#WHEN DID YOU START LIKING AUTOMATION OVER PEOPLE THINKING AND DOING THINGS FOR THEMSELVES??? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thecurioustale · 7 months

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Social Media Sucks and I Think I Have Used Up Most of My Lifetime Tolerance for It Over the Years

I "hid" my first Tumblr ad the other day. It was a body horror thing of some lifeguard shaped like a snake with lots of ab muscles, and the first couple times it showed up were whatever but Tumblr pushed it so hard that eventually I had seen it like twenty times and it was starting to make me feel icky, so I decided that it was time to take action!

I may be a Tumblr idiot, and a social media idiot in general, but I did have enough knowledge to know that if you press the Ellipsis on an ad post you might get the option to "hide" it, so I did, and it did, and I did, and it didn't.

That's right: No one-and-done when it comes to making Our Sponsors the slightest bit inconvenienced. First, of course, I was presented with an automated survey asking me why I was hiding the ad. And, of course, the survey was terribly designed.

Let me go on a quick side rant here: IT IS ASTONISHING HOW BADLY DESIGNED MOST SURVEYS ARE. Corporate ones, academic ones, governmental ones...it's like most people never took any kind of instruction, nor applied even the most basic common sense, on the principles of survey design. Well, here, in a nutshell, is the number one tip and trick you can use to life-hack your way to a better survey:

IF YOU ARE MAKING A MULTIPLE-CHOICE SURVEY, EITHER MAKE THE OPTIONS CONCEPTUALLY COMPREHENSIVE OR PROVIDE AN "OTHER / NOT APPLICABLE" OPTION.

Needless to say, my reason for wanting to hide the ad—I'd been fed it so many times that the body horror had gone from off-putting to actively disgusting—wasn't on their damn list. The two closest options were "offensive" and "too frequent." I decided on "offensive," and when I clicked the button the offending ad was instantly snapped away back to Hell where it began, and I went on with my life.

UNTIL THE VERY NEXT IN-FEED AD, where it returned like some #&%%@*$ demon in a dark comedy, grinning as if it had never left. So this time I "hid" the ad and selected "too frequent," and I'm not holding out much hope on the matter.

Social media, even Tumblr, has evolved to make you as powerless, immobile, and docile as you can possibly be made through the long reach of an electronic series of tubes. While some social media networks are better than others, the general rule is that you have very little options to control your own "user experience"—and this is by design, because "UX" is something they optimize for on their end from their perspective of what "optimal" is.

Increasingly gone online are the days when Buttons Do Functions. That is a form of direct control: Click a button, and a pre-knowable thing will happen. Like flipping a light switch. Or pushing Stop on a tape deck. Baring some kind of malfunction, you know what will happen. That's less and less of a thing on the Internet now, especially on social media, where buttons are treated more like data inputs to an algorithm somewhere, and god only knows what output will be spat out at you—if any at all! Sometimes the buttons literally don't do anything.

Oh and by the way they PERIODICALLY REARRANGE EVERYTHING so that you have to find everything all over again, and relearn the whole damn GUI, and some of the functions that actually did work are probably gone now for good measure.

This is so dehumanizing, and it is going to be generationally rebelled against SO HARD someday. And the rebels of that era are going to think themselves sage and wise, and turn up their noses at our "dark ages" of user-alienating barbarism, never knowing that the original Internet didn't do this at all; it was a societal development fueled by the lust for profit and a failure to empathize with users.

But in the meantime, stuff like this has a cumulative exposure for me. Every time I get fed the latest indignity, the latest of infinite variants on some gross thing that won't go away and which can only be temporarily dispelled by lying on a poorly-designed survey that no one will ever read, a little text pops up that says "Josh will remember this."

And one day, I'm just gonna stop. I already don't use most social networks, and, of the ones I do use, I flat-out do not need this kind of bullshit in my life. My 6-week Return-to-Tumblr experiment is nearly over (come the Equinox), and I may or may not write a post about it at that time, but if I do then this is one of the points I intend to make. I can feel my interests and utility both steadily diverging from whatever this weird direction is that social media continues to evolve in. I am both outgrowing it and drifting apart from it.

I just don't like being treated this way, and I think that's not unreasonable of me. I understand they'alls gotta make their money. I understand it's their platforms, their rules. I understand that "most users don't know what they want and Numbers Go Down when we give them more control." I understand all of that. And I am willing, to some extent, to trade a modest of dignity and agency in return for the benefit of being able to use a service with lots of fascinating content and the potential to reach people with my own ideas. But I have my limits.

I know there's no one at any of these social media companies who actually cares if one of their advertisers' ads not only fails as an advertisement for one particular user but also estranges that user from the entire service—not all by itself, of course, but as the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back. And if not an ad, then some other inanity of the functionality of the service. It doesn't even matter what the last straw actually is, really. To the people running the show, we're not even people. Just metrics. And there's always another sucker, so for the most part the people who finally give up on this stuff after a long season of exasperation and small cuts are more than drowned out by the rising tide of new users joining. Until suddenly one day the ratio crosses the inflection point, the tide reverses, and the whole company folds like a house of cards...by which point the original looters have long since cashed in on their fat salaries and benefits packages.

We live in an era of no loyalties and no pride. The notion of caring about the products you make or the level of service you show your customers (or, more to the point, your users) is positively quaint. The people have spoken: We want it cheap; we want it easy; we want it now. That's what gets the clicks.

This is all increasingly dystopian and I am getting tired of it.

#The best moments in the lifetime of a society always seem to come just before the popularization of a marvelous new wonder #Some new technology or art form or scientific discovery or whatever #And the opportunistically monetized aftermath is so incredibly bland that it stings #I'm betting myself a nickel that the next in-feed ad I see will be the snake lifeguard with the abs #UPDATE: It was a different ad so at least there's that

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mdshow-me-your-moves · 6 months

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I'm not trying to be an ass, and I don't think I'm smarter than anyone, I'm just a little confused about some opinions regarding ai art.

I'll start off by saying I agree that using people's work to train ai software without their express permission is obviously shit, and that I too don't like the look of most ai generated images. I want to talk about criticisms people have over the technology itself in this post.

The confusion comes in when people are saying it's stealing jobs and taking the soul out of art, among similar criticisms.

A lot of this type of criticism reminds me of how people felt (and occasionally still feel) about photoshop. It's also reminiscent of people's opinions on any form of automation throughout history. With many early attempts at automation for any given skill, much of the criticism was that it didn't look as good, was a tool for lazy people who didn't want to learn a skill, and would take jobs away from people who spent their whole lives learning the skill.

Usually, most of this was true (ignoring the obvious subjective opinion that it "looked worse" despite that being a subjective take that changed as the tech improved) but for many of these things, there are still crafts people doing these things with their own two hands, it's just that by the time automation took over the larger industry, it became a hobby rather than a job because they could not keep up with the efficiency of automation.

For me personally, there's probably a venn diagram I could make for reasons I like more automated work versus hand made hobby work. But to be honest, I'd prefer to keep my art a hobby.

I don't like that in the short run, people will lose jobs over this. That always sucks. I don't like that many less creative people will be able to make more money faster than real craftspeople. But this has happened before. So many times. And with many of these tools of automation, they did not become available to the layman until years later, whereas, ai tech is available to the same people photoshop is available to. These perceived problems imo are an issue of capitalism forcing people to commodify their work in the first place, not the technology itself.

It seems to me that what people are angry about is primarily emotional, based on the sorts of people they imagine are using the tech, and how much they feel as though it betrays something fundamental about art because it's taking them a lifetime to develop their own skill, but people using ai tech claim themselves to be in the same realm as them when they didn't take the time to do it the way they like to do it. Is a four year olds drawing of a house less valuable than a 30 year olds drawing of a house just because the 30 year old spent more time learning how to do it in a way that appears more realistic? Is art that clips images and text from magazines and glues them to a canvas less valuable than a person who used paper and pencils and paints they made themselves? You'd probably be more impressed by the stuff that took more personal effort, and I feel like that's something automation isn't going to take away from people.

Is art used for ads not art just because you don't like it?

Is any art not art just because you don't like it?

Art isn't some ethereal spiritual special thing at all times. And though many people would not be satisfied with the result of an ai art generator, that is personal preference. As much as people are trying to argue that it isn't. Many people are satisfied with the results they get, and asking them to spend years of their life learning something as time consuming as art when they are probably already spending their time learning other skills seems a like a narrow opinion to me.

One other small thing is I see people claiming that people using prompts to generate images no "real" artist has created are themselves stealing jobs. Like, if nobody was doing it before then who's jobs are being taken? Especially when the vast majority of these people aren't making any money off this stuff themselves.

It just feels from the outside that people are being emotional and hyperbolic about things.

The way people talk about it though, it feels like there is something I am completely missing about these criticisms. I want to be proven wrong if that's the case.

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sittinwithyou · 1 year

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Os Auditorus #QuordlePrompt 8

On my Wattpad!

Bones were not something that I used to think of fondly. I mean, I still don’t, but now I think that most people should be at least respectful towards them. Bones, as they are, represent our collective base selves as living organisms. Thinking back on my childhood, I never thought skeletons were a cool design fad like the rest of my class. I didn’t enjoy watching cartoons that animated our inner-most structural form in zany ways. I didn’t have the fascination with grinning, fleshless smiles on Halloween. I held a reverence, in ways. Truth be told, if I had to subscribe to something fantastical, I was more of a werewolf kind of guy. Maybe sometimes I’d dabble in ghosts and goblins, but the thought of becoming a half-animalistic terror to take on foes fascinated me. But as I grew, I changed. I didn’t turn to appreciating skeletons as a social medium, but I did leave behind my love of the wolf man. I left behind most all supernatural fandoms, actually. As a young man, I dove more into the science fiction and the explainable. That’s why I find it kind of funny that I’m now a breathing representation of the sort of fiction I actively started to ignore as an adult.

I don’t understand how I am what I am now. The actual origination of the method to my rise to office eludes me and my staff. Well, at least that’s what they tell me. I’m pretty sure Beth holds a few secrets clutched close to her broad, werewolf-ian chest. And the multi-tentacled Tim always finds a reason to leave the room when I start asking questions that could be see as ‘invading’. So, to keep the peace and to make sure we all stay productive, I run the numbers and pull the results. I move the data. I make sure the office stays moving. You see, the bones aren’t going to audit themselves. Trust me, I tried to implement that policy once. I gave the sorting room a very well-documented set of instructions that should have allowed them to become autonomous. That plan had resulted in a back-up so entangled that Earth halted new organism construction for three hours.

Ceasing the function of life for three hours seems harmless, right?

That was the year the human population of the planet dipped by one-point-two million. Experts across the world deemed the organic hiccup as the “worst thing to happen to livestock since the Great Depression.” I accidently made a famine that was felt three years after I tried to automate distribution. All because I wanted a little break.

You see, being the Os Aduitoris (or Mr. Bone Audit as the kids are calling me these days) is a job that I must take seriously, or the world’s existence will just… stop. And as far as I can tell, I can’t just give the mantle over to another person until they stumble in like I did seventy years ago. In order for that to happen, I must leave the front door open by a true, honest mistake with no forethought after completely forget about the fact that I had another life before being inducted. The chances of those circumstances lining up in that order – as I write this at the end of seventy years without forgetting life on earth – are slim. Accidental relief of my position is also hard to achieve due to the multiple ‘positive affirmation’ posters on the walls here that depict moments of my own life in a perpetual loop. In the meantime, I’ll continue to make sure that most (not all) organisms that need a skull get just one. I’ll continue to assure the world that their continued existence will stay a constant. I’ll continue to slide the beads on my infernal abacus from the abyss and perform the ancient galactic rites that transmute dust into skeletons. It’s the very least that I can do now because anything less will destroy the world.

And I’ll be damned if I’m going to get my picture put down in the hall of shame. The last guy in there had had a deal with that Noah guy.

We all know how that turned out.

#original story #short story #writing prompt #quordle prompt #sittinwithyou #scifi #fantasy #bone daddy #latin #office

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thelador-s-mclargehuge · 1 year

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Artists beat NFTs! Artists can beat AI art!

I was not expecting to write an entire damb essay on this but here it is I guess. So with AI art, as it was with NFTs, is a lot of the people fighting against it is artists. Of course, because they're the ones who are harmed the most by. But the thing is, is they've kinda been really successful in holding the Techbro Tide. A lot of industries have had problems with it, but artists seem to be particularly strong. it's almost like they're drawing scissors while the techbros are drawing paper. And I think if we look at NFTs we can see why Being an artist is not going to be the most profitable route to take, this is just a fact that everyone knows. So to be an artist you'd need to take passion over money. Which leads them with not very much, so they don't have a lot of capital. But they do, many times, have Social Capital. It's kinda what they live and die on. If they're not well liked they're not making any money. And of course, it's pretty capitalism out there, so you need money to live. Also, they're creative in a very lateral way. They're very good at dealing with abstract problems that don't have a singular solution. That's their job.

So here you have these computer money makers trying to muscle in on their turf. Guys who are creative in a logical way. Point A to Point B kinda dudes whose ultimate goal it to make the world a place where this kind of thinking is the only one valuable, where ownership is law, and creativity can be automated. But to do that they need the social capital. The way they were doing that with NFTs was a little bigger than NFTs. it was an attempt to legitimize cryptocurrency. After Silkroad died, there kinda wasn't anything to spend Cryptocurrency on, which isn't great for a currency, even if more and more people are buying into it. If there isn't something you'd want to spend specifically crypto on, then eventually the market would plummet, because what value does it have? So, put Non-Fungable Tokens on the blockchain that can only be bought via cryptocurrency. And all they need for it to work is for people to think "I want to get some cryptocurrency to buy these things!" IE gain social capital. So can get social capital from financial institutions, who can help guide their hand, and guys down on their luck who can be their dupes. They get these guys on board by saying "Here's an easy way to make money! Ain't it cool!" and ultimately, these guys will buy in because their answer is "Yes!" And with these yes's they buy themselves some social capital they can push forward. But, when they tried this with NFTs, artists we're the first ones to sniff them out. They played their hand a little to early by having the first NFTs be things like The Bad Luck Brian meme and The First Tweet. Things that are a public good that they were purporting you could have ownership over. This, of course, was a huuuge red flag, for artists who see their art as more than a commodity. (And many artists are leftists and dislike the concept of ownership on it's own right.) So Artists moved against them, while NFTs bros tried to court them. You could see it happening in real time as you had concept artists, you know, industry people, saying they were going to start selling NFTs, and then, within a month, start dropping out as everyone in their friends circles told them "Naw man this shit sucks" Which is why the only artists that would work with them are the most "Fuck you got mine" need to make bank artists you could find, and every NFT looked like something you'd see on a T-shirt at Spencer's Gifts. But the Techbros simply didn't care. In fact they did actively nothing to stop people from just straight stealing art. They didn't give a fuck. They couldn't imagine a way they'd be able to be stopped! Artists don't have enough money to sue most of the time, stealing the art is piss easy and can be done anonymously, the art they're working with sucks, sure, but who fucking cares? The point is that you 'own it'! and what power do artists have if they can convince large corporations that they're the future? They set up strong systemic defenses. They're reaching for power in the places power is held. A very logical bedrock to build an empire.

But artists are lateral thinkers. And these guys are nerds. Nerds looking for social acceptance of their new thing. You can just bully them. This not only actively harms their goal, but can undermine their entire ideology. They can't build their new way of existence if it's widely rejected, and the bullies aren't saying "NFTs aren't cool" They're saying "If you're the kind of person who thinks NFTs are cool, you're a fuckin' clown." You have multiple vectors for attack here. The first one is "Hey! This motherfucker stole all my hard work and is trying to sell it as his own to make money, get his ass!" Another one is "Oh, you think you 'own' this? Then why do I have 22 thousand copies on my computer lol" and the very simple "The monkey NFT looks like ass, and you're an idiot for spending a even dime on it." Artists many times are taste makers. And have a tendency to reject any soulless corporate art. And if they reject it, so does everyone else. Look at Zombie Formalisim's fall. Now bullying someone for using NFTs won't stop them from using it, they'll of course get real defensive, and maybe even double down, but that ain't the point. It's to show 'everyone whose watching that these guys are dorkuses' And they see themselves as such infallible big brain big boys they usually will double down and make themselves look even sillier.

And not only that. You're bullying them on the internet so it's a call to action for other people to bully them too! And tech bros are the easiest targets because they don't know how to deal with it. All they can do is try to explain their (extremely bad, to be clear) logic when they're being swarmed with emotional responses.

They're trying to win the debate, when what they need to do, is win over the people. These are two very different things, and a nerds biggest weakness is that they will never understand that.

And even, of course on the logical side, you can point out that their baseline ideology of Ownership As Law sucks and is bad and should be roundly rejected. (FoldingIdeas 'The Problem With NFTs' is the best in it's class at this) but Techbros are incredibly susceptible to someone just calling them a jabroni, because their next course of action is to defend themselves in a way that makes them look like a total jabroni!

And they lost I can't stress enough that they lost. This was Cryptocurrency's big push for legitimacy and it flunked, and every crypto market has tanked, almost irrecoverably, since. They got shit on so hard, anyone who spends any time on the internet had heard NFTs sucked. Which eventually reached a lot of corporate bigwig ears and most either finished their NFT projects and dropped the whole thing, or backed out entirely. And of course, if you weren't super online, why would you want a bad picture of a monkey in a digital space?

And with AI art they don't even have a baseline ideology, they don't have 'cryptocurrency making a legitimacy play' backing, they don't have shit except for "This thing is kinda cool innit" and they're still just as susceptible to bullying. And so, so much that they'll build will be too. TL;DR There's this one post going around saying the best way to combat AI art is by bullying. Seconded.

#ai artwork #ai #NFTs #artists on tumblr #artists #art #bullying

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lynxcherry50 · 2 years

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The next three Issues To immediately Do About Best Minecraft Mods

And don’t assume it’s all rosy in here. I have a buddy who creates all forms of music, and lately he determined to experiment with 8-bit. We've talked about it, and at first I think he was nervous about how I might really feel about it. However not like previous years, them and their ilk didn’t drive the dialog in 2020. With reside sports activities and film theaters shut down, lots of people that normally wouldn’t consider themselves “gamers” turned to the medium for leisure and solace. Folks usually love Minecraft game attributable to its ownership, ease of use, and replayability. How do I install Minecraft mods? It is not illegal to put in mods or taking part in modded Minecraft. And do remember to support the Minecraft developers, as it’s their arduous work we're reaping the fruits of. It's also potential to vary your server’s location - our help workforce is prepared to help. Moreover, it hired a crew of economists to assist show its practices aren't anti-aggressive. Contact our sales team and allow them to know you’re looking to construct a server particularly for Minecraft.

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But what about having a digital wedding? Certain, many people used Zoom to attend weddings during COVID-19, however what about actually having your complete marriage ceremony within the metaverse - an immersive virtual world - with every guest attending as an avatar? Take Minecraft - gamers can build homes and even complete villages. There are tons of wonderful Minecraft mods obtainable since the game's modding community has been energetic for years, and every considered one of them adds to or modifications the Minecraft gameplay expertise in fun and creative methods. Since Minecraft version 1.7.10 and 1.12.2 have the largest modding communities, we'd rank these two versions as the very best. Due to this fact, you must definitely give Minecraft mods a shot, as they make one of the best Computer video games ever made even higher. In lately as many of the families are unit families and the family members are much less in numbers subsequently, people are getting great downside find out their appropriate companion to play video games. Wholly distinct possibilities are unlocked once this Minecraft mod is put in. The Companion mod introduces new options that'll help keep your pets protected, even in the midst of battle. WordPress Hosting also consists of extra features constructed-in to the hPanel (Hostinger’s management panel).

In truth, I had to restrain a lot of the cell-cell emergent conduct so as to place players in charge of the gameplay. When did Minecraft put cookies? Applied Energistics 2 is a essential mod that has been constructed to resolve the problem of storage when you begin automating many issues in Minecraft. Next, obtain the mod you wish to use and place it into your Minecraft folder. But large multiplayer games have also played their half, and many casual players gravitated towards them not as a strategy to get pleasure from the sport itself, however as a spot they can screw round with their buddies. Elsewhere, there's a brand new characteristic for Recreation Move subscribers on console. If you utilize a console gadget reminiscent of Xbox or PlayStation, you will need to pair it with a widescreen Tv. Games Elite Armageddon offers with an impending apocalypse that will engulf your Minecraft world in four days.

#Games #let's talk about games

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ruby-whistler · 3 years

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The Prison Arc - a Complete Recap

[ /dsmp /rp - All of the people mentioned in this post are the characters, not the content creators behind them. TWs for mentions of fictional murder, abuse, torture, self-harm, and other canon-typical themes. ]

Watch the cut-down version of this recap here! The video doesn’t have all the details, but is well-edited and easier to watch.

Starting where we left off, after the Disc War finale, Dream reveals the last trick up his sleeve, the revival book. Seeing him as an active danger to the server, the people need a way to get rid of him in order to keep themselves and each other safe, but instead of killing him, they store him away for later use, also making the prison a Vault in a literal sense.

This is where the story of the prison seemingly begins, but - let’s rewind for a moment, because any and all information here is vital. What do we know about the prison? It was commissioned for 64 diamond blocks by Dream to be built by Awesamdude a day after Tommy was exiled. The prison was supposed to be inescapable, and hold a highly capable individual, yet allow visitors.

Getting back to the lore, a day after Dream arrives in the prison, Tommy goes to visit him. During this visit, Dream states that there is nothing to do in the cell besides watching the clock on the wall, and that he is planning on writing something in the books that were given to him. Tommy shows him how to spin the clock really fast, which Dream calls a new game. He says that he is doing well so far, that he gets fed raw potatoes and can write or “swim”. He goes on to jump into the lava that blocks off his cell, killing himself. Tommy teases him, Dream asking him to visit more as he is alone in the cell with no real interaction. He then argues that if he stays for a long while and gets better, he can be freed, however Tommy doesn’t agree. Dream then apologizes, presumably to convince Tommy he can be let go, and talks about feeling bad about things he lost during the Finale. Tommy gives him five books to write, saying it’s so that he can forgive him. After this exchange, Tommy asks who Dream misses the most, and Dream yells for Sam to make him leave.

Around this time, as he reveals later, Dream starts telling Sam about what he did to Tommy in exile, which leads to the Warden becoming increasingly fearful and especially hateful towards the prisoner.

Nine days later, BadBoyHalo decides to pay Dream a visit as well. Dream is slow to respond at first, commenting that BBH is the first visitor in a while. He says he’s doing good, and spins the clock, because apparently he burnt some of his books, and doesn’t write much anymore. Bad tries to be optimistic about his conditions, and Dream agrees in a very… unconvincing, tone of voice. (29:40 - 29:49)

He says that he gets potatoes, but they’re raw, so they’re not good food. Apparently, Sam has told him he couldn’t have any visitors for a few days, because he would try to get out. He concurs to Bad that he did bad things that got him locked up, and asks how Sapnap and George are doing - noting that they haven’t visited him yet. Bad tells him that Tommy has started a hotel, and about the Egg. Dream seems lethargic and preoccupied the entire time, spinning his clock - he says he’s named it, but doesn’t want to elaborate further. He gives Bad a note that says “thank you for visiting me badboyhalo!” and explains that his sentence is forever, which is later also confirmed by Sam, and goes on to talk more about the clock and how he “likes it halfway” it’s because c!Ranboo metaphorically is the clock-

He once again reiterates that there is not a lot for him to do, and that nearly no one has visited him. He reveals to BadBoyHalo that he sometimes does a “prank” where he’ll burn his clock, so that Sam has to come to replace it and he can see and say hi to him. After being asked whether or not he gets in trouble for it, he replies that Sam will sometimes deprive him of food as punishment, essentially starving him for his attempts at interaction, though Dream diminishes it and laughs about Sam reprimanding him. The Warden is planning to make an automated food dispenser so as to not have to come into the cell himself, which means even less interaction in essence. Despite all of this, he says that Sam is “treating him amazing” and that he’s happy. During the visit, he sniffles and coughs as he talks, voice low and void of energy.

BadBoyHalo wants to become a prison guard so that he can make the cell look nicer, perhaps giving Dream a potted plant and flower or two, as well as promising he’ll talk to George and Sapnap who Dream says he wants to visit him the most. He encourages him to look forward to better things, think positively, and - (42:03 - 42:20) As BBH freaks out, he explains that hurting himself this way is how he keeps himself entertained, setting himself on fire again. He says he wants to summon Bad into the cell by breaking a block when he becomes a guard, but goes back on this as it would potentially make Sam mad. Bad promises to visit with his friends, and leaves the cell.

He tells Sam that he needs to replace the clock, who refuses to, seeming frustrated with Dream’s antics. Bad tries to convince him to give it back, Sam saying it doesn’t matter whether Dream has it or not, although it’s basically one of Dream’s only sources of entertainment, and Bad tells him to give him one more clock as a compromise. Sam asks whether he… said anything, suspiciously enough? And Bad says they only talked a bit and that he jumped in the lava. Sam confirms he does that a lot and he thinks it’s for attention.

BadBoyHalo feels conflicted, to say the very least. (53:34-54:02 54:16-54:33 56:34-56:53 1:02:24-1:03:05)

That very same day, Ranboo has a strange hallucination-like nightmare about visiting Dream. However when he tries to visit again, Sam tells him that he visited not too long after Dream was first locked up, also bringing a memory book with him. Later, during the prison podcast with Techno, Dream himself mentions Ranboo and says that he “used to visit a lot” before stopping completely - this lines up with what Ranboo does afterwards, having Sam promise to never let him in again.

On February 7th, Dream dies in lava repeatedly on someone’s stream. This happens a couple of times throughout people’s time on the server, and seems to line up with Sam’s claim that he swims in lava pretty often.

Twenty-one days into Dream’s stay in the cell, Sapnap finally decides to visit. Dream stands mostly still and silent, holding the clock in his hand, and explains through books that he’s not talking because he’s on strike. He places the clock and spins it - Sam seems to have renamed it to “DO NOT BURN”. He tells Sapnap that he took too long, who responds that it took him a while because he felt hurt, but also says that Dream can talk to him if he wants to. Dream’s cell has had some of the obsidian changed out for crying obsidian as a security measure - Dream could’ve, and tried to, light a nether portal in the cell to escape. Sapnap tells him he needs to stay in the prison, because that is where he deserves to be - Dream burns his clock in response, insisting that he will get better and get out eventually. Sapnap threatens to kill him if he does - Dream simply tells him to deliver a message to Ranboo because he stopped visiting, a smiley face, which seems to trigger his enderwalk when received, and promises to stop throwing his clock away in return. Sapnap says he’ll visit more, and that he’ll tell George to visit him as well.

The next visit is nine days later, and is an attempt at getting closure. Tommy notes there’s a little hole on the prison roof when he goes to check up on it beforehand. (1:39-1:44). When Sam asks, Tommy says he thinks Dream is deserving of being locked up, but he highlights he doesn’t think he deserves death. He implies he could or might deserve torture though. (12:13-12:16). He says he’ll only ever visit Dream if he needs anyone revived from now on, calling it the only reason Dream’s still alive. Upon entering the cell, he notices some of the obsidian is now crying obsidian.

The first thing Dream tells Tommy is that he lost his clock since the last time he visited him. Tommy seems nervous, stumbling over his words. Dream eagerly tells Tommy he’s glad he came to visit him, that it’s been a while, and that he wishes he would visit him more. He says he likes having people visit him, that he likes just talking to them (23:46-23:49).

Tommy tells Dream this is his last visit. Dream argues that forever is a long time, asking why it is the last time. Tommy tells him he’s the pinnacle of villainy and that he wants to move on. He says he’s been suffering from success while Dream wasn’t there. Dream replies that he has been too, except without the success part, just suffering - Tommy says he had it coming. Dream nonchalantly replies with “yeah”. He goes on to say that maybe one day he could leave, saying he’s already been changing since he came. They talk about the crying obsidian, Tommy comparing the situation to exile, which devolves into an argument. He finds out that Dream burnt the books he was supposed to write, and that BadBoyHalo visited at some point. Dream asks him to visit again, but Tommy refuses, saying he’s terrible. Dream says that everyone thinks they’re in the right, and that he did bad things for good reasons (31:51-32:13) - Tommy refuses to listen to said reasons, listing Dream’s crimes again, and says he refuses to stress himself out by going to visit Dream any longer. Dream says he’s trying to change, promising to be better if he comes back, and Tommy says goodbye.

In that moment, explosions are heard going off in the distance. The two talk about it for a moment, before Tommy starts yelling for Sam. His name disappears and the Warden doesn’t answer as more TNT goes off, Tommy freaking out and Dream seeming to find it interesting.

Tommy starts begging Dream for a way out, and Dream tells him calmly that Sam is dealing with the security issue. Tommy doesn’t get it, so Dream explains that it means he could be stuck in there for a little bit, maybe even days. Tommy is getting desperate, Dream tells him he knows he signed a book, because he’s the one who wrote it, that said that if there’s a security issue, he can be in there for up to a week.

Tommy rambles about all the things he has to do that week and calls out for Phil. Dream suggests they break out together, but Tommy refuses this offer.

Dream gives Tommy some potatoes, who hits him and yells at him to explain, to which Dream yells back he has no idea what is going on as he’s locked in a room.

Tommy accuses Dream that he’s lying, saying it’s too perfectly timed to be a coincidence, calling him the monster of the server, saying he hasn’t changed, and Dream trying to convince him he did or he’s trying to. The two argue, Dream bringing up exile in the process, until Dream suggests to just deal with each other’s presence, not hit each other, and explains he’s happy to finally have company, Tommy panicking and saying he wants to hurt Dream. He takes the “thank you” books from the chests, as well as empty books and quills, and burns them despite Dream’s protests, telling him if Sam hears him panicking over the items, he’ll come back - Dream begs Tommy to just wait, panicked, and gives him potatoes.

After quite a bit of arguing and Tommy nearly punching Dream into the lava multiple times, Sam says the prison is on lockdown. Tommy is incredulous. Dream says it’s not that bad, that they have tons of time to bond, and after Tommy repeatedly calls him dumb and evil, Dream loses his cool, yelling that Tommy’s the one that’s being dumb. Tommy calms down as the realization sets in, and the stream ends.

The next time we see Dream and Tommy, the scene opens with Tommy running around the cell, making loud noises, and Dream sitting in the cauldron, writing. He’s frustrated and asks Tommy to be quiet - who looks at the cat that seems to have appeared in the cell, calling it annoying. Dream disagrees, saying it’s the best thing that’s happened to them - Tommy tries to repeatedly lead it away from its place on the chest, however the cat always comes back. He keeps asking Dream questions, punching the cat to which Dream stands in front of it, asking him to stop. Sam appears to give them potatoes. He asks Sam to let him out, who refuses as the security issue hasn’t been fixed yet. Tommy complains about not having enough food, to which Dream gives him some as well as Sam dispensing more into the cell. Tommy punches Dream away from the potatoes, also getting the clock. He tells Sam that this feels like exile, but worse, saying he’s claustrophobic - he refuses once again, and leaves the two alone. Dream says it’s not that bad - that he’s gotten used to the cell, that he’s happy to have company and a cat with him. He burns the clock, and after Tommy asks to be let out again, suggests they escape together - Tommy says no, punching the cat as Dream tries to stand in front of it to take the blow. He asks Dream if he loves it, killing it when he says that he does and wants it to stay after Tommy leaves. In response to this, Dream says that the cat was hope he could stay in the prison and be content, however now he’s even more motivated to escape and get his revenge on everybody who’s wronged him. He says he’s grown tired of Tommy’s whining about being in the same box he’s been locked in for a hundred times longer - Tommy tells him he will never get out, and Dream promises to never use the revive book on him or his friends. He says he’ll be freed someday, because the only way he’ll ever revive anyone, is if he’s let out - Tommy reveals he doesn’t think the revive book, the only reason people are keeping Dream alive, is real. They argue, Dream asking if the fact he can’t be killed because of the leverage he holds makes him some kind of god - Tommy disputes that he has said leverage, Dream killing him as a result to prove the point that his life still holds value because he can bring people back to life.

In the aftermath of this event, Sam reacts by saying he didn’t anticipate Dream actually killing Tommy - hence he never reached the cell in time. When Bad mocks him for this, he replies saying that he thought he had “broken the will out of him” to act up that way. He also reveals that Dream laughed when he started screaming at him - he says he can’t think of worse ways to punish him than he already does, not knowing what time it is, without the clock and with only raw potatoes as food.

After this happens, Sam leaves for an island that we see in Quackity’s lore later on. Quackity comes to visit him, only to rile him up and give him the idea to kill Dream in retaliation - however, when they arrive in the prison, Sam realizes that Tommy trusted him to keep Dream locked up and alive, and decides against it because of his duty and the revive book.

Two days after Tommy died, he was revived once again, with Dream asking him questions about death and the limbo, such as how long he’s been there, who he’s talked to, and what it felt like. He says he was scared it wouldn’t work, because he had never tried it before; Tommy details that being dead felt horrible, he’s talked to Wilbur and Mexican Dream although Schlatt, strangely enough, appeared to be asleep. He expresses signs of trauma when Dream punches him after being asked to do so, and has somewhat of a breakdown in the cell. Dream proclaims he is a god as he can revive people, and Tommy says Wilbur said horrible things to him while he was in limbo with him, and tried to get Dream to promise him that he would never bring him back, declaring Wilbur worse and more dangerous than Dream ever was - Dream refuses, saying he is the only one with the power to decide on that, and he thinks Wilbur hasn’t done anything that bad. He also suggests experimenting on Tommy to find out more about the afterlife, and perhaps even become unkillable. Tommy realizes Dream is the revive book, in essence, and there is no other way to get rid of it than to kill him, to make sure Wilbur stays dead forever. Dream invites him to kill him, however Tommy realizes he can’t, because then he’ll be stuck in the cell alone forever - Dream even walks into lava for him, all the while detailing the possible consequences of such an act.

Dream says that when Tommy gets out, he can tell everyone the revive book is real - that he wasn’t lying. He also says since he can kill everyone and bring them back, they’re his puppets - when Tommy asks him why he killed him, Dream says he wouldn’t listen to him, and hence he had to prove the legitimacy of the revive book to him. He says he’ll let Tommy go, and not kill him again, just so that Sam doesn’t cut off his visitors further or starve him again - but also promises to bring back Wilbur, with whose help he will escape.

After eight more days, Dream and Tommy are still stuck together within the room, Dream remarking that he’s starving, confirming Sam hasn’t come back to give either of them food during the time since Tommy’s revival. He lets Tommy keep his when he says he has only one, and the two bicker after Dream hits him. They’re bored, waiting for the Warden, and have no idea how much time has passed - Tommy burns his food in lava as they argue again, before Sam finally arrives, and Tommy is released. Tommy warns him to not allow Dream any visitors, saying he plans to escape, and that Techno owes him a favor. He also calls Sam inadequate to run the prison.

After this experience, both Ranboo and Tommy start plotting to kill Dream, so that he can’t “bring back the villains” of the past, present, and future, allowing them to rid the world of such dangerous individuals for good.

However, another person also ends up becoming interested in the powers of the revive book - and that person, is none other, than Quackity.

He doesn’t intend to destroy its powers for good, though. He persuades Sam into letting him bring weapons into the cell as a means of getting the revive book, taking away the last bit of power Dream has, and allowing them to take his final life. Sam agrees in the end, giving him better tools before he steps into the cell, including netherite weapons and shears. During the first visit, Dream comments he hasn’t had a clock in a while, Quackity saying the cell doesn’t look very comfortable. He goes on to talk about Dream’s loss of control since he got locked up, to which Dream asks if he came to gloat. Quackity brings up Tommy’s death, and Dream is interested in other people’s reactions. The topic goes back to the revive book, Dream asking again whether people knew it was real now, saying it’s good that they do. Quackity begins to ask that he gives it to him, but Dream refuses, saying he burnt it a long time ago and it is preserved only in the form of knowledge. Quackty takes out the weapons, and after the initial shock, Dream begins to frantically yell for Sam, not knowing the two are working together. Quackity promises to come torture him daily until he gets the revive book from him.

Around this time, the prison’s keycards are stolen by Ponk. Sam builds him a room, planning on killing him and then burning him with lava, beating and poisoning him until he gives them back, even though at this point they aren’t even functional. (4:05 - 4:24) Ponk tries to talk him out of it, saying that the prison is controlling him as much as the Egg would, and that he’s changed. (6:26 - 6:38) Sam ends up cutting off one of Ponk’s arms, successfully getting every last one of the defunct keycards back.

Later on, while BadBoyHalo and Antfrost are handing out invites to the Red Banquet on behalf of the Eggpire, Sam greets them holding a clock and gives them empty books & quills he claims to have confiscated from Dream.

In Quackity’s next lore video, we get confirmation that he has in fact been coming in daily to torture Dream, always escorted by Sam, using different tools and staining his shirt’s sleeves red.

Tommy finally decides to come and kill Dream, sneaking in with an invisibility potion while using Ghostbur as an alibi. The lava starts dropping, and Dream seems to run around the cell once, before coming to a stop at the center. Ghostbur yells excitedly when he finally spots Dream on the other side. He looks at Ghostbur, coming closer to the edge to wave at him, but stops waving when he spots Sam. He backs off slightly, breaking eye contact with Sam. Ghostbur and Tommy cross the lava, and Dream has his back turned on Ghostbur.

As soon as Tommy arrives at the cell, and before the netherite bars drop, he reveals the Axe of Peace. Sam yells at them to stop. Dream takes a step towards the entrance, Tommy immediately turns to him, trying to hit him. Dream backs off until he hits the wall, letting out a small “What?”. Tommy crosses the bridge while Ghostbur stays. Tommy and Sam argue, Dream interrupts, but Sam shuts him down, telling Ghostbur to get further away from him.

Dream pleads for Sam to let him out, who tells everyone to shut up, as Tommy is asking Ghostbur if he can reach Dream to kill him. Dream yells that he has a hostage. Sam answers that he’s just a ghost, while Dream stammers that Sam wouldn’t let another person die.

Tommy starts insulting Sam, calling him a horrible warden and telling him to kill Dream, and they start arguing again. (31:00-31:13, 33:50-33:58) Dream shows that he has the revive book in his hands. Ghostbur starts pleading for Tommy to help him. Tommy and Ghostbur count to ten, Sam telling them to shut up. After he shuts down a last request to set Dream free, he kills Ghostbur as the lava starts covering the entrance.

After well over two months of daily visits, a scene opens with Quackity showing Dream which weapon he will use that day, choosing an axe. Dream tries to take it off the item frame, however fails and only gets himself in trouble, with Quackity yelling at him while he cowers. He says it’s getting tiring, but that he needs to come in to remind him every day about everything he’s done or else he’ll forget, to which Dream promises he won’t. Quackity then proceeds to ask him questions about his involvement and relationship with Technoblade, and tells him to write a note, inviting him to visit. He refuses to say why, but promises to give Dream a week-long break if he obeys. Dream doesn’t trust him, continuing to question his motives. He tries to compromise, offering to write a note to Sapnap instead. Quackity goes on to threaten to kill him, saying he doesn’t care about the revival book, and that he likes hurting Dream, because in his eyes, he can never pay back the amount of evil Dream’s done to everyone on the server. He says not even Sam can help him, swinging his axe around and hitting Dream with a sword while he begs him to stop. In the end, Dream agrees to write the note for him.

Outside of the cell’s confines, Foolish proposes to Sam an idea to reform Dream through community service. This idea is shut down immediately.

MichaelMcChill, a new addition to the server, also tries to break him out a couple of times because - because he. Because he thinks he’s hot???

Interestingly enough, Quackity doesn’t have the note to give techno and just tells him to visit Dream verbally - Techno does, getting trapped in the cell in the process. And, well, in the end: (4:24 - 4:40)

That’s it for the recap!

Thank you.

#dreblr #dream smp #c!dream #dsmp recap #prison arc #c!awesamdude #c!sam

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therainroguefanfiction · 2 years

Text

❉ 139 Dreams (Tej Parker 2 of 2) External

Table of Contents | Previous

Genre: Angst, fluff, romance

Word Count: 3,328

Pairing: Heavyset Female! Reader x Tej

World: The Fast & The Furious franchise

Warnings: Violence

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"Ah! There they are. Disaster." Safar shook his head in disbelief as the group entered the garage, led by Ramsey.

"I'm sorry," she told him, but he wasn't having any of it.

"I get you an invite to the most exclusive party in Abu Dhabi -"

"Safar..."

"No, no, no. You steal the host's car and you jump it between two buildings."

"Actually, it was three buildings," Brian interjected, holding up three fingers. You snorted, elbowing him in the ribs and getting a grin in return.

"Oh!" Safar laughed sarcastically. "Two? Insult. Three? Honor. My bad."

The door closed loudly and Mr. Nobody approached the group with Sheppard close behind. "Well, well, well. I have to say, you've got an interesting interpretation there of 'low-key,' Mr. Toretto. You know, Dom, I thought we had an understanding."

Dom shrugged nonchalantly. "Sometimes you have to play the hand you're dealt."

"Now, that's why I prefer to be the dealer."

You shifted your weight and winced, holding your arm over your stomach. One would think having extra weight would help shield a person, but it really doesn't. Especially when someone hits your stomach with the leg of a table like they were batting for a homerun. It honestly hurt like a bitch, but you were confident that the damage wasn't anything serious. More of an inconvenience than anything.

A warm hand rested on the small of your back and Tej leaned toward you, his voice soft so as not to draw attention to the two of you. "You good?"

You released a shaky breath, partly because of the pain and partly because of how close he was to you. "Yeah... yeah, I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"Absolutely." You glanced at Ramsey as she approached a set of computers with God's Eye in her hand. You nodded toward her. "You should be over there. Might learn something."

Tej hesitated, looking from you to the computers a couple of times before finally nodding and approaching them. His eyes lit up when he did. "Oh damn, this is crazy."

Ramsey plugged in the drive and the monitors flickered to life.

"What's it doing now?" questioned Rome.

"It's hunting," she answered. "Hacking into the security cameras at Etihad Towers. That's the last place you saw Shaw, so that's where we'll start."

Footage of the party popped up, showing Shaw on the elevator.

"That's him." Brian stepped closer, pointing him out. "Right there."

"Wait, wait." Tej leaned closer. "What are these numbers right here for?"

"It's bio-mapping Shaw's face. It'll run it against every camera. Every audio device in this hemisphere."

"So much for privacy," you muttered, slowly lowering yourself onto a nearby stool.

"Bingo. Looks like he's holed up here."

"That's perfect," Brian stated. "Automated factory, no people, lots of places to hide."

Mr. Nobody was impressed. "You just changed the face of manhunts forever. Congratulations."

Personally, you believed the thing should be destroyed. It's impossible to keep power from the evil that desires it and, honestly, no one should have that much power no matter what side they consider themselves on. It's a literal disaster magnet! But you kept your thoughts to yourself, not wanting to risk making yourself look like a fool in front of Tej.

"Hey, uh..." Rome leaned toward Ramsey. "Can I check my email real quick?"

You shook your head in disbelief. The others sent him deadpan stares.

Dom was the one to break the silence, but it wasn't an answer to Rome's question. "Dawn's up in two hours. We're gonna go take down Shaw then. Go get changed."

You caught Brian's eyes and you knew what he was thinking - no way was Dom gonna wait 'til dawn, he just didn't want to put his crew in the line of fire. 'He can be such a dad sometimes, sheesh.'

The others started to clear out, happy over the idea of getting changed and getting some rest, but you stayed put, asking one of the soldiers if they could get you some painkillers. While waiting on him to return, Tej approached you, tapping your arm with the back of his hand.

"Come on, Y/N. You can ride with me."

As badly as you wanted to accept that offer, you knew you had a job to do. Instead, you offered him a small smile. "Thanks, Tej, but... I think I'll hang back here for a bit."

His brow furrowed. "Why?"

"Oh, uh..."

An arm slung around your shoulders as Brian appeared at your side. "I asked her to. We need to have a little chat about something private."

Tej didn't look convinced as his eyes darted between the two of you, but he did trust both of you so he finally nodded. "Alright. Call me if you need me."

"Night, Tej." You gave him a little wave and he smiled before turning around and leaving the garage.

"Let's go," Brian urged before the two of you rushed toward the other side of the building where Mr. Nobody and his men were preparing. Dom was there, as well, already out of his suit.

"I thought you said at dawn," commented Mr. Nobody.

"My guys are racers," Dom told him seriously. "The best drivers in the world, but they ain't killers."

Brian stepped around the corner, sending you a look. "I told you he'd say that."

You were close behind, clicking your tongue. "Maybe not direct killers, but we've ended quite a few people inadvertently."

Dom sent you both a look, much like a parent displeased with his unruly children.

"We know you too well, Dom, and we're going with you."

You nodded, giving him a grin. "Can't get rid of us that easily, man."

"Well, looks like we've got a nice little hunting party." Mr. Nobody clapped his hands as he looked over at you. "Let's go bag a shadow."

☾ ⋆･ﾟ:⋆･ﾟ: ⋆.:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: . ☁

"Have you ever heard the saying, 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend'?" Shaw sat at a small, square table eating a steak dinner. He didn't look the least bit surprised or worried by the group of armed soldiers surrounding him, their weapons trained and ready to fire at a moment's notice.

You gripped the assault rifle tightly, stepping closer to Brian. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Yeah, me too."

"I don't have friends," Dom told him confidently. "I got family."

"Well, I got a lot of friends."

The lights cut off suddenly, plunging the factory into darkness. An explosion went off somewhere behind you, the light showing off a group of armed men before fading. Gunfire filled the air and you dived for cover behind a large wooden crate. Bullets grazed it seconds later, sending slivers of wood flying everywhere.

"Two-two formation!" Mr. Nobody barked loudly. "Sheppard, peel one!"

You couldn't see shit beyond the flash of muzzles as they fired and you squinted into the darkness. Your eyes started to adjust and you slowly peered over the top of the crate, lying down fire on the men closest to you. You saw Mose raising his gun, aiming at a soldier who had his back to the man and you scowled, shifting your aim to take fire but you were too slow, Mose downing the soldier in a matter of a couple seconds with a shot to the head. You fired at him and he dodged.

From the corner of your eyes, you saw Mr. Nobody hit the ground. The second your attention was elsewhere, Mose took advantage, aiming for your head but you moved at the last second. A sharp pain ripped through your shoulder and you gritted your teeth in pain, spraying fire toward him. Blood soaked the white dress shirt you wore, trickling down your arm. Adrenaline did its job, keeping most of the pain at bay so you could continue fighting for your life and the life of everyone else on your team. They were pushing up, though, forcing you to snake between crates and large metal drums to get closer to your team.

"Cover me!" Brian yelled at you before attempting to grab the God's Eye. You did your best, taking out several of the enemies before they could attack him, but there were just too many. For every guy you took down, it seemed like two more popped up in his place.

"Brian, leave it!" Dom ordered, helping Mr. Nobody toward the exit while you and Brian laid down cover fire. You heard something heavier than bullets clang against the ground.

"Get down!" Brian cried.

"Shit, shit, shit!" You rushed after them and the grenade exploded behind you, the blast pushing you forward so quickly that you lost your footing, falling to the ground. Your ears were ringing, head fuzzy, and body sore, but there was no time to rest. Brian grabbed your arm and yanked you up.

Dom lifted Mr. Nobody like he was nothing more than a sack of potatoes. "I got you!"

You rushed out of the building, stepping around Dom so you could pull the back door open to the closest SUV. He put him inside rougher than he meant to before hopping in beside him, slamming the door. Brian jumped into the driver's seat and you got in beside him, breathing heavily as he put the SUV in reverse and whipped it around, the tires squealing in protest.

☾ ⋆･ﾟ:⋆･ﾟ: ⋆.:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: . ☁

"We gotta get you two to the hospital," Brian said in a slightly panicked tone, glancing at Mr. Nobody who had begun coughing loudly. His bulletproof vest had caught one bullet, but another had lodged deep into his side.

"No, you're not," he ordered in a pained voice. "I carry my own... health insurance. SOCM medics on standby. They're already inbound. Pull over, kid!"

Brian was reluctant to do so, but he relented. The sun was beginning to rise, the sky lighting up around you. You tugged the white dress shirt off with a grunt of pain, earning a worried look from the blonde beside you. You just smiled tiredly, tearing a strip of the cloth before wrapping it around the wound as best as you could, using your teeth to tighten it. The adrenaline was nearly gone now and waves of pain were beginning to crash over you.

Dom got out when the SUV came to a stop, helping Mr. Nobody out and over to a metal barrier. After ordering you to stay put, Brian jumped out to join them. You wanted to retort, to ask where you could possibly go, but you honestly didn't have the energy for sarcasm. You were exhausted and in a lot of pain.

It wasn't until the helicopter appeared on the horizon that the two men returned to the SUV, peeling off down the sandy road.

"A war is coming for us," Dom stated from the backseat. "Whether we like it or not. If a war is coming... we're gonna face them on the streets we know best."

"We're going home?" you wondered softly, watching the sand dunes fly by out the window.

"Yeah," Dom gently patted your arm, mindful of the wound. "We're going home."

☾ ⋆･ﾟ:⋆･ﾟ: ⋆.:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: . ☁

"Should've taken you to the hospital," Brian muttered as he helped you out of the SUV.

"We don't have time for that," you muttered back, following Dom into the lobby of the hotel. "The wound isn't too bad, I can stitch it up myself before our flight leaves. Just..." you winced in pain, clutching your shoulder. "...get me to my room."

"I'll wake up the others," Dom told you.

When the elevator stopped on your floor, Brian helped you to your room, but he was crowding you like a mother hen and it was working on your last nerve. "Brian, can you please go buy me some painkillers, whiskey, and bandages?"

He seemed hesitant to leave you.

"Please, Bri."

"Yeah... yeah, alright. I'll be right back so hang in there."

You breathed deeply when he finally left, sliding down to the floor with your back against the bed. With more effort than usual, you managed to tug over the black duffel back from beside the bed, pulling it open to search for the items you would need - fishing wire, a needle, a tiny bottle of rum, and a white towel. You realized that you should probably start investing in red towels instead.

The door slammed open, bouncing against the wall and your brow furrowed in confusion, knowing there was no way Brian had returned that quickly. To your surprise, it was Tej that rounded the corner, looking equal parts worried and panicked.

"Jesus." He fell to his knees beside you, inspecting the wound. "You said you wouldn't do anything reckless."

"Technically speaking, that only applied to the party, not what happened after." You resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably under his penetrating gaze.

"Don't move," he told you sternly before leaning closer, his hand on your arm. "Looks like the bullet went straight through." He folded the towel, holding it beneath the wound before slowly pouring the rum over your skin.

You hissed in pain, fingers clenching around the carpet.

"Sorry. Just bear with it, baby girl."

The pet name sent waves of heat to your face and you quickly turned your head away so he wouldn't notice, your voice soft. "You don't have to do this, you know... I can do it myself."

"Not happening," he shook his head, lighting pressing the soaked cloth over the wound. "What were you thinking, going with them?" He dipped the needle into the rub for some sort of sterilization before threading the fishing wire through it. "I can't believe they took you with them."

"I didn't give 'em much choice," you muttered, leaning your head back against the mattress and closing your eyes. "I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't go."

"Stop putting others before yourself," he scolded with an angry tone, pressing the needle into your skin. "You're always throwing yourself in the line of fire, not caring what happens to you."

"Well... yeah. As long as you guys are safe, that's all I care about."

"And what about what we care about? What I care about?"

You slowly lifted your head to look at him, meeting his gaze. You had never seen so much heat, so much raw emotion in his eyes before. It stole your breath away. "Tej..."

"I don't know what I'd do if I lost you," he told you softly, resting his hand on your cheek. "I can't lose you, YN."

Your heart skipped a beat, lips opening and closing as you tried to form a sentence. The door opened again and Brian rounded the corner with a plastic bag in his hands. He seemed relieved to see Tej there.

"Here, this will help." He set the bag down beside you, taking out extra strength pain pills and your favorite drink.

"Thanks, Bri," you murmured softly, holding your hand out so he could place the pills into your hand

"How's it look?"

"It looks worse than it is," Tej told him, tieing off the fishing line. "It's a solid fix for now, but I'm taking her to the hospital as soon as we land."

"Do I get a say in this?"

"No," they both chorused, making you scoff.

"Rude asses."

Brian patted his shoulder. "I'll leave her in your hands, then. Let me know if you need anything else."

Your eyes followed him as he rounded the corner, listening to the sound of the door closing behind him. A thick silence had settled over you as Tej wrapped the wound with the bandage. You wanted to say something to him, to give him an excuse for your behavior, but you couldn't manage more than a soft, "Sorry..."

His expression softened. "I'm just glad you're okay, baby girl."

That damned pet name again! Tears stung at your eyes and you bit down hard on your lip but it didn't stop them from rushing down your cheeks. He noticed your trembling shoulders before your tears.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he inquired softly, cupping your cheek to make you look at him. "Are you in a lot of pain?"

You shook your head, wiping furiously at your eyes but the tears refused to stop. "No, it's just... everything!" You breathed out.

"It's been rough lately." His thumb brushed away your tears and he smiled softly. "But we'll get through it, we always do. Right now, you only need to focus on healing up, baby girl."

You shot up, ignoring the pain in your shoulder. "Stop calling me that!"

"I've always called you that." He stood up, a frown tugging at his lips. He reached out for you but you stepped back, running a hand through your hair.

"I know that! It's just... when you call me that, you give me hope and that fucking hurts."

"Hope for what?"

You didn't answer, turning your back to him. Regret filled you and you scolded yourself for opening your big mouth. You felt embarrassed, you were in pain, and you just wanted to sleep and forget everything but Tej wasn't going to let this go, you knew that.

He tried to turn you toward him but you wouldn't budge so he moved to stand in front of you instead, lifting your chin up to meet his eyes. "Hope for what, Y/N? For this?" His lips captured your own, stealing the breath from your lungs.

Your hands shook as you reached for the polo shirt he was wearing, your fingers curling around the fabric. And then you came to your senses, pushing him away. "Why are you doing this to me, Tej? It fucking hurts, okay? Every time you call me that, it gives me this tiny sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe there's a chance you could like me, but I know that won't ever happen..."

"You seem pretty sure about that." Tej's face was blank, not betraying how he was feeling or what was going through his mind.

You scoffed. "Of course I am. You don't exactly hide the type of women you like and I'm nothing like them! The perfect girls to parade around in fancy cars... I'm fat and don't even qualify as cute. No one wants to see my fat ass on a car and I get that. I accepted it but you always do these small things that give me hope and I can't take it anymore!" Tears were now falling freely from your eyes and you didn't care to stop them this time.

"I won't lie, I do find them attractive," Tej slowly closed the distance between you. "But to me, you're damn sexy, Y/N."

"Stop it."

"It's not just about the external, baby girl. It's about what's here," he tapped two fingers over your heart, looking deeply into your eyes. "So what if you're not skinny? You are the strongest, bravest woman I know with a heart of gold, and that makes you the sexiest woman in the world. Those other girls may catch my eyes, but you're the only one who caught my heart."

"Tej..." You searched his eyes for any sign of deceit but you saw only genuine love and warmth.

He smiled, his thumb brushing your cheek as he leaned in, claiming your lips again. You clutched at his shirt, bringing him closer as you tilted your head to deepen the kiss. "I love you, baby girl. Don't ever forget that."

"I... love you too, Tej," you replied softly, a smile tugging at your lips. Saying the words for the first time out loud felt like a heavy weight had been lifted off of your shoulders. You felt so much relief and happiness swirling inside of you. You never thought you would ever see this day but now that it was here, you wanted it to last forever.

☾ ⋆･ﾟ:⋆･ﾟ: ⋆.:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: . ☁

#tej parker #the fast and the furious #the fast & the furious #fast and furious #fast & furious #the fast saga #reader insert #139 dreams

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felassan · 3 years

Text

Jon Renish (Foundation Technical Director @ BioWare, working on DA4) recently did a Twitch stream where he played through some DAO. Although he works on DA, this is his first time playing through DAO. He’s playing through it looking at random details from a dev perspective as he’s currently working on DA4 and therefore wants to know more about the previous games.

On the stream he mentioned some tidbits on the development of DA4. There were also some insights and anecdotes about the development of DAO and similar. It’s a 3 hour stream so I collected them here in case that’s of use to anyone (for example not everyone can watch streams which don’t have subtitles/captions). The stream is a fun/interesting watch though, so if you’re curious or able to watch I recc doing so. 😊 The rest of this post is under a cut for length.

Please note that there’s some paraphrasing on my part, this is not a transcript. There are also some additions from another dev who featured on the stream to give some commentary. The stream also contains more snippets that at times I couldn’t make out (I tried my best!).

(There is a mention of Cullen’s VA in the text below.)

DA4

Jon said he can talk about things about DA4 that aren’t “consumer-facing”, but he can’t say anything about the game that would be consumer-facing but which isn’t already publicly available. There are several reasons for this. One, that’s not his job, there are people whose job this is and they let each other do their respective roles. Two, BW are a publicly-traded company, so if he said something that could affect that that would be insider trading. Three, they’re not done making DA4 yet, so if he said that they have added [x] to the game and people got all excited about that or pre-ordered on that basis, but [x] ended up being cut, people would be like ‘BioWare lied to us’, when it’s just that things changed during the course of development, as is often the case

He’s glad that fans are excited for the game but notes that fan expectations are always double-edged. It can be really tough as some people started ‘playing’ the game in their heads as soon as they heard of it. That’s fine, he loves that, but he hopes that peoples’ expectations don’t turn into requirements. Clearly BW have alluded to certain characters, like Solas, being in the game, but some fans say things like “If [say] Morrigan isn’t in the game, then, rahhh!” Y’know, there’s a lot of talk about how certain characters have to be in the game, and yeah.

On characters which are quantum (i.e. characters which can die or which can have similar end-states as death in previous games): their being quantum makes it really hard for the devs to work with those characters in subsequent games. The devs naturally aren’t going to put as much effort into characters which could have died previously. A character can have had an amazing appearance throughout/role in a previous game, but if there is a risk of something happening to them and of them being removed [effectively] from the plot, it just doesn’t make sense to have them as a major character in a subsequent game. If a character can, say, sacrifice themselves in some glorious ending, the devs have to make sure that if they use them again, in worldstates where the character didn’t do that, the character is kind of ‘muted’, as the devs don’t want to disrespect the players who made a different choice

A comment in chat expressed a wish for Shale in DA4. Jon’s response is that he has no idea on that front

Bugs don’t come out of crunch, they come out of development in general. Crunch does impact on the quality of a game though. In recent years BW are always really trying to reduce crunch, they’re currently working really hard to bring it down. The best way of doing that is by controlling scope. As creatives it’s tough to balance wanting to make great stuff and be industry-leading with the desire to constantly do extra passes over things they’ve created like the audio, art etc. Their biggest enemy is time, other ways of reducing crunch or time spent in general include iterating tools to make often-repeated processes as time-efficient as possible

I think the following was an observation on the industry in general as opposed to a BW-specific/-exclusive comment: he thinks that as a result of this sort of thing [working to reduce crunch], a lot of games are going to have to be smaller and a lot more focused in scope i.e. the devs will have to focus on hitting the key selling points of that particular game/series as hard as they can, and cut down on branching out sideways/wide on a bunch of random other stuff

Jon doesn’t personally engage in character creators in games, but he knows that for some players that expression is worth a lot of time and focus. BW want to be industry-leading in this kind of stuff as it’s something which is interesting/key/integral to their games

In a way BW have made their own nest of problems what with every DA game being so different to the previous one. Still, he notes that each game has a staunch fanbase that says that their particular favorite game is the best one in the series

He doesn’t want people who think that DA4 isn’t what they want to buy it and be upset - there are so many other great games out there! BW are going to make the game they’re going to make - if some people like it, that’s great, and if some people don’t, that’s cool. Sometimes waiting until reviews are out and/or really seeing beforehand if a game is something that you want [has things/features in it that you want] prior to getting it - as opposed to jumping right in or pre-ordering - is a good idea. Fans don’t always know what they want, but they do know what they like - these are 2 different things

He hopes that whatever they ship for DA4, people go “I enjoyed this experience”, and that then, if there’s additional content for it down the road, people can decide, “do I want this further content?”

On hair: BW are using the new hair technology in the latest version of the Frostbite engine, so they’ll see what they can do! This was said in response to a comment about the hair in the latest FIFA games (as EA make FIFA)

A comment in chat asked about a flying mechanic (griffons). Jon’s response is that flying is such a heavy gameplay mechanic that you can’t put it in a game without everything in the game being built about it (see Anthem)

Relating to the above comment, in DA4 mounted combat would be cool but then they’d have to make the game ‘around’ mounted combat and make the mounted combat feature meaningful

On the underwater concept art: it should not be interpreted as a promise of gameplay. BW have amazing artists who sit down for a couple weeks while they’re in early production and just draw loads and loads of all kinds of stuff. Concept art is like a moodboard or Pinterest board. Elsewhere in the stream he advised, take all the concept art together like a mosaic and ask, ‘what is the overall theme[s] here?’, and to zoom out from individual details. [This stuff echoes PW’s word on concept art]

BW don’t generally write things or the choices as bleak as the choices in DAO were anymore. This is a conscious choice on their part, they want their game to be fun [note: this was said when the side quest in Orzammar where the Warden has the option of convincing a dwarven mother to abandon her young baby to die was being played through. It seems to refer to intensively grimdark choices/beats of this kind]

I think this was more of a general comment on games: SSDs (solid state drives) mean that players will see shorter elevator rides (Mass Effect - was this a reference to the remaster?) and fewer switchback corridors (those are actually loading zones). Generally, these are going to change mechanically the time it takes to do stuff in games

The devs have lots of features on their backlog that they’d like to offer players but each will ofc involve implementation and subsequent maintenance, and each one that is chosen to add is being chosen over something else. And sometimes, it’s hard for them to tell if [x] feature or [y] feature would be better to add to the game

They’re about to work on a giant feature (a pure tooling feature, something that isn’t consumer-facing) that is probably going to take ~2 staff years of effort [I think “staff effort” includes multiple staff working concurrently, so 2 years of staff effort doesn’t = 2 years of time chronologically] to get done in the next few months. They’re investing all this effort across the people working on it because they don’t want their artists and designers etc to have to deal with the problem that it’s going to solve anymore. I’m not sure what this feature is but elsewhere in the stream they referred to tooling and automation and gave the example of, the better your tooling is, the fewer times you have to manually set the camera for a human vs elf vs dwarf position, for dynamically-generated [cinematic?] content and for the first pass to be automated (if this is the case, less time is spent/wasted on redoing it and manually touching it up) [see last bullet point in this section]

He doesn’t know how big DA4 is going to be but said “let’s ballpark and say like most games it’ll be somewhere between 70 and 100 GB”

If we kept our Wardens as the PC throughout all 3 games, at the end they would be so powerful that it’d be a bit like “Let’s just do [thing], I’ve killed gods before, whatever”. He thinks it’s good that they have fresh characters each time in DA in order to reset that power level. Some people want more Commander Shepard in the next Mass Effect and he feels like, ‘what else could you possibly want / what else could that character possibly do after 3 games?’

When asked how much freedom he/they have now to focus on next gen, he said that there’s actually almost no difference on that front. The problems never change. They now have better renderers, better ray-tracing, better graphics cards etc, but they have always made DA games for high- and low-spec PCs, so it’s actually about gameplay systems. The freedom isn’t power-based and them getting access to more cores and more RAM generally isn’t going to change how the games are played. The games still have to be made for hard drives on PC. Dev creativity matters more than power here. The challenge of building a BW game is more about/from managing loads of different plotstates, loads of different art pieces, etc

On the title situation (two): names are the last thing they worry about because names have to go through legal before being approved. Every name, including character names, has to be checked in case it’s a famous person, or associated with something bad, or offensive in a different language due to localization etc

They don’t do face scans of people with big beards

There was also a bit about changes/developments to/in the cinematic design process and associated tooling [?] but I found it too hard to follow sorry >< This bit of commentary begins at timestamp ~ 1:52:45 and continues til ~ 2:00:05 [keep listening through the bit where they pause for a cutscene]

General BW

There’s currently ~350 staff in Edmonton, ~200 in Austin and more elsewhere

He notes that DA games sell pretty well, but relative to EA games in general, they’re a drop in the bucket compared to FIFA

DAI

5% of players of DAI never created a character [Q: does this refer to people who just used the default appearances/presets with no editing, or people who only played multiplayer?]

The mounts don’t actually go faster than running, this is an illusion

I think they said it has 55,000 lines of dialogue. [I’m pretty sure I remember devs elsewhere saying it has 80,000 lines of dialogue]

One of the companions had to have their name changed during development because of legal/translation reasons. It sounds like the original name sounded too close to something offensive

DA2

Back when DA2 was internally code-named “Nug Storm”: this was at the beginning when it was pitched to the team on a set of slides. The image on the slide for that pitch had devil horns, a metal hand and no flesh, it was just made out of fire and flames

DAO

The engine DAO is made on is the third engine that they tried for it during development. [David Gaider has gone into the DAO engine stuff some on Summerfall’s series of DAO playthrough streams]

The cracks on the cracked eluvian asset are modelled after the crack on the Tardis in Doctor Who from around that time, as at the time some devs had been talking about Doctor Who a lot. A dev actually added this factoid to DAO’s entry on TV Tropes but someone else (evidently not a DA dev) came by and deleted it saying that it was too much of a stretch x)

Before the game had its name there was an HTML script that randomly generated possible titles for consideration, it adds verbs and nouns together e.g. “Grim Dark”. One of the craziest possibilities that it once generated that the devs always remember is "Bone Wind”

One of the portraits that’s used for decoration around the world in-game (it’s of a bearded human man) is actually of a specific BW staff member

He played through Stone Prisoner, where Wilhelm’s son Matthias gives exposition in the cellar. Matthias is voiced by GE and this had been pointed out to Jon earlier on. Jon: “I don’t think that character’s voice acting was super strong there”

On the in-game area towards the end of Stone Prisoner: Outdoor areas in games are large and one of the things needed for them is streaming, so different chunks can be ‘streamed in’. There’s a tower [?], and technically the top of the tower was made an outdoor level so that sky stuff could be there, though it didn’t really need to be. The person that made it an outdoor level chose the very smallest chunk size for the terrain mesh, which determines how fine of a streaming they do. So when playing, every time you moved like 4 meters, the game would stream out 50-100 chunks behind you and the same in front of you (this is the bubble around the player of what actually exists). Because it was so small, it was constantly thrashing the CPU and disc to do all the loading. The devs were like “this isn’t going to work”, but they barely had any time. The solution: they made a new level that was outdoor and copied all the sunlight and other settings, but with the largest chunk size. They copy-pasted the entire level from one to the other. The problem with that many chunks then is that there was a giant expanse of flat terrain sticking out of the middle of the tower. They didn’t know if the story was going to involve shots of the outside of the tower for this sequence or not, so they took the terrain deformation tool and bundled all the terrain vertices at the bottom of the tower in a giant clump. So to this day there’s a mess of vertices and twisted terrain at the bottom of the final level that probably no-one has ever seen [not sure though if this anecdote is in reference to a place in that DLC or somewhere elsewhere in the game?]

There were also some tidbits on Anthem, however I didn’t note them down (sorry).

If you think I misheard or misunderstood anything from this stream please let me know and I will edit/fix it. :)

(Thankyou to some of my friends who explained a tech detail from this to me.)

[source] <-- current rewatch link

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #dragon age #bioware #video games #greg ellis mention #morrigan #queen of my heart #solas #mass effect #anthem #next mass effect #i love these factoids and insights into game dev it's so interesting and fun #i actually started this post yesterday but 2 hours in I was so sleepy (it was mad late) so I called it a night

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strawberrylemonz · 3 years

Text

Past and Present

Part 12

Part 13 [CURRENT]

Part 14

DT: @petrichormeraki @applepie1000 @jump-in-the-cadillac @ivorylin @sydneys-sketches

------------

Tommy quickly slapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late. The group in front of them turned to face the source of the group. Tommy mentally smacked himself upside the head as he pulled Fundy behind him, the Lovely Trio slipping behind him as Kristin and Grian stepped in front of Sam and Puffy, who held the children close. It wasn’t until three familiar faces made their way to him, that he felt like breaking. It wasn’t because Phil was there, concern and relief flooding his face as he looked over Tommy. It wasn’t because Techno was looming over them, facial expression unchanging, only betrayed by the several emotions going through his eyes. It wasn’t because of Ghostbur, because Ghostbur wasn’t floating there. He wasn’t even floating he was standing. There, standing with his hands stuffed into his pockets, stood Wilbur, who was very much alive. The three of them stepped towards the youngest member of their family, the one they missed so dearly, only to stop when he put his hands up in defense, stepping closer to the fox shifter behind him.

“Wilbur, you’re...you’re-”

“Tommy, you’re okay!”

Everyone on the Dream SMP frowned as Tommy made an “eh” noise, making a balancing movement with his hand as he peered back at the group behind him, all who, aside from Sam and Puffy, made similar noises and movements back at them. Much to their embarrassment, they were the only ones who found amusement to it. Regaining his composure, Tommy turned back to Kristin, giving her pleading eyes. She nodded before nudging Grian, who was already moving to pick up Theo. Clem smiled as she climbed into the embrace of her grandmother, hugging her with delight. After being reassured that the children were away from the group, Tommy returned his gaze to the members of his older server.

“Let’s go to a more private space. I would very much like you all more if you don’t start anything unnecessary during my opening.”

Without waiting for a response, Tommy turned and, after ensuring Fundy was safely in front of him, began walking out of the cavern, everyone else following behind. As he waved to guests and Hermits alike, he led the group into one of the larger taverns. Taking out a keycard from behind the automated desk, he patted the robot working there before walking over to a large set of double door. Humming a tune that caught Wilbur’s attention, he inserted the keycard and pushed the doors open, leading the group in. He closed the door after the last two people, who happened to be a very disgruntled Jack and Niki. After everyone was sat down in their own seats, they all exchanged uncertain looks. Finally, Fundy decided it was best to break the silence.

“So, I see the resurrection was successful.”

“Yeah, we managed to get Wilbur bac-”

“You have a son.”

Tommy saw Fundy stiffen beside him as the voice of Wilbur spoke up, quieter than they remembered. Fundy pressed his lips in a thin line as he peered up to his newly revived father. Giving him a little nod Fundy cleared his throat as he scratched the back of his neck.

“Yeah, I do. He’s great, you know. Very smart and fun, sneaky too.”

“Do I know who your significant other is?”

“I wouldn’t call him my significant other, we aren’t together. He was very...the situation was...we didn’t work out. But, yeah, you know him. You all do, actually.”

“Who is it?”

“Dream”

Fundy quickly spoke the name, reeling back as he waited for the expected backlash. Hesitating for a moment, he almost believed that, much like the situation with Tommy, he would receive no backlash. He was, however, quickly proven wrong. The only other revived man there was the first to speak up.

“WHAT?!”

“YOU FUCKED DREAM?!”

“LANGUAGE!”

“THE FURRY FUCKED GOD, OH MY FUCKING ENDER-”

“George? George, can you hear me? Dude, blink if you can hear me-”

“When we said ‘suck it green boy’, we didn’t mean literally!”

“How did you manage to get him to-”

As the chaos began to rise, Fundy began to shrink in his seat, panic settling in. Taking note of this, Tommy frowned as he tried to settle everyone down. When no one responded to him, he grew frustrated. Getting annoyed, Tubbo sat up to yell at the source of the chaos, only to find that he was beat to it. With a loud foot stomp, a booming voice yelled over the chaos.

“Will you all shUT UP?!”

Silence filled the room as everyone turned to face the source of the yell. There, fists clenched tightly by her side, stood Drista. Everyone hesitated about her next course of action, as the eyes on her mask seemed to glow with her annoyance. As she sat down, crossing her arms and legs together, she huffed as she prepared to speak up once more. Much to her annoyance, however, the door to the room creaked open, a new presence creeping in.

“Sorry I’m late, you all have seem to have forgotten me back on my server.”

Everyone watched as the figure approached, Fundy shrinking in his seat. Tommy stiffened in his own, one hand in Tubbo’s, the other clamped around Fundy’s wrist. Tubbo, on the other hand, glared at the floor as he held onto Tommy’s hand, as if that alone would solve their issues. The figure, now more visible to be Dream, hummed as he stood in between the three boys and the members of his server. Seeming to only focus on the three, he crossed his arms as he laughed.

“Wow, I didn’t think I’d see you three again. Tommy, Tubbo, it’s been years. Good to see you two in good shape. Fundy, I haven’t seen you in a little over two years. Didn’t think that I’d find you here, of all places. Did you all miss m-”

SMACK

Everyone stared in shock as Dream held onto his face, trying to keep his mask steady as he regained his balance. Once he quickly regained his composure, he quickly turned to face his “attacker.” Standing in all her glory, stood his sister, hands on her hips as she stood there, anger simmering underneath her mask. As she stood up straight, she hummed in acknowledgment as Lani walked up beside her, leaning on her for support. Holding her hand out, Lani smirked as Drista gave her a high five. The beginning of their best friend handshake was cut short, however, when Dream spoke up once again.

“Drista? When did you get here? Is this where you’ve been? Why haven’t you come by to visit me-”

“Oh, I don’t know, why did you never reach out to me? And if you had bothered to show up to the revealing of the park on time, you would have known where I’ve been. Now sit down and stay quiet so we can all catch up.”

“And none of you better try attacking! All guests are unable to do any form of pvp that’s not in any of the special arenas, so don’t even try!”

“Yeah, what Lani said!”

--------

The group was walking to the opposite side of Tavern Town, towards the booth games. Fundy was walking with Quackity and Karl, telling them of al the projects he had done since he last saw them. Not trusting her brother at all, Drista walked beside Dream, Lani joining in on keeping an eye on the admin. Tubbo was catching up with Ranboo, as well as timidly speaking with an unusually kind Schlatt. Humming as he walked in the front of the group, Tommy bopped his head as he replayed a song in his head. Opening his mouth, he quietly sang out the lyrics that swam in his head.

“He’s in your bed-”

“-I’m in your Twitch chat”

Jumping slightly, Tommy turned to see Wilbur, walking up to be by his side. Joining him in this was both Phil and Techno, the three of them as awkward as ever. Unsure as to what to expect from them, Tommy just gave them a nod of acknowledgment. As much as he wanted to embrace the three of them into a grand hug, telling them how much he missed and loved them, he didn’t dare to do so. After all the years they spent away from each other, he was able to reflect and forgive them for the wrong things they’ve done to him, intentional or not. What he didn’t know, however, was how they viewed him after all these years. Did they forgive him for all the troublesome chaos he caused, intentional or not? Could they find it in themselves to do so? He didn’t blame them if they didn’t, he wasn’t even sure if he would.

“You know, we thought that you had died, mate. No one had seen you in so long after...after L’manburg. And I know he isn’t family, but he practically was, so it was concerning when Tubbo went missing too. Then, out of nowhere, Fundy was gone overnight. I thought I lost my family, so I became desperate to get Wilbur back so that the three of us could get you all back.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, mate?”

“Why get us back? Why want us as family?”

Did he forgive them? Yes, of course he did. Doesn’t mean that he had to forget their actions, as well as the consequences that came from them. Doesn’t mean that he wasn’t allowed to question their decisions. He still loved them, sure, but he needed answers. He needed to know if they loved him back, if they loved all of them. He watched as Wilbur was in deep thought, trying to find the right words to say. He turned to see Phil, emotion running through his face as he stared at Tommy, not knowing what to say to his questions. The last person he thought would speak up, spoke up.

“We were blinded by our own emotions, Thes- er, Tommy. That’s not an excuse for our impulsive decisions, especially ones that put your life at stake, we know this. But we are family, as much as I tried to run away from that fact over the last few years. I let the voices and the power that I held as a pvp god distract me from my original mission.”

“Original mission? What was that?”

“Protecting you. Well, protecting everyone in my family. I have always been protective of my family, but the first night you were brought home changed how I handled that. The moment you laughed, I knew that I had to get stronger to keep all of you safe. I never thought that I’d use that strength against the very same person who brought me to want to become stronger. I’m not going to beat around the bush, we’ve been a shit family to each other these past years. We’ve hurt you, in ways that we may not even know. But, Tommy, if you let us, we can try to be the family you deserve.”

Tommy stared at his eldest brother, surprise painting his face. Blinking a few times, he switched his gaze over to both Phil and Wilbur, before returning it to Techno. Lightly biting his tongue, he took his gaze off of the pink haired warrior and faced the front, refusing to look at any of the three men walking beside him. Finally putting proper words together in his mind, Tommy spoke up once more.

“You all have hurt me in a handful of ways, that is true. But I’ve also hurt all of you, too. For all that, I’m sorry. As for not being a family, that can’t be solved quickly. This isn’t something we can speedrun into a healthy dynamic.”

“Tommy, we-”

“But that doesn’t we still can’t heal. If you are all willing to take the time and effort to work with all of us to fix our family, I’m willing to give you that chance. Oh, and Technoblade? You can call me Theseus, it is a part of my name, after all.”

Tommy couldn’t help but smile as the tension from the three men left their bodies, relief taking its place. Peering behind him, he made eye contact with his nephew, who stared back with worry. His worry, however, melted into a content smile as Tommy gave him a reassuring nod. Waving him over, Tommy smiled as Fundy excused himself, jogging up to be at his uncle’s sign.

“Hey, Tom- Hey!”

“Haha! Look at you, being all amazing!”

“Can you not be an embarrassing uncle for five seconds?”

“Nope!”

Fundy rolled his eyes at his uncle, laughing for a while before standing up straight. Ducking his head in nervousness, he gave a shy smile and wave to his grandfather, as well as his other uncle and father. Before words were exchanged, however, a frantic wail filled the air, catching Fundy’s attention immediately. Taking a few steps in front of everyone else, he kneeled down with arms open. Running towards him was Theo, wide eyes as he reached for his father, who lifted him into the air in an instant. Burrowing his face into the neck of his father, Theo dramatically wailed once more. The concern that once filled Fundy and Tommy had melted away at this. They now knew that he wasn’t in danger, he was just overreacting. The two of them would bet anything that a certain gremlin was behind this.

“Theo, what’s wrong, buddy?”

“SHE WAS GIVEN A SWORD, WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIIIIIIEEEEE!!!!!”

Fundy and Tommy gave each other a look, both unsure as how to respond to that. A shrill shriek of joy caught the entire group’s attention. There, frantically swiping a wooden sword in the air, came a joyful Clementine at full speed. Running up to Fundy, she began to jump up and down, sword waving in the air, as she tried to reach Theo, who had managed to climb on top of his father’s head.

“DON’T LET HER REACH ME, PAPA!!! SHE’S CRAZY WITH THAT THING!!!”

Theo shrunk behind his father’s hat as Clementine reacted to his statement by growling at the fox hybrid. Sighing, Tommy scooped up the rowdy child, who squealed as she hugged the sword.

“Clem, ya can’t go around swinging a sword at your cousin. And don’t ever hug an actual sword, ever, dear god. I’d like you to keep your fucking limbs, Jesus Christ.”

Clem only responded to this with a giggly smile, turning back to face her cousins. Fundy rolled his eyes as he plucked his son off his head, cradling him in his arm as Theo hugged his father’s hat in his chest.

“Clem, what do we say when we hurt someone or make them scared?”

“SUCK IT!!!”

“For fucks sake, Clementine, no. We say that to jackasses and assholes, not to your cousin. Try again, Clem.”

“Humph, sorry, TT.”

“Hm, okay! I forgive you, CC!”

Before the children, who were now conversing in their own secret language, were introduced to everyone, a concerned Grian and Kristin ran over. Once they saw the children, they physically relaxed.

“Thank goodness they came to you guys, we nearly panicked when they ran. Things were going great, but then Clementine whacked Grian on the foot before turning her attention to Theo.”

“It’s what we expected, this is Clementine we’re talking about.”

“Grian? Is that really you?”

Grian stiffened as he turned to face Phil, Wilbur and Techno staring at him in disbelief. Rubbing his arm in uncertainty, he watched as Phil walked up to him. Eyes scanning his face, Phil let out a strangled noise as he threw his arms around Grian, never expecting to see his first missing son after all the years that passed by. Grian let out a sigh as he hugged back, a smile painted on his face. Pulling away, he let out a laugh as he turned to his brothers. Shooting Tommy a look, Grian snickered at the nod of approval given to him. Turning back to Wilbur and Techno, he let out a hearty laugh as he yelled out words that Techno knew too well.

“OH, I’M PRESSING THAT HUG BUTTON!!!”

“Wait-”

Tommy wheezed out a laugh as Wilbur and Techno were pulled into a group hug by Grian, the triplets finally being reunited. It wasn’t until they heard the choked up and shy tone that came when Phil spoke.

“Kristin? How, uh, hey! How up? What’s you? Shit, wait, no. How are you?”

“Really? Decades separated, and this is the greeting I get.”

“I didn’t mean to be-”

“At least buy me dinner, sheesh.”

#memories in the stars #memories in the stars au #hermit!tommy au #hermit!fundy #hermit!Kristin #hermit!Tommy fankid #fwt fankid theo #mcyt fanfiction #PRESS THAT HUG BUTTON POG #Grian Wilbur and Techno are triplets au #Grian Wilbur Techno and Tommy are brothers au #Clementine and Theo are at it again #Pogs for the gremlin children

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crescentsteel · 3 years

Text

Keeping a Secret - Prologue

plot: ehehe lemme leave this blank for now as this is only a prologue genre: fluff, crack, slow burn, eventual smut, sexual tension, angst at some point wc: 2.7k

[a/n]

I am reeling just from finishing this one because Tsukki is my boy (Kuroo ily too i swear)

Who writes 2.7k words of prologue? lol me

I’ll set up the masterlist when I’m done with the 1st Chapter.

Thank you so much @oii-sugasan and @haikyuu-is-for-lovers for the betaread! :)

Let me know if you wanna be tagged

Chapter 1 || masterlist

You aren’t just annoying. You’re a fucking menace. Every time he goes to the gym, your presence is like a plague. You're just a manager, but sometimes he thinks that you think you’re the assistant coach. There’s nothing he’d love more than to shower you with the nastiest, most off-handed comments, just to shut you up and wipe the cheery grin that taunts him every time he sees you.

Seriously, you’re all over the place -- you talk to all members of the team as if you’re a player yourself, you nag everyone to take care of themselves outside training like you’re their older sister, you hand out self-gathered information on upcoming matches as soon as matchups are announced, you scamper around the gym tossing balls, assembling the net, doing whatever the hell you can get your hands on, all the while wearing those stupid shorts that distract the majority of the team, especially the new members.

As his eyes follow you, you suddenly turn around to face him, breaking him from his reverie. Even when you’re halfway across the gymnasium, he can see the sharp playfulness that you always exude whenever you talk to him.

“Tsukishima!” You wave at him with that disgustingly sweet grin. “If you’re done staring at my sexy back, you can start your blocking drills, okay?!” you shout with a voice loud enough for everyone else in the gym to hear. Tsukishima feels multiple sets of eyes glance towards his direction and he ‘tsks’ in annoyance under his breath.

He immediately walks away. He refuses to hear more of the unnecessary and untrue prattles directed at him by you.

He hears footsteps follow him. Judging from its pace and heavy strides, he already knows its Kogane without even looking

“Oi, Tsukki. Do you like our manager?”

He doesn’t understand why Kogane is whispering when you’re half a court away from them. More than that, he doesn’t understand why Kogane assumes he likes you. For one, you were wrong: he wasn’t even staring at you. He was staring randomly at nothing while thinking about how irritating you are and you just happened to be at his line of sight.

“I don’t see anything to like about her,” he replies passively.

“What? Why? She’s super helpful -- and pretty too.” Kogane, just like the rest of the team, believes so. Even Kyoutani is fond of you because of that one time you received his spike on full force. You rolled on your back from the sheer power of it but you were able to receive it perfectly, making the whole team go wild when you did, with him as the only exception as he found it inane.

“If you think so, go confess or something then.”

“You know we can’t!” Pink stains begin to surface on his teammate’s cheeks, obviously infatuated with you. Then again, this is not new to him. It was a basic reaction from anyone whose dick is more functional than their brain. Maybe it’s because you’re the only female so close to everyone else. Honestly, he really doesn’t know. But one thing’s for sure. Kogane has 0 chances with you, and neither does every player of Sendai Frogs.

He remembers the conceitedness you displayed even in your first year as a manager. You two became part of the team almost at the same time. He was two months in when the former manager introduced you to the team. As she finished introducing you, you whispered to her to add something. It went something like ‘oh, umm. y/n-chan also said that no one from the team can’t date her.’ Even the former manager looked at you weirdly but you were just there beaming as you bowed to everybody.

They thought it was a joke, but when you became a full-pledged manager in less than six months, you announced it yourself.

‘I know I’m kind of cute, but I won’t ever consider dating anyone from the team. Okay?’

You announce it with a sickening smile every time there are new members, reminding everyone else that you’re untouchable.

It’s fucking atrocious, to him at least. Unlike the other players from his team, he’s not shallow enough to fancy you just because you’re not disgusting to look at, or that you did your managerial duties so exceedingly well.

He grits his teeth. He hates it. How can someone so chaotic as you be so effective in managing the team. What grinds him even more is that you go to the same university he does, and even there, your presence stinks. He once had a class with you only to find out that you’re not as dumb as you make yourself out to be.

It’s infuriating. He can’t wait for the day you mess up -- only then would he finally get the chance to diss you. He’ll turn that shit-eating smile of yours upside down.

Man, nothing boosts your mood better than bugging Tsukishima. When you felt his sinister stare boring at your back earlier, you just couldn’t waste the opportunity to say something about it. He just ignored you, but the scowl on his face was enough response to satisfy you.

The truth is, you have nothing against Tsukishima. Yeah, he has a sharp tongue and a vile attitude, but hey, he’s a good team player. He doesn’t speak much, but he gets shit done in matches. Despite his foul personality, he’s actually manageable: he listens to you and he rarely shows up late. He’s not particularly motivating to look at, but he still does what’s asked of him. For some reason that you don’t know, he still hasn’t spat out his usual, rancid remarks towards you. You know he’s itching to, and honestly, you’re kind of curious of what he’ll throw your way.

Still, for the last three years he kept his mouth shut even though he looks at you like you’re the most unpleasant being he’s ever laid eyes on.

“Y/n!”

You jog towards the team coach, Coach Mira. “Yes, Coach?”

“Do you like Tsukishima?” she asks curiously. The question is funny to you but you hold back the laughter and smile instead.

You like Coach Mira a lot. She’s more like an older sister than a coach to you. You’re free to share a few laughs with her, and she values your input to the team. Maybe it’s because you’re both women drowned in a sea of male athletes that you sort of have that innate connection.

“No, Coach. Why?”

“Cause you pay attention to him the most.”

“I don’t see what’s to like about him,” you veer your gaze towards his direction, watching his scowling face as he walks away, Koganegawa following closely behind him. You can’t hear them, but the sight is already amusing as it is. “I just like putting him in place whenever he’s being extra nasty,” you add.

“If you say so, y/n. Honestly, I don’t really care if you go out with one of them.”

You wave your hand back and forth like you’re swatting a fly. “No way, Coach. They’re like little boys I’m taking care of.”

She sweeps her gaze behind you, scanning all the players present in the court. “Can’t say they feel the same way though.” Then she looks at the same person you’re looking at. “Well, maybe except for Tsukishima.”

“That’s why I like messing around with him the most,” you admit with mirth as you watch Tsukishima get away from Kogane.

Everyone in the gymnasium is staring as they enter the arena. If there’s one thing opposing teams remember about the Sendai Frogs, it’s their female tandem of a stone-cold coach and a ‘hot,’ bubbly manager who walk side by side in front of the whole team, not the players.

It’s not really an issue for Tsukishima. He doesn’t really care. Shimizu had the same reputation back in high school. But you? You’re not Shimizu. You aren’t even close.

And you, being the chaotic mess that you are, you milked the attention. Whenever someone blatantly gapes at you, you’d wave at them. You’d even entertain those who openly flirted with you. In retrospect, he should find it despicable. Rather finds it entertaining. So does the rest of the team.

When the Sendai Frogs reach their spot, a guy wearing a Tamaden Elephants jersey approaches you shamelessly. A brave (maybe a little bit foolish) act, considering you’re with the whole team.

“Hi!”

You turn around and greet him just as enthusiastically, maybe even more.

“I just want to say, great game from last season, he says as he scratches the back of his head.

Liar.

If the guy really wants to acknowledge the team’s play from last season, he’d approach one of the players. He also wouldn’t have that stupid blush on his awe-struck face.

“Thank you! Great game indeed,” you return the compliment.

As soon as the guy starts fidgeting, Tsukishima can already guess what comes next: it’s either a date or your number.

“If you don’t mind, can I get your number?”

Tsukishima sneers at how predictable the scene is, and he can’t wait to see what comes next.

You beam at the guy. “Sure! It’s number 1.”

He still smiles even though he’s obviously dumb-founded. “Sorry, what?”

“My number, right? It’s 1. Cause we’re number 1 in the district,” You say with that fake innocence that isn’t really fooling anyone.

“...Uhh.”

“Go Sendai Frogs!” You cheer out of the blue and as if an automated response, the rest of the team, even Tsukishima (though lifelessly), answers.

“Sendai Frogs fight!”

The loud baritone of deep male voices drew the attention of other people in the area, brightening your face up even more as you focus on the guy in front of you again. He looks scandalized by what just happened.

“How about you? What’s your number?” you ask, pushing the guy to a mental corner as Tsukishima and his team glares at him while waiting for how he’ll answer. An embarrassed blush replaces the previously infatuated one as he realizes that he shouldn’t have made the mistake of hitting on you.

“I-I’m not really sure,” his voice loses any shred of confidence it once had.

“Oh. That’s too bad,” you feign sympathy.

“Yeah.” The guy looks down. “Guess I’ll see you around,” he adds before retreating defeatedly.

“Bye! Nice to meet you,” you wave cordially. ‘Whoever you are, newbie elephant,’ you say to yourself as you watch the unfamiliar member of the Elephants go back to his team, a team you wiped the floor with last season.

Until now, you don’t understand why people still even bother. You welcomed the flirtations, but never really went out with anybody. You’re not really opposed to getting in a relationship, but like -- Gooood! They’re all so uninteresting. Rejecting them is more fun than the mere prospect of dating them.

You feel a familiar touch on your shoulder.

“Good job boosting the team morale,” Coach Mari says in a volume that only you can hear as she pats you.

“Thanks, Coach!” You grin at her praise.

You turn around to check your players and your eyes instantly land on Tsukishima who had just put on his white headphones and began scrolling at his phone. Around him, everyone else has already started stretching.

You bounce your way to him, knowing that you’d instantly get his attention even without saying anything. But even with you ogling when you stopped in front of him, he still doesn’t budge.

“Tsukishima.”

No response.

‘Heh,’ you snicker internally. He never fails to amuse you when he tries to ignore you.

“Tsu~ ki~ shi~ ma~” You bob your head sideways, popping at the opposing sides of his phone so he’ll notice you.

You don’t miss the minute twitch of his eyes as he drags his phone closer to him in an attempt to shut you out.

Tsk tsk. He should know better by now that you're not the type to back away.

You go beside him instead, tiptoeing so you can see what he’s so busy looking at. As soon as your arms touch his, he puts down his phone and irritatedly removes his headphones.

He’s shooting daggers at you, making you giddy with excitement as he looks like he’s about to say something you. You hold his gaze with a raised eyebrow and subtle smirk that you couldn’t suppress. Did he get fed up already? Is he finally going to say something?

‘Do it. Do it. Do it,’ you chant in your head.

He takes in a painful deep breath instead. “What?” The single word contains so much disdain that you want to cackle so bad.

“Shouldn’t you be stretching?” you query.

“In a bit.”

You leisurely shake your head with disapproval. “I know you’re a lazy ass fucker sometimes,” you begin. “But you always help us win. You’re our meanest, tallest, best blocker.” Your gaze drops down to his ankles and travels up.

“So,” you continue, dropping your voice amusedly, “stretch those gorgeous, God-given, legs you have.” Your eyes linger on his thighs before landing up to his face to smile sweetly at him. “Will you?”

This is one of the moments you’re pretty sure he won’t dare talk back at you. Why? Because you’re one hundred percent right, and he knows that too.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t hate it.

He glares at you for one second and walks towards the rest of the team to join them.

Playing at the professional level, he always considers one match to be a big win already, even if it’s just the first match of the regular rounds. Ever since he became a starter for Sendai Frogs, he was not allowed to slack off even for one rally. He could take the lecture if it’s from Coach, but he couldn’t stomach it if it’s from you.

Even before the match started, you were already on his grill, pestering him just because he wasn’t warming up yet. He was pissed the whole game and put extra effort than usual to make sure that you won’t have anything to say after.

“Um, excuse me.” A girl from Red Rabbits blocks him on his way to the restroom. “Tsukishima, right?”

He can tell that she is trying her best to look nonchalant, but the familiar tint on her face is telling.

Tsukishima had never understood girls who approach him for anything remotely romantic. Does he look like he’s interested? It’s not that he’s not open to the idea of dating, but he finds it unpleasant when people go after him because they like how he plays. Worse, for some obtuse reason like him being ‘cute.’

“Yes. Why?”

She smiles at him bashfully with her arms crossed behind her. “I’m also a middle blocker. I was really inspired with how you read block so well. If it’s okay with you, can you teach me how you do it?”

Why would he do that? He’s already a senior college student who’s also a professional athlete. He has no reason to go out of his way to teach someone read blocking. Especially someone who’s already supposed to know it since (as she claims) she’s also a middle blocker. Judging from where they currently are, someone from Division 1 no less.

“Sorry. I’m really busy,” he says bluntly.

“Oh, okay. Sorry for bothering you.” She bows then takes off immediately.

He watches as the girl from Red Rabbits scampers off as quickly as humanly possible. Did she really think he’d agree to it?

He is too occupied to notice the faint sound of footsteps behind him, and only when you speak does he notice your presence.

“Aww, poor girl going out of her way to ask you out.”

He groans. Why are you even here? You’re supposed to be checking on the team since their match just ended.

You fall into step beside him as he brushes your comment off and continues heading for the rest rooms.

“I didn’t ask her to,” he calmly responds despite your irksome presence.

“How are you going to get a girlfriend like that?” you ask exaggeratedly as if not getting in a relationship will lead to his ruin.

“I don’t need one.”

You gasp. “Damn, Tsukishima. Men your age are all about raging hormones. Where do you put all that raging testosterone?”

He purses his lips in a corner, his jaw tensing at your remark. Men his age? You talk as if you’re older when you’re in the same year he is.

Also, what the fuck?

Now you’re nagging about his personal life too? You’re already aggravating as the team manager. Now you’re even sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.

His blatant irritation must have shown in his face because you suddenly let out a giggle. “My bad, my bad. Don’t look so scary. Geez. Where you get action is none of my business. I just followed you to let you know that we’re leaving in twenty minutes.”

You turn around, about to go back but stop before you make the first step. “Oh, and we have a meeting later. I did the stat sheets of the game and gave it to the coach already. Great blocking, Tsukishima!” You pat his shoulder twice with a proud smile, then saunter off back to the arena.

Damn it. If only you aren’t so good at being a manager, he would actually be able to dislike you to the fullest. Not only that, he wouldn’t feel that silly, tiny contentment he felt upon hearing you.

Chapter 1 || masterlist

Taglist:(those crossed out can’t be tagged)

@ameliaxo @suikrem @akaashisslave @tsumurai @babythotshq

#tsukishima x reader #tsukishima x you #tsukishima fluff #tsukishima crack #haikyuu x reader #tsukishima angst #tsukisima series #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu crack

252 notes · View notes

goonlalagoon · 3 years

Text

The stars must look on forever || Second Star to the Left

Bell Summers is supposed to be minding three Scouts.

Three months in, Gwendolyn Hartley hasn’t answered a single one of their calls, and all they can think is maybe I already failed. When the comms finally spark to life, they almost fall off of their chair in relief even as they snap accusing protocol down the line because it’s better than saying thank god thank god thank god you’re alive thank god you’re okay to a stranger.

It’s a thought that will repeat.

Read on Ao3

(Spoilers through to end of ep. 10 below)

Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was.

- J.M. Barrie Peter Pan

When they receive the data packet detailing their three assigned scouts, Bell spends the whole night curled up reading through every detail, narrating key details to Gigo. They’ll read it all again in the morning, and again a few weeks later, and again the night before landfall, until they’ve memorised it - the scant personal details, names and pronouns and birthdates, the more detailed medical records (you can’t monitor someone’s physical condition without knowing the baseline, without knowing that Mikail mustn’t eat tomatoes and the schedule for when Hartley has to do regular maintenance on her prosthesis), the dense reports on what’s known of their destination planets. They use up highlighters and scrawl on post it notes.

Strictly, it isn’t Bell’s job to know the first thing about the planets beyond the elevator summary, but they were a scout before they were a minder. The structure of the dossier hasn’t changed a bit, and they absorb it all. They don’t know what they missed, on their failed expedition, but they won’t let it happen again. They can’t.

Priyanka isn’t a surprise; they knew that strings were being pulled specifically to line them up to be the assigned minder for Pri’s mission, because Pri’s uncle knew that if it came down to it Summers would burn every tenuous bridge they’d managed to rebuild to get her off the planet, and damn the consequences. They’re all so, so proud of Pri for getting through training, for being clever enough and strong enough and driven enough to make it, and they’re so worried too. Bell would burn any bridges, of course they would, but not every danger has enough of a time window to drag resources into place.

Mikail on paper seems promising - when his comms unit splutters into life as he’s speeding through the stars, months into the first year of expected isolation, he seems promisingly eccentric. He’s a cheerful rambler to Pri’s quiet snark, chattering about the reading he’s doing and the experiments he ran on the side back in training. They listen, gauge his wellbeing and start the slow work of building up trust, and try to ignore the smile tugging at their lips. This burring curiosity would serve him well, they think in the early days, exploring and studying and mapping out a whole new planet, so long as it didn’t kill him. It was their job to make sure it didn’t, that he remembered to eat and sleep and build proper shelters. That he remembered he couldn’t live off of curiosity and scientific glee alone.

Hartley doesn’t respond at all.

Bell checks all of the reports they can, to see if the signal is disrupted or there’s any suggestion that there’s been a technical issue, but everything shows up as working. They can see readouts of Hartley’s vitals, pulse rate and oxygen levels, so they know she’s alive. Probably. If one thing has gone wrong with the shuttle, who knows what other bizarre glitches may have cropped up.

They tell themselves that everything is fine, that there must just be a wire loose in the radio unit or, much more likely, Hartley has just decided that she doesn’t need a scout-minder and wants to go solo, has decided that Summers is an unnecessary and patronising addition to the mission. They submit false reports on Hartley’s well being, because they have absolutely no issue with lying to their superiors when they know the consequences for revealing that one of their three scouts has gone radio silent before even making landfall.

They talk to Pri and Mikail regularly, review condition reports on all three of them, ping Hartley every day and get no response.

They tell themselves that everything is fine.

Bell Summers is supposed to be minding three Scouts.

Three months in Gwendolyn Hartley hasn’t answered a single one of their calls, and all they can think is maybe I already failed. When the comms finally spark to life, they almost fall off of their chair in relief even as they snap accusing protocol down the line because it’s better than saying thank god thank god thank god you’re alive thank god you’re okay to a stranger.

It’s a thought that will repeat.

Retrieving your scout bot hadn’t been a tradition for Bell’s local program. They wonder if it’s one that other programs have, or if it’s just Hartley’s program, one of the small, unofficial differences that most of the time no-one ever knows about. It’s not like scouts regularly get the chance to compare notes outside of their cohort.

If they kept to their class promise, Pri and Mikail had been familiar enough with their minder after three months to not inform them of where they were going - neither of them were in the habit of thinking aloud to their bots, either, which would have made it easier to hide that they weren’t strictly following protocol. Gwen was defiantly independent, uncaring of her unexpected monitoring, and Bell wanted to cheer her on and reign her in at the same time.

They guess most places have a tradition or two, some secret pact amongst scouts who are pointing themselves out to the stars and seeing where they land. Something to tether you, when you set foot on a new planet and know you’re on your own, something that ties you back to the people you left behind. Bell takes a moment to be grateful that their pact hadn’t been quite so risky; instead of venturing out into the unknown before even setting up a shelter, they had sworn to wake up early, ignoring all the schedules and warnings and automated messages prompting them to get their full six hours - find somewhere high and climb up to watch the first sunrise on planet.

They’d scraped the skin off their palms clambering to their highest point, winced as they cradled the thermos they’d carried up with them and the warmth stung the broken skin. The ground had been damp, seeping through the seat of their trousers, a bite to the air that made their nose run, but they’d done it. They’d pointed Gigo in the right direction to record the sight, this first dawn over a new horizon, the first day of their new life.

Despite everything that happened, the nightmare things had turned into, the bitter taste on the back of their throat whenever they think back to the way it had gone, it’s a memory that brings a smile to their face even as they scold. It’s a memory that they might not have thought to be precisely worth it, if they’d known at the start what they’d learned by the end, but it’s a memory they cling to all the same.

They can’t help but be a little glad that there’s some kind of tradition for Gwen, too, even as they worry aloud about structures and protocols and whether Hartley is going to have the shelters up in time.

The shelters have air filtration built in, have temperature regulation, and are designed to withstand the harshest of conditions. If everything turns to dust, they think the shelters will keep their scouts alive for long enough to find a solution.

They direct all three of their scouts to build an emergency beacon, the one deviation from the protocols that Bell told themselves at the start that they’d not only permit but encourage - no, insist upon.

The union had fought so hard for assigned minders, for check ins on alternate days and a reliable source of human contact, citing studies of mental well-being and the importance of support networks, but it all went one way. Bell would call their three charges every other day, talk to them or listen in as they went about their business for the mandated four hours, and review any data packets the scouts copied them into when they were sent out to home office - to monitor for adhesion to proper protocol, for signs of strain, and for their own scientific curiosity. The scouts would answer the call, update them, then be stuck waiting a day and a half for the next call. If there was an emergency, they would have no way to reach out, to ask for help.

If something happened, Bell wouldn’t know until they tried to call and no-one answered.

The beacons meant that the scouts could at least ping them, a request for contact that would tell Bell to drop everything and grab their headset. With a few quick instructions, the beacon could be altered - honestly, any of the scouts probably knew enough engineering to figure it out themselves - so that it wasn’t locked to just the one frequency.

If there was an emergency, if their scouts were let down by all official channels, Bell wanted them to be able to reach out to anyone else who might listen, to have the choice to burn their own bridges for the sake of living. They thought, sometimes, that if it had just been them they wouldn’t have called on the smugglers, but they wouldn’t ask the same of these three scouts; looking through the dossiers, curled into a narrow bunk on a half decrepit station, Bell had already known that they’d beg them to do whatever it took to survive.

It’s not even that they’re that much younger than Bell - only a few years their junior - but they seem it. They seem so painfully young, practically children for all that they’re in their twenties. Still caught in the excitement of it, lost children pointing themselves at the stars and planning to map it all by hand.

Bell had been that young, once, before everything - before they spent years alone on a planet, before they were told your lives aren’t worth saving and turned around to save them anyway, before all of the ongoing consequences of that choice drove the knife that much deeper.

What are you going to do if something goes wrong? snipes scout Hartley, her first day on planet as she’s standing on shaky legs, leaning on Boots because she managed to get bitten by something venomous on her little jaunt into the undergrowth. Listen?

Bell splutters something back, because they know how useful this can be - someone to talk to, someone to do research when you’re stuck, knowing that someone picked up the phone and heard you out. Knowing that someone out there will notice, if you disappear for good.

They don’t sleep well, staring at the ceiling over their bunk, thinking. They know it can help - they know they can help, that Hartley would probably be a lot more inclined to listen if she knew that her minder had walked this road themselves - but they can’t hide from the harsh truth.

If it comes to it, if one of these three scouts finds themselves trapped in an apocalypse, sends up a beacon to say it’s all falling apart and I have no way out - all they can do is listen, and hope it’s enough.

Priyanka falls ill, and they don’t notice.

Pri has been important to them for years, but they’ve never been close, exactly. They know each other mostly from stories shared by Pri’s uncle, and there’s a level of familiarty that you don’t get from those kinds of tales, from a few months’ worth of regular check ins. Hartley notices, sees something amiss between the lines of the letters Pri sends her, and she does the only thing she can, flags it to their shared scout-minder - she does the only thing she can and speaks up, hoping that someone will listen.

Bell wonders, later, once Gwen has been proven terribly right, if maybe this is the first time that Hartley has thought of their presence as anything other than an annoyance. Pri, once she got over the change in expectations, had been glad to have a semi-familiar presence on the line, someone who she could trade family gossip with when she felt like it and had worked out an agreement with for the time when she didn’t want to bother with conversation, and Mikail had been cheerful enough from the start to have someone to talk to about all his ideas and findings, but Hartley had always seemed - resentful, maybe, like having Bell shatter her solitude was unwelcome, for all that she seemed to agree with the union on the practicalities of providing a life line of contact.

Pri fell ill, and Bell didn’t notice.

They remind themselves, over and over, that it hadn’t been obvious. Gwen, Mikail and Pri had studied together for years, lived in each other’s pockets as they made the same harsh choice to leave everything they knew behind with no guarantee they’d ever be able to get any of it back. It makes sense that Gwen had seen something Bell didn’t, they know it makes sense, but they can’t keep from going back over every report, replaying every conversation, trying to pick up the hints of a change that they hadn’t seen.

What else would they miss?

They lose Mikail to a storm, nothing but static when they try again and again to call. Bell hunches over their monitor in their tiny cubicle, punching buttons with fingers that want to shake, hoping that if they try just once more it will go through. They’d known the risks, all of them, of course they had, but -

This was what they’d feared most, when they took the job. If a planet collapsed, if it came to it, they had strings they could pull with the smugglers, had learned already where they drew the line. The worst news they’d expected to have to deliver would have been bad news, the settlement office doesn’t care about you at all and won’t cough up any of their copious spare change to save you, but good news I’ve got some friends on their way, so sit tight and keep the line open. But they’d known the statistics for scout missions; they’d known that they’d be stuck on one end of a line through accidents, through unforeseen dangers.

Bell had wondered, on sleepless nights, what they would do if they called one of their scouts and got nothing in return. They’d thought they would have gotten used to it, what with Hartley turning off all comms for literal months before they finally made contact, but this was different. At least with the shuttles they’d had the readouts, vital signs and tracking, to guess that things were probably okay.

Mikail was just gone, and they thought about what Gwen had told them, what Mikail had never mentioned directly for all his endless chatter - of all the scouts, of all the planets, they’d sent the one who hated water and despised swimming to a place he couldn’t escape the sea.

They had never met their scouts, but they had seen them in photos. There hadn’t been pictures included in their briefing information because it wasn’t necessary, but Bell had wanted a mental image of the people they were speaking to, so they’d looked up the relevant records in the system. Pri they’d seen in pictures before, shared by a proud uncle, but Gwen and Mikail had just been names with attached heights and weights until they called up the photos attached to their official IDs.

It meant they could imagine - Mikail, on his island, frowning at the waves and smiling at his scans. Mikail, caught in the water, washed away in a storm surge - they see it, over and over, whenever they try to sleep.

The beacon pinging them is so unexpected that they think for a moment they may be dreaming. They’d thought it too late, that everything must have been washed away along with their scout, but here he is reaching out to them. The emergency, against protocol backdoor channel that they’d insisted on was doing its job, and they were so glad. They drop everything, as promised, as planned, and when Mikail’s voice come through their headset they bury their face in their hands, even while they fight to keep their voice even.

What else had they missed? Pri, poisoned by something in the air that crept into her system and twisted her brain in circles. Mikail had been quietly studying an alien species without mentioning it, had learned enough to make a call that they wish he didn’t feel he had to make.

They lose Mikail to the sea, after all.

That he was choosing to dive and keep swimming helped, but they lose him all the same.

Gwen’s planet lights itself on fire, and all they can do is listen.

They wonder, somewhere in the midst of the panic they’re fighting not to allow to bleed through into their voice, if this is some kind of punishment. If this is another penalty, some kind of justice, you let your settlers down and now you have to be stuck watching, always watching and never able to do anything useful.

They’d been stuck listening as Pri struggled to diagnose the changes to her own brain, to the silence on the end of the line when Mikail was swept away, to the quiet certainty of his decisions after that. They’re stuck listening once more as Gwen runs back into the oncoming fire to get their maintenance kit, because if she leaves it behind there’s little enough point surviving anyway.

They don’t know who they think it’s a punishment from, and they don’t voice the thought because they know it isn’t, really. They do. Bell knows, as well as anyone, that knowing someone is listening even if there’s nothing to be done can mean everything.

But it seems like so little, one hand clutching the edge of their wobbly desk in their narrow cubicle to ground themselves, pressing their headset closer to their ear like that will somehow help, like being a millimetre closer to the ear-piece can make a difference to Gwen as she tries to outrun a wildfire. It seems like so little, to be able to only promise to pass on any messages that Gwen wants, to swear they won’t stop until they’re delivered, if they’re the last words Gwen ever gets to say.

It seems like so little, and that’s before they learn the truth, learn that Peter will never read any of the letters.

Peter has been dead the whole time, and later Bell will think they should have guessed - neither Mikail or Pri had mentioned him much at all, even when Mikail had been listing off who he wished he could talk to about his decision, the limited handful of people who he wanted to be told the truth if it was safe to. Gwen had never shared a single snippet of a letter from Peter, for all she repeated gossip about her sister and stories from her other friends on their own missions, and Bell thinks they should have guessed from that alone rather than assuming it was just too private.

They hadn’t - they hadn’t thought they knew everything about Hartley, of course they hadn’t, but Gwen narrated her day to Boots and, by extension, Bell whenever they called. They’d thought that Gwen was the one they weren’t missing anything from - no unrecognized illness, no secret alien encounters.

Just a grief they hadn’t known she was carrying, a loss she was still learning to live with.

They think maybe they know, now, why Gwen had been so reluctant to have a voice in her ear, that first day, setting out to rescue a scout bot she’d sworn to retrieve. Why it had mattered so much that this was her first achievement, once her boots touched the ground of that alien planet for the first time.

Gwen’s planet is burning and neither of them know what she’ll have left in the world when it dies down, so Bell does the only thing they can and tries to fill the uncertain silence with a story to hold on to.

When Amelia lays out gleeful threats, promises of justice, it’s Gwen that Bell calls.

Their head has been spinning since they hacked into the archives - they’d bought into the conspiracy theory, somehow, half convinced themselves there was a big reason for what had happened, something that would answer all the questions they’d lived with for years. Something that could ease the burden of guilt on their shoulders and caught at the back of their throat.

Well, they had their answer: a skipped scan. A check they forgot, let slide because they were busy, a protocol they set aside to juggle other things - yet another warning sign they’d missed.

Gwen insists otherwise, points out the ways they can’t be blamed, the way they wouldn’t blame any of their scouts if positions were changed. Points out that maybe it wasn’t a conspiracy, but there’s still something dodgy going on. There’s still something here - in the way these records are hidden, restricted, when they should be public record.

If there was nothing here more damning than the record of what Bell missed and the price their settlers paid - it would be a cautionary tale, something held up in class for the overconfident new scouts: here’s why you should stick to protocol, kids, even when it seems pointless. This is why you can’t get complacent, get comfortable, can’t trust that after five years you know everything about your planet and you can relax.

But it’s hidden, and they refuse to let that stand. They’ve wondered, so often over the years, if being made to do nothing but listen helplessly is the punishment for whatever mistakes they made. They know that’s what their employers think, those in the know about their history, shaking their heads and murmuring about how at least this once-promising scout can put their training to use. Those that can do, do, and those that can’t, teach. Or, as the case may be, listen.

They listened, and they know that mattered.

They listened when Hartley raised concerns, pushed for scans and tests to uncover what was ailing Pri, what could be done to save her. They listened to Mikail when he begged to be declared dead, gone, pleaded for them to be the one to break his family’s hearts because he couldn’t stand to be the reason his planet and its people were destroyed. They listened to Gwen while her home burned, talked to her through the panicked flight and the post-adrenaline slump.

Sometimes all you can do is speak, and hope someone is listening.

Twenty years for the murder of someone still alive. There’s an irony there, but they’re not sure they appreciate the joke. Less for good behaviour, so they try to curb their tongue, suppress the urge to fix things and instead try to maintain a stoic silence when they want to stand up to anyone who thinks to shove them around.

After the first time they throw a punch in prison, because someone crosses a line and it’s all too much, because they can’t let it slide and still be them - it occurs to them, bandaging up bruised knuckles and wondering if they tell Gwen about this or try (and probably fail) to hide it, that it doesn’t matter.

They aren’t here because the people in charge really think they committed murder – no unbiased court could look at assembled an emergency beacon out of spare parts and scout who hated swimming drowned after his entire camp was destroyed in a massive storm and conclude that it was remotely related, let alone intentional: they’re here because when they were told the price of freedom was lying to – lying about - their settlers, denying their dead justice, they said not a chance in hell.

This isn’t a flawed attempt at justice, this is a punishment.

They won’t be allowed out early, even if they’re the perfect prisoner. They have to live with this, and if that means getting a few bruises and scraped knuckles - well. They’ve never been afraid of a fight, and they weren’t the best at following the rules even before they realised just how little anyone in power cared.

Gwen writes to them, and they can’t help checking in - are the crops growing, is her leg holding up, has she done her monthly environment scans (yes, yes, and of course, Bell) - all of the questions they had written out years ago to cover in regular check ins.

They wonder who has taken over as scout-minder, who’s talking Pri through her newfound challenges as best they can without stepping too much on her fiercely independent toes and trying to figure out the change in cadence that signifies Hartley has switched to talking to Boots rather than whoever is on the line. They wonder if anyone is trying periodically to ping Mikail, hoping against hope that this time he’ll answer, that by some miracle he survived (they wonder if he’s figured out how to get his own messages to Gwen, once he realised that conference calls had always been an option except for bureaucratic limitations)

They’re checking in, lists of questions and signs to watch out for briefed to them in advance, but they’d ask anyway, even if they’d never been told to ask.

This stopped being about making sure that the scouts who’d had so much money and time invested into them remained at optimum performance sometime around the first time the call connected and they were taken on a completely out of protocol wander through Gwen’s new home in search of a defunct scout bot and a new horizon.

They’ve come a long way, since the first long weeks of trying and failing to reach the third of their assigned scouts over the comms, since the first time Gwen picked up the call to discover that instead of an automated message she had a live - and somewhat irate - scout-minder waiting on the other end of the line.

Bell knows that there’s no point trying to call until the ship is in sight of the planet, that they won’t have the signal or the range to reach Gwen until it’s a matter of hours before they meet face to face. They try anyway, thinking with retrospective fondness of the first three months, calling a number that never picked up no matter how often they tried.

They wonder what’s going on, on planet.

This is the first time they’ve been out of contact from Gwen since the first relieved moment when a call went through, when Scout Hartley made landfall and resigned herself to turning the computer and all its notifications back on. Bell thought at the time that being stuck just listening was bad, but they never thought they’d have months with no contact at all, no way of knowing. Everything had seemed fine, and the settlement ship was en route, but they knew how quickly things could deteriorate.

Then again, Hartley had managed to coordinate a prison break remotely and apparently undetected despite using official comms channels to do it under the settlement offices’ collective noses. She was probably fine and managing to do a lot of impressive and yet wildly off protocol things that would delight and exasperate Bell in equal quantity.

Honestly, Bell would like to say they’re surprised that this is the kind of woman they fall in love with, but they’re not; they’re years past lying to themselves like that.

The planet comes into view, and they reach for their headset again. In a matter of hours, it won’t matter - neither of them will be stuck just listening, offering up ideas and research and stories to carry each other through, calling for help and hoping someone pays attention.

But for now, the comms unit splutters, Gwen’s voice filling the storage bay they’re illicitly camped out in, and Bell presses the headset closer to her ear like that will help them hear more clearly, will make it easier to know for sure that Gwen is really okay, unsuspected and untouched by the fallout.

I’ll see you on the ground, they promise, a distant star falling to the earth at last, and watch the horizon come into view.

#my writing #Second Star to the Left #SSTL #I had a lot of feelings at the end of this podcast okay #Very much recommend it if you haven't listened

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thefanficmonster · 3 years

Text

Never Satisfied [Chapter 5]

Corpse Husband x Original Female Character

Warnings: !!DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF A PANIC ATTACK!!; Language

A collaboration between Vy & Ashens 🖤

Note from the authors: Hello dear readers! This chapter, as mentioned in the warnings above, has a detailed description of a panic attack which might be highly triggering for some individuals. That being said this chapter is NOT A MUST-READ. You can understand the further progression of the story perfectly well without reading this chapter. If you decide to skip this chapter, which we recommend if you are easily triggered, we’ll be seeing you in the next chapter. If you’re sticking around for the ride, enjoy 🖤🖤🖤

“headed for a breakdown“

“I’ll catch you later, feel free to text me anytime.” Cora smiles warmly, standing outside Corpse’s apartment complex, where they’ve spent almost half an hour just talking in his car before she finally mentioned she had to get going which led to them both stepping out of the car and into the late afternoon air. At first, Corpse thought it must have been something he had said or did but before the panic could start eating away at his calmness, Cora was quick to reassure him, promising she had a client meeting her in about two hours which is why she needed to get going.

Now he finds himself standing in his apartment, feeling cold and alone. He feels like a huge chunk is missing from his life now, despite that very chunk not even being a part of it just a few hours prior. He allowed Cora to bring him some happiness, relief and ease for those few hours, and now that she’s gone, he realizes how unprepared he is to be dealing with his loneliness again. He’s aware he shouldn’t get this attached to someone he barely knows, or to anyone really, but she made him feel so much, and none of the feelings unpleasant: she allowed him security, safety, comfort; she gave him some of the most genuine laughs of his life, managed to speed up his heart because of excitement and joy, not anxiety or insecurity. She provided him with what he’s been longing for for so long, and she did all that in less than a day.

With all that taken into consideration, one would find him missing her more than reasonable, but Corpse isn’t so easy on himself. Quite the contrary actually, he’s scolding himself for it in this very moment as he paces the living room.

He shifts from one foot to the other, tipping his head down as he carefully toes off his shoes. He stops in one spot suddenly, feeling himself consumed by the deafening silence, a lump starting to form in his throat as well as tightness building in his jaw. The telling sign. His eyes sting, burning red and painful. His head is swarmed, buzzing statically like a TV on a dead air channel.

I fucked up

I fuck everything up

I am a fuck up

These thoughts begin to cloud his brain with such intensity there is no way of him even having a chance at fighting them or pushing them away. They take firm hold on his brain and refuse to let go. He’s no stranger to them but that doesn’t mean he has any defenses ready for when they show themselves. He’s helpless and hopeless even after all the times he’s had to deal with them though it seems like they get progressively stronger instead of weaker.

This time, they appear the strongest yet.

Tears burn his eyes so he covers one eye with the palm of his hand in a hopeless attempt at keeping them at bay, choking out a soft noise from his throat as everything starts welling up in his heart, causing him excruciating pain in his chest.

He’s sure he did something wrong. Said the wrong thing. Had the wrong reaction. Messed something up.

He plays every second back in his mind over and over again, searching between the lines of conversation, skimming through each word they exchanged for something, anything that would indicate that his worries and anxiety are grounded and concrete. His heart is galloping, his mind is going haywire. He doesn’t know what to do with himself, how to defend himself against the raging storm that has taken over his head and the incoming waves of negativity that are for sure to attack him in the horrible, painful minutes to come.

He wants to sit down, lie down, anything just to get off his shaking feet and relieve his knees that are threatening to give up on him any second now. However, he simultaneously wants to punch a wall, a mirror, break something, ruin something as a piece of evidence that he always ruins things for himself and others. That he is exactly what he claims to be - a fuck up.

You aren’t worth it

You aren’t good enough

You are never good enough

People deserve better than you

They don’t want you around

She doesn’t want you

AND IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT

His mind races, spins, betrays him, leaves him to drown in the darkness that is slowly consuming him. The room feels both too big and too small at the same time, suffocating yet he feels so small in comparison to it. His knees finally give, let him down just like his mind has and he drops down to his knees, clutching at his chest. Breaths come at a rapid pace as he starts hyperventilating, wheezing and sobbing with each passing moment, barely able to squeeze enough air into his lungs as to not pass out. He digs his nails into the carpet in desperate attempts to ease the pain or just to keep himself awake and stable, as stable as he could possibly be during a panic attack.

Pity Grief Loneliness Disgust Sorrow Dread

His checkpoint isn’t here and the demons in his head are telling him she’ll never be again. Telling him he isn’t worth it, telling him she deserves better and shouldn’t be wasting her time on him anyway.

He forces himself to his still and even more so unsteady feet, swaying dangerously before finding some weak stability to carry himself to his room to avoid being any more miserable than he already is by lying on the floor. His body doesn’t seem to agree with him though, flashing warning signs at him that he shouldn’t be standing up right now. He ignores all the warnings, the clouded and then vignetted vision, the much harder process of breathing and the retching that is steadily climbing from the pit of his stomach up towards his throat.

All signs telling him this is not a battle he can win.

* * *

Corpse wakes up on the floor, having dropped before he could reach his bed, vomit beside him. His breathing is shaky, almost as much as his hands. Ignoring the warning signs yet again he pushes himself in a sitting position, causing his head to spin even worse due to the sudden movement which is the last thing he needed in this state the panic attack has left him in.

I blacked out. I can’t even have a panic attack right, He thinks to himself, the toxicity remaining in his mind just to pollute it for the next couple of days or so.

He’s trembling horribly yet he still chooses to not allow himself the rest he so desperately needs and instead gets up onto his feet to clean the mess on the carpet he’ll probably need to buy a stain remover for. His jaw clenches, his shaking hands doing a poor job at making anything better, actually worsening the situation he’s trying to fix. With another fail added to his list of fuck ups, he gives up on the carpet, removing his stained sweatshirt with force and throwing it across the room before he climbs into bed, wrapping the blankets around him like a safety cocoon.

Just as he thinks he’s about to drift off to sleep, his only refuge, his phone chimes, startling him more than it probably should’ve.

Out of instinct, he reaches out and fishes for it among the many items littering his nightstand. Finally feeling the rectangular device under his touch, he retrieves it and checks what the chime is alerting him of.

It’s a text from an unknown number but the message’s content clears up the identity of the sender right away.

Digital Checkpoint activated. Reply to save progress. 💜 — Cora

With minimal contemplation he replies seconds later.

Corpse: save

Cora: your progress has been saved. Thank you for choosing A.S.S. - the Automated Save System. You are now free to activate the digital checkpoint at any time.

Cora: I had a nice time. Text me whenever you need to. We’ll hang out again soon, deal?

Corpse: thank you

Cora: anytime sugar ;)

Funny how a text exchange so simple and short can turn so much around for a person. Funny how a huge weight lifts off him the second he locks his phone, suddenly finding it easier to breathe, to move, to blink, to function - to live. She gives him that kick he needs to be reminded to live and not just be alive. He’s still not comfortable with how much he’s relying on her but seeing her effect on him is nothing but positive, the most and best thing he can do for himself is go with the flow and let things happen. No overthinking, no planning, no shooting guesses, just facing things as they come face-to-face with him. He may never get used to it, but he won’t know that until he tries, will he?

@fockingwhore @vixenl @annshit @wineandionysus @wiseflamingoqueen

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pi-cat000 · 3 years

Text

BNHA: Kakashi dimension hops crossover (6)

Summary: Kakashi gets dumbed into the My Hero Academia universe through random plot devise.

Characters: Kakashi Hatake

Fandoms: My Hero Academia and Naruto

WARNINGS: Mentions of violence/injury

START / PREV / NEXT

As predicted, the day following the seal’s application is miserable. His chest is tight with almost anxiety, pins and needles run up and down his arms making his skin itch, and he is increasingly lethargic. All symptoms of a chakra imbalance and to be expected when one’s normal chakra replacement rate was thrown out. The sensations would pass once his body adjusted as they had with his sharingan.

He is eating three square meals a day, doing the bare minimum when it came to exercise routines and avoiding excess chakra use. It had been literal years since he had had this much bed rest. If he were ever going to slap a chakra collecting seal on himself, this was a perfect time. Okay, so maybe he should have steadily increased the chakra drain over the course of a few weeks for a smoother adjustment period. Hindsight and all that.

What mattered was that he would be fine, and he just had to wait it out. Bright side? No one had commented on the seal yet. Oh, he has definitely noticed serval people throwing the odd confused frown at his shoulder, but that was as far as anyone had gone in acknowledging it. His oh so clever strategy of acting like nothing was wrong worked so much better when he wasn’t surrounded by other shinobi and medic-nin.

“Your blood pressure is still too high. Are you sure you haven’t been experiencing any additional fatigue or other symptoms? Is something about the hospital causing additional stress? If there is something wrong, we should work on strategies to fix the problem.”

Well… it worked on everyone who wasn’t Wada. The man was irritatingly persistent in his doctoring. Apparently, the pressure of adjusting to an increased chakra drain wasn’t doing his body any favours.

“Maybe it’s a part of my quirk. High regeneration. High blood pressure.” Kakashi shrugs loosely not bothering to look up from HEROES and HEROINES May Issue. Unlike his previous reading material, people gave him odd looks when they saw him reading these magazines which immediately upped their entertainment value 100-fold.

Wada undoes the compression sleeve he had been using to measure Kakashi’s blood pressure, lecturing as he goes, “From what I can tell your cells produce more energy-rich molecules, ATP, NADH, then is typical, increasing cellular functions. Where your cells are getting the energy to produce these molecules, I have no idea seeing as you eat about the same amount as any baseline human. What I can safely say is that it should not influence your blood pressure. If anything, your blood pressure should be a bit lower than average. Now don’t dodge the question.”

He pauses, waiting for Kakashi to cave and suddenly confess. Kakashi, an old hat at dodging medical questions, continues reading unperturbed.

“I’ve been at this for over 30 years. An attack like the one you suffered is understandably traumatic, not to mention the stress of severe amnesia. I’m sure, whatever is bothering you, I’ve heard it before.”

Kakashi very much doubts that. “I feel fine.”

Wada huffs, unconvinced, “Young men. You all think that admitting you have a problem is a sign of weakness. High blood pressure can damage your heart and lead to problems later in life so finding the cause is important.” Good thing a shinobi life spans tended to max out around 30. The odds of him making it to an age where he’d have to worry about the long-term effects of anything were pretty low. He doesn’t voice this opinion, continuing to read.

Wada continues talking with greater gusto, “No matter, I’ll prescribe you something for stress hopefully that’ll help with your blood pressure. However, this is no replacement for healthy habits both physical and mental. You should consider professional therapy.”

Kakashi snorts. Yeah, that sounds about right.

“Oh, you think that’s funny do you,” Wada makes to grab HEROES and HEROIENS and he lets the doctor pull the magazine free from his hand. It gives him a good view of the man’s irate expression.

“No, of course not.” Kakashi attempts to placate and gets a light smack over the head with said magazine for his troubles.

“There is no shame in pursuing a healthy mind!”

“Weren’t we going to test my quirk today?” He complains to derail the current line of questioning.

“I have half a mind to put it off and have you rest another week,” is threatened before Wada’s stern expression relaxes, “Lucky for you, I’ve booked you into serval tests that can’t be rescheduled.”

Kakashi breaths out dramatically. He thinks Wada might have made a good medic-nin if he had lived in Konoha. Sure, he is a little too trusting, but he was also not above pestering his patients into taking better care of themselves. Sakura would approve.

The doctor, with the assistance of an attending nurse he hadn’t bothered to learn the name of, helps Kakashi out of his bed and into a wheelchair, ignoring his protests about his leg being all but healed.

“You’re to avoid putting weight on it until you start physical therapy,” Wada snaps at his continued complaints, “You’ll need to be careful, extended bed rest and surgery can leave your muscles weakened. Also, leave that magazine behind. You’re doing eye tests when do you think you’ll have time to read!”

Kakashi doesn’t push the matter further, resigning himself to being wheeled down the hospital halls like the invalid he was pretending to be. It is not like Wada knew about his frequent excursions to the roof or the fact that he has been running through strengthening exercises on his own time for several weeks now. Best he keeps that information to himself.

Partway down the hall, he pulls out HEROES and HEROIENS from where he had slipped it into his shirt, enjoying Wada’s exasperated expression. Of course, he stops reading when the doctor threatens to start lecturing again. The man could definitely talk when given the chance.

Wada and the nurse take wheel him to a set of double-door elevators which take them down several floors below the ground level. The hallway they exit of a mirror of every other hospital hallway. Grey and white walls, pale blue lino floor and bright fluorescent overhead lights. The only difference is that this hallway is lined with heavy-looking metal doors. From snooping through patient files, he knows that all quirk tests are carried out in specially designated underground ‘safety rooms.’ That doesn't make him any more thrilled about being several stories underground. It cut down on his escape roots.

“These are some of the more secure recovery wards in the hospital,” Wada explains as their little group stops at a small reception desk where the doctor taps away at a computer screen, “they’re mostly for treating patients with unstable quirks.” Kakashi maintains a neutral expression, accepting the explanation.

Wada wheels him up to a steel door, swiping his ID card which also doubled as a key to many areas of the hospital. The heavy door is automated and slides open. A lot of the doors in the hospital operate this way and always made sneaking around slightly more troublesome.

Inside walls and floor are plain white and there is an odd number of tables and chairs pushed to one side out of the way. Everything stinks of disinfectant. On the far wall is a single solitary painting of a tree in a field, the only splash of colour in an otherwise depressingly sparse room. A poor attempt at living up the space. The opposite wall sports a rectangular, reflective surface which was probably some sort of observation booth. Well, if being underground hadn’t put him on edge, this obvious confinement room definitely did the job. Kakashi eyes the space. Worse comes to worst, he could use the kamui and remove the adjoining hallway wall then climb his way out through the elevator shaft. There are only two other people in the room with him and one woman at the reception desk, all were most likely unenhanced with quirks unsuited to combat, easily removed. He doesn’t let his body language reflect his unease. He is just a little on edge because the new seal is messing with his body’s natural homeostasis. If this is a trap there would have been other signs of deception before now.

“Yes, I know it might seem like a whole lot of fuss just to run through a few flashcards,” Wada comments, oblivious to Kakashi’s poor mood. He waves to his assisting nurse who wheels over and lowers one of the metallic tables so Kakashi doesn’t have to move from his wheelchair. “But it’s a standard safety procedure when an unknown quirk is involved. Trust me, this is a lot easier than travelling to an external testing range.”

Wada stops to give Kakashi a once over, frowning, “How much do you know about your quirk sub-type?”

Kakashi shrugs, “Nothing much.”

“Ah,” The doctor’s frown grows, and he grimaces, “Of course you don’t.” A sigh.

“Typically, ocular quirks will act to enhanced sight in some way or improve base level memorisation and recall ability. It is also common to have a replicating function, allowing the user to produce some sort of copy of things they see. In rarer cases, ocular quirks result in precognitive abilities.” Wada explanation falters, “They can also have a line-of-sight emitter effect, such as laser vision, optical blasts, a few instances of mind control and other mental effects. These can also be incredibly dangerous if the user isn’t in control. There have even been instances where whole buildings have been levelled.”

“I see.” He supposes Wada's irritation at this private 'quirk' testing made a bit more sense. A doctor faced with an unknown and possibly dangerous ability would be annoyed if said patient went about experimenting without taking safety precautions.

“I should have checked whether you knew the dangers instead of just assuming. Apologies. That is my own error.”

He peers at Kakashi, almost guilty now, “and you don’t have a phone either so there would have been no way for you to research quirks yourself.”

“Ah,” Kakashi rubs the back of his head not likening how torn up the other man seems to be seeing as Kakashi had ever been in any real danger. “Don’t worry about it,” he reassures.

His reassurances land flat, the doctor still frowning, “I’ll see if I can get you access to the internet somehow.”

Privately, Kakashi adds 'research' to the list of functions ‘phones’ apparently provided and 'internet' to his growing list of terms to investigate.

Wada sighs again. “Regardless, let’s get these tests done first.” He places a thick folder labelled National Standard for Registration: Kit Type 3 alongside one of those portable keyboard-less computers the doctors tended to carry around. “Hold on, been a while since I’ve done one of these. Need to find the rights files. Ah, here we go. First, these rooms are monitored, and all tests are recorded. The data collected is confidential, accessible only to the patient and physician unless doing so causes the patent harm. Information regarding quirk function and use is shared with the Registry Office. You have a right to stop testing at any point. You got that?”

Kakashi grunts, his already poor mood souring further. He is not sure he wants the hospital - or anyone - keeping records of anything sharingan related.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Wada continues unperturbed, a testament to his serval weeks of trying to doctor Kakashi, “remember to let me know if you’re experiencing any discomfort. Don’t want you busting anymore blood vessels.

Kakashi lets out a tired breath, “Sure.” The sooner they left this room the better.

“We’ll test memory and vision first to compare to your baseline, then we’ll run through the replication and precognitive tests just in case.”

The nurse, who had been on the opposite side of the room waves, “All ready over here.” There is now a large poster with letters of varying sizes hung on the wall. He recognises the chart from his previous eye tests.

“Okay, let’s start with just uncovering it. Make sure you’re looking away from me as a precaution.”

Kakashi resists rolling his non- sharingan eye at the obvious instruction, shifting his attention to the poster on the wall. He flips his padded eyepatch up with his index finger so it partially rests on his forehead. All the letters, no matter the size, immediately snap into sharp focus. Nothing spontaneously combusts under his gaze. When he glances at the painting of the tree, he can now see a lack of brush texture, suggesting that it wasn’t a painting but a print of some sort. With that useless information now forever etched into his memory, he turns back to examine at Wada.

The sharingan picks out all the wrinkles and pores lining the older face. It focuses in on minuscule muscle movements as the man’s expression shifts from professional and accommodating to curious. The doctor’s fingers twitch ever so slightly over his computer. Most likely an unconscious habit. The man’s breath is slightly uneven like his chest can’t smoothly expand, suggesting some sort of lung problem. A past smoking habit perhaps? Nothing threatening is revealed.

“Doctor.” Kakashi prompts when Wada spends a little too long staring back at him. The sharingun did have a weak hypnotic effect, encouraging extended eye contact to help catch targets in genjutsu. Kakashi rarely uncovered his eye in the presence of civilians so he doesn’t know if the effect is more pronounced or if Wada is just curious.

Wada blinks, “Well…I certainly see where the ‘wheel’ description comes from.” He spends a second more staring then turns to start writing notes and tapping away at his computer screen. “I wonder if those spinning tomoe are purely cosmetic or if they have some other function because they are certainly fascinating to look at. There is also faint bioluminescence to the eye which is a common feature of ocular quirks…”

Honestly, the blatant eye contact is weird. Even his closest allies tended to avoid looking at his sharingan out of habit - expect for Naruto who was an outlier in almost everything - for understandable reasons. He thinks the people here would also exercise caution if an ocular abilities included mind control or exploding a person through eye contact. But no, Wada just goes right ahead and stares. A few seconds later and the unnamed nurse is also looking curiously at his eye. … …

Aside from redoing a standard eye exam, Kakashi runs through a marathon of flashcards to test both his memory and then precognitive abilities. The tests are done with lights on then in the dark and Kakashi is given a perfect 20/20 and an enhancement score of ‘15 grades above average’ for both. There are also several pages worth of words and numbers in progressively complex arrangements to test his information retention. Of course, everything is easily remembered with the sharingun active.

“Well, it seems to give general across the board vision enhancement alongside perfect recall and retention,” Wada finally concludes as he records all Kakashi’s results, “Of course, we’ll have to re-test retention in a few days so see if the information degrades over an extended period and we don’t know whether your quirk effects your long distance eyesight, but, for now, this appears to be all. The link between your quirked eye and the regenerative side-effect is still unknown. Odd that we couldn’t trigger any ‘copy’ function considering the quirks name though ‘copy’ could also be a reference to memorisation. If any other features do reveal themselves make sure you alert a medical professional.”

… …

Kakashi despises the process of getting an MRI with a heated passion. He hates having to lie prone in a loud confined space. It is the height of discomfort, making him tense up and clench his jaw. It is only the fact that Kakashi had researched and mentally prepared himself for the experience that stops him from accidentally snapping someone’s neck.

“We’ll have the results back in a few days,” Wada informs once the trying ordeal is over with, “From there we’ll update the Registry so you’re properly in the system. Speaking of which, have you made any progress on remembering a surname? I need something for the forms.”

“Hatake,” he grunts, too irritated to bother evading - he just wants to return to his room and wait out the side effects of his seal in peace- the question like he had every other time the man asked, “I think I prefer Kakashi though.”

It wasn’t like the name meant anything here and, who knows, maybe someone would come looking for him. This way they would have a trail to follow.

#bnha #bnha fanfic #naruto #boku no academia #CrossOver #kakshi hatake #dimension travel AU #fanfiction #my hero academia #more hospital stuff #probably a bunch of medical inaccuracies #quirk biology #quirk stuff #world building

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theyearsiturnedintoaghost · 3 years

Text

“But I Wanna Know One Thing When Did I Become a Ghost?”

Sometimes I try to pinpoint the exact day I became a ghost. I go over days and nights and try to decipher if it happened pre or post certain parts of my life. Was it before I finished college? Maybe earlier, maybe the day my parents finally split? Maybe it was the day I realized a boy I loved in my twenties was never going to love me back, and I just needed to focus on myself while life kept unfolding? Was it somewhere in the move across the country to finish college, and try to do something for myself that might better me, that my actual self flew out the window somewhere in Texas, or some other dusty road, and the entire years following were just my ghost years? Or maybe it wasn’t until after I let myself fall so far away from what I remembered myself to be, or what I stood for, or dreams I had, that I shrunk into myself so small and became a walking shell of who I used to be. Maybe it was the day I stood next to someone else at a bar, a different one than the bar I’d left that earlier unrequited love behind at, and thought for the first time in so long ‘is this person perfect?’ while I was introduced to him, and instead of being cool or sweet, or like someone a person would want to talk to - I blabbered on about some snowboarders who had a TV show that this person had never heard of, and I realized in the walking away from that person as a blush rose to my cheeks and my hands shook just enough to let me know that deep down I wanted to cry from my anxiety, that I was just too fucking weird for people, and not just that person, but maybe all people. These same type of ‘outer body’ or anxiety induced conversations and moments just kept happening over and over so I started focus in and realize I was the common denominator and that I must be the cause to my inability to relate to people or not be so fucking weird that I could practically feel their eyes rolling at me while I spoke to them. Clearly, I didn’t become a ghost because of any of these specific moments, but probably due to all of these moments all swirled together with so many others, and also due to my brain makeup and what I imagine is some missed diagnosis from childhood that today would for sure have me on the spectrum. Which, for the record, I’m completely okay with being on. Actually sometimes I think it would give me some kind of ease that maybe I’m not as ‘crazy’ or ‘out there’ as I’ve compared myself to be when I look at other peoples lives of my age. There’s no shame in thinking differently and having to work out how you do think so other people who don’t think the same can sort of understand. So please don’t take that as a cruel joke, or something to be angry at. It’s just me recognizing that people can be different, and sometimes they don’t know the reason for it because they were never seen properly.

So, I’m not exactly sure of the day I became a ghost - fuck, maybe it wasn’t one of those moments or days specifically, but a lot of days, weeks, or months; full of falling further from who I’d been at seventeen, even twenty-one, or twenty-three, or who I even thought I would be by thirty, that made me disappear from myself one day and just become this person who just existed in the world day to day, but wasn’t actually living. I ate sometimes when I wasn’t trying to disappear fully so clothes would fit me better or boys might think I was beautiful, I laughed when I was supposed to, went on dates like I was trying, got up and went to work like I was supposed to, read a book here and there, binged watched TV shows to have conversations and social interactions with people like normal people do, and tried to convince myself that this was what living was, I guess. Between all of these day to day things and smoking myself to sleep, crushing up pills in private places and snorting them through straws, or dabbling - to put it lightly and politically correct - into cocaine, just to pass the time and make myself feel anything most of the time, I guess vanishing became easy.

Becoming a ghost was easier.

It’s just not exactly clear to me to be able to figure out the exact date and time I fully realized I’d become a ghost. It’s not as easy as like providing an alibi for myself for one specific night, and not because my brain was so hazy and filled with anger, sadness, and drug fueled smoke and pills for most, but not all - and not all at the same time - of the years between twenty to nearly thirty, that I cannot fully recall the moment I fully realized I wasn’t who I remembered myself wanting to be, but really because I think it happened slowly at first, somewhere in between being lonely, living in a place that I kind of had a hard time fitting into, not in terms of the weather or nature, but in making a friend or two or feeling like I wasn’t so... annoying-to-people-based-on-reality-shows New Jersey in a non-New Jersey place, and even if maybe it didn’t fully seem that way to other people, trying to finish school and not feel so old being basically a junior at like twenty-three when every other person I knew had already graduated and was moving to the next levels of their lives - whatever those were - while I was working as many hours as I could to just pay the rent, trying to make a friend in any place - which is really hard for me if I’m being honest. To cut it down to brass tax, I think I’m socially awkward and full of so much anxiety that I either shy away and appear unapproachable, or I let people in too quickly and my heart gets broken by them when I realize I probably care too much for them than they do for me.

I think I’m just afraid of disappointing people. So instead I just disappoint myself.

I let people leave me because it’s easier. Why make them stay when they don’t want to? Why hope they’ll call first when they won’t? Why hope they’ll love me back the way I would have loved them?

It’s easier to let them go on and be happy and just... disappear.

It’s why I think I let myself slowly start to slip away from who I had been my whole life. Some girl who was hoping for the ‘happy ending’ the ‘good things to come,’ as embarrassing as those things can sound for a person to imagine, the successful life that I sadly felt I would achieve with the promises of getting an education and working hard, but instead was just always left outside of the winners circle. Not that anyone wins in any of this, but you know what I mean. The truth is, in life - from what I’ve come to understand - there are just people who lose less often than other people. I just got tired of losing, and feeling like I was losing all the time. I got tired of making it to my twenties and feeling like I was never going to be the girl who would ever become anything or the one that anyone ever actually wanted back. Sure, I had ‘romantic entanglements,’ if you could call them that, crushes, and drunken kisses, but nothing that it felt like everyone else was so easily able to get. Boyfriends, flowers on a date night, fucking date nights in general, a birthday party thrown for them; not one they had to put together themselves and hope at least five people would come. The things one may think matters, but don’t - not in the grand scheme of anything that actually does really matter to the world - but these things still add up as years go by, and as I kept getting older and older and it felt like everyone I knew had this laundry list of relationships and ex’s and I was just kind of aware of how... no one has ever asked me out properly on a date or reached over to hold my hand in a crowded room. Or knew the thing I wanted to laugh about in public without me even have to say it. Those stupid wishful, movie, dream life, fantasy land bullshit things that everyone tells you aren’t real outside of movies, but I just didn’t fully believe because I’d seen my own friends make eye contact with someone they loved across a room and I’d seen that feeling occur in real time. Maybe it wasn’t in a movie script ending kind of way, but it still happened. Small and simple, but it still did happen, and it was probably more beautiful than Hollywood could even fathom or conjure up.

And once I started to kind of realize that this kept occurring to people around me all of the time I just started to think that I was invisible. And soon after I came to realize I was.

And it isn’t just the relationships that make you feel invisible, it’s the other things everyone around me seemed to be doing or achieving that makes me feel sort of ‘less than.’ People getting - what seems like to a twenty-something - a big fancy office job out of college, or buying a house, travelling with a group of friends multiple times a year. Fuck, even just having a group of friends, that was actually amazing to me after like twenty-one. I could honestly walk through a store, or down a street and I’m not sure one person may have even noticed if I was there - or if I wasn’t. Even if I did daily routine items like where I bought my coffee or the days I shopped at a grocery store, or when I went for walks or not, I’m not sure if people would notice when I didn’t, or if I ever even did. Even when I was working in the office I got fired from, and commuting day to day, I’m not sure any one on that bus would be able to pick me out a line up even if I took the same 6:50 everyday. Hell, I’m not sure people who I worked with and spoke to would even notice if I wasn’t there. And when I would wash my hands in the bathroom and the automated sensor wouldn’t even recognize me, I really started to wonder if I wasn’t actually a ghost after all.

And day in and day out, month in and month out, year in and year out, all of it just started to add up. All the good things that were happening for everyone else - which was something I truly was happy for, despite how fake that sounds typing, like I’m trying to make myself sound like a decent human in hopes someone won’t just think I’m being whiny or jealous, I really was happy for them because I think a person - even some of the worst ones - does really want the people they know and care about to be happy; even if that happiness is seemingly impossible to hold for themselves. Regardless, deep in my heart I know that I was happy for them getting all of their desires, I was just sad I wasn’t getting my own ‘good things,’ or desires. And I felt like I had nothing to talk with people about. Like when I came to their table I was just... the person they knew who wasn’t progressing on any kind of timeline; even my own.

I started to feel ashamed about it. Embarrassed and stuttery about any kind of topic any one might speak to me about. So I sort of just stopped going to people’s tables. I didn’t want to see them look at me out of the corner of their eyes with pity as the thirty-something year old who had no direction, no love life, no career type job, and had not created or accomplished anything; at all.

And in the meantime, in trying not to fail, or having something to speak about that I felt I’d done a good job on or created, It felt like any kind of outlet that I tried to create to promote my own dreams or wishes just kept never hitting the mark. Trying to make a clothing line? Fail. Like even having one of these Tumblr’s years ago for my writing, anything I actually did write was pointless; or at least felt that way. Any story I’d completed, I wished were different or more original. I just kept feeling like other people had done the ‘path’ correct and they were all getting their foot in the door at the right times, and I was just... behind. My lack of being able to commit to a major at school, or even get an office job or internship doing something basic and day to day just didn’t appeal to me. Not in a way that made me excited for the next thirty years of my life, especially because that’s what I always thought being an adult was. Finding a place to work that allowed you to build a career, and just getting through that until you were able to retire.

I guess I didn’t really think much about the joy in any of it, or what adulthood really held for me that didn’t seem so mundane and boring. Like just something you had to do and there was nothing super exciting about it. By the time I made it to like twenty I kind of realized dreams I’d had since I was younger were already out of question. I was clearly never going to be that Olympic Gymnastic’s Champion I thought I would at eight - which even as I type this I want to laugh at how farfetched that dream even feels to remember - and the odds of me becoming Georgia O’Keefe, who I dressed up as for a 4th grade biography day - felt impossible, especially since my desire to possibly go to art school after college were kind of laughed off by my family because what are the odds people make any money out of art school? Plus, she mastered flowers, it’s hard to compete with the beauty of that. And I was clearly never going to be some teen idol movie star or popstar princess. Which was also very far off dreams that I guess I recall having around 14. But I was like twenty-something now, and I’d heard myself sing, it is not good, even just speaking I have a voice most people wish they could unhear, and the most acting I’ve ever done is pretending I was just fine for most of my entire life. Even though I could feel the sadness deep in my chest and gut that felt so heavy and dark I was afraid of even admitting it was there in fear of what other people might think about me, hell, what I might think of myself.

That’s the thing I’ve learned the most about trying to pinpoint when I became a ghost, I think I always was in some way, I was just never honest with myself about feeling that way. Not until I got much older and everything got out of control, that is. It’s why I’ve always felt more comfortable in my own space and house. Where I have confidence in myself and my own little secret hiding spots for where I keep the sadness or fears of inadequacy. It’s easier to be me behind closed doors and in the stillness of my bedroom or solitude of my basement. I can be me in places where everyone isn’t watching, or it doesn’t feel like they are. Where I can’t hear them laugh about me as they pass around a group chat or some other joke I’m not privy to. Where they aren’t looking at my messy bun and unfashionable clothing and the smattering of pimples on my chin, or sad eyes and splatting of goofy childish freckles. I don’t feel so odd when I’m alone. It’s when I’m actually around people - especially people who I don’t know, or who have job titles much more important sounding than my name, or people who have travelled all over, or created something beautiful that they are proud of - that I notice how inadequate I feel in their shadows. That any small useless fact that I might know, or place I’ve travelled, and job I’ve held, feels unimportant or less.

I am also aware that a lot of these feelings are just that, feelings, and not actual facts. That these people are probably not actually feeling these things about me, but that’s the way my anxiety and depression feels. It keeps me in the basement of my own heart and mind because it feels safer. Like assuming all of these people already think those things about me will hurt less when I find out they actually do.

And that’s the part that also hurts - a lot - is when you do find out that those people feel and think those things about you. Sometimes you only find out because someone tells you, and sometimes you have to hear them making fun of you behind your back to realize it. But it hurts all the same.

And it hurt the most when I was actually actively trying to reorganize my life and try to pull myself up out of my own depression and self induced spiral, and was honestly trying; going to therapy weekly, removing myself from bad places, narrowing down my circle of people, and mostly cocooning myself from the rest of the world outside of throwing myself into a desk job and reading books on my commute to and from said job. I stopped using social media, stopped talking to a lot of people, stopped doing a lot of anything.

And still I was a joke to people. Turns out, the people I worked with were just... making fun of me without me knowing. I was trying my best to find a footing and ‘build a career at a company’ or whatever the fuck that really means, and they were just laughing at how uncool I was, or terribly dressed, or the annoying voice I posses. I mean, I understand why they didn’t like me - most of the time prior I barely liked me - but it just sucked to know that even when you were trying to be an okay human, one that wasn’t fucked up all of the time and actively working on yourself two mornings a week where I cried so often about how much everyone hated me and how much of a fuck up I was, hurt so much worse than all the times when I was a teenager and felt like I didn’t fit in. When the mean girl in our neighborhood would invite all the other kids out to play manhunt, but wouldn’t include me. Or the girls in middle school wouldn’t include me because I wasn’t an A-Team soccer player or whatever other bullshit made me weird to them.

Because now I was an adult, who knew she was a ghost for so long, and when I was finally started allowing myself to be seen in any formation - people laughed. It made me wish I’d stayed hidden in my night shift jobs, basement hideouts, and in the comfort of the naps I took that were basically second nights of sleep, just with daylight shining on outside. It felt worse to realize not staying a ghost allowed people to see me, and even then they didn’t like me.

So I became a ghost, again. I cut off more people, stopped responding to others, asked some of them to stop reaching out to me, and just existed alone. I cried - a lot. In fields with my dog, who then was still a live, in parked cars outside of a job I hated, in the bathroom of that same job when I was constantly messing up and being allowed to have no responsibility, privacy, or final word on anything I did, I also cried in my bed, silently, almost every night as I stared at the ceiling fan spinning above my head and tried to transport myself to another place and time where it hurt less, I felt more secure, and maybe someone, or something, loved me back. But most of the time when I cried it was for the life I thought I was going to have, the one I realized I was mourning even though I never lived it, and crying for the other part of the person I let myself become which was a person that people at these companies, and ‘friends’ I knew in some parts of my life was a good reason for them to laugh at.

I cried a lot because I was never able to be someone, but what I think I was really crying for - and still do sometimes - is that I forget when I stopped wanting to be me.

Even the me that people in offices don’t like, or girls in middle school don’t understand. Sometimes I cried because I wished I could like that person more because at least than I’d feel like me. It’s hard to come to terms with that, hard to realize that I’m okay with not being liked by people, but it gets lonely realizing that having people in your life means all they want is for you to change. For you to fit the mold that they are okay with you being or who they would be comfortable bringing around their other friends. Someone who doesn’t laugh at the most inappropriate stuff, or snores in their sleep, or cries at commercials, whose car isn’t a mess, doesn’t hate folding laundry, knows when to call it a night at a bar one drink earlier than I do, or has a clear direction in their life and a slew of opportunities waiting for them at every corner with so many points of contact to makes those opportunities reality. Things for them to talk about at dinner parties or weddings as someone's date.

Things that people who aren’t ghosts know how to do naturally and effortlessly.

So I guess the real answer is, no, I don’t know when I actually became a ghost, if it was my whole life, or one morning when I woke up and just thought, ‘none of this is fun anymore,’ none of the getting high, or buzzed, or pretending I’m okay, or doing jobs that don’t make me happy, or never feeling the love of another human in the full ways that I wished I could, but instead tried to ignore and pretend I didn’t desire or want in my life. I’m not really sure when it all happened, I just know that I remember it all happening; slowly in random bouts of progression and over so many minutes of a life I kind of feel I’ve wasted to some extent, and hell, I’m unsure if I’ve ever really stopped fully wanting to be one. Sometimes it just feels easier to move through places and moments alone because it hurts less, somehow. Like it’s easier for everyone else if I just never get too attached to anything in fear that I’ll hurt them, or worse, they’ll break me, again. And I’m really tired of being broken by things that I may have thought were for me, but ended up not being.

And then there are the random moments where I peak out into the world around me, fully noticed by someone - in a normal everyday running of an errand kind of way - and walk away from a conversation or an event and feel a slight bit of content in my heart that I think maybe it really doesn’t hurt worse than never actually feeling anything fully. It’s an odd catch 22. Wanting to be seen, and being fearful of being seen in fear, on both ends, that you’ll end up broken somehow.

I’m unsure what any of it fully means, I guess for anyone. Do other people feel that way? Is it just a whole group of us who exist out there and feel - lost? Or scared? Or afraid to be who they actually are in fear that the life they lead now will no longer suit them or make them actually happy? And I know that this must be something people struggle with in terms of sexual orientation, but in a way, even as someone who does not struggle with that and knows I am into a certain sex, I still understand it in the sense that faking who I am feels wrong. It feels like selling out. Like I’m only living to appease other people, and I wish more times that other people were willing to live to accept other people for who they were; faults and all. Even in this cancel culture world, not everyone is good, and not everyone is bad; people can be so many things, it’s the idealization to put a label on everything that makes things harder I think. We aren’t ingredients in a candy bar for consumption, we’re people - ghosts and all - but we are all allowed to be phases of ourselves sometimes. Sometimes, you have to become what you’re not all of the time to maybe even fully realize who you are, or want to be, most of the time.

Unsure if any of that makes sense, but I think I’ll have to break it down even further. Maybe next time. In another post, where I don’t ramble on forever and come to no conclusion. This thesis would fail if I had to hand it in for a grade.

Unless of course it was a scientific experiment hypothesis; and maybe that’s all life really is - one giant cosmic experiment where the rules will forever change and the points don’t really matter. Some giant game of Whose Line is it Anyway?

From one ghost behind a computer to another reading, goodnight.

xoxo

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marjansmarwani · 3 years

Text

hold you ‘til the morning comes

1.6k || ao3

Carlos has known nothing but fear since he first got the report that a firefighter had died in the line of duty. After hours of wondering, here TK was: very much alive, but far from okay. But Carlos is not going to let him suffer alone.

Inspired by the scene in the promo of Carlos comforting TK --- Carlos Reyes Week Day 7: Anything goes

This idea came to me while I was watching the promo and @officereyes, being the wonderful enabler she is, encouraged me to write it. I carefully avoided any mention of who dies so I could be right either way, but I have my theories. Anyways, enjoy some Carlos introspection as he worries about TK 💕

--------------

When Carlos and Mya returned to the precinct, there was a tension hanging in the air.

At first, he ignores it, choosing instead to focus on the path to his desk and the prospect of sitting down. A volcano erupting in the center of the city had left everyone a little crazier than usual, and after a full shift on patrol, he wanted nothing more than to collapse at his desk and bury himself in paperwork for the remaining hour.

But as he and Mya headed to their adjoined desks, he could feel eyes on him.

“Am I imagining things, or are people staring?” he asked his partner under his breath.

Mya looked around and frowned. She paused in front of the desk diagonal to their own and stared down at its occupant, “What the hell is going on, Johnson?

Johnson, a young, quiet officer nearly jumped out of his skin at the mere prospect of being directly addressed by Mya. He swallowed nervously, glancing around the room before he responded as if hoping someone else would step in and save him. When no takers arose he swallowed again before speaking, “A report just came in. It...said that a firefighter died.”

Carlos froze mid stride, a cold dread seeping through his chest. He turned and faced Johnson, catching the worried gaze of his partner as he turned. He kept his voice as calm and steady as possible as he asked the question he desperately needed to know, “did it say which station?”

Johnson shook his head frantically, nearly vibrating out of his seat with anxiety in the weight of Carlos’s gaze, “no, sir.”

He felt Mya’s hand, warm and steady on his arm as she leaned closer, “there’s no saying it’s him, Carlos.”

He nodded, jaw tight, but didn’t voice what he was thinking: but there’s no saying it isn’t either.

Somehow his feet find their way to his desk where he sits, hyper aware of all the surreptitious glances thrown his way. It wasn’t just that it could be TK. It was that it could be Mateo or Judd, Paul or Marjan. It could be Owen, for all he knew. It could be any number of the members of the little family they had built for themselves in the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty, and Carlos didn’t want to lose any of them.

But it could be TK, and Carlos didn’t know how he was supposed to live with that.

The room was quiet and Carlos could feel more than one pair of eyes on him. He did his best to ignore them. He didn’t need their pity, and he had more than enough fear all on his own. He couldn’t really blame them though; in the months that he and TK had been together, his boyfriend had become known around the station. At first by virtue of being a fellow first responder himself, then later because he would stop by on days he was off to meet Carlos for lunch, or just to say hi. TK got on well with his coworkers, so he understood the heightened fear. They weren’t just worried for Carlos’s boyfriend, they were worried for their friend.

He ignored the whispers and Mya’s concerned gaze and pulled out his phone, hands trembling ever so slightly as he accessed his recent calls. He tapped on TK’s name and waited, each ring another spike of fear being driven into his soul. All too soon the automated voice of the voicemail sounded and Carlos ended the call, placing the phone on his desk without a word or a comment to anyone.

Not answering didn’t mean anything. TK often didn’t answer when he was on shift: it was hard to answer your phone when you’re scaling a building or doing whatever else the day might require.

Or that’s what Carlos told himself, at least.

He turned back to his paperwork, trying to bury himself in the routine, resisting the urge to check his phone every other second. The minutes tick by and soon his shift is over, but he can’t bring himself to leave. If he leaves and goes home to his empty condo, he might actually go crazy. So instead he stays, willing to trade off the unpaid overtime for the comforting monotony of paperwork.

At some point, he realizes that the desk in front of him is still occupied too. He looks up to find his partner sitting resolutely at her desk, shuffling through her own paperwork.

“Mya,” he began but she shook her head, effectively interrupting him.

“I go home when you go home,” she declared firmly. “I’m going to be here for you no matter what, so just get over it.”

Despite everything, he had to smile. “Okay,” he agreed, knowing when to admit defeat. He turned back to his paperwork, but not before checking his phone one more time. There were still no new messages, and he tried to ignore just how much further his heart sank each time.

He had just turned back to his paperwork when the sound of loud voices outside the room filter to his desk.

“They’re saying that fireman just ate it,” someone was saying, “he was dead before they could even get to him.”

Eyes all over the room turned to Carlos, some more subtly than others, and clenched his jaw, determined to keep his expression neutral.

“Carlos,” Mya began, already halfway out of her seat with the likely goal of telling whoever was talking to kindly shut the fuck up, but he shook his head.

“It’s fine Mya, I’m just going to step outside and try calling him again.”

She nodded and gave him a tight smile as he grabbed his phone and headed towards the back door. He opened it and stepped out onto the stairs, taking a deep breath of the crisp night air. It doesn’t fortify him as it usually does, but there is only one thing in the world that could make him feel better tonight.

The fear that he has been burying inside his chest all night is ready to burst but he pushes it down one more time. There’s still no saying it’s him, there’s still no saying that he has anything to fear at all. He pulls out his phone with shaking hands, ready to try again and already dreading the sound of his voicemail. He’s just about to dial when he sees someone at the bottom of the staircase. He frowns, pocketing his phone. This isn’t the public entrance to the precinct. Most people didn’t even know it existed. He was about to call down, to see what the strange figure wanted when they stepped into the yellow light of the floodlight and their features came into focus and suddenly Carlos couldn’t breathe.

He took the stairs two at a time, rushing down to TK, because it was TK. He was here, he was standing, and he was alive. He might just be the most beautiful thing Carlos had ever seen.

He called TK’s name as he rushed down and when his boyfriend looked up at him Carlos was struck by the sadness in his eyes even from a distance.

He slowed as he approached, taking in his appearance. He seemed to be unhurt, as far as Carlos could tell, but he looked smaller than Carlos had ever seen him.

He stopped short of pulling TK into his arms, though he wants to so desperately. He studies him up close first, before speaking, “There were reports saying a firefighter had died and you weren’t answering your phone. I...” he trailed off, not sure how to explain what he had spent the past few hours feeling and not wanting to burden TK any more with his own feelings when the other man was clearly drowning in the weight of his own.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

TK’s voice is too small and Carlos’s heart aches, “It’s fine,” he assures him, “I’m just happy you’re safe.”

He wants to ask what happened, he wants to ask all the questions echoing through his mind but TK is shaking and Carlos feels fear start to climb up his spine again, “Are you hurt?”

“No,” TK assures him, “I’m not hurt. I’m okay.”

As they stand on the stairwell and look at each other Carlos reflects that in all their time together, that might just be the biggest lie TK has ever told him. He steps forward, hesitantly at first but when TK makes no move to stop him he pulls him into his arms, sheltering his shaking body with his own. He can feel TK’s body sag into his, losing some of the tension. It’s only a moment before he can feel his shoulder getting wet as TK’s body quakes with silent sobs. He pulls them down so they are sitting on the stairs and gently rests his chin on the top of TK’s head, running a hand in soothing circles on his back.

His boyfriend is safe and he is beyond grateful. He wants to bask in the feeling of TK in his arms and the knowledge that he is safe, that he hadn’t lost him, but it feels selfish in the face of TK’s grief. He had lost someone today, and though Carlos doesn’t know the details, he understands. Whether or not it was someone from his station, whether or not it was someone from his team, the loss of any firefighter could feel like the loss of a family member. It could also serve as a reminder of what he stood to lose every day; that when the ones closest to you are the ones running into the fire beside you, there is so much more to risk.

Carlos would ask those questions later, he would help him through it, whatever it was. For now, they would just sit here, curled together in the stairway, savoring the warmth and existence of each other.

Everything else could wait, for now.

#911 lone star #911 lone star fic #carlos reyes #tk strand #tarlos #911ls season 2 #my writing #carlosreyesweek2021 #userkimmy #userac #usermaximus #userjilly #tuserpaige #tuserjamie #jazzyjezz #aanathema

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