throbbing in your forehead is incessant and stubbornly clinging on.

Gang activity in your neighbourhood has stifled from its initial raucous to a cautious thrum. There were still glimpses and the ignored nods, and that delicate rope-work still standing strong despite men from their brackets dying some terrible death. They don’t suspect you. It would be stupid to ( because you could hardly hold a gun in their eyes, or fight back. Your claws are chipped and your fangs blunted. It’s not a mystery ).

It does not stop the occasional loitering goon up front as parents grow a little braver and a little more desperate to bring their sick children in.

You settle with your work email, tapping your foot against the faint buzz from the streets outside and the waiting area. There is the occasional loud call. Kids being kids, shushed by mothers and fathers with warnings of naughty ones being fed the nastiest medicines for bad behaviour. You’re not cruel enough to do so maliciously, but it quiets them down amidst the worried ogling.

A ping pulls you from sinking further into your pit of thoughts. The document pops up in your inbox and Aleena slows her typing to two finger taps. “Can I take a week off?” She pipes up, nervously picking at her fingers. “Next month, that is.”

“For the agelu?” you guess, a new sort of weariness settling. “I suppose you can.”

Aleena stifles away a relieved smile followed by a : “You're not going?” She looks a little surprised, then lets her eyes sweep across the clinic. “I mean…yeah I guess you won't, given the state things are in right now…”

You wince. Your father had sent a text in. He asks for you, in his own, distant way. Maybe he misses you. Maybe you miss him beneath the hurt and the anger. But feelings were messy, scary things and it was better to look away and stick your head into papers and books and words that could be read. “I’m not sure.” is the soft admission. “It's a little early, I think, for me to make a proper decision.”

( Going home feels like a fever dream now. You’d almost come to loathe the smell of marigold and incense smoke. )

That and you can't be certain if Kafka would pick your guest up any time soon. She never gave you a timing, or any sense of clarity and control in this mad scramble. Blade was to lurk in his little window in the backrooms with all the year-old files for as long as he should.

“Besides.” You finish with a hint of good humour. “I'll take full responsibility for any ancestral hauntings after. Maybe my great grandmother could make a nice home on my couch.”

Aleena purses her lips. It’s says enough. A little more if you squint hard.

“Okay that wasn’t very funny.” you admit.

“No. It wasn’t.” She tilts her head sympathetically, pressing the pads of her fingertips to the edge of the desk, half pushing up against hardwood and paper. “I have plenty to say…but you’re my boss and that would be unprofessional.”

You bite back that twitch to your lips. “A wise choice. Take care of yourself now…and don’t forget about the rest of the reports.”

Primal fear rear its ugly head and scrapes at the bars when you meet Blade’s gaze.

“I have two patients due in the next hour.” you manage to pull out, turning your heel immediately after. Any inch for a quick escape, really. “So don’t come out. You’ll scare them.” you add for good measure, like he’s a child himself, or a feisty dog muzzled and chained up.

( The kind of dogs who bite at anything and everything. The kind who quietly bare their teeth at cruel hands and kind. You aren’t certain of Blade’s stance here and now, if he was pleased with his arrangements — stuck in a room too small for him, with someone who clearly didn't want him here.

Because you don’t. There’s something about you and your face and the way it’s a traitor. It gives away your thoughts, your heart, the things you want to keep tucked away at the back but seep under the doors and stain the carpets. And your displeasure seeing him is on full display.

His corpse comes to mind. Still, dead, cold took the touch with the beginnings of rigour mortis settling when he was hauled over the stretcher and wheeled away. )

He says nothing back, unsurprisingly. He didn’t even bother speaking out as much when Kafka came in and dropped him off with all the unceremonious sneaking and threatening. You think he’ll carry on with his silence, letting whatever this delicate little semblance of distant amiability stay within its stagnant state. An untouched web.

You turn. Keep walking. You really don't want him here, you think miserably. The paradoxical warmth in his body now, when for a moment there was none. His gaze, unsettlingly intense. You don’t want him here at all.

Still, you turn once more. You speak. “Is there anything else you need?” be polite. Be polite.

Blade considers it. He looks at you. You fool yourself into believing the hunger simmering beneath harsh vermilion does not exist.

“No…” he finally relents. His voice is coarse, heavy, the whisper of a growl.

( You leave faster than you should have. )

He follows you home after the day is done ( you wish he didn’t ).

Blade keeps you within his line of sight — just within reach and just close enough to feel that faint prickle of body heat against the back of his neck. It’s an uncomfortable itch. It’s unwelcome. So you turn your head back to his silent figure and test your fingers against your bicep.

“Could you walk in front of me?” you ask.

Blade seems to consider it. “No.” he finally decides with finality edging every word. “You might run.”

“I don’t think you’d let me get very far to begin with.” you mutter under your breath. His footsteps are heavy, kicking aside loose concrete you avoid. Blade still stays an unwanted spectre behind you, treading in a way that is too soft to be human.

“I won’t.” he agrees, sounding sure of himself. Bored even. There is a scuffing sound, cloth against cloth. You’re tense again, anticipatory ( and yet, you don't dare to look back, to look at him ). “It saves inconvenience. That is all.”

You decide you’d like to be an inconvenient annoyance. That should drive him back to wherever he came from.

“I still don't think you should walk behind me though.” You repeat. Your fingers curl. You wish you had a taser. Your last bottle of pepper spray was spent as is on a few other thugs the past couple months. “You look like a creep. And a stalker. You might mug me.”

“I won't.”

“How do I know that?” You keep rambling, hysteria trickling down. It's a leaky tap, that anxious mess in your chest.

Blade blinks. “Kafka told me not to.” ( like it was the most obvious thing. You might be imagining the heavy condescension oozing through ).

That does not make you feel better. Kafka seems as reliable as a tsunami, or a flood, or any natural hazard creeping into its first few stages of utter destruction. It shows on your face, that muted mix of disbelief and horror. Blade's gaze is sharp, not quite the disconnected distance it held before. Kafka was suffocating as is but blade feels like rubble bearing down, down, down. You hate it.

“And it would be pointless, trying.” He continues. “Killing you would change nothing.”

You wordlessly rub at your knuckles, at the pulled skin of your hand. You do not talk to him for the rest of the walk. You should be more polite, you tell yourself. Be more polite. You killed this man, watched him die as his brain slowly collapsed in on itself. The least you could do after those fifteen and a half dumpster fires is extend some basic human decency, right? Be polite.

A scream ringing out gives you another thing to focus on. They're normal to hear, even as it wrenches open your viscera and leaves something sick on your tongue. It continues, growing increasingly hysterical, then stops.

( You almost run for the source, You want to. You do not. )

By the time you slip into the parking lot of the apartment and head for the elevator, you’re half hurrying Blade along. There’s nothing glamorous about the place — a standard five storey tall building just like the other projects lining most lower middle class neighbourhoods. The watchman was found out back, half passed out from his shift and stinking of beedi smoke, leaving the dog that frequented the neighbour's doors to rip into any intruders.

You don't think Blade is wholly impressed as he nudges at him with his foot. The watchman jolts with a huff and a startled snore, then passes out, head lolling to the side a little. The dog does not bark, simply trotting up to accept a few pats on the head. And indignant annoyance flares up. You sharply tug at the hem of his sleeve.

Blade jolts. The vermilion of his stare burns you.

"Leave him alone." you warn, giving his sleeve another tug for good measure. Blade's lips purse, his displeasure a quiet shift on his face for the most part, burying away immediately into the corners and crevices where things were never brought up again. "I hope you like cats." you add. "I have one who visits sometimes. She's a terror and a half…"

He grunts, stepping to the side as you fiddle with your keys, pulling away the string from your key chain and getting your door open. It’s a welcome ritual, feeling the cool breeze from your apartment filter in after a while. The cat is passed out on the balcony floor, cracking open a single yellow eye in greeting when you shuffle forth to take a peek.

“Hello, pretty girl.” you coo, feeling that heavy warmth in your arms and the softness of her fur against your palms. It eases you just enough to face Blade again.

Be polite, you tell yourself because you killed him, because he could snap your neck in two, because you think that the last thing you need is pissing off a pair of seeming psychos. “You won’t mind tea, right?”

Blade leans against the wall, maybe trying to make himself as small as possible within the cloistered rooms. “It’s a waste.” he replies, ignoring everything else; the hum from the streets below, the occasional flicker from the lights, the cat settling on the couch and sleeping an arm’s length away.

“Okay.” you mumble and set down two cups anyway.

You do not like Blade’s silence. His silence means he’d rather think about something and him thinking could involve certain death. There is a disturbed sheen glossing over his gaze. He does not look wholly there, the less he talks. Most conversions your parents had with guests were about the weather, then delving headfirst into some obscure gossip about a family three kilometres away.

Another fleeting glance at Blade has you reason that he’s not one for gossip.

( You let this silence settle in. It’s still a suffocating thing, an unwanted presence and an unwelcome guest. You think of the suited men and the gangs amok in the dirty corners and you think the silence looks like them. )

“So…our first meeting wasn’t…wholly ideal.” You speak up after a while, handing him his tea. Blade looks vaguely surprised when he takes it. “I don’t think ‘ideal’ would be the right word for it…”

“You killed me.”

You swallow. “Yes.” your voice shakes. “I killed you.” Your legs are drawn a little closer to you before you talk and you lower your voice, all that shame and guilt subduing the last bits of that cocktail of fear and tumult and annoyance. “I’m sorry for killing you. Even if you’re still alive…somehow…it wasn’t the best course of action, to be fair — ”

Blade’s lips twitch. He takes a sip of his tea, letting you stew there with your fumbling, your shame. It still goes unspoken. That damning ‘how are you still alive’. You don’t bother asking it. He can’t stay dead — Kafka said so herself. The very notion feels like an existential terror moulded to the shape of a man and you want it to stay far away from it.

“Four days.” he finally utters out, inspecting the last bit of tea staining the bottom of his cup. “I was dead for four days.”

Oh. Oh that stung.

“I’m sorry.” your voice cracks and your eyelids start to prickle. Stupid. Stupid stupid, you curse at yourself, claw at the offending load inside.

Blade snaps his head towards you. There is a twitch in his hands, slow, dog-like in the way strays jolt in alarm. You do not comment on it, awkwardly pressing at the surface of your cup while the tears are quickly wiped away and smudged against your cheeks. There's no use crying over it, you scold yourself. Grow a spine.

“Spare yourself the pity. It is not an uncommon occurrence.” is his uncomfortable dismissal. The words are nonchalant and his forehead crinkles to match the perplexed hitch to his shoulders. He probably wants to say more, speak more, tear you apart. Or he was just too put off by how pathetic you are.

“You’ve been killed before?”

“Yes.”

Horror stirs deep in your gut and a small sliver of morbid fascination shunting beneath the murky waters and glimmering up in those seconds of resurfacing.

( Can he not die? He’s still here after dying from a stroke. Does he regenerate? How does he do that? Do his cells simply have a faster metabolism? That means his neurons can too despite their limited replication in most normal people. Does he — )

The tear tracks are drying. Your face feels stiff.

“I was trying to protect myself.” you even talk like a guilty person ( it does not help. It’s subdued, the way you speak. Beaten down, half hearted. You wonder if you even want to protect yourself at all ). You don’t want to look at him anymore.

“I don’t blame you.” he replies. It’s soft, missable, sympathetic and you know that can’t be the case. Blade blinks slowly, setting his cup aside. “Would you do it again?” he asks solemnly. His hands twitch again, out of its usual bent stiffness. Beneath the dim lighting, the paleness of his skin is a corpse like macabre; greyish, sallow. He seems starved. “Would you kill me?”

Your lips part. Bile and acid burn your throat. You shut it again and shake your head and the desperation, you assume, is enough. No, no never again. You don’t want that nausea. You don’t want any more of the griping aches in your stomach and the incessant pound of your capillaries.

Blade straightens up and gives you a long, thoughtful look. He steps back and returns to his stony silence without a word. The air is restive, poisonous in how it melts away the peace.

You really should pray to that nameless god, to soften that blow. You really should pray because nothing good ever comes out of this. There’s that brush of scale against your foot, the shrinking courage when faced with dour vermilion. It’s wolfish; its jaws bear down. The cat cracks open an eye again, letting out an annoyed mewl.

No, never mind that.

IV. EXUDATION OF BLOOD

You should have prayed. The questionable existence of a god or not, maybe you'd have given yourself that tiny bit of assurance.

Even your ancestors would have done well enough. What would your grandmother say?

( Her old spirit's possibly disowned you, if she hasn’t already. She must have burned your seat in the afterlife and spat on the ashes. Bringing a man into your home, no matter the circumstance would have incited all the wrong reactions. )

You learn quick enough that Blade never sleeps. The third night after spent between lurking within the stuffy storage space and wedged next to old folders, you’d spotted him sitting upon the couch in the middle of the night. “What are you doing—” you croak out after the initial scream. He scrutinised you with clinical indifference, sweeping over your bare legs to your face. You tamp down the urge to pull your shirt down, cheeks burning.

“Thinking.” he says. There is no further elaboration to it. Blade turns to peer outside your window and the dead streets below. There is a faint echo of the strays barking trailing behind the occasional hum of a passing car. Your little town was far sleepier than the cities, where the traffic continues on, long past the morning calls and the reedy music from 24-hour bars.

“You scared me for a moment.” you purse your lips, picking at your hands. Blade blinks. “I mean, you're just standing there.” You try to justify it, fumbling a bit and coming across as far more slow than anything else. Blade tugs at his sleeve and smoothens over the damp spots.

“I'm not trying to kill you.” he reasons.

You dig your thumb down into the thicker skinned parts of your palm. It reeks of iron. He always reeks of iron. “Startled me, then. I thought you were asleep.”

Blade considers it. “I do not need sleep. Not more than what is necessary.”

Uneasiness filters in. Your throat bobs with it, unsure. “Everyone needs sleep.” you stumble out. Blade shifts, tracing along his nape with a purposeful look. His regeneration. Yes, his regeneration. Tissue rest and repair would be unnecessary with that, wouldn't it? Sleep, food perhaps, the little necessities taken for granted — peeling that away and pulling back the blinds to peer down that gaping hole, it's strange.

The grislier parts of his curse seemed to strip away those human needs. It likes to gnaw out any sense of humanity from his bones, in fact, scavenging away the bare ligaments and swallowing it whole.

“So…you’re just going to stay there then...” .

“Yes.”

Blade’s shoulders are set into its perpetual hunch. There’s something unfettered about him, roiling within deeper confines with a sense of wildness and entropy. You take your cautious step back and steel the nerves you have left ( there aren’t many to begin with — you still try ). It’s far from the moodiness he usually holds himself with and the cyclical introspection. “Could you be less…disturbing, then…?” you ask.

Silence. “Disturbing.” he echoes, tasting every breadth of the word on his tongue. You feel metal coming to rest in your mouth and dig into the insides of your cheeks. There’s a flicker from the apartment across and sterilised white shines upon the side of his face. He looks worn down, worse for wear. The darkened spots on his clothes are dyed red round his torso and dried blood crests across the rim of his fingernails. Red. Red on his clothes. Red on the floor. Red on your couch. Red —

“Did you leave this room?” it’s not a question. You’re not asking questions.

“No.”

You don't quite realise it, the scrambling and the frantically locked doors till the cold nip from your room settles against your skin and your shaky hand holds up your phone. It takes a moment for the buzzing numbness to fade to a tumultuous undercurrent and for you to dial down that emergency contact, seconds away from calling —

— a notification.

It's an unlisted contact, and a single message.

Unknown. I wouldn't do that if I were you.

A moment of pause. You don't move, balking at the sight of it.

Unknown. There's a good girl. I hope Bladie isn't giving you any trouble. If he's made a mess, just help him get cleaned up, please.

You. Is this Kafka?

Unknown. Look at you playing detective! That's cute. It is, by the way.

You. How did you get my number..

Unknown. Oh I have my ways. And I wouldn’t call the police. I can’t say I’ll stay quiet and pin the blame on you. It would be easy, hiding a few bodies in your storeroom. I like Bladie, you know. Can’t have him getting arrested and all.

It feels like you’re grasping at ice, with the way it feels cold. Cold, so cold and uncomfortably harsh against your cheeks. You want to tear into something, into your pillow, into yourself. You want to throw your phone across the room and scream till your lungs are hoarse. You want to call the police anyway and shove that into Kafka’s face. You want to cast them out into some forgettable void and be done with this fear and this painful grip in your stomach and…

…you do none of that.

Some small defeated part of you whispers its comfort. You ignore it, cast it aside, call it a fool. You’re gutless, maybe a little brainless and honestly, you half consider going back to your hometown and — no. You will not think about that. Not now. Not ever. You broke that life apart, stepped over the fragments and let your bloodied footsteps lead you here. All that hurt is not worth the quiet defeat.

The door creaks open. You peer back out at Blade. “Sorry…” you mumble. He glances up at you. “I just…i was shocked…there’s blood all over you.” You think about what you should say next. You chose your words carefully. “Did you…”

You don’t get to finish. Blade leans back and shakes his head. “I did not kill anyone.” A wry little tug twitches at his lips. “Not now at least.”

It takes a tentative step, then another for you to exit the room completely. Blade doesn’t look bothered, content in his solitude where sits. You look down at the tiled floor trying to summon forth whatever blind insanity you had. It takes a special sort for this, for this specifically where the cracks fissure into the sides and down down down to the foundations. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” A lie. There’s blood on him for crying out loud.

Still, you do not pry. “Should I…” you stop. It takes some struggle, reaching down deep and wrenching the words out into something stringed and legible. “Do you want to clean up?” you offer softly, motioning to the bathroom. “Just…a shower, I guess. I can get those washed.. Blood’s really hard to get off after all and they’re nice clothes…from my personal experience at least…”

Blade watches you, tilting his head a bit. He does look a little like a dog now, one with a wrinkled muzzle and dark, serious eyes. “Fine.” he relents after some consideration, impassively getting to his feet. He follows you to the bath, delicately sidestepping your frame to enter. You let the water heat before letting it run into the bucket, offering him a pitcher and some soap.

“You’ll have to make do with the towel…I might have some spare blankets around.” you add, because you will not have a naked man walking around your house. There’s so much your ancestors might allow at this point. This would be toeing the line from possibly being dragged into the afterlife.

He spares a grunt in response while bandages come undone. You chew against the inside of your cheek, inhaling stale metal and collecting blotched brown linen from him. He’s hesitant, letting you close, but it takes a quick turn of his wrist for you to pick out the worst of his wounds. These ones do not heal away the rawness and the sick pink of flesh. These ones still bleed.

“Can you manage?” you peep out. Blade stares at his hand, at yours grasping his.

“Yes,” he says after a while. His fingers brush against the inside of your palm as you let him go, and you take that shaky step out of the bath, leaving behind a clean roll of bandages and antiseptic at the door.

V. PUTREFACTION

The woman beside you looks tired, worn away at the eyes and around the edges of her face. “Stay still.” she whispers hurriedly, stuffing her phone back into her purse as she gathers the skirts of her seere.

The boy on the bed does not stay still, tapping his fingers away at his lap as you shoot him a reassuring smile. There’s plenty of nervous energy stuffed away in the cracks and crevices of that tiny body of his, and it barely abates with the ticking second hand from your analog clock. “Are you nervous?” you offer, taking a knee beside him. The boy purses his lips, brown eyes focused wholly onto the floor below.

“No.” he decides to be brave and squares his shoulders up. You appreciate the effort as you press at the inside of his arm.

“That’s nice.” you nod. “But it’s okay to be scared sometimes. I know how scary needles can be.”

“I’m not scared.” he insists. He challenges you, looks at you dead in the eye with the most determination he could pluck away at his reserves and gather together. “Last week I chased a ghost away from my room. I turned the lights on and screamed at it.”

You crack a smile. “Is that so? Did it try to come inside?” you entertain the thought, poke away at his imagination till you find the faint blue of a vein. You see how his mother bows her head down, looking a little sick. The boy doesn’t seem to catch on in the way his eyes light up and he draws himself up. You don;t think she wants him to see. Sometimes there are instances where you see parents squirrelling away those bits of childish innocence like uncut diamonds; biting down at grimy hands that try to snatch it away.

You cannot fault her for wanting him to be happy. He was only four.

“Yeah. I was all GRAAAAAHHHH’!” you flinch at his spirited demonstration. He’s pleased with the audience and the invoked emotion as his mother winces and tries to pull at his ear to keep him quiet. It’s too late given his excitement, ducking down to continue his babbling. “And it went ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH’! Then it left and I went to see if amma and appa were alright. They were and I hugged them to make them feel better.”

“That is brave.” you nod. “You be careful out there, okay? Don’t stop hugging your amma and appa. I’m sure they love your hugs.”

“After this, can I have the chocolate at the desk?” he asks, batting his lashes. He flashes you a cherubic grin, and you might have caught yourself smiling a little wider. It’s a rare instance of silly happiness after the mounting strain on your shoulders and the urge to rip your eyes out bloody and raw. “The one in the big bowl.” he adds for clarity; because adults, he might be thinking, needed plenty of that.

You look over your shoulder to the door with a thoughtful little hum. “It’s not chocolate. It’s tamarind candy. The sweet kind. But it’s sour too.” You admit. “Do you still want some?”

The boy draws his lips back. “I’d still like some. I like tammy-rind.”

“Well, listen to your amma and stay still, okay?” he does, his small hand reaching out to grasp at her seere’s pallu. She holds her hand out and he takes it, tugging at her fingers, then her thumb as the nervousness slowly trickles in and scrunches away at his brow and nose. “Don’t get all stiff. Deep breath in…deep breath out. You can tell me about things you like if it helps…what games do you like playing?”

“I like football.” he offers. “My cousins say I'm a baby so I can't play with them. But I'll grow big and tall one day and I will kick their legs and show them.”

“Don’t start there.” his mother warns. “You’re not kicking anyone.”

The boy makes a face just as you give him his shot, then yelps a moment at the pin prick. His eyes squeeze shut for a second, his grip white knuckled till you finally pull the needle out and pat his cheek. “Done. That’s his DTP vaccine done with. He’ll need to get his booster next year as well so keep a reminder on for that.” His mother nods, handing in the little booklet as you scribble away the recommendations and mark away at the sheet.

The boy grumbles, poking at his arm. “Do I get the tammy-rind now?”

“Of course. The brave kids always get an extra one too.” you appease, walking them out.

“Great.” he’s mollified at least, wiping away any residual tears with a discreet turn away. “And i think you’re brave too. I saw a ghost here. In the door at the back.”

You freeze up a bit. “Did you now?” you’re feeling your voice crack a bit at the end of that question. Even the mother glances over, unsettled. You shake your head and the reassurance returns. It’s nothing, nothing at all, you try to say.

“Yes. He looked super scary. But he just looked at me and told me to go back to amma.” the boy sighs.

“I’m sure that was just one of the boys who helps the doctor.” his mother reasons, her words taking a sterner edge. She’s bustling him out, putting away at his back as she straightens her pleats and fixes her pallu. “It’s not nice saying things like that now. You’d better apologise to that man if you said that to him.”

“I didn’t say anything.” the boy insists as you pause by the door and see them off after handing him his hard earned candy, ( “thank you, doctor. Say thank you to the doctor auntie.” the mother urges. The boy echoes it drolly then slips back into his stubborn insistence, pulling at her arm ). Their voices fade into the faint music playing at the lounge and the chatter in the waiting room. Aleena turns to call for the next person, peering down at the files.

A hush filters through. One of the men stands over the row of seated people. They draw some of their children closer, muted shock and fear splayed across and you feel flayed open. “Tell the clients to leave.” you mumble. She nods and sends the word out. Some of them seemed to catch on quick and pack away their folders and gather their companions. A line of men and women mill out, leaving that sole frame standing, arms crossed in wait.

You keep your eyes down as you motion to the doors. Aleena hides away as she usually does ( you’d torn into her when she’d gotten too mouthy, too brave the last time ).

“Is something wrong? I’m sure I paid off the fee two weeks ago.” you test out.

The suited man doesn’t reply yet, sinking into the backdrop of static and the panicked thudding in your ribs. You vaguely remember Blade hiding away within the archives and hope he doesn’t wander back out again. He takes his time, dragging out the seconds as he idles past your framed degree and a few photos from your childhood home.

“A few weeks ago there was an…altercation in your clinic, correct?” he states more than he asks it, rubbing at his chin.

Oh shit.

“Yes…” you nod when you sense his wait. Your nerves wither away and you lose your sense of touch.

“Some of the men on my side died here. I was sent in to get to the bottom of it all.” His narrowed gaze settles on you. “It’s funny. We know there’s a third party involved but his body went missing from the morgue before he could be ID’d. Any footage of him? Wiped clean, and aeons forbid the police trying anything when it comes to getting witnesses to speak a consistent story.” His footsteps are an echo in the back of your mind, too loud, too distracting. Blade, dear lord, his presence here is a mistake. “Now, I'm here to ask if you had a hand in it, doctor.”

“No.” you choke out. “I don’t.”

“Were you working with that man who killed them?”

“No — ”

“Did you see him?”

You're too slow to respond and it takes him grabbing a fistful of your hair to rattle it out faster. “No I did not!” you insist, squeezing your eyes shut. You recall what you tell the boy, and the empty words about bravery. You feel like a liar steeped in bitter hypocrisy. It makes you want to rip your insides out and claw at your viscera.

Nails dig into the softer parts of your cheeks as your face is slammed into the wall. It draws out a choked, gasping wheeze from your ribs and white hot pain screaming at your skull, your muscles. The small, scared animal in you is crying, crying, crying away into bleak emptiness. It tries to run, eyes blown out and mouth hung open. It tries to make you run before you’re gutted clean through. “Are you lying?” the man asks quietly.

“No. No I didn’t.” You stutter it out, pressing your fingertips into the chipped paint. “I was hiding…I-I was hiding till t-they took the bodies.” The pressure against your head builds, builds till you yelp and struggle, terrified of him digging down hard enough to cut away at your airflow and snap your neck in two. For a moment, you wonder if he’ll do just that when he finally, thankfully, lets you go…

( Your eyes flit up, desperate, moving things and you look at him, actually look at him and the cold death in his gaze. You never assumed someone could look like that — empty and scooped clean of any humanity lingering at the edges. He’s hollow, and angry*.*

You made your mistake. )

…You’re slammed back in. The scream in muffled into your wrist. “You saw nothing?” he repeats, guttural in how he addresses and enunciates every word. It’s like reasoning with a man eater. You nod, nod because it’s all you had. “Nothing at all? No faces?” another nod and the man slips back and lets you crumple to the floor with that warning.

“You better not be lying.” he tells you, slipping to the speedy notes of your local tongue. “There will be hell to pay for that.”

You’re lucky, you think, for getting off that easily. The buzz in your mind builds and smothers you against your spot and you shift a bit when Aleena presses a hand to your shoulder. Blade is right behind her and she’s flattening her lips.

“You’re a nuisance.” you tell him, annoyance and anger and all that frustration meandering and stubbornly oozing through the cracks. Blade fixes you with a glare, drawing his mouth back to a half sneer.

“Who did this?” he asks, voice dipping to trembling danger, entropy brewing underneath all that. “Who did this to you?”

“None of your business.” you snip in turn, wobbling to your feet. Your coat is blotched red around the collar and the shoulders. You didn’t realise you were bleeding till your fingertips came away sticky and wet ( you feel like you’re careening off of the edge of a cliff, in a car you have no control of ). “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.” you add, croaking through your words and the buzz and the annoyance. “So just leave. Leave, tell her I can't babysit you if this…this is what I have to deal with.”

Blade narrows his eyes. “I cannot.” he states and leaves no room for argument as his hand grabs you at the scruff and half tugs you alongside him. You’re not spared any more dignity around him, and he treats you like a wet cat nipping and scratching at his arm. “You.” he adds, turning to your receptionist. “She needs to be tended to.”

Aleena mumbles something under her breath but seeks out the first aid kit. She swats Blade’s hands away once she approaches you again. You appreciate it. You don’t want him touching you and the crawling chilliness of his body invites an ugly sort of desperation that blocks away your throat and nudges at all the parts of you you’re less than proud of.

Blade does not leave. He never does, on that bitter note, looming over the two of you by the wall, that beast twisting in his eyes like a snake.

He unsettles you with the way he stalks the emptiness of your apartment rooms, pressing his body to the wall with shaky breaths. You watch him from the crack of your door and wonder if this is what unravelling sanity looks like. If it is the face of a man ripping open his chest and screaming through the guts until that beating heart is carved clean from the cavity.

Blade is more animal than human in how he walks. The room smells strange too. You do not know what it is, in its pungent notes and the unpleasantness of it all. It’s not rot, you’ve smelled rot before, and tasted that stench of decay lain thickly on your tongue.

This is more rancid, like regurgitated food and butter. You spot a single leaf on the floor, fan shaped and dipped in sunlit gold. Then more at his feet.

His form flickers by, rustling past your door. He’s at the balcony, then he’s not. You pad out and scan the dark streets, spotting his hunched frame nestled within the alleyways tucked at the side. There is a glimpse of purple from Kafka’s hair as she presses her lips to his cheek, whispering something to his ear.

Blade seems to melt and you watch on, half transfixed from the scandal, cheeks warming when Kafka leans to the side and waves, a playful grin curling on her face. She whispers something again and has Blade turn too, and you think you’re almost drawn in, dizzyingly close to the edge of your balcony rails till reason snaps you back and you return to your apartment.

( “Bladie…” Kafka coos at him, her gloved fingers pressing up against the seam of his lips. Blade tries to hide away the dry hunger in his stomach and his mouth. “Do you like this one?” she asks.

He thinks about it. The release of death. The warmth of your hands. The tears. He thinks of the man sawed apart on the concrete, down to tendons and bones and muscle and flesh. He thinks of the scattered limbs and the bruise and your blood.

Her hands press to his cheeks. “Listen to me. Push the mara down…we don’t want to keep upsetting her now do we?” she asks, teasing in how her teeth flash. Kafka feels like a dream lost in the haze of it all. He leans into her touch and lets the flowering roots in his chest rupture and decay.

“No.” Blade admits, surreality dragging him under. He does not spare her a reply to that question. Kafka already knows. )

VI. DISCOLOURATION AND DESICCATION

“Tell me who did it.”

“No.”

Blade looks annoyed, scraping and haunting the walls of your apartment as he follows you through the kitchenette like a ghost. The brewing…whatever it was…from the past couple of days seemed to have cowed after that visit from Kafka, nothing more now than a placid beast ( as placid as a rabid mutt could be ). You clench fist into your knife’s handle a little harder than you should have.

She could have taken him back, her little lover boy guard dog and his strange balcony crawling ass —

Blade hovers close, so close. There’s an absence of heat beside you. He’s always cold, colder than a man, warmer than a corpse. That in-between he seemed to linger in. His limbo. “He hurt you. He will do it again. Tell me who it was.”

“Absolutely not.” You state, voice flattened against bemusement. “You'll just kill him.”

He stills, his eye letting out something of a neurotic twitch. He might just strangle you now, carve you open with that sword, eat your insides…maybe. “He suspects something. He must die.” He says it slowly, irritation budding through the dryness of his countenance. Your nose wrinkles at this.

“That's nice and all but you stink of death enough, and ‘enough’ is still far too much.” You angle your knife, pressing into the tender outer layers of the onion till you slice through it. The blade shudders against the impact and your hand strains into it. You bite back a curse.

( You're thinking about too many things.

You're thinking about Aleena turning in her resignation letter, and her apologies. A marriage, she'd said. And how could she turn down her parents’ demands after everything? They care. Despite the pain, you knew that too. It's that painful kind of love where you'd hurt and hurt and keep hurting them when the choices seemed so sparse. Better a bloodied knife, they'd try to say. Better a few cuts than being torn apart.

She only just found out, she admits. There was an uncomfortable shift in her body. She looked ready to crumple into herself and shatter into a million pieces. She's meant to meet him during the agelu. It's been arranged for.

How did you? you'd asked. You were afraid to ask. You shouldn't have asked. That meant looking ugly things in the eye through to the nauseating technicalities. Aleena swallows. She looks more distressed than she should. You let her weep a little and nurse those gaping cuts. Your bruises don’t smart anymore. You’d forgotten they were there.

She shows you a newspaper. And you stare on with an empty kind of apathy as you spot her details within the bridal adverts, down to her college degree and the colour of her eyes. )

( You were reminded that there's a kind of love fuelled by bitter hate. You were reminded of the sight of her shrinking back and fading into the walls of your clinic, like a collapsing black hole. It's how daughters and duties were here, a little better than the north but broken in a way where broken things couldn't be fixed.

You've seen it in a mirror once, hollow and void and dead in your eyes, and your mehendi stained hands tearing apart the the jasmine in your hair. )

Blade tilts his head and angles the knife just a bit before you could cleave a finger straight off. “I’m being reasonable. He won’t hurt you if you let me.” he tries to reason, playing clumsy diplomacy. But Blade still pauses between his words with that perplexed unsureness. He didn’t know what to tell you when you were sobbing on that couch. He doesn’t know what to say now, when your insides were burning away your peace.

You brush him away and viscerally visualise grinding him to a bloodied pulp with your grandmother’s mortar. The violence in your head helps a little.

Blade keeps watching you, turning his head away from the spattering chillies and the sour notes of tamarind staining your hands. The onions are still a bother. You think it can't quite get worse at this point, with stubborn tunicated bulbs and a dull blade. The over-stimulation you're half subjected to feels like claws on a chalkboard, gratingly demanding every bit of your attention.

“Give it to me.” It's not a request. He takes the knife before you could really mutter out sneering ‘no’. He slices through the onion, passes you a pointed look and keeps slicing ( why does he make it seem so easy? Why??? ).

“Give it back.” you try.

“No.”

“Please…?”

He nudges at your shoulder, towards the stove. Your shoulders sag and a frustrated lump gathers at your throat. At least he’s helping, you reason. You shouldn’t be so angry over this. A normal person wouldn’t want to throw a fuss over a stolen chore and a stubborn wraith. You light the stove and gather what you’d prepared. Blade was done with onions. It’s only been a minute.

…You decide to not question that.

( Please don’t kill me, you add in your mind for good measure. )

There’s something therapeutic in indulging with this familiarity. Your old home smells like this, like comfort and nostalgia in the idyllic sorts of memories. They’re the ones you lock away in a box, nestling that key deep inside your ribs. Even so, that horrible weight swells up like a tumour. It could burst any minute. It’s wearing you down and frying the ends of your nerves.

“Aleena is leaving.” you blurt out. Blade blinks. “My receptionist.”

“She told me.” Blade nods.

“She’s getting married.” you continue.

Blade considers this. “She is…young, yes?”

You nod. “Twenty four.” you swallow. Your throat is parched. “Some families do marry their children off at this age. Not all of them, of course…and not every arrangement is all that bad…I've seen some good ones.” He keeps listening, you know it in the way his head tilts ever so slightly to you. Your senses are clumped together, messy, messy, messy. “It’s none of my business.” you add feverishly. “I shouldn’t be getting upset.”

“...why aren’t you?” the question is sudden. You feel your confusion knock away reason. Blade tries again. “Married. Why aren’t you married?”

“That’s a very impolite thing to ask.” you reply quickly.

“I see.” he struggles, pondering over his next few words. “I will not push further.” You purse your lips, the conversation delicately fraying and fading out. You let the silence stagnate, hovering by the stove with your vessel-full of coconut milk.

Something inside you tugs.

“I was supposed to be.” you mumble. “He was a nice guy, was working for a stable job and had plans to buy a house close to the beach. The kid you’d see in movies, you know?” you laugh a little. “And maybe I was a little swept up. But then we talked and we both realised that…we had dreams of our own. Things we weren’t willing to let go of, a relationship he was serious about.”

The chicken goes next, as the gravy settles into a shade of brown-red. Blade is staring, something in his face set in an odd way. He looks off putting. Hungry, like those night spent pacing through your living room.

“We parted ways. There weren't any dramatic rejections…he seemed just as pleased with it, to be fair. I hear he’s settled nicely with his boyfriend…good for him.”

“So you came…here…” Blade works it out.

“Quite. Those choices weren’t wholly supported by my family. They kept trying to find someone and I kept pushing it away…I was scared I guess, and people got angrier and insistent and I started feeling less…human.” you take a deep breath in. “So I left one day. They never contacted me. My father only started again after my grandmother died. And I opened this clinic up…”

The room is blurred out. All you see are splotches of colour and a blemished, dark blue whee Blade stands, rimmed by the sunset.

You wipe the tears away.

“It’s all I have now.” you whisper, a painful crackle coating the peaks. “All of it. And it’s a nice place…I used my grandfather’s photo frames in the reception…my mother’s carpet too. It was a souvenir from the north. And…and some of the toys were my own. It took some digging and cleaning and repairing but they’re just as good as any other…” It’s flaking at the surface. You aren’t a strong person. It’s always been so easy to crumble with the weight ( like a paper doll ). “So please…please just leave before you make it worse.”

Blade regards you. He always is, watching, watching, watching, like there’s nothing else that could tug him away, take up his mind when he’s not snapping necks till they shatter.

“I cannot.” His brows are set, pulling together just a little.

“You can.” You insist, feeling stupid, childish. Its pointless trying to convince him otherwise anyway, Not without feeling hacked down and near helpless beneath his looming shadow. “You can leave. You and Kafka can, it's not that hard.”

“We have work to do and it must be done.” driven finality settles deep. He feels so far away, repeating words like a robot. It's hard to think of Blade as human in times like these, where he's either too robotic or too animalistic. It feels scripted, all wrong, all twisted up and chewed apart. “You wouldn't understand it. Leave it be.”

“I won't, if it's my business you're intruding on.” You set the coconut milk down, the steel vessel striking polished granite with a sharp ring. Your teeth grit together ( you hate feeling angry. You hate the cloudiness that comes with it ). “What if I run then?”

Blade's glare is cutting. “You will not run.” He asserts, scruffing you so easily, tugging you just a little closer. You fight back the urge to swat at him. At least you could think a little. At least you still had a tiny hand digging it's claws into your self control. “I'll drag you back. I will keep dragging you back till you cease this foolishness.”

( How were you being foolish? All you have are fragmented snapshots, the lingering sense of dread, the knowledge of something sinister brewing beneath the surface. You have a man in your house, a murderer. You have a man in your house you swore you killed. You have a man in this house who doesn't die.

How were you being foolish? You want to scream at him till your vocal chords fray and your arytenoids collapse. But Blade has probably never felt fear. You can't imagine his sympathy.

And you still killed him though. You stop. The guilt is back, and the anxious Turn of it, and the seething edge of your rage burning, burning, burning. )

“Did Kafka tell you to do that too?” poison burns holes into your words. You and Blade are sinking deeper and deeper beneath it, boring holes through your skin.

( You need to stop. You need to stop talking. )

“She wouldn't be as kind.” He asserts simply, rolling his eyes at the mention.

Defeat comes for you from the corners. You huff. “Let go of me.” your arm is shoved back, elbowing his ribs. Blade doesn't flinch, but his grip loosens and he dips his head down in acknowledgement. “Are you ever going to leave me alone?”

“When we collect what we need, yes.”

“...get it over with quickly then.” You mutter, stalking away from him. “Tell me when the chicken is cooked. Leave me alone till then.”

Blade takes a moment. “Alright.”

“Bladie, you're upset.”

Is he? Blade doesn't quite see it. But there is an ache where his heart should be. It's been there since you'd locked yourself away and he’s left to stare at the curry bubbling at the edges. Kafka laughs from the other end of the line, light, airy; she's probably wiping blood away from her swords.

“You are. Has the doctor been softening you up?” She's playful, prodding, poking, stringing along her words. “Cute. Is she why you’re calling?”

“She’s asking questions.” he steadies his phone. It’s so easy, how it slips between his fingers. It’s not the firm immovability of his sword hilt and it’s slippery, almost unusable with his twitching. Blade hears Kafka hum against his ear, kneading away at the issue before her voice picks up again.

“You know you can’t give too much away, right? We need to follow the script and if she meddles too much…”

“I know.” Blade cuts in, apathy sinking deeper. The script, yes, the script. There’s that flash of familiar awareness. The script is something to be followed, right down to the bare details. If pinstripes needed to be worn, then pinstripes must be worn and if Blade must cut a hand off, that hand must go. But even he knows of the variables being difficult, breaching at destiny’s thin skin.

“And she’ll only get hurt, Bladie.” Kafka coos it out gently, placating the tenseness building in his shoulders. “It’s unfortunate how scared little things tend to bite more. Listen to me, try appeasing her a little, yeah? I’m sure a treat or two should keep her from stepping too out of line.”

“How much longer do I have to stay here?”

“You want to leave so soon?”

Blade does not. He can feel the roots tugging at his feet, fixing him down here, leeching, leeching, leeching. The fluttering ache in his stomach has grown worse. Blade fears never slipping away and that won’t do. Wolves aren’t to be leashed. That fractured memory, the writhing ocean in those eyes…there is no place for him here.

( Destiny, destiny, destiny. The unattainable, the inescapable…Kafka whispers something else. He wants to break his wrists. )

And still, Kafka knows. He can practically see the cheshire curl to her lips. “Cute.” she repeats, drawling the word out. “I’m almost done. Just a bit of the usual…we’ll have the stellaron collected in no time and we can head out. Till then, lie low and be a doll for me before I come to collect you, okay?” he can hear the faint echo of her footsteps echoing past empty hallways. She might spare a visit soon, he realises. “And again. Try not to upset the doctor too much, yeah?”

Blade dips his head down, mollified. “Alright.”

The phone cuts away. You’re still in your room, cut away from most of his conversation. The chicken looks cooked so he turns the stove off and gropes about absently till he feels a plastic handle. Then he knocks on your door.

It takes you a moment to open it for him. “Is it done?” you ask. Blade stares down at your wide, tired eyes. “Yes.” he replies, dizzy and blotted out in the centre all at once. He can’t quite stop it, the rapid undergrowth, the rustling call of mara, that need to seize you by the face and tear into the softness of your cheeks, to bite, to taste blood, to break your bones and devour you. To feel the dig of your nails against his arms, something sharper, you scooping out his chest, his ribs and his heart till it’s beat ceases and he curls into your warmth —

“Do you hate me?” he asks quietly, unwavering. Its swelling. “Do you want me gone?”

You swallow, halfway out of your room. Blade wants to grab you, taste —

“I do.” you mumble.

Appease her. Kafka’s echo fades out once more in the back of his head. Blade presses the knife to your hand, holding its edge just over his stomach, pressing till he feels its prickle numb out. It’s where the fluttering was, unfettered when he tore his intestines out upon your couch and let the blood seep into the fabric ( you hadn’t liked that, so he stopped ).

He stops, gripping you just above the beat of your pulse. It speeds up, vivacious, so alive ( Blade is used to his steady thrum, slow, so slow unlike that of a human ). “You can kill me then.” he tells you. “If it pleases you.”

There’s a shift. The handle slips away and you snatch your hand back, face twisting to what he recognises as distress. Then you look angry, slamming the door back shut. “Don’t talk to me.” You scream through, muffled by hardwood.

Blade feels empty. He collects the knife and turns back into the kitchen, temptations spilling out when he lingers a little too long and thinks of sweet oblivion.

He muzzles himself as most dogs should be. His teeth are blunted, his claws filed.

He doesn't want to scare you.

VII. SCAVENGING

Aleena hasn't spoken much since she'd told you about 'the arrangement' ( you make it sound like some cold business deal. A travesty. Maybe you were being far too pessimistic with this whole ordeal, putting in too many chunks of those ugly memories into that basket. You could be wrong. You could be wrong about it all ). It's an all too familiar disconnect, a silent misery that you'd watch every day after. She's letting it fill out her whittled spaces, and it worries you. Worries you in the way your heart twists and your insides turn.

( Won't you be coming, he'd asked again over a messy phone call. There's a lot of things to catch up on. We'll lay off the insisting, we'll let you choose the groom this time. That would be far better, right?

And your father's words meter out to warbled static, spilling through your ears and onto the floor. )

Maybe you should put something out in penance. Let those ghosts keep to themselves and continue their silent vigils. You're not superstitious, and rituals like these feel more a far away dream since you'd moved away.

"Aleena…"

"Yes?"

"How about we go get some cha during our break?" you offer a kind smile, tired, a little neurotic but you think it will ache a lot more if you say nothing at all. That wound up and coiled-away thing in her, pulling at the set to her jaw and the firm stoicism she displays — it slowly lapses. She looks down at her feet, back up at you and blinks a long, slow blink.

"That sounds nice." she croaks out, pushing aside a stack of papers. You check the analog clock above the two of you. A lunch break was due in another fifteen minutes and there a few checkups and medical records to fill in for school diaries. You could finish soon enough."Is it at the local place? I like the one with the cardamom."

"Sure you can."

Aleena seems to think a thousand thoughts all at once. "Thank you." she whispers when you step back, trained down to the keyboard. She's not typing, tracing the plastic frame itself . You leave her be, let her stew a while before gently gathering her up and leading her to the closest stall.

( Blade was cornered in the stores. You tell him not to stir up any trouble.

"Where?" he asks.

"None of your concern. I'd like some time alone with her, please." He reaches out, curling his hands into the sleeve of your coat. His eyes look like smelted iron. You tell yourself not to flinch, to skitter away because you will not be a rabbit. For once you will not be a rabbit. "I'm going." you repeat with more purpose. "You can't tell me otherwise."

Blade lets you go. )

It's crowded as is, and you try not to let yourself be pushed out by the squeezing throng. Not until you and Aleena leave with your tea and a packet of glucose biscuits to sit by a roadside ledge beneath the tree cover.

She takes a few bites before she starts talking again.

"Sorry about the suddenness of it all."

"The marriage?"

"Yes." She picks away at some of the crumbs.

"It's okay." You pat her hand in assurance. "I was wondering if you were doing alright

Aleena seems to ponder over it. "A little. I know him. We went to the same school…so it's not all bad." She drains the last of her tea, throwing the Styrofoam cup into a dustbin. "I'm just…angry I suppose."

"At your parents?" You guess.

"Yeah." She swallows. "They've been pestering me since my second year in college. I had to keep telling them that I wanted more stability…a job. Something. I can't just keep relying on my spouse for money and all that, you know…my parents said I could do that after. That I was being selfish for putting it off."

You purse your lips. "It's good to be stable." You agree. "Sometimes it's easy to point fingers and blame it on unnecessary worry and paranoia…but from my experience, marriages like these are a gamble. You can't be too sure, even with people you think you know." You must be rambling. Embarrassment floods into your cheeks. You have the grace to look a little sheepish.

"Right! And I told them that and…" She shakes her head. "They don't get it, I guess. I mean…I don't mind settling down, really, but they keep pushing me and rushing into it and then they just put up that advert without saying anything and..." Her wide eyed hysteria is palpable. You might want to hug her, steal her away. Familiar pains tend to do that, stinging at your soft insides.

"Am I not a good daughter?" The fragility spotting it aches, unfurling, spreading forth. You shut your eyes.

"I'm sure you are." You tell her honestly. And she is. You know she is.

Aleena's face stretches, pained. "It feels the exact opposite. I might be making it all more difficult…I should be grateful, shouldn't I? They care about me, I know that and…this…" The words are turned over, thought upon. Her hands twitch, gesturing at the air with wild frustration. Aleena is shrinking by the second, cracking at the corners. "What do I do?"

Your throat dries.

"I don't know. I ran away from mine and now my family refuses to talk to me." You tell her. "There's a lot of different ways this could go. Parents react in different ways…all I can say is…you need to trust your instincts."

"I don't want to lose them." She admits shamefully, wiping away a tear. "I'm a coward."

You purse your lips. "I think we all are." You sigh. Your tea has cooled against your fingertips. “But…but I'd say it's better than being miserable the rest of our lives. It's selfish, I agree…” you feel defeat trickle down — defeat, hopelessness, a cocktail of too-many-things-at-once.. “it could work out too. It could work out and it will be alright after that. But there's a lot more before it all as well…I'm sorry. I'm not very good with advice.”

Aleena shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. "It's better than people telling me that I'm being a nuisance."

"You said you knew him too." You add.

She scoffs. "He might have changed. The most I remember is him pulling at my hair and calling me ugly."

"Oh. Hopefully for the better, then."

Aleena rubs at her knuckles, humming softly as a trill of birdsong echoes above the two of you. "Thanks for taking me in." She says, and it's spoken so softly you almost miss it. "I learned a lot working under you.and you were good to me. Better than some other bosses I had…hopefully I should still be able to work after…" She breaks away.

A gooey sort of warmth trembles inside. It's the sort that cracks you open. "You're welcome."

She kicks out her feet, letting her footwear flap shutter against the balls of her feet, then stands back up. "We'll head back then? I don't think I'd want to leave you with unfinished work on my last day…"

"That would be terrible." you agree, cracking a grin.

Aleena veers the subject away to the common pleasantries. She talks about the weather, the new park in the better parts of the city and the flowers there. She talks about the old lady who invites her to feed the pigeons. You listen as you do, till you slip back into the clinic and start the afternoon shift again. Clockwork, familiar clockwork. Still, you ache. It's selfish.

"Blade." you call out when you step back into the stores. You're greeted with silence. You're greeted with emptiness.

"Doctor? we have another checkup!" You straighten up, smooth away the frazzle, the jumbled nerves and the frayed ends. There is a time and place for panic. Not now. Not when you have work to do. So you work. You work till the minutes and hours bleed in and the sun spills past the concrete rises. You work till the night falls and you realise the silence in the storeroom seems to have grown past the occasional rattle from the shutters and the wind.

You heave in a breath. Aleena has left, pulling you into a final hug. You find yourself looking for him.

( Where is he? )

It's Kafka who drops by after closing. The anxiety nips at you, your face, your hands, everywhere, between Blade still not making a reappearance and now…this.

You hadn't met her face to face in a while and you've almost forgotten the weight she carries. She'd turned you around before you could walks away any further, her gloved hands snaking round your waist and her lips brushing against the shell of your ear. "Sorry for the visit, doc." she speaks out, like you're old friends. "Had some work to look into."

You hunch your shoulders, cowed of any initial annoyance. Something in you draws back, scared around her. It's the cat-like preening, the way Kafka smiles so emptily at you. "Right." you mumble.

"Bladie's been treating you well? I told him to be on his best behaviour."

"He's…he's alright. If you're here to pick him up…well he's been missing since this afternoon. I…i swear I didn't — "

Kafka shakes her head. "Oh no, I sent him on a little errand." she assures you, sitting down in the waiting room. She pulls you down next to her. "I've noticed he's been doing his best around you too…granted I'm sure some of his habits are a little…of putting." That smile is back, razor edged.

"It's fine." You try to say.

"Mhm. If you say so." Kafka crosses a leg over the other. "I've been souvenir shopping between work and all. I might pack up a larger haul after this final matter is dealt with. So many things to do…" She trails off, drumming his fingers against her chin as if deep in thought. "Have any places you recommend visiting? I've heard the silks here are to die for."

You hadn't known that either. "That's…nice." You lower your head, that far away beeping growing louder and louder against the chills clawing up your spine. You breath in, feeling the point of her nails press up against your cheek and turn you around to face her.

"Oh dear. I don't think you're very happy to see me." she coos. "Bladie hasn't been very good to you, has he?"

You open your mouth.

"You don't have to say anything." she cuts in with what seems to be kindness. You were almost fooled by it, set adrift, running straight into that tangle of webbing. Kafka feels predatory the way Blade does, and in ways that doesn't feel like him either, spinning you around and around in circles for those simple little amusements.

"He scares me." you blurt.

"Is that so?" Pity weighs in her sentence, cloying it together like resinous amber and sundew. She looks delighted.

"He does." you nod, feeling helplessness undo your seams. Kafka leans in close, close enough for the warmth from her breath to spill over your jaw. You want to push her off — you should, given who she is. But she clings so close, drinking it all in with strange euphoria. She's still holding your face, and Kafka was far stronger than she presents herself to be.

"You poor lamb. I hope he didn't bite you too hard." She smiles, caught in a trance as you sink further into magenta and pink and the smell of her perfume. "Then again, Bladie's always rough with the things he likes. I'm almost tempted to take you with us."

You shutter, blank out, flail about internally before all reasoning bears down with the impact of a comet. "I don't want to go with you though." You squeak, the words sinking in so quick and it shocks you.

Kafka considers you, tilting her head with assured grace. "Are you sure?" She asks again, thumb pressing up against the apple of your cheek. "It complicates things quite a bit for you. I'd say you'd be more miserable staying here than giving in, no? For one…" She's enjoying herself, her lazy gaze scanning the clinic again. "…you'll be loosing all of this."

You seize up. "…What — "

"This." Kafka repeats. "All of this. It'll be gone soon enough. Bladie and I have dipped into businesses that most should keep out of…I'll spare you the details, really…though you might just have more popping up in that little head of yours." She taps a nail against your temple.

"What are you talking about." You croak out, falling into a gaping bit. The vestiges of horror start taking root in your lungs. Kafka bites her bottom lip, playing coy.

"Oh dear, I've said too much. May as well let you in on it then." She croons. "The IPC don't have much of a hold here, do they? No wonder…granted it made going through this operation far easier." Kafka lets you go. You lean back, back away from her, sputtering. "To keep it simple, we were here to collect something. A very important something…and out of all the possibilities we had…your little route happened to give us the least amount of grief to deal with."

You grip at the armrests hard. "I don't…I don't understand…" You choke every syllable out with a tongue that feels like lead. "I don't understand." you repeat, the mania arching your higher notes. Your clinic, this clinic, the only thing standing between giving up and going back and…Your clinic ( You remember the money, the scraping together and the loans upon loans and that less naive part of you still folded into the walls and corners ).

Kafka shrugs. "I don't expect you to. You've been a tucked away and coddled into this peace your planet has blanketed you with. There's plenty more in this universe you can't quite comprehend; and there are plenty of big bad things out there that Bladie and I could hardly hold a candle to…" She grins. It's a vicious, predatory thing. Your fear is a feast to her, one lazy bite after the other.

"I don't want this. You're lying — "

"In another five minutes…" Kafka begins. "Bladie will come back , dragging a little friend of ours along with him. He'll have sustained a hit to his head, half healed. The hem of his coat will be ripped off." Her gaze darts to the clock. "Tick tock. I'll be busy after that so you'll need to be quick with what you have to say."

You're stunned to silence. Blade. An associate. It's a nightmare in the making. strangling every bit of air from your lungs. Kafka seems terrifyingly sure, watching the way you move, scramble, feeling disjointed and not all there or all quite present in your body.

"I don't want this." You tear up.

She kisses your cheek. "I know, sweetie." Kafka gives your shoulder a condescending squeeze. You may as well be stabbed in the stomach too, revulsion burning your throat, jerking you away from her. It makes you want to grow claws, to make her hurt somewhere, anywhere. "It's too bad, really. Maybe if you were a little braver, a little more gutsy, we might have struck you from that list." She laughs. "Honestly, I find it adorable. You're like a scared little stray…"

A sickening thunk suddenly echoes out back, soft against the tile, and moving trough whimpered struggles. Kafka's eyes narrow. "That seems to be our cue." she comments lightly. You look at the clock. Five minutes.

Your voice is stolen away, a failed note against the hand crushing your windpipe. You feel dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, almost stumbling over the chair. Kafka is drunk off of it, shoulder brushing against yours. It's just her, those footsteps, the smell of her perfume. "So…" she whispers. "What's it like?" Her touch sears at your wrist, edging higher. "Being scared?"

Blade steps between the two of you. His hand coming to grasp at your arm, smearing a brown, bloodied stain against the expanse and dwarfing your wrist ( he can break it so easily ). He stinks of iron and rot and you don't dare to face that monstrous view of him, just like that first day, feeling his pulse recede and the massacre he left behind under the fading colour of his eyes.

( And still, you feel guilty. Because Kafka is right. You are a coward. )

"Kafka." Blade utters, a warning stained against his stressed inflections. "Leave her be."

Kafka's lips pull at the corners, serene, seemingly innocent. She doesn't even try to hide the deception. "Jealous much?" she snickers, letting you go. Blade feels agitated, the beginnings of a riptide streaking beneath a still surface. He yanks at you, fingertips pressing at your cheek, the spot between your ear and the column of your neck. It's the most he's touched you.

( Has she hurt you, he wants to demand. Has she? )

"Don't touch her."

Kafka holds her hands up in surrender. "Okay." she relents, content and entertained with the way things seem to be. From the corner of your eye, you see a mass…something close to human, move. A scream is lodged in your pharynx. Your nails dig into Blade's hand, a hoarse, wheezing sound heaving from the depths of your lungs. The mass stretches, tries to move away. You see red plaster the white tiles beneath it.

Blade's gait shifts to awareness, sharp eyed, watching the man try to escape.

"You didn't break his legs?" Kafka asks.

"I did. This one is stubborn." Blade snarls. He looks dog like, wolf like, fangs borne between a drooling muzzle. Your eyes sting as you try to tug away, away from him as Kafka stands and saunters over to the body, that elusive little smile still present.

"Well, we have plenty to ask of him. He still has a few details to give away now, doesn't he?" She hums a little tune, yanking the man by the hair till his broken whimpers turn to miserable screaming. "Come on Bladie, I need help. And you…" She fixes that stare on the man. "Listen to me. You can't speak anymore, or scream, or cry. Not till I tell you to."

The man's cries fade out into open mouthed gasps, his face a bruised and bloodied mess of tears and snort. Blade was not kind in handling him, not with his torn tendons and the unearthly jut his legs were angled at. Your skin crawls at the sight. You reach for your bag, your phone, shaking past the initial terror to give a final call for help.

Blade looks at you. It's enough to completely shatter it, unwinding, undoing, pressing down harder against the fragile cracks in your walls and letting that mess slip away past the desperate grasp of your arms and down away on the floor.

You shut your eyes and tell yourself you saw nothing.

VIII. SKELETONIZATION

You don't hear much of the man, save for Kafka's questions muffled behind the walls. The whats, whens, wheres and hows that you can't keep track off without giving too much of yourself up ( you're afraid you do, a thousand different things will split. You tell yourself there's nothing there ). You focus in the clock instead, watching minutes after minutes pass beneath the incessant sound of it ticking, ticking, ticking.

Minutes after minutes after minutes.

There's a final exchange of words. You hear a tumble, a body hitting the ground. Kafka walks out, hardly bothered in the slightest and pristine save for that dampness of her gloves. She shoots you a charming smile, taking in how you'd tucked into yourself. "Well you're a sight for sore eyes. Scared, lamb?"

You're scared of a lot of things now, of the woman in front of you and the man outback and the man whose words they stole and the impending aftermath predicted. You're trapped in your own burning house, doors jammed shut and the window too high to take a jump. You'll suffocate in here, choke till your lungs collapse and your organs scream and fragment.

Kafka cups your cheek. "Hm, a pity. Scripts have to be followed though…sorry about that doc." She draws away and you let out a wet little sob. "Don't be too sad about it." She coos, patting your cheek. "On the bright side, I'll be leaving soon. Stay close to Bladie, okay? Can't have you running off and throwing a fuss now."

Dear lord no. Not Blade. Not Blade after all this. It feels like a joke and a half, an empty attempt at drawing out any laughter from an unenthused crowd of blank eyed faces. You stay seated, wide eyed and insistent. "No." you choke for good measure. Kafka's expression glows.

"No?" she echoes, a hand resting against either side of the armrest. You try to make yourself small, edging away from her farther and farther till her knee slots between your legs and you nearly cry out and kick her off. "Come on now." She coaxes, hand tugging at your waist, sitting you up proper. "Don't be too difficult. Bladie's not half bad."

You shake your head, blanking out through her crooning as your struggle intensifies. "Stop it." you repeat, shaking your head, seized and maniacal till your nails dig in. Kafka doesn't flinch. She's still smiling. "Don't you dare tell me I'm being —" You sob. it's messy, so messy and that pain in your chest only grows, spreading across like blooming rot. " — that I'm being difficult." You spit. "After all this, I'm allowed to. You're both insane, you fucks, I — "

Kafka presses a thumb over your lips. You bite, hard.

"Listen to me." She keeps talking. She won't stop. "Stop crying."

You stop crying. Your mind is empty white and fuzzy static stretching out like elastic. You feel her laughter against you. "Good girl." She praises. "Now, go on along with Bladie, okay? He'll do a good job looking after you."

You claw at the walls, trying to protest as your body lifts, padding out back, trapped within the long winding of corridors that didn't quite look like that once. "Kafka." you hear Blade echo again, his hands resting heavy on your shoulders. It sounds exasperated? Why? You're fine. You think you're fine. You see a magenta blur flutter around you and words spatter apart and stitch back together into nonsense and noise.

Blade takes you by the arm. You're half leaning against him, the soft, shaky breaths against his ribs and his heartbeat ( it's a slow, faint sound ). He seems to linger in place, letting you be as your nose screws against the smell of blood spotting his clothes. Then, he's leading you along the less crowded roads, shuffling past the harsh blaze of streetlights. Vaguely, you remember where this route takes you and you try to join the pieces — the memories feel so far, far away.

The mass tucked under Blade's arm moves. You look the man straight in the eye and do nothing. Your mind, your ribs are barren spaces.

You smell salt, hear the sea, the waves, the wind. The man in his arms struggles ( you're not here ). You see the panic stretched across, the way he pales to what looks like ash grey ( you're not here ). You watch Blade turn your face away, annoyance sparking in his eyes ( you're not here ). You look on anyway, as his fingers claw at his throat, so easily tearing apart soft flesh and tendon and muscle till his hands are stained warm red ( you're not here ). You're lain bare to those death throes, a wheezing from a broken windpipe, the yellow of subcutaneous fat and the ruptured arteries ( you're not here ).

"You should have looked away."

Blade's voice pulls you out. You finally breathe. Take it all in again as the cotton and the fuzz and the silk web is untangled from your notches. The man falls to the sand, nothing more than dead weight at this point.

( This could be you. )

You take a good, long look at him, at that tear stricken, marred face, that distended jaw and the awful angle to his limbs. The sand is already soaking up beneath him — he was alive once. You didn't know this person, you'd never met him and…

( You let him die. You're a doctor and you let him die. )

Blade's brow furrows when you take a shaky step back, two clear words; 'do not'. You look around you, spot one clear rout of escape amidst that hopeless need to collapse, the world spinning faster and faster and fraying and burning away at the far extremities. You try to run.

He doesn't lie when he says it's easy to catch you again.

You're drawn close, your back practically colliding against his chest before you could make it too far. That rabid, scrambling beast in your snarls and you sink your teeth into his wrist, kicking wildly till your foot connects with his shin. Blade grunts, and you slip away just a little, an inch, one more. But he's bigger, bigger and stronger and it takes a moment for you to fall to the floor, swiping into the buzz and feeling his heaving chest pressed against yours.

His hold closes round your throat. "No — " You burst out,. "No, no don't — "

Blade doesn't move as much against your kicks, face drawn to stony apathy while you try to pry his fingers away, vision blurring against tears and snot. His thumb presses down against your thyroid, breaths unevenly paced to an animalistic rhythm. He doesn't seem all there with how he seems so steeped in madness and…

…fuck it, you're terrified.

Your hand gropes to the side, closing round the uneven surface of a stone. You drive it into the side of Blade's skull, a faint crack ringing out. He falters, wide eyed as one hand presses against the wound and comes away wet. You take a gasping breath in, pushing yourself up but Blade drives you down hard, down to your back till it hits something soft, and still and dead —

( No no no nono no no no NO NO. )

The vermilion of his gaze burns you ( just like all those nights ago ).

It's already started to heal, collapsed parts of his skull scraping and pushing itself back out, repairing damaged bone and muscle. And Blade looks half drunk, sunken into rapture and starvation, his hand sliding up from your throat to press at your cheeks. You freeze, ceasing your assault to his chest and stomach.

He curls over your form, shrugging and swatting away your hands to pin you down proper. There is a wet squelch against your arm pressing against that open wound. "Stop…" You whine, trying to tug him back. "Blade. Blade stop — "

He presses his lips to yours. You slam your fist into his sternum, tasting his blood in his mouth. His teeth come next, biting against your bottom lip, taking, taking, taking. It feels infecting, like a disease, like something that shouldn't be there and you squirm. Blade's fingers tangle into your hair, giving it a sharp tug. You feel your back press against the corpse's shoulder, practically crushing you against it.

He's not gentle. Blade can't be gentle with the violence that comes with him. It's too deeply embedded into the crevices of his bone and marrow and in his veins and blood. It's the oxygen he breathes in, the lead that poisons his alveoli and files away at the pliable parts of his abdomen.

His tongue peeks through, pushing past your lips to take a taste. There's that heady taste in you, disgusting, curling in your guts and just about threatening to batter out. You kick him again.

His eyes flash, dyed more red than orange. He comes away with spit and blood smeared across his lips. You heave, staring up at him, then break down, sobbing openly. Blade keeps you still, bending down to kiss you another time, just at the corner of your lips.

"Enough." You beg him, sounding small. You feel defeated, the load wearing down the bones of your shoulder till you're crushed and collapse. "Please."

Blade blinks. He sits up and sits you up with him, nestled between his legs. You look behind you, the man's larynx having come turn free from your struggle, hanging out a hairs breath and cushioned by fat and crushed muscle fibres. You croak, tipping your weight over and emptying your stomach out onto the beach; till all you are retching out is acid and bile. He pulls your hair back, halting your mess from getting caught in it.

"Done?" he asks, drawing you back close to him, his gaze lidded. You shut your eyes.

"I want to go back home." you whisper.

"Alright." Blade promises you, putting you back down on the sand. "Don't move." You don't think you can. Your limbs weight down more and more with the passing minute. Blade drags the body out into the ocean, for a moment, disappearing beneath the surface. He returns, of course. He can't drown, or die ( He's not human, never will be ). "Come." he tells you.

You allow it, him gathering you in his arms. You don't make a fuss, or shout. "Keys." he reminds you. You hand them to him, leaning your head into his shoulder. Your tears prickle beneath your eyelids.

He takes you back home.

You don't know how he'd avoided the security guard's questioning, or the neighbours, But Blade sets you down on the little stool, pulling the bucket beneath the tap to let the hot water run. You draw your legs to your chest, thoughts collapsing into each other, fracturing and splintering as your trembling grows worse. All you can think of is gargling till the taste of blood is gone and the memory of that kiss is gone.

Blade fixes his attention on you. "You need to bathe." He says, taking a knee. You're exhausted, too exhausted to protest, trembling when he pulls away at your jacket and your pants, letting it pile up by the door.

"I can do it myself." You mumble. You question the necessity of it. He won't listen, after all.

He unhooks your bra and tugs down your underwear. "You're tired." He states. "Your attempts will not be as effective."

"Does that matter?"

Blade hums. "Kafka mentioned the need for hygiene. You could fall sick. Besides, you are a doctor." Not anymore, you nearly snap. He moves on to himself next, unbuttoning his jacket. "Detergent?" he asks when you squeeze your eyes shut and refuse to see any more. The sound of his belt buckle is next and his trousers being pulled down.

"Cabinet under the kitchen sink." you mutter. Blade steps out and you lean up against the bucket, watching the water steadily fill till it reaches your fingertips. You hear the beeping from the washing machine and Blade's returning footsteps. He settles behind you

"Turn around."

You turn. You do not look down.

He spends a moment regarding you, then empties a pitcher-full of water over your head. It's warm enough and you let your eyes slip shut as he works on scrubbing away the blood and sweat from your hair. That rotten thing curls in your belly, ringing round like a centipede crawling.

Blade's thumb wipes away the smudge on your cheek with sandalwood soap and he tips his chin up. "Don't fall asleep yet."

"Okay." you passively reply, opening your eyes. he hums and continues to wash you, treating your body with clinical indifference. You don't know what's worse, the hunger or the distance. The act of being viewed as anything but human leaves a sour taste in your mouth. "What about you?" You ask, filling the empty space. You don't want to think about tonight. You don't want to think at all.

Blade hums. "You can help." He shrugs right after. "We will be done sooner at least."

"Okay." You echo, reaching for the soap. You come to realise that he does need the help. Pulling the bandages off of him was a hard enough task. They were messily strewn on, almost cutting away his blood flow and he sweeps it aside. His wrists and his forearms are next. You don't undo the one on his thigh, furiously washing the dried fluids off of him.

What are you doing?

A part of you laughs at the obscene humour. A few hours ago, you'd have dropped dead at the very idea of doing this, if the hopelessness wasn't torn away from you the reins and left you on the backseat of a crashing car.

"You can…turn around."

Blade grunts and turns. you spurt too much shampoo into your hands. Some of it spills over. "You're scared." He says.

"I am."

He bends down a bit. It's easier to reach his head this way. "You should be. You should have killed me." He states, severity weighing his words.

Your shoulders slump, fatigued. "Please. Just stop." Your voice dips into a whisper. "Just stop. I want to rest, alright?" Blade falls silent, knitting his brow together. He nods wordlessly as you rake your fingers through his hair, undoing some of the knot building up against the shampoo suds.

( Blade thinks you're still too gentle with him, in how you trace one of his scars. But he feels the shudder, the roiling beat under your skin, the fear. He sees how easy it is to bring the tears out again and turn that mind of yours off.

He turns a little, pressing his fingertips to the softness of your thigh, just in case you try to run again. )

When you're both done, he has you swaddled in your blankets and deposited on your bed, clothes in tow. It's horrible, this tenderness. You don't think he's used to it either, in how he shuffles and cautiously pads at your arm like you're a fragile little thing, like he wasn't the one who took the mallet to it in the first place.

"Will you hurt me?" You ask, dead eyed.

Blade's lips part ( sometimes he does, when the mara blooms forth florets in his chest and stomach and he wants to break something that breathes beneath his hands ). "Will you run?" he asks.

"If I do, will you hurt me?"

"Yes." he replies bluntly, his hand resting on your calves. You know what that means. You squeeze your eyes shut and nod, laying down on the bed and curling up into yourself.

"You're a monster." you tell him with a shaky, illegible slur. All this for a preordained destiny, for convenience, because you're a coward. All this and you'll be left with nothing tomorrow. You think of your clinic and what you'd salvaged before opening it. It's foundations and the grey walls of the empty rooms it once had. Your heart poured into it all. "Both you and her."

Blade lowers his head. "We know."

IX. DISJOINTING

You did not sleep at all, last night. Blade still stalks the hallways at the unearthly hours you wake at ( five thirty on the dot ). A man is dead, a man you barely know, whose body now below the ocean's surface. Maybe the sharks ate him. And your clinic…you curse it all, and you curse that compulsion that has you reaching for your phone.

It doesn't take long to find it after browsing the local news network. A few live footage of the collapsed interior and the busted furniture. Years of work torn apart ( At least Aleena quit. At least she doesn't have to see this ).

"Do you know why they did this?" you ask, your voice scratchy when Blade comes to linger by your door frame. He'd washed his clothes last night, having pulled his trousers back on with a loose fitted tank top. Kafka must have dropped by.

Blade looks away.

"You know." You spit out, fury bubbling up, clouding your eyes, painting it all red. "You know, don't you? Look me in the eye and tell me you do, you little — "

"The man." Blade cuts in. "The man who hurt you."

You grip the sheets. "What did you do?" you whisper, numbness taking foot and taking away more and more reasoning.

"I killed him." he passes you a sharp look. "Letting him live would have put both of us at risk."

You let out a mirthless laugh. "So it's your fault then. You…you come in and just assume I would be fine with you just…" You laugh. You laugh and laugh and laugh till your ribs hurt and your sides ache because it was so unnecessary, all of this. He must be sick in the head, him and Kafka, to twist apart your livelihood and step all over it. Monsters, the lot of them. Monsters.

"Oh god you're a fucking riot. Now what should I do? I have no job…should I go back? Maybe you could get a kick out of me being sold off again, right?" You flash him a bright little smile, mania at it's finest, and anger. So, so much anger it boils your body alive.

He narrows his eyes. "You will not be leaving. They'll come after you next."

You giggle. "Of course they would." You whisper. "Of-fucking course they would. Then I'll just die. Let my father douse my ashes, if there's even a body to cremate because that just seems the best way to go." You lay back down, tugging at your hair with frustration. The mattress dips as he lays next to you, lips drawn against your nape.

It's possessive, demanding of every little thing and every little part you had to offer.

"I won't be leaving." You snarl, feeling all that spite gather. "I can't because of you. remember?"

"I know."

You press your cheek against your pillow. You're tired again. You want to sleep. "You may as well just kill me at this point." You state flatly. "There isn't much use keeping me alive. I've served my purpose right? What was it, some glorified shield?"

His grip on you constricts. You're pulled closer to his chest. "You will not die." He tells you, his nose pressing up against your neck. Blade inhales, tangling his fingers into your hair. "And I won't kill you."

You bare your teeth at him. Then you stop, and press your face to the pillow again. "Enough." you tell him, feeling angry and tired and empty and more. You try to push Blade off of you, the small of your back brushing against him. Blade lets out a hiss, nails digging into your forearm and you freeze.

He's pressed up, half hard against you.

You throw yourself away from him.

Your eye sockets burn as you flinch and struggle. "Stop." He rasps his order, pressing you stomach down against the mattress as you curl over the edge, letting out a panicked whimper, a migraine searing through your forehead. It turns into an ugly sob, into cries that bleed into the sheets, tracking saliva down as you're dragged back.

His weight bears down hard on your back, his mane curtaining your line of sight. You try to elbow him off and he wrestles your hands down, pinning them behind you. He's panting, letting out a stray growl every now and then. The edge of his nails dig a little deeper into your wrists, just as the other hand fixes itself firmly against your thigh.

You shake. You don't try to hide the glassy eyed look. You only shake.

Blade's annoyances seem to mount, his forehead pressing against your temple. ( Appease her, Kafka's voice whispers to his ear. Blade feels too much of you beneath his palm, and it stokes a selfish hunger that comes down violently ).

He trails his hand upwards. You lay slack, surrendering to it with a tense form. It tugs your nightwear down, spreads your legs a little more. You cry a little, then give up on it, his fingers exploring the softness of your thighs and slipping to the inside. He lets your hands go and you come to grasp at the pillows, nipping down at your bottom lip.

"Blade…?" You whisper, unsure.

He traces the seam of your cunt, dipping a finger inside to toy at your clit and you squeak, grabbing his arm. "H-hold on that's — "

Blade turns you over, draping your legs on either side of his hips. You look at him, pupils shrunken down at the sight of him surveying you, his lips pressing over the curve of your knee, then further down. You squirm beneath him, movements stilled by a firm hand on your belly. Blade bites hard, tearing into the skin of your thigh, breaking capillaries and drawing blood.

He pulls away to witness the bruising and the wet wail you shudder out, soothing you with his tongue brushing over the wound like a dog. You slam your foot against his shoulder. Blade simply grabs it and hoists it above his shoulder.

"Let me…" he mumbles, groaning up against your skin, spacing your thighs apart some more. You're squirming, and he roughly pulls you closer. "Stay still."

You can't, you want to say. You can't when he's touching you like that and —

He stills. "You haven't done this before, have you?" he guesses. You want to sink, sink down into a place that was far away from here. Blade's eyes are unnaturally bright, burning like coals against the dim lighting.

"Shut up and get this over with." You rasp. There's nothing here, nothing between the two of you. Maybe a few sick feelings from his side. You want it to be done with and let the maggots eat away at your body after ( if that makes it easier for him in the end ). Blade huffs, vague amusement flitting past his expression. His cheek is smushed against your thigh.

"Your first…" he mumbles, a vague story playing out in his eyes. Your legs are pushed back, and he sits himself down before you, teeth grazing through soft flesh till he latches his mouth to your cunt and presses the expanse of his tongue over your bundle of nerves. You mewl into it, jolting under his touch as his hands come to massage circles at your hips.

You stay steadfastly quiet after that, as the assault continues and he licks a strip up your slit while gauging every little shift and twitch on your face. You could have fooled anyone else with the forced apathy, fooled Blade with you looking at anything but him. He suckles at your clit, rolling it over the tip of his tongue and you twitch, bucking your hips into the grind.

Blade demands. He demands and keeps demanding, eating you out half starved and at a pace you couldn't keep up with; feeling that appendage slip into you at some point of it all. You moan ( this doesn't feel good. It shouldn't. How fucking pathetic are you?! ) trembling at all the new feelings blurring out your mind.

You tell yourself to take it. Take it and let him leave you be after that taste of satisfaction. Blade nuzzles into your cunt, smearing your building slick against your outer lips till smelted orange meets the fatigue in yours.

"You're being stubborn." he comments, pulling away for a moment. You grit your teeth, open your mouth to snap back. Blade dips down then, a finger slipping into you, massaging your insides and pacing himself with more gentleness than you'd expected. Gasping and grasping at the sheets, your narrowed gaze fixates on his, fuming, fuming.

You push his face away when he leans in close and he persists, teeth latching over your neck, licking a delicate strip up the column of it. His chest seems to vibrate — it's not a purr. It rattles at you, it's unnatural.

"Make it quick then!" you sob. "Please."

His finger curls inside you and you curl your toes into the sheets, keening into his hair. You hate this. You hate this. There is a warmth in your insides that stirs and seeps through the cracks. Blade seems to notice and takes it in with a hunger that terrifies you. He presses his pads against that sweet spot, a thumb returning to your clit. You whine, shake your head.

"Good?" he asks. It feels like a taunt.

"Shut up." you grimace, rocking your hips in pace with him. It's little jolts of that buttery feeling that has your mind sink further and farther away. Blade kisses your neck, grinding up against your ass through it all. It's awful. It's all wrong, this facade of gentleness.

You mumble, grinding at his hand as another finger is added and he stretches you out a little, testing your limits with rapture. That heat grows, grows, grows bit by bit, tuned to the way his finger curls into that spot. A moan spills out, then another and you spa a hand over your mouthy, shaking your head. You want it to stop. You want this to stop now and —

Blade's digits nudge against your cervix and he bears down on your clit hard.

It snaps, that warmth. You tighten round his gingers, clenching, sucking him in deeper and his lips part as he watches you fall apart with a jumble of words and begging. You fall back into the sheets as he pulls his hand away, laving at your mess while he undoes the buttons of your shirt. It spares a peak of the sweet of your breasts, the soft expanse of your stomach. He's seen it before. There's nothing new to it.

He bites again, not as deep this time as he pulls his pants down. You spare a glance, snapping out of the afterglow when you catch sight of him. "That won't fit." You whisper.

Blade shudders, his cock resting at your stomach. It's hot, an angry res that makes you feel uneasy. You half expect pain when he slides down to breach you entrance, you expect tears and you expect it with hunched shoulders. Blade is slow instead, thoughtful, almost. He keeps his progress slow, watching you wince against the stretch before he thrusts in deeper, finally nudging his tip to your cervix and staying there a moment.

Somewhere between all that, his hand finds yours, pressing down at your palm in awkward assurance.

You can't take it.

"What are you doing?!" you demand, whining against how full you felt. It's strange, so strange and you think you see the mad ramblings from friends and gossip over how good sex felt sometimes. But this is Blade. Blade, with his violence and his slashed wrists and the way he stank of death.

Blade pushes some of his weight on you. "It's your first time." he replies.

Your first time. A rare consideration. An emotion that bud out too late for your tastes. "Why should you care then?!" You snap, grabbing his tank top. "For fucks sake, stop treating me like I'm your lover! I'm not! You're not doing this to me because you have feelings do you?!"

The question was wholly rhetorical. It's a harsh accusation, mounted by everything else he'd done wrong. Blade falls silent, eyes wide. You leer up at him, then chortle with disbelief. "Oh god, you are." You choke out, feeling violated in a way. Feeling more violated than you were already. Blade keeps staring at you as you cover your face, cackling. "Oh god, oh god this is just unbelievable! You like me? Me?!"

You feel venom drip into your words. You feel that ache, the urge to tear his eyes out then and there. Boys will be boys. The words keep echoing through and it makes you physically ill to think of it.

"You're pathetic. You're absolutely fucking pathetic!" you cut through, grabbing his hair and pulling at it. Blade grunts, annoyed. You don't care, ripping at his face, his neck, his shoulders. "Fuck! Fuck you! After all this bullshit, fuck you!" Blade hisses, trying to shift a bit, move some more but you kick out at his thigh.

"Do not." he grits out, his voice low and angry. "Your anger is an inconsequential thing. I've seen far worse."

"You think I want your guilt, you ass?!" you demand. "You think I want you begging and grovelling for forgiveness?!" Blade thrusts. You dig down, fight against it and the sweet burn it brings. You feel that storm brew in your chest and you spit at him, jarring Blade enough with wide eyed shock ( it's a satisfying thing to see ) to slam your weight into him and roll the two of you over, your hands grabbing at his throat.

He nudges deeper into you and you cry out, feeling his tip coax into your g-spot. Still, you hold on.

Blade still watches, gauging the sudden shift, waiting to see you move. When you take a moment to gain your bearings, he grasps at your hips, guiding you down his cock and you almost falter, feeling his free hand tweak your nipples. sputtering a little, you persist, your thumbs coming to press against his Adam's apple.

Blade lets out a gasp, snapping his hips up again, drawing himself out then back into you. You feel him grind against those sensitive spaces he'd gauged out earlier and a few flustered cries sputter out before your grip tightens round your neck.

He sets his speed, increasing that pace to a faster rhythm, grasping at what parts he could, letting you take from him for a moment. You double over, teeth tearing into his cheek. "I despise you." You tell him. "I hate you for taking everything away from me. I hate you for ruining my life." You pour it all in, all the vitriol and the fury. Blade's eyes shut.

"I know." he grunts, feeling you clench down on his cock.

"I wish you'd stayed dead." You add, feeling it all pile up into a raw mass that eats you alive. "Do you hear me?"

"I know." He repeats.

"I hate you." You sob out, your tears splattering against his jaw. Your thumb presses down harder. Blade moans, his tempo increasing and catching you in it's midst, hitting your sweet spot over and over till it tumbles through to make a mess between the two of you, the baggage and the tucked away harshness. "You're pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic."

It feels so fuzzy, the heat, the faint warmth from Blade, blocking out his airflow. His movements grow frantic, almost, his grip on you bruising your hips till finally, you find you release again, legs weakening below you. Still, you hold fast, dragging yourself over the expanse of his body as he keeps up with thrusting faster and faster to a brink of near over-stimulation, all of it animalistic grunts and grows and teeth nudging at your chest.

You press down hard enough and Blade finally cums, his release coming in spurts inside of you. The cartilages in his larynx give out and you feel tissue collapse into itself ( just like that man on the beach with his throat torn out, poetic in a gruesome sense ). You watch him struggle to breath and you push down harder, hysteria bursting as you bare your teeth and drive him closer to another death.

Blade goes still below you. He's cold as a corpse.

You sway a bit, lifting yourself off of his cock, falling into a haze of cotton wool and sick satisfaction, tipping into the space next to him. He's dead. He's dead.

You shut your eyes, and you feel nothing.

You have better to do now, the unsaid and the undone. The empty buzz of pleasure slowly recedes and you grasp your phone between your hands, tapping at the message app. You let out a soft cry, shoulders shaking. There was a life once that felt far too distant. Where you'd been tugged away and folded into silk and gold till you were shackled down and told to stay quiet. 

( There are many things you want to tell them. Many angry things, many quiet, introspective things. Many with a little more love lining your words, a little more longing. They still wait for you, even after shutting their doors. You know this too. )

So, you start to type.

Dear Appa…

Blade wakes when the sunlight filters in, and his arm winds round you in the silence, listening to the rustle down below and the coming commotion. Then, he rises, buttoning his pants up proper and drawing the blanket over your head. "Stay here." he tells you.

You listen to the angry voices and the encroaching footsteps from the staircase outside. Blade summons his sword, stalking out of the room, dog-like, wolf-like, his violence returned to him after briefly being cowed by your venom. 

The doorbell rings ( you know who it is, through the ringing metal and the acrid voices ) and you draw into yourself.

You are not here. You tell yourself. You close your eyes and open them back up, petrichor seeping through and your feet sunk into damp soil. You let yourself stay there, in the garden in front of your childhood home, away from torn flesh and the building agony.

You are not here.

📼 — AUTHORS NOTES + ETYMYOLOGIES //

MANY MANY THANKS TO MOTH FOR BETA READING THIS.

this fic was something that took me months to write ( and honestly it shows with the mess and the rush XD ). either way, tda does touch on a few cultural topics and reflects on some of the good old desi trauma when it comes to the arranged marriage scape, something i wish i could have explored more in depth. but with a fic nearly hitting 20k and my own set deadlines...perhaps another time. so here are some of the stuff i mentioned that were picked straight off of my own experiences :

the newspaper adverts listing out bride and groom details amongst other stuff is a pretty common sight here. within my own personal experiences, arranged marriages are a gamble to say the least, considering i only knew two within my immediate sphere that worked out pretty well. add in the stigma surrounding divorce and hooooo boi.

needless to say, there is a lot of shit to unpack with arranged marriage culture ( specifically down in the south where a lot of women and men are given the illusion of 'control' but are still heavily pressured into it ). it's not as overt or obvious to be fair, nor as deeply touched upon.

there's also the weird dynamics within our families where children cannot wholly cut themselves free from their familial unit, disownment and distancing aside. due to how community takes center stage here, family plays a pretty heavy handed role when we're raised. this is mostly due to assumptions of familial disownment being tied into 'questionable behaviour' in a sense. one of my friends was turned away during job hunting solely because some employers were unnecessarily quick to judge.

add in the sheer dependancy you grow into and how tight social circles tend to be and hoooooo b o i. ( you're dead if you live in a small town ).

the reader here does exist within these two spheres, half pressured into arrangements and a duty to be a 'good daughter' by proving financial stability. the clinic isn't just a ways of keeping her away from her family and the matrimonial expectations they have on her ( and trust me, it's not just the parents ) but also her own little act of rebellion by showing them that she can manage just fine.

some of the stuff are more in line with my own community's practices. the agelu is a feast laid out to pay respects to ancestral ghosts. cha is our way of saying 'chai' within my language.

blade in this fic was also initially supposed to be very unhinged. maybe a little more out there with far darker scenes. there was an instance where the reader was actually married prior but had a difficult relationship with her husband. the divorce was what incited the disownment.

she was also a liiitttlle more involved with the stellaron hunter's plans, but i thought the sheer disconnect and the painting of the hunters in this shadowed, unclear light made more sense XD. that and how i was sadistic enough to write a whole scene depicting aleena's marriage and a few unsaoury aftermaths.

anyway, thank you for taking the time to read tda!!! this fic took a WHILE to write out given my busy schedule so i appreciate it so very much!!!

TAGLIST ノ join the taglist. — @silentmoths @meimeimeirin @sleepynoons @vourfrede @endursent.

@jessamine-rose @ofoceansandtombsanew @chiyoso @4acoffee.

[rayday-mayday]

I seriously don't get why antis believe that SA ( or just sex in general ) and violence are so far removed from each other. Like, of course there's how both rape/SA and violent actions ( murder, battery, etc ) are illegal and harmful, but there's a lot more on top of that that links the two.

Like, there's how SA aka Sexual Assault literally has the word "Assault" in it. You know, which is a crime of it's own that involves physical violence sometimes. Saying rape/SA of any kind and violence aren't the same/linked, inherently takes away the violence of rape/SA.

We could also take a look at the BDSM scene, where stuff like choking, spanking, bruising, biting, etc are quite common kinks that obviously go alongside sex, which, once again, links the two subjects.

There's cannibalism which is inherently violent, but often sexualized in multiple different ways. Be it the classical soft vore fetish art you see online, or the metaphors where cannibalism and sex are woven together to show some deeper meaning.

And there's also how classical horror media and ( fictional ) non-con media can produce similar reactions in people. I know personally that when I read yandere x reader fanfiction ( both with- and without non-con elements ) it gives me this form of rush that has helped me cope with the urge to be abused. And just here a bit ago I was playing Doors ( yes, the Roblox horror videogame ) which gave me a similar rush of adrenaline.

I know part of the appeal of monsterfucking at times also ties into the fear and horror of the creatures, which ties into the violence and destruction these monsters can commit.

There's also how both violence and sex can be practiced safely if everyone involved is consenting, and have the proper safety precautions in place; and how both can also be traumatizing if done without consent and/or without the proper safety precautions.

As you can see just by those examples, sex, violence, fear, and trauma are incredibly closely linked. This isn't to say that sex is bad or that violence is good, but that denying that all those subjects are tied together, or that saying they aren't similar, is just flat out wrong.

Tbh there's probably more examples out there, too, but those listed above are just the ones I can think of at the moment. Feel free to add onto this in the reblogs/tags/comments if you can think of any. I just wanted to ramble about this after I realized how similar the rush I get from horror games is to the rush I get when I read darkfiction.

[creekfiend]

I've had something in the back of my brain percolating the concept of Jewish Materialist Anti-Zionism for a while now.

It is our task to oppose Zionism without denying the material conditions under which Jews live, and have lived, globally. Zionism is a response to the material conditions of Jews in the global diaspora. It is a response influenced heavily by 19th and 20th century European nationalist movements, and it is a response that has resulted in an absolutely unacceptable level of violence and oppression of Palestinians.

That does not mean that the material conditions under which diaspora Jews live are not of concern or meriting response. The state of Israel has addressed a non-zero number of problems for Jews globally.  It has addressed them at a cost that I do not find acceptable.

The right of return policy has indeed resulted in many many Jews who would have otherwise been killed having somewhere safe to go with no questions asked. It has *unquestionably* resulted in many many fewer deaths of Jews globally than there would have been if it did not exist.

Some of those Jews are my family.

And, the cost in order to found and maintain the nation-state of Israel to justify the policy is an unacceptable cost. Jews should not hold our lives more dear than the lives of anyone else. The right of return policy of the modern state of Israel is not an acceptable solution to me. The violence innate to the founding and maintenance of Israel as a nation state is unacceptable as a price for Palestinians to pay. I do not and will not ever accept it. I understand that the policy, and Zionism, are responses to a problem that is real. I demand a different response.

If you want to understand the current Israeli government as a western antizionist, and you should, I think it is important to understand that it is a far right fascist movement that arose (somewhat inevitably) from the violence (and nationalist mythologies that arose to justify it) innate to the founding and continued maintenance of the state of Israel. In this respect it is almost indistinguishable from the far right fascist movements in the United States that arose (somewhat inevitably) from the violence (and nationalist mythologies that arose to justify it) innate to the founding and continued maintenance of THIS country.

The thing is, when far right fascists in the United States say "white people are oppressed globally!" they're lying. But when far right fascists in Israel say "Jews are oppressed globally!" THAT'S TRUE.

The response is different. The response is "yes, and that does not justify this."

The only way to defeat Zionism is to come up with a better response to antisemitism than Zionism is. I honestly do not think that this should be very difficult considering that many Jews have had deeply Anti-Zionist philosophy is for as long as Zionism has been around so there are a lot of alternative ideas out there. I think there are a lot of arguments to be made that Zionism has not done a whole lot to address the issue of global antisemitism! It is not a difficult argument to make that it is a failed project.

Making people complacent about fascist rhetoric is so much easier if you can make them afraid. Jews have a lot to be afraid of and that includes Jews in Israel. The point is not that the fears are not valid, the point is that the fears do not justify the violence.

I'm going to turn reblogs on for this post (provisionally) later when I can keep an eye on it.

[genderkoolaid]

lol you’re really slow if you believe that “transmisandry” is on the same level as transmisogyny. no one is denying that trans men face oppression because they are trans men, because they absolutely do! but a lot of the time, when you hear stories about trans men being assaulted or killed, it is purely because of misogyny; because they were perceived as a woman, if not for another outside reason. meanwhile, when a trans woman is killed, it is almost always because she is trans, not to mention that trans women have way more stigma against us compared to trans men. just look at who conservatives always blame for “gender ideology,” it’s ALWAYS a trans woman

"no one is–" yes they do. frequently people do exactly that. for example:

"trans men (mostly) get assaulted and killed because they are perceived as women." downplaying the role transness plays in the violence we experience is not much better than denying it happens at all. also calling me "slow" first thing in an ask is a bad idea if you want to seem reasonable.

First of all, people rarely ever admit that! People genuinely get pissed off at trans men for saying they are vulnerable to misogynistic violence while not being women. You are only admitting that trans men experience misogyny as an argument for why talking about anti-transmasculinity is BadWrong Actually.

Trans men are murdered and labeled women, trans men in abusive families and marriages aren't allowed to transition, so the vulnerability of trans men is never recognized. Woaaaah it's almost like.... the misogyny is intersecting with something..... being trans perhaps?

Second, "you only get murdered because people mistake you as a woman" is also an argument used against trans women, by people who are invested in ignoring the complexities of trans people's relationship with misogyny.

Thirdly, trans men do get assaulted and killed for being trans. Not that they always get enough police attention that the motivations or attackers will ever be known (very much the same case with trans women victims). Do you know any of their names? Do you talk about the violence done to them, ever? Not just Brandon Teena, but Ebeng Mayor? Myles Utz? Ahmed El-Tounsi? Gautam Ramachandra and Shaman Gupta? Zahair Martinez? Abhay Gondane? Ky Peterson? Jacob Williamson? Lourenzo Broken? Andrew Jonathan Blake-Newton? Camdyn Rider? Manoj? Do you ever think about them? Because I think the fact that we only talk about the violence against trans men when we are talking about how it barely ever happens and should be shoved aside to make space for the Real Issues says a lot.

Genuinely, what good do you think you are bringing to the world by sending me this ask?

[rhyaxxyn]

a writeblr resurrection

my name is rhyannyn, and i'm looking to get more involved into the writeblr community after a lengthy hiatus of getting myself and my works in order. i'm always willing to follow new people, and reconnect with writeblrs i knew a few years ago when i was consistently on tumblr (going as kennedy :b)

if you write any of the following, are intrigued by any of the following, or just want to hang out and rip my OCs apart (i've got a list of where you should start, by the way) please feel free to follow and I will follow back. i'm really looking to find writeblrs right now who blogs are focused on writing, as i always love finding new things to read, and new stories to support :)

tragic characters--characters who see no way out, characters who are icarus coded and sisyphus coded AND antigone coded, characters caged by their duty and love and faith and it destroys them

in turn, complex characters with really rich backgrounds

stories influenced by slavic cultures (polish heritage plays a large part in one of my fantasy cultures)

queer fantasy stories by queer voices

FANTASY! CONTEMPORARY FANTASY! SCIFI FANTASY! DARK FANTASY! HIGH FANTASY! URBAN FANTASY! I WILL SCROUNGE THE FLOORS FOR FANTASY AND GORGE MYSELF ON IT!

stories that are anti-colonizer. i like seeing indigenous people win, and i love stories with irish, native american, sammi, and kurdish influences. i like seeing characters cling to who they are and old gods and kind ways while colonizers try to take it away, and i like seeing indigenous people prevail.

worldbuilding with a major focus on family values, religion, and magic.

any and all things dark

slowburn lovers, slowburn friendships, slowburn found family. make it teeth-gritting and loving and heart gouging. i will devour it.

characters who are hurt and traumatized and it isn't the end. characters in the dark who keep going even when there isn't any light in sight.

all things divine and demonic and grimy. i have a taste for violence as long as it serves a purpose to the story and isn't done just for fun

this is a list of things i write, and what i particularly love to read in literature, but i'm willing to follow any writeblrs and hopefully connect with some new and old accounts!

again, i've been off of tumblr for an official two years now (yes my bad, but alas i had the strangest hyperfixation on the job i despise and totally disappeared), but i am holding myself by the throat and forcing myself to resurrect because i am trying to publish a book right now!

oh and my wip page sucks. please avoid it at all costs while i try to edit it :3

[gatheringbones]

[“While Casual Transphobe-coded participants categorized trans women as women and female, their responses were more complicated than a mere yes or no. Amanda most exemplified this in her response after I asked her whether a trans woman is a woman and/or female. Amanda replied:

Um if they get the surgery, then yes I would. But a lot of people don’t have to go through getting the surgery done, if they, you know, because they already have little things, but hey, it takes a lot for them to get their body the way that they want to, so of course I would just go along and go with the flow, whatever.

Amanda’s response, while ultimately signifying a recognition of trans women as women and female, in comparison to those in the previous section and those in the forthcoming section was not a mere disavowal of trans women’s womanhood nor a complete recognition of it. Instead, Amanda’s response explicated what is core to those participants I categorized as Casual Transphobes; that is, a rambling answer due to a lack of forethought. Throughout the interview, Amanda repeatedly noted a lack of thinking about these questions prior to that day. For example, at the end of the interview, I asked Amanda if there were anything she wanted to share that I had not otherwise asked. She responded, “That was a good one. I just can’t get over that one. I don’t see myself tryin’ it, but hey, that was a good question, I’ve never had that question before.” Here, Amanda did not mean a single question I asked. Instead, she meant the entirety of the interview. She had never thought about whether she would date a trans woman, whether trans women are women and/or female, why cis-het men murder Black trans women, and other questions throughout. There was neither an overt hatred, fear, or intolerance of trans women by these participants, nor an overt celebration, acceptance, and/or love for trans women.

Such lack of attention to trans women and cissexism resulted in responses akin to Amanda’s above. A lack of forethought also resulted in microaggressive responses that did not signify an intent to harm trans women. Alyshah felt that trans women are women and female. However, when I asked her if others would see a trans woman differently for being with her as a cis woman, she responded, “Probably or maybe . . . . Because I’m the actual female, probably.” While Alyshah recognized trans women as women, her responses at other points like this reified a differentiation of trans females and cis female.”]

alithia zamantakis, from thinking cis: cisgender heterosexual men, and queer women’s roles in anti-trans violence, 2023

[sundrop-writes]

When Doves Cry

Jason Todd x Gar Logan

How can you just leave me standing - alone in a world that’s so cold?  So cold.  Why do we scream at each other?  This is what it sounds like: When Doves Cry.

This fic is dedicated to a husband who has never given up on me. 

Love is infinite, patient, and always welcomes you home.

Summary:

At Dick's insistence, Jason comes back to Wayne Manor to help the Titans end Crane's deadly plan. Jason doesn't want redemption or forgiveness - he's done believing that he's worthy of those. Once Crane is back at Arkham where he belongs, Jason plans to disappear, never to be heard from again.

But Gar - someone who never stopped loving Jason and never stopped believing in his goodness - has other plans.

Jason Todd x Gar Logan. Friends to Lovers/Lovers Reunited. Smut and Emotional Angst. Set during Season 3, Episode 13.

Word Count: 11,100

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: this is a character x character fic - no reader character here; this is M/M; emotional angst - Jason's self deprecating inner monologue; Jason being emotionally constipated; mentions of Jason's past trauma - including being kidnapped by Deathstroke, and his canon suicide attempt; canon level violence (mentions of guns/gun violence, mentions of killing/mentions of Jason killing people); mentions of Jason's death and resurrection; mentions of Gar mourning Jason's death; mentions of Gar's canon trauma - being forced to murder people while under Cadmus' mind control, having brain surgery performed on him to achieve that mind control; implications of Dick/Hank/Dawn being in a poly relationship because I literally cannot help myself; mentions of Jason being injured from the confrontation that goes down at Wayne Manor in 3x13 (which is canon) - the injuries are vaguely described as 'bumps and bruises'; mentions of Jason's substance abuse - including the Anti-Fear Gas (which yes, even though it's fictional, is still substance abuse), alcohol, and implications toward other unnamed drugs; there is mentions of Jason/Rose - but in this version of things, their interactions were one single kiss and Jason never had any true feelings for her; because of his attraction to Rose - Jason is very much bisexual in this, and though it's not mentioned that Gar has been with a woman (or anyone aside from Jason lmao) - I always headcanon him as bi and write him as bi just so you know; mentions of Gar and Jason having a previous sexual relationship during their time living together at Titans Tower (but that relationship was purely sexual and not romantic); implications that The Pit changed Jason's body somewhat, including making his dick bigger; smut - M/M smut; biting/marking kink (from Gar toward Jason) - at one point, Gar bites down hard enough to draw blood; wet ?? humping/grinding; mentions of Jason and Gar masturbating; passing mention of sex toys (a dildo); anal sex with lots of (real!!!) lube; unprotected sex - they don't use a condom (but there is no mention of STDs and technically they are monogamous even if they didn't discuss it, but irl you should always use one!! don't be like them); Jason bottoming while Gar tops; scent kink - Gar and Jason both really like the way that the other person smells; Jason is a power bottom at first and then becomes more submissive; Gar is very possessive/animalistic during sex; some dirty talk; emotional/passionate sex; creampie kink - Gar cums inside of Jason and they both really like it; a warning for literally licking wounds - Gar licks a cut on Jason's forehead that he has from the fight (this IS NOT blood kink - it's about him caring for Jason because his animal instincts are telling him licking the wound will make it better/soothe it) (btw I am not shaming those with a blood kink, I have written blood kink before and I love it - I just wanted to clarify the tone of the moment); this fic does have a happy ending if that makes you more motivated to read it. I believe that is actually, finally it.

A/N: In case it's not already clearly labelled - there is no reader character in this fic! It is very different from what I usually write, but I felt very inspired and the request that @nctzenkane gave me was just too good not to write. Jason and Gar have so much chemistry in the show, they are such an obvious ship, and they never even got to say goodbye to each other. (The writers make it so convenient that Gar is just not in the room during Jason's pivotal moments - sigh.) Anyway - I love JayGar as a ship and I feel like this fic sums up everything I love about them, as well as giving them the ending they should have gotten. They should have ended up together and Jason should have gotten forgiveness from the Titans family. I hope you guys enjoy this fic even though it's not like my typical stuff, and if you sit this one out - please know that this one did wonders for my creative flow as a writer, and I will be back with more amazing things later. Also, I know that this fic is gonna make my Top Ten Favourite Fics of the year when I make that list for 2024. I was not at all expecting to write this fic but I absolutely love it so much omg. Also - even though I started my taglist a little while ago, I decided not to use the taglist for this particular fic because it's so different from my usual stuff. But the taglist will be used for all upcoming fics.

...

“I have to believe that this dude we fought alongside - my friend - he’s not all bad.” 

Gar purposefully put emphasis on those two words, trying his hardest to remind Dick of what Jason was to them. At least, what he should be. A friend. Even if Dick wanted to deny it, Jason had been a Titan once. He had been part of their family. Even if Gar was the only one who still remembered that; even if he was the only one who still remembered Jason’s good side. Even if Gar was the only one who had ever truly loved him - the others needed to remember what being a part of that family meant, and what their obligations were to Jason because of it. 

No matter what Dick claimed, Jason hadn’t turned into some evil villain overnight. He had his own reasons for what he was doing, and that meant he could be reasoned with. (Gar knew that it was difficult to reason with Jason - but he knew it could be done.) 

Dick’s silence was deafening. Maybe he didn’t want to tell his tender-hearted friend what he really thought of Jason now; those tiny streaks of things that he had been secretly thinking for a long time. Or perhaps - Gar was really getting through to him. 

Jason needed to come home. Despite what everyone else believed: he could be saved. 

… 

All of it was Dick’s idea. Gar still wasn’t even entirely clear on half of it, but the bulk of it involved using his newly acquired - still very undeveloped - ability of turning into a bat so that he could fly up to Jason’s unlocked bedroom window and breach the house’s security system undetected. 

No matter how much Gar stressed the fact that he can’t fly, Dick kept telling that it would be okay - that he just had to believe in himself, blah blah. The typical leader speech jargon that he used to convince people to do dangerous things. Gar felt like he shouldn’t have been so easily convinced, but he knew that a lot was on the line - he knew that Crane needed to be stopped. So he put aside sense and transformed, and flew off toward the window even though he barely knew how to control himself in this state. 

He was so damn dizzy when he landed. He could taste vomit swelling up inside his mouth and he forcefully pushed it back down. The world was spinning around him in an utterly cruel way and he could barely comprehend anything - he was naked and he needed clothes, so grabbing Jason’s shirt off the floor was nothing but pure instinct. The smell of Jason’s stupid strong cologne - so entrenched in the bedroom’s walls, mixed with the natural musk of sweat in the bedsheets - it should have made Gar even more dizzy and nauseous, but instead, it grounded him. It made him feel safe. 

Dig, if you will, the picture of you and I engaged in a kiss. The sweat of your body covers me.  Can you, my darling - can you picture this?

It was one of the only things that gave him a true, firm center while the world was spinning so damn hard, still undulating under his hands and knees while he dug his fingers into the expensive carpet, gritting his teeth with how much he absolutely hated the sensation. 

Gar and Jason have always been the same size. 

It was something they found out days into living together at Titans Tower, when Jason got out of bed and put on one of Gar’s favorite hoodies without a word. He never apologized for getting milk chocolate on it and letting it stain. From that point on, their wardrobe easily blended into one. Jason wore ‘nerd shirts’ with logos that he had no clue about the meaning behind, and Gar found himself wearing more black and more band tees with logos for bands that he couldn’t stand the loud, angry music of. 

After Dick had confessed everything that had happened with Jericho, Jason pulled away on the screeching tires of his motorcycle, and ended up taking some of Gar’s clothes with him. This left Gar with the pain of accidentally pulling something out of his drawer that still smelled like Jason - sleeping in sheets that definitely still reeked of that strong cologne. In fact, Gar had been wearing one of Jason’s black hoodies on the night that Cadmus had stormed the Tower - on the night his life had forever changed. 

In the present, when Gar left Jason’s room dressed head to toe in Jason’s clothes, it felt natural. It felt natural to be surrounded by that scent. It gave a certain kind of unconscious comfort to his overwhelmed instincts during such a chaotic time. It wasn’t even something he had put that much thought into. Instead, he was far more focused on using the remote Dick had instructed him to grab in order to disarm the alarm system - a task he was incredibly worried about getting right. 

With Dick in his ear giving him instructions to defuse the alarm, even with the terrible itch of anxiety creeping down his neck - he felt a certain sense of safety from being wrapped in Jason’s clothes. Even when the sound of gunfire came from down the hall - something that nearly paralyzed him with fear, part of him still foolishly felt bulletproof because of that familiar shirt on his back. 

When he rounded the corner, the first thing that truly made him freeze up during all of this was actually seeing Jason for the first time in so long. 

It was a true shock to his system. 

After all the talk of Jason - a death that he barely had time to mourn, so heavy in his heart and barely processed by his mind. After finding out that the person behind Red Hood’s mask had once been his best friend, somehow stolen from the morgue and woken up from what should have been a permanent sleep due to the treacherous waters of the Lazarus Pit. After spending all that time talking Dick’s ear off, trying to convince him to let Jason come home, where he truly belonged; after feeling so damn fruitless in doing so. After tracking down Molly, trying to stand united with one of Jason’s last true friends in an effort not to see him hurt. 

After all of that, everything Gar had been through over the past few weeks, actually seeing Jason in front of him - it was like having ice water poured down his back. 

He froze up standing there, and he knew that the expression on his face must have been that of dumbstruck delirium. 

He hadn’t expected their reunion to be anything like this. 

When Jason had first stormed out of Titans Tower, Gar had imagined that he would come back. Even after he had screamed at the top of his lungs, telling Dick to fuck off, and followed that up by screaming at Rose not to touch him when she had tried to grab his arm in some poor attempt at ‘comfort’, daring anybody else not to follow him - Gar had thought that it would be only a matter of hours before Jason came back. 

At the time, he had texted Jason after everyone else scrambled out like cockroaches fleeing from the light, and he had told Jason that it was safe to come back because they would be alone together (save for Conner’s unconscious body). He had expected that statement alone would cause Jason to eagerly come running back. 

He thought that it would be a predictable reunion. 

Jason would come back puffy-eyed and stinking of booze, stumbling, furiously denying that he had even been upset, saying that he would never let Dick Grayson get under his skin. Slurring his words while also denying that he had been drinking and driving his bike - because he didn’t want Gar to ‘narc’ on him about it. 

Gar would put him in the shower and douse him in cold water to sober him up while trying not to scold him about the potential of crashing the stupid speeding death machine due to being drunk. They would go to bed together and Jason would fall asleep holding onto him for dear life. And he would still make Jason the best hangover breakfast that vegan soy substitutes can offer (and Jason would complain about Gar not cooking with ‘real’ bacon, but he would still clean his plate). And Jason would sneak a kiss over the sudsy dish water that would turn into soapy grab-ass, and he would have wanted to fuck Gar across the kitchen counter just because nobody else was around to complain about it. 

(Maybe that last part was just a fantasy Gar cooked up with his hand on his cock in his bed at the Tower when he was missing Jason a bit too much. But still, it felt like something Jason would do.) 

When the days passed and Jason still hadn’t responded to him - still hadn’t come home, Gar tried to deny that he missed the mouthy asshole. He tried to weed those shirts out of his laundry so that he could stop being constantly reminded of Jason. He tried to keep his crying limited to the shower, or muffled into his pillow at night. 

And then, he didn’t have to worry as much about that stuff, because he got distracted and busy when Conner woke up. Introducing the clone to the world, teaching him to be a Titan. 

When he got his brain scrambled, between the taste of blood in his mouth and the distant sound of a done drill - memories of Jason flickered in front of him, and when he was present enough in reality, he knew that Jason running far away was a good thing. It meant that Gar couldn’t hurt someone like him. Someone he loved who didn’t have any meta powers to defend himself - someone who was only flesh and bone with no way to defend against a six hundred pound uncontrollable tiger pouncing on him. 

There were moments of mental clarity, tiny little moments when Mercy wasn’t humming in his ear. Moment when he prayed that he would never see Jason again - because he never wanted the blood in his mouth to belong to Jason. 

After Rachel helped him gain back control, he still wondered if he was capable of hurting Jason, even by mistake. He was almost glad when Jason rode away from Donna’s funeral in the opposite direction. (Almost.) Because that feeling of missing him came back harder than ever days after the funeral, when the dust had settled. When he realized that he was fully in control of his powers - working well as a Titan, and the only thing missing from the picture in his mind was having Robin right there by his side, working as the perfect duo Jason always knew they could be. 

When Gar found out about Jason’s death, he felt numb. It had never felt real. Sure, denial is the first stage of grief - but Gar never truly felt like he was living on the same earth where Jason was not. He felt like the world should have stopped. Or at the very least - he should have gone down with Jason. 

He kept imagining that someone would wake him up from the nightmare - that someone would shake him and he would wake up in his bed months earlier, with Conner still in a coma, only to find out that everything that had happened at Cadmus had been one big horrible dream. He would open his eyes to find out that Jason was still alive, waiting to sneak out and get veggie burgers with him at three in the morning. 

But no. There was a grave in the backyard of Wayne Manor with his name on it - even if Gar had seen it empty after Dick had dug it up in a manic state. Just to make himself feel like he wasn’t totally crazy, Gar had searched through Bruce’s files and found Jason’s morgue paperwork, wanting to fully confirm that Jason had even died in the first place. After seeing the attached photos of Jason’s bashed-in skull caused him to lose his lunch, he knew then that it was very much real. It wasn’t just a horrific dream. 

Jason had died and somehow been brought back from that. 

Even then, Gar imagined their reunion to be very different from this. 

But here he was - standing in one of the many hallways of Wayne Manor, staring Jason down like a deer in headlights, his heart pounding while his wide eyes fixated on the person he thought that he would never get to see again. Someone covered in bumps and bruises from a fight, looking much more worn down by the world than the guy who used to laugh at Gar’s shitty puns. 

Dream, if you can, a courtyard- An ocean of violets in bloom. Animals strike curious poses. They feel the heat - the heat between me and you.

Jason’s eyes flickered down and locked on Gar’s chest, or rather - fixated on his shirt. Jason’s shirt that Gar was wearing. In a moment, he felt more naked than he ever did when he stripped down in public to transform. He felt so fucking caught. Of course Jason knew that Gar was wearing his clothes. Gar could have claimed that it was out of pure convenience, but somehow, as if he was part animal himself - Jason’s pupils dilated and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed thickly. It was almost like he could smell the fatal yearning coming off Gar, everything about him that said: ‘I love you, I missed you, I need you’. 

“Jason-” Gar croaked out. 

There was no chance for conversation. 

A streak of movement behind Jason’s heavily armored shoulder realigned Gar’s priorities in a snap. 

“Look out!” He shouted, pointing sharply behind Jason before he ducked for cover himself. 

Jason didn’t hesitate - he fired his gun, taking the enemy out. He did a visual check of the hallway to make sure that nobody else was coming before he turned back to Gar - who was crouching tightly against one of the divots in the complex design of the old house. 

“I’m here for you.” Jason said - finding that he felt far too naked in his own way with how utterly vulnerable this sounded. 

Especially when Gar’s lips quivered, almost as if desperate to cry out for him, to thank him for coming home - something. 

“I’m here to help. Dick sent me.” He quickly amended, attempting to clarify that this was all business. 

Even though, with Gar’s large, glassy eyes staring him down - he couldn’t be sure that’s what it was. 

He didn’t have too much time to grind through the details of it, though. They had to get through the business aspects of it or there wouldn’t be any personal details left to untangle because they would all be dead. 

They split off, following a plan that Dick had carefully laid out, and Gar was proud when Tim and Dick led Crane out of the Batcave in shackles. 

With the relief of knowing that they had won, Gar quickly set about finding Jason once again - to thank him, to ask him what their next move was, to kiss him - he wasn’t quite sure yet. But he felt gleeful. 

All that glee was slashed when he caught Jason in his old bedroom, packing a bag. 

He had stripped out of his Red Hood armor from the waist-up, and Gar was met with the shocking sight of bright purple welts smothered across the broad of his back. It made Gar’s natural urge toward sympathy ache, especially when it came to Jason. But that feeling conflicted with nothing but boiling anger at the sight of him furiously stuffing things into a duffle bag he had placed into the middle of his bed - clearly trying to rescue everything he could from his old life on the way out. 

How can you just leave me standing alone in a world that’s so cold? So cold.

He was running away. Again. 

“Going somewhere?” Gar asked, trying to sound tough when his voice was trembling at the very thought of Jason leaving him again. 

If he was less mature, he would have dropped to the floor and thrown a catastrophic toddler fit, flailing his limbs and screaming at the top of his lungs. He would have demanded that Jason stay, telling him that he simply wasn’t allowed to leave. 

He knew that it was selfish, but it just made Gar feel so disposable. The fact that Jason came into his life, made him laugh, made him smile, fucked him like they were in love, made him care - and then he wanted to run away like Gar meant nothing to him. He knew that Jason had his own issues - a list of problems and past traumas longer than his arm, but Gar would have run away with him. Jason didn’t have to be sentenced to solitude. 

All these thoughts caused a sheen of tears to form in Gar’s eyes - the sadness battling with the anger inside his chest. He was threatening to spill those tears by the time Jason whipped around - partially startled, partially angry that his plans to disappear again had been disrupted. 

Jason mirrored back his own wet eyes at seeing Gar so upset, but quickly blinked the tears away. 

“I was never here.” He quietly croaked. “I can’t-” 

“You can’t ‘what’?” Gar barked back, cutting him off. 

This was the most cruel way that he had ever spoken to Jason, but he was fed up, to say the least. All of the emotions that he had been politely festering with now boiled over. The grief, the mourning, the loneliness - all of it spilled over at once. 

“You can’t stay?” He asked, raising his voice in anger. “You can’t admit that someone actually cares about you for you for once in your fucking life?” 

Maybe I’m just too demanding. Maybe I’m just like my father - too bold.

Jason’s face quivered at this. 

He knew Gar cared about him. Of course he did. But that was why he had to run. He couldn’t let Gar risk his place with the Titans for a murderous piece of shit like himself. He threatened to break into sobs and he forced himself to become steel. Without Crane’s drugs running through his system, he felt even more weak and chaotic - but he couldn’t let Gar be the drop of water that broke his dam after all these weeks. 

“I can’t stay.” He said solemnly, his eyes glued to the floor, refusing to look at Gar. “I - I can’t… stay.” It hung in the air for the moment as the words truly sunk in for him. He had been so busy packing in order to flee that he hadn’t even fully realized why. Now it was even more painful. “They won’t let me.” 

The realization pierced through Gar’s heart like a knife. 

This wasn’t just about him. Of course it wasn’t. 

The thing that he had been fighting for, fighting against all this time - the idea that Jason wasn’t even worthy to come home because he was some crazed killer. Gar wasn’t the only one who got a vote. Gar wasn’t the only one to claim love for him or deny him. 

If Gar’s love for him was the only thing that mattered, then the whole thing could have been smoothed over weeks ago. Maybe Jason wouldn’t have left in the first place. Maybe Jason wouldn’t have been balanced on the edge of a roof about to jump off while Gar had been sleeping. 

Gar wheezed out a harsh breath - almost as if the pain of the realization had literally pierced his lung, and he was having difficulty breathing because of it. 

“Stay.” Gar begged, hardly realizing that he was crying openly now. “I’ll talk to Dick, I’ll-” 

Maybe you’re just like my mother: She’s never satisfied.

“I can’t.” Jason said bitterly, entirely defiant. “You know I can’t. Not after everything that’s happened. Especially not after Hank.” 

There was a careful kind of mourning in Jason’s voice when he said the name - and potently, he flipped back around then, unable to face Gar after bringing it up. He continued to pack his bag as Gar stared at his back, his throat tightening harshly around everything that he had to say in reply. 

Gar loved Hank as a friend - as a mentor, someone to look up to. But even now, he couldn’t fully blame Jason for Hank’s death. He knew that it was all a part of Crane’s plan. He knew that Jason was sorry. Before, that fact was something he had based solely on his knowledge of Jason - but now he could base it on Jason’s very clear guilt towards the situation. 

Gar knew that if he told Dick that he forgave Jason for Hank’s death - it would put them on bad terms. Dick had known Hank for longer. And there had been something more there (something more between Dawn, and Hank, and Dick). Something that made that scar extra tender for Dick. 

Gar had to find a better way to explain it. Perhaps tell the team that he had once been a pawn himself - he had been to Mercy Graves what Jason was to Crane. And he knew that if she put him alone in a room with Hank and told him to kill, he couldn’t have been sure that his sterling morals and his willpower alone would have held up against everything that she did to him. 

Why was the situation with Jason any different? 

Why were they so determined not to forgive him? 

Out of the corner of his eye, something broke up his contemplative thinking - Jason slipped a tee shirt over his head, and Gar couldn’t ignore the glaring shade of green that said it was one of his. It caused a possessive streak to roll through him - he had a difficult time holding back a feral growl as it flared up in his throat. 

It made him only able to focus on one thing. 

“What about before?” Gar croaked out, disappointment apparent in his voice. 

Jason looked over his shoulder with gentle confusion, and he felt the need to clarify. 

“What about everything that happened before Hank?” Gar rephrased the question. “Doesn’t that matter?” 

Why do we scream at each other?

Jason wanted to say - yes, of course it does. 

But it felt so much more complicated than that. 

“Gar-” He barely choked the name out before he was cut off. 

Gar couldn’t stand to hear more excuses - more reasons as to why Jason was going to cut and run. He reached a hand up to Jason’s neck and pulled him into a kiss before anything else could come spilling from his mouth. 

It felt like trying to desperately claw his way into the front door of a home he once knew - a house that was now cold and abandoned as Jason stood stalk still, purposefully not kissing him back. Jason wasn’t letting him in - not giving him a single sign that there was any love left there. That there had even been love here in the first place. 

Deep down, Jason was terrified. If he gave in and kissed Gar back - he would be done for. He would be opening himself up to a world of hurt that he once thought he could erase with doses of Anti-Fear Gas. 

Gar was used to playfulness; teeth nibbling on his lips, laughter in the air. He was used to a hand reaching for the tie on the front of his sweatpants while that cocky voice muttered lustful ‘threats’ against his mouth - something about how he was ‘going to get it’ - when in actuality, Jason was always the one who ended up a moaning mess on his cock. 

Tears spilled hotly from the corners of his eyes and a sobbed choked out from the back of his throat when Jason was completely still against him. He was being so coldly denied - Jason was like stone, fighting off everything he had missed most from Gar because he still felt like he had to run, and this was nothing more than a distraction from that. 

“Please.” Gar wept against his mouth. 

It was one of the hardest things he had ever done, but - Jason didn’t move. 

This is what it sounds like: When Doves Cry.

Gar pulled back harshly then. When his wet eyes fell to the Triforce printed in the middle of Jason’s chest, further signaling that it wasn’t his shirt (because he likely had no clue what the symbol meant or what it even was) - Gar felt a wave of rage overtake him. He gripped the hem of the green shirt and didn’t hesitate to yank it up over Jason’s head. Rather than the typical heat that this action would lead to, there was nothing but bitter tension in the air as Gar waved the ball-up fabric in front of Jason’s face. 

“This is mine.” He choked out, barely holding back a wave of sobs. “So - so if you’re leaving, you can’t take it with you. You can’t be that much of an asshole. You can’t just take everything that belongs to me.” 

Gar choked on his own words, holding back more. 

They both knew that the words held a dangerous double meaning. If he was going to run, he would be taking so much that belonged to Gar - so much more than some fabric that they had once blissfully shared. 

He would be ripping Gar’s heart out of his chest and taking it with him. 

Jason looked at him with tears now leaking from his eyes. Oceanic blue swimming in bloodshot red - not a pretty sight, by any means. He took in a heavy breath, but his stomach was visibly trembling where he was holding in his own sobs. 

He wanted Gar to tell him to stay. He didn’t want Gar to be okay with him leaving - he wanted it to be such a fight that he couldn’t just walk away. 

Touch if you will, my stomach.  Feel how it trembles inside.  You’ve got the butterflies all tied up.  Don’t make me chase you - even doves have pride. 

Gar - still feeling the need to comfort Jason, even stewing in all his anger toward this man he called lover, enemy, or friend - dropped the shirt on the floor and reached out, smoothing his hands over Jason’s hips. He leaned in and laid the most feather-light butterfly kisses across Jason’s shoulder, and Jason choked on another sob. 

Gar smoothed a hand over Jason’s stomach, and under the intense heat of Gar’s large palm - his muscles calmed. Any cries of anguish died off inside of him and he was able to gather enough breath to speak as Gar laid a gentle cheek on his shoulder. 

“You - you can’t do this.” Jason whispered, the weakest protest he could have come up with. 

Gar only hummed in response. This close to Jason, he could almost feel that thing inside Jason, yearning for him, crying out to him. 

He knew that Jason didn’t want to leave. He knew that if he was patient, Jason would crumble to the need as much as he was. 

He already felt as though he had won. 

“You’re a fucking hypocrite.” Jason added on, his words slightly steadier now. He curled his fingers into the fabric of the shirt Gar was wearing - the one he had picked up off of Jason’s bedroom floor when he had landed. “This is mine.” 

Gar wanted to make some sarcastic jest about how he wasn’t planning on leaving while wearing it - but he became choked up at how the words sounded. As though Jason was truly claiming him - something he had been waiting to hear for so damn long. 

He lifted his head to ask if it was true - if Jason would stay for him or if they could flee together - but Jason caught the back of his neck and slammed their lips together, stealing any words that Gar was planning to speak. 

There was a certain fierceness that followed next - a battle of stubborn wills that was as stiff and tense as their words. 

Passion and love and anger are spears all lined up on the same fence, all equally sharpened - Gar was still angry with Jason for leaving in the first place and never coming back. He still blamed Jason for all those months of bitter loneliness that he had felt, for being left there in the Tower with no help when Cadmus had attacked. Deep in the back of his mind, there was a fantasy of the night they attacked - of Beast Boy and Robin operating as the perfect team to snub out evil. 

Jason was still mad at Gar for not chasing him, for not asking him to come home. Mad at him for not making more of an effort, for siding with Dick on seemingly everything. 

He had no clue how hard Gar had fought to bring him home. How much Gar’s voice had burrowed into the ears of the others, especially Dick, being the only remaining one to speak up, vouching for Jason’s good side. If he had been a fly on the wall, perhaps he would have bowed at Gar’s feet, thanking him. 

But instead - these lopsided views created a bitter stubbornness. Something that made the kiss feral and angry - gnashing teeth and hot, hard breaths as they grabbed and groped at each other, battling with their own anger and swelling up with that love they tried so hard to deny. 

Why bother staying so angry with someone if you didn’t care about them? Why take that much time and effort to be pissed off if you wouldn’t just forgive the person out of love at the end of the day? 

Jason ripped off Gar’s shirt - the borrowed shirt that only further reminded him of everything he had missed out on, the home he couldn’t come back to. He threw it to the floor, trying his best to forget about it - but this only made way for Gar’s hot skin underneath his own, forcing more temptation as they made more skin-on-skin contact. 

He let out a kind of wounded sound when Gar gripped the back of his head and swept down, his mouth tracing along Jason’s neck, digging his teeth in. He was still unsure if he was trying to claim Jason in that animalistic way and make it impossible for him to leave or if he was just taking that anger out on him, trying to cause a little bit of pain - trying to make Jason feel a fraction of what he had felt. Either way, his teeth were savage and frantic on Jason’s skin, and Jason’s nerves screamed pleasurably with the full effects of it. 

“Fuck,” Jason moaned out as Gar sunk his teeth in harder. “Fuck you.” 

Gar was about to make some clever reply - the typical ‘you should’ or ‘I’m trying to’. 

But he was caught off guard, silenced when Jason put a hand in the middle of his now bare chest and shoved him back toward the bed - causing him to sprawl beside the bag that Jason had been trying to steal away with. He poofed out across the luxurious, expensive mattress; there was a worrying second as he looked up at Jason when he believed that Jason might just pick up that bag and run. 

He could use this as his opportunity to flee. 

But instead, Jason eyed him up and down heavily - lustful eyes casting a thick gaze over Gar’s body. Looking over every inch of him carefully, from his now ruffled hair, down across his heaving chest, to the place where Jason’s borrowed pants were hanging low on his hips - the thickness of his hard cock very apparent between his thighs with no underwear on underneath them. 

Jason knew it was temptation. Fondness. 

At the time, perhaps he considered it ‘one last hurrah’. But in truth, it was the breaking point - the point of no return. The point at which Gar had truly hooked him in and reeled him back. Between those big, beautiful brown eyes staring up at him with a combination of intense affection and fear at the possibility of him leaving and that fat cock practically calling to him - Jason was done for. 

Jason reached for the button on his own pants, and Gar remained frozen for a moment. 

“Well,” Jason said impatiently. Gar still didn’t move, unsure what was expected of him in that moment. “Get your fuckin’ pants off. I know you’re not shy about stripping down, ya damn nudist.” 

Gar felt the tension leave his body with a stiff exhale. He wanted to make some smartass comment, but found himself lacking. Instead, he became distracted by rushing to get the pants off and watching the flexing of Jason’s muscles while he worked to get his own pants and boots off. 

All he could muster up was: 

“You - you’re an asshole,” Gar chuckled out, throwing Jason a genuine smile as he kicked the fabric off his ankles, leaving himself wonderfully bare in the middle of the bed. 

Gar’s eyes traced over Jason’s naked body - he seemed more thick and muscular than the last time Gar had seen him. Had he been training harder in the time that he’d been gone? Though his overall build was still much the same - matching Gar in stature, though Gar’s muscles were leaner and softer compared to Jason now. And if Gar wasn’t mistaken, Jason’s cock was bigger? Though that seemed more like a trick of the eye. (Though, it was still a good two or three inches smaller than Gar’s, which Jason often called ‘monstrous’ and joked that he could barely walk after taking.) 

Gar didn’t have too much time to admire Jason’s nudity before Jason was on top of him, bumping their cocks together as he climbed onto Gar’s lap. 

Gar let out a harsh growl from deep within his chest at the feeling of his sensitive dick being touched by someone else for the first time in months - for the first time since Jason had stormed away from the Tower in a fit. Since then, he’d had nothing but his own hand and distant memories of Jason fueled by the fading smell on the clothes he’d left behind. 

Even then, it’s not like he had the opportunity or even the desire to touch himself all that often - not with the chaos going on in his life. So having a warm body in his lap again - the warm body of someone he had missed so fucking much - it reignited the fire inside of him like poking holes in a gasoline tankard and lighting a match. 

“Fuck, Jay.” 

Gar reached up and tightly, possessively grabbed Jason by the ass, pulling him closer instinctively. This caused the echo of a whimper from within Jason’s throat as he bent down to take Gar’s lips again. Jason’s hands planted firmly on the hard muscle of Gar’s chest and Gar kept that needy grasp on Jason’s ass - wanting to keep Jason as close to him as possible. 

The touch quickly turned into moving Jason on top of him, grinding Jason’s body on top of his so that their cocks were gyrating together - a perfectly filthy clash of hot skin that fit together so well after they had been apart for too long. 

They moaned into each other’s mouths and Jason forced his tongue past Gar’s sweet, pink lips - as if he was still trying to put up that fight, still trying to show that he held some power over the man underneath him. Gar’s cock was leaking furiously and soon the slide of their two cocks became wet and glossy while Gar’s bright pink cockhead was continually nudged against his stomach, making a mess against his abs and staining slickness all over Jason’s eager, throbbing dick. 

“Fuck. Fuck, man.” Jason hissed, pulling away from the kiss, a new urgency pumped into him. 

Gar felt a slight streak of disappointment when Jason looked away from him - like a fictional pixie, fading away for the slightest moment without Jason’s attention. The feeling was doubled when Jason took the touch of his chest. He actually found himself whimpering like a pathetic puppy as he wondered what Jason was doing. 

It made a bit more sense when Jason frantically unzipped his would-be getaway bag - rifling through the pockets, ripping out spare underwear and - fuck, of course, more of Gar’s bright green shirts that he had stolen - until he came back with a bottle in hand. 

Lube. 

Of course. Of course that would be something Jason considered to be an essential to travel with when he was stealing away into the night, never to be seen or heard from again. 

Gar would have made some kind of joke about it, but he found his mouth dry, and he was far too horny and mesmerized, his blood pumping through him at top speed as he watched Jason. Who uncapped the bottle and squirted some onto his fingers - then his hand disappeared behind him while he tensed his thighs and hiked his body higher up onto his knees, clearly with the intent to finger himself open in preparation for Gar’s cock. 

Gar huffed out hot breath. 

It had been so damn long. 

He felt his cock pulse with fierce need and spurt out more pathetic spurts of precum, making his stomach even more shiny as it began to pool inside his belly button. He rubbed his hands lovingly over Jason’s thighs as he continued to watch with the utmost rapture, his eyes drinking in every single inch of the beautiful body in front of him - the flexing muscles, the sharpness of Jason’s hips, the thickness of his thighs, the way his perfect, modest cock bobbed between his thighs while he worked. His plump, pink bottom lip snagged between his teeth while he tried to contain his moans. Something that turned the sounds into the most beautiful little grunts that Gar had ever heard. 

After a few moments, Jason pulled his fingers from himself with a sinfully wet sound, and then he reached for the bottle of lube again. Gar was surprised though when he went straight to pouring the shockingly cool liquid across Gar’s cock. 

Typically it took them a lot more work to get Jason ready to take Gar, seeing as he was a bit longer than nine inches, impressively thick - and though he tried his hardest to be gentle - when Jason begged him and nagged him with purpose, he could sometimes get carried away. (Jason claimed that he liked the feeling of soreness afterwards, but Gar sometimes felt guilty for letting go of self control and pounding into Jason like an animal.) 

“You - you want more help?” Gar choked out. 

With Jason’s hand on his cock, spreading the wetness, he was already pushing his orgasm down past the onslaught of sensations - the lube warming under Jason’s hot touch, the purposefully loose grip that Jason had on his dick that just made him itch and made him want more. 

Jason grunted in reply. 

“I fucked myself this morning.” He said, distinctly not making eye contact with Gar. Instead, continuing to stare at his own hand as he picked up the bottle and poured more wetness around his grip on that impressive, thick cock, and then spread it around. 

He almost added on: ‘I was thinking about you when I did it.’ 

But somehow, even now - that felt too emotionally vulnerable. 

Gar quickly became swallowed up by heated thoughts of this. He became consumed by the visual image of Jason splayed out on a bed somewhere, (wherever he had been staying since he had left), fucking himself with his fingers shoved deep inside his well-lubed hole while his other hand moved frantically on his cock. Or even better, pounding a toy inside of himself like the one Gar had found snooping through his room while looking for anything he could use to help Jason against Crane. 

He would look so fucking good like that, spread open on the unforgiving thickness of the silicone, desperate whines and moans coming from his lips because it was good, but it just wasn’t right. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t perfect like having Gar’s hot body on top of him while Gar’s big cock carved out a spot deep inside his guts- 

While Gar was distracted by these thoughts, Jason took the opportunity to line up the now well-lubed dick with his prepped hole and sink down onto Gar without another word. This caught Gar off guard, stealing his breath in the best way. It was smooth and slick and he didn’t waste a second before putting his entire body weight onto Gar, letting his ass rest flush with Gar’s pelvis so that Gar’s impressive cock was fully inside of him. 

“Jay - oh, fuck.” 

Gar let out a chest-rattling moan and quickly became dizzy, and it didn’t even occur to him that Jason had skipped putting a condom on him. So, this was the first time that he was bare inside Jason, absolutely no barriers between them. He couldn’t mentally comprehend it, and all he could think was - of course it was hotter, of course it felt better - he hadn’t seen Jason for so long, he had forgotten how perfect Jason felt around him, he had forgotten that it felt this fucking good. 

“God, fuck, Gar, your dick-” Jason mumbled out, clearly lost in a haze of pleasure himself. 

Jason didn’t waste a second - with Gar too pleasure-numb, Jason simply took what he needed. He planted his hands on Gar’s chest while Gar’s hands rested dumbly on his thighs, and he began frantically bouncing up and down on Gar’s dick, impaling himself on that beautiful big cock, quickly creating a good rhythm. He watched with awe and swelling adoration as his eyes locked on the man below him. 

Gar looked so perfect like this. 

His body was a sculpture of perfection, like Adonis himself, carved from marble. Every single time Jason got him naked in bed, he wondered how the hell he had gotten so lucky. With his pink lips parted as increasingly loud moans escaped him and his brows creased with pleasure, bits of that distinct green hair stuck to his forehead from the efforts. His stomach fluttering and flexing every single time Jason slammed his hips down and took Gar back inside him fully, Gar’s body glistening with sweat, slick from their encounter so far - he was a picture of perfection, not a single flaw that Jason could pick out.

And while his hole was tingling with the pleasure of having Gar inside him again and his cock was throbbing as it danced between them, beginning to sputter out precum now - he was beginning to ache with a brand new need. 

He was chasing a sexual need, of course, but he was also growing frantic with an emotional need that he had pushed down for so many months. He had missed Gar so fucking much. So much it hurt - and he had used so much to try and forget about it - the Anti Fear gas, the intense focus on Crane’s mission, the booze, the distance. 

But now it was all right here in front of him - those moans he had missed so much, that green hair, the smell of someone so distinct that he had tried huffing off clothing like a drug that he couldn’t buy anywhere off the street. He swallowed thickly and tried his best to hold back tears, and was only reminded of this more when Gar’s fingers dug into his hips - a firm but loving grasp that only more deeply reminded him of who he was fucking. Reminded him of what he had missed out on. 

“Dammit,” Jason huffed out. “Fuck - your-your cock is so good,” 

Usually he was a motormouth during sex. He was infamous for never shutting up until his orgasm hit him like a truck. If it was spitting out ‘fuckboy’-esque promises that he never could keep because he usually wasn’t the one fucking Gar’s brains out (but rather, mindlessly taking a cock), or horny blabbering as he begged for more - his tongue was constantly sputtering out something while Gar touched him. 

So he thought that talking would be a good distraction from the horrible knot in his gut - from this thing that he was feeling. He didn’t need to deal with those stupid fucking feelings right now. He just didn’t. 

“So fuckin’ big.” Jason whined. “You feel so good inside me.” 

Gar grunted in return, taking a tighter hold on Jason’s hips and helping more now. He helped Jason slam down harder, causing a harsher collision of their skin each time - a sharp, wet slapping that sounded absolutely sinful in the room. It made Jason feel fuller somehow, and he let out a downright whorish sound, struggling to get out his next words. 

“God - I - fuck -” He whined. “Your cock - Gar - you feel so-” 

“Yeah.” Gar breathed back in reply, encouraging him. “Yeah, Jay.” 

With another hard slam of Gar’s hips up into his hole, Jason’s mouth was knocked loose. 

“Missed this dick.” He breathed out. “Missed this - missed this so much. Missed you.” 

It was a stubborn admission that even the world’s harshest torture couldn’t have pulled out of him. But the feeling of Gar’s cock deep inside of him, those fingers digging into his flesh like he owned Jason - that was enough to have his tongue loosening around his secrets and have him spilling into vulnerability like it was his fucking job. 

Jason didn’t have enough time for the sting of regret to settle over saying the words, because something inside Gar snapped. The mourning in Jason’s voice, knowing that Jason has missed him just as much - he went from dumb and lustful as Jason bounced on his cock to swelling with that passionate anger once again. He had missed too much time with Jason, and he needed to make up for it. He needed Jason to know that he couldn’t just run away - that he mattered. 

He became filled with the determined need to show Jason that he couldn’t leave - he could never leave, because Gar had missed him too. 

Gar loved him. Gar needed him. 

They needed each other. 

Gar grabbed him around the waist and with a deep growl that was truly bordering on animal this time, he flipped Jason over onto his back. His cock slipped out of Jason, slick from the lube, causing Jason to make a startled, disappointed noise as he suddenly felt far too empty. When Gar leaned over Jason and felt Jason’s getaway bag brushing against his knee, a swell of offense came over him. He reached for the bag, shoving it off the bed without a second thought - spilling clothes and other random items across the floor out of the open zippers, something that neither of them paid any mind to in the following hours. 

“Please, Gar-” Jason breathed out, and from there, anything else in the world was shut out for him and Gar. 

Maybe what they had done before could never be considered making love - but they certainly had their moments. Times when Jason would kiss Gar’s forehead after making him cum, before getting out of bed without a word. Times when Gar grabbed both of Jason’s hands and interlocked their fingers while he rocked his cock deep inside of him. But for the most part, they fucked filthy and horny and desperate. They fucked like two guys in a race to get each other off - and it worked for them. 

But this felt different. 

As Gar slipped his cock back inside of Jason, he locked eyes with the man below him and a spark ran through him that said this was different. This wasn’t turning to the closest warm body out of convenience or boredom. This wasn’t just a friendship with some very particular, spectacular benefits. This was the intense gaze of a lover, locked into a stare that said the rest of the world was locked out, completely forgotten just because Gar was touching him. 

This was coming home. 

This meant that nothing else mattered - no past transgressions, no supposed mistakes, no demanding corrupt figures that had used them as pawns in their own games - none of it could even be seen as Jason locked his knees around Gar’s lower back, holding him tightly in place, silently begging him not to go too far. 

A quiet: please, don’t leave me, I need you. 

I need you just as much as you need me. I swear it. 

Gar held back more tears, and his next huff of breath turned into another low growl - a sound that had Jason whining quietly and clenching down on his cock. That hint at his more animal side had always been something Jason had liked - especially knowing that Gar was the most tame ‘beast’ he had ever met. Ironic, considering that Gar could turn into a six hundred pound tiger and he could shred people with his teeth at will. But Gar was the most gentle person Jason had ever known - someone he trusted with his life within a day of knowing him. Someone better than his own blood relatives and shitty foster ‘families’ who had tossed him out onto the street without a second thought. 

Gar was never a beast, no matter what he was capable of. 

“Please.” Jason begged, his voice slightly choked and breathless. 

He held on tightly to the side of Gar’s face, the other hand straying around to grip the back of Gar’s shoulder - and though Gar’s cock was already throbbing and threatening to blow far too early, he knew he couldn’t deny Jason any longer. 

Gar pressed his forehead into Jason’s neck, unable to stand the piercing interrogation of that gaze - looking for atonement, looking for validation, looking for love. Gar would give him all of those things, and he fucking will - but he couldn’t concentrate on that and delivering a quality fuck at the same time. Jason deserved that, too. He deserved to cum in a spectacular and satisfying way. 

With his concentration a bit steadier, Gar began to fuck his hips forward - fucking into Jason in slow, smooth strokes. 

“Jay, fuck,” He moaned out. “So fucking good. You’re so fucking good.” 

Jason let out a high whine in return and Gar sped up his hips - fucking into Jason faster, but nowhere near as fast as Jason had been riding him. It was still so tender and slow, deep and firm as the thickness of his cock truly made a home inside of Jason that reminded them both exactly where he belonged. 

Jason’s voice warbled - becoming nothing but a nonsensical echo of weak sounds dispersing into the air. Gar couldn’t help himself; he kissed a trail from the middle of Jason’s chest up his neck once again, taking the time to lay a few more possessive bites across Jason’s neck before he reached his face. When he felt roughness under his lips, it truly sunk in that Jason had been hurt - he had picked up a few injuries while fighting to defend him and the other Titans. Jason had put his body on the line for them. 

How could Jason ever be bad if he was willing to get hurt in order to protect his family? 

A swell of passion and possessiveness streaked through him again. 

His tongue sneaked out of his mouth and he licked over the cut above Jason’s eye like a cat trying to lick the wound clean, all of his instincts heightened with the lust pumping through him. Something in his lust-drunken brain was screaming at him that Jason needed this care, and nothing more than the saliva from his tongue would make Jason feel better. 

He did this, kitten licking across the cut, while he continually ground his hips deeply against Jason’s, stuffing his cock ever deeper into Jason’s needy hole. It made for a breath-taking combination of care, attention, and heat that made Jason’s stomach curl. 

“Gar-” He gasped out. “I - ah - fuck!” 

Gar gave another little lick and then moved to grab both of Jason’s hands, entwining their fingers on both sides as he had done in the past. Previous times Jason had laughed about it or called him cheesy, or even suggested that Gar use handcuffs instead if he truly wanted to pin Jason down. But this time, as Gar brought the grip of their tangled hands up above Jason’s head and continued fucking him so deeply. Jason only let out another shuddering gasp and looked Gar in the eyes with a glassy look that said he was truly gone. 

He had surrendered everything to Gar now. 

He couldn’t have run from this if he tried. 

“Come on,” Gar grunted, slamming his hips a little harder, a little more determined - pulling back a bit more, going a bit deeper. It was a motion that pulled louder sounds from Jason, that made him tremble. 

“Cum for me.” He breathed into Jason’s ear. “Cum on my cock - so good for me. Cum for me, show me how much you missed me.” 

Gar kept Jason pinned by their joined hands and by his hips holding Jason tightly to the bed. With his cock slamming into Jason in fierce, heavy, hard strokes - and with Jason’s cock jostling between them, brushing against Gar’s impossibly hot stomach - it was difficult for him to deny the order. With those words spoken in that perfect voice, floating in his ears, the orgasm shot through his body like his soul awakening - like he was truly feeling himself for the first time since he had woken up after The Pit. 

“Shh - shit! Ah! Fuck!” 

He gasped and struggled to get air into his lungs, and Gar cloaked his mouth over Jason’s gaping lips, fucking him right through it. Jason’s cock jumped and jolted between them, painting both their stomachs with his cum while his hole tightened and clenched around Gar - while he shook beneath Gar and tightly grasped Gar’s hands. 

It was utterly perfect. 

“Please, please, please-” Jason gasped, frantic. 

He needed Gar to cum, too. He needed the feeling to be complete. 

Gar let out another growl, shoving his head into Jason’s neck, taking a healthy whiff of his sweat as he fucked his hips hard into Jason. 

“Mine.” He growled possessively into Jason’s skin. “Mine, mine, mine-” He punctuated each slap of his hips into Jason’s ass with the word, his mind filled with this as though it were the one true thing in the world. 

“Mine.” 

A final pathetic dribble of cum escaped Jason before Gar’s cock began pumping into him. As he came, Gar’s teeth latched onto his neck once again, biting down hard enough to pull blood this time - creating a twinge of copper under Gar’s tongue and wringing even more inhuman sounds out of Jason. 

Gar pressed his hips as deep as possible into Jason, making them both utterly high on the feeling of his cum fucking deep into Jason for the first time. Jason feeling it so warm inside of him and having it pool and leak down over Gar’s balls - it only further reminded them how utterly close they were, how deeply Gar had marked Jason, how Jason was cursed to return back to Gar because he needed this - it was a deep reminder of how Gar was his home. 

Tears leaked from Jason’s eyes and Gar licked them away, grinding his hips deep into Jason - causing stray whimpers and aftershocks of pleasure while his cock began to soften. 

“God, oh-” 

“I know.” Gar replied, his voice more ragged than he imagined it should be. 

When he pulled out, it felt like a shock to both of their systems. Too empty, too distant - even still so close to a warm body, too cold. 

Jason’s first instinct was to get up and go to the bathroom to clean up. Especially feeling the stickiness and the mess all over his body as he came down from the high. But Gar rolled onto his back and put a tight arm around his back. 

“Sleep now.” Gar told him, puffing out an oddly cute little yawn. For someone who had just fucked his brains out - he now resembled a sleepy little house cat. 

Jason found that he couldn’t really argue with that. 

… 

Even though Jason was exhausted and hadn’t slept much in the past few weeks, he woke up long before Gar did. 

There was still so much worry plaguing him. 

Oddly enough, Gar’s snoring was more of a comfort than it was a disturbance. It reminded him of sharing a wall with Gar when their bedrooms had been so close together; when he had laid awake at night after scurrying out of Gar’s bed at top speed after they had fucked, wondering what it would have been like if he had decided to stay. 

Back then, it felt like the end of the world to open up to Gar. But now, he couldn’t help but to wonder if it would have saved him in the long run. 

Titans Tower was never the perfect place for him. It only ever felt livable because Gar had been there. They grew so close so quickly - at the time, Jason had tried to convince himself that it was just friendship. That it was the delusion of being stuck in close quarters. Gar was convenient - he was a good fuck, close by, and he was hot. He was someone Jason could get off with while Dick and Bruce had him locked up. And most of all, Gar was pleasant to be around. He didn’t look down on Jason like he was just some street rat, and he didn’t expect Jason to perform miracles just because he had taken on the mantle of Robin. 

Gar treated him like an equal. At the time, that was the best that Jason could ask for. 

Jason didn’t think there were any possible downsides to being close with Gar, and letting himself have some sexual relief in the process. 

Until Deathstroke. 

If he had any feelings for Gar, he had been suppressing them, and then - Gar argued with him about going out to hunt down Doctor Light. He felt betrayed. He felt like Gar didn’t understand him anyway, like Gar would always side with Bruce’s favorite - Good Old Dickie. The one thing he had been putting Gar on a pedestal for - treating him as an equal - was slashed away within seconds. 

Back then, Jason couldn’t think rationally. He felt like he needed to capture Doctor Light and bring him in to get back in Bruce’s good graces, to show the Titans what he could do. He had no clue that Gar was scared for him; that he was acting out of fear, trying to protect Jason. (Something he would continue to do no matter what, apparently.) 

At the time, Jason was insecure and stir crazy and he let it get to him. 

And then, he was blindfolded, strapped to a chair, stabbed, and beaten, and all he could think of was how much he was going to disappoint Gar. How much he was going to hurt him. Bruce, Dick, and the other Titans were the farthest thing from his mind - all he could think about were the last time those soft lips had been on his, the flash of green hair. The utterly disappointed look Gar had given him when he had declined to call Dick for back-up before going into the train tunnels. 

Gar thought Jason was stupid. But Gar was so damn soft-hearted. And Jason couldn’t stop thinking about how much he was going to hurt Gar with his idiotic antics. How much he was going to take from someone who didn’t deserve it. 

As he was strapped to that chair, watching Deathstroke sharpen the sword, all he could think about was the look on Gar’s face - the tears he was going to cry when he was eventually told about Jason being sliced open. Especially because he knew that Gar would blame himself for not saving Jason, for not calling Dick sooner - and it was all Jason’s own stupid fault. 

When he got back, somehow unscathed, he kept his distance from Gar. It hadn’t happened then, but the day would come when he would bring Gar a lot of undue pain - and if he started severing their ‘friendship’ now, then he could eventually soften the blow. At least, that was his line of thinking. He kept far away from Gar’s room when he needed that comfort more than ever, thinking that it would both do them better in the long run. 

When a knock came on his door, he was surprised that it was Rose, and not Gar - and he was pissed off and annoyed more than anything. She was persistent and he was tired. 

When she barged her way in, he found a particular part of his brain nagging at him - telling him that technically, he was still single. He shouldn’t get so attached to Gar anyway, because it would only hurt them both later on. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to be attached - he wanted to know that he could run at any time. He needed to know that he wouldn’t get hurt. More importantly, that he wouldn’t hurt someone soft and caring like Gar. 

He wanted to be able to say that everything going on between him and Gar was just sex. 

So he let himself kiss Rose. 

And he felt absolutely nothing. 

When she told him: ‘Don’t be stupid and maybe it’ll happen again.’ 

He wanted to bark out: ‘It won’t.’ 

But he didn’t want to lay it all out. He didn’t want to tell her of all people that he was in love with his best friend and that’s why he wasn’t available. He wasn’t ready to say it out loud - and that’s why he settled for simply telling her to loudly fuck off as he stormed out of Titans Tower, determined to be alone. Especially when Gar did nothing more than stare him down with sad eyes, not moving a muscle, making no efforts to chase him. 

He was meant to be alone. Or so he thought. 

It was very clear that Gar had other plans. 

Gar - who was currently snoring beside him with the presence of a slumbering lion. Perhaps Gar had skewed his idea of what it might actually be like to sleep beside a lion - wholly warm, downright hot, with heat radiating off his skin like a furnace, utterly soft and cuddly even though he was so muscled, someone who slept with his mouth agape and snored loudly - but in a pleasantly rhythmic way. He was a perfect, quaint, slumbering beast. 

He made Jason feel safe. 

It was not a luxury Jason had often in life. Maybe it was the thing that kept him coming back to Gar, again and again - that precious feeling of safety. It truly was better than any drug. 

More and more presently by the minute, Jason was reminded of the mess - the unpleasant drying cum between his cheeks and on his lower stomach, leaking out of him and no longer pleasantly warm. It made him want a shower. He didn’t want to scare Gar by having him wake up to an empty bed, but he also didn’t want to wake him, steal sleep away from him when he clearly desperately needed it. 

Jason nudged his way to the edge of the bed, trying to sneak away to the bathroom - but when he heard a harsh snort from Gar, he knew him well enough to know that this had signaled the end of his sleep; a harsh jolt awake. 

“Where are you going?” Gar mumbled tiredly, not even having his eyes fully open yet before he frantically looked around for Jason. 

“I was just gonna go shower, crawl outta my ass.” Jason hissed back, still feeling a bit raw and defensive. 

He knew that Gar would sacrifice anything for him, but he still felt unworthy. Like a puffer fish growing big in defense, Jason was spitting out sourness in a last-ditch attempt to get Gar to change his mind - to shift his thinking last minute and suddenly see the truth: to find him unworthy. 

Jason was almost shocked when Gar smiled. 

Gar held back a clever quip about how he had made a home inside Jason’s ass and he wasn’t going to change that now. 

“I’ll come with you.” He said instead. “Hot shower sounds nice right about now.” 

“You should stay and sleep.” Jason told him, still teetering on the edge of the bed. “You’re clearly tired.” 

“And you’re not?” Gar probed back. 

There was a moment of tense silence. Jason didn’t offer up a reply. 

“Come on, what’s this about?” Gar asked, fully opening his eyes now, propping himself up on one elbow to stare Jason down. 

“After I get dressed, I have to go and talk to Dick.” Jason declared. 

The words were heavy in the air. 

The admission that he no longer felt the need to run. That he wanted to make an effort to stay, that he actually wanted to ask for his place back with the Titans. 

Gar wanted to squeal with glee. Naturally, he held himself back. There would be a few more bumps in the road before Jason was officially home. 

“Not by yourself.” Gar told him sharply. 

Jason’s jaw clenched. He was afraid to admit that he needed the help. It was something he had been afraid of for a long time. 

But he knew that without Gar’s help, without Gar vouching for him in Dick’s eyes, the conversation would likely only go one way. 

And he needed to come home. He needed to stay. 

Jason felt weak, and his voice was quiet when he finally mustered it up. 

“Okay.” 

It was a weak surrender. But things between him and Gar had never been that kind of battle. Not the kind of battle that he had with Bruce, or with Dick, or even with himself. There was never any true hatred there. Just the kind of fierce anger you feel when you love someone so much that you fear losing them. 

So this surrender didn’t feel like a stain on his record - didn’t feel too much like giving up, after all. Not when the picture he ended up with had him and Gar in the same frame. It was something that made him feel more content and less defeated when Gar poorly concealed a smile in response - and then pulled him in for a kiss before getting up to grab towels for their shower.

...

A/N: This is a standalone oneshot, so please do not ask for a second part or a continuation. If you are going to comment, please comment about the body of work that has been written.

Also, typically, I don't write character x character fics, so if you randomly found this in tags and you really like it - I apologize, because the rest of my masterlist is not like this and I won't be writing anything else like it anytime soon. I do write a lot of Titans fics and I have a lot more of them on my masterlist, so if you enjoy my style of smut or if you really enjoy my characterization of these two, then you should definitely check out the other things I have written - particularly No Place Like Home, which has a lot more JayGar scenes in it.

If you do really like my writing style and you want to see Titans x Reader fics (which is what I typically write), then you can follow me and sign up for my DC Titans Taglist by replying to this post asking to be put on the taglist or sending me an ask about it. Anyway, glad you enjoying the fic if you read this far, thanks for reading!!

[wheelie-sick]

Hi! I’m just curious why you’re anti-psychiatry and the reasoning behind it if you’re comfortable sharing? I want to take care to specifically learn the reasoning so I can educate myself upon them, I’ve wanted to be a psychiatrist since I was a kid and so I’m wary of making any mistakes in my profession that could damage others or perpetuate harm. Thank you so much for your time. /genq

okay, first of all I'd recommend reading my post here which talks about why there are no good psychiatrists and this post here about how some people being helped by the system does not make the system good. they're long but the first is pretty foundational to my beliefs on psychiatry and the second covers the most common rebuttal I hear for antipsychiatry.

putting the rest of this under a cut because it's really fucking long because I wanted to provide some context to my beliefs and there's a lot of context

my foundational reasoning for being antipsychiatry comes from listening to other's experiences. I did not have a traumatic experience with psychiatry directly. I'm not going to repeat other's traumatic experiences but if you look through the antipsychiatry tags you can definitely find some of the repulsive things the psychiatric industry has done. my belief in antipsychiatry also comes from my experiences with therapy.

I have been cycled through many therapists who dropped me for being "too complicated" for them. my second most recent therapist I dropped after constant abuse from him.

-> TW for therapeutic abuse until "why I'm antipsychiatry" <-

my issues with my old therapist began when I first started seeing him. I was being actively abused at home and every time I tried to talk about the physical and emotional violence I was experiencing at home from my former father he would shut me down and tell me it was not abuse.

-> TW for descriptions of physical abuse for the next paragraph <-

I told him about the attempts to shove me down stairs. the times I was dragged around. the times I was thrown into the couch. the times I had my face slammed into a wall. the restraint. the hitting. the punching. the grabbing. I told him in detail. my mom has since admitted that I was abused by my former father.

He did not think it was abuse. he had an obligation to report this to CPS and he never did. he told me it was not abuse the minute I brought it up, before I ever even tried to use the word abuse. I could never talk about the violence I was experiencing because I would get shut down every time and eventually I gave up.

-> TW for emotional abuse for the next 2 paragraphs <-

several years later my former father disowned me. (that's why I call him my former father) he told me that he did not see me as his child anymore, that he hated me. he said some other rather disgusting things about me, most of which I will not repeat, but one sticks out. he told me mom that she should handle my being trans as if she was dealing with a dog; when it (and yes, he used the word it) misbehaves you should ignore it. this all happened in a single conversation.

in my next therapy session I was distraught. I didn't like my former father but it never feels good to be disowned. I was trying to talk to my therapist about this and I said "he hates me" my therapist doubted me and asked me "did he say he hates you or are you just perceiving he hates you" trying to, dare I say, gaslight me into thinking this was all my perception. he did this to me frequently when I brought up the emotional abuse I was experiencing. I said "yes, yes he did say that" and things got really quiet because for once he couldn't tell me it was all in my head. in that moment I lost all faith in him because I realized he was wrong. that he was manipulating me into believing I was the problem. that all these conflicts were my fault. but they were never my fault.

-> TW for mentions of self harm for the next 2 paragraphs <-

the final nail in the coffin came about 2 years later when I finally decided to open up about my self harm. I had relapsed on my self harm about 8 months prior, usually it was just a one off but this time it had spiraled out of control into the beginnings of an addiction. I wanted to stop, so I decided to open up to my therapist about it. he got angry at me. I was scared, and vulnerable, and he was angry. he asked me why I didn't tell him sooner, I said I was scared of hospitalization. a week later he threatened to hospitalize me multiple times after promising he wouldn't.

what actually made me drop him was 3 weeks later. I was tired of talking about self harm and I was feeling the same if it all. he asked me about it and I said I don't want to talk about it. he pressed mex accused me of avoiding therapy, threatened to hospitalize me if I didn't spit out adequate details. when I said I hadn't even self harmed that much he accused me of lying to him to avoid therapy. he crossed many boundaries that day and then pressured me into agreeing to fill out a form every week detailing all the information about my self harm down to how many cuts I made. that was my final straw. I was done.

why I'm antipsychiatry:

after that I started reflecting and realizing the whole thing was fucked up. from the starting point in 4th grade when I saw my first therapist to the ending point where I saw my second to last therapist (I had a therapist after the nightmare therapist, her name was Sara she was Deaf and amazing but largely unhelpful) the system was designed to produce bad therapists. the nightmare therapist was not the only bad experience I had with therapists, just the worst. they all liked to abuse their power over me, they all liked to deny my experiences and gaslight me into believing all my problems were my own perception rather than a real outside factor. this wasn't one bad therapist is was one bad system.

and I'm done. I'm so done. therapy has never helped me but it has hurt me and I don't think I can find a good therapist because the whole apple tree is rotting from the inside. I'm sticking with my psychiatrist because he has done minimal harm to me but my experience with therapy has thoroughly cemented that abuse isn't an exception it's the standard and therapists who aren't abusing their clients are breaking the rules. my experience is the norm and it shouldn't be but you can't reform a rotting tree you have to plant a new one.

that's what antipsychiatry also seeks to do. it's cutting down the apple tree but it's also planting a new, different fruit tree. a tree that respects autonomy of patients, that acknowledges patients' realities, that seeks to support not control and manipulate.

if you want to help people with their mental health I urge you to look into the alternatives to the psychiatric system and consider working there. the tree will turn you into a bad apple too because the tree is rotted but there's a new tree growing and you can find other ways to support people. admittedly I'm not the most familiar with alternatives to psychiatry but I know they do exist and they're becoming more common as people realize the damage the psychiatric system is doing.

sorry this was kinda a trauma dump but my antipsych beliefs largely stem from trauma so I wanted to share that context

[gabityaby]

House of the Dragon is not pseudo feminist

You see, while yes, GoT had a lot more unnecessary sex scenes than was normal at the time (thus earning its reputation) and HotD came to change that, it didn't do it in a way that was meaningless or politically charged as one may come to expect, because while we do get the average nudity expected it's never just for the sake of shock value (yes, that suden scene change to the brothel was kinda shock value but hear me out) anymore, it has within a value to the storytelling, for example, the first shocking nudity i saw was the gelding ordered by Daemon in season 1, i personally was shocked to see it done but later on when Daemon is being criticized for it you can way more easily understand the level of violence the characters are speaking about, so it's about immersion basically, and yes, we still get needless nude scenes, like Aemond's full body shot, i do agree that nothing was gained except shock value but then again it could be argued that that is one of the elements of the adaptation. And yes, its true that female nudity, mainly of the main characters, is not so in the face as GoT would've had it, for example we do see Alicent naked for her bath and sex scene yet we never see her private parts, its always of her back or just her upper torso, and when you think about it, there really is nothing to add to the storytelling by showing that, we know she'd naked and she's vulnerable and open, it is all very well compelled by the actress so.

Another point i'd think important to make is that i highly doubt HotD is being pseudo feminist, rather i think it's tackling a very different aspect of feminism that the one we saw on GoT because in GoT we have a rather ample and varied selection of strong female characters throughout the world of ice and fire that show that even through hardships one may think unbearable they rise to the top to accomplish their wishes and desires, in HotD however its very different, in the book, while we do get a large variety of strong female characters, we do lack the personal descriptions that could be afforded in a novela rather than the historical account it plays as, so in that aspect i can understand the writers taking that as a boon to center the story in a limited amount of characters in a limited amount of connected settings.

Tangent aside, my point is that by having a centered storytelling (around Rhaenyra and Alicent) they can tackle the very important topic of the feminist vs the anti-feminist, and how do they do that? by looking at how the patriarchal society of Westeros allow Rhaenyra and Alicent to develop their character in a high-pressure high-stakes environment. One the one side there is Rhaenyra, as the daughter of the king she grew up wealthy and privileged with certain amounts of responsibilities that she has to fulfill to the realm and to her family, and while in her teenage years she rebeles against this seeking her own desires in the end she still marries, she still has children and she still fulfills her role as princess of Dragonstone, however it's in those liberties she took that the problem rises, because on the other side there is Alicent, while also rich and privileged she has to endure even more responsibilities set upon her by her father to her family and himself, and Alicent does not have the power to seek liberties as Rhaenyra does, and so she takes pride in finding her place in society, she reverts to religion for the comfort of the freedoms that she sees in Rhaenyra and knows she can't have, and when she becomes Queen she also becomes the enforcer of order in the court, in society, in her duty as the administrator of the King's household she takes pride in the world running just as her father would want it, in fact she constantly comes to him not just for guidance but for confirmation that everything she does is for a good thing, keeping order, but there is one black sheep that is just constantly out of her reach, one black sheep that keeps getting away with trampling tradition under her pretty foot, one black sheep that wants more that her place in society would have her take, Rhaenyra, the heir of the king, that just by having being named as such has upended years of tradition and so has embodied the truth that Alicent refused to accept all her life.

It's in the clash of these two that we see a more antique form of feminism, when suffragists were fighting for the vote there was always other women who stood against them, when the fight for their civil rights was raging there were always women who in the comfort of religion told everyone who'd listen that whatever they were fighting for was nonsense, when the fight for abortion started to this day there are women willing to burn down abortion clinics because they just couldn't stand another woman having the ability to choose, who just saw other women being worn down by the slot society put them and thought that by just accepting their place and swallowing the hard pill that their lives would improve immediately.

While not being as subtle as GoT was with their feminism, i think HotD cannot be accused of not having it, not only does it limit itself in the needles amount of shock value thirst traps ( if you want to see the actor in skinny clothing just go see their photoshoots, no need to rant for not having it on the show) but it does make a compelling case of showing that even women can bring down other women, be it out of spite or out of envy. Sometimes i go back to what Rhaenys said to Alicent: "You desire not to be free, but to make a window in the wall of your prison." I think the show couldn't have been more evident with their politics if they tried.

[andreal831]

What do you think of Kol/Davina?

Y'all already know you aren't going to like this one.

But Kolvina is probably my least favorite of the Mikaelson canon ships. And yes some of that is due to the fact that Kol is my least favorite Mikaelson. But a lot of it is just based on how young Davina is and how young the show continues to remind us she is. Also, how little effort was put into this ship.

In season 1, Davina is 16 years old, only a year younger than Elena was in season 1 of TVD. Davina, I believe is the same age as Jeremy. However, with everything being aged up in TO (the characters, the love interests, the maturity/violence), Davina comes across as even younger. And this is done purposefully. Davina in season 1 is put into these white, babydoll dresses for most of the season, despite it being unnecessary as she's living in an attic. Her hair is typically very simple and her makeup minimal to give her a youthful look. The show is trying to remind us how young she truly is.

This is not only done with her clothes, makeup, hair, etc. But also with how the characters talk about her. I made an edit one time of how differently Rebekah treated Elena and her friends versus Davina. She treats Davina like a child, like a daughter, when Davina is only a year or two younger than the teenagers Rebekah and her siblings had just spent a couple of years harassing/killing. You also have Vincent, Cami, and Marcel treating her like a child (cause she is one) and worrying about the responsibility that has been put on her. Even her relationship with Josh keeps reminding us of how young and even naïve she is when she isn't aware of things he talks about because she's been so sheltered and is a literal teenager.

The show is reminding us how young and innocent she is so she appears much younger than the characters in the show we just watched (TVD). This is because we need to be angry at the ancestors and the witches for what they've done to her. But mostly because we need to separate it from Klaus sacrificing a 17 year old just a couple of seasons before. Elena was made to seem older so that we could set aside the fact that these 100+ year old men were not only sleeping with her, but continually putting her life in danger. But the opposite is true for Davina.

So then when, in season 2, Kol is brought back as a witch sent to charm Davina, she is still a child to the audience. Yes, she's gained more agency, but you can't just erase all of the footwork the show did to make her appear so much younger than everyone else. And yes, I know the argument that Kol was turned at 17 so they are basically the same age. But I've already discussed how that argument doesn't hold weight with me here.

I'll move on from the age thing though. Another one of my issues with the ship is the bait-and-switch Kol essentially does to Davina. Davina was the biggest Mikaelson-anti. Some of it I think was exaggerated to create conflict in season 1, but no matter what the reason was, she wanted them dead. Kol enters, lying to her about who he is and she is swept away by his charm. Kol spends the better part of a month manipulating a teenager who feels abandoned by everyone. Only to learn the truth and feel betrayed by him. He winds up winning her over because he wants her help to take down Klaus. Only to then betray her once again as soon as Klaus gives him any attention. Where is the Davina we know and love from season 1 who had Marcel, Elijah, and Klaus literally on their knees for lying and betraying her??

I've talked about Kol's development falling flat to me before, so I won't go into too much depth here. But Kol was the stereotypical younger brother. He pretends he is too good for his family, but as soon as Klaus gives Kol any type of attention, even negative, Kol is buddy-buddy with him again. The scene where Davina is watching Kol hug Klaus after Klaus nearly attacked her will always stand out to me. The look of betrayal in her face.

We never really see Kol work to gain Davina's trust or love. He just has it. It doesn't help that a lot of their relationship happens off screen, but what we do see just makes me sad for Davina. Also just the fact that Kol is Marcel's least favorite of the Mikaelsons since, you know, he actively tried to kill Marcel as a child, would make it even harder for Davina. She is constantly being pulled in different directions and at no point do we see Kol trying to make it easier on her. He doesn't work to rebuild his relationship with Marcel or the witches or even Josh. He just pops in and out (yes, I know it was partly due to them both dying constantly) of her life and her feelings are just expected to be there.

This idea that Davina sees Kol as "the best of the Mikaelsons" also just highlights how little she actually knows about him. At least with Cami and Klaus, Klaus has told Cami nearly every awful thing he's done. She is going in with eyes wide open. Even Elijah and Hayley, Hayley knows who he is and even goes into his mind and sees it first hand. Whether they would have ever gotten back together after that is up for debate (they would have, there's no debate), but again, she is making an informed decision. Davina sees Kol in isolated instances where their goals align. And when they don't Davina is just expected to put hers aside and go along with Kol, which the audience is okay with since it's supporting the fan fav family.

The version of Kol we get in season 4 and 5, the small glimpses we see, are don't have anything in common with the Kol we knew throughout TVDU. Like I said in my post about Kol's development, he essentially becomes whatever character the show wants him to be. There is zero reason given for his development other than him falling for Davina. I'm sorry, but men do not just change who they fundamentally are because they fall in love and that is a dangerous message to put out there.

To me Kol and Davina were a plot device to make Davina more hesitant to go after the Mikaelsons and to also cause conflict within the family. They have some cute moments, but I never truly believed their love for each other was anything more than infatuation.

Thanks for the ask! Sorry if it wasn't what you wanted

<3

*Marcel when he finds out Kol is the witch Davina's been seeing*

[heavenlymorals]

Hey there!! I would like to know what your opinion is about Arthur's redemption and what it is based on and what Arthur's big change was in terms of his mentality at the end. Do you think he died being a bad person despite having done good things in the end? Do you think he hated the old Arthur and all the violence and the outlaw life he had lived?

On Objective Morality

Hi anon and thank you so much for the ask ❤️❤️

The thing about Arthur's redemption is that it is different for everyone. Some people think that despite everything, Arthur is still a bad man. Others believe in the opposite.

My perspective is a little different in the sense that I don't really believe in objective morality for MOST things. There are always exceptions and there will always be things that are evil no matter what, but what I've come to notice is that most crimes can become "good" if the reasoning behind it is acceptable to our morals standards. This can go for murder, assault, robbery, etc. Hell, one time, I read a story about a man raping another man for wanting to rape a girl and people were reluctantly praising him for his actions.

I guess my point is that in the vast majority of cases, no crime is evil just by the action. No, crimes are evil by the intention of them.

Now let's look at the VDL gang. The VDL gang started as these Robinhood figures. They stole from the rich and gave to the poor. They tried to stop the destruction of industrialism and unregulated capitalism. They only became desperate AFTER the Blackwater massacre.

"And here I was believing in Dutch's bluster about helping folks." Arthur to Strauss.

And even after the massacre, look at the people who they actively rob. They are either criminals, rich people, robber barons, industrialists, slavers, the government, and/or the army. They target those people because they hate them and what they stand for.

Does this not sound familiar? We hate them too. On the Internet, I always see things that are anti-capitalism, anti-industrialism, anti-billionares, anti-government, etc. Pretty much the same things that the VDL gang fights against but is the VDL gang evil because they actually fight by force? Is violence more evil than the systems that grind people to dust? So many historical figures become controversial because they use violent means to reach their end goals, but people end up condemning them more than the system they fight against because of the violence. Think people like the Luddites, John Brown or Malcolm X.

It's a complicated question. Some people will say yes. They will say that violence against such systems is sometimes the only correct and honorable way to change the world. However, those same people are also very likely to shy away from the same violence once they see it in front of them.

And no doubt about it, the VDL gang is violent. We know canonically that they try their best to not have people die during the jobs they pull and we can also make the argument that the vast majority of kills in the game are for gameplay purposes only and they don't actually kill that many people, especially if you play high honor. But despite it all, the VDL gang was violent.

But those ideals that they had is what separated them from other gangs and what made them "good" or at least better than the other gangs and Arthur believes in this morality too because of his redemption. Arthur's redemption isn't realizing that the outlaw life is bad or that violence is bad or that pacifist mindsets are superior.

No, his redemption was about the same humanity that the gang was started for. Arthur's apathy is what made him so violent to debtors. Arthur's apathy and bitterness regarding himself is why he was so against people leaving the gang to live their own lives.

His redemption was doing a 180 and chosing humanity and the original ideals that Dutch lost in his insanity. That is what his redemption is about because he lived and died a fighter.

I don't think Arthur hated the violence of his life. He hated himself for letting the bitterness of the world get to him and not have him care.

So do I think Arthur died a good person? For what it's worth, I go back and forth. Did he redeem himself? Yes, he redeemed himself from his apathy. Did he die a good person because of that redemption? Well that depends on whether or not you believe or don't believe in objective morality. I usually don't, so in the world that Arthur lived in and the philosophy that he believed, be died becoming a Robinhood once again and that made him better than what he once was.

The question of Arthur's redemption is one of philosophy. Does violence destroy a cause? Does redemption actually exist? Is forgiveness real? Do I need to shut up (I do know the answer to that, it's yes)?

In any case, Arthur's redemption is just as complex as he was.

(Also, to all my other anons, especially the Arthur x reader anons, trust me, I will answer them, but I'm busy and depressed lmfao 😭😭)

[separatist-apologist]

I just read an article in that guy who murdered two women. Absolutely horrifying. All the booktok crazies fawning over him reminds me of the women that would write letters to Ted Bundy while he was in prison.

I wasn't gonna answer this because I felt like I said what I needed to say and like, I was just preaching to preach but THEN while I was asleep, an anon came into my askbox to accuse me of not being a girls girl while intentionally missing my point. I blocked them before I thought of a good comeback (tragic) but like fellas is it anti-feminist not to stan a man who killed two women because (and this is so important to me) he hates women?

I'm gonna put the rest of this under a cut with a heavy trigger warning for domestic violence, I just want to say it and then I think I'm done talking about it because it's genuinely so disheartening.

Anyway, I think sometimes I get nervous to answer these kinds of asks because as a therapist I should know better than to speculate on people and what they're going through and whatever else, but as a person, its like...do you want to be picked that badly?

I think we all know by now that I work in DV and all the people fascinated with men like this fuck me up because like..."oooh what makes him tick, I want to talk to him, why did he do it-" and for me, I sit on the opposite end talking to survivors of violence asking the same questions with hollow eyes, with shaking hands, with safety plans meant to buy them just enough time to get out of their house so they aren't killed. I still think about some of the people I spoke with who didn't survive it.

When I was in grad school, I took a summer internship at the local DV court helping survivors with orders of protection. The system was set up better than a lot of other courts, but its still the legal system, you know? With all its flaws. My job was to flag for lethality based on what I was reading in the OPs and then reach out directly to survivors to help them navigate the process, connect them with resources, and sit with them in court. And I still remember this one particular woman who's situation was so desperately dangerous. We did a safety plan- and at that level, a safety plan isn't like, "remember to take your keys and wallet with you when you go", its "don't go into the basement or bathroom if he's in the house with you because there are too many hard surfaces, exposed pipes, and basins of water that making killing you easier. Go to a bedroom or closet because strangling a person is really hard and takes time," like THAT kind of safety plan. Anyway she thanked me, I remember this so well, she said thank you and I told her I'd call her the next week with an update and over the weekend he bludgeoned her to death.

And I guess I just don't think there is anything fascinating, interesting, or otherwise unique to men like this (obligatory yes I know women kill/abuse too). They're everywhere. I saw another post about how some podcaster is trying to get him on to talk to that guy and its like, why don't you just call up one of your friends' exes. Like. If you've got more than one female friend, you've probably got a friend who has experienced violence at the hand of a male partner, call him. Talk to him. Ask him why he did it, let him give you his made up story about trauma and sadness and oh life is hard because whatever whatever.

That's my thing. Books, movies, tv- they're not making people like this, and I'm not condemning people for what they enjoy in fantasy spaces. I am condemning it when you bring it out of those spaces and side against the women who were violently murdered because, and this is so important to me (did I say this already??), he HATES women. You are not special. You cannot fix him. He's not smart, or interesting, or fascinating and the having an attractive face is literally just chance and not something inherently moral.

And like, lastly, when you prop these men up and give them a platform, you signal to EVERY man just like him that there is something special and tragic about him. You let him play the victim, you let him rewrite the narrative, you shift the blame of his actions off of him and onto the people he hurt. Like with this particular man, you also side with a white supremacist so what are you saying to all your BIPOC/Jewish friends/mutuals, you know?

Anyway. That's my self-righteous rant, I guess.

[usaigi]

How @yellowocaballero and I Fixed Daredevil by Headcannoning Him as Mexican

When Daredevil first appeared in 1964, he was a second-generation Irish-American from Hell’s Kitchen, a working-class Irish-immigrant neighborhood. In a time where Irish people weren’t viewed as “white” or “real Americas.” They were a part of the oppressed working class, the bottom of the food chain, who had nothing but their religion, the vehicle of their culture from the old world, to keep them together.

Note: Today, the argument that “Irish people aren’t really white” has been co-opted by white supremacists and has often been used in bad faith against POC. I want it to be clear that what is considered “white” is and has always been a political term with no backing in science. Discrimination against the Irish back in the day was tied to anti-Catholic sentiment in predominately Protestant states, such as England, Scotland, and the United States. Naturally, Anti-Catholic discrimination overlaps with nativist, xenophobic, ethnocentric and/or racist sentiments (ie Anti-Italian, Anti-Polish, Hispanicphonia).

Jack Murdock was a poor boxer with no education or prospects who had to exploit his body to provide for Matt. And recognized that not a way to live and thrive, so he pushed Matt into academics for social mobility. Sound familiar?

At its core, the story of Matt Murdock is an immigrant story. Matt has the immigrant mentality;  immigrants-get-the-job-done type of thing. Gotta hustle and became a lawyer because that’s how he moves up the social and class ladder. And when he does “make it” he chooses to stay and help his neighborhood because he has a cultural connection to it. 

This worked in 1964, I don’t know how much it works now.  

Hell Kitchen isn’t a rough neighborhood primarily occupied by working-class immigrants, it’s another gentrified hipster hellhole. Irish people and people of Irish ancestry in the United States no long face systemic discrimination. 

Therefore, modern-day recontextualizing is to make Matt Mexican. 

Technically, Matt can also be from any other Latin American country or Filipino but I lean towards Mexican since a) this is my post go make your own and b) we get the most discrimination from the mainstream media. Yes, a lot of it is because racists use “Mexican” as a catch-all term for anyone from Latin America but still. Trump made his presidential platform by calling Mexicans illegal rapists and druggies. 

If Matt was actually the son of Jack Murdock*, an undocumented brown immigrant living in a working-class immigrant/POC neighborhood, it gives him the underdog immigrant arc the character is missing in modern-day adaptations. Matt's core is still the same Matt we know and love, he’s still the son of a boxer, whose dad’s pushed him into succeeding academically, who lost his dad to gang violence, and who is extremely Catholic. Someone who wants to fit into middle-class educated (white) society and feels like he has to suppress the "devil" inside until one day he can’t. He's seeing discrimination and poverty and crime and gentrification tear his neighborhood apart and the police turn their back on it since it's predominantly POC. The law has failed them, he's not going to fail them too. 

Meg made the fantastic point that Matt should still be white-passing (and ginger) so he could exist somewhere in between worlds.  And Matt takes advantage of that, as well as his Columbia Law degree to help his community. Matt not using his conditional whiteness and the fancy degree to “escape” his community and instead help it.