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smoooothoperator · 2 months

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untouchable

20: Lonely

Lando Norris x OC (Violet Sinclair)

same group friend, unrequited love, acquittances to lovers, ski trip, love triangle, life as lovers

Words: 5.3k

Warnings: Harry.

a/n: Happy Easter!!! I hope everyone had an amazing week! A little warning, the next chapter will be the last one! But of course there will be an epilogue and bonus chapters

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Day 1

Nurses came to check on her all the time to see her vitals, how her brain was going as well as taking a look at how her body was healing after the surgery.

My phone was blowing all the time with messages and calls, asking if I was alright. Just how I predicted, everyone saw the news and recognized my car. Workers from McLaren called me, my family and friends called too, drivers from the grid.

Everyone was worried about me. But none of them expected what actually happened.

When the nurses changed her to the VIP room I reserved for her, Max and Pietra came with me, both of them bringing clothes for her and for me, as well as something to eat.

“You have to eat, mate” Max sighed, watching how I left the bowl of salad on the table, not even touching it.

“I'm not hungry, I swear” I sighed.

“You didn't eat anything yesterday, Lando. Eat something, or at least drink” Pietra sighed.

I looked at them and sigh, grabbing the bowl and eating it under their gaze.

“I don't know what to do… my phone is going to explode soon with all the notifications and calls” I sighed, looking at my phone. “What should I do?”

“Maybe write something you can send to everyone, as well as posting it on your social media” Max sighed. “Everyone is talking about the crash, mate. And they think it's you”

“I know” I sigh, brushing my hair with my fingers. “I just… What should I say? Hey, I'm okay but not my girlfriend who was actually the one driving the car?”

“I mean… Yeah? Just tell everyone that gladly you are okay, but unfortunately the one involved in the crash was Violet. And if you are going to write something for your media just ask for privacy. You know how the world is…” Max said, shrugging his shoulders.

I took a deep breath and looked at Violet. Her hair is messy and some locks are tinted in red.

“There has to be a way of washing her hair” I mumbled.

“I'll go ask a nurse, okay?” Pietra smiled weakly, walking out of the room.

I sighed and just scanned Violet's face with my eyes. The cuts were still there, her left eye was swollen. Her arms are full of cuts as well, maybe because she tried to shield her face with her arms.

“I'm going to write a text” I sighe, grabbing my phone and watching all the notifications. “God… It's like I was dead for a night. I didn't answer none of them”

“It's okay, I'm sure everyone will understand” Max sighed, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Plus, I'm sure your fans know it's not you. You were streaming when it happened”

I smile weakly and nod, looking at the screen and typing something, then delete it.

Hello everyone. I'm sorry I didn't answer any of you. I'm okay, physically, but mentally I'm not. It was true there was a crash and my car was involved, but I hate to admit that it didn't happen to me, the one driving it was Violet. We are in the hospital, she's unconscious. I hope everyone understands why I didn't reply to your text.

I showed Max the message and sighed when he nodded, copying the text and sending it to everyone that texted me.

“I don't know if I should call her family” I mumble. “I mean… she doesn't have a good relationship with them. But still, they are her family”

“Did they try to contact you?” Max frowned.

“No” I sighed, looking at Violet. “They have my number, Violet sent it to them in case of an emergency… And I think this one is a big one”

“Then, if they didn't call you, don't call them. It was on the news, it's hard to believe that they didn't read about it” he said. “She said it herself, they only reach for her when they want something from her”

“I know” I sighed.

When Pietra came back with the nurse, she asked the three of us to get out of the room so she could clean and wash her hair.

“Come on, let's go walk a little” Max said, grabbing my arm.

I just let them guide me, feeling how my phone buzzed constantly inside of the pocket of my hoodie. I grabbed it, reading every message, smiling sadly.

“Some drivers want to come” I sighed. “Carlos, Oscar, Charles, Daniel, Max and Alex”

“That's good” Max smiled.

“I don't know if it is…” I sighed. “I mean, I know they want to do it to cheer me up. But right now all I want to do is sit next to her bed and wait for her to wake up. I don't even want to force a smile”

“Then don't force it. They will understand. You don't need to be smiling all the time, Lando” Pietra said. “And you need to be distracted too, think about something else”

“I'm just tired” I sighed. “But I guess you are right”

Some hours passed. Max and Pietra left so I could have time with the other drivers, as well as letting me have time for myself.

“What if they come with their pity faces?” I sighed, holding Violet's hand. “I don't know if I can with that”

I sighed, shaking my head and looking at the door once I heard a few knocks on it, standing up next to her bed.

“Come in”

I took a deep breath, trying to put on the fakest smile I can put now, watching how the door opened slowly and hearing the quiet steps of Carlos and Oscar walking inside of the room. Somehow, I felt grateful they came first. They are the ones I trust the most lately. Carlos being my first teammate and my true friend in the paddock, and Oscar being my current teammate and someone I trust and I know I can rely on.

“Hey…” I sighed.

“Oh, Lando…” Carlos sighed, walking towards me and wrapping his arms around me. “I'm so sorry… The other guys are outside, we wanted to come in first to see how are you”

“No, please” I mumbled. “Just… She's alive, okay? She's just sleeping”

“Of course” Oscar nodded. “But how are you dealing with this?”

I took a deep breath and immediately erased the fake smile. I looked back at Violet for a few seconds and sighed.

“I swear I thought I had lost her” I said with a sad smile. “When I received the call, I was in shock. I was repeating the words they said in my mind, over and over and over again. And on my way to the hospital I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen to me if she didn't survive…”

“But she's okay” Carlos sighed, placing his hand on my arm.

“She's in a coma, Carlos… I don't know if she's really okay. I don't know if she's in pain, or scared” I said, feeling my eyes getting wet again. “I feel useless now, sitting and watching her, hoping that she wakes up”

“Hey, you are not useless” Oscar sighed, hitting my arm softly. “You are here, supporting her. And you are being so strong, mate. Staying here and not leaving her side, I'm sure she will appreciate it”

“I wish I could do more” I said looking back at her.

Day 2

Her room smells like flowers.

Yesterday, when the drivers came with their girlfriends, all of them brought flowers for her, as well as some other things to cheer her up once she wakes up.

“We know she loves reading, she got us into it” Carman said, smiling weakly. “So all of us got her a book”

“You didn't have to, girls” I smiled weakly, looking at the box they placed on the table with a few books inside of it. “I'm sure she will love it”

I sighed, looking at the table and standing up, walking towards it and looking at the inside of the box. When I opened it, I smiled weakly, watching her favorite candies inside of it as well as a few books I hadn't seen on her shelves yet.

“You won't believe what the girls brought you” I smiled weakly, sitting next to her and holding her hand. “The books you had in your wishlist. I think something like Fourth Wing and Iron Flame… Oh, and that one from the actress with seven husbands”

I looked at her, hoping that those words made her react. But of course, my delusional mind was being too naive.

“Mom and dad are coming soon” I sighed. “Should I let them stay in the apartment? I don't want them to go around looking for a hotel knowing that I won't stay at home. You don't mind, right? I just… I can't leave you here alone”

I sigh looking at her hand, trying to feel her squeezing my hand as a sign. The doctor told me that anytime she could do that, she could respond and move her fingers.

“Please, just move a finger… I'll go insane if I keep talking alone” I whisper. “Are you alright? In pain? You know I hate it when you are in pain…”

I waited some seconds to receive an answer, but I could only hear the beeping of the monitors with her heartbeat.

The door opened and I sighed, recognizing the steps of my parents coming closer. I heard them leave something on the table and then walk towards me.

“Oh, God…” my mom sighed, hugging me.

“How is she? How are you?” my dad asked, making me smile sad.

Everyone has been asking me that. My messages are full of people asking me how Violet is, how I'm dealing with it.

“Why is everyone asking that? It makes me feel like she's dead” I sighed.

“I know, son” my dad sighed, sque my shoulder with his hand.

“I'm just… dealing with it, I guess” I sighed looking back at them. “I feel relieved somehow. The nurses that come say that she's recv well. The surgery went well and her brain activity is good. But they don't know when she's going to wake up”

“I'm sure it will be soon” my mom nodded.

I sighed nodding, hugging her and taking a deep breath.

“You can stay in the apartment” I said, looking up at them. “It's like half an hour away by car… But at least you have somewhere to stay”

“No, Lando” my dad sighed, shaking his head.

“It's okay” I smile weakly. “I won't go… I will stay here with her. The nurses will arrange for me the extra bed so I can stay at night too. And you'll have food and somewhere nice to sleep. I'm sure won't mind”

They smiled weakly and nodded, both of them wrapping his arms around me. I don't want to break down, I want to be strong for Violet. I tried so hard the last two days to not cry while I'm in her room, but now feeling my parents’ arms around me, it is so hard to hold on to everything.

“I am so scared” I cried softly. “What if she doesn't wake up? What if things don't go well? What if I really lose her?”

“You won't, Lando” my mom sighed, rubbing my back. “Violet is a strong girl, she has a strong soul”

“Everyone is telling me that” I mumble. “But why can't I believe it? Why everytime I look at her I feel my heart shattering?”

“Because you love her, Lando. You love her and watching her this way makes you vulnerable”

I felt my shoulders shaking with every sob, feeling their hands rubbing my back and their arms tightening around me.

Once I calmed down I got up from the chair and walked with them towards the table, watching the bag with lunch they left there. I sighed, opening the box and playing with the food in front of me.

“Somehow I feel that this accident made me see that I have to love the present with her” I said.

“Why do you think that?” my dad asked, frowning.

“We were talking about buying a house together” I sighed. “And I was looking for engagement rings. I just… I love her so much, but I was so focused on it and living my own fantasy with her that I didn't face reality. We have only been dating for six months, I can't take a big step like asking her to marry me…”

“It's soon, son” he sighed. “You two are young, just wait a little. Enjoy life with her”

“I know” I nodded. “Now I know…”

My mom looked at me with a weak smile, placing her hand on top of mine and sque it softly.

“Do you want to show us what you two were looking at?” she smiled weakly. “Maybe we can help”

“It's not necessary, mom” I smiled weakly, grabbing my phone and showing them the pictures of the houses we liked.

“We want to” she smiled looking at my dad and both of them nodding. “We did the same with Oliver's first house with Savannah. We will do the same for you and Violet”

I took a deep breath and smiled, nodding.

I just have to face the reality. And unfortunately, my reality is that the love of my life is unconscious and I have to accept every help and hug I receive.

And in moments like this, I know who will be by my side.

Day 4

Days were too long. So incredibly long.

My routine was so monotonous: waking up before the nurses came to check on Violet, get changed into comfortable clothes and then sit on the chair next to her bed.

I wonder if Jon would be mad if I tell him that I'm skipping my diet and barely working out. Will he be mad? No, right? He knows me, he knows how I'm feeling right now. He knows that, right now, Violet is my priority.

“I think I'm going to read one of those books you are obsessed with” I said looking at her. “Just to feel close to you… Which one should I read? The one of that Feyre girl? Or the one that is a mix of The Hunger Games with Greek mythology?”

I looked at her, trying to find an answer and I sighed. The doctor said that her brain activity is going well, she's recovering. Slowly, but she's recovering.

“Well, A Court of Roses and Spines will be the one” I sighed, smiling weakly, grabbing my tablet and downloading the book, starting reading it immediately.

When Violet told me that a day can go faster when you read a book I always thought that she was exaggerating a little. Whenever she stayed in her office all day, I never imagined she could be starting a book in the morning and finish it at night.

But now, reading the last line of the book, I understood how she felt. When I read the last word, the sky was already dark.

“Oh my God” I whisper, looking at Violet. “Why did you never make me read this before? And the Rhysand that is in this book is the same Rhysand you say is your book crush? What the hell? How? Why? ”

I held my breath, trying to see a reaction. But again, I only heard her heartbeat as an answer.

“I wish you were awake…” I whisper. “God, now I see you so much in this book. I see you in Feyra, my love…”

I sighed, taking her hand in mine and bringing it to my lips, pressing a kiss on her knuckles. Her hand is cold, but somehow that doesn't scare me because she always had cold hands.

Maybe reading her favorite books made me feel closer to her, getting into one of the things she loves. Somehow, since we started dating, I learned new things about her every day, things I never knew I would discover before about her.

And somehow, it made me miss her even more.

“Please, wake up” I whisper. “I miss you so bad, Violet. I miss your smile and your laugh, even how you complain because I stay in the computer too long and I don't come to you to cuddle. I promise I won't stay up late gaming, just… Please, please, open your eyes”

Day 6

“Okay, you were right. Rhysand is good, Tamlin is not good”

When my parents came yesterday, they brought me the books I was reading. Both of them were surprised I started reading, something I barely did before meeting Violet.

“You know? Now I think I understand why you said that we are like Rhys and Feyre. And I agree” I sighed, holding her hand. “I see us… Maybe I should dye my hair black? Rhys has black hair and is tanned. I don't have purple eyes, but…”

I smile weakly, kissing her hand and leaving the book on my lap.

Her face is less swollen than a few days ago, she only has bruises now and scars of the cuts. Her doctor gave me a cream I can put on the scars so they won't leave a big mark on her skin.

I sighed and continued my reading, but I was interrupted by my phone receiving a call from an unknown number.

“Hello?” I sighed, frowning.

“I'm talking with Lando Norris?”

“Yeah, who is this?” I frowned, swallowing thickly.

“I'm calling from the police department. We made an investigation about the car crash where your car was involved a week ago. And we would like to talk with you”

“L-look… I think right now is not the right time” I sighed, rubbing my face. “My girlfriend is in the hospital. I can't leave right now”

“It's related to what caused her crash” he said. “It wasn't an accident. It was intentional”

“What?” I frown, getting up from the chair and walking away from her bed. “What do you mean it was intentional”

“The brakes were manipulated. Someone manipulated them” he sighed. “We can investigate who it was”

Someone manipulated the brakes. Someone wanted to… No. Not her, the Audi is not her car.

“Someone wanted me to crash” I said, swallowing thickly. “The car was mine”

“We will search for the person who did this” he nodded.

“Can you please look at the street cameras around where we currently live” I said, swallowing thickly, somehow scared of what the conclusion would be. “I have been receiving pictures of someone invading our privacy, receiving threats. I think that person would be the same one that tried to…”

“We will work on it” he said. “Thank you for telling us that”

“Y-yeah, just please, get that person away from us”

I ended the call and sat on the table, looking at the wall in front of me, not believing what was happening.

Someone tried to kill me. Someone manipulated the brakes of my car to make me have an accident like the one Violet had. Someone wanted me dead, and instead, Violet is there in the bed unconscious.

I didn't want to trust what my mind was saying, refusing to recognize the name that echoed in the back of my mind.

Harry. Harry. Harry. Harry.

He wouldn't, right?

Harry. Harry. Harry. Harry.

“Fuck” I gasped.

Eloise had the same crash she had. And what did she have in common with me? Violet.

No, no, it can't be. He wouldn't do something like that to Eloise… Right?

My body worked alone and soon I heard the beeps of my phone next to my ear, and after that the same voice of the officer that talked with me minutes ago.

“I think I have a name” I mumbled.

“Oh? Are you sure?” he said surprised.

“I wouldn't like to be” I sighed. “Harry Greyson. He… He was a friend of ours. But I think he did really bad things to us, to all of my friends. His girlfriend… My girlfriend's best friend died last year in December. They said it was because of the snow, but I wouldn't be so sure. Please, just find answers”

“We will investigate him. Thank you for the name” he said.

“Y-yeah” I nodded, swallowing thickly and ending the call.

Would Harry do this? He would do anything to have Violet, right? But… If he wanted her since the start, why never go for her? Why dating Eloise?

“Fucking hell…” I groan, messing my hair and looking at Violet. “I swear to God. If he did this to you, he's a dead man. I swear, Violet”

Day 8

I hated this. I hated the uncertainty of not knowing what was happening was killing me.

The police started an investigation, they looked at the street cameras that are near Violet's apartment as well as where Eloise used to live. But they never called me back to give me updates of it.

And to make it worse, a week has already passed since the crash.

“I hate this, love” I whisper while holding her hand. “I hate so much that I can't do anything to make you wake up. Are you even hearing? Can you hear me? Just move a finger please, because I think I'm going crazy. Will you wake up? What should I do?”

I was so uneasy. The calm part of me wanted to stay here and wait for her to open her eyes, holding her hand and whisper sweet nothings. But the mad part wanted to walk out and find Harry, get answers.

“What should I do?” I sighed, swallowing thickly when I felt the tears coming back. “I want to punch and kick the shit out of him. I want answers, Violet. What if he's not who we think he is? And I'm afraid of being right, but… What if he is the man that was stalking us? What if he was the reason Eloise died? What if he did everything because of you? Because he's sick and only wants to have you as his puppet?”

I swallowed thickly and looked at her. If I'm right… What should I do?

“He has to go to jail, Vivi..” I whisper. “Right? The police will call me soon, I can feel it. I gave them his name, just in case”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

This is a nightmare, and it only will end once this finally ends.

The day passed slower than I wanted. Max and Pietra came to spend the afternoon with me, but that didn't stop my anxiety whenever I received a notification.

“What is going on?” Max frowned.

“I just…” I sighed. “The police called me. They said that the crash wasn't an accident. Someone wanted me to crash, hoping that I was the one getting in the car. And somehow that made me think”

“About?” he whispered.

“Harry” I sighed, shaking my head. “I don't know. I just… I don't know. His name somehow came to my mind and things started to click immediately”

“But, how?” Pietra frowned. “Why?”

“I never told you, neither Violet. Someone was sending me pictures of us. Someone is stalking us” I said. “And it has to be someone that knows where Violet lives. You two know it, and I highly doubt it would be one of you. Eloise knew too, and… she's dead. Who else knew where she lives?”

“Harry” Max nodded.

“Exactly” I sighed, swallowing thickly. “I'm not going crazy, right?”

They looked at each other and then at me, smiling weakly.

“I have to find him” I said firmly. “For Violet”

“What? No. Lando!” Max frowned. “Going to him won't make Violet wake up. You are not an Avenger or something in the style”

“I know! But I need answers, Max” I said. “I need to know why he did everything he did”

“You are assuming he was the one that caused the crash” Pietra sighed. “You are angry, we get it. But please… Don't do something stupid”

I took a deep breath and looked away from them, fixing my eyes on Violet. I need to do something, I can't stay here with my arms crossed and waiting for a miracle.

And then my phone started buzzing, with the same number of the call I received two days ago.

“Hello?” I answered the call, swallowing thickly when I pressed the speaker button.

“We have him” the officer said. “Harry Greyson has been under arrest since this morning. You were right, he was the one that invaded your privacy and the one that manipulated your car”

“Oh, thank God” I swallowed thickly, sighing with relief.

“But he wants to talk with you. He didn't even call a lawyer. He only wants to talk with you” he sighed.

“What?” I frown and took a deep breath. “Okay, I'll go”

I ended the call before Max could complain.

“Lando!” Max sighed, shaking his head.

“It will be safe. He's under arrest, you heard it” I said. “With chains and all, I'm sure”

I took a deep breath and stood up, looking at Violet. I don't know when she's going to wake up, the doctors said she should be already awake… Why is she not awake?

“Please stay with her” I asked them, grabbing my phone and wallet.

“You are joking, right? Come on, Lando!” Max exclaimed. “Don't do something you will regret”

“I have to, Max” I sighed. “I have to know the truth. I have to know why he did that. He wanted me dead! If I was the one in the bed, you would do the same, right?”

I took a deep breath and looked at him, watching how he lowered his head and sighed. I'm letting my anger take control of my emotions, and I absolutely hate the feeling of that.

“I'll come back, okay? Just… Stay with her”

Before they said anything I was already walking out of the room, feeling my heart beating strongly against my chest. This was the first time I'll leave Violet since she's hospitalized, and somehow that made me feel anxious.

What if something goes wrong while I'm not here? What if she thinks I left her? What if… What if, what if, what if…

But I was already on my way to the police station, getting out of the taxi and going to the reception and saying that an officer called me. And before knowing it, I was sitting in front of Harry.

“Well, well” he smirked.

“You did it” I frowned. “You manipulated the brakes of my car”

“What makes you think that?” he laughed.

“You are the only one left of our group that knows where Violet lives” I frowned.

He looked at me with a grin that made me feel goosebumps. It wasn't the smile he used to have when we were kids, that mischievous smile he had whenever we planned something funny or when we made a prank. No, that was a scary grin with a gaze that only meant something bad.

“It's all her fault” he said seriously, but not erasing that smile. “She was the one that started it all. With that smile and that stupid behavior. If she kept smiling in that way to everyone, she would be in trouble. She smiled at me first, she chose me!”

I frowned looking at him. Is he being serious?

“But of course, those guys came” he scoffed. “What were their names? Oh, yeah! Jared the cheater, Michael the snob and Owen the…”

“Don't you dare to say it” I frowned, swallowing thickly, clenching my jaw

“Whatever” he scoffed. “It was pretty easy to get rid of them at the start”

“What?”

“Oh yeah! It's really impressive how easy it is to make her believe things, hm? A picture sent by an anonymous saying that Jared is cheating on her but actually he's hugging his cousin. And threatening Michael was really funny, you should have seen how scared he was when I broke his car with a gold club. But Owen? Oh, Owen was harder than I thought, but the end was pretty satisfying. It was so disappointing noticing that he loved drinking, but he didn't even notice the powder on his shot as he drank it. And hearing her scream for help, panicking while the man she said she loved only wanted to have fun... I was so disappointed with you, actually. You, the man that was so crazy in love with her since you met her… You, who always tried to find a second to be close to her but couldn't hear her screwing for help”

I swallow thickly, feeling nauseous. He did this, all for her. I was right, and I hated being right in this. Hearing him talk this way was like talking with a stranger.

“Why?” I groaned, clenching my jaw. “Why did you do all of this?”

“Oh, because it's so funny! It's so funny watching how she runs back to me! How, after everything, that stupid smile was only to me!” he laughed. “But then Eloise started to get too involved. She wanted to spend more time with her, to have her all for herself. She invited her to that stupid trip you planned and wanted to spend time with her. And let's not forget all the times she tried to set you up with her. Why?! Violet is mine! Why would she want to spend more time with her?! And then you… You started to put stupid things on her brain. Telling her things about me! How dare you?!”

“Because you are crazy! You manipulated her!” I exclaimed, but he stood up and it made me flinch. Something about him scares me, maybe the fact that he was chained to the table or his gaze of psychopath.

“You should be the one that got in the car and died!” he exclaimed. “Not her! It was easy with Eloise! But you… You did it! You killed her!”

“She's not dead” I mumbled. “She's not dead and she will hate you until she can't remember you”

“Nah, I don't think so” he smirked. “She will always come back to me. You will hurt her, maybe cheat on her with one of those models that walk around the paddock and then she'll come back to me. Right where she belongs”

I took a deep breath and grabbed my phone from the pocket of my hoodie, placing it on the table, in front of me.

“She won't, Harry. Give up” I said, stopping the recording. “She's with me, she's happy”

It was so quick. The moment he got up again and tried to wrap his hands around my neck, two guards walked in and grabbed Harry by the arms, making him sit while he screamed. I just got up and walked out, with an intense need of throwing up as soon as I walked out of that room.

Never in my life I imagined he was able to do something like this. Never in my life I imagined he would kill someone and try to kill me.

The officers that walked next to me gave me a weak smile as they walked me out of the police station, talking to me. But I wasn't listening, not understanding what they were saying.

“Harry will be sent to jail” one of them said. “After talking to you he made a confession, he will go through a court, but that won't save him”

“Y-yeah, okay” I nodded, just wanting to get away from here and go back to Violet.

I took a deep breath and called a taxi, going to the hospital while looking at the screen of my phone. He really said everything, he really told me everything.

How on Earth could he turn into someone like this? Why on Earth did he get so obsessed with Violet?

“I'm back” I sighed, closing the door of her room behind me. “Guys… I was right. He…”

“Lando” I heard her.

“Violet?”

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myechoecho · 26 days

Text

Queen of Tears really just took a sharp nosedive off a very steep cliff these past 3 episodes. I didn't post anything about the last two episodes since there was nothing to say. I've had issues with some aspects of the drama that I could overlook because Hae In and Hyun Woo were top tier stuff. The break down of a marriage of two people who loved one another finding their way back to each other through medical crisis was so good. It didn't even need the Eun Sung or the family business stuff (it would have made a tighter, more coherent drama but I digress). But the last 3 or so episodes I've lost all patience. We've had:

Hae In's miraculous brain surgery which required no shaving of the hair, which I can overlook because it is a drama. Her memory loss too, as again, it's a drama and it's been hinted at since the beginning. I'm not necessarily thrilled with it but it's fine.

There is no way that Eun Sung would have suddenly become her legal guardian just because Hyun Woo left. It makes NO SENSE. Hae In was clearly there with Hyun Woo. They met with her doctors. There would have been forms and documents signed, with appropriate translators for any language barriers. Eun Sung would not have been able to waltz in and say I am her guardian now. I'm fairly confident of this even without knowing German law.

Hae In's family had people in Germany following her for...reasons??? They did nothing to protect her from Eun Sung? They didn't go to her when Hyun Woo was carted off? To be fair I was kinda fast forwarding part so maybe I missed something.

Hyun Woo's arrest, extradition back to South Korea, finding the evidence to break his case, trail, release and then arrest of the real perpetrator all took place within a month. Which seems absurdly fast. Also they found and arrested the hired hit man but not who hired him??

Hae In is following Hyun Woo, taking notes to figure stuff out for herself yet does not think to look herself up on the internet? Pretty sure there would have been articles about her saying Eun Sung threatened her?

I generally forgive the burned notebook finding its way back to her.

Also, Hyun Woo's sister is married? With a kid? Living overseas?? and we find this out in ep 13 or 14? No pictures of her kid anywhere?? No phone call?

Hyun Woon has been hit by car, by Eun Sung because of course that happened. At least he won't get amnesia, right? RIGHT?

What a mess.

I still stand by the core story of Hyun Woo and Hae In being the strongest parts, even within the past 3 episodes.

How much do you want to bet they are not even going to address the miscarriage, which was catalyst for their whole marriage falling apart in the final episode. Despite the 1031 being used for pass codes. I've been wanting that from when we found out and it looks like it won't happen. Who knows if Hae In will even get her memory back.

The preview for the final episode doesn't give me much hope, even if we get a nearly 2 hr final episode like Crash Landing on You.

So much wasted potential in the drama. If only they had focused on Hae In and Hyun Woo, and not 20+ other plots.

#queen of tears #kdrama

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sunny-mercya · 19 days

Text

Red Water

Poly! Billy Loomis and Stu Macher x FTMale Reader

Fandom -> Scream 1996

Requested by -> Anon

Masterlist

Warning: Mention of Period and Blood,

The clean water, with a bit added soap, in the bathtub, once scorching hot—frogging up the window and mirror, leaving glistening droplets on the tiles behind—had long ago turned cold—creating goosebumps on the naked skin and the red water couldn't be any redder anymore, a strong smell of iron lingering in the air.

The first two days—in your monthly week of still remaining Period, a deadweight to endure till it could be finally removed—were always the easiest to manage with barley any pain nor blood, but once the third day hits the mark, it comes crashing in like a unseen flood.

Skyrocketing high waves of pain, so unbearable and uncomfortable that not even four pills of heavy dosed painkillers seemed to help—letting you go into a hysteria of crying and screaming, wanting nothing more but to stab yourself into the stomach and ripping out that reminder of former—of something which you never were to begin with—anatomy still existing inside of you.

And with the pain, so comes the blood and it surely was way more blood than it should be—causing still a great worry for your older siblings, Doctor and Boyfriends—because the amount of blood you're losing within the next three days—when your period has their actual start—could be almost considered of needing a constant transfusion to keep you stable.

So you thought, because sometimes it seemed to help, a good hot bath could soothe your pain—but today it just didn't work and so you continued to lay in the bathtub till the water turned cold and became a murky smelly red.

~~~

»[Name]? Did you fall asleep in there?« Billy knocked on the bathroom door for a third time, annoyance mixing with worry—as you had been in the bathroom for over four hours now and that was never a good sign to begin with.

Billy thought, when you had announced, hours ago—in a small barley audible whisper—you would take a bath, he could do a quick grocery trip—but like said before, that was hours ago and now he's back in your home and you're still in the bathroom.

Billy knocked again, hand sliding up to the doorknob, ready to burst in—if the door is locked, which shouldn't even be—and for once ignoring the boundary of respecting privacy.

It wasn't like Billy or Stu hadn't seen you naked, just not completely nude as it was always only your chest—which after your breast surgery, you liked to show proudly and with a good amount of self confidence and love—and sometimes your and only your ass, when Stu felt like being a naughty silly little shit—and nothing more, after all you had made it pretty clear to them how much you valued the privacy of your body.

»Still no response? Maybe he really did fall asleep?« comment Stu, leaning against the wall and arms slightly crossed.

»Sleeping in cold water for damn four hours? I don't think so. [Name]! We're coming in now!« Billy turned the knob, opening the door and once the ironing smell comes into his nose—Billy was close to recoil, holding back a gag.

Of course Billy had seen blood before, knew that irony smell well, but this was something else—this smell was more foul and more intense, leaving a taste of disgust behind.

»Pff, looks like the red sea, doesn't it?« Stu snorted a bit at his own joke, getting hit in the stomach by Billy within minutes later.

»Not funny Stu. Not the damn time.« gritted Billy out, glaring at Stu slightly—pushing the lanky tall frame of his boyfriend a bit out of way.

»[Name]? Still with us?« Billy asked, getting near the tub, crouching down and poking a finger at your cheek.

You didn't respond, reacted at all, even though you heard your boyfriends very clearly, you just couldn't answer—brain feeling numb and tongue tied up.

Billy sighed out through his nose, dunking his hands into the murky red water and under your armpits—practically fishing you up and out of the tub, waiting for Stu to put the bathrobe around you, before carrying you into your bedroom.

~~~

The texture of the bathrobe and towels, which grazed your naked skin—especially your ass—felt rough and unpleasant, not so soft as they once were before.

There was no other choice of way though, with the heavy bleeding you do, your older sister had long ago established the rule—after you had stained all your underwear, pants and a lot of bedsheets into a mass pile of red colour—that you have to lay on these large towels and wear—when at home—a bathrobe, because you could stain them as much as you want—as your sister didn't need to wash so often than (or rebuy bedsheets and clothes again)

What's even worse to feel, besides the rough texture, is the knowing flowing wetness of blood—which you could practically feel dripping—down there, making you grimace in discomfort.

Stu, not completely aware of your distressing situation—because that's more Billy's area of knowledge—pressed the two hot water bottles a bit harder onto your stomach, believing the pain is the reason for your grimacing face.

»Did he already took painkillers? Maybe we should add up to like ten, maybe than those cramps are going down,« Stu mused out his thoughts, perking up when something akin to an sniffle or small cry like sound emitting from your lips.

»Sometimes, Stu, I'm really question your ability of mind.« Billy looked absolutely done with Stu's nonsense, raising a brow—scowling in slight annoyance.

Stu had the mind of a gutter, when it comes to human senses and the ability of emotional intelligence (and empathy)—but when it comes to mathematics, physics and science, he's a real genius for such subjects (Billy find absolutely boring)

»Just saying, doubling the medications might do wonders of reduce« shrugging his shoulders, Stu turned his attention back to you, grinning brightly he leaned down—pecking your lips.

There was no doubt though, that Stu was way better in showing affection than Billy—as Stu is more extrovert, a people and party person.

Billy shook his head, taking also a seat next to you—forcing a straw to your lips, knowing very well that you have to stay hydrated and having to intake more sugar into your bloodstream, otherwise you would collapse and being send to the hospital.

»C'mon [Nickname] drink up.« Billy said it like a command and when you took a few sips, Billy praised you with a compliment of „Good boy“

Some week in the months might be hard, but with two Boyfriends, like Billy and Stu, at your side—you knew you're in good hands as these two make sure that you're feeling good and comfortable, treating you like a prince.

Simply because, if you can give them love—showering them in a bliss of affection—they can give you comfort in return.

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tsaomengde · 1 year

Text

“The Mission”

A short story about love, time travel, healing, spaceplanes, and making the world a better place, even when no one will ever know.

---

After the TAG forces shot me out of my cockpit in low orbit, I floated there for about six hours. Something – probably debris from my fighter – had hit me in the back, hard, and I couldn’t feel anything below my waist. My suit’s maneuvering jets let me correct the initial nauseating spin I was thrown into, but they didn’t have sufficient thrust to get me out of my unstable, highly eccentric orbit.

My suit told me I had about eight or nine trips around Titan before my periapsis wobbled low enough into the atmosphere that drag would bring me down below escape velocity. At that point, gravity would catch up with me, I would fall, and I would crash into the surface and die. The suit had an emergency beacon, but no built-in communications beyond that. I was alone in the silent dark.

I sped around the moon at a little less than ten thousand kilometers per hour. The view of Saturn, for the parts of the orbit where it wasn’t eclipsed by Titan, was gorgeous. That was a small comfort, as my brain endlessly analyzed the ways I could go. A bit of debris from the battle could kill me outright at these speeds, or it could puncture the suit on a glancing hit and it would be a toss-up whether I would die of suffocation or extreme cold. My oxygen meter also claimed I had about three hours of air left, which meant I would probably be unconscious or dead by the time I actually hit the ground. And, of course, there was the matter of my probably-broken spine. I suspected I was bleeding internally from that.

Later, when I woke up in a hospital bed on the Agamemnon, they told me that the TAG brass had transmitted a formal surrender eighty-seven seconds after my fighter had exploded. I was officially the last casualty of the Earth-Titan war.

They fitted me with prosthetics so I could still walk, but as the physical therapist with the cute dimples explained to me, there was some kind of incompatibility with my chromosomal something-or-other that meant I couldn’t use them at a hundred percent, which meant I didn’t qualify for combat. My spine, which had indeed been broken, was too damaged to repair with conventional methods. That left experimental regenerative genetic surgery, which was more expensive than the navy was willing to shell out for.

So, at thirty-one, after thirteen years in the navy, I got out with an honorable discharge, a pension that was decent enough but far from what it would take to fix my spine, a chromium heart for my injury, and enough PTSD to fuck me over for the rest of my life.

---

“I don’t care about my legs,” I said to Kate, the first time we ever met. We picked a bar about halfway between us for our first meeting. She had a gin gimlet with cucumber simple syrup. I had an old fashioned. “They get me from point A to point B just fine. I just miss flying.”

“Were you good at it?” she asked, blue eyes very wide.

“I certainly thought so. But then some TAG dipshit blew me out of my fighter above Titan and ended my career, so maybe I was less good than I thought.”

“You can’t fly for one of the intrasolar shipping companies?” she asked. “Or transport?”

I gave her a patient smile. “Do you know what a pilot actually does aboard one of those big fusion torchships?”

“No, actually.”

“They point the nose where the destination is going to be, fire the engine for half the trip, then flip the ship around and fire the engine for the other half. There’s nothing to that. I miss flying.”

She nodded sympathetically. “I understand.” I could tell she didn’t, not really, but that she wanted to.

I moved in with her a few months later. Part of me wondered if it was a good idea, moving so fast, but I was two years from Titan and still waking up screaming in the middle of the night, convinced I was back in my suit, in the dark above the moon. The greater part of me, the selfish part, was happy that someone was there to touch me, to talk to me, to root me back in myself and pull me back to earth from up there in the black.

In that sense, Kate could have been anyone. I never thought of her as replaceable, but there was always a vague sense of guilt, of knowing that I was definitely getting more from the relationship than she was. I voiced this to her once, and she told me I was being silly, and that she loved me, and that was all she needed.

So when she first approached me with her idea for the Mission, I like to think it was that part of me, the part that wanted to be more for her, that moved me to say yes to what was honestly an idiotic idea. Not the part that missed flying. Just selfless altruism and desire to help the woman I loved.

I like to think that a lot.

---

We cracked time travel about a decade after I was born. Much to our collective disappointment as a species, it was not the fun kind of time travel that lets you go back in time and kill Hitler.

Kate, as she told me once we were living together, was part of a DOD think tank tasked with finding some kind of use for the technology. After a lot of experimentation, they came up with what Kate called the Four Rules.

1. It’s time travel, not space travel. If you want to meet Julius Caesar, you had best make sure you’re in Europe when you travel back.

2. It only works by going back. There is no forward travel because the future hasn’t happened yet. The only exception is returning to your point of origin.

3. If you actually do meet Julius Caesar, it’s because your meeting him will not change history in any measurable way. If you try to go back in time to change something significant, it simply doesn’t work. The little box makes the noise, it uses up a lot of energy, and then nothing happens.

4. The corollary rule to number three, then, is that when you travel back in time, whatever you do end up doing has already happened.

I asked Kate what this meant about determinism versus free will, and she primly replied that she was a theoretical physicist, not a philosopher. The DOD was not known for employing philosophers and paying them the kind of money they were paying her.

---

The Mission’s personnel consisted of four people. Myself, the heroic pilot. Kate, the brains behind the time travel stuff and the one who came up with the Mission to begin with. Leon, the aerospace engineer slash DOD contractor. And Ash, the director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. We would go over to Ash’s place, have dinner, and conspire.

Over one such dinner – mac and cheese with broccoli, I remember it vividly for no adequate reason – we discussed the logistical difficulties involved.

“We can’t use anything from the last century,” Leon was saying around a mouthful of mac. “All the guidance systems on those ships are keyed into the orbital satellite network. There’s nothing like that at the target time. We need a craft that can achieve orbit, rendezvous, and de-orbit in a single stage, without remote guidance.”

I nodded. “That means we need a spaceplane. Not just a fighter, but an actual spaceplane.”

Ash chewed over the problem as well as their food. “There might be an SR-75 in decent enough shape we could appropriate from the displays at the museum. The hardest part will be bribing the transport operators to take it to home base instead of, you know, a navy cache where highly dangerous military surplus equipment is supposed to go.”

I raised an eyebrow at them. “That’s going to be the hardest part? What about getting the parts to get it into decent working condition, or the fuel?”

Leon waved a hand dismissively. “Do you know how many spare parts I have lying around at work? How many millions of tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen are stored in poorly-guarded places that I have access to?”

“No. I’m guessing the answer to both is ‘more than the general public would be comfortable knowing about.’”

“Exactly.”

I looked at Kate. “Is the magic box going to be able to send a whole spaceplane back, kitty?”

She wrinkled her nose at me for using her pet name in front of our friends, but let it go for the moment. “The magic box can send anything back given enough juice.”

“Okay, but is the shitty little battery at home base going to be able to give it enough?”

“Probably. If we strip everything nonessential out of the spaceplane, get the mass down as much as possible. I need to know the exact mass of the plane, plus us, when it’s ready for travel.” Kate shrugged. “If it won’t be enough, we can always add to our list of capital offenses and steal a torchship, then use its fusion reactor for the power.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Last resort.”

---

“I don’t really understand why we’re doing this,” I told her one night, in the silence following her helping me out of another flashback.

She shifted a little in bed so she could look me in the eye. “You said you were on board.”

“I am. I’d do anything you asked, kitty, you know that. And obviously I’m excited to get to fly again. But nothing we’re going to do is actually going to matter. That’s one of the four rules, right?”

With a little shrug, she began running her fingers through my hair, which I’d stopped bothering to keep short after I was discharged years ago. It was pretty long by now. “It’ll matter to us, won’t it? And to her?”

“I mean, sure, but the risk-reward ratio is way off. You and Leon and Ash could all lose your jobs, we could get prosecuted by the Justice Department –”

“Vee, why did you sign up to be a pilot?”

I stopped. “I mean, I always wanted to fly.”

“Yes, but what was the reason you put on your application? And the reason you told me on our first date when we were still trying to look really good and put together for one another?”

That took me back, and I snorted gently. “To make the world a better place.”

“Exactly. Does there have to be a minimum threshold of goodness increase in order for an altruistic act to be worthwhile?”

I weighed that particular bit of moral utilitarianism in my mind before I committed to an answer. “No.”

“So, that’s why we’re doing this. To make the world a better place, even by the tiniest, slimmest margin.”

I gently snaked a hand out from under the comforter to lightly boop her on the nose. “And the real reason, since we’re not on our first date and this isn’t an application you’re filling out?”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “I know how much you want to fly again. And I want to see my magic box used for something other than letting rich assholes reenact Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’ without any of the nuance or lessons learned.”

“Dinosaur leather shoes is not the outcome you probably had in mind,” I agreed. The time-travel hunting industry generated billions for the government every year now.

We fell asleep that night, and the next morning, we took a magtrain to Vegas, and from there we went to home base.

---

Home base was an abandoned aircraft hangar in the middle of the Nevada desert. Leon had said something about centuries-old top-secret aircraft testing, when we first conceived of the Mission, and lo and behold, there was a facility with room for a spaceplane. We spent far too much money on the highest-capacity quantum battery civilians could buy, hooked it into the Vegas grid, and watched it take eight weeks to charge.

It had also cost far too much money to bribe the transport operators to bring the SR-75 here, but the deed was done and they hadn’t sold us out so far. They probably assumed we were aviation junkies. What domestic terrorists would bother stealing a hundred-year-old spaceplane when there were far cheaper and more effective ways to kill people, these days?

Kate, Leon, Ash, and I sat at a small table in a corner of the hangar, drinking coffee and going over the ascent profile. Ash’s part was done, having delivered the goods, but they wanted to be here for everything, and I certainly respected that. The spaceplane took up the majority of the hangar space, a sleek black dagger with barely a suggestion of wings to either side. The underside was dominated by a pair of huge jet intakes, and the rear of the plane sported three engine nozzles, the center much larger than either of the ones flanking it. A gracefully curved tail fin slightly forward of the engines completed the vessel’s profile.

“The plane looks like it’s in good condition,” Leon was saying. “I’ve sourced the fuels we need. The main problem is going to be the timing, not the equipment.”

“How so?” Kate asked.

I spoke up. “The SR-75 should theoretically be able to hit escape velocity just on the air-breathing engine mode, but the target has an extremely elliptical orbit, and we’re launching much closer to the equator, so we’ll have to adjust our inclination, too. That means either a lot of burns with the rocket fuel mode once we’re in vacuum, or a very steep climb to orbit. That pronounced an angle of attack might affect the engines’ ability to get enough air to achieve escape velocity.”

Kate blinked. “Still not seeing how that affects the timing.”

I pulled out my personal comm, laid it on the table, and put it in draw mode, so I could trace pictures on its screen with the tip of my finger. I drew a little ball, the Earth, and traced a messy, elliptical orbit around it. I indicated the very top of the orbit, where the line peaked like a mountain summit. “We have about a thirty-minute window to achieve rendezvous with the target. We need to rendezvous at or near its apoapsis, here, where its orbital speed is lowest and matching relative velocity will be easiest.”

I loved Kate, but it was endlessly amusing to me how she could understand quantum and temporal physics and articulate mathematical concepts I could never grasp in a million years, yet still not understand basic orbital mechanics. She gave me a blank look, then just said, “And that’s hard?”

“Yes. It is very hard, kitty. We are trying to hit a target the size of, roughly, a bullet train car, except the target is going twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour. We need to come alongside it, match velocity with it, perform our docking maneuver, and then decouple. And the parameters of the Mission mean that there is exactly one half-hour window we can do this in if we’re going to avoid violating rule three.”

“I think the best solution is going to be adding some external rocket fuel tanks,” Leon said. “Not much, since we have to think about flight performance and transit mass for the magic box, but even a few hundred extra meters per second of delta-vee might make the difference in your ability to match orbits with the target.”

“Agreed. Just make sure the Goddamn things aren’t going to come loose at Mach fuck-you.”

Leon grinned at me. “I love your optimism, Vee.”

---

Unlike with most modern fighters, and indeed with even-older jet aircraft, the SR-75 did not have a fully enclosed cockpit. The pilot sat in a big swiveling chair in front of the instrument panel, and the main cabin of the craft was accessible from there. It was a spaceplane, and therefore supposed to be able to perform orbital docking maneuvers exactly like the one we were about to attempt, which necessitated the crew being able to actually get up and access the docking port without going fully extravehicular.

Kate sat behind me in a second chair that Leon bolted in there for her. She had the magic box in her lap, hooked up by a pair of very fat and long yellow wires to the bulk of the quantum battery, which squatted heavily just slightly off-center in the SR-75’s main cabin. (“Gotta keep that center of mass where it’s supposed to be,” Leon had said.) She was doing something with the box’s controls, squinting at the small readout which displayed some kind of complicated waveform.

“I’ll initiate the breach when we get to fifteen thousand meters,” she told me. “It wouldn’t do for anyone to actually see us at the target time, because then it just wouldn’t work, but I would rather not get shot down by our modern-day autonomous airspace defenses.”

“Sounds good,” I told her. “Hey. Kate.”

“Yes, Vee?”

I craned my neck around as best I could while strapped into the pilot’s seat. “I love you, kitty.”

Her cheeks darkened a little and she smiled. “I love you too.”

I keyed in the ignition sequence and the SR-75 roared to life. Leon and Ash, both standing a safe distance away outside the hangar so their eardrums didn’t rupture, started waving and giving us thumbs-ups. I gave them a thumbs-up in return, projecting more confidence than I actually felt, and brought the throttle up just a little.

The spaceplane practically leapt out of the hangar. Ruggedized, smart landing gear wheels hit the Nevada desert ground like it was perfectly maintained asphalt. Within twenty seconds I pulled back on the yoke and the SR-75 was in the air, starting a steep climb. I opened the throttle up the entire way and was slammed into my seat with the gee-force.

“JESUS CHRIST WE ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE!” Kate screamed.

I glanced over my shoulder at her. “You okay, kitty?”

She was clutching at her chest, magic box forgotten, and for a long, terrible moment I thought she was having some kind of heart attack. But then she nodded, looking pasty. “I just got taken by surprise,” she shouted over the roar of the engines. “Sorry!”

“Okay!” I returned my attention to the instrument panel. We were already moving at a good clip, and the altimeter was increasing fast enough that even the digital display was having trouble keeping up. For a long, pure moment, I just relaxed into my seat, hands on the yoke, feeling the currents of air spiraling around the ship. Now, more than ever before my prosthetics, it felt like an extension of myself. I was flying again.

“We’re at fifteen thousand meters!” I told her.

Kate pressed a button on the magic box. Everything blurred like someone just messed with the focus on a camera, except the camera was my brain. When it re-focused, we were still in the plane, climbing toward space at an impressive clip, but all of the global positioning systems were dead. There were no satellites to receive data from, not in this era. However, we had accounted for this; the SR-75 had its own onboard suite of computers dedicated specifically to calculating orbital information.

It was at this point that things began to go wrong. I felt a sharp tug on the yoke. Swearing to myself, I corrected, keeping the plane on course, and keyed a status readout. The SR-75’s onboard systems insisted that nothing was wrong, but that the plane was experiencing significant and unexpected drag.

It hit me. “Fuck me!” I snarled. “Leon’s fucking external fuel tanks! I told him they needed to be secure!”

“What’s going on?” Kate asked.

“One of the external fuel tanks Leon spit-soldered onto this Goddamn thing has come loose, and the drag is killing our velocity,” I told her. “I need to get it off of us, now.”

My gaze was fixed on my instruments, so I couldn’t see the horror in her big blue eyes, but I could hear it loud and clear in her voice. “How?”

“Shearing force. Hold on, this is going to fucking suck.”

I stomped down on one of the SR-75’s rudder pedals with my right foot, the motion almost as smooth as it used to be even with the prosthetic, and spun the plane in a sharp, hard three-hundred-sixty-degree roll. I nearly blacked out, and I know Kate did for a few seconds, since she didn’t go through flight training. But there was a sudden, violent wrenching feeling that went through the yoke into my arms, and afterward the drag was gone.

“Did it work?” Kate asked blearily.

“Yup. And apparently an external fuel canister from several hundred years in the future crashing in the Nevada desert doesn’t fuck up the timeline, since we’re here at all.”

“Are we still going to be able to make it?”

I eyeballed the delta-vee readouts on the navigation display. The lost fuel tank didn’t exactly have a ton in it, and of course, the reduced mass of the ship now that it was gone meant the net loss was slightly ameliorated. But even so, the situation was grim.

“Well, yes and no,” I told her.

“That is never the answer anybody wants to hear, Vee.”

“I should, should, still be able to match velocity with the target and achieve rendezvous. But our margins are basically nil now. If I don’t do this perfectly, we’re going to miss completely.”

I felt her reach out and place a hand on my shoulder, give it a squeeze. “You can do this, Vee. I know you can.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” I told her, and was surprised to hear that it didn’t come out sarcastic.

The ascent became a delicate balance. I was trying to hit escape velocity while still using the air-breathing mode of the engines, which was incredibly efficient compared to the rocket fuel. But as I got higher, the engines needed to work harder to ram enough air in to function, which meant my thrust decreased. Without the global positioning system to feed me flight info, I needed to do it all by feel and eyeballing the orbital information given to me by the onboard computers.

I trimmed a couple degrees off my angle of attack, trying to find the sweet spot between still gaining altitude and not starving the engines of air in the increasingly-barren stratosphere. The SR-75 shuddered, engines straining, and began to threaten me with a stall. I swept my gaze across my instruments. “Fuck,” I muttered, and switched the engines to rocket mode.

Instantly, we were slammed back into our seats again as our thrust suddenly increased dramatically. I glanced at our projected apoapsis, counted to three, then shut the engines down.

In the sudden silence in the absence of the engines’ roar, Kate asked, “Did we do it?”

“Yes and no.”

“Goddammit, Vee!”

I looked over my shoulder at her and gave her my most reassuring grin. “Sorry, couldn’t help it. The drag from the fuel tank breaking loose meant that we lost velocity, which meant we took longer to get to the speed we were needing, and the spin I had to put the plane through shifted our course a little bit. Our inclination is about five degrees off of where it should be.”

“Okay. What does all that mean?”

“We are going as fast as we need to be, but we’re not in the place we need to be going that fast. I’m going to need to do correction burns at certain points in our ascent. We can still make our rendezvous, but we won’t have the fuel to do a proper deceleration burn. I’m going to have to perform emergency aerobraking.”

“In English, Vee!”

“On our way back down I am going to use the atmosphere to slow us down the old-fashioned way.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Is this plane designed for that?”

“Probably.” I shrugged. “Assuming we don’t burn up, I’ll be able to switch the engines back to air-breathing at a certain altitude and land without the need for lithobraking.”

I could see her trace the Latin roots of litho and arrive at the gallows-humor definition of the word. She went even paler than before. “Certainly hope so.”

I let my grin fade as we continued to coast on our momentum, rising inexorably up through the mesosphere into the thermosphere, our speed gradually slowing as we crested toward the very top of our parabolic arc. At key points, I reoriented the SR-75’s nose, now using chemical thrusters to maneuver the craft in the absence of air for the control surfaces to manipulate, and fired the engines in rocket mode, tweaking our orbital inclination until it matched that of the target.

The computers suggested to me, at that point, that we would be able to achieve equal relative velocity, and it would leave us with enough delta-vee to then de-orbit ourselves. We would not be stuck in orbit forever until we died. I blinked hard, banishing the memory of Titan as it suddenly threatened to overwhelm me, and repeated the affirmations Kate taught me. I am not there anymore. I am here, now. I am safe.

Safe was, of course, a relative term in the vacuum of space, going tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. But Kate took my hand from behind and gave it a squeeze, and I was good again.

“We’re going to do a long burn once we’re within ten kilometers,” I told Kate. “That’ll bring our relative velocity to zero. From there we just point our nose at the target, fire the engines for half a second, get as close as we can until we’re either about to hit or miss, fire them again to bring ourselves back to zero relative velocity, and then we do that over and over until we’re close enough to dock.”

“I don’t need to know all the mechanics,” Kate replied, and I could see she was fighting to keep her teeth from chattering. The environmental controls were working just fine, so it was fear she was dealing with, not cold. “I just trust you, Vee. Make it happen.”

I suited action to words. It took ten long, arduous minutes, and by the end of it we were very short on time to actually execute the retrieval, but I successfully brought the SR-75’s docking port, which sat on the dorsal surface of the spaceplane, in contact with the target’s own.

Not that they were remotely designed to be compatible, being hundreds of years apart in origin, but fortunately the SR-75 had the advantage of smart materials incorporated into its construction. Its port sealed itself tight around the target’s, flashing a green light and hissing open to reveal the shiny metal surface of the target.

Kate was already out of her seat, plasma torch in hand, and the acrid smell of it hit my nostrils as she ignited it and started cutting through the ancient hull like butter. It was joined less than a minute later by new smells: faint traces of iodine and ethanol, urine, feces, and a wet, animal musk.

And, of course, I heard barking.

“Got her!” Kate called to me. “She’s in pretty rough shape, but she’s alive!”

“Strap back in, and get her secured too,” I told her. “We’ve passed apoapsis and I need to fire the engines right now for the Oberth effect or we’re going to be stuck in orbit forever.”

I keyed in the command for the docking port to close on our end and release. The leftover atmosphere inside the target puffed out of it in sudden decompression, pushing our two crafts apart, but not hard enough to seriously perturb either of our orbits. That was the engines’ job, and I brought them to life as soon as we were clear.

They sputtered out as they burned the last of the rocket fuel. I looked at our orbital readout. “Ah, shit,” I muttered. “This is going to be a bumpy ride.”

---

We all but rammed into the atmosphere with the entire length of the plane. The yoke bucked in my hand and the instrumentation suggested to me that I was a fucking moron that had doomed us all, but with polite numbers instead of those exact words. I kept an iron grip on the yoke, worked the rudders with both my leaden feet to keep us perpendicular to our approach vector so we would generate more drag and thus lose more speed, and prayed to every God I could think of. Behind me, Kate’s teeth were audibly chattering, but she managed to avoid screaming again, and the dog was remarkably quiet.

The interior of the SR-75 got incredibly hot, naturally. The instrument panel helpfully informed me that it was almost fifty-five degrees Celsius inside, and that was with the life-support system working as hard as it possibly could to cool it. The one saving grace we had was that the spaceplane’s designers had anticipated the need for this kind of extreme aerobraking, and the skin of the craft was designed to tolerate it – in theory. I sweated, and I panted, and I watched our velocity slowly decrease until we were no longer going to boomerang back up out of the atmosphere.

Then I pointed the plane’s nose down, let gravity take over, and switched the engines back into air-breathing mode.

They decided they did not want to start.

“Well, we’re fucked,” I laughed.

“This is a plane, right?” Kate asked through clenched teeth. “Aerodynamic? You can fly it without the engines, right?”

“Well, glide, yes. Fall slowly, yes. Land… maybe.”

I let us half-glide, half-fall until we were back in the troposphere. “Magic box time,” I told Kate.

Everything unfocused again, and when I was able to see once more, my global positioning displays were back online. They told me that, if I did nothing, we were going to crash into the ocean just off the coast of Hokkaido.

I tried the engines again. Still nothing. The reentry had fried them, as far as I could tell.

I started the plane’s nose trending up again, trying to bring us out of the dive and into a climb. The control surfaces bucked and the plane fought me.

“I’m sorry, Vee,” Kate said.

“Don’t start,” I told her. “We’re not dead yet.”

“I couldn’t go back and save you from what happened at Titan. I thought, if I could save Laika, maybe –”

“I know exactly what you were thinking, kitty.” I looked back at her, and the scared-looking mutt buckled into her lap. “It’s okay.”

“I just – when I read about how she died, all alone, in that terrible little capsule –”

“I said don’t start, Kate. I said it’s okay and I meant it.”

She kept going like she hadn’t heard me. “She was supposed to have enough food and oxygen for a week. But the satellite was rushed, and the temperature control system failed. So when she was –”

“FUCK me!” I shouted.

That finally got through to her. “What?!”

“Temperature control.” I quickly hit a series of switches. “The jet intakes were superheated by our reentry. When you switch the engines to rocket fuel mode, they have shutters at the front that close so you don’t get trace amounts of gaseous oxygen mixing with the liquid fuel. Those shutters are probably half-melted shut.”

“And?”

“There’s an emergency release that just drops them completely.” I pressed the button, felt the SR-75 shudder as explosive bolts fired and it shed hundreds of pounds of metal. “Okay. Now –”

I was cut off as the sudden force of the engines firing slammed me hard into my seat. The plane began to corkscrew wildly as the engines put out differing amounts of thrust for the first few moments until the oxygen feeds equalized. Clearly one of the intakes had had less of its shutters blown off than the other, and the plane had needed some time to adjust.

Kate coughed. “The engines? They’re working? We’re not going to die?”

“Oh, we’re still going to die,” I told her. “Eventually, of old age. But probably not today.”

She smacked the back of my head. “Jackass.”

---

The vet gave us a very suspicious stare as we paid our bill and accepted Laika’s carrier back from his nurse. “I have never seen an animal in that kind of shape before,” he said. “Malnourished, half-dead from heat exhaustion, matted shit in her fur, and primitive bio-monitoring equipment surgically grafted into parts of her. I assume you didn’t do this, since it would be colossally stupid to come into my office and ask me to fix her up if you did.”

Kate shakes her head. “No, it wasn’t us. She’s a stray. Found her while we were out on a trip. We felt so bad for the poor thing that we brought her back with us.”

Somewhat mollified, the vet nodded. “Well, make sure to give her the antibiotics for the rest of the week, and call me if there’s anything else she needs.”

We stepped outside, and I opened the carrier to let Laika out. She staggered out, still a little loopy from the anesthesia, and I got her leash onto her without too much trouble.

“You know,” I said to Kate, “when we first shacked up, I said I didn’t want any pets.”

She grinned at me. “For someone who was so against the idea, you went very far out of your way to get me one anyway.”

---

About six months after we brought Laika home, a very humorless man in a snazzy uniform, accompanied by many more humorless men in uniform with large guns, came and visited our house. The humorless man in charge sat and chatted with us for a while, and Laika sat in his lap and let him give her pets.

Nothing else ever came of the visit.

There is no neat bow to tie on this story, unfortunately. I still wake up screaming in the middle of the night, though not quite as often. That probably has more to do with the passage of time and a lot of therapy than pulling a time-travel dog rescue, though. The only point to any of it is that we spent a lot of taxpayer money (since Kate, Leon, and Ash are all paid by the government) and risked our lives to make the world a better place, even by the tiniest, slimmest possible margin.

And perhaps having read about it will have made your world a little better too.

#writing #my writing #story #short story #science fiction #sci-fi #spaceplane #cw: ptsd #ptsd

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aitadjcrazytimes · 5 months

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Hi, I saw your tags:

I was wondering. Um. Would you be comfortable sharing what other symptoms you have?

I've had memory problems for years but every time I look them up I just get stuff like alzheimers and car crashes and stuff, which doesnt apply. Idk

I was wondering if this might be me also. I'll talk to a doctor, of course, but. Just wondering what the general vibe is

Sure! Though, be aware, if you Can get evaluated for your symptoms you probably should, at least to make sure it isn't degenerative.

Via-a-vis the ABI (That's Acquired Brain Injury), part of the reason it took so long to diagnose is because

I already have a different diagnosis of cEDS (Classical Ehlers Danlos Syndrome) that explained several of my other symptoms

I have GAD and PTSD due to living in a very abusive and dangerous environment up until about 5 months ago, and

At least two of my family members are autistic, so it was just kind of vaguely assumed that any weirdness regarding my sensory processing and so on was because of that.

So! To summarize (and I put this below a cut because it gets Long).

Chiari Malformation is when you have a defect in the base of your skull that puts pressure on your cerebellum, causing part of it to go into your spinal column. Many people with this condition don't experience any symptoms, but that is not always the case, and even with no symptoms, it does place you at a much higher risk for a brain injury. With a Chiari Malformation, even a mild concussion can cause serious damage.

I have had several concussions, with one of them knocking me out for several minutes when I was very young. So. Here we are.

Regarding treatments for Chiari, most of what can be done is simply treating the symptoms. Unless there is concern about the condition getting worse (more memory loss, paralysis, etc.), patients will likely be referred elsewhere to discuss pain management, because from my understanding, the only effective treatment for Chiari is a decompression surgery, which will remove part of your skull to take pressure off the brain. It's not terribly risky as brain surgeries go, but the best brain surgery is, of course, no brain surgery.

Re my Physical symptoms:

I get headaches very frequently, and often very severely. They have been categorized as migraines in the past, because they come with severe light and sound sensitivity, and they tend to knock me out for hours. That said, they don't meet all the criteria for a migraine, including having no aura to speak of. They are often triggered by strain and jostling my head--by coughing, sneezing, vomiting, jumping, or anything that would cause motion sickness.

I have poor balance. I have found that walking with a cane helps, but physical therapy doesn't do all that much (because it's in my brain and not my muscles).

I also struggle with chronic fatigue. Getting out of bed is a real struggle most days, as is getting anything done outside of simply going to work and then coming home--although I recently went on an antidepressant, which has helped a bit.

Insomnia! I have trouble sleeping. It comes and goes, sometimes I get several days worth of restful sleep, but sometimes I get only a few hours worth of sleep over the course of a week.

Shooting and burning pain in back of skull, neck, spine, shoulders, and chest. Be careful with this one, because this can also be a result of a heart issue. That said, I've had my heart checked out, and that's all good, which is why they checked the brain in the first place.

As for my cognitive symptoms, it's a bit fuzzier, because like I said before, I have PTSD, I have the ABI, I have GAD, several of my family members are somewhere on the autism spectrum, and now my therapist is also having me evaluated for OSDD. So, your mileage may vary. But essentially:

Memory loss. Some of it is retrograde, and I have found that I'll forget significant events and people. Most of it is anterograde, or short term--so, forgetting what a conversation is about while I'm in the middle of a sentence, and either having to improvise and try to make a guess as to what I was talking about, or having to have my conversation partner walk back what we were talking about to explain what we were doing. I have to have a very detailed and elaborate task tracker at work in order to stay on top of things, or I would simply forget it all. I also have the experience of feeling like all of my memories are stories that were told to me. So, I rarely experience a memory as a thing that happened to me, complete with sights and sounds and feelings and sensations and so on, but more like a story that someone told to me once. So, a vague recollection of events and the order in which they happened. This makes it difficult to differentiate between my own memories and stories that other people have told me. It has happened a few times that I have told a story of something that happened to me, only to find out that it actually happened to the person I was talking to instead, and I just got confused.

I'm not sure what to call this one, but I get EXTREMELY easily distracted from processing audio, especially in an environment with more than one thing happening. If I am having a verbal conversation with someone in a restaurant, and someone comes and sits at the table next to us and starts talking, I become almost incapable of conversation. If I'm talking to someone and someone turns on the TV in the next room, I become almost incapable of conversation. If music is playing, I lose track of the conversation. I forget everything I was saying. I won't be able to understand what other people are saying. Spending time in loud, busy, or crowded environments is not that distressing by itself, but I will not be able to hold a conversation.

Aphasia and Verbal Processing. It is incredibly difficult for me to put words together in a way that is coherent. It is significantly easier through writing, because I can look things up and take my time with it. But in vocal conversation, I will frequently have verbal shutdowns where I cannot find a word, and all of my language processing shuts down while I try to comprehend what I was talking about. This often leads to...

Fuzziness/Blurriness. I typically call this "going fuzzy". Generally it involves a verbal shutdown to an extent, where my brain has reached capacity with processing information, and is deciding to simply wipe everything and start over. Think of it like restarting a really old computer. Sometimes it doesn't take too terribly long--a few moments. Sometimes it takes more than half an hour. It depends. This is often accompanied by...

The Buzzing™--It happens for me at the base of the skull, where the injury is. It feels like a tuning fork fused to the inside of my skull. It is completely maddening. My ears ring, and it sounds like a high pitched whining noise. I become very on edge, it's incredibly anxiety inducing, and very overwhelming. I don't know if this is a common symptom you will be able to find under brain injuries, but it's Extremely not fun! I have found that it can be lessened somewhat with massaging the area.

The Voices™: I have heard voices ever since I was a kid. (Schizophrenia has already been ruled out.) Sometimes, it Is an actual auditory hallucination. I recently had an experience where I was grocery shopping and kept flinching because it sounded like someone was shouting my name directly into my ear. Other times, I've heard people whispering or knocking on my walls. These typically occur during or following a stressful situation. HOWEVER, I also experience The Voices™ in my daily life outside of stressful situations. In these situations, it is never auditory, more just a thing that occurs in my own head. I have, in the past, had the experience of talking more or less constantly to one or several distinct people in my head. Nowadays, it feels more like experiencing multiple trains of thought or multiple sets of emotions which feel distinct from "mine". Or feeling like a background voice in my head while someone else does things for me.

Per my therapist, I have recently begun categorizing them as different people to see if that helps. And it does sometimes! And sometimes it does not. It is a process. But that's where I am with that.

There's more to it, but I don't really have the capacity to talk about it much more than I have at the moment.

If you want to see what my experience with this is like... I mean. I did write an entire fanfiction about a character with several of my symptoms recently. You likely won't have the context for what is going on re the character and the situation unless you are into Red vs. Blue, but just in case it helps to see a recounting of it, here:

The Fanfiction That Helped Me Realize I Had Brain Damage™. Have fun!

#ask.txt #also yes i reopened the askbox #im a creature that needs interaction to survive #also. be nice re the fic. i am linking it in case it helps. i am not claiming it to be fine art.#yes it has my rvb blog (made After i wrapped up aitadjcrazytimes) mentioned. if anyone harasses me there i will be very disappointed in you #and probably also close both ask boxes

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trqelove · 1 year

Text

i’ll stay for as long as you need me to.

in which florence shepherd loses her brother, and jackson avery is the air she needs.

A/N: hi! i hope you enjoy this fic. please read and consider following me and sending requests. this is unedited and 955 words. 🤍

“Florence, how much longer do you think you have in here?” Jackson whisks into the OR, mask over his face.

Florence Shepherd does not look up, her eyes trained on the patient in front of her.

“Hell if I know,” she scoffs out. “It was going so well, until it wasn’t.”

When Jackson doesn’t respond, Florence shrugs. “An hour, tops. Why? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, of course, Flo. Mind if I watch?”

Florence glances up, but only for a second. “I never mind. J, are you okay?”

Jackson scoffs. “Yeah, just, yeah. I’ll stay out of your way, promise.”

Florence focuses back on her work, she loves Jackson, he’s been her best friend for as long as she can remember, but sometimes, she simply does not understand him.

The youngest Shepherd continues her surgery, Jackson stands in the corner, shifting uncomfortably every so often. Florence isn’t sure what’s wrong with him, maybe nothing, but she doesn’t care, she enjoys the company of her best friend.

Florence completes her surgery just before the hour mark, assigning an intern to close the young boy up. “C’mon, J, you can tell me what the hell has got you so anxious in the corner of my OR,” Florence teases as she walks out of the OR, and begins scrubbing out.

It’s when Jackson says nothing that Florence begins to worry. As she scrubs her hands, she looks to him, “What happened?”

“Just-uh-keep scrubbing out,” he offers, scratching his head.

“J, what the hell is wrong. You’re scaring me!” Florence turns the water off and faces him.

Florence studies his face. The way his forehead creases and his lips are pressed shut. His eyes are filled with the despair and sorrow she is far too used to. “Who?”

Jackson reaches for her, but she pulls away. “Who, Jackson?”

She can’t bring herself to say the word, but she doesn’t have to, he knows.

“Flo, please. Come sit with me.”

“Is it Amy or Mer?” Florence paces the room, her breathing rising.

Jackson doesn’t answer, so Florence keeps talking. “No, Amy is on call. She’s in the room next to me. Is it Meredith? Or is it Derek? It can’t possibly be Derek, he’s too fucking smart to die. And he’s supposed to be in D.C. meeting with the president, or whatever.”

Florence inhales, stops pacing, and looks at Jackson. “But Mer said the White House called and he hadn’t arrived.”

Jackson reaches out for her again, but she steps back. “No, I’m- You’re kidding, right? There’s no fucking way.”

Jackson finally manages to grab her hand. She stares at the door though, not meeting his eye, or even turning towards him.

“How?” She shudders out. “He’s too damn smart, Jackson. How?”

Jackson swallows thickly and pulls her arm, tugging her towards him. “Do you really want me to tell you?”

Florence laughs. “He’s my brother, of course I do.”

“There was an accident, he was taking a different route to the airport. He stopped to help them. After the ambulance came, he got back in his car, a semi came out of nowhere and hit him head on.”

She stays silent for a moment, “Did he die on scene?”

Jackson shakes his head, though she still isn’t facing him. “He made it to the hospital. They didn’t do a head CT and he had a brain bleed, I think. The police went to the house and took Meredith there. She waited, then they..”

Florence’s laugh cuts him off. “Meredith waited and then pulled the plug on my brother? Without calling anyone?”

“Let’s go somewhere more private, Flo. You can be with Amelia and..”

“Derek survived a shooting, nope, two shootings, then a plane crash. And he died because of a semi?” Florence’s laughter grows louder, before fading into sobs.

She goes back and forth between laughs and sobs, the weight of the world sitting on her shoulders, as she gasps for more air. She can’t breathe, her heart is pounding and her lungs are being filled with water. She’s going to die, too. And then who will Amy have? And Meredith? And their poor mother. Two kids in one day. She’ll be devastated.

She doesn’t realize she’s on the ground until Jacksons’ arms wrap around her. They’re tight and secure, his hand fans through her hair, whispering comforting words. She wonders if the people assisting with her surgery can see her. She wonders what they think, she wonders if they know Derek’s dead, and she wonders if they even care.

They have to care, though. Derek Shepherd is dead, and everybody cared about Derek Shepherd.

She sobs until the sobs turn into incoherent hiccups, until Jackson carries her into an on-call room, laying her gently on a bed and curling in beside her. She lays against his chest, hearing his heartbeat. She cries again, because Derek’s heart isn’t beating, and she wonders if hers is, and if the water in her lungs is ever going to kill her.

“Who made the call not to get a head C.T.?” She wonders aloud. “What kind of person makes that kind of call?”

Jackson shakes his head. “I don’t know, Flo. I don’t know.”

“I hate them.”

He nods. “I know.”

She sniffles and pulls away from him. “You probably have somewhere to be, don’t you?’

He shakes his head, pulling her back in, and pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “Nowhere.”

“Then you’ll stay? I want to sleep, but I know I’m going to wake up in the morning and remember this is real, and it’s going to hurt all over again. And I am so scared.”

“I’ll stay for as long as you need me to.”

#jackson avery #jackson avery x reader #jackson avery x oc #jackson avery fic #jackson avery greys anatomy #greys anatomy #greys anatomy fic

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romanarose · 6 months

Text

Burn

Joel Miller & Ellie Williams

Join my taglist : Masterlist

Summary: How Ellie got that scar. Just my thoughts of the moment Ellie mutilated her arm to cover up her bite mark.

Content and Warnings: Self-mutilation but not for mental health reasons. Protective Joel, Dad Joel, Joel needs a hug.

A/N this isn't going to be for everyone, it's not a reader fic, but I couldn't get this scene out of my head. Does not show Ellie burning her arm, but it does show her in extreme pain.

****************

It wasn't supposed to happen in Jackson. Not yet anyway. Ellie was 15 and had 3 years before she would take up patrol shifts, so in Jackson, she would be safe, right? Joel would be around, he'd protect her. Even out in the feilds where he was now, Joel knew no one would mess with her, not with his reputation. There was the fact he was Tommy's brother, yeah, the town leader's brother in law... but Maria didn't show favoritism, and if she did... well, Joel wasn't a favorite. Still, the town didn't need to know that, and Joel proclivity towards violence to defend his kin had reached the popular gossip. Yeah, no man would dare lay a hand on his kid.

Not that she couldn't handle herself, of course. She'd told him what she'd done to that bastard in the winter... but she shouldn't have to. That was the point of him. Joel was supposed to be there so she didn't have to. He failed her with David, and now as he road on the back on Tommy's horse, he felt like he failed her again.

When Tommy road up to where Joel was working in a field, flying like a bat out of hell, Joel knew something was wrong.

"Ellie's hurt-"

"What the hell happened! Who-"

"Joel! Get on and I'll explain on the way."

It had been an accident, Tommy said. No one was in the auto building where Ellie was learning to fix up a tractor when another worker heard a crash and she started screaming. Battery acid.

Joel had a thousand questions, mostly why she was left alone. Tommy answered that with the fact in Texas, Joel has been operating a chainsaw since he was 13. In hard times, teenagers have to take on responsibilities.

"Where was she burned?"

"I don't know, Joel."

"There's a big different between her whole face and a splash on her leg Tommy!"

"I don't know! I didn't stick around to get a diagnosis, someone needed to get you and if it was anyone else you'd rip his fucking head off right now so will you just fucking relax!" As they road up to the clinic, Joel practically jumped off the horse, Tommy calling after him to not hurt anyone.

When he burst into the clinic, he felt the flashbacks start, the sheer panic like that day in the hospital again, like if he even wasted a second, he'd be too late. The nurse seemed to be prepared, holding a door open and ushering him down a hall. "All the way down on your left."

But as he entered the hall anyway, he heard her screaming.

"ELLIE!"

When he saw her alive and awake, it was almost a relief. He wasn't relieving the hospital, they hadn't touched her at all. He brain wasn't cut out of her head. She was alive.

"Joel! Shit! It fucking hurts!" She cried out, writhing in the-

"WHY THE HELL IS SHE RESTRAINED!" Joel screamed at the doctor.

He answered, looking scared. "She kept trying to claw at the burn."

Ellie shouted that it was burning, and Joel turned to see where the burn was... on her forearm... and she was wearing a short sleeve... Elli couldn't wear short sleeves because her bite mark was on her- fuck.

"Did you give her anesthesia?!"

The doctor hesitated, and Joel heard Tommy shout from down the hall, but he ignored him. "Mr. Miller, there's a limited amount of anesthesia, we can't give it for minor injuries-"

Before he knew what was happening, Joel fisted his hand up in the doctors shirt and thust him against the wall. "SHE HAS BATTERY ACID ON HER ARM!"

"WE CLEANED IT!"

It was Tommy to pull Joel off.

A loud back and forth ensued, the doctor trying to explain that anesthesia was strictly for surgery, while Joel, trying to undo Ellie's restaints, screamed at him that she's just a kid. Tommy tried to mediate, but he had his own frustration. He'd grown rather attached to Ellie in the months since they returned. Sarah's death hit him hard too, and he was beginning to see Ellie as a niece... with the birth of his son, Joel's fatherly pleas that she was just a kid rang true in his ears.

"Just give her a little topical to get her through this so she doesn't go into shock, okay?"

"But-"

"I'll take your daughter off overnight patrols for a few months, okay?" Overnight was more dangerous.

The doctor hesitated but agreed. "Just once. Just to get her past the hard part."

The doctor left after administering anesthesia and promising not to tell Maria. Tommy hung by as it kicked in, Joel and his holding either hand as she kicked and thrashed and cried. Ellie tried so hard to grit and bear it, but every now and then a string of expletives fell out her mouth.

"It's okay, babygirl, s'alright. I'm here, Ima take care of you, kay?"

Tommy's eyes flicked up to Joel, and when his bother got his gaze, Tommy nodded down to where the battery acid burned away at Ellie's skin. He raised his eyebrows in a silent question. 'that her bite mark?'

Joel nodded, the went right back to holding Ellie's hand in one of his while the free hand caressed her face. "Gonna be alright, Ellie, you're doing real well, 'm so proud of yuh, being real brave."

Normally, Ellie hated anyone babying her, but in rare moments, moments like these, she found comfort is just being able to be a kid who needed her dad.

After the doctor checked on her to make sure she hadn't gone into shock, Tommy left with Joel sitting by a sleeping Ellie's side, holding the hand of her burned arm. He knew what she'd done. Every know and then, she'd whimper in her sleep.

Ellie woke up, disoriented and in pain... but when she gasped and looked to her side, she saw Joel. If Joel was there, she was okay. Slowly, Ellie took in her surroundings, and connected the dots of what had happened. Joel was going to fucking kill her.

"Better start explain' yerself" Joel mumbled, eyes still closed. Alert ass mother fucker.

"Jesus, do you ever fucking sleep."

He opened his eyes. "Do you ever think before you act?"

Ellie yanked her hand out from where Joel stole held her. "Well what was your grand plan! I can't wear long sleeves forever! It gets hot as balls in the summer, Tommy told last year it was like, 110!"

Fucking Tommy always running his mouth. "You should have talked to me!"

She scoffed. "Please, you never would have let me-"

"Of course I wouldn't!" Joel shouted. "Battery acid on your am, are you insane? Jesus, Ellie!"

"Oh yeah, here you go, acting all dramatic-" She tried to get up off the bed but Joel grabbed her hand.

"I'm trying to protect you-"

"Dad! Stop!"

They both in their tracks. There was no back tracking what she just called him. Ellie broke the silence.

"Shit, Joel, I'm sorry-"

"Please don't be." He was quick to reassure, Joel's voice soft and quiet. "I- I don't mind that."

"I'm not trying to... replace Sarah, or snything-"

"Your not." A pause. Joel sighed, letting got of her hand. "Sarah will... always just be Sarah. She'll always be 13, or 12, or 5... she'll never be here in Jackson but... you are. You're here and... you make my days better, you make me smile when I'm cranky-"

"What is a lot"

Asmall smile quipped at his lips. "-which is a lot, but you do, you make me smile and... you make me proud. You ain't replace'n her or noth'n, Ellie. You're someth'n new, someth'n special all your own. You are both... different from each other, but I love you both, as my daughters, all the same and..." Joel swallowed hard. "And if you see me as your dad well, then, I hope I can make you proud too."

Ellie was hugging him before he had a chance to think, and instinctively he wrapped his arms tightly around his daughter. She was okay. She was hurt, but she'd be okay. The burn with heal, and so will she. He didn't fail her. Ellie would live a good life, a happy life. He'd give her everything he couldn't give Sarah.

"I love you, baby girl"

"I love you, dad."

**********************

Ellie calls Joel dad <3 might be a lil too sappy for our two emotionally constipated besties but what's a little OOC between friends.

please lmk if you want to join my tag list or be removed!

If you enjoyed, reblogs are the only real way to spread art, and comments mean the world <3

@fandxmslxt69 @runa-falls @k-ra @whatthefishh @ahookedheroespureheart @mikaelak @littlenosoul @stevenandmarcslove @pikapuff-316 @del-ightfulling @faretheeoscar @harriedandharassed @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @campingwiththecharmings

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