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werdlewrites · 11 days ago

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masterlist - ao3

summary: An ugly sniffle fills the air, a whimper of agony on her tongue as she wipes at her eyes with already dampened sleeves. “Brenner. Did you know about Brenner?” She already knows the answer to it, yet a piece of her is aching to hear him spew denial—even if it’s not true. But the glow of the day easily illuminates the loss of flushed cheeks and horrified eyes. He’s been caught in a trap, making peace with his demise. “Y’know what he does? What he did?” warnings: suggestion of kidnapping, child neglect, mistreatment, sad times wc: 2,179

It’s an image locked in his mind. The sight of a broken girl standing out in the white expanse, watching with saddened eyes as the distance between them grows. She becomes smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror—that haunting expression vanishing in a haze as the tires kick up freshly fallen snow.

“M’not leaving you like he did.”

It’s a vow he cannot and will not break. Leaving home each morning and night, he knows what it’ll do to her if he doesn’t walk right back through that cabin door. Suppose something was to take him before she had grown—before she had a sense of self and a solid foundation to stand on. She was just a kid. And now, there were two of them to fight for.

Every second that passes is filled with a picture of them. A reminder of what he was doing this all for. He hardly sees anything else before him. Not the wet road as he travels or the wailing children he passes as they tug on their mother's jacket. He hardly sees his friends—or coworkers. Shoulders brush along one another as he walks into that office and down the halls, ignoring the cries of Florence at his back as she goes over what he’s missed. But he’s not here for work. He’s here for answers, and they sit inside a stacked file, messily tied together. Some contents were already threatening to spill out from the sides.

The door at his back is shut, locked, with curtains pulled over the tall windows of his office. The fuss over him drowns out, a sigh of surrender heard on the other side as Florence moves on with her tasks, leaving Hopper to his work. The pile is almost…intimidating. It was hardly the largest he’d seen, yet not entirely shallow either. There’s enough history to keep him well-occupied for a few hours at least.

His hands trembled as fingers pulled at the thin rope, letting a few loose papers slip out from their hiding places, gliding along his desk. The first thing he pulls is an aged black-and-white photograph of a boy—young enough to hold his mother's hand for comfort, but old enough to feel wild and free as he runs along the yard. He’s not recognizable—but with the twist of his wrist, he finds a date etched by a faded blue pen: 5/10/1942.

The picture is set aside for a later study—when the pieces of the puzzle manage to come together, and it doesn’t take long. A copy of a birth certificate comes shortly after, reading, “This certifies that Ian Phillip Shaw was born in The Birthing Center at Columbus Regional Hospital on the 13th of August, 1938.”

The names of witnesses have been tampered with—scrawled out seemingly on purpose. The ages seem to match, and every picture he discovers falls to the corner of his desk, the mysterious child now named Ian Shaw, not Ian Reid as he proclaimed. So where in this stack did that change come into play, and why?

Paperwork from schools say he was a prodigy. Just a growing boy with far too much potential and needing a better environment to expand his mind. He receives a scholarship and pursues college out of state before others have even left High School, leaving his parents behind to become something great—and he doesn’t. Not right away, at least. Ian begins to flounder and fail. His pictures become less starry-eyed and bright and dull with an unknowing look in his eye. There’s a shift within him, and he returns home where a silence builds.

Suddenly, he shows his face. Ian is smiling again in photographs and has returned to school in Indiana, where he consistently gets better grades. He turns in long essays regarding science and the astral plane—the unknowns of the universe and all that can be accomplished. His words soar right over Hopper’s head, but his fascination alone is damning.

Then, another photograph. Two men sitting across from one another, elbows pressed to a small coffee table with their hands interlocked for an arm-wrestle. They pause in their game to smile wide for the flash of a camera, and the officer can’t help but notice a similarity in the second person. He looks nearly identical to the man who once sat next to his wife and baby—his existence now wiped from the world.

His name was Warren McKay.

Ian had become friends with this man, and it was unclear what the intentions were. They seemed happy—genuine friends. Attending parties together and posing during school rallies, ultimately graduating to teach at the same school. And somewhere in the story, a woman appears. She’s often hiding from the camera, too shy, and maybe out of her element. Always in the background mingling, until confidence grows and she’s seen standing beside Warren with an arm protectively around her waist. Ian sits nearby, all appearing blissful and entirely unaware of what was to come.

All seems to fizzle out. The stack grows thinner by the second. There’s a reported incident of Warren filing harassment charges against someone he once called a friend. Claiming psychotic behavior and delusions had poisoned his mind. Ian is forced out of the school shortly after. The timeline begins to meld together with fewer reports of him. Warren and his wife move out of town, and Ian practically vanishes.

It isn’t until 1973 that he reemerges from the shadows as Ian Reid, a little girl in tow as he moves into Hawkins. He’s listed as her only emergency contact for the school, and his list of work is vague. Some factory work just out of town. Boring enough for no one to ask questions, but Hopper has not once heard of the company before. But there isn’t much after that. All runs cold. Living a mundane and quiet life where he chooses a night spent at home rather than some neighborhood barbeque for fear of further exposure.

Now, on the cusp of 1984, he’s gone again. Leaving that girl to figure life out on her own in the mess he’s left behind. Did he ever think of her? Did he wonder what had happened once he took the cowardly way out? Did he care enough to earn the false title of ‘father’?

It’s all he can think of when he finally calls it quits for the day. Packing it all up to sit snugly and hidden beneath the seat of his car—piecing together the missing pieces of just how and why this innocent child ends up in his care. Had he been waiting for that moment? His mind snapping to the point his dear friend has to force him out of the picture.

Hopper sees them there—sitting on the frozen steps of an old cabin. The features of Warren meld together with his beloved wife to create…Autumn McKay. There’s not an ounce of Ian within her, other than the madness he’s forced her to endure. How could the world have been so blind? Believing in the lies that she took after an absent mother—someone who had never existed. A mere fairytale.

But there is no fairytale. It’s a book filled with horrors with every flip of the page. Her eyes are red—a painful contrast to the white expanse that surrounds them. She had been crying. Tears vanish into the curl of her lip, a snarl on trembling lips. The panic of the unknown sets in with a thousand different scenarios flooding his vision—anything that would keep her out in the cold, seemingly in distress.

Hopper moves with haste, nearly tripping over his feet as they stride through the snow. He’s so locked in on her that he doesn’t register the path of violence carved out as she screamed. The snow is disrupted, scattered piles here and there and splattered up against bending trees. He only sees her, and the way she stands to face him. Autumn steps down and forward, ignoring the burn against her skin as the wind whips. The officer can see the fists at her side and the glare in weeping eyes but thinks it couldn’t be for him. How? All he can think of is the overwhelm of worry—a need for closure. “What the hell happened?”

The teen girl doesn’t answer with words, more so, with force. Open palms connect with his chest, effectively sending him stumbling back a step or two in shock. Fresh tears fall, the glare shifting between heartache and anger as she goes in to shove him once more. His large hands catch her wrists before contact is made, and she rips them away. Almost disgusted by his touch.

“Did you know?” she finally asks. The words mumbled and weak on scratched vocal cords.

“Know what?” He seems almost frustrated by the lack of information. Having such a small girl become a weapon against him, yet he did not understand why, especially after all he had done for her just an hour prior.

An ugly sniffle fills the air, a whimper of agony on her tongue as she wipes at her eyes with already dampened sleeves. “Brenner. Did you know about Brenner?” She already knows the answer to it, yet a piece of her is aching to hear him spew denial—even if it’s not true. But the glow of the day easily illuminates the loss of flushed cheeks and horrified eyes. He’s been caught in a trap, making peace with his demise. “Y’know what he does? What he did?”

Hopper can’t bring himself to respond. All words are lost in transit—scrambled up before fading to dus; knowing what he wants to say won’t change anything. He braces for the impact, knowing it’s deserved.

“Did you know he tortured those kids? Do you know what he made them do?” Her voice trembles with every word. Frail as she pictures her much smaller self adorned in a hospital gown. The world is filled with nothingness—grey, hollow, and pained. Blood splattered across the rainbow beneath her feet. She doesn’t want it—can’t accept it but is unable to ignore the blaring signs. Forgotten time, trauma pushed out by force to live another day. “Was that me? Is-is that who I am?”

A sharp breath of chilled air fills his lungs, finding only the strength to whisper her name in defeat and sympathy—watching a girl spiral into madness. Adrenaline keeps her fury alive until she collapses into the abyss—her spirit flickering out. “Was that me?” She cries out. The veins of her neck protrude as her voice is pushed to its brink. Her heartache echoed and danced through the wind with power. “Y-you said they knew each other.”

The silver-haired man makes his way down the paved path of her home. A sickening smile on his face—unafraid of being caught as he locks eyes with the teen just across the way. He speaks of the weather. His stance is confident, and his voice unbreaking—like they were familiar. Like he had known her once upon a time. Perhaps calling her an old friend—or a tortured specimen.

The memory flashes like the pictures of a movie. So vivid and real, she swears she could reach out to feel the wet grass of November. Feel the sun before it all fades to the gray of deep winter. Hopper steps forward to cut the scene in two—a figure of security with arms out to catch a swaying form.

She eyes him wearily. His existence is nearly a blur of light and shadows as heavy tears cascade down puffy cheeks. Her heart breaks before him, lying in scattered pieces at his feet. “Is this what I am? J-just some fucking rat in a c-cage? An experiment?”

Again, nothing comes. No words of comfort or truth—no denial. There’s only the cautious reach as he tries to hold her, but her arm rips away from his touch as if he’s made from fire, burning up her bruised and battered shell until nothing remains to protect what was inside. The fragile creature—the soul. Hopper doesn’t surrender so easily, stepping closer each time she retreats until she’s left frozen in place, choking back sobs like a child.

Warm fingers ease their way along her shoulders, using just enough pressure to pull her in, and she caves. There’s no more fighting or words tainted by venom, only surrender as exhaustion creeps in. An unspoken yearning for something solid in a crumbling existence. Despite the betrayal, the girl still sees him as the savior in her story. Hating the secrets he kept, yet unable to stray from his presence.

Autumn is lax against him. Her arms hung heavy and low with his dirty shirt dampened from the tears, and he only pulled her tighter, afraid her knees may give out or the sudden exposure may force walls to rise just to keep her safe. To block it all out and pretend all is normal. But this little life they now lived was anything but. So, he mumbles his apologies into the girl's mess of hair, voice cracked and frail.

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werdlewrites · 22 days ago

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Chronic pain led me to lower standards where I'm happy about being in pain for only 50% of the time, and not 100%

And then my doctor gives me the hardest side eye like "Yeah I guess it's subjective"

#chronic pain #chronic illness #me things #health

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werdlewrites · 27 days ago

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SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using

his dyslexia;

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there.

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain;

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again.

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice.

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later:

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether.

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them.

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that.

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation.

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

#fandom #plagiarism #AO3 #speechify #word-stream #Cliff Weitzman #writers on tumblr #fan fic writing #AI plagiarism #independent authors #please share #Ofek Weitzman

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werdlewrites · 29 days ago

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To all of the people out there who have to suffer through a heavily maga influenced family dinner during the holidays..

I'm your family now.

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werdlewrites · 29 days ago

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werdlewrites · 29 days ago

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When you’re in the middle of a fic and realise you’ve missed a very critical tag

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werdlewrites · 30 days ago

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masterlist - ao3

summary: “You know him?” The girl named El nods slowly, and Autumn is instantly closing the distance between them. The cold plate is now forgotten on the counter. “How? Who is he?” The silverware is laid down with a gentle thud, hands folding up into her lap. The connection between them is strong and unbreaking despite the obvious worry in her innocent eyes. As if speaking of him will manifest a sudden appearance. “Bad man. Makes me…hurt people.” warnings: child trauma and neglect :( wc: 1,795

You wonder what it’s like.

To feel haunted by something you don’t quite understand.

To know something has its eyes on you, but you can’t quite make it out in the fog of terror. It’s waiting for you. Dying to get a taste of your fear as it digs its claws into you. Maybe it feels like a fire has been lit inside your stomach. Bubbling and boiling until your skin runs raw from fidgeting back and forth, on edge as the monster lingers in the shadows. Maybe it feels a lot like nothing. Your body is left frozen from shock. Mind stuck in a twisted web of fight or flight and unable to choose in the panic. A lack of action leaves you for bait as teeth and claws creep in closer at your back. But the creature of her story is a mere child—harboring knowledge of the true beast she runs from.

Autumn’s pants are soaked from time spent out in the snow—watching as his truck vanishes into the distance, then refusing to move. Stuck and one with the ice that melts from the heat of her body. She can no longer feel the sting, but her lungs begin to burn. The only reminder of nature's wrath as it slowly chokes the life from her.

Returning to the cabin brings no comfort—not the way it once did. Not the way she had hoped. She’s cautious as she moves around the small space, walking on her tiptoes and avoiding the boards that squeak with the slightest of weight. A trap set to spring should she make one wrong move.

Wild eyes are scanning the small space—from the closed-off room to the ladder up toward her private sanctuary. She could hide like a coward and wait for the girl to wake—pretending not to notice or to care as she wanders right out the door and out of her life. Out of sight, out of mind. Except now that she’s seen what was once a ghost, now walking among her, it’s hard to ignore.

Still, she never asked for it.

Anxiety gets the best of her and has her feet flying without grace across the wooden boards—the thunderous steps drowning out the sound of a rusted handle twisting. Autumn’s fingers are wrapped around the railing, prepared to make her ascension by the time she notices a shadow. For a moment, she hopes it’s all just another nightmare. That she still lie in bed, and Hopper had never left for work.

But just over her shoulder, the girl stands in total stillness. Nearly a statue with dark eyes watching the older girl in wonder. Their gazes meet with great reluctance—worried their connection will send her spiraling down a path she hadn’t braced for. A memory that had been purposefully forgotten.

“H-hello.” Her voice is tiny—timid and full of fear and uncertainty. She’s practically cowering from the teenager. Just barely stepped beyond the threshold of the opened door, ready to retreat should she need to. It’s her hesitation that makes Autumn realize that she’s just as afraid of her.

“W-where is—?”

“Gone.” The girl's voice cracks with the reply. Not entirely prepared to speak as a rapid heartbeat climbs up into her throat. A forceful swallow to give room for shaken breaths. She clears her throat. “G-gone. He, uh… He said he would be back. He had t’do some things.”

The child nods. Her fingers twisted and pulled at the fabric of a tarnished dress that certainly didn’t belong to her, as it seemed just a tad too big. She was terrified—anxious and uneasy in this new space. The look of her alone left a nauseating feeling in the pit of Autumn’s stomach, finding familiarity within her. She was just as the teenager had been when she first woke from the trance of shock. Lost and alone.

Autumn pries herself from the wall. Back aching from the pressure of the ladder forced against her skin. There’s a forced bravery on her face. A trembling, gentle smile—hardly seen in the dim light of early morning. But she wears it for the girl who purposefully shrinks away. “What’s, uh… What’s your name?”

The girl’s fidgeting fingers are still, though tangled tight in loose threads, cutting off the circulation as her fingers begin to turn red. “El.” She replies in a quiet voice.

Autumn repeats her name. Hushed and on a loop as her gaze falls to the floorboards. She’s trying to place the name to a time forgotten. To someone even mentioning her name in passing, and nothing comes up. No spark of a memory. No cozy, familiar feeling. Just an anomaly disguised as a girl.

But it was just a girl. Her innocence is long gone and replaced with heartache and trauma. Sorrow and frailty fill dark eyes as she searches for a place of safety and protection. Untrusting of all despite the sacrifice made to rescue her from evil things. For her sake, Autumn swallows the nerves to put on a brave face but keeps her distance. The electricity between the two sent fire crawling up her skin, burning deep into every nerve and bone.

“A-are you, uh… Are you hungry?”

El nods with great hesitation, though there’s a spark of hope on her face.

“Right, okay, uh, just—just have a seat.” A shaky hand gestures to one of two chairs—old and teetering with the added weight and a missing foot for balance. The girl waits patiently at the small table, hands folded up into her lap—nerves wound so tight she could bolt at any second from the slightest noise or wrong motion. A small animal of prey waiting for the fatal strike.

Autumn has to pry herself away from the wall, vision fading in and out with the rushing adrenaline until her hands meet the handle of the fridge. She works almost on autopilot—mind unthinking as she pulls out the food she worked so hard to prepare, yet never getting a taste of it as her body slips into panic. At least Hopper had enough sense in all of the chaos to store it away.

The plate is filled and warmed in complete silence. Thunderous hearts filling up the small space and lurching up into her throat when she lays the plate in front of the girl. Like she catered to the beast. Anticipating another invasion of the mind or something yet to be seen. Autumn puts distance between the two, colliding with the rattling fridge.

El doesn’t seem to notice the awkwardness or the anxiety ignited between them. Dark eyes are locked on the food, and like an animal, she begins to eat. The fork moving quickly across the dish to stab and scoop until her cheeks were puffed, heavy sighs of relief escaping her nose. How long had it been, exactly? If she’s been missing for that long, she would be a mere ghost of herself. Hollowed out with no strength to even lift a utensil.

Maybe the blood on her dress was an indication of just how she survived. The brutal reality of being left behind.

The teenager is so lost in thought that she doesn’t notice the child's pace has slowed. Her mouth is still full—chewing with care as she studies the far-off look in the other girl's eyes. El speaks. Words muffled by food and barely audible despite the quiet around them. “What?”

“Y-you were…scared. I’m—I’m sorry.”

Autumn isn’t aware that she’s staring—eyes gone dry and pained now that she’s locked on the girl, drinking in her sadness—her frailty. She’s only a child with a history unknown. Though it’s painfully obvious something darker follows her. Is it the same thing that haunts Autumn? The bizarre mysteries the universe had cursed them with and the fear of what they could do. She’s like her—that’s what they had said. But how far did it go?

“How were you in my head?” the teen asks.

The question puts El in a place of discomfort. Gaze faltering to land on a half-eaten dish. The admission was soft and almost shameful. “It was…an accident. Thought—thought you were in mine.”

It’s not the answer she was looking for. More vague responses to something otherworldly, leaving her without progression or closure—still lost and desperate for something bigger. Her stomach rumbles. The only sound between the two, and she surrenders to its call, turning her back on the child to rummage through the leftovers.

“D’you think he’ll find us?”

“Who?” Autumn asks without thought, practically on autopilot as she samples a cold spoonful of stuffing.

“Papa.”

The hunger is silenced by the nickname. It drifts through the air, seeking her out. The poisonous name crawls along her skin and slips between parted lips to coat her tongue. It spills down her throat—a rushing wave acting before she has the chance to choke it out. It’s unsettled, burning, and eating up her insides. Claws of death climb up her spine until they worm their way inside of her mind. Her senses are numbed—turning to glance over her shoulder at the girl.

He said they would take things slow. They would work at a snail's pace to prepare her distorted mind and her broken heart. It’s infuriating, even if the path ahead is frightening. But the need to know drowns out the itching anxiety. The bubbling heat of terror.

“You know him?”

The girl named El nods slowly, and Autumn is instantly closing the distance between them. The cold plate is now forgotten on the counter. “How? Who is he?”

The silverware is laid down with a gentle thud, hands folding up into her lap. The connection between them is strong and unbreaking despite the obvious worry in her innocent eyes. As if speaking of him will manifest a sudden appearance. “Bad man. Makes me…hurt people.”

Her heart is racing—pumping that poison to move faster until all she can feel is the buzz of excitement. The door to all she needed opening with the helping hands of a child. Too young to understand secrecy, and longing to be a part of something bigger than themselves. “Well all hurt–”

“Who, El? Who is ‘we?’”

There’s a glisten in her eyes. Old sorrows rose to the surface, a telling sign that her emotional wounds were still fresh and bloodied. No scars as a sign of healing and processing the trauma of life.

Autumn is sitting just across from her now, arms folded across the small table as she leans in. A reassurance that despite her lack of affection and hardened exterior, she was present. She was there for the child. Maybe it’s just cruel manipulation. Maybe it’s real. But she’s there, guiding in the focus of another broken soul. “What did he do, El?”

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