Day 4: You eat a weird bug and don’t even care.

Starting later than usual today because I’ve been absolutely swamped with work. Let’s get down to business to defeat the Huns.

https://homestuck.com/story/644

I’ve never really gotten why John falls asleep here. Seems an odd place to fall asleep, especially with the adrenaline rush that must have been. Maybe he’s passing out from exactly that? Alternatively, maybe Vriska is putting him to sleep.

 I also forgot that John Sleeps/Skaian Magicant is split between two flashes.

https://homestuck.com/story/651

Ah here we go. John has what are, if Jade is to be believed, lousy dreams. He dreams of his Dad, of clowns, of baked goods, of Fruit Gushers, of his own symbol, the weird knock-off slimer, and Harry Anderson, before finally Jade appears.

I am not a psychologist or therapist. I am not even anything more than an amateur literary critic. But let me give you my take on that. It’s clear that John is dreaming about all kinds of things that are giving him anxiety here, if Jade’s assessment about his dreams being lousy is true.

Harry Anderson is, as he’ll say later, kind of a weird mutual father figure for him and his Dad, and as a stage magician and comedian, he represents John’s aspirations.

John wants to grow up to be a great stage magician and comedian, and if there’s anything we’ve seen about the Heir of Breath so far, it’s how extremely self-critical he is of his abilities - he’s screwed up every disguise and magic trick he’s tried so far. 

The other things are pretty self-explanatory - he’s anxious about his relationship with his Dad, he’s anxious about his Dad’s identity, he’s anxious about his own identity - with the exception of the gushers. Are gushers just symbolizing Sburb for John? Does he have a premonition that the gushers are tainted by the hand of his archnemesis, Betty Crocker? Maybe that one’s just silly.

Maybe they’re all just silly!

https://homestuck.com/story/652

I promise I will have more to say about Jade’s conversations once she is actually introduced, but until then, she is too enigmatic for me to talk about :^)

I will say, if the fact that John is stressing out about everything in his life and just not vocalizing his anxiety, it’s probable that he thinks Jade is just as mysterious as his pals think she is, and is just not talking about it.

I think John, like Jake, is way more intelligent than he lets on, and probably just keeps a lot of things on a simmer, thinking about them without necessarily opening up about them. He talks a lot about surface level stuff for sure, but he seems a lot more hesitant to talk about emotions, theories, that sort of thing. It actually reminds me a lot of how Kim Kitsuragi from Disco Elysium, far from his highly imaginative partner the player character, writes his thoughts down in a notebook to keep track of his through processes, hunches, case details, etc, whereas the Detective organizes everything in an interactive Thought Cabinet that serves as one half of the game’s Inventory and Progression System.

For example, John’s ability to describe and his ability to theorize is on full display in the FAQs that he writes, but when he talks, he’s often just as disorganized as he is everywhere else. Maybe John needs to take up journalling.

Huh. I wonder if Kim is a Prospit Dreamer and the Detective is a Derse Dreamer? That would make a lot of sense. Once @bladekindeyewear finishes playing Disco Elysium (which he is playing at my behest), I’ll see if he’s interested in assigning Lunar Sway, Classes and Aspects to the two of them.

https://homestuck.com/story/665

Dave Owns. The Narrative switches between character perspectives often right before there’s a major climax so that lots of characters can all have climactic encounters in sync with one another.

Eye imagery is on full display here as Dave ascends to the highest point in the building. The Sun over Dave’s house is drawn differently from other abstractions of the Sun in Homestuck, and this particular drawing of the Sun will later be juxtaposed against Terezi’s eyes as Alternia’s Sun burns them out.

The Sun as the Symbol of Light is also juxtaposed with Rose’s eyes later when she uses her seer powers, strengthening the connection between the Sun and Eyes. Near the very beginning of the comic, Rose compares the Sun moving on from the east coast to the west as him casting his lurid gaze on younger parts of the world, or the country. I’m not recalling the exact phrasing at this time.

Lil Cal’s creepy eyes are also highlighted by the Camera here. Through the vehicle of Lil Cal, Lord English is watching and quietly giving approval to all of this.

I choose to interpret the camera’s focus in this flash as giving us a glimpse into what Dave is paying attention to. And boy does Dave notice all of these eyes on him. Between seeing the sun as a malevolent eye watching him, to Lil Cal’s glassy gaze, to the Cameras bro uses to surveil him 24/7, Dave feels like he’s constantly being watched, and I think it’s safe to say it gives him the creeps.

https://homestuck.com/story/673

WV’s self-estimation isn’t much better than John’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/678

I wonder if we can get some insight into the strange minds of the Carapacians in the way that before he’s even finished receiving the commands, WV acts on them. WV is even more impulsive than John.

https://homestuck.com/story/684

Oh yeah, WV’s self-worth is way worse than John’s.

https://homestuck.com/story/685

Luckily almost as soon as his thoughts come, they go. He doesn’t spend too much time brooding over his self-loathing and survivor’s guilt, so good for him.

https://homestuck.com/story/688

A whole bunch of things that are symbolically related to the cast!

While WV’s can town playtime functions as foreshadowing for us, it serves as a replay of the extremely recent past for him, at least in terms of events that we know about.

https://homestuck.com/story/694

The light on Serenity’s belly looks a bit like the Sun, and therefore, an eye.

https://homestuck.com/story/699

The Blue Trees of Can Town call forward to Terezi’s forest, but I don’t think this is probably more substantial than something fun Andrew decided to call back to when he was writing the trolls.

IDK. Maybe Blue Trees = Democracy = Justice?

But Terezi’s brand of justice has nothing to do with Democracy.

https://homestuck.com/story/709

Tab, like GameBro, is an artifact of a bygone age.

https://homestuck.com/story/711

It’s a lot easier to become a citizen of Can Town than it is to become a citizen of the United States!

https://homestuck.com/story/714

I wonder who input all those commands before WV got on board? Maybe whoever was in charge of building these contraptions in the first place - a Carapacian Lab Rat in the Veil.

Always felt like the unseen actors making Sburb run behind the scenes were one of the nicest touches, they lend an air of sinister mystery even beyond the Guardians.

https://homestuck.com/story/721

I am not good at chess.

Maybe sometime, I will have my friend who is good at Chess analyze this game, and see how he feels about it.

https://homestuck.com/story/735

WV’s Self Esteem is very, very bad.

https://homestuck.com/story/752

Our first introduction to the laws of time travel in Homestuck - the past is a place that materially exists, and in only one specific configuration that can be interacted with. You can only bring things forward from the past if nobody else got to them before you. You can’t go back and undo things that somebody else (or you) has already done according to the canonical configuration of events.

https://homestuck.com/story/757

This is ridiculously cool.

Homestuck’s huge climactic story events are arguably one of the things that makes it so special as a story. I can’t think of a story that does such a good job of building up tension in multiple storylines before having them all converge.

https://homestuck.com/story/760

:D

https://homestuck.com/story/765

I wonder what the exact mechanism is by which Jade is aware of the gaming abstractions and commands to the degree that she is? Is it just her Skaian dreams? This could be a one-off gag, but it could also be an indication of a degree of clairvoyance greater than that which I feel like the visions she has as the Prospitian Moon passes through Skaia.

https://homestuck.com/story/768

Jade loves to watch things grow.

It’s a Space Thing.

https://homestuck.com/story/777

According to BladeKindEyeWear’s Inversion Theory Jade’s complicated and carefully orchestrated time loops, which she uses to connect people with possibilities, is an example of her inverting under extreme stress, acting more like a Seer of Time, her opposite, than like a Witch of Space (in much the same way that Rose acts an awful lot like a Witch of Void for much of the comic’s first half!)

I expect a real Seer of Time wouldn’t need quite so many contrivances to keep track of everything going on in the past and future. Eventually, Jade stops using her colourful reminders, which is probably an indicator that she is no longer attempting to play outside of her lane.

https://homestuck.com/story/789

Pretty much all of Jade’s interests cast her immediately as someone with a pretty strong maternal instinct, something that she shares with other heroes of Space. Jade is a caretaker. 

Her playthings are dolls so she can roleplay the part of a Mom. She grows oodles of plants, and seems to have a knack for it. She likes animals, and though the only animal in her life takes care of her, she puts in some work to take care of him too.

Her interests definitely mark her as the more classically girly of the two between her and Rose, and like her brother is preoccupied with manhood and Dadliness, Jade seems to preoccupied with Momliness - which is odd, considering that she doesn’t have a maternal figure to aspire to! (Maybe the White Queen?)

https://homestuck.com/story/790

Jade is not of course, only girly. The same way that Dad’s culturally out-of-place baking hobby marks him as transgressively feminine to John’s dismay, Jade’s scientific and artillerist hobbies are transgressively masculine.

Although it’s tempting to say that Jade loves the sciences because Grandpa raised her to, or because she’s aping him after he died, she’s clearly born to it. I think about the question of nature and nurture a lot in Homestuck.

I think on the whole, it falls pretty far to the side of Nature. Characters who share a common ancestry also share common character traits more often than not, even in the absence of shared cultural touchstones, shared geography, shared timeline. The same character only has a limited number of possible choices that they could have made, as Aranea will later say.

On the other hand, some characters turn out very different in one life than they do in another. Dirk doesn’t turn out nearly the psychopath that Bro Strider is by the time that Homestuck Proper concludes.

https://homestuck.com/story/795

Squiddles are, as everyone knows by now, a manifestation of the Dark Gods of the Furthest Ring, but I think there’s more going on with them too - they have kind of a horny energy that I can’t quite place. I’m going to come back to that. Any case, they seem to be one of the symbols that Rose and Jade share in common, although Rose subverts the colorful and cute squiddles into icons more of the extradimensional beasties that they actually represent.

Maybe I think Squiddles are a symbol of horny for the same reason that snakes are lewd to Cherubs - there’s definitely something phallic about tentacles, and definitely something intimate about the idea of becoming someone’s tangle buddy. The very first time I read Rose’s handle, I thought it read Tentacle The Rapist, which I suspect is kinda the point, and some of Andrew’s other works have variously described the process of interacting with tentacles as being molested and so on and so on.

Rose and Jade actually share a huge number of symbols in common between the two of them, which I think is great, but also sad - Rose and Jade clearly actually have quite a lot in common, and the two of them don’t really interact very much.

https://homestuck.com/story/797

I’m going to eventually decode Jade’s fascination with animals too, but for now I want to remark that it’s not just the idea of looking like an animal that excites Jade - it’s the idea of being  like an animal that excites her. The exact same little poem is later reiterated by Serenity in WV’s nightmare, as he dreams of losing control of the power of the Ring of Orbs Fourfold and killing everyone he loves. What would be a nightmare for WV though is a fantasy for Jade. The idea of being out of control is thrilling for her.

Dave is also a furry.

https://homestuck.com/story/798

The trappings of a proper gentleman. Monocle. Pipe. Top Hat. Little White Gloves. A proper gentleman without these is a piss poor excuse for a proper gentleman indeed.

SYMBOLS.

https://homestuck.com/story/800

Another spot where Jade is able to interface directly with the audience, in some form or another.

https://homestuck.com/story/802

Jade may have fantasies of transforming into something more animalistic, but she’s not willing to indulge them.

https://homestuck.com/story/803

Jade completely rejects the symbols of witchcraft that Rose so readily embraces.

https://homestuck.com/story/804

Jade contemplates engaging in some Vriskaesque behavior. Is it just because Vriska is watching her? Maybe she’s picking up some Vriska-esque vibes through the feed as the Thief of Light practices her mind control. 

https://homestuck.com/story/808

I think it’s safe to say one of two things is going on here.

Jade is either literally cognizant of the audience and interacting with them, putting her on a layer of the story that is quite a lot closer to us than you would expect of someone as innocuous as Jade (maybe the immediate presence of the Fourth Wall upstairs could facilitate that relationship?)

Or Jade has an active imagination, is extremely lonely, and likes to interact with her imaginary audience as a way of projecting a friendly and hospitable demeanor onto the world around her in sort of the exact opposite way that Rose imagines the worst of everything and everyone?

Or, as it often is in Homestuck, it could be both motherfuckin’ things.

https://homestuck.com/story/829

Did I mention Dave is a furry? Dave is totally a furry.

If we read Squiddles as a symbol of intimate contact with living things, Jade’s computer having Squiddles front and center is appropriate - it’s her point of contact to all the people in her life.

Tune in on the morrow to watch Dave’s Bro beat the shit out of him.

Until then, this is Cam signing off, alive and not alone.

There's something more to this psychologist's story by Nickbotic

Hey guys, since I can only post one story at a time, this is the continuation of this story. Dr. Elliot had just told me that while working at a prison, he was assigned a patient named Miguel. Miguel would go on and on all day about the “ones in the shadows”, which bears a striking similarity to what his patient from years prior, Katherine, claimed haunted her.

Miguel had been saying nothing but “never disobey the ones who live in the shadows" for about four years, and it started about a month after he arrived at the prison. He was sent to solitary confinement for violently lashing out multiple times, and shortly after that, he stopped speaking except for that phrase. Of course, this mention of people “living in the shadows” conjured up memories of Katherine. I tried telling him I’d heard of the shadow people before, but it didn’t do anything. Nothing did, until I thought back to Katherine and the first thing she said to me that had raised an alarm.

”Do the people who live in the shadows tell you to keep all of your feelings inside, and let them out when it can really count?” When I said that, he stopped talking and looked at me. “That’s what their leader says.” I asked how many of them there were, and he responded that there were too many to count. He said they come to him at night, telling him they want him to join them.

”They come out of the wall and stand around my bed. All of them talk at once, but no one else can hear. They say they can make me strong. They say they can make me invisible. That if I join them I’ll never have to be in prison ever again. All I have to do is kill myself.”

Over the next year and a half, I managed to convince Miguel that the people who live in the shadows weren’t real. I never outright said it, because I didn’t want to invalidate what he thought to be true. When I finally dropped the bomb that they didn’t really exist, he didn’t have the response I thought he would. He looked relieved, then said something that caught me off guard.

”I think Jacobson sees them too.”

I of course asked what he meant. He said that another inmate, a man named Jacobson, would scream all night every night. He would stay awake through the sedatives they would give him and just wear out his vocal cords. Because I wasn’t assigned to Jacobson’s case, I had to obtain permission from his doctor to speak with him, which I was given.

I went to talk to Jacobson, who told me that the voices in his head told him terrible things, all night long. All he wanted was for them to stop. I asked if he knew who these voices were, if they were people who lived in the shadows, and he looked at me like I’d just struck a nerve. After glaring at me for a moment, a nodded his head with force. I used the same methods of speaking I used with Miguel to instill in him that the shadow people weren’t real, but I felt I wasn’t getting through to him.

About two weeks after my breakthrough with Miguel, Jacobson was found dead in his cell. He had hung himself with his bedsheet. It was around this time that I knew there was something going on. Whoever these “shadow people” were, or rather the shared delusion they were, had enough power to make people kill themselves.

I began doing more research into the shadow people phenomena, and found that it wasn’t unheard of. It showed up a lot in cases of sleep paralysis in particular, but none of the three patients I’d seen had an issue with that. It was around this time that I started feeling uncomfortable working at the prison. I kept thinking I’d seen shadows moving where they had no cause for movement. I got the unmistakable feeling of being watched, but again, it was a prison.

Eventually, I started to feel like the shadows would be closing in on my own shadow on the wall. However, being a firm believer in science, I chalked it up to bad nerves and did my best to let it go. Time went by and I didn't hear anything about the people who live in the shadows from patients, and Miguel’s mental health seemed to greatly improve.

That is, until some time after he was placed back in general population, he woke the entire unit up with a scream, and entered a catatonic state. According to his cellmate, the only thing Miguel said before he screamed was that “the shadow man is real.”. I spent decades attempting to help Miguel recover from his catatonia, even after I stopped working at the prison, but was ultimately unsuccessful. I last checked oh, I don't know, four years ago, maybe? He was still a ward of the state, and still hadn't spoken or moved.

I attended a dinner with a group of people I went to graduate school with, fellow psychiatric doctors. Abiding by confidentiality laws, I inquired about any delusions their patients may have had in regards to shadow people. I was surprised to find that all but two of them had had patients at one point or another who spoke of them. After more individual talks, I found that one colleague, [Jessica], had seen a patient one time years prior, and that this patient claimed to hear whispers in her head about “joining them in the shadows”. Jessica told me she was going to try to contact this former patient and that she would get back to me. I wouldn't hear from her for nearly four years, but I'll get back to that later.

At this point, Dr. Elliott was tired, so he retired to his bedroom. I went home at that point and decided to do some research on him just for some background for you guys. I was kind of perturbed at what I found. Apparently, Dr. Elliott had had his medical license revoked a few years before getting diagnosed with cancer. The reason for the revocation was cited as being because he’d had an inordinate amount of patients die while in his care, and that his own mental health had been compromised after years of helping others with their own problems. It also mentioned an investigation into him that had apparently uncovered some things in his personal life that reflected poorly on the open investigation of him.

I decided to keep the fact that I knew this to myself to see if he would say anything. I planned to only ask about this after I’d heard his entire story as he told it, and that I would attempt to reconstruct everything he would leave out, if anything, afterwards. I gotta say though, something mentioned in the article (which was just from a local town website, newspaper originally) really kind of creeped me out. The exact words were “found to have owned a number of articles of clothing that matched the descriptions of a persona he’d allegedly taken on known as the “shadow man”.”

In The Eye of the Storm

New John Lennon fic, this time featuring Paul and John’s love of Paul! Can also be found on my AO3 account here.

Summary: While sailing to Bermuda, John has a transformative experience. Summer, 1980.

The weather was just right for a seaside holiday. The stars guided him in a South-Easterly direction, which took him to the sparkling shores of Bermuda. His father was a sailor; he was born to be a sailor.

Of course, these were not really the reasons he took to the ocean on that sunny June day. The true reason was that the sea was the absolute opposite of everything he’d seen for the past five years: blank, featureless and fucking claustrophobic white walls now gave way to blank, featureless, never-ending water-surface.

“But it’s not really blank,” John whispered, “That’s what’s so great.” Because there were always things, terrifying beings lurking in the dark under-surface – it was blank in the way a facial expression may be blank, concealing a raging soul. There was no more soul in his white apartment than in an empty record sleeve. Yoko squeezed his arm, and wished him silently to be safe. John kissed her forehead in response, buzzing with the excitement of leaving, praying for an adventure.

When the adventure arrived, it landed squarely in John’s lap. It was a storybook tempest: a crack of thunder exploding like shells overhead, the monochrome strobe effect caused by the lightning. The yacht rolled sickeningly, taking John by surprise as he was rocked about along with it. Tyler Coneys was laid low by the storm; John watched his white and greenish face as he staggered below deck. His two cousins followed close behind. There was sickness rising in John too, but there was always a sickness inside. This was a different kind of sick, something closer to the amphetamine rush he got all those years ago in Hamburg. Damned if he was going to hide in the galley through this.

Grabbing the mast, he stayed up, and proudly relished the sprays from all sides. He screamed to the skipper over the roar, “nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

The skipper briefly looked back at him from the helm to reply, and John saw that he too was becoming affected by such heavy boat-lurching. John couldn’t resist a little scoff – and he was the amateur here! “You got some balls, man,” the skipper yelled back, his cap flapping uselessly around his head, “this is the worst squall I’ve weathered in years. And Tyler’s a tough bastard, too.”

I’m tougher. “You alright over there?” John headed towards him, and found himself catapulted to the helm with a particularly forceful buck. “Want me to take over?”

The skipper was clearly more than willing to hide his head in the cosy cabins, and John enjoyed watching his conflicted expression. “Well, that is, I mean… If you feel you can… Christ, your first sailing trip… I shouldn’t, I really… Go ahead.”

Any sounds that may have come from the skipper, or Coneys, or any other human other than the voice in his own head, were killed by the waves. John found that a prospect equal parts terrifying and fantastic. He was alone, truly alone. Time to face the music. The yacht bucked again, horribly, John’s hands found the cool metal of the helm, and he gripped with all of his might. “Way, haul away,” he began to sing, raucously and joyously, “We’ll haul away Joe. The cook is in the galley, making duff so handy…” Here he was, the lowly cook, saving them from all from a storm only he could handle. He felt he had a right to be smug.

Fuck smug, he was on fire. He was soaking wet, but he felt completely alight, afraid to touch something lest it burn up in his presence. There was a groan from the yacht, a groan from the ocean. “The captain’s in his cabin, drinking wine and brandy,” John sang to them. “Away, haul away, we’ll haul away Joe!” The sky crackled, like something substantial, and suddenly John changed his tune to a wordless scream. He could not tell if it was a scream of euphoria or sheer terror, and this fact alone drew another yell from him. It was nearly lost in the wind, but he could hear it fine.

He continued to shout, and soon he realised he was shouting words after all: come on, come on, come on.

John had always been a believer in the here and now, but never had his life seemed quite so here and now as this exact moment. These last years, particularly, he’d been drifting in an aimless, placeless stasis, and it was difficult to enjoy the moment when every moment was identical to the one preceding and the one following. Now, though – truly, truly now – every potential sensation inside him was on its highest setting, and there was no sense of before or after. There was just him, whoever he was, and the moment. And, he realised, without the slightest glimmer of fear, this was a life-or-death moment. He had started sailing with this very trip, and here he was trying to weather the worst storm Tyler’s crew had seen in years. It was a recipe for disaster.

Sod that. Everything in his life until this point had been a recipe for disaster. He gripped the helm harder, and pulled it firmly to one direction. It was one-on-one now, Lennon versus Storm, and it was a fight he had no intention of losing. Now that, he thought, rather gleefully in the midst of it all, is what I call “Primal Scream.”

He was still screaming, but now the words were different, they sounded more like coming, coming, coming. Well, this was certainly an orgasm, if that word meant anything real.

The word brought something into his head. A clanging guitar riff, fast and clever, and distorted voice singing the confident words, you want a love that’ll last forever, one that will never fade away…

“Paul!” John cried, delirious, “What’re you doing here, you little bastard?”

Coming up, Paul replied, cheekily and tunefully, coming up, like a flower.

His hands loosened some. The storm was beating so hard on his ears, and Paul’s song was climbing up inside him, getting louder and louder, uncontrollably so, the dial on his internal amp ticking steadily up, and up, and up. He was not so much in the here and now anymore. Now more familiar feelings of the then and there, and the when and where, were beginning to creep in. Ah, friendly old doubt. How nice to see you. Do settle in.

Christ, what was he doing? He didn’t know how to sail. He didn’t know how to write songs, he hadn’t done for years. He could barely look after a single beautiful child like Sean, what was he thinking stepping out like this? His hands seized in horror on the helm. He could not move them. The sea seemed to laugh at him; he frantically remembered his battle with a surge of pride, then a surge of panic as he realised that this was no game, he could truly die here. But his hands, they still would not move. His mouth too was locked open in a silent cry, filling with salt and freshwater from the sky of blue and sea of green. What was he crying for? Was it help? Deliverance? It was certainly not joy, not anymore. Before he could examine the thought, a blinding flash of light assaulted him, and everything – the helm, the ocean, Coming Up – disappeared.

There was a moment of blackness, and with it silence, but Paul’s words still seemed to shape the air, making it vibrate with frequencies too high for his hearing. Coming up… Coming up… Up… Up… Get up… Get up, John!

“Eh?” The pillow on which John’s head had been peacefully resting was yanked out and promptly used as weapon. John groaned as it smacked him upside the head, but still he did not open his eyes.

“Come on, you lazy arse, it’s past noon!” John opened his eyes, finally. The world was a mess of blurs, with a splash of black on white, which he imagined was Paul. He fumbled around for his glasses, had a split-second of panic when he did not feel them on the bedside, until smooth fingers slid them delicately up the bridge of his nose.

“Thanks.” He shook the sleep out of his head, blinked twice, and there he was: sitting in his Weybridge bedroom, with all of its useless trinkets cluttered about in perfect focus, and there was Paul, with a hand on one hip and a pillow in the other. A magazine pose, really. His eyebrow was quirked at John; John grinned back. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”

“Getting you out of bed, clearly. Can’t have you snoozing all our precious time away. I want to show you something.”

“And here it is,” John smiled, “the great Paul McCartney’s newest masterpiece must have an audience, and all. It simply can’t wait for next rehearsal session, can it?”

Paul scowled, but John felt none of its annoyance. After all, Paul had specifically felt the need to come to his house, on a weekend, just to show him his work. It was as normal an event as it had been five years ago; still it brightened the day up a little. “Asshole,” Paul said, in a perfect East-coast accent. Who’s Kojack now? John suddenly found himself thinking. What a strange thought to have.

Paul’s hands had spirited up a guitar, and looking down with that irresistible concentrated-yet-effortless expression, he strummed a G, a healthy little chord. “To lead a better life,” he sang, “to B-minor, and then, interestingly, to B-flat, “I need my love to be here…”

It was a delicate, wistful tune, perfectly suited to Paul’s choirboy vocal cords. Like much of Paul’s work, though John had yet to tell him this, it was an eternal melody, one which seemed to have existed dormant in John’s mind already, until Paul had woken it up. It was painfully, shamefully good, and John felt two simultaneous pricks of pride and jealousy. The words were simple, and lovely. A love that was omnipresent and God-like �� only rooted in the earth, hands in the hair, and all that. It sounded familiar to John. Even when Paul was not with him, he seemed to be, always here, there and everywhere. That was how he liked it. “It’s alright,” John told Paul.

Paul grinned at him, a completely sincere and proud smile, which caused John to crumble inside a little. “You love it.” A movement in the clouds outside caused the sun to stream hurriedly into the open room. It flushed Paul’s hair with brightness, and in that moment he became a figure burning with youthful potential, casual and elegant in his affluent talent, and of course John fell in love with him all over again. It was too unnerving a situation to address. John did not tend to waste time finding his female lovers beautiful, or mystical, in the way he found Paul. Their appeals were all ordinary, like the luxuries he now took for granted. Paul had something awe-inspiring mixed up in all that, which frightened him. “You written anything new?” He asked.

It was like a knife sliding into his back in another dimension. “Not for a few weeks, no.” Not for a few years. You knew that, Paul. Is it bad enough to torment me with your constant talent, now you have to remind me of my failures? Again, John was surprised by his own thoughts, sounding so bitter. He felt an uncomfortable nausea, as if the room were softly swinging in a breeze. He had not been that drunk the night before, had he? “I’ve hit a brick wall.”

“Don’t be silly. You’ve been lazy, is all. Sleeping ‘til noon is hardly good song-writing form, is it?”

It was not an entirely genuine chide. But the words hit home, because he was right. Cooped up in these white walls and the baby – hang on, though, that wasn’t right. He closed his eyes. Clearly remnants of his dream had spilt into the day. “Maybe there’s a song in that,” he mused. “Sleeping through the day.”  

“There you go,” Paul said, “write that down, then.”

The doubt and nervousness that took hold of him at this point briefly starved him of words. Paul tilted his head at him. “I do try to write,” he murmured. “Really I do. I’ve thrown away more scraps of lyrics than I can count.”

Paul put down his guitar, and sat next to John on his bed. “Why’d’ya do that?” he asked. “You could just come to me with it. We haven’t worked on a bit together in ages…”

John shrugged. “It’s crap, that’s why. I don’t like writing stuff that’s no good.” Since Yesterday. Since you flowered into a genius, and I didn’t even realise.

“So what? It’s got to be better than nothing, hasn’t it?” He was looking earnestly at John now, his playfulness vanished. They were sitting close together, and their hands brushed as Paul lifted a finger to scratch the side of his nose.

“I don’t know about that.” John squeezed a patch of the bedclothes in his fist, and found that they had a strangely stiff quality. Metallic, almost. “It seems a lot of things might be better off if I didn’t do them at all.” His son for instance – no. His sons. “I don’t believe in meself.”

Paul seemed to be about to contradict this, but he stopped himself. “I believe in you,” he said finally. Then he smiled again. “Here, don’t get teary on me now.”

John wiped his face, though he was not sure it was wet with tears, or something else. “How could I lose you, Paul?” He’d take it all back, just for one more wake-up call like this. “I can’t do it without you.”

Paul’s hand was warm and solid, a splendid impossibility in the wet and biting wind. John leaned into the touch. “I never left. I’m still waiting for you.” Something John had not felt since the summer of 1964 began to simmer inside, something good.

“Don’t go now, then,” he gasped. “I’m coming.” And then Paul laughed, a windy laugh, full of the wide expanse of the oceans.

“Steer your boat, Johnny.”

The squall was still raging, and John was still alone at the front of the yacht, still facing it down. With aching friction, his hands turned the helm. His feet skidded in the pools of water between the planks, but the doubt was completely gone. He had duties to fulfil, and he was believed in.

When Hamilton harbour bobbed into sight a week later, John was called by Tyler from the galley, up to deck. He blinked in the sunlight. “We did it.”

“Yeah,” Tyler’s hands were relaxed and practised on the helm, a world away from John’s chaotic tactics. “You got us through the worst of it.” He whistled. “This is your first sailing trip, isn’t it? How d’ya like the wind in your face?”

“It’s great,” John replied. The wind was low now, and the yacht moved almost imperceptibly through clam waters. But the adventure was not over, not by a long shot. Going by his blood bubbling with words and music, and the itch in his fingers to strum them out, it was only just beginning. “We’ve all got to step out once in a while.”

25 Real or not real? I am on fire. The balls of flame that erupted from the parachutes shot over the barricades, through the snowy air, and landed in the crowd. I was just turning away when one caught me, ran its tongue up the back of my body, and transformed me into something new. A creature as unquenchable as the sun. A fire mutt knows only a single sensation: agony. No sight, no sound, no feeling except the unrelenting burning of flesh. Perhaps there are periods of unconsciousness, but what can it matter if I can't find refuge in them? I am Cinna's bird, ignited, flying frantically to escape something inescapable. The feathers of flame that grow from my body. Beating my wings only fans the blaze. I consume myself, but to no end. Finally, my wings begin to falter, I lose height, and gravity pulls me into a foamy sea the color of Finnick's eyes. I float on my back, which continues to burn beneath the water, but the agony quiets to pain. When I am adrift and unable to navigate, that's when they come. The dead. The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface. The small white bird tinged in pink dives down, buries her claws in my chest, and tries to keep me afloat. "No, Katniss! No! You can't go!" But the ones I hated are winning, and if she clings to me, she'll be lost as well. "Prim, let go!" And finally she does. Deep in the water, I'm deserted by all. There's only the sound of my breathing, the enormous effort it takes to draw the water in, push it out of my lungs. I want to stop, I try to hold my breath, but the sea forces its way in and out against my will. "Let me die. Let me follow the others," I beg whatever holds me here. There's no response. Trapped for days, years, centuries maybe. Dead, but not allowed to die. Alive, but as good as dead. So alone that anyone, anything no matter how loathsome would be welcome. But when I finally have a visitor, it's sweet. Morphling. Coursing through my veins, easing the pain, lightening my body so that it rises back toward the air and rests again on the foam. Foam. I really am floating on foam. I can feel it beneath the tips of my fingers, cradling parts of my naked body. There's much pain but there's also something like reality. The sandpaper of my throat. The smell of burn medicine from the first arena. The sound of my mother's voice. These things frighten me, and I try to return to the deep to make sense of them. But there's no going back. Gradually, I'm forced to accept who I am. A badly burned girl with no wings. With no fire. And no sister. In the dazzling white Capitol hospital, the doctors work their magic on me. Draping my rawness in new sheets of skin. Coaxing the cells into thinking they are my own. Manipulating my body parts, bending and stretching the limbs to assure a good fit. I hear over and over again how lucky I am. My eyes were spared. Most of my face was spared. My lungs are responding to treatment. I will be as good as new. When my tender skin has toughened enough to withstand the pressure of sheets, more visitors arrive. The morphling opens the door to the dead and alive alike. Haymitch, yellow and unsmiling. Cinna, stitching a new wedding dress. Delly, prattling on about the niceness of people. My father sings all four stanzas of "The Hanging Tree" and reminds me that my mother - who sleeps in a chair between shifts - isn't to know about it. One day I awake to expectations and know I will not be allowed to live in my dreamland. I must take food by mouth. Move my own muscles. Make my way to the bathroom. A brief appearance by President Coin clinches it. "Don't worry," she says. "I've saved him for you." The doctors' puzzlement grows over why I'm unable to speak. Many tests are done, and while there's damage to my vocal cords, it doesn't account for it. Finally, Dr. Aurelius, a head doctor, comes up with the theory that I've become a mental, rather than physical, Avox. That my silence has been brought on by emotional trauma. Although he's presented with a hundred proposed remedies, he tells them to leave me alone. So I don't ask about anyone or anything, but people bring me a steady stream of information. On the war: The Capitol fell the day the parachutes went off, President Coin leads Panem now, and troops have been sent out to put down the small remaining pockets of Capitol resistance. On President Snow: He's being held prisoner, awaiting trial and most certain execution. On my assassination team: Cressida and Pollux have been sent out into the districts to cover the wreckage of the war. Gale, who took two bullets in an escape attempt, is mopping up Peacekeepers in 2. Peeta's still in the burn unit. He made it to the City Circle after all. On my family: My mother buries her grief in her work. Having no work, grief buries me. All that keeps me going is Coin's promise. That I can kill Snow. And when that's done, nothing will be left. Eventually, I'm released from the hospital and given a room in the president's mansion to share with my mother. She's almost never there, taking her meals and sleeping at work. It falls to Haymitch to check on me, make sure I'm eating and using my medicines. It's not an easy job. I take to my old habits from District 13. Wandering unauthorized through the mansion. Into bedrooms and offices, ballrooms and baths. Seeking strange little hiding spaces. A closet of furs. A cabinet in the library. A long-forgotten bathtub in a room of discarded furniture. My places are dim and quiet and impossible to find. I curl up, make myself smaller, try to disappear entirely. Wrapped in silence, I slide my bracelet that reads mentally disoriented around and around my wrist. My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. My home is District 12. There is no District 12. I am the Mockingjay. I brought down the Capitol. President Snow hates me. He killed my sister. Now I will kill him. And then the Hunger Games will be over.... Periodically, I find myself back in my room, unsure whether I was driven by a need for morphling or if Haymitch ferreted me out. I eat the food, take the medicine, and am required to bathe. It's not the water I mind, but the mirror that reflects my naked fire-mutt body. The skin grafts still retain a newborn-baby pinkness. The skin deemed damaged but salvageable looks red, hot, and melted in places. Patches of my former self gleam white and pale. I'm like a bizarre patchwork quilt of skin. Parts of my hair were singed off completely; the rest has been chopped off at odd lengths. Katniss Everdeen, the girl who was on fire. I wouldn't much care except the sight of my body brings back the memory of the pain. And why I was in pain. And what happened just before the pain started. And how I watched my little sister become a human torch. Closing my eyes doesn't help. Fire burns brighter in the darkness. Dr. Aurelius shows up sometimes. I like him because he doesn't say stupid things like how I'm totally safe, or that he knows I can't see it but I'll be happy again one day, or even that things will be better in Panem now. He just asks if I feel like talking, and when I don't answer, he falls asleep in his chair. In fact, I think his visits are largely motivated by his need for a nap. The arrangement works for both of us. The time draws near, although I could not give you exact hours and minutes. President Snow has been tried and found guilty, sentenced to execution. Haymitch tells me, I hear talk of it as I drift past the guards in the hallways. My Mockingjay suit arrives in my room. Also my bow, looking no worse for wear, but no sheath of arrows. Either because they were damaged or more likely because I shouldn't have weapons. I vaguely wonder if I should be preparing for the event in some way, but nothing comes to mind. Late one afternoon, after a long period in a cushioned window seat behind a painted screen, I emerge and turn left instead of right. I find myself in a strange part of the mansion, and immediately lose my bearings. Unlike the area where I'm quartered, there seems to be no one around to ask. I like it, though. Wish I'd found it sooner. It's so quiet, with the thick carpets and heavy tapestries soaking up the sound. Softly lit. Muted colors. Peaceful. Until I smell the roses. I dive behind some curtains, shaking too hard to run, while I await the mutts. Finally, I realize there are no mutts coming. So, what do I smell? Real roses? Could it be that I am near the garden where the evil things grow? As I creep down the hall, the odor becomes overpowering. Perhaps not as strong as the actual mutts, but purer, because it's not competing with sewage and explosives. I turn a corner and find myself staring at two surprised guards. Not Peacekeepers, of course. There are no more Peacekeepers. But not the trim, gray-uniformed soldiers from 13 either. These two, a man and a woman, wear the tattered, thrown-together clothes of actual rebels. Still bandaged and gaunt, they are now keeping watch over the doorway to the roses. When I move to enter, their guns form an X in front of me. "You can't go in, miss," says the man. "Soldier," the woman corrects him. "You can't go in, Soldier Everdeen. President's orders." I just stand there patiently waiting for them to lower their guns, for them to understand, without my telling them, that behind those doors is something I need. Just a rose. A single bloom. To place in Snow's lapel before I shoot him. My presence seems to worry the guards. They're discussing calling Haymitch, when a woman speaks up behind me. "Let her go in." I know the voice but can't immediately place it. Not Seam, not 13, definitely not Capitol. I turn my head and find myself face-to-face with Paylor, the commander from 8. She looks even more beat up than she did at the hospital, but who doesn't? "On my authority," says Paylor. "She has a right to anything behind that door." These are her soldiers, not Coin's. They drop their weapons without question and let me pass. At the end of a short hallway, I push apart the glass doors and step inside. By now the smell's so strong that it begins to flatten out, as if there's no more my nose can absorb. The damp, mild air feels good on my hot skin. And the roses are glorious. Row after row of sumptuous blooms, in lush pink, sunset orange, and even pale blue. I wander through the aisles of carefully pruned plants, looking but not touching, because I have learned the hard way how deadly these beauties can be. I know when I find it, crowning the top of a slender bush. A magnificent white bud just beginning to open. I pull my left sleeve over my hand so that my skin won't actually have to touch it, take up a pair of pruning shears, and have just positioned them on the stem when he speaks. "That's a nice one." My hand jerks, the shears snap shut, severing the stem. "The colors are lovely, of course, but nothing says perfection like white." I still can't see him, but his voice seems to rise up from an adjacent bed of red roses. Delicately pinching the stem of the bud through the fabric of my sleeve, I move slowly around the corner and find him sitting on a stool against the wall. He's as well groomed and finely dressed as ever, but weighted down with manacles, ankle shackles, tracking devices. In the bright light, his skin's a pale, sickly green. He holds a white handkerchief spotted with fresh blood. Even in his deteriorated state, his snake eyes shine bright and cold. "I was hoping you'd find your way to my quarters." His quarters. I have trespassed into his home, the way he slithered into mine last year, hissing threats with his bloody, rosy breath. This greenhouse is one of his rooms, perhaps his favorite; perhaps in better times he tended the plants himself. But now it's part of his prison. That's why the guards halted me. And that's why Paylor let me in. I'd supposed he would be secured in the deepest dungeon that the Capitol had to offer, not cradled in the lap of luxury. Yet Coin left him here. To set a precedent, I guess. So that if in the future she ever fell from grace, it would be understood that presidents - even the most despicable - get special treatment. Who knows, after all, when her own power might fade? "There are so many things we should discuss, but I have a feeling your visit will be brief. So, first things first." He begins to cough, and when he removes the handkerchief from his mouth, it's redder. "I wanted to tell you how very sorry I am about your sister." Even in my deadened, drugged condition, this sends a stab of pain through me. Reminding me that there are no limits to his cruelty. And how he will go to his grave trying to destroy me. "So wasteful, so unnecessary. Anyone could see the game was over by that point. In fact, I was just about to issue an official surrender when they released those parachutes." His eyes are glued on me, unblinking, so as not to miss a second of my reaction. But what he's said makes no sense. Whenthey released the parachutes? "Well, you really didn't think I gave the order, did you? Forget the obvious fact that if I'd had a working hovercraft at my disposal, I'd have been using it to make an escape. But that aside, what purpose could it have served? We both know I'm not above killing children, but I'm not wasteful. I take life for very specific reasons. And there was no reason for me to destroy a pen full of Capitol children. None at all." I wonder if the next fit of coughing is staged so that I can have time to absorb his words. He's lying. Of course, he's lying. But there's something struggling to free itself from the lie as well. "However, I must concede it was a masterful move on Coin's part. The idea that I was bombing our own helpless children instantly snapped whatever frail allegiance my people still felt to me. There was no real resistance after that. Did you know it aired live? You can see Plutarch's hand there. And in the parachutes. Well, it's that sort of thinking that you look for in a Head Gamemaker, isn't it?" Snow dabs the corners of his mouth. "I'm sure he wasn't gunning for your sister, but these things happen." I'm not with Snow now. I'm in Special Weaponry back in 13 with Gale and Beetee. Looking at the designs based on Gale's traps. That played on human sympathies. The first bomb killed the victims. The second, the rescuers. Remembering Gale's words. "Beetee and I have been following the same rule book President Snow used when he hijacked Peeta." "My failure," says Snow, "was being so slow to grasp Coin's plan. To let the Capitol and districts destroy one another, and then step in to take power with Thirteen barely scratched. Make no mistake, she was intending to take my place right from the beginning. I shouldn't be surprised. After all, it was Thirteen that started the rebellion that led to the Dark Days, and then abandoned the rest of the districts when the tide turned against it. But I wasn't watching Coin. I was watching you, Mockingjay. And you were watching me. I'm afraid we have both been played for fools." I refuse for this to be true. Some things even I can't survive. I utter my first words since my sister's death. "I don't believe you." Snow shakes his head in mock disappointment. "Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other."