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prvtbugsbuggins · 2 years

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31 - Reach For The Sun

For @whumptober2021

Chapter link -> Here

Trigger warning for: Discussions of sad things in therapy.

Prompt: Trauma

Summary: Dr. Grey offers a new type of treatment for Caboose, but she has no clue what lurks in his mind. She just hopes she can help him.

—

“I want Caboose to try therapy.”

“Huh?” Washington looked over to Dr. Grey, a brow raised in confusion. “Therapy? Isn’t that what he’s doing now?”

“No,” She said with a little giggle. “That is gene therapy he’s getting. No, this is different. Talk therapy, if you will.” She watched Washington puff up in response, looking quite alarmed by the very concept. She steepled her hands together and leaned forward against her desk. “The kind where you talk about your problems, and I’ll help you feel better and learn how to cope with your traumas.”

“The councilor-” Washington started to speak, before she cut him off before he could start to panic.

“No, like like that. That was a sociopath. This is proper therapy. By the looks of it, it’s something you should try out too.” She glided her chair over to one of her file cabinets, opening one of the drawers and rooting around inside. She found a slim little pamphlet, taking it out and back to her desk. She handed it over to Wash, watching his face make about three different emotions at once as he took it. He glanced over the pamphlet, that had [COGNITIVE THERAPY AND YOU!] stamped across in bold letters.

“No offense, but I don’t feel ready to let people dig into my head just yet.” He groused. He sighed and sat back in his chair and began to fiddle with the paper in his hands. A habit Emily noticed that many of the troopers seemed to have. Perhaps it was because there was no gun in his hands, not having an equalizer is bound to make most people nervous once they got used to having them.

She hrmed in response. “Therapy is not effective unless the person wants it. So no, I’m not going to drag you kicking and screaming into my office to make you talk. But if you feel ready for it, I’ll be here.”

Washington sighed, tapping his foot as he lifted his head to rest the back against the wall. “Why Caboose though? Hasn’t he been through enough already?”

“Why, do you think Caboose doesn’t need therapy?” Emily raised a brow, watching Washington’s reaction. He brought his head back down to stare at his feet, and sighed. She continued to talk, haven gotten Wash’s unspoken confirmation. “I have his file. I spoke with his sister about this. You told me yourself that he doesn’t know who he is or where he is sometimes. You cannot ignore the fact that he is is an augmented super soldier with obvious signs of post traumatic stress disorder. For his safety, as well as for everyone else, I highly recommend therapy.”

“I don’t know if he’d like the idea or not…” Wash leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “He already doesn’t like having to come here for his shots, let alone having to spend even more time here. He just got put back together again from what Felix did, I’m sure he’s sick of the place. I know I would be. I don’t know what you’ll say to get him to agree to give it a try.”

“Oh that’s easy,” Emily grinned. “After you tell him about it, mention that he gets double the cupcakes.”

“Really?” Wash frowned at her. “You really think that cupcakes are going to make Caboose, the one with medical trauma, willingly stay in a hospital for longer than he has in order to not die.”

“You think so? I bet you fifty dollars that says otherwise.” Some would say that she was cheating, but hey, she earned those doctorates in both medicine and psychology. She’ll take all the advantages that she could get, including outright bribery.

“Fine, you’re on.” Wash stood up to leave, it was about time Caboose would be done with his post-treatment nap when he could be picked up and taken home. “I’m telling you, it’s never going to work.”

—

Emily sat at her desk, fifty dollars richer and watching a very happy super soldier carefully eat a cupcake on her new couch. She had to get a completely new couch to order to let him relax more comfortably. It’s wasn’t that hard, seeing that there was so much junk steel left over from the war. It just took some welding and casting and a bunch of cushions and blankets to have something both cozy and least likely to outright collapse. Anything for one of Chorus’s saviors, after all.

He hummed happily as he ate the cupcake down to a picked clean wrapper, and then folded said wrapper into a heart. “Thanks!” He chirped, putting the heart in one of his armor pockets. Emily had noticed that he was looking a lot more alert and bright eyed lately, something she was glad to see. It meant he was staying more in reality instead of slipping somewhere else, and most likely... unpleasant.

“You’re welcome Michael!” the smile came easy to her, his happiness tended to infect others around him. “I’m glad you agreed to come and talk to me. It’s a big decision.”

“Well uhhhhh.” He folded his hands on his lap and tilted his head from side to side, like a metronome as he thought about what to say. “Indy said that she tried it and it helped so it might help me to not have bad dreams and getting spooked.”

“It can help with that, yes. But it’s up to you what we talk about. If you feel uncomfortable, you can change the subject at anytime, okay?” She had already gone over patient rights earlier, but she wanted to be very sure that he understood that this was therapy, not a torture session.

He nodded with a smile. “Yes! I know! I do not like talking about sad things though…”

“That’s okay, we can work up to that if you like. So, how about you start by telling me about your day so far and how you are feeling?”

She sat and listened for a full hour as Caboose described in great detail how he was doing, taking notes off to the side. Retirement had given the soldier a lot of stability, especially since his friends stayed with him to provide support. He was responding well to his treatments. He had his casts taken off recently so he was happy to scratch all the itches. Overall he seemed rather happy, but she read his file. She heard what his sister and his guardian had told her. She’s seen how he reacted to needles and basic medical equipment. Pain was lurking just under the surface, but that was okay. He’ll talk about it in time.

She just needed to be patient.

—

Four sessions in, Caboose finally talked about something negative.

“I um, had a miss match again.” he admitted, noticeably more subdued and quiet than his normal, bouncy self. It was quite the change and Grey paid close attention.

“A miss match? What is that?” she asked, wanting to hear his definition. She kind of suspected what it was, but she wanted to be sure.

“It’s when I think someone is someone else, or that I’m someplace not where I am now.” he explained. “Sometimes I think I’m still in school, or that I have a test, or that I’m in trouble for something. I don’t like them, they make me and my friends sad.” He fiddled with his fingers, eyes downcast to look at his boots.

“I see, what happened this time?” She asked, ready to record what he told her.

“I thought that Tucker was Echo. Echo is my sister who went out to explore and went to MIA and I miss her. And then um….I thought Washingtub was one of my teachers and then I got scared cause I thought he was going to put her in detention and do mean stuff.” He fiddled harder, biting his lips and taking a short pause before he spoke again. “So I took Tucker and ran away and hid with him until I remember that he was Tucker, not Echo. And everyone got sad and then I got sad and then I took a nap and woke up with a headache.”

So he had an intensive flashback and the increased stress triggered a seizures, she thought. The next thought she vocalized. “How did that make you feel?”

“I was sad,” he sighed. “I remembered this one. Wash was sad cause he said he’d never ever hurt me and I thought he would cause I didn’t remember who he was. Tucker was sad because he said he tried to make me remember sooner but it didn’t work. I made everyone sad because they had to look for me and tell me that Tucker wasn’t my sister and that they weren’t teachers. Then I took a nap and made them have to carry me back to tuck me in. I don’t like making my friends sad because I love them and you don’t make people you love sad.”

She took a moment to finish her notes and process what she was going to say next. She felt bad for the poor soldier, but she knew she had to nip one specific thing in the bud before it could take root in his mind.

“They aren’t sad because of you, Michael.” She said gently. “They are sad because you get trapped in your head, and they don’t have a way to help you. When you love someone, you accept them fully. That means accepting their pain and their hurts. When you hurt, they hurt too, because it’s impossible not to when you care about someone. Would you be sad if Tucker had a bad dream and was scared as a result?”

“Yes,” he raise his head up to look her in the eyes. “Because Tucker is my friend and I don’t want him to be scared. It’s not nice to be scared.”

“But did you cause Tucker to have a bad dream and get scared?”

He thought for a moment, mulling over her words in his mind before he finally spoke again, words a little quiet and hushed. “No, I didn’t.”

“That’s how everyone feels about you, Michael. They feel sad when you are sad and that is normal. It’s just what love is, and you have a great big heart full of it. So don’t blame yourself when you have times when you get mixed up. Just accept that they care about you, after all, they wouldn’t have stayed if they didn’t.”

The rest of the session consisted of Caboose quietly weeping, but when he left after the hour was over, Grey swore he walked a little lighter than when he first came in.

—

The next few session went as normal as they could be. Caboose was talking about random things that were happening on Iris, one of them in particular involved one of his friends.

“Simmons got a letter from his mom,” Caboose said. “She was mad at him.”

“Why was she mad?” Grey leaned back in her chair and adjusted her glasses. “Did he tell you why?”

“It’s cause he and Grif are going to get married and Simmons said that she is mean and doesn’t like it that Grif is Grif and everyone called her a ‘ B I T C H ‘.” He spelled out the last part in a quiet voice, as though he would get into trouble if overheard.

“Oh, so she doesn’t like that her son is marrying a man? Is that right?” She blinked a couple times, such thinking was quite outdated nowadays.

“I think so, and well...I wondered…” Caboose suddenly got very interested in his boots, staring down and not looking her in the eyes. “Is that why I don’t have a mom? Cause moms are mean and she didn’t want me?”

Well, that was quite a conclusion to jump to. “Oh no, no. Plenty of moms are very nice. My mother is very kind and I still talk to her often. Not all of them are mean.”

“I guess mine was mean then?” he frowned deeply and started to chew on the ends of his gloves. “Cause I never had one, so that must mean she really didn’t like me.”

She wondered how much classified information she could divulge, but decided to say ‘fuck it’ and just tell him what she knew. “No, I’m sure your mother would have loved you very much. She died during the war, and you were left an orphan. That’s why you and your sisters were taken into the SPARTAN program.”

He thought for a few seconds, still chewing on his fingers, before he spoke again. “So if Simmon’s mom dies, does that mean he gets to be my brother?”

The rest of the session was spent making it very clear that no, killing someone’s mother does NOT mean you get to claim their children as siblings, no matter how much you want to.

—

Dr. Grey knew something was very wrong when he didn’t touch his cupcake.

He just laid down on the couch and stared at it, shivering as he curled up on himself. He said nothing. He did nothing. He just laid there, looking as though he was trying to keep a dam from breaking within and flooding the world with it.

She stayed patient, quiet. She wanted her office to be warm and inviting, and if he just wanted to rest here for his session, she was fine with it. But she was very concerned.

“Michael, can you tell me how you are feeling right now?” she asked quietly after around 30 minutes of silence.

He shuddered for a moment, blinking his eyes before he turned his gaze to her. She looked back, and saw such immense suffering and pain that she nearly forgot where she was.

“I remember.” he whispered in a haunted voice.

“Remember what?” she leaned forward, trying her best to hear him. “Can you tell me, Michael?”

He let out a short whimper and hid his head. “O’Malley.” He choked out, and spoke no more for the rest of the session. Wash had to come in at the end and help him out, the haunted look never leaving his face.

He did not return for the next two sessions.

—

Grey was happy to see Caboose in a good mood today. Their sessions had their ups and downs over the months, but she was slowly seeing a positive change in her patient.

“I got my last shot today!” He announced, voice loud with joy. “We are having a party!”

“I’m glad!” She couldn’t help but grin, proud of him for sticking with the treatment, and a little pride for herself for being able to help him. “I’m proud of you. They were scary for you but you stuck with it! How do you feel?”

“Better!” He rocked back and forth on the couch, unable to sit still at all. “I don’t get so many headaches now! Agent Washingtub said that I haven’t had an unscheduled nap in a long time! So that’s why we are having cake and we are all going to watch all the Shrek movies!”

“That sounds exciting, is everyone going to be there?”

“Yeah! A couple of my sisters won’t be able to come cause they got busy work to do. My sister Juliet has new babies on her farm so now I have to come up with names for them all and she can’t leave cause she has to bottle feed some. It’s important work.” He grinned and leaned back on the couch. “I’m very happy!”

“It’s good to be happy, you seem happier these days.” Grey pointed at him with her pen with a smile. “It’s something I like to see, lets keep going, shall we?”

He nodded, his smile like the sun.

—

Grey scanned her key-card before heading to the waiting room. It was time for Caboose’s session, and she needed to go and fetch him. She nearly dropped her coffee in surprise when she saw not only him, but all the troopers and freelancers occupying the chairs.

“Hello! Can I help you all?” She was a bit confused, wondering if they were all here for Caboose’s sake, or someone got ventilated with bullets again. A medical emergency was not something she was down to tangle with today, unless it was an interesting one, of course.

“Well…” It was Simmons who spoke first, rubbing the back of his head as he built up the courage to speak. “We saw how Caboose was doing…”

“Which is great, cause he isn’t forcing cuddle sessions on us so much anymore.” Tucker added.

Wash just pointed at Caboose, who was quite literally vibrating in his chair in joy.

“Soooooooooooo, we were wondering if well, you had spots in your schedule free for additional patients?” Donut asked hopefully.

Grey blinked, and then she smiled, relieved and somewhat impressed.

“I think I have some spots open, let me get my planner.”

—

And so we end the month long challenge with the last chapter as a message of hope. Therapy helps, it helps so much. I can function today because of it and I wish it was more available in my country (USA). If you can, I highly recommend it. It can change your life for the better.

Now lets get the troopers and freelancers to therapy too!

Special thanks to those who took the time to comment and say hi. It really helped keep me motivated to keep working hard to write this all for you. I'm so glad people enjoyed it. I just hope I can continue to provide FEELS for a while. Special thanks too for @smilysstuff who gave me so many ideas for chapters, your help was greatly appreciated :,3

See you next time with a fluff compilation!

#whumptober2021 #no.31 #trauma #rvb #red vs blue #fic #spartan!caboose #Kaleidoscope #michael j caboose #emily grey #agent washington #get thee to a therapist #talk therapy #cognitive therapy #thank you all for your comments and help #ilu all #caboose #a bug wrote this

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pla-teau · 3 years

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WANDAVISION EPISODE EIGHT THOUGHTS

GIF NOT MINE

HOLY SHIT THIS EPISODE TORE ME TO SHREDS & IT’S VISUALLY MY FAVORITE EPISODE.

hayward fucking lied | that manipulative weasel tried to pin all this on wanda to make her look like the bad guy and at the end she did absolutely nothing wrong except maybe cost them new windows. i believe hayward knew that wanda was going to be the power source to bring vision back to life. he hinted at it and i think he tried to push her at SWORD headquarters. when the hex happened, he put the missile on the drone knowing damn well wanda would stop it. he knew that after he detected that she created a copy of vision within the hex, she was the key to completing their rebuilding of vision. overall, my hatred for the man has reached a new level and i hope he dies at the end of the series.

white vision | obviously referring to project catarract that darcy found in SWORD’s hardrive. when i said i wanted white vision to appear, i didn’t mean this way and i’ve seen some theories floating around that maybe james spader will voice this vision? and if this is the big secret actor paul has been saying he’s going to work with — i will laugh and cry because i am one of those who was thinking we’d get an x-men cameo with either professor x or magneto and i’m gonna hold out hope. if it is just vision vs. vision, i don’t doubt i’ll love it. so excited to see this vision though it’ll hurt to see vision battle wanda since this whole episode just showed us how much they loved each other.

wanda and vision’s relationship | we got to see a very sweet and deep moment between the two in the avengers compounds after age of ultron. when i tell you i damn near cried into my pillow, it made my heart ache. they really are fucking soulmates. i didn’t originally care for the couple but this show really showcased how despite being the pairing of a witch and an android, there is still so much LOVE between these two. i broke when i saw the deed to the lot and vision’s note of growing old together. excuse me marvel i didn’t ask to be emotionally obliterated, thanks.

wanda’s chaos magic | clearly, we see that wanda is responsible for the creation of the hex. i think she didn’t purposely block out her creating the hex. when she said she doesn’t know how it happened, she truly doesn’t. we’ve seen her lose control once and that was after the death of pietro but it wasn’t as strong before. i believe she just blacked out a bit since she hasn’t used that much of her power before. i think with literally no one (where tf was clint? the avengers?? literally anyone????) there to help her grieve and basically keep her grounded, the wave, referring to her powers, did drown her this time and consumed her into this escapist reality where she no longer felt that pain.

wanda & sitcoms | now we learn why the show has been in the style of various television sitcoms. she’s grown up with them since she was a little girl in sokovia - her favorite being the dick van dyke show. hello i’m soft af. even when her parents were killed and she was practically at death’s door with pietro, television was there to help her get through it. in the HYDRA base, wanda still has a television to watch and help her through the days. what this episode told us is that television is wanda’s constant. i mean this in the sense that unlike people, television has always been there for her. wanda has not had a consistent group of people around her. it’s a revolving door when it comes to the people in wanda’s life. we see her alone and almost abandoned when we see how the creation of the hex happened. television is her escape which is what television provides for everyone. that’s the purpose of television shows - give you an escape from your life because in shows like the ones that have influenced wanda’s reality, they always turn out fine by the end of the episode.

agatha’s therapy | throughout this whole thing agatha is sort of giving wanda much needed therapy even if the end goal is not in wanda’s best interest. she mentions very quick about wanda being a young witch which could coincide with the idea that wanda’s always had this sort of gene in her like pietro and other mutants (if they’re going to use her to confirm the existence of the x-gene which im dying for tbh). she has a clue from the get go as to what wanda is but until she has the full picture, she doesn’t reveal it until the end of the episode. she confirms that ‘fietro’ came from a necromancy spell sooo does that mean she’s using a dead body? he was her eyes and ears but of course, wanda didn’t give up much and that plan was foiled.

wanda resurrecting vision | we learn that wanda never stole vision and brought him back to life. because she and vision are both born from the mind stone, it’s not shocking as to her practically using the chaos magic to create a vision for herself. it also explains why vision can’t live outside the hex - he was born from it and without the chaos magic, he’ll die. also, it’s peppered throughout the episode that the two are soulmates so there’s that aspect to it as well. so she hasn’t been puppeteering a corpse - that image of dead vision stems from wanda’s trauma and mentality starting to chip away at her reality. it also proves how fucking powerful this woman is because like agatha said, she’s supposed to be a thing of myth. while she did use her magic to create/resurrect vision, he’s still his own being in a sense - she doesn’t control him completely. he has his own thoughts and perceptions. he’s aware and the fact that something of wanda’s creation can do that really just showcases the power she holds in her.

agatha’s backstory | seems that agatha’s pretty smug when she’s confronted by her coven leader. it’s pretty easy to see through (in my opinion) the pleading to her mother and the rest of her coven. also kathryn hahn is simply eating up this fucking role and i’m here for it. now we learn why she has the broach, it’s her mother’s which is sweet but seeing agatha throughout the series and in the past, seems more of a token of practically massacring her coven that day. i liked seeing that snippet of her past and it seems like she’s always been drawn to the darker and more sinister side of witchcraft.

wanda’s power | as agatha comments at the end, wanda truly doesn’t know how dangerous she can be. wanda can barely remember how the hell the westview hex happened. while yes i’m here for wanda being shown and known as the most powerful being in the mcu, it’s also worth noting that she is dangerous. at the beginning of the episode, agatha rubs her nose in about how simple a protection spell is or how she studied to get her powers to where they are today. wanda doesn’t know anything about witchcraft or spells. yes, she gained powers from the infinity stone but she was made to be a weapon and even after being brought into the avengers, she wasn’t taught magic or how to tap into her chaos magic. she didn’t even know that her power was considered magic. i also think wanda’s powers are very much rooted in her emotions. we saw what she could do in age of ultron when she felt her twin die. wanda is powerful but so dangerous in this aspect. not saying that this is a bad thing but it separates wanda from other magic users like agatha, dr. strange and even loki. agatha has had years of knowledge and training to be as powerful as she is now. what separates wanda from the others is that she doesn’t have the control and mastery like them. she didn’t know that her powers could make another vision or alter the reality of a town populated by 3,000+ people. agatha is right, wanda is dangerous because she hasn’t had years to control the power she holds at her fingertips.

#wandavision #wandavision spoilers #scar’s theories #scar tries to piece together what she can each week #wanda maximoff #vision #agatha harkness #tyler hayward #tyler haydick is what he is on his birth certificate #marvel #mcu

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jeongyunhoed · 4 years

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Past-Present-Future

What do you do

When everything you’ve done

Comes back to haunt you?

Group: ATEEZ

Superpowers AU!

Mutants, assassins, confronting the past! a little dive into the concept of romantic soulmates!

with OCs

Genres: Fantasy, Supernatural, Adventure, Angst, Implied smut, Fluff, Gen

Flashback-heavy

Featuring mentions of: Park Jihoon (solo), Chanyeol, Dean, Zelo

Warnings: Blood, gore, death, violence, character deaths

She has lived with guilt. Slowly remembering details of her checkered past when interned at a sanitarium years ago. The sudden reemerging of a person she remembered dying and the resurgence of a powerful crime syndicate will have her trying to walk the line between the person she has become and the person she was once destined to be.

A/N: I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post this at all, but I guess it’s worth a try to increase my works on this platform again. The masterlist for this will be up shortly once I figure out/try and make a good graphic. Keyword: TRY (as I suck at photo editing)

Chapter 1.

“As of today, the seven of you will become a unit, a covert unit. To put it simply, if I want someone killed, you will do it for me, if I want people killed, you will do it for me, if I want information, you will retrieve it for me, all in all, if I want something, you will get it for me, I am good they are bad,” A woman, whose face was obscured in the dark, told the seven people - six men and one woman, all of whom had vacant expressions and were staring into space.

They were lined up in a padded room, a secret room in the sanitarium that doubled as a training room from the shelves upon shelves of sharp weapons on display at the very end of the room. She knew they could hear her, they just couldn’t speak.

“Kim Hongjoong, Park Seonghwa, Jeong Yunho, Song Mingi, Jung Wooyoung, Choi Jongho, and,” A man said this time, his face also obscured in the dark, reciting each of their names before rounding on the sole woman in the lineup of people wearing sanitarium uniforms. “Lee Mirae,” the man was smirking in the dark. “The future of our program, you will lead this unit, your progress from all the training these past few years has been exceptional, near-perfect, I would like to think.”

Mirae said nothing. “Quite an impressive one you are, Lee Mirae,” The woman spoke again. “It’s almost as if you were born for this kind of job. Changseok, what do you think? She is the most successful one we’ve trained under the program, right?”

“Quite right, honey. Lee Mirae, you are the most successful experiment in this program of ours. It’s not hard to see why, you were born with the mutant gene,” The man seemed to stare at her. “Your own parents didn’t realize your true potential when they interned you in here, but consider this as a way to lead you to what you are destined to be. The most-feared mercenary the world has ever known. The mere sight of you will bring even the most powerful people to their knees, begging you to spare their lives.”

Mirae still said nothing. Like the others, she could hear them, she just couldn’t speak. “You will be pulled out whenever we have a mission for you. This will entail traveling to faraway parts of the world. While you’re all built to be killing machines, I don’t think any of you are invulnerable to harm. But don’t worry, after every mission, upon returning, you will all be subject to electroshock therapy. Just enough to make you forget what you’ve done, where you went, and whom you might have killed,” The woman spoke again.

They could hear her. They just couldn’t speak. “You are all ready for your first mission. It’s in Busan. You will be briefed on the way. It’s time to open Pandora’s Box.”

The seven of them twitched in their places. As the man known as Changseok began to repeat the last two words, the seven of them continued twitching, tilting their heads as if hearing something that hurt their ears. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard, forks scratching ceramic plates. When Changseok stopped, all of them stood still, a blank look in their eyes as if in a trance. “Remember, regardless of the weapon you pick, you are the true weapon.”

Seoul. 9:00 p.m. Present day.

Five years have passed since the Seoul attack that changed everything. Almost everyone that was part of trying to stop it was gone, either dead or missing. Lee Mirae stared at the rain tapping on the windows of her apartment. It was now four years since the Utopian cult, the encounter that gave her a rude awakening, the encounter that made everything seem like a lie, the encounter where she lost her adoptive brother Jihoon. There was a memorial in place for the lives lost during those times, placed on the site where the Center for Paranormal Research once stood.

This was no longer the place she once knew. Even the brightest colors from the lights by the river seemed to have a grey, almost black tinge to it all. For some reason, the place she called home was no longer as bright as she knew it to be. It was a lot darker, and it wasn’t only because of the constant dark clouds hanging over the city, but it was also because the crime rate was still at its highest. Gangs were rampant all over. Law enforcement couldn’t be trusted. It wasn’t hard for Mirae to realize how much things weren’t so bright and cheerful since the Seoul attack. It was never bright and cheerful. She just wasn’t paying much attention.

Mirae was a mutant, and had the ability to manipulate energy. She turned the smallest things into extremely explosive projectiles, and she often did it with a deck of cards. Being an omega-level mutant, the fullest extent of her powers allowed her to turn into an energy being, aside from a healing factor that made her almost immortal, and it also slowed down her aging process. She was a fighter, gifted with many forms of combat, and she was often told by her adoptive brother that no one could beat her in any way, but she knew that wasn’t true nor was it going to be true. She often used a steel bo staff made for her by Junhong, one of the surviving tech guys from the attack, who also took it upon himself to make changes to some of her things, including her car and the windows of both her apartment and the record store she owned and operated.

Her powers didn’t stop there. From the two big events that shook the city came her ability to trap souls into objects, usually her cards. This also resulted in a white streak in her hair that she never bothered covering up, not even when she tried to dye her hair.

She heard the door open and turned around. It was her half-brother, Choi San, coming back from getting take-out at the nearest restaurant. San was a mutant like her, and was also gifted with the ability to manipulate energy, only he channeled it through his harpoon. His healing abilities were just as strong as hers, granting him near-immortality. San was also skilled in combat, and when they reunited, he was working as a mercenary for hire. He still was one. Like her, he also had a streak in his hair, a purple one that seemed to cover up the white that formed upon using his powers to their fullest extent.

Mercenary. The mere word made her shake her head. That wasn’t her. If it was, then it was the old her. She was no longer under the control of her Utopian cult. The trigger was gone, taken out of her head. She knew this well. She was the one who drove the sword into the leaders of that cult, her own adoptive parents.

“I’ve come back bearing meat, I figured we could grill some over the stove for dinner tonight” He said, holding up a black plastic bag. San tilted his head. “You had another dream, didn’t you?” He figured.

“Yeah,” Mirae let out an exasperated sigh. She had trouble sleeping, knowing that her dreams would present her flashes of memories from her time at the sanitarium. Only this time, the memories she would have would lead her to wake up in tears as those memories were of Jihoon. Jihoon, whom she promised to protect with her whole life when he got out, whom she practically raised, and whom she ultimately failed to save.

“What was it this time?” San asked, already bringing out a griddle pan to pan-fry the meat instead.

“The first mission I had, or at least that’s what it sounded like, the usual stuff,” She replied, setting the table while he cooked the meat.

San’s expression turned into that of concern as he glanced at her. It made him wonder how he could somehow help her get out of this, out of her inability to sleep. “I could get you sleeping pills if you need it,” He said carefully.

“Thanks, but no thanks. Whether or not I take them, I still have those dreams,” Mirae shook her head, helping him out with cooking this time.

“Hasn’t Junhong… tried to come up with something to help you? What about your friends? Chanyeol? Hyuk? Have they thought of helping you?” San’s tone was becoming increasingly concerned.

“How can they? Hyuk’s not that powerful a telepath, what can Chanyeol do, burn my head? Ino… well, he’s too caught up in trying to manage his own powers to even try and help out other people,” Mirae answered. “Even if they tried, when the trigger was taken out of me, the psychic block in my head grew stronger, they can’t read my mind even if I wanted them to.”

San frowned. He hated that he couldn’t do anything to help her either. “I hear you crying in the middle of the night sometimes,” he said, partly wondering if it was the right time to point it out. “At first I thought you were crying because you missed Jihoon, but over time I realized it was something else,” He quickly turned the meat over in time before one side burned.

“I will always miss him. But every time I go to sleep I’m always haunted by what happened to me before,” Mirae muttered. “I’ll be fine, San. Really, I’ll be fine, I can cope with it,” She assured him. “Maybe some sparring will help clear my head. Want to spar with me later?”

“Will you let me win this time?” San teased, in an effort to lighten the mood.

“I can’t promise you that,” Mirae teased back.

“I thought you said you were training yourself?” Mirae asked later on in the training room down the hall from their apartment later that night. She managed to put San down on the mat in less than a minute during their first try.

“I was!” San argued, sounding frustrated as he got back up on his feet. “You’re just that good!” He pointed out, charging towards his sister, who easily blocked every strike he made while he did the same yet with a few maneuvers later, he was back down on the mat.

“That’s not true, you’re probably just not training enough,” Mirae pointed out, helping him back up.

“Hey! I really was!” San got back up. “Maybe we should just go through the obstacle course kind of training instead,” He said. Although he was frustrated at how he never seemed to be able to one-up Mirae, he couldn’t stay frustrated for long. He wanted to help her clear her head and he was determined to make it happen, even if it was at his own expense.

“Deal. I would never fight you anyway, unless you need to because I might be hypnotized or something,” She assured him, flipping one of the switches to start the courses in front of them. Several dummies were already positioned at the end along with spiked gauntlets that were rotating.

When Mirae flung a few cards towards the dummies in front of her, it signaled San to attack as well, his harpoon gun piercing through the dummy head and as the arrow pulled back, the head was nearly ripped off. The two of them rolled over to either side of the room, picking up the nearest weapon they could get their hands on: Mirae, her staff and San with a pair of nunchaku.

They attacked the spiked gauntlets at the same time with their weapons, kicks, and punches. Their attacks seemed incredibly effortless and precise. San smiled to himself at how they attacked at the same time, and he could tell Mirae was smiling as well, some blood staining the backs of their shoes from kicking a little too hard and breaking the spikes off. When they reached the end of the course, they looked at the nearly broken down obstacles, satisfied with what they did. Mirae handed him a pair of shurikens and the two of them kicked each one towards the dummies that fell out from the ceiling. While San’s hit the dummies on the legs, Mirae’s hit them squarely on the chest and on the head.

They hit high fives. “Close enough, but we did great!” San enveloped her in a hug with one arm. “One day, I’ll hit those dummies just as good as you did” He said, eyeing the shurikens on the legs of the dummies hanging from the ceiling. “I’ve always wondered why you don’t have guns in here.”

“These weapons existed long before there were guns,” Mirae pointed out, retracting her staff. “And they’re a lot cooler to use,” She winked, making San chuckle.

“Okay then, let’s call it a night, I’ve got a game to play and we’ll clean all of this up tomorrow, don’t clean it up, let’s do it tomorrow” San pushed her towards the doors before she could object.

Mirae allowed herself to be led, still feeling the rush from their training session. As she set foot outside the room and into the hallway, she froze as she saw a tall man dressed in black from head to toe, wearing a mask and a fedora. She could tell he was looking right at her before he fled. The way he was dressed seemed familiar to her yet she didn’t know how, it felt a little too familiar as if she wore something like that before. He himself also gave off that familiar feeling.

The man fled before she tried to follow, but as Mirae ran and tried to catch up by the elevator, he was already gone. San caught up to her. “What is it?” He asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing, a stray cat got up here” She muttered. “Let’s go back inside.”

San frowned. “We could’ve taken that cat inside, gave it food, it was probably hungry” He said as they turned back to their apartment. “We could’ve even taken it in for good, like a pet” He eyed her.

Mirae shook her head again as they entered their home, taking their stained shoes off, revealing the bloodied socks they were both now sporting. She was still thinking about the man in black. Why was he so familiar to her? “You can shower first, I’ll go in after you” She said, heading to her bedroom.

“Really? Okay then, I’ll let you know when I’m done” San raised a brow, sensing that something was on her mind. Not wanting to ask further, he went straight to the bathroom.

“Remember our promise, okay?” Yunho choked, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth as Mirae tried to hold him. They were in the middle of a desert-like place, somewhere far away. “Remember it-I’ll look for you-I’ll find my way to you when either of us get out, okay?” He sputtered, looking up at her, eyes becoming glazed over.

The strong wind hit their faces but Mirae didn’t care. Hot tears were streaming down her eyes as she held him, trying her hardest to stop the bleeding coming from his side but failing. “Mirae! Get back here! Leave him!” Hongjoong was yelling as they were on their way back into the military plane, trying to get away from the larger group of what looked like soldiers that worked for their target.

“He’s a lost cause, you can’t save him, Mirae,” Seonghwa tried to pull her up but Mirae refused to budge. “You’re our leader, we’re not leaving without you” He added.

“Go with them-go with them” Yunho sputtered. “I love you, Lee Mirae. I love you. Remember that” and his eyes closed, his form collapsing under her.

More tears fell down the sides of her face as she held his lifeless body close. The pain she felt was slowly being replaced with rage, and as she saw the oncoming soldiers running towards them, about to fire their weapons, her eyes glowed red making all of them combust, exploding in front of her including the weapons they were carrying.

Seonghwa and the others stared at the scene in shock. Tears were still flowing down the sides of her face as the glow in her eyes faded. He was gone. Yunho was gone.

Mirae’s eyes shot open in the middle of the night and she sat up. An overwhelming sadness came over her and before she realized it, tears were already flowing down her face. Her hands were shaking as she sobbed into them, She had forgotten his name, but he must have been someone important to her. Whoever he was, his death felt like a heavy blow, like her heart was being broken over and over.

She had been dreaming about him a lot more lately. Mirae got out of bed and stepped out of her room, sneaking past the sofa bed that San was sleeping on and going to the kitchen. She still felt that overwhelming sadness as she took a drink of water, trying to wipe her eyes from the tears that managed to escape even as she felt like she had already cried her eyes out for the past few minutes.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized how her time at the sanitarium was more than just a blur, more than Jihoon, more than the electroshock therapy sessions she often had to go under. Mirae figured she fell in love while interned, with the guy she was dreaming about, the guy whose face she was being made to remember.

“Mirae,” San was already sitting up, looking at her with one eye open. “Are you okay?” He asked.

“Go back to sleep, I’m fine,” Mirae assured him quietly.

“It’s getting harder for me to see you like this, I can’t just go back to sleep,” San got up and made his way towards his sister. “What was it this time?”

Mirae didn’t know how she could tell him. “Someone who isn’t Jihoon, dying in front of me, I killed a lot of people in return. I can’t remember his name, but I’m remembering his face more and more.”

“Must be important to you, whoever they are” San said.

“He must be. Otherwise I wouldn’t have killed all of those people in front of us.”

San rubbed her back and wrapped an arm around her. “Like what you told me, sis. You’ll be okay. This is what’s helping you heal.”

“I hope so, San,” She looked up at him, feeling the overwhelming sadness and heartbreak again. “I hope so.”

San stayed up with her to keep her company for a little while more until she urged him to go back to sleep. Neither of them were aware that the man, dressed in black from head to toe with a mask and a fedora hat, was looking up at them from outside the building.

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diyunho · 4 years

Text

The Joker x Reader - “ What Death Tastes Like” Part 5

Scarecrow’s daughter might be only 22, yet the terminal lung cancer she was diagnosed with six months ago didn’t discriminate against her age; the young woman didn’t show worrisome symptoms until it was too late. Y/N always had a fascination for the much older King of Gotham and despite the consequences, maybe it’s finally time to do something about it.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

The Joker feels his face covered in soft kisses and although generally speaking he loves being pampered, this particular instance awakens his self-defense mechanism.

“What time is it?” J mutters.

“Let me see,” you stretch for your phone. “12:03 am.”

“I should go,” he lifts his head up from the pillow and you pull him back in your arms, yawning.

“Stay for a little bit longer, ok?”

“Why?”

“I wish to hold on to my birthday present for a few more minutes,” Y/N pleads with the man she senses doesn’t want to be there anymore. “Don’t worry, I’m aware it was a casual affair,” your sad smile prompts a completely out of context answer:

“If you noticed I fell asleep, you should have woken me up!” The King of Gotham complains.

“I fell asleep also,” you snuggle to him and since J is suddenly quiet you whisper. “It was amazing.”

He keeps staring which makes you wonder what the hell is going on in his mind right now.

“At least for me,” you underline after you grasp he won’t comment on the subject; you didn’t have a clue he’ll convert the night you spent together into awkwardness for no reason. “Get out of my tent!” you snap at his behavior, irritated. “Get out!” you shove him and The Clown Prince of Crime doesn’t budge.

“Why are you mad?” he finally addresses the annoyed Y/N.

“Because you’re a jerk!”

“Come again?!” The Joker frowns and Scarecrow’s daughter has a clever response; she doesn’t share his genes for nothing.

“I would but I guess you’re not a big fan of us having sex a second time!!!”

“Wow!” J bitterly scoffs. “You sure can twist a guy’s words, huh? If you really must pry into my personal life, I’ll have you know that I’m not used with small talk afterwards, understand?”

While you wonder if he’s bluffing, you can’t help offer the benefit of doubt served with a side of insolence.

“Well, maybe if you would give it a try with someone that actually cares, you’d have stuff to discuss.”

“Miss Crane, what makes you think Mara doesn’t like me?”

The Joker expects a feisty reply to his audacious remark yet he receives a piece of sturdy logic instead:

“If she was crazy in love, she wouldn’t agree and with this on and off relationship you two have.”

J is obviously displeased at your statement thus Y/N has to unleash her creativity in order to push him comprehend what she’s aiming at.

“The problem is you don’t approach anything important, you only shut down everyone. Even Emma believes she’s not yours.”

The King of Gotham was preparing to lash out but your latest sentence totally catches him off guard.

“What do you mean?!”

“You never talk about her mother granted she keeps asking so Emma presumes you probably stole her from an individual you consider your enemy and raised her as revenge.”

“Huh?!” The Joker gets on his elbow, appalled. “She is my daughter!”

“I say that to her when she panics, unfortunately random people do look similar…,” you twirl a strand of his green hair around your fingers. “Steering clear from issues we’re uncomfortable with doesn’t necessarily result in a positive outcome,” Y/N concludes and her partner is not excited at all.

“Are you psychoanalyzing me?!”

“I’m a Crane,” you peck his lips. “It’s in our blood.”

A lot of thoughts rushing behind those blue eyes and you’re confident his patience is running low; add a short fuse to the combo and according to your flawless instinct J will bite soon.

“Take me for example,” you attempt to cram in the main point of your dialogue before it happens. “I don’t care you’re older, I fancy your company nevertheless: you’re super handsome plus emotionally unattractive…”

“I’m what?!” The Joker interrupts.

“Umm… emotionally unattractive?” you hesitantly repeat while watching him jump off the pillows and start to collect his clothes in the semi darkness.

“Serves me right for sleeping with somebody half my age!” he growls at the young woman realizing she upset him with her rant.

“So you’re 46?” you struggle to joke at his affirmation.

“Listen here, Miss Crane!” J dresses in a hurry, angry at your stunt. “If you imagine you figured me out, you didn’t!! Nobody fucks with me!” he violently kicks the mattress and you can’t avoid it:

“I think I just did. Literally.”

The hate in his demeanor makes you regret opening up; your goal was to imply you like him no matter what yet the aftermath is way off what you intended.

“I apologize, OK?” you sigh and reach your hand for his.

“I hope you perish!” he strikes your fingers with such brutality it stings. “You’re dying anyway but hopefully the Cromyxillium kills you faster!” The Joker unzips the tent and leaves a shocked Y/N breathless at his hurtful tirade.

“That’s all you got? Stupid old man…” you whimper and cuddle under the thin blanket with his cushion.

Grief is not the correct term to describe what you experience for the moment: a perfect birthday turned into exactly the opposite in a blink of an eye simply because The Joker proved once more he has no concept on how to handle dynamite; fire suits him better.

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

Next morning, 10:14am

“Are you hot or cold?” your father inquires since your intravenous therapy commenced 10 minutes ago.

“No,” you gaze at the IV bag and Jonathan lingers by your bed, reminding his offspring about their plan.

“We’ll do 3 hours on, 3 hours off; I’ll monitor your vitals and if you feel strange alert me immediately, deal?”

You nod a yes and his perseverance in aiding you with your terminal cancer evokes a sincere confession:

“Daddy…Thank you for trying to save me…I’m sorry I’m a burden…”

“A burden?!” Scarecrow mumbles.

There are a million facts you should evoke, yet the predominant one keeps hunting you.

“You buried yourself in the lab because of me…and Evelyn left…”

“Evelyn and I broke up for various motives,” your parent grumbles. “Saying I immersed myself into working because of you hints that I was forced into it against my will which is not true. I did everything out of love… I can’t bear the idea of losing you,” he kisses your temple; you wrap your free arm around his neck, squeezing him tight.

“You’re the best dad; I’m lucky you’re my father. If I die… you think mom is waiting for me?...”

Jonathan Crane has the weird sensation he’s choking; his wife died after you were born due to leukemia, now their daughter is fighting for survival: she’s plainly the last fortress separating him from utter madness.

“I couldn’t save your mother, but I’ll be damned if I let you die kid,” he caresses your cheek. “She can wait; I bet she’s not eager to take you with her,” Scarecrow reassures his daughter. “Rest honey.”

“I will…” you consent and Emma barging in the bedroom with her duffle bag switches your attention.

“I’m here, I’m here!” she exclaims. “Traffic was horrible, bad accident on the freeway!”

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

11 am

“Are you comfortable?” Emma checks with her friend, not entirely certain how to bring up a very delicate topic clouding her usually bubbly disposition.

“Of course,” you smile and she wiggles in her recliner. “Are you?” you wink at her visible restlessness as you attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

“Y/N…,” she taps the fluffy carpet with her feet. “Mmmm… last night after we returned from the river I dropped by to see how you’re doing and… I came to your tent…,” Emma pauses seeing the stupefied expression on your face. “I…I found my father sleeping in there with you…”

You lick your lips and strain to keep your calm even if your heart is pounding out of your chest.

“Did my dad take advantage of you?” she lowers her voice and you can tell she’s torn apart by the horrible notion.

“He didn’t,” you shake your head.

“Dumb girl…” Emma admonishes without any trace of resentment; what else can she articulate in these circumstances regardless?

“I can’t believe I’m inquiring… Did you use protection?”

“No…It just happened…”

“Oh my God!” the concerned judgement pressures you to continue:

“It didn’t end well so it’s fair to assume we’re not in any danger of me becoming your stepmom,” your tone diminishes and she leans over to scold when The Joker passes by the opened door without bothering to peek inside your bedroom; you didn’t spot him but Emma did.

“I’ll be back!” she hisses and you’re confused at her desire to leave you.

“Hey, where are you going?”

She ignores your question and races after The King of Gotham, catching up with him at the end of the long corridor.

“Dad!” Emma shouts and he turns around.

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?!” she interrogates the clueless Joker.

“I’m meeting Crane. Is he downstairs?”

“In his lab compounding the next batch of Cromyxillium for Y/N,” she fumes at J’s impertinence. “Didn’t you forget something?”

He seems puzzled and Emma is not tricked by his deceiving performance.

“My best friend is in her quarters, uncertain if she’ll survive the cancer treatment. Are you pretending she doesn’t exist?”

“Meaning?” The Joker sneers.

“I know you slept with her!” the accusation follows instantly. “Don’t deny it! How could you take advantage of her?!”

The Clown Prince of Crime straightens his shoulders, aware he can’t negotiate his innocence out of this complicated riddle.

“I did not take advantage of her! How dare you accuse me of such low move?”

“You didn’t?” Emma closes the gap between them. “You know she has a crush on you and she’s vulnerable; what type of man would prey on that?!”

J is not thrilled with the innuendos and cuts her off:

“She basically begged for some and I obliged out of pity!”

Emma slaps him and The Joker gasps, enraged she had the audacity:

“Do that again and I’ll neglect you’re my daughter!” he growls and the serious threat doesn’t faze her.

“Hurt her more and I’ll forget you’re my father! If you are indeed my father,” she emphasizes while stomping away towards the kitchen.

“I am your father!” J simmers at her impeccable strategy: Emma is retreating to a different corner of the house giving him the opportunity to choose.

Who the heck knows if she’s actually his?

One thing is undeniable though: they share the same despicable temper.

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

You discern The Joker in the doorway and your body stiffens; you stare at the TV screen wishing he’ll disappear.

“Where’s Crane?” J analyzes Y/N’s IV pole.

You don’t engage so his crankiness emerges.

“I suppose you didn’t flatlined yet!”

“Nope,” you grunt at the provocative declaration that served its goal: you did reply to The Clown’s rubbish.

“Where’s Crane?”

“I heard you the first time and I’m not sure why you focus your energy on a useless interrogation. You know where my father is!”

“Where?” The Joker’s vile attitude can’t compromise for less than instigating his fling.

“Please take your stuff that’s firm now but will get saggy in maximum 20 years and vanish!” the poisonous remark makes him groan.

“What stuff?!”

You check him out glaring at his mid-section before dismissing his presence.

“That’s the rudest fucking criticism ever!” The Joker barks and Y/N crabbily indicates:

“It’s not criticism, it’s reality! Gravity’s a bitch! Mara won’t mind, won’t she? After all, you two share a very special bond: on today, off tomorrow, hookup next week, take a break next month. Such dreamy relationship!”

“Do you have more derogatory references to my private life?!” J grinds his teeth ready to unleash several atrocities your way.

“No, too busy dying…” you show him the needle in your arm. “I don’t feel the pain from the medication burning my veins; I’m used with my sickness, with the ups and downs. What I do feel is the pain of being taken for granted.”

The Joker is not a fan of the insinuated context.

“You said no strings attached!” he stresses the lack of commitment consented the previous evening.

“You’re the one that came to me; I thought it meant you were accepting to be the center of my universe.”

J ogles the ceiling of Y/N’s bedroom and assembles a couple of harsh disclosures in his brain when her entitled smirk halts the project.

“You’re buying it, aren’t you?” you chuckle at his astonishment. “I’m just messing with you Mister Joker; who in their right mind would make you the center of their universe?! You have 10 seconds to leave, otherwise I’ll scream and security will come!” you shelter your head with the quilt so you don’t have to see his mug anymore.

No outpour of vexation from his part which is cool: means he bailed.

The blanket is slowly pulled until your eyes emerge; J hovers your face, pissed at the unwelcomed clash.

“I’m checking if you kicked the bucket; corpses are usually covered thus my dilemma.”

“Go away!” you advise. “Or I’ll scream!”

You inhale preparing to yell: The Joker didn’t predict you’d defy him and he swiftly kisses you in order to stop the sounds.

The door is cracked and Emma witnesses the scene, reckoning bizarre elements:

Her father holds grudges and was mad at Y/N earlier due to whatever happened yesterday; nevertheless he still kissed her.

On the other hand, you were definitely miserable after your escapade, yet you didn’t reject him.

Emma may not be informed about the entire story, but one detail is crystal clear: the future is far from being simple.

Also read: MASTERLIST

#the joker x reader #the joker fanfiction #the joker imagine #the joker jared leto #the joker suicide squad #the joker #joker #joker fanfiction #joker imagines #joker leto #joker suicide squad #mister j #Mistah J #dc #dcu

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rainbow-sides · 5 years

Text

A Hand to Hold: Chapter Seven

Summary: Patton befriends an isolated boy at his high school and soon develops feelings for him that aren’t just friendship. Navigating a relationship of any kind with Logan Barry isn’t easy, but it sure is worth it!

Pairings: romantic Logicality, possible background Prinxiety but I haven’t decided yet

Word Count: 1,739

Warnings: talk about bullying, ableism from a parent, very brief mention of Deceit, mentions of abusive therapy (implied ABA), food mention, mild spoilers for Doctor Who, anxiety, school stress,

Notes: ATTENTION I am no longer using a taglist. Instead, please follow and click notifications for the blog @rainbow-sides-fics. I’ll be reblogging all of my old fics there as well as any new ones I’ll be posting. Alternatively, A Hand to Hold is now available on AO3. Love you guys! <3 ~Martin

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six

___________________________________

“GCAT PUPY PUPY,” Virgil chanted, his palms pressed to his temples. “Guanine and adenine are purines, cytosine and thymine are pyrimidines. Right?”

Logan nodded. “Correct. Well remembered.”

“Thank God for mnemonics.” Virgil popped a chip into his mouth. “Okay. Okay. What else is on the study guide?”

“It says to understand 5’ and 3’ directionality, decoding amino acid sequencing, and be able to explain the process of DNA replication as well as translation from DNA to proteins,” Logan said, summarizing the study guide for what was probably the fourth or fifth time. Although he knew that Virgil obviously knew the material, he got anxious during tests. He had asked Logan to help study with him so he felt more prepared.

“I feel like I know all of that, but there's got to be a catch, right? I'm gonna fail. I'm gonna fail.” He started to breathe too quickly.

Chex, who had been resting on the floor next to Virgil's chair, sat up. She nudged Virgil's leg with her nose and let out a soft whine.

Virgil buried his hand in the fur on the back of the dog's neck and took a deep breath. “No, I'm probably not going to fail. I've never failed a test in this class before, and I've been doing all the work.”

“I don't believe that you will fail,” Logan agreed. He twisted the ring on his finger, not sure what else to say.

He wanted to help Virgil, but anxiety was complicated and Logan wasn't great at complicated emotions. Logan figured it was probably best to leave that to Patton. And Chex, of course. The sweet black lab was so in tune with Virgil's anxiety that she could tell even before he started to have an attack and would remind him to redirect his energy into more productive avenues.

“Would you like to keep studying?” asked Logan. “I have vocabulary cards for the whole unit, and there is always a vocabulary section on the test.”

Virgil nodded. “Sure, vocab practice sounds good. Hey, um, thanks again for coming over to study with me. It's nice to have a friend in that class now, I'm less stressed about it.”

Logan thought that Virgil still seemed very stressed. He didn't voice that opinion. “Codon,” he said, holding up the first vocabulary card.

“Uhh, uh, it's any series of three nitrogen bases that code for a specific amino acid, right?”

“Correct. Peptide bond.”

Virgil looked up at the ceiling. “It's...uh, well, peptide is referring to proteins, so...bonds between proteins?”

“Bonds between amino acids,” Logan corrected. “Okasaki fragments.”

“Oh shit,” Virgil muttered. “Um, something about the leading strand?”

“Lagging strand. Okazaki fragments are the stretches of DNA that are copied piece by piece on the lagging strand,” said Logan. He spun the ring on his finger again. He hoped that Virgil wouldn't get worried that he wasn't getting all of the vocabulary right.

“Right! I remember now.”

“Operon.”

“Oh, hey, I know this one. A group of genes that are functionally related,” Virgil said.

“Correct. Intron.”

They kept going until all of the vocabulary cards had been discussed. Logan put aside the ones that Virgil had struggled on so he could keep looking at them later.

“Seriously, thank you so much for coming and helping me out,” Virgil said. “I feel much better about the test on Thursday.”

Logan flicked his hand up near the side of his face. “You're welcome,” he said.

“I don't think I'm going to be able to cram much more into my brain right now, I need a break. Hey, how's the Doctor Who marathon with Patton going?” Virgil wondered.

With a slight bounce in his seat, Logan replied, “We watched Boom Town this weekend! On Wednesday afternoon, he is coming to my house to watch Bad Wolf and The Parting of Ways!”

Virgil leaned forward. “Oh, man, you're already almost to Nine's regeneration? Does Patton know it's coming?”

“Yes, and he says that he will miss Eccleston, but that he's seen David Tennant in other things and is looking forward to meeting Ten,” Logan said happily. He hummed to himself for a second before adding, “I am looking forward to reaching Ten's episodes, he is my favorite modern Doctor.”

“I gotta say, I like Capaldi. He's grumpier. More my style. Though Tennant at the end of his run is cool, he gets dark and edgy.” Virgil grinned. “The new season with Jodie Whittaker was freaking fantastic, too.”

“Much agreed,” Logan said. “I appreciate having a larger group of companions again, and the diversity has improved recently.”

Virgil scratched Chex behind the ears. “Yeah, big team TARDIS's are fun. One of my favorites was at the end of Journey's End was when they were all flying the TARDIS like she's supposed to be flown.”

Logan nodded. “May I ask you a question?” he said suddenly.

“Yeah, course.”

“What does it feel like to you when you are excited about something? Such as when you are talking about or watching Doctor Who, or listening to the music you like?” Logan asked.

There was a long pause as Virgil thought about that. “It makes me happy, I guess.”

“How does it physically feel?” Logan pressed.

“Oh, jeez, I'm not sure. It almost makes me feel peaceful? Like, um, listening to my music makes my mind slow down for just a little while. My body feels more relaxed afterwards. Same with watching something I like. It's a comfort, almost.” Virgil tapped his fingers against the table. “This is a tough question, dude.”

Logan leaned back in his chair. “I apologize.”

“No, it's okay. Really, I just need to think for a minute. Um...it feels warm in my chest sometimes. I guess that's about it. Well, starting a new episode almost feels like anxiety for me. But then again, most emotions turn into anxiety for me. That's just how anxiety works,” Virgil said. Then he asked, “What does it feel like for you?”

Putting his hands on his chest, Logan says, “I'm not sure. I have alexithymia, so I have a difficult time labeling emotions. I can sometimes describe it in physical sensations, though. And my excitement about my special interests feels like my heart and my lungs and my stomach are all on fire, if being on fire felt good and didn't hurt.”

“Sounds intense.”

“It is.” Logan looked down as Chex put her head against his leg. Her sweet brown eyes blinked up at him, and a soft warmth spread through his chest. “Hello,” he said. “Hello, Chex. Your ears are very soft.” He stroked her head.

“She wants to make sure that you're okay,” Virgil said. “She...she can hear changes in people's voices and checks up on them, even if it isn't me.”

“I'm alright. I don't have excellent volume control, or tone control. I never know what I sound like, exactly.” He couldn't tear his eyes away from the beautiful dog. “But I suppose that talking about my experiences with emotion do cause me some distress, which could have emerged in my voice without my noticing.”

Virgil stood up and walked over to the living room. “Want to come sit over here, Lo?” he offered.

“Um, alright.” Logan went over to join him. Chex followed him, and all three of them sat down on the ground. “Why?”

“Why does talking about your emotions distress you?” Virgil asked.

Logan froze up. “Because they are difficult,” he said slowly. “And I do not understand them. I do not like talking to people about things I do not understand.”

“Are you worried that someone might tell you that your emotions are wrong?”

A confused, bad feeling swirled around inside him. Chex laid her head and front paws in his lap, and he felt calmer. “Perhaps, but I'm not sure that I understand the question,” Logan admitted, running his hands down the dog's fur. It was almost as soothing as a full-body stim, and the pressure of her weight against his legs added to that effect.

“I mean, do you think that someone will come along and tell you that the way you are labeling your emotions is wrong? That the words you use to describe your experiences are incorrect?” Virgil tried to clarify.

“Yes, that is what happens.” It had happened many times before. The way he tried to describe what he was feeling to his mother or to his therapists had often been misinterpreted or simply ignored because it didn't make sense. Logan had learned to keep quiet about what he was feeling.

“But you're talking to me about it, even though it...scares you?” Virgil checked. “Is that right?”

Logan shifted. “Yes.”

Virgil smiled. “I think that means you trust me. Thank you.”

“I do trust you,” Logan said. “And I have learned that you and Patton and Roman are worthy of my trust. You've never once tried to make me act normally, or made fun of me.”

“It sucks that the bar is so low,” sighed Virgil.

Logan kept petting Chex. “I don't know that that means, exactly, in this context.”

“Um, it means that I don't think that somebody not laughing at you or trying to change you into something you're not should be the bar, the threshold or limit, for whether or not you can trust them. I mean...I guess what I really mean is that it sucks that you don't get that from everyone. In a perfect world, nobody would make fun of anyone or try to change them,” Virgil explained.

“But we do not live in a perfect world,” Logan reminded him.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know that very well.”

Chex whined softly and raised her head to look at Virgil. Her tail thumped a few times against the floor, and he scooted closer to put his hand on her back. He closed his eyes. Logan didn't say anything. They sat there petting Chex in silence for a while, and it was a soothing silence. Logan felt much calmer and less bad by the time his mother arrived to pick him up and take him home.

He sat in the living room and watched Ian flutter around his plants as the afternoon trailed on. His mother chatted to him as she cleaned and prepared dinner, but he wasn't listening. He was off in his own head, trying to imagine a perfect world.

___________________________________

Sorry for the long wait and the fairly short chapter! I’m working on the next one. But also I’m going back to work next week, and school starts a couple weeks after that, so who knows when I’m going to have time to write? Ah, well. I’ll do what I can.

And hey, check out Time and Time’s Turning if you like my writing! It’s a fairy AU with eventual Royality and Analogical. Also, it has art!!!!! <3 ~Martin

#a hand to hold #my writing #logicality #romantic logicality #platonic analogical #logicality fic #autistic logan

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evien-stark · 4 years

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✧I Need You✧ Chapter 73

Happy made quick time back to the office. Both a blessing and a curse. You needed more time to yourself. To clean up mentally. To prepare for whatever the hell this meeting was. It was probably important- even though you had no idea what the hell it could be. But for Pepper to have to prep you this much that it needed something more over the phone- and who just showed up an hour early to a meeting anyway? The pinnacle of rude. Did this person really expect you to just drop everything for them and see them?

You were a busy woman. You had things to do. Someone who came an hour early demanding your time was going to get very little of it. That much you were already certain of.

Stark Industries seemed to be abuzz as you walked just behind Happy while he escorted you in. Every person that walked by him he flashed his own as he said, “Badge.” Over and over. Trying to ID people as the two of you were walking in. It kind of made sense. Pepper was nervous over a strange meeting- and you saw a slightly sketchy looking guard sitting in one of the chairs outside your office. “Badge? Do you have a security badge, sir? I’m talking to you-”

You gave him a little pat on the arm. “I’m going to go talk to Pepper. Try not to… scare our guests.”

“They clear? They don’t seem like they got cleared.” He was being very tough. You weren’t sure why. Perhaps it had something to do with Tony’s episode outside the restaurant. Happy hadn’t brought it up, but he wasn’t stupid, either.

Maybe everyone just had a sudden case of anxiety today-

Ah. Oh. That was you wasn’t it? You were infecting him.

“Why don’t you look into it and I’ll be right back.” Giving him one last gentle pat, trying to seal yourself off. To lessen the damage you’d already done. He just gave you a curt nod and you walked around the other way to catch Pepper in the break room.

She had a mug of tea in her hands which she nearly dropped with a startled gasp as you appeared. “God! Don’t do that!” Yelling at you.

“I’m- ...I’m sorry. You called me. You weren’t expecting me?” Trying not to sass with her too much but everyone’s nerves were frayed. And that was a recipe for acute disaster. “What’s the matter with you?” Even if this was somehow your fault, she seemed a little more out of it than usual. Even with your assistance.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Breathing in and then out on both those apologies. Then she looked over your shoulder, maybe trying to see if anyone was around? Listening in? This really must have been serious. Then she waved you closer, so you moved further into the little kitchenette. “So- this guy… when I was booking the meeting a few months back, it didn’t really register. But. Now that he’s here- you remember, when I was working at that small startup? Before here? And my boss-”

“The one who used to hit on you all the time?” You suddenly did not like where this was heading.

She nodded. “Yeah. And ask me out on dates. And had a hard time understanding the word no. I mean- he was harmless- for the most part-”

“Your boss constantly bearing down on you to let you fuck him isn’t what I’d call harmless, Pepper.” Sometimes you really wished she’d look after herself better. Think more of herself. You’d told her as much when she’d come home every other night and tell you all about- “Eldritch?”

At this she nearly snorted into her mug of tea. “Horror. Yeah. Aldrich.” The inside joke the two of you used to laugh at in your dinky little apartment seemed to soothe her nerves, even if she’d corrected you after. And there was only one reason that could be-

When it clicked you held your hands up. “No. Absolutely not, Pep. What’s he want from me?” Why would she schedule a meeting like that? What a fantastic time to throw her power around and shut him out in the cold? A creep like him deserved at least that.

“His secretary at the time booked the meeting, I think. His little start-up isn’t so little anymore. He looks different now- way different than I remember- And, hey, I might not have had the greatest interactions with him but-”

A knock came on the side of the door frame and her chatting died as the two of you turned to look. A tall, lean man with sandy blond hair, tan skin, and perpetual five o’clock shadow put his hands in his pockets. Soft blue-grey suit with brown undertones. “Sorry to interrupt you.”

As you stared at him, soft big band music played behind your ears and the memories intertwined.

You look absolutely divine this evening. Would you care for a dance? I know social climbing is frowned on at these sorts of events, but I was hoping you’d give me a chance.

I have a little thinktank that is doing wonders with gene therapy. We heard- well, everyone heard about what happened at the Stark Expo a couple weeks ago. I know there are some people laid up in hospital beds with injuries they may never recover from.

It’s remarkable, the lengths you’re going to to help everyone. To fix things. I was hoping to have a sit down meeting. I think my company could partner with yours and do some extraordinary things. Really help people.

We’re called AIM-

“You.”

“You remember me. I’m very honored.” He put a hand to his chest and gave a little forward lean. “Sorry for coming so early, we heard Stark Industries’ security measures were quite stringent these days… I’d wanted to get a jump on things.”

That was Happy’s department. Ever since you’d promoted him he’d really taken it all to heart. But it seemed like this Eldritch guy- Alrdich you quickly corrected yourself- made it in just fine.

Pepper, however, seemed confused. “You two have met?”

You crossed your arms, not liking this at all. There was just sort of a funny feeling about it. Then again… he had been requesting a meeting for a while, and you’d put him off and then kind of forgotten about it. Ellis had banned gene therapy, so you’d thought that had probably snuffed the light out of this little thinktank. What was he doing here now? “We met at a party.”

Aldrich leaned his arm against the door. “One of those terrible events the rich cavort at to make themselves look even more glamorous.” Clearly trying to be charming, this one.

And while you might have felt the same way, you aimed a bitter smile his way. “What’s that say about us?”

“We know the right place to be at the right time.” He was quick, you’d give him that. Probably not much else.

Since he was already here, and apparently all badged up, and the meeting was practically taking place… there was no way to get out of it. You gave Pepper a small wave. “We’ll talk later.” Then turning to him, “If you’ll step into my office, Mr…?” Realizing Aldrich was his first name. And you had no idea of his last.

“Killian. But, please.” He stepped aside you, a little too close for comfort. “Call me Aldrich.”

As he opened your own office door for you, you gave a little down low wave to Happy, who was sitting across from the other man that you had no doubts by now must have been Killian’s bodyguard. He gave you a little curious shrug back and you just shook your head. No idea what the two of you were saying, really, but hoping to impart to him that you were fine. And that you had this handled.

While you moved to sit at your desk, you noticed that he closed the door for you. ...and then stayed there in the front of the room. “So. Mr. Killian.” Determined to let him know you were not fazed by his lathered on charm. “How can I help you?”

Reaching up, he lowered the dimmer on your lights. As if that didn’t evoke even more red flags. “I’m just gonna dim your lights here.”

“Excuse me-”

“After years dodging the President's ban on "immoral biotech research", my think tank now has a little something in the pipeline. It's an idea we like to call Extremis.” Completely talking over you. You were getting less and less impressed by the second.

This was all so unimportant. Tony was at home doing who the hell knew what. Suffering most likely. You were just at the cusp of doing so yourself, if not for this pompous man. “AIM?” Remember the name very vaguely. Probably a mistake to ask at all. You should have gone on pretending you barely remembered anything about him.

He grinned, pulling something out of his pocket to stick behind his ear. “Advanced Idea Mechanics, yes. Here.” Stepping closer into the room, finally, he held up three decently sized metal balls. “Regard the human brain.” Tossing them in a little roll, they clattered atop your coffee table, and then lit up, casting quite a light show towards your ceiling.

Yet. All very unimpressive, considering. Tony had nearly every practical patent on holotechnology on the market. This was child’s play. Even if it was beautiful.

Still, since you were stuck here for at least another five minutes, you did as you were asked. And regarded. “Mm hmm.”

He held a hand up. “Oh- hang on, hold on. That’s the universe.” Throwing wonder into his voice. “My bad- but. If I do that…” Raising a remote and clicking a button. The image changed over to a much more recognizable shape of a brain. Although it had beautiful blue lights running through it, with just a little touch of yellow. “That’s the brain.” Looking up, catching your eyes, he smiled. “Strangely mimetic, wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s very… interesting.” Trying your best to at least not be rude.

He seemed to take it in stride. “Thanks. It’s mine.”

“Your?”

“My brain.” Reaching behind his ear to tap at that thing he’d placed there. “This is a live feed. You’re inside my head.”

Without your permission, your eyes wandered back up to the lights, casting a deeper look. His brain? So the magnet on his ear was… taking a live scan? Surely Tony had already perfected this type of tech- it was kind of what was used to check vitals in the suits. Right? ...a little beyond you. This sort of stuff wasn’t your forte.

“Here.” He cut through your thinking, standing from the couch and taking a step up onto your coffee table. “I’ll prove it. Come up here.”

Although you stood, you ushered your hand back the other way, directing, “Please get off my glass top coffee table.” What the hell was wrong with this man?

“Come on. I promise I won’t bite.”

Instead you stood next to him, crossing your arms. “This work on everyone else, Mr. Killian? Because I gotta say-”

He rolled his eyes in that soft sort of way, playing perhaps at fond, but then he reached up, turning his wrist over, and with his other hand plucked at the inside skin. The lightshow sparked to life, sending a flurry of yellow and orange sparks scattering. It effectively drew your attention away from his antics as you looked up again.

“What is that?” Damning yourself for asking.

“It's the primary somatosensory cortex. It's the brain's pain center.” Effectively proving the live part of a live feed? But why? Instead of giving him anything more, you let him continue. A poor idea, as he stepped off the table, pulling the hologram with him. Closer to you, stepping just behind you. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

You cast a wary glance up his way, he was too close for comfort. But he redirected your attention as he raised that little remote, bringing the back part of his brain closer up in front of the two of you, then reached into the air to expand it further. Zooming deep in.

“Now, Extremis harnesses our bioelectrical potential and it goes...here.” Stopping the zoom when he arrived at what looked like a hole in the back of his brain. “This is essentially an empty slot, and what this tells us is that our mind, our entire DNA in fact, is destined to be upgraded.”

And while this stuff would probably always be beyond you, you couldn’t help but say- “I don’t think that’s what that means.” He had a hole in his brain matter and he was telling you destiny meant for him to stick a chip in it?

What koolaid had he been drinking?

��“Then what do you think it means?” He was looking down at you. Still too close for comfort.

“I think if you have a hole in the back of your brain, you probably need to see someone- and… wait- you’re telling me your tech goes in there. Yet… yours is empty. You’re trying to talk up tech to me you don’t even trust to use on yourself?” So unlike Tony, for example. Who was the primary tester of almost all of his tech these days. That was someone you could trust. Not-

He just chuckled. “You’re very astute. I’m not surprised. Trust me, I’m on the docket for an upgrade.” He nudged you just a little with another unwelcome touch, and got you to sit down on the couch, where he sat down with you, and finally turned the light show off. “I’ve been struggling with the idea myself, for quite some time. I have a lot of research, I’ll leave it with you.”

So with that, “LUNA can you turn the lights back on, please?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Her voice rang in the office, since you had company, and the lights indeed came on seconds after.

Killian was still smiling at you. “I’m just asking you to think about it. Imagine if you could hack into the hard drive of any living organism and recode its DNA.”

Finally he made the point he was trying to make. “Mmn. Before when we first met… you talked about gene therapy. To help injured people. Now it sounds like your motives have shifted.”

“How so?”

“Recoding DNA. To- to what, exactly? In what way?” You knew already where he was going with it.

You just wanted him to say it to your face.

Still, he kept that smile. “Where are your thoughts right now?” Ah, so he wasn’t going to admit it.

Fine. You’d do it for him. “This sounds highly weaponizable. I think what you’re trying to get at is that you want to make perfect humans. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read a history book, but that doesn’t always work out great. Tony and I-”

His rumbly laughter stopped you in your tracks. “Tony. Right. Tony. You know, I invited Tony to join AIM thirteen years ago, he turned me down.”

Somehow this didn’t surprise you. Not because Tony would have had an inkling of what this guy really wanted to do that far back, but because that far back Tony absolutely would not have given this guy the time of day. You imagined it happened just like that.

Reaching out, he put his hand over yours and it jolted you back into cold reality as he gazed at you. “But something tells me now there is a new genius on the throne who doesn't have to answer to Tony anymore, and who has slightly less of an ego.”

With as much poise as you could muster, you pulled your hand slowly away from him and settled it in your lap. “I don’t know what you’ve heard but I don’t answer to Tony, you’re right.” Giving him a light smile, letting him soak in the moment before you blew it apart. “Tony and I are a team. We work together. And because I’m confident that he’d agree, I’m giving you a no. From both of us.”

The light fizzled out of his hopeful gaze, lips pressing together before his head dropped in a nod. “Well. I can’t say that I’m not disappointed.”

Now that this meeting was effectively over and done with, you stood, holding your hand out to him. “I have something else I have to attend to. It was nice seeing you again, Mr. Killian.”

Rising to meet you, he took your hand in a firm shake. “Really, Aldrich is fine. And- just because you turned down one business proposal doesn’t mean I don’t have others.” While you wanted to turn him down flat, he continued, “Let me walk you out.”

Sensing he wasn’t taking no for an answer, and you really were heading out anyway, you gave him a careful shrug. “If you want. You’ll have to link up with Pepper. She’s in charge of my schedule.”

The two of you walked out of the office and took the left down the hall. You’d noticed both chairs out front had been vacated. Happy and Killian’s body guard had disappeared somewhere. As you walked, you felt the unpleasant feeling of Killian’s arm lightly ghosting around the back of your waist, guiding you as you walked towards the entrance. “It was nice to see her again. Good to know someone is making good use of her talent. I’m sure you two practically run this business.”

Outside, the both of you stopped, and you saw just in the distance, Happy was pulling the car around. You took a second to reorient yourself, pointedly stepping out of Killian’s zone. “You know, for someone with such disdain for Tony, it’s a wonder you wanted to meet in the first place.”

“No wonder at all. You’re cleaning up Stark Industries. Let’s not both stand here and pretend it wasn’t in trouble before you showed up.” He really was trying to lay it on as thick as possible. Just behind you two cars pulled up- one for you and you assumed one for Killian. “It was nice seeing you again, too. I can’t say I haven’t wondered when our next dance would be.” Then, without warning, he leaned straight into you.

And was about two seconds from planting a kiss on your cheek. You held your hand up, pressing him back. “Excuse me-”

“Oh- I’m sorry. I think I misread the situation.” He held his hands palm outwards to show he meant no harm.

But the harm had already been done. You stood back solidly. “I’ll say.”

“Please. Accept my apologies. Can I make it up to you over dinner?” Putting his hands up again, “A friendly dinner. I promise. No undue surprises.”

This guy was a real fucking piece of work. That was for sure. A tenseness settled in your chest. Uncomfortable to your core. No wonder Pepper never wanted to date him. You’d never met him before you’d joked around with her, calling him Eldritch when she told you so many of these stories.

Now you completely understood. And it made you want to go home all the more. It was like this guy just thought you ran the business. And Tony was… unimportant. A second thought. Even though the night he’d met you- similarly to this, putting himself in your space- was the night you and Tony had announced to the world you were dating.

But none of that seemed to matter to him. He seemed not to care at all. Like he could just reach out and take your hand and you’d just accept.

Happy came up right behind you, his strong presence grounding you. Not that you needed it for this. “No thank you, Mr. Killian.”

“I really didn’t mean to offend you-”

“I’m not offended. Just embarrassed.” On your behalf. You let the thought linger before turning away without a goodbye, feeling a small swell of relief as Happy stepped in line with you, held your door open for you, and safely got you into the car.

Killian was still waiting as Happy pulled the car from the curb. Peering into your windows as you drove by. Watching. Happy looked up into the rear view mirror. “That guy bothering you?”

Funny. That was what Tony had asked, that night so long ago. And where was he now?

“Immensely. But. It’s fine. It’s over with now. Pepper will never take another meeting with him.” So that meant you never had to see him again. “Can you please just take me-”

“Home. I know.” His tone was warm. Reassuring. Letting you know he knew what you wanted. And was keen on delivering.

“Thank you, Happy.”

“Hey, I don’t like that guy either. Or his bodyguard. Very shifty characters...” Happy started going on and on. Always trying to keep an eye out for you.

You just needed to go home. Take a shower. Wash this ick off of you. And…

Try to finally have a long conversation with Tony. After all that… maybe it really was time.

#Tony Stark #Tony Stark x Reader #INY Chapter Seventy Three

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avengerscompound · 5 years

Text

Those Little Words - Two

Those Little Word: A Iron Man Fanfic

Series Masterlist PREVIOUS //

Buy me a coffee with Ko-fi Word Count: 3482

Pairing: Tony Stark x F!Reader

Warnings: Age difference (not used as a kink), Dirty talk, Smut (M|F, oral sex, vaginal sex, public sex), unsupportive parents.

Synopsis: Everyone knows that Tony Stark is the textbook definition of a narcissist. So what happens when he meets someone just like him.

Part Two

Tony Stark is the textbook definition of a narcissist. Everyone knows that. He even knows that. He prides himself on it.

Only now you’ve gotten to know him better you’re not so sure. He certainly does think very highly of himself. But to be fair he’s very, very smart. You’re very, very smart too. Did it make you a narcissist too because you weren’t willing to hide it either?

What you had noticed about him was he may think highly of himself but he also cared about other people too. He just seemed maladapted at showing it. When he tried and they misinterpreted what was happening, he’d actually get quite sulky.

The other thing you noticed was that for someone who allegedly loved themselves that much, he didn’t take very good care of himself. He often stayed in the lab quite late into the night. You know that because it was a habit you had picked up too. He also skipped meals regularly. Choosing instead to just snack on dried fruits and nuts.

The three out of the five days you worked in the tower Bruce would always go grab lunch with you at the cafe downstairs. Each day you’d walk out and you’d see Tony working in his lab. When you’d get back he’d still be there and it wouldn’t look like he’d even moved.

One day on the way out you tap on the glass and he looks up at you puzzled. You poke your head in the door. “Have you eaten?”

“Who has time for that?” He asks, going back to whatever it is he’s working on.

“Come on, old man. It’s my shout.” You say, going in and dragging him to his feet.

“No one’s ever offered to buy me lunch before.” He replies, dragging his feet after you.

“I wouldn’t fight her, Tony. She always gets her way.” Bruce says, from the doorway.

Tony continues to resist you pulling him. “But I always get my way.” He complains. You keep pulling and all of a sudden he stops resisting and starts walking along with you. You almost fall on your ass. “Right. Food. Three meals a day. Of course. Good idea. I’ll take you both out for lunch.”

The next thing you know you’re sitting in the back of a stretch limo looking at least half as lost as Bruce.

“Where are we going?” You ask.

“The Polo Bar,” Tony says, simply.

“How did you get a table last minute?” You press.

Tony smiles at you. “I’m Tony Stark.”

You sigh and run your hands down your face. “You know I’m rescinding my offer to shout you, right?”

Tony smirks like he just won some kind of competition between the two of you. “Naturally.”

From then on that was your routine. Go to have lunch with Bruce. Tap on the glass wall of Tony’s lab. Ask him if he’d eaten. The three of you would go to lunch. You started finding him sitting up expectantly waiting for the two of you. He even stopped trying to one-up you and would just join you at a food cart for hot dogs, or some shitty hole in the wall fast food place for Shawarma.

You started worrying about him when you weren’t there though. On those two days a week where you had to be at Columbia teaching you couldn’t help but picture him hunched over the workbench pushing through until the afternoon where he had meetings or press conferences or therapy.

You started texting him.

He did have the annoying habit of walking in on you when you were in the lab alone, earbuds in. That would be fine except that often meant you danced while you worked.

You were completely engrossed in your work, swaying your hips. “Now the time is here, For iron man to spread fear, Vengeance from the grave, Kills the people he once saved.” You sing as you put vials of blood back in the refrigerated storage.

You turn around to see Tony standing in the doorway grinning at you and eating dried blueberries.

“Holy shit. You scared me.” You say, pulling your earbuds out. You don’t think you’re blushing, but being caught singing Iron Man by Iron Man might have been the single most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you.

“Nice song choice.” He says, raising his eyebrows at you. “I like Black Sabbath too. You’re a bit young for them aren’t you?”

“Music has an age restriction? I had no idea.” You snark.

He strolls over to you looking really pleased with himself. “You sound a little defensive. Did the song remind you of me?”

“Because you’re a villain waiting to happen? You got me there, old man.” You reply.

He laughs and takes your phone out of your pocket, you try to snatch it out of his hand and he holds it away from you as he looks through your playlist. “AC/DC, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden. You’ve got good taste, new meat.”

You leave him with your phone and go back to your computer. “That’s why I listen to it. To impress geriatrics.”

He laughs and strolls over to you throwing some more blueberries into his mouth and sitting on the stool next to you. He puts your phone back in your pocket and looks over your shoulder.

“Check this out.” You say, expanding the field on your screen. “So you know in everyone’s DNA there’s basically the code to be just about anything? We can grow a human ear on a mouse by just shifting some of the code.”

Tony gives you a 'move along' gesture with his hand. “You’re talking to a genius remember. Move faster.”

“You flick some files up with long strings of codes on it. So this is Steve, Bucky, Bruce, Wanda and a woman known as Jessica who is also enhanced.” You say, indicating some of the files. “And here is you, me and just a few other random non enhanced people who gave blood. Do you see?”

His eyes scan over the files and they suddenly go wide. He zooms in on each of the files for the enhanced people and looks over them one at a time. “You found it.”

You nod. “Yep. Every one of them. It’s like the trauma or treatment or whatever it was that they had done to them flicked that gene over to active. It’s not quite that simple obviously. They all have different genes also turned on and others turned off that don’t all match, but that one… that one seems to be the key. I would say; I can’t believe nobody has seen it before, but it’s not like anyone had the blood work to look.” You bring up another couple of files. “The gene is damaged but not unfixable.”

Tony looks at the new file and pulls his glasses off rubbing the bridge of his nose. When he finishes he looks back at you. It looks like he’s lit up from the inside. “We could fix Bruce?

You rub your arm. “I mean… it’s going to take a lot more research. We have no way of testing it out. It’s not like these enhancements are showing up in lab rats and all the other people who have them want to keep them. If we tried it, it would be straight onto Bruce and I get the feeling the other guy might fight back. His cells multiply so fast when he transforms. I have no idea what kind of treatment we could make that would keep up with that.” You explain. “But hypothetically, yes. We could fix Bruce.”

He looks at the computer and then closes it all down. “We’re having drinks. Upstairs. FRIDAY, tell the others.”

“Right away, Mr. Stark.” The voice of the buildings AI replies, filling the room.

“No, Tony. I don’t even know those guys.” You say, panicking a little.

He takes you by the elbow. “Little miss snark’s actually scared of a few superheroes? I never thought I’d see the day. This is happening.”

He leads you to the elevator and you take it to the top floor. You’re the first people there and he goes to the bar and pours you a Scotch without even checking if that’s what you want.

You take it and down it in one go. He laughs and pours you another. “That’s a sipping Scotch, dear. Take it easy.”

“Yes, Dad.” You retort. You do take his advice though because that first glass had felt like it had burned your esophagus right out.

The doors open and Steve Rogers comes in followed by Bucky Barnes. You take another drink so you don’t just stare at them open-mouthed.

“Evening, Tony. What’s the special occasion?” Steve asks.

Tony pours both men a drink. You wonder given their metabolism if drinking will have any effect on them. Regardless, they both take the glass and take a sip. “I thought it was time everyone met the new meat. She’s been here four months now after all.”

You introduce yourself to both of them. Shaking their hands firmly.

“We’ve heard all about you from Bruce. He speaks really highly of you.” Steve says, warmly.

“He does?” You look at Tony like he might confirm it. He drops you a wink and you turn back to Steve.

“All the time. So does Tony.” Steve assures you. “I don’t pretend to know what they’re talking about, but whatever it is, you’ve impressed them.”

“Oh it’s simple really, we’re just looking at…” You begin, but the doors open again and James Rhodes enters.

“War Machine is in the house!” He announces loudly.

After Rhodey there is a steady stream of people who come through the door. You’re introduced to all of them in turn. It’s not long until you relax amongst this group of people who you really feel you have no place among. You tend to drift between Bruce and Tony a lot. You do know them best after all. The others however all take the time to get to know you. Even if they do have no idea what you’re talking about some of the time.

You don’t get too drunk. Others do though. You play a game of pool against Clint Barton and find out pretty quickly why that was a stupid idea. Slowly, just as they arrived they drift off again. It’s a work night and no one is really willing to stay up too late. By eleven it’s just you and Tony eating cold pizza on the couch and looking out over the twinkling lights of the city.

“See. That wasn’t so bad was it?” Tony says, taking a bite of the crust of his pizza.

“Did you just start eating that slice crust first?” You ask, horrified.

“The crust is the best bit.” He says, defensively.

You shove him. “You maniac. Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to eat properly?”

He grabs your wrist and twists your arm behind your back and once again you’re suddenly hyper-aware of how close your bodies both are. “Maybe you haven’t heard my motto. It’s ‘I do what I want’.” He takes another bite from the crust of his pizza. You gasp and bat the slice out of his hand. It goes sailing over the back of the couch and both of you watch as it arcs through the air and lands cheese side down onto the carpet.

You both look from it to each other and back again before breaking down into laughter. “What is wrong with you?” Tony asks, pulling you a little closer.

“What’s wrong with you? Crust first.” You scoff, climbing into his lap.

His hands go into your hair and he pulls you into a kiss. His lips are salty and slightly greasy from the pizza and you can still taste Scotch on him. You wrap your arms around his neck and roll your hips against him. You start feeling the press of his cock as it stiffens against you.

You break the kiss and look down at him. “I thought we were never happening again?”

He starts kissing your neck and unbuttons your shirt. “I thought I was outside the acceptable dating age range.”

“We haven’t been on a date.” You reply.

He makes his way to the last button and pushes your shirt down your shoulders. His vision just fixed on your breasts. “Maybe we should.”

You tilt his chin up to you. “What?”

“Maybe we should. Go on a date. Or more than one. We should date. Could be fun.” He says, looking you in the eye.

You take his glasses off and put them on the couch beside you before running your fingers down his jaw. “Do I get to take you home to meet my father?”

He flinches a little and nods his head. “We’ll talk about the good old days. When music was better and the youth had more respect.”

“You actually want to do this? Like actually date and not just randomly hook up? Because I can do the second one just fine.” You say.

He scratches his head and looks like he is in physical pain. “Yep. Can’t have your honor being tarnished by the likes of me. We’ll date.”

You shake your head in disbelief and look down at him. “Well okay then, but this first right?”

“Oh most definitely.” He pulls you back into a kiss. It’s wet and hungry. You bite at each other's lips. He cups your breast and squeezes it making you moan. He pulls back and looks up at you. “Bedroom?”

You nod and get to your feet pulling him after you. He takes you to the elevator and once the doors close he’s on you again. Pushing you against a wall and kissing you hard. You drag your fingers down his back and bunch his shirt up in your fists.

The elevator ride is short though, and you barely have a moment to even consider how hot it would be to fuck him in there when the doors slide open.

The elevator opens right into Tony’s apartment’s living room. He must have the whole floor. You step into the room. It is large and houses an eclectic mix of sleek furniture, distressed timber, and pieces that look like they were picked out by a five-year-old.

There is a sleek black couch and a baby grand piano. A hardwood bar and a state of the art sound system. Abstract paintings that you’re sure must have cost him millions hang next to posters of Iron Man that you’re sure you can buy from Walmart for three dollars.

He spins you to face him and starts walking you back towards the wall. You drop your shirt to the floor and pull his up over his head. For someone pushing fifty, he’s still in remarkably good shape. Honestly, he’s still in good shape compared to a lot of men your age. His chest hair is salt and pepper and he has significant scarring on his sternum where his chest once housed the mini arc reactor.

He unfastens your jeans and when you bump into the wall you kick your shoes off and drop them, shaking them awkwardly off your ankles. His eyes glide up and down your body and he bites his bottom lip. “You’re stunning, you know?”

“Privilege that comes with youth.” You say, running your fingers up his torso. “You’re holding yourself together pretty well though.”

He lifts you from the ground and pushes you against the wall. “I work out a lot.”

He starts kissing your neck and you tilt back your head to give him better access. “I can see that.” You half moan, wrapping your arms and legs around him.

You start to kiss again. Frantically. All teeth and tongues. You kiss like it’s a competitive sport and one of you will be declared the winner at the end. Your hands go to his hair and tug on it. He growls and moves off the wall, carrying you to the bedroom.

You drop to the mattress and unhook your bra sliding it off while he rids himself of his shoes and jeans. Not once do you break the kiss. You move back onto the mattress and drag him down with you.

He lays down, leaning over you to continue kissing you. His hand goes into your panties and he starts stroking his fingers up and down your folds. You spread your legs more and he starts circling over your clit.

You hum into his lips and run your palms down his back to his ass. You squeeze and his hips jerk against you. He counters by thrusting two of his fingers inside of you and dragging them over your internal walls. You gasp and grab hold of his cock.

He rolls so he’s completely above you and yanks your panties down. A moment later his fingers are back inside you, curled and stroking over your g-spot. You push him and roll on top, straddling his hips. He laughs and shakes his head.

“Protection?” You ask.

He points to the bedside table. You reach over and dig around until you find a condom. Tony continues working his fingers in your pussy, sending little tendrils of pleasure out through you. You hold the packet in your teeth and settle back against his hips. You grind against him.

“You’re kind of pushy aren’t you?” He smirks up at you.

You tear the condom packet open and start rolling the condom over his cock. “I could say the same for you.”

He takes his hand away and you guide his cock into you letting your head fall back and sighing as he stretches and fills you. He raises his hand to your mouth and traces his fingers over your lips. “Have you ever tasted yourself?” He asks.

You part your lips and your tongue darts out grazing over his fingertips, just getting the very hint of your musk on him. You slowly rock your hips in a slow figure of eight. “Mm-hmm…” You hum. “I particularly like tasting myself on someone else’s skin.” You take his fingers in your mouth and slowly suck your fluids from them. The salty sweet of your arousal filling your senses.

Tony watches on, his pupils blown out with lust. “That is the best way to do it.”

You put your hands on his abdominals and slide them up to his chest. “What about you, old man? You ever taste yourself?”

He smirks at you and raises an eyebrow.

“Why Tony Stark, you dirty boy.” You say, bringing your lips down to hover over his. “I am impressed.”

“You said it yourself; I’ve lived a lot of years. I’ve had a lot of sex.” He says and pulls you down into a hard kiss.

He rolls you both over again and starts thrusting hard into you. You clutch at his back, your nails raking down his skin.

He kisses your throat and you kiss his until you’re both sporting matching hickeys just under the left corners of your jaw.

Positions change again. You ride him hard. Your hands resting on his chest while you stare down into his eyes. His thumb rolls over your clit and as you feel your orgasm peak he sits up and holds you in his lap, thrusting up into you.

You come, and bite down into his shoulder. He has to hold you in place as your legs tremble and you whimper through it. He rolls you on your back once more and grips the sheets by your head thrusting hard into you. You feel his cock start to throb and you push him off you and scramble down his body. You unroll the condom and toss it in the waste bin before plunging his cock deep into the back of your throat.

“Holy shit!” He gasps. His hands grip at the sheets and his hips buck up against you. You suck up his length and run your hands down between his legs. His hips jerk up again pushing him back down your throat and he releases. Hot ribbons of come coat your tongue and you swallow it down.

You slowly crawl back up his body and collapse half lying on him. He wraps his arms around you and you both just lie there panting.

You pat his chest and sit up. “Okay… that was good. I’m out.” You joke.

He laughs and grabs you pulling you back down. “Don’t leave too soon. We have several more rounds to go.”

You laugh and flop back down on him. “I wouldn’t get too eager there, old man. You’re gonna get sick of me way before I get sick of you.”

Tony laughs. “See that just sounds like a challenge.”

// NEXT

#tony stark #tony stark x reader #iron man #iron man fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #reader insert #smut #genius billionaire playboy philanthropist #those little words

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etherealvoidechoes · 4 years

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Hollowed Defiance - Chapter 18 Intel Discussions - XCOM Fic

Commander Reeves has a talk with Volk about a possible ADVENT scientist that wants to defect over to XCOM. She’s not keen on all the details. But, sometimes risks have to be taken.

Ao3 Link

Also have changed the fic’s rating to M since I do plan for some darker stuff in the future.

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“Volk.” With a sharp tongue, her reply was curt. “This intel is nice and all, but I’m not seeing why I should risk the lives of my men just to ‘rescue’ this defecting scientist.”

Commander Reeves ran her fingers through her hair, well, lack of hair. “With the intel regarding Durga, how heavily guarded this scientist, and them being stationed at the city’s most secure gene therapy clinics for pete’s sake!” She paused for a moment to recompose herself. “It may be a setup by all means. To even pull off this rescue, we would need a major distraction.”

Down in the Resistance Ring, so far, the meeting had been going well. Volk was relaying all the information his people had gathered about the scientist, the city they were located in, and everything XCOM needed to know about Durga and her security detail. But the Commander wasn’t liking it. It just seemed too risky. Especially with this Durga. She was dangerous. One misstep and they could lose both the VIP and a soldier.

“Commander Reeves.” Volk replied, almost annoyed by the slight scolding. “We both know how dangerous VIP rescue operations can be, but from what my people gathered,” he paused, a smirk slowly appeared, “not only has this scientist personally worked on the AVATAR project, but they also worked on you. The time when you were in that stasis suit.” Some enticing information. “They have a lot of information they would like to share concerning both topics if you get them out alive.”

Her eyes narrowed at him. She felt like he had held back that bit of information on purpose. Just a little something to nudge her. “That would be nice. But I’m still not putting my soldiers' lives on the line for this scientist.” She shook her head. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Backup.” She smiled. “Some of your Reapers to help play lookout and possible provide a distraction of sorts for my soldiers.”

“You already have Elena.”

“Yes, but the rest of my men are not as silent as her.” She crossed her arms. “The window for this operation is quite slim from what you told me, as they will be moving the scientist soon. I rather have extra eyes to make sure my people come back with minimal casualties.”

Volk grumbled, rolling his eyes as he took a sip from his mug as he thought for a few moments. “I may have a man.” He mumbled, hand scratching his chin. “The same one who gathered this information. He knows that city like the back of his hand. Perhaps…”

“Perhaps…?” She gestured for him to continue.

“Perhaps I can loan him to you. For a little while…” He paused again, a grumbled slipped his lips. “If I can get a hold of him.”

She raised a brow at that. “Having trouble keeping track of your own people?”

“He’s a bit of a special case. Reports to both me and… Fayruz.”

“Really now? That’s a questionable person you have under you.” She raised her hand to mouth to stifle a chuckle. She could just feel the venom slipping through.

“In his words, ‘Gotta keep the tensions low and the family together somehow, Volk. And I can’t let Fayruz have all the fun raiding ADVENT armories’.” He used air quotes. “But he’s still loyal and fairly dependable.”

“Hmm.” She tapped her lip. “Strange one you got there.”

He chuckled. “I’ll get in contact with him as soon as I’m able to and see if him and his little crew would like to provide backup.”

“And if he agrees?”

“I’ll let you know, and he’ll find your people.”

She hummed and hawed for a bit. Thinking. “Sounds like a deal.” Perhaps it was worth the risk.

“I expect a little something in return.”

“To be expected. We can hash out the details later.”

“Until we speak again, Commander.” He chuckled. “Volk out.” Their conversation ended.

Commander Reeves sighed, closing her eyes. “Mmm, a lot of risk with this possible operation. Have to carefully select the crew. Think of their strengths and weaknessssss…aaah.” Her eyes closed tighter as her words trailed off into a pained hiss. She could feel a headache coming on.

“Return to Us.”

“Dammit not now.” She grumbled under her breath. The calls were starting up again. She was glad it was just her in the room. She shuddered as she felt a familiar pull on the back of skull. She could feel them reaching for her. She took in several deep breaths, steadying her herself and thoughts. “I will not be your thrall again.” She thought.

“You will be reclaimed. All will be forgiven.”

“Lies.” She knew better. They were just a den of vipers. They spoke sweet words, but all was poison.

“You are the light to what lies ahead.”

She winced when she felt them pull more, Their voices growing louder, but something else sent a chill through her body.

“Help me.”

“Help us.”

It was faint, but she recognized it and another feeling. Hands. Grabbing hands. She kept her eyes tightly shut. She would not look. She could still see the twisted, wailing faces. Faces full of torment and despair.

“No, no, no…” She muttered.

She could soon hear them. Wailing voices competing with the calls from the Elders, if not drowning out their calls in a matter of seconds. It was deafening. She felt like she was losing herself in all the wailing. She could feel their grief, their pain. She could feel whatever was tormenting them. Consuming them. Chaos. Just… chaos.

“Hey! Commander!”

Just when she thought her head was going to cave in, a firm voice and a hearty shake brought her back.

“Huh? What?” Her eyes flew open. She looked around before noticing a hand on her should. It was Central.

“You alright? Jynn?” A hint of worry crossed his face. He tightened his grip on her shoulder.

She let out a sigh. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just lost in my thoughts.”

“Those must have been some deep thoughts.” There was a hint of skepticism in his voice.

“I’m fine.” She put on a smile. “Just thinking of the mess Volk has offered for us and how the pull off the operation.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. He could tell something was off. The smile was fake. Another mask of hers. He hated it. But he wouldn’t push it for now.

“So,” he set his tablet down on the table, “how did the meeting go?”

“I would say mostly. well minus I’m learning Volk likes to hide some details.” Her brow twitched.

He chuckled. “He has his moments and likes to sweeten his side of the deal.”

“Hard to believe how much he’s changed.” She shook her head. “I’m starting to remember that operation in Alaska before the invasion really started.”

“You’re remembering that?” His eyes lit up.

“Bits and pieces. Chryssalid. Lots and lots of Chryssalids.” She shuddered. “They were lucky we didn’t have to firebomb the place like that fishing village in Newfoundland.”

“You remember that one too?”

“In excruciating detail.” She shuddered once more. “Kept me from eating fish for a few weeks, and you know how much I love fish.”

Central chuckled, holding back a laugh. “I remember. And remember you also decking Sergent Beckart for the prank he pulled a week after that operation.”

“Oh, that wise ass…” She gritted her teeth. “He was lucky the scientists could neutralize the venom from that Chryssalid claw fairly quickly!”

He laughed. “Well, a temporary demotion, broken nose, black eye, and an earful in four different languages set him straight.” He caught his breath. “Surprised you have a mouth of a sailor in Japanese.” He smirked deviously. “Something about gouging out his eyes and ramming a—”

“You still remember that!?” She bristled, her cheeks turning a bright red. She narrowed her eyes. “Wait… You don’t even know Japanese… last I remember.”

“Yes, I remember that day. Can’t quite forget the Commander being slightly high due to the effects of the antidote.” He smirked. She bristled again. “And I’ve been picking up bits and pieces of a few languages over the years. Learned a bit of Japanese.” He chuckled. “I may not be polyglot like you, but knowing a few things has helped with connecting with resistance cells.”

She let out an exasperated sigh, covering her face with her hands. “Of all the days you remember, you remember that.”

“Sorry, Jynn.” He chuckled and patted her back. She only groaned in response. That was an embarrassing day for her.

A few minutes of silence passed.

“Anything new?” Commander Reeves still had her face covered by her hands.

“Got another message from Fayruz. One of the smaller havens the Silent Striders protects got hit and hit badly.” He told her.

“How bad?”

“Massacre.” He shook his head. “Only a handful escaped.”

“Ghost Butcher again?”

“Yes. Same M.O. Same ‘unkillable’ leader that likes his axes and taking off heads.”

She shook her head, finally pulling her hands away from her face. The news angered her. “We’re going to have to lend them a hand, but we can’t put off our meeting with the Templars.”

“Depending on how the VIP operation and a few planned raids go, we may be able to head their way and at least help a few of the havens relocate.” He suggested. “Technically, they will be on the way for our journey to America.”

“That… Could… Work.” She nodded. “But all depends. We are on a bit of a time crunch.”

“Right.”

“Keep that plan on the back burning just in case something opens up.”

“Will do that, Commander.” He nodded.

“Also keep you eye out for Volk calling us again. He said he would see if one of his people would lend a hand for the VIP operation.” She said. “If he manages to get ahold of them and twist their arm, the operation is a go.”

“Actually getting Volk to lend you another one of his people? Thought that would never happen.” He chuckled.

“It took a little work.” She chuckled. “He probably won’t do this again.”

“He most likely won’t.”

They agreed on that.

The two discussed a few more things until they noticed the time. Commander Reeves had a health check up she needed to be at. They soon headed to the Infirmary. There was silence between the two, besides the usual hum and buzz of the ship, as they walked. The Commander was buried in her thoughts. Central was distracted by his tablet. Reports to check on.

“Hey… John.” A heavy sigh broke the silence.

“Hm? Yes?” He looked up from his tablet. Something about that sigh worried him.

“I have something to tell you….” She bit her lip. “Something I haven’t been too keen on sharing.”

“What is it?”

“Can’t tell you now… to many… ears.” She looked around.

That worried him more. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “The usual?”

She nodded. “Yes, tonight.”

“I’ll make sure I’m there.”

“Thank you.” She softly smiled.

The smile was some slight reassurance to him, but he could tell something was eating at her.

“Well.” She stopped in her tracks. “See you in a few hours.”

“Huh?” At first he was confused and then he noticed his surrounding. “Oh, right.” He shook his head. “Hope everything goes well, Jynn.” He gave her a few hearty pats on the back.

“Ow, ow, ow.” She flinched. “Still like a twig!” She punched his shoulder.

He chuckled. “Sorry.” With that, he left to make his rounds.

———————————

A few hours, Central was on the Bridge issuing orders and fielding calls. Volk eventually called back. His man, Bones, was willing to aid them in the operation. Bones was actually eager to give a go with working with XCOM. Perhaps they would get another Reaper to join XCOM sometime soon? Only if Volk felt like relinquishing another of his people.

Central relayed the information over to the Commander as soon as he could. With the go ahead, he selected the troops that would be best for the operation. Only the best of the best and those who could show some restraint. They wanted to be as quiet as possible for this op. Going loud was the last thing they wanted to do. They needed to avoid casualties.

With that done and a little prodding from Dimitri, and others on the Bridge, Central went to his quarters to take a quick nap. He figured he needed to be fairly awake for whatever the Commander had to tell him later.

#xcom #xcom 2 #writings #fan fic #fan fiction #XCOM 2 WOTC #Fic: Hollowed Defiance #XCOM Fic

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bjro233 · 5 years

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The Life of a Gay Man and His Need To Prove It

#1 The “Gay Gene”

Although it has only been found in males, a linkage to males and homosexuality has been discovered by Dean Hamer and colleagues. On X chromosomes there is an unidentified gene that these scientists have named Xq28, which they relate directly to homosexuality. It’s a very controversial theory but ultimately purposes so many answers.

#2 Evidence is Mounting for Homosexual Men

“In 1993, genetic variations in a region on the X chromosome in men were linked to whether they were heterosexual or homosexual, and in 1995, a region on chromosome 8 was identified.” says Andy Coghlan from thenewscientist.com. This just proves that no, gay men don’t just wake up one morning and say “Hey, I wanna try dick today.”

#3 The Third Gender: Muxes

In southern Mexico, the Zapotec people recognize a third gender called Muxes. In our culture, they would be known as homosexual people and transgendered people. This just makes me realize that some cultures, although so old, are so ahead of their time, open-minded, and progressive. Another reason to yell @ Donald Trump, don’t build the damn wall.

#4 We Are Not Alone

Listen, science isn’t the only thing that proves this theory. Look at our environment and what isn’t directly affected by or altered by humans. “Homosexual behaviour is a natural biological feature and is common among non-human animals. In at least one species – sheep – individual animals have been known to form lasting preferences for same-sex partners.” says Australias Science Channel. Fun Fact: the oldest living tortoise who was thought to be female but was actually male only mated with males. Thus showing why no babies were being born.

#5 Should We Care About Giving Reason To Being Gay?

Of course, being gay myself, you’re faced with a lot of harassment, questioning, judgment, and bigotry. Religion really attacks you, and you’re forced to feel like an outcast and forced into a stereotype. So, given the chance and these scientific findings, it can help explain to people who don’t believe/understand. It normalizes sexuality, it lowers being/feeling like a minority. “It adds yet more evidence that sexual orientation is not a ‘lifestyle choice’. But the real significance is that it takes us one step closer to understanding the origins of one of the most fascinating and important features of human beings.” says Dean Hammer from newscientist.com.

#6 Being A Watermelon in A Sea Full of Cacti

One word: Grindr. If you’re a gay male, you either gagged or hid your face in shamefulness for using the app. My need to prove myself starts here, it completely drains lives of romance and relationship oriented people. It sends a message that all gay men are they same, they’re horny and only want to bone. “The mental health professionals I spoke to are seeing problematic Grindr use in their clinics. And there is little published guidance on how to help those who are struggling.” says Jack Turban with Vox.com. This app is notorious for only being used to have sex, and it’s showing and obviously causing detrimental effects on gay men.

#7 Breaking Stereotypes One Straight @ A Time

Growing up, I only had girlfriends. Instead of playing basketball or throwing a football at recess, after school, in college, etc... I jumped rope. I learned how to french braid, I sang and danced. I yearned for the male on male friendship, or bromance you may say. I never got it because theres a stereotype, “I don’t have a problem with gay guys, but if he hits on me its game over.” Now, I can say once straight cis men give me a shot, they realize the stupidity behind it. I always here, “I’m not gay, but you’re one of the coolest dudes.” which isn’t ideal, but it’s progress.

#8 Trouble in the Workplace

When I bring up LGBTQ issues to acquaintances, a lot of the times i’m faced with “I don’t think gay people have a lot of issues nowadays”. But we dont, thats why I feel its so important for me to prove myself, my life, and what comes along with it. The facts, the struggles, the ugly truth. “59% said that where they live, they are less likely to be afforded employment opportunities because they are part of the LGBTQ community. One in five stated that they have had difficulty when applying for positions.” says victoryinstitute.net

#9 Let’s Prove Stats Wrong!

Statistics can be demeaning, not all the time are they helpful or good. Sadly, for the LGBTQ+ community, the stats are disheartening. For example, LGBTQ people are 5X as likely to commit suicide than heterosexual people says thetrevorproject.org. 77% of LGBTQ youth reported are depressed, have anxiety, and/or have feelings of worthlessness says hrc.org. So, to all the heterosexual people out there wondering where their “Straight month” or “Straight parade is”, you have it, 11 months out of the year because you dont have struggles like that.

#10 Trans People are Simply, People.

Working with white, privileged, conservative, middle-to-upper class women, i’m forced to hear a lot of what they believe and how they think and what political decision they have recently made. Now and then, obvious and not so obvious transgendered women come into the store to shop and they outwardly treat them different or question the “real gender” of the person. I ask myself why whatever is under their clothes matter so much to them. When I tell them they are a woman, and that’s all they are, they are confused and partly agitated because I didn’t give them the answer they wanted to hear. Saddening fact? In a national study, 40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt. 92% of these individuals reported having attempted suicide before the age of 25 says thetrevorproject.org. Maybe if we stop making people feel so different, and start working toward progression instead of sticking our nose where it doesnt belong, we could actually get somewhere. Proving myself, to help the Trans community.

#11 “Gay People Can’t Naturally Reproduce”

I want a family, I want someone to call my husband. My son or daughter, my family. I need that in my life weather it is “natural” or not. People are so pressed about the natural way of things, but they can’t see that a majority of LGBTQ people who don’t reproduce via a man and a woman, help reduce the amount of foster children.14,000 foster children are being raised by Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual foster parents says Movement Advanced Project. Just because I am a man, married to a man, with our own children doesn’t make us any less capable for raising a family.

#12 LG(B)TQ+

Another group of people that are drastically hated on for being themselves. Human beings can’t grasp that someone may actually be more concerned about someones personality rather than their sexual organs. According to 2013 research by the University of Pittsburgh, 15% of people did not categorize bisexuality as a legitimate sexuality, with straight men being three times as likely to think it's "not a thing." People looking at you and just thinking you’re fake or just too horny. It’s pathetic, hence another reason to prove myself, my sexuality, for the other groups in my community.

#13 You Can Be Cured With Some Treatment & Religion - Mackelmore

Ever since before me, for a very long time, we were taught that there are conversion treatments, that being gay was a mental disability, a deformity. There were actually shock therapy treatments and conversion camps for LGBTQ+ people, people were killed in the midst of these treatments. But heres, *tap tap* the mutha f*ucking, *tap tap* TEA! American Psychological Association undertook a thorough review of the existing research on the efficacy of conversion therapy and their report noted that there was very little research on sexual orientation change efforts (SOCEs) and that the "results of scientifically valid research indicate that it is unlikely that individuals will be able to reduce same-sex attractions or increase other-sex sexual attractions through SOCE." says hrc.com. Today there are still states that legalize this method!! Stop this!!

#14 The Importance of PRIDE

This isn’t just a time for LGBTQ+ people and allies to strut down the street in cute colorful clothing. This parade we participate in is a lesson, its teaching others about what we’re trying to do. Policies, laws, and other arguments we want and need heard. During the 2000s, battles at local, state, and national levels were being fought for marriage equality. Pride parades were utilized to educate the public, generate support, and encourage lawmakers to vote in favor of LGBT rights says thegayfamilylawmaker.com. We need to educate people on the education pride parades actually do. If it wasn’t for these parades, we wouldn’t have made the progress we have today.

#15 The Audacity!?

My need to prove myself may be... borderline pathetic. HOWEVER, it’s so important and necessary in today’s society. The fact that just in 1982, it was okay to openly discriminate against LGBTQ people. IN 1996, it was BANNED to marry unless it was between a man and a women. Only in 2011 was “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” finally repealed. This may sound like good news... but then BAM! THIS YEAR, President Trump banned Transgender people from being in the military.(CNN.com) Every time we feel like we’re ahead, we get knocked back down a few steps. This is why it is important, this is why it is necessary, this is why i’m doing it.

REFERENCES

https://australiascience.tv/science-of-sexuality/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cross-cultural-evidence-for-the-genetics-of-homosexuality/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2155810-what-do-the-new-gay-genes-tell-us-about-sexual-orientation/

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/genetics-dna-homosexuality-gay-orientation-attractiveness-straight

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/giant-study-links-dna-variants-same-sex-behavior

https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/lgbt-rights-milestones-fast-facts/index.html

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/4/4/17177058/grindr-gay-men-mental-health-psychiatrist

https://victoryinstitute.org/issue-at-a-glance-lgbtq-employment-discrimination/

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/preventing-suicide/facts-about-suicide/#sm.00001tfv8n5yekdvsq5f6al6h6i7u

https://www.hrc.org/resources/2018-lgbtq-youth-report

https://justlists.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/familyequality/

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rogue-snorunt · 6 years

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Can I still be nosy? 7, 8, 16, 18, 19, 31, 43, 44

i’m shook because someone actually wanting to get to know my doofy ass ; u ;7. Do you have tattos?Yep! got 3 tho tech one is a two-parter: +The Great Chain from Bioshock with “A man chooses, a slave obeys” quote on left wrist.+ Assassins Creed feathered insignia from the second game on right wrist.+ White ink skeletal angler fish on right side of left calf with its angler wrapping around to left side turning into a branch in which a cute ass fluffy owl sits as its lure.8. Want tattoos?Yep, and I want to get more : Gene’s star tattoo from Outlaw Star; Cardinal and some Daisies ( nana and great nana’s spirit bird and favorite flower) and a crow (my favorite birb) done in a mixed style of abstract and geometric shapes. The Marker from Dead Space with possible “Altmen be Praised” But both a phobia of needles (ironic i know but the tattoos i have already I did as a sort of self forced exposure therapy) and money currently prevent them,16. I’ll love you if…You treat me like a decent human should treat others; give me food, are patient, I am able to relate to you due to similar likes and interests. 18, Most traumatic experience:strap in- this is gonna be long and I apologize:

three years old- dad chasing and holding me down and forcing piercing my ears with a needle and an ice cube.six years old - the cat I’ve had an lived since birth and was my only friend: scratching me in the face , it was my fault as I pulled his tail like dumbass kids tend to do, resulting in the cat running outside and getting ran over by my day. i lost my best friend and my right eye that day.16 years old - accidentally getting left behind at a gas station in new jersey because I had to pee and left my phone in the car.

17 years old - Let my fathers dog - Milkshake out before taking a quick shower only to get a knock on the door a few minutes later by a random dude who informed me he had hit Milkshake. there was nothing anyone could do and no place was open so on christmas day I laid in the snowy road with Milkshake while she choked on blood for a couple of minutes and than died. 19 years old - 3 months into driving, a deer running out infront of me and I swerved to miss it resulting me to go off the road on a steep guard rail-less hill. my car got air and I popped all four tires; the frame got shifted 4 inches to the right, bent the control arm, it flipped on its side and my 50 pound toolbox getting thrown my backseat, missing my head by a few inches and smashing into my windshield. my car landed a few feet from a metal pole in a ditch. the only reason I was able to get out was because I happened to have the sun roof open that day and managed to fit through it. Instead of going to the hospital after, like the intelligent person I am, I just went home and slept for 3 days.22 years old - getting rammed from behind doing 75 on the highway by a white truck while trying to pass a semi-truck while driving home for the weekend from college. fishtailing then doing a couple 360′s managing to not hit the semi truck besides me or the truck behind me and stopping inches from hitting the guardrail, facing the opposite direction. again, did not go to hospital; went to my friends restaurant where I worked at the time and just went to sleep on the dining room floor.22 years old - crossing the crosswalk on my way to my friends restaurant and assuming the suv coming down the hill would abide by the laws of this land but instead getting double-tapped by an old lady. No hospital - went to restaurant and went to sleep in the hallway to the house above the restaurant.23 years old - the head gasket in my 88′ Ford Bronco exploding while driving back to college on a dark and very stormy night. I had to stand in a downpour next to a giant fireball for 2 hours waiting for the cops to come.25 years old - moved to Wisconsin for a bit and while riding the bus to work, a man apparently disapproved of how I was sitting and punched me.Few months later a finch flew into our apartment building and I tried my best but it died in my hands.26 to 27 years old - Moved back to new york; where my step mom died and her appearance at the wake still fucks me up.Than I began working at a bakery and worked with an unstable man who would black out; scream, throw and break equipment and threatened to hurt/ kill me and lock everyone inside the bakery and burn it.and finally 27 years old: on january 31st - my friend was driving me home before a bad snowstorm hit and we hit black ice and slammed into a tree. the airbag broke my hand; face and glasses and fucked up my ribs, left lung and have a damaged nerve in my neck. The feeling of getting the air knocked out of you and not being to breath and the agony of trying to was the worst pain i’ve ever experienced in my life and I was in and out of the hospital for 5 years with pancreatitis, kidney stones and infection, ulcers and organ shut downs all at the same time. last: having to put my dog with prostate cancer down after he wasn’t getting better. he died in my lap and it still haunts me.19: a fact about your personality take away the silly manner of speaking and vocab; puns and dumb jokes, pop culture references and goofy mannerisms : I’m just a dumb emotional asshole. 31. Last text message“I can’t help that I’m a slut for grade a memes and maple candy, stop shaming me”43. Sexiest person who comes to mind:tbh, i havent had a thought like this but now that I am @life-is-no-sugarlicking ‘s roy ; gage , dean winchester and ryan goslin come to mind.44. random fact:alot of food advertised as gluten free is naturally so already. Companies like advertising that and repackaging it to sell at a higher price just because they slapped “GLUTEN FREE!” on something they been selling already for years. and its a trap alot of people newly diagnosed with celiac’s are victim too. Rice; Veggies, Meats, Potatoes, Corn starch, Corn Tortillas, Cheerios, Rice Chex, Fruits, marshmallows, chocolate and gummi worms/bears/etc, also oatmeals are naturally gluten free so you don’t need to buy that special overpriced junk.if it requires a rue (thickener like in gravies and chowder) / is a soup/ requires a binder such as meatballs and meat loaf/ needs to be baked or fried / beer or other alcohol like that = 99% chance its gluten, don’t eat it! vodka; rum; tequila, i believe gin and apple ale are all gluten free.you can use corn starch in lieu of flour for making gravies and soups Advice? Read the labels for everything. Personally, as long as it doesnt actually contain wheat/wheat by products or gluten, I can have things with “MAY contain..” but everyone is different and more sensitive than others. just be careful and read everything. (soy sauce and corn pops are fucking traps because soy sauce is alot of the times made with soy AND WHEAT so check!!! and corn pops are shitheads because you think “oh! CORNpops! I must be able to have it! cause its CORN pops! FRIGGIN CORN-POPS! CORN!!” NO YOU CANT BECAUSE THOSE SNEAKY MUTHAFECKERS USE WHEAT AS LIKE THE 2ND INGREDIENT AND I AM REALLY SALTY ABOUT IT)

#ask a rogue a question #car accident mention #traumatic mentions

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trinamcmichaels01 · 3 years

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Physiotherapy - A Reliable Sport Injury Monitoring as well as Avoidance Strategy

Sports injuries are inevitable! Players despise them given that longer spells of absence can have a destructive result on their stamina as well as performance. Most importantly some valuable chances to excel as well as move to the next levels of the game are lost. Physiotherapy is by far the fastest method to put any kind of sporting activities individual back at work. Its healing worth has been recognized as an independent scientific research to restore physical health. On top of that, it is an unmatched precautionary strategy also. That's how physio therapists are now an indispensable component of sports training entourage.

The proficiency and also experience of a physiotherapist enters play when determining the reasons of an injury, chalking out the therapy and rehab strategy.

The First Assessment

The first meeting with sporting activities physio therapist is a substantial one wherein the physiotherapist seeks response to a great deal of thorough inquiries to identify the reasons of an injury. Basis these responses as well as other basic information, the medical professional formulates a complete strategy to place a damaged player on the road to therapy as well as healing Connected Health Centers.

Treatment and also Recovery

The treatment options rely on the trouble recognized. There are multiple physical rehabilitation treatments offered like cool or warm treatment, taping, soft tissue mobilization, 10s, ultrasound or complete immobilization with wheelchair or crutches and so on. The objective of all these treatments is to manage the early inflammatory phase, secure the hurt cells from further injury, control discomfort & swelling as well as to activate the recovery procedure. The physio therapist will utilize among these or mix of these methods relying on the nature of injury.

When there is no discomfort, early mobilization exercises like variety of activity, massage therapy, strengthening exercises etc are used up to fix up. The recovery program achieves regular joint activities, brings back strength and regular muscle mass features Connected Health Centers.

Precautionary Physiotherapy

When the injury has actually been healed, the emphasis of a physiotherapist moves towards enlightening and furnishing the player to avoid future injuries. The task plan is currently sporting activity certain. Below are a few strategies the physiotherapist will certainly utilize:

- Reinforcing the core - Core includes the abdominal area, obliques as well as lower back muscular tissues. All these with each other form the power house of the body and also offer force for all the facility activities.

- Enhance flexibility with stretching exercises

- Educate the significance of proper warm up

- Correct the pose, the strategy called for as well as exactly how and also when to use pressure

- Recommend the best shoes and also sports gear, safety tapping and supporting

- Teach self monitoring that is determine the symptoms and also factors injury and also best methods to prevent injury

Physiotherapy is not only concerning physical well being. It has an all natural strategy where in the general health and fitness degrees of mind and body are improved. A well experienced physio therapist works in tandem with the player to draw out the most effective in terms of endurance and also efficiency and also stop future injuries.

Rehab From Addiction Via Extreme Sports

Exactly how can you place on your own via an effective rehab programme if you have been addicted to drugs and alcohol for greater than 15 years? Exactly how do you reconcile your vast talents as well as thrown away life in alcohol and drugs? Exactly how do you concern terms with an addicted mommy who committed suicide in your young child years? Meet Todd Crandell from Ohio, and learn exactly how you can turn addicted life around with a rehabilitation programme based on severe sporting activities that will provide you objective and also definition in life.

Todd's sad tale began when he was 3. His mommy, who was addicted to medicines committed suicide. That left a scar in Todd s deep that he suffered from emotional issues from a young age. He might not integrate with the truth that his mommy was gone. Where was the love that was intended to be provided to a child growing? His father, managing his own grieve after that might do little to assist him cope. As a result, by 13, Todd has begun drinking. At 16, he had his first taste of drug and that obtained him hooked. All those years of looking for something that would reduce his pain of his mother's lost unexpectedly appear to be over. He assumed the high of drugs could ease that discomfort. For temporary moments, he felt that alleviate. Drugs and alcohol was his rehabilitation from the discomfort of shedding his mother Connected Health Centers

Todd was always a gifted sportsman. He mastered ice hockey and also was energetic in various other sporting activities. At high school, he was among the best objective tender in the group. Yet as his drug addition got hold of him, he came to be less and much less of a player he was expected to be. His coached sacked him reluctantly, but Todd did not care. Medicines were his rehab and also detoxification from the discomfort that never vanished. The end of his senior high school sports days was likewise the start of a trip of torment, prison, arrest, misery, and aimlessness for him. Living and dying became non presence to him. He could not see any difference.

In 1991, his dad provided him a final word to visit rehab or get out of his house. Todd told his daddy that he would have sufficient of his 'rehabilitation' initially before going for a real rehab and detoxification programme. He even endangered to 'eliminate' his papa if he attempted to stop him. There was nothing Todd's father might do, but he never quit on his son. As months past, Todd saw the love and also care of his dad, as well as in 1993, while consuming beer, he simply put down his beverage as well as left. Todd had reached his transforming point. His genuine rehab had begun Connected Health Centers.

He started playing sporting activities once more, and made use of that platform as his primary rehabilitation programme. Playing hockey once again did not mean much to him any longer. He required something a lot more extreme and also extreme that would certainly extend him past what he has actually experienced. The pain he had suffered during his addiction days needed to be changed by another type of pain for this new rehabilitation programme to work. Triathlon became his brand-new medicine. The Iron Man through 2.4 miles of swimming in open waters, 120 miles on the road bike over rolling terrain and 26 mile of going to test the human endurance to the limitation, became his new medicine towards a much more deliberate and also meaningful life.

Todd trained for months preparing for this huge test. His brand-new rehab program reshaped his body and additionally rerouted his energies to something a lot more deliberate. When the moment came, Todd was successful in his very first Iron Guy. He discovered his new drug, this moment it is a positive kind of medication. Todd took place to complete more than ten Iron Man races. In 2001 Todd also found brand-new drive and purpose in his life. He uncovered that his life was in fact preparing him for his ultimate calling helpful those in comparable troubles as him. He began the 'Racing for Recuperation' program in Ohio, which had actually attracted significant rate of interest from those like him before, seeking to rehab themselves from alcohol and drug dependency. Todd likewise discovered success in his family. He now has a household of his own, although his operate in the "Competing for Recovery' program took him away from them frequently. However his new located hope as well as drive had actually provided Todd a new lease of life. From hereon, his brand-new rehabilitation programme would proceed and there will certainly be no end. We are constantly on rehabilitation once we have actually located our hiring life Connected Health Centers.

What You Required to Find Out About Physical Rehabilitation Centers.

There are so many physical rehabilitation facilities now across the country. They are supplying a large range of physical therapy and also rehabilitation. It is currently tough to find a health center in the states that hasn't obtained the most recent in physical rehab modern technology. What they are offering are modern cure and recovery for patients with physical obstacles due to ailments, genes and or mishaps. Another prospering division in almost all physical rehab facilities is the sports and job associated injuries. Since sports is currently a multi-billion sector, athletes as well as hopeful sporting activities aficionados do not just go to these rehabilitation centers for treatment however maintenance as well as education and learning also. Since majority of individuals are currently mindful that some kinds of workouts and sports is a part of healthy and balanced living, running, jogging, working out in gyms and also various other forms of exercises are obtaining popularity consequently accidents and also injuries can not be prevented.

Nova Care Rehabilitation Facility is one of the leading suppliers of physical and work-related therapy with certified as well as gifted specialists and staff prepared to help and also aids clients with physical problems. Other than Physical as well as Work Therapies, Nova Treatment additionally offers Orthopedic Rehabilitation, Low Back Program, Aquatic Therapy, Elderly Health, Neurological Rehab, Vestibular Recovery, Female's Wellness Program as well as Athletic Training Solutions.

Orthopedic Rehab is treatments as well as rehabilitation of clients, who had gone through total hip or knee substitute or has actually sustained injury to the bone. A team of specialists help patients reclaim their toughness flexibility and endurance to be able to go home and go back to their typical activities Connected Health Centers.

Possibly among the most usual issues of males and females alike, reduced back pain can likewise be a chronic injury. Mostly suffered from poor position, work associated problems and crashes, a total program that aids in reinforcing and dealing with positions to alleviate people of reduced neck and back pain which are sometimes disabling already.

Water Therapy is one of one of the most frequently utilized therapies when it concerns the therapy of muscles and bones. Due to the fact that our body considers minimal in water, certain muscle teams in addition to joints and also bones can openly as well as securely move when immersed in water therefore offering a secure setting for recovery as well as treatment Connected Health Centers.

Individuals aged 65 years and also over have unique needs when it pertains to muscular tissues and bone treatment. The Senior Wellness Center particularly caters to those people and also their special requirements providing education and learning on just how to care for their back and joints to stop mishaps and injuries.

Neurological Rehab is a mix of muscle mass as well as sensory education and learning, control activities and also movement and also speech treatments especially to those who endured stroke or spinal cord injury Connected Health Centers.

Vestibular Rehab is the recovery of injuries and conditions of the inner ear like vertigo, wooziness, discrepancy and other similar conditions. All programs are individualized, focusing on the source of the injury or condition which is the majority of the moment various from the others Connected Health Centers.

Female's Health Program is specifically developed for her one-of-a-kind needs. Typical wellness concerns for women that are consisted of in this program are weakening of bones, fibromyalgia, incontinence and others.

For More Information Visit Here

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liliannorman · 4 years

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The many efforts to lick cat allergies

Time magazine’s list of Best Inventions of 2006 included an unusual creation. It wasn’t a gadget; it was a cat.

“Love cats but your nose doesn’t?” the magazine asked. “A San Diego company is breeding felines that are naturally hypoallergenic.” (Hypoallergenic means that something is unlikely to cause an allergic response.) There was a 15-month waiting list for these “sniffleproof kitties,” which sold for $3,950 or more.

The company selling the cats was Allerca. It had tapped into a tantalizing dream for allergy-prone cat lovers. Just two genes are responsible for making cats a problem for many people. It therefore seemed like a no-brainer to engineer cats that lacked those genes — or to simply breed cats with versions of the genes that made the animals less allergenic.

But so far, itchy-eyed cat lovers have been left disappointed.

Explainer: What are allergies?

By 2010, Allerca had stopped taking orders. Lawsuits were lining up. The sniffle-proof kitties never materialized. Some angry customers said they never received a kitten. Others were sent a cat that set off their allergies.

But for all those who haven’t given up hope, there may be new options around the corner. An allergic owner might pop open a can of allergy-fighting food — for the cat. Or maybe vaccinate the cat to produce fewer allergens. And allergy shots for owners might shift from weekly or monthly injections to a shot that offers immediate relief.

The new gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 might even come to the rescue. This technology might deliver the ultimate dream to those who can afford it: a cat that doesn’t produce allergens at all. One company has made some progress applying CRISPR/Cas9 to cats.

Success in taming cat allergies might even bring good news for people whose allergies have nothing to do with cats. If any of the cat allergy–fighting measures prove safe and effective, they might be deployed against other allergens. They could prove especially useful against airborne ones like pollen, dog dander or dust mites. Up to 30 percent of the world’s population suffers from allergens in the air. So that’s plenty of runny noses to dry up.

Explainer: What are proteins?

When it comes to cat allergies, the main culprit is Fel d1. This small protein is produced primarily in cats’ salivary and sebaceous glands. Fel d1 is found in flakes of dead skin, or dander. It is spread to hair when a cat licks itself. Thus it’s not cat hair that people are allergic to, just hair coated in cat spit.

A singular target

As allergens go, Fel d1 gets around. It sticks to hair and clothing, so it’s easily carried from place to place. It lasts for weeks or months before breaking down. It’s light and easily enters the air. That makes it even more insidious. In fact, even houses without a cat tend to have a little Fel d1 in their dust, says Martin Chapman. This immunologist is president and CEO of Indoor Biotechnologies. It’s a company in Charlottesville, Va., that tests for allergens and allergies.

All cats produce some amount of Fel d1. However, that doesn’t mean that all cats are equally allergenic. In tests of hundreds of cats, Indoor Biotechnologies found levels ranging from just 5 to as much as 2,000 micrograms of Fel d1 per gram of fur. Variations in two key genes explain much of that wide range. But no one knows exactly which versions of the genes result in low-allergen cats.

It’s also not clear what role Fel d1 plays in cats. Lions and other big cats have their own version of the protein, Chapman notes. So it seems to have stuck around during cat evolution. That suggests the protein does something. Male cats that haven’t been neutered tend to have the highest Fel d1 levels, which have been linked to male hormones. Based on that association and the protein’s similarity to other molecules, Fel d1 might be a pheromone. That’s a chemical used to communicate via scent. But no one knows whether the protein plays some role in keeping cats healthy.

It’s not clear what role Fel d1 plays in cats. But lions and other big cats have their own version of the protein, which suggests it must do something, Martin Chapman says.Bernard Bialorucki/iStock/Getty Images Plus

All this uncertainty has made allergies to cats difficult to tackle. For now, options are limited. People can take antihistamines and other medications to reduce symptoms. But such drugs don’t stop the allergy.

Traditional allergy shots are known as immunotherapy or desensitization therapy. They aim to retrain a person’s immune system to be less sensitive to an allergen. But those shots are a commitment. A patient may need up to 100 injections over three to five years.

Some people can avoid needles by taking under-the-tongue daily drops of the same U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved allergens as in the injections. But this treatment often is not covered by insurance.

“Desensitization therapy has been the only therapy for decades,” says Gerald Nepom. He is director of the Immune Tolerance Network in Seattle, Wash. It’s a research group funded by the National Institutes of Health. Exactly how desensitization works is still not fully understood. But the basic idea is that exposing the immune system to small amounts of allergens causes the body to make antibodies that block part of the allergic response. Unfortunately, Nepom says, desensitization generally doesn’t eliminate all symptoms. And the effects aren’t always permanent.

Allergy treatments

There is no permanent cure for cat allergies, though a number of available treatments can reduce symptoms in many allergy sufferers. New treatments aim to do a better job at this or stop the allergy process in its tracks.

TREATMENTAVAILABLE NOW?ACTIONPROSCONSAntihistaminesYesBlock histamine productionNewer drugs like cetirizine (Zyrtec) and fexofenadine (Allegra) cause less drowsiness than previous drugsMay not eliminate symptomsNasal steroidsYesReduce inflammation in the noseReduce sneezing, congestion and runny noseOnly treat symptomsTraditional allergy shots or dropsYesExact mechanism unknown; may increase helpful antibodiesThe only current therapy that reverses some allergiesRequires many shots over several yearsAllergy shots of lab-made antibodyNoBlock immune system’s recognition of allergenFast-acting prevention of allergic responseBoosters requiredPet food with antibodiesNoCuts amount of active Fel d1 allergen in cat salivaNo shots neededDoes not eliminate all Fel d1Vaccine for catsNoPrevents human immune system from recognizing cat allergenNo shots needed for peopleDoes not eliminate all Fel d1; more testing needed to confirm safety for catsGenetic engineering of catsNoRemoves genes that direct Fel d1 production in cats With no Fel d1, nearly all cat allergies would be eliminatedEffects on cats are unknown

Newer approaches are focusing on Fel d1. They either directly neutralize it or block its interaction with the human immune system. The competition to devise an effective solution to cat allergies is fierce. Because of the large potential market — about 10 percent (some estimate 20 percent) of people are allergic to cats — a successful approach could make companies a lot of money.

Applying lessons learned here to other allergies is a strong motivator, too.

Improving immunotherapy

One problem with traditional immunotherapy is that it tries to stop one of the later steps in the allergic response. Immunoglobulin E, or IgE, is an antibody that triggers an allergic reaction. Antibodies patrol the body looking for specific interlopers. In people with allergies, the IgE only latches onto the proteins or chemicals — allergens — that trigger their allergy.

When an IgE find its allergen, the antibody raises an alarm. It does that by telling certain cells that something is wrong. Those cells make chemicals called histamines (HIS-tuh-meens). It’s the job of histamines to get rid of bothersome things by any means necessary. Those histamine chemicals might make eyes water, or trigger coughing, sneezing or itching. That’s helpful when the substance poses harm. But it is not pleasant when the substance — like cat dander — is actually harmless. In allergies, this histamine response can go way too far. It can even cause people’s throats to swell shut and other life-threatening consequences.

Traditional immunotherapy blocks the histamine-producing part of this reaction. Yet that’s only one part of the body’s response to an allergen.

“We now see allergy as an immune-activation symphony,” explains Nepom. Rather than a strict chain of single events, it’s more like an orchestra. And it has many players (molecules) performing on cue.

Today, Nepom says, allergy researchers are getting a clearer understanding of the role of each player. “This is like figuring out which part of the orchestra is creating the problem. Is it the horn section or the strings? Or do you have a single oboe player going rogue?” Knowing that could help researchers target players in the immune system more efficiently, he says.

For example, one research group funded by the Immune Tolerance Network is wrapping up a human trial that goes by the name of CATNIP. This clinical trial is testing what’s called an “allergen-plus” approach. Scientists combine small amounts of Fel d1 with an antibody that blocks a substance important to triggering the allergic response. That substance is a protein that helps spark and maintain allergic reactions. It may be one of those rogue oboists. The idea is that if this treatment works, a patient would develop a long-lasting tolerance from a one-year series of allergy shots. That may sound like a lot, but today’s version of such a therapy requires three to five years of shots.

Other parts of the allergic response are prime targets, too, says Jamie Orengo. She is an immunologist at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals in Tarrytown, N.Y. (Regeneron is a major financial supporter of the Society for Science & the Public. The Society publishes Science News for Students.)

In a test of people with cat allergies, one injection of an antibody that binds to the protein Fel d1 provided more relief from nasal symptoms than did a placebo shot. SOURCE: J.M. Orengo et al/Nature Communications 2018 T. Tibbitts

The company has designed antibodies that are highly specific to Fel d1. These antibodies bind to and lock up the allergen before the immune system can react to it. It’s an amped-up version of traditional immunotherapy. And it’s one that could be used to target other allergens, Orengo notes.

“We don’t have to rely on the human body. We can make those antibodies in the laboratory instead of waiting for them to be generated by the person naturally,” Orengo says. Tests in mice and in people allergic to cats showed fewer allergy symptoms after just one treatment, her team reported in a 2018 paper in Nature Communications. That one treatment gave results that used to be seen only after years of conventional immunotherapy. Most people treated saw as much as a 60 percent reduction in nasal symptoms.

One shortcoming: While this approach is very fast-acting, it doesn’t retrain the person’s immune system. Someone receiving the treatment would need periodic boosters — perhaps every few months.

Special cat food

Cat saliva is the biggest source of Fel d1. Researchers at Nestlé Purina are now testing cat food containing an antibody. It binds to the protein in saliva as a cat eats. This antibody doesn’t prevent the cat from producing the allergen. It does, however, make it almost impossible for the human immune system to recognize the allergen.

“In fact, this was an important strategy behind our research,” says Ebenezer Satyaraj. This immunologist is leading the research at the Purina Institute in St. Louis, Mo. “We didn’t want to stop the production of Fel d1 because currently it is not clear what role it has in the cat.”

When 105 cats were fed an experimental Purina pet food containing a Fel d1 antibody, levels of the allergen dropped below baseline levels over a 10-week period. SOURCE: E. Satyaraj et al/Immun., Inflamm. and Disease 2019T. Tibbitts

Tests so far suggest that the food can knock down the amount of active allergen on cat hair by about half. That may be enough to offer relief to some people with mild to moderate cat allergies. The company expects to begin selling the cat food later this year.

But it won’t help everyone. People with severe allergies or asthma may be unable to tolerate any amount of Fel d1 without causing symptoms, says Michael Blaiss. He is executive medical director of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology in Augusta, Ga.

Vaccinate the cat

There are cat lovers out there who’d probably be happier letting the cat get the shots. So another new approach aims to vaccinate cats against their own Fel d1. The shot would stimulate a cat’s immune system to produce antibodies that bind to Fel d1. That should make it so that human immune cells no longer recognize — and react — to the protein.

Researchers at HypoPet AG in Zurich, Switzerland, studded an inactive fragment of a virus with dozens of Fel d1 molecules. “If you make the allergen look like a virus, the immune system thinks it is a virus,” says Martin Bachmann. He is chief scientific officer of HypoPet. He’s also an immunologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. This “Trojan horse” then triggers the cat’s immune system to start seeing Fel d1 — which it normally ignores — as an invader.

An initial test was done in more than 50 cats. Three injections of the vaccine were given three weeks apart. They stimulated the cats to make antibodies specific to the allergen. This reduced the cats’ secretion of the protein by more than half. And it did this without harming the cats, the researchers reported last July in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The company now plans further safety testing, Bachmann says. HypoPet is working with U.S. and European Union regulators to bring the vaccine to market.

The hypoallergenic cat

Producing a cat that makes no allergens at all is still the goal for some researchers. The fact that some cats are naturally low in Fel d1 suggests that such pets could be bred. This is what Allerca tried and failed to do a decade ago. But frustratingly, you can’t just breed two cats with low Fel d1 levels and get a litterful of hypoallergenic kittens.

Tom Lundberg breeds Siberian cats in Oregon. He cautions that breeding two cats that are naturally low in the allergen Fel d1 doesn’t guarantee their kittens will also have low levels of the protein. His advice: If you need a low-allergen cat, get it tested and meet the cat before bringing it home.Sarah Starr

Oregon cat breeder Tom Lundberg has bred Siberian cats for more than 10 years. His goal has been to breed low-allergen cats. Lundberg himself is allergic to cats. He became fascinated by Siberians after owning one to which he was not allergic. But a second one, he recalls, gave him a “snotty nose and itchy eyes.”

Lundberg has long measured his cats’ allergen levels and tracked the results of breeding. He can confirm that there’s no way to guarantee that all the kittens in a litter will hit the genetic jackpot. He and his wife, Meredith, now sell the cats they breed based on their Fel d1 levels. Those tested with the lowest levels, which are the most rare, command the highest prices. These cost up to $5,200 for a kitten in the “extremely low” range of less than 1 microgram of Fel d1 per gram of fur. Only about 1 in 15 of the kittens he breeds from low-allergen cats fall into that category, he says.

Lundberg has received hundreds of calls from people giving up Siberian cats that breeders had claimed were hypoallergenic. “They’ll say the kittens were ‘bred from hypoallergenic lines,’” he says. “That’s like saying corn was bred from corn — it’s meaningless.”

Anyone interested in buying a low-allergen cat, he says, should insist on seeing test data. He also notes that buyers with severe allergies may not be able to tolerate any amount of Fel d1.

Indoor Biotechnologies is trying to genetically engineer a cat that makes no Fel d1. “We’re working on it,” says Chapman, who founded the company. This company has used CRISPR/Cas9 to delete two genes. The company has filed for a patent on the process. Called Ch1 and Ch2, the genes being deleted would have instructed cells on how to make Fel d1. So far, the gene edits have worked for cat cells growing in cell-culture dishes.

Next, the company will try knocking out these genes in cat salivary tissues, also growing in a lab dish. Researchers will then make sure Fel d1 is no longer being made, says Nicole Brackett. She’s a postdoctoral scientist at the company. She has analyzed the DNA sequence of the Ch1 and Ch2 genes of 50 cats. She now has plans to do the same for 200 more cats. That will help identify the best gene region to target using CRISPR/Cas9.

If the genetic trick works, engineered cats would lack part or all of the genes needed to make Fel d1. Some cats naturally produce very little of this with no ill effects. So the thinking is that preventing cats from making the protein is unlikely to harm them. But scientists won’t know for sure until someone tries it. “That’s precisely the reason to do the experiment,” Chapman says.

Typically, producing such a cat would require deleting the gene from an embryo. The embryo would then be implanted in a female cat until the kitten is born. But Chapman doesn’t want to get into the breeding business. Instead, he hopes to ultimately edit the genes of adult cats. That is similar to gene therapies being developed now for people (which use a harmless virus to deliver gene-editing tools). Recent experiments have successfully edited the genes of adult mice and even people with sickle-cell disease, for instance.

Such a virus could be delivered by having a veterinarian inject it into the cat’s salivary glands. Or it might come as skin treatment to reach the sebaceous glands in the skin. And if it edits the genes for Fel d1, “that would be exciting,” Chapman says.

One researcher working to wipe out cat allergies won’t be standing in line for any injections, however. Bachmann, of HypoPet, says that he and his son are allergic to cats. When asked if he would try any of the new allergy treatments, he replied no. “I don’t love cats that much,” he says. “I’m more a dog person.”

A personal quest

Stoli (shown here) is a Siberian cat that belongs to the author of this article. Siberian cats are considered hypoallergenic by some people. But there’s no evidence that any cat breed is universally low in Fel d1. E. Engelhaupt

I’ve always been a cat person. So when I married Jay, who’s allergic to cats, among other things, I had a problem. Whenever Jay spent time around a cat, his eyes would start to itch. His nose would run.

But Jay loves cats, too. Like many allergy sufferers, he tried all the usual treatments. For a couple of years, he got monthly allergy shots. He now uses daily nasal steroids and the antihistamine cetirizine. Eventually, his allergies didn’t seem so bad. So we wondered if he could tolerate a cat. I’d been seeing a lot of claims about hypoallergenic cat breeds. I was skeptical but curious.

We’re both biologists by training, so we dove into the scientific literature. We didn’t find much. One small study in Veterinary Sciences from 2017 reported on mutations in Siberian cats that could potentially lower their Fel d1 levels or render the protein less allergenic. It was the barest of hints. But we decided to visit a Siberian cat breeder in Georgia and see if we might luck out.

That day we brought home Stoli on a trial basis. Stoli is a nearly 17-pound sweetheart. Jay’s allergic reaction to him was occasional and mild. And over a few months the sniffling seemed to diminish even more. We thought we’d found our low Fel d1 cat!

Then in the course of reporting this story, I decided to test Stoli. I sent off a fur sample to Indoor Biotechnologies. The result: Stoli’s fur tested at 790 micrograms per gram of fur — pretty darn high.

Maybe the immunotherapy that Jay has endured over the years gets more credit than Stoli’s genes. It’s OK. Despite those test results, we are definitely keeping the cat.— Erika Engelhaupt

The many efforts to lick cat allergies published first on https://triviaqaweb.tumblr.com/

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letthesleepingdoglie · 5 years

Text

From Whence He Sprang - 09

Title: Never Left or Right

Part: 09 of 18

Rated: M

The Batcave

Gotham City

January 17th, 2012

17:24 EST

Team Year One

“You look like crap.” Artemis noted as she stepped off the open elevator platform that had brought her down into the Batcave.

Dick tore his gaze from the screen in front of him and turned to look over his shoulder at his friend. At least, he tried to. The movement was stiff and sluggish on account of the many bandages and stitches covering his exposed torso. It had taken Alfred the better part of an hour to patch up all the wounds that Dick had received from the fight last night, and the last thing that he wanted to do was tear all the meticulously stitched cuts open.

Now that the adrenaline from the events of last night had worn off, each and every one of the wounds he’d received ached and throbbed as he moved. The fight with the mysterious assassins had been so intense that he didn’t remember receiving half of them.

“You should see Bruce.” Dick grunted as he finally managed to complete his turn.

“Seriously?” Artemis asked, an expression of surprise on her face. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen the dark knight seriously injured. “What happened to you guys?”

Dick shrugged. “Assassins, sword fights, explosions. The usual.”

A cursory glance told him that she must have come straight from school; she was still wearing her hated Gotham Academy uniform.

“What brings you all the way out here?” He asked her, which was a valid question. Batman didn’t have a Zeta Tube installed in the cave, and Wayne Manor was a relatively long trip from her home in the East End.

It was Artemis’ turn to shrug. “You missed class. I was worried.”

Dick suppressed a small smirk, though he tried to hide it. Artemis always put on a tough front so that people wouldn’t see how vulnerable she truly was, but it was always endearing to see that she cared.

“Plus,” she continued, pulling a handful of papers from her backpack, “Barb wanted me to make sure you got your homework.”

Dick groaned, but took the papers from Artemis and flipped through them. It wouldn't take more than an hour to get through, but it would be tedious, and he had bigger fish to fry at the moment.

Artemis took advantage of Dick’s momentary distraction to glance at the screen that he'd been working on. A meaningless scroll of names, numbers and code flashed across the screen. “What’re you working on?”

“A difficult case.” He put his homework to one side and hit a few keys on the bat-computer’s keyboard, bringing up the relevant files and images for Artemis to skim through.

“About two weeks ago, Batman and I met a kid named Jason Todd and sent him over to the Catherine Hershey school. Yesterday, we got word from Commissioner Gordon that he’d gone missing. We went to the school to see if we could find any leads on what happened to him and ended up being ambushed by a group of assassins working for something called the Court of Owls.”

He pointed up at the corner of the screen, where the image of a man with inverted eyes was displayed. “He was their leader. Called himself Shrike.”

Artemis frowned as she looked at the picture. “What’s the Court of Owls?”

“We have no clue.” Dick sighed in frustration. “The assassins blew themselves up when they realized that they were going to lose. We’ve been looking since the attack and haven’t found anything. Batman’s never heard of it, and I can’t find any references to it in anywhere.”

Artemis’ frown deepened. It was rare for Batman to have never heard of something. “Do you have any leads?”

“Not many.” Dick admitted. He gestured over to the side, where several items sat arranged on top of a high-tech scanning bed. The mask that Robin had removed from Shrike. The swords and throwing knives the assassins had dropped in their fight. Charred pieces of limbs and barely identifiable chunks of tissue.

“Most of the physical evidence was obliterated in the explosions. We’ve run their DNA through all the databases we could and come up with nothing. Their gear is also untraceable. We’re analyzing what’s left, but nothing yet. Batman’s back at the school, looking for anything we missed.” Dick sighed. “All we really know for certain is that the Court of Owls is good.”

He tapped at the keyboard again, bringing up a series of case files bearing the GCPD’s logo. “Look at this.”

Artemis moved so that she was standing next to Dick’s chair and peered at the display. Dozens of names and faces populated the screen, each identifying a child between the ages of 10 to 13. “What am I looking at?”

“GCPD missing persons reports. Specifically, children listed as missing from the Catherine Hershey School. Notice anything?”

Artemis frowned. Some of the kidnappings stretched back decades, with some going all the way back to the 70s, when the GCPD had started keeping track of missing kids. She realized what she was supposed to be looking for as she read the dates listed on the files.

“Like clockwork… One kid disappears every four years. Jason was just the latest.”

“Right.” Dick confirmed. “And those are just the disappearances that we have official records for. Unofficially, I managed to dig up reports of similar disappearances stretching all the way back to the school’s founding.”

“Why?” Artemis asked, incredulous. For a school to have this many missing kids… Granted, this was Gotham City, but still, even accounting for the fact that a boarding school oriented towards strays and orphans would probably have more runaways and disappearances, how had someone not noticed?

“I don’t know.” Dick said. He was clearly frustrated, which was understandable. He’d been trying to come up with the answer to that question for the last few hours. The problem was, he didn’t know if that was the right question to ask.

At first, both he and Batman had based their theories on the assumption that Jason had been kidnapped because someone was trying to bait them; after all, it was a common enough strategy amongst their regular rogue’s gallery. But now that he’d dug deeper and found the reports of serial disappearances, he was forced to come up with new theories to work around.

It was like trying to put together a puzzle, except he didn’t have all the pieces, he didn’t know which pieces he had were useful, and he had no idea what the final image would look like.

Knowing that a child’s life was likely on the line, his inability to figure the situation out was maddening.

“Any ideas?” Dick asked her. “I could use a fresh pair of eyes on this.”

Artemis hesitated, considering how she could best contribute. It wasn’t that Artemis thought she wasn’t smart enough to help, or that she was intimidated by the fact that her mentor wasn’t a world renowned detective. The simple truth was that most of the things that she could think of right then and there would have already occurred to him. If she wanted to help, she needed to draw on the resources and skills that she had exclusive access to.

“How good were the assassins who attacked you?” She asked.

“Very.”

“League of Shadows good?” She pressed.

“No. Better. Much better.”

Artemis considered that for a moment before pulling out her phone. “I’ll ask my mom if she heard of anyone like them when she was part of the League. They try to keep tabs on anyone that has skills like that.”

“Thanks.”

As Artemis took a few steps away so that she could call her mom without disturbing Dick, an automated notification popped up on the Bat-computer’s screen to tell him that the detailed scan he’d been running on the assassin’s bodies was done.

“Whoa…” Dick breathed as he read through the results.

Almost every biological sample that he and Batman managed to collect displayed some evidence of either chemical or genetic manipulation. For example, the assassin’s blood contained cells that looked like normal platelets, but upon closer inspection, appeared to function much more effectively, clotting in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. Fragments of bone revealed that their skeletons had been coated in a porous material that allowed biological materials to pass through, but was as strong and as light as titanium. There were even remnants of organs that the bat-computer didn’t recognize as human.

No wonder he hadn’t been able to find a match in any of the databases he’d looked at. Even something as fundamental as their DNA had been re-written to include what looked like distinct strands of animal genes. This was almost Cadmus level gene-manipulation; there were parts that barely looked human anymore.

It wasn’t just the sheer scale of the enhancements that Dick found overwhelming, but also the amount of time it must have taken to implement them. He’d seen full body augmentation and reconstruction before, of course, but it wasn’t something you could do all at once. Even with advanced tech from STAR Labs, someone undergoing this much surgery and gene therapy would need, at best, several years to adjust to all the changes being wrought on his or her body.

Years… Dick realized with a start, as a disturbing thought crossed his mind.

Working quickly, he minimized everything on the computer screen except for the picture of Shrike’s face that the cameras built into his mask had captured, then opened up a program that had been designed for forensic investigators so that they could “age” pictures of young children to find out what they might look like several years after their respective disappearances.

Dick ran the process in reverse, taking a scan of Shrike’s face and reversing the aging process so that it displayed an approximation of what Shrike might have looked like at the age of 12. Granted, the image was very, very, very rough, but at least it gave him something to work with. He ran the image through every database concerning missing children that he had access to, both within the US and internationally.

Even with a super computer as powerful as the one that was built into the Batcave, the search still took a few minutes.

That gave Dick a moment to ponder. And to hope he was wrong. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t notice Artemis was done with her phone call until she was standing next to him.

“Nothing.” She told him, tucking her phone away. “My mom says she’ll ask around though.”

He looked over at her. “Are you sure? I don’t want her to get into any trouble.”

Artemis waved his concerns away. “It’s fine. She knows how to take care of herself. Besides, I think she likes being able to help with hero stuff. It gives her something to do besides sit around the house all day, you know?”

“Mmm.” Dick conceded. He could empathize with that.

He sighed, rubbing his face, giving his eyes a rest. He’d been working non-stop on this since the ambush last night. Just because he was used to long hours of work didn’t mean that it never caught up with him. It was just hard to focus on things that seemed as trivial as food and sleep when someone’s life was on the line.

“Are you alright?” Artemis asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah.” Dick said, pushing himself upright in his chair. “It’s just been a rough day.“

“You should get some rest.” She said. Dick glanced at her. He recognized that tone. Despite phrasing it as a suggestion, Artemis’ voice made clear that she was prepared to frog march him upstairs if she thought it would be necessary.

Oh, to have an big sister like Artemis.

“I’m just gonna finish this search, then I’ll grab a quick nap.” Dick promised.

Artemis crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at him. It wouldn’t have been the first time that he’d made a similar promise to her, only for her to return hours later to find him slumped over the keyboard, fast asleep.

“I will.” He insisted when she didn’t budge.

She continued to stare at him for a few moments longer before she uncrossed her arms. Inwardly, Dick breathed a sigh of relief.

“Fine.” Artemis said as she made her way back towards the elevator leading up to the manor. “But if you don’t give Zatanna a call by the time I get back from the Cave, I will beat the crap out of you.”

“Fair enough.” He conceded.

Artemis rolled her eyes, but gave a quick wave goodbye as the elevator doors slid shut.

The computer chimed in with a notification, letting him know that the search was done. Facial recognition had found a relatively close match for a child that had gone missing in Oregon.

“Matthew Board.” Dick said to himself, reading the name at the top of the report. Born to David and Serena Board, September 1975. The youngest of four children. Reported as missing January 16th, 1988. The official notes listed it as likely the child had run away from home.Interestingly, it hadn’t been his parents who had reported Matthew as missing, but a teacher at the school he had gone to. He ran a quick check and found that both the mother and father had criminal records, mostly for drug related offenses, though there were more than a few citations from Child Protection Services as well.

Dick’s discomfort was starting to grow. It felt like the picture on the puzzle was starting to become clearer. Matthew matched Jason’s profile almost exactly. A child from a rough background, around the age of 12, whose disappearance wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

This being the United States, which maintained a national database of missing children, there were DNA records for Matthew on file that Dick could access. He pulled these up and compared them to the samples that he had recovered from Shrike.

After Dick edited the sequences of animal DNA and removed them from the analysis, they were almost a perfect match.

Shrike was, or had been, Matthew Board.

Dick’s blood ran cold at the realization. Whatever the Court of Owls was, it had been kidnapping children in order to turn them into super-powered sociopathic killers. They’d been doing it in Gotham for years, decades even, right under their noses.

And he and Batman had put Jason right in their path.

——————————————————————————————————————————

The Labyrinth

Location Unknown

Time Unknown

Jason knew he was going to die.

That was his only rational thought as he stumbled forward through the dark, displaying none of the learned caution or stealth that he normally would have used. In truth, he was so consumed by the realization of his impending demise that he was scarcely aware of his surroundings, moving forward out of stubbornness rather than any real hope of going anywhere.

He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The way he would die was irrelevant. Cut apart by another booby trap. Bludgeoned to death by the fists of ferals and torn apart to be eaten. Finally succumbing to the gnawing pit of hunger and thirst that was welling up inside of him. It would all mean the same thing in the end: dying, alone, down in the dark.

Strange, to think of his death in such dispassionate terms. In a way, the only thing that surprised him was the fact that he was still alive.

He hadn’t seen any signs of life for…

He didn’t know.

He didn’t remember.

He didn’t care.

Lorena. Joseph. Chris. Sean. They all probably thought he was dead.

Maybe they were right. It certainly felt like he was in hell right now.

For all he knew, they were the ones who were dead. The tunnels reeked of so much decay and abandonment that he couldn’t really believe that there was anyone friendly left in the world. Moving through the darkness, still covered with clotting blood and other visceral filth, he felt so cut off and isolated from everything that nothing felt real.

One of the few reassuring things he still felt was the weight of the knife in his hand. He vaguely recalled prying it, his own hands still sticky with blood, from the grasp of a fragmented skeleton that he’d tripped over as he’d stumbled through the dark. Judging from the size of the remains, it had probably belonged to a past aspirant. One who had fallen into the blood pool, just as he had, and somehow died, just as he would.

The knowledge had scared him at first. He had stared at the knife for a long time, knowing that he could have turned the weapon on himself, ended all of the pain that he had endured and the pain sure to come by slitting his own throat.

The prospect had, admittedly, been tempting.

But Jason hadn’t done it. Instead, he thought back to when he’d found James’ body.

His friend had known he was going to die the moment he realized he’d been caught in the floor trap that had dumped both of them down here. Even with everything that had happened to him, he’d gone down fighting, quite literally tearing the guts out of his feral killer.

Even in death, James would have avenged himself had Jason not intervened.

That seemed like a good example to follow.

If Jason was going to die no matter what he did, he wanted to die doing something, die fighting his fate. As much as he wanted the suffering to end, he wouldn’t take the easy way out. As much pain as it would bring, he would keep moving, resist, even if brought him to the bitterest of ends.

Jason clutched his looted knife tighter and kept moving forwards.

It was as good a direction as any other.

#young justice #young justice fanfic #young justice fanfiction #batman #robin #dick grayson #jason todd #the court of owls

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mdvisualize · 6 years

Text

ONC Announces Recipients of Two Health IT Awards

Renowned leaders in U.S. and North American healthcare gather throughout the year to present important information and share insights at the Healthcare Informatics Health IT Summits.

Director, Information Services and CISO

Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer

Boston Children's Hospital,

President and Chief Executive Officer

Mount Auburn Cambridge Independent Practice Association

Executive Medical Director of General Medicine and Hospital Medicine Shared Services

Wake Forest Baptist Health System

Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Chief Information Officer

Mount San Rafael Hospital

Senior Vice President and Chief of Strategy Integration

Nemours Children's Health System

Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer

Saint Luke's Health Systems

Chief Medical Information Officer

Chief Information Officer and Chief Digital Officer

Children's Mercy Hospital

Chief Medical Information Officer

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics

Chief Medical Information Officer

HCA Physician Services Group

Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer

University of Pennsylvania Health System

Chief Digital Officer and Senior Vice President for Technology Innovation and Consumer Experience

Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health

Vice President and Chief Information Officer

University of California System and UC Health

‹›

/news-item/innovation/onc-announces-recipients-two-health-it-awards

/article/innovation/making-precision-medicine-reality-cleveland-s-university-hospitals

Making Precision Medicine a Reality at Cleveland’s University Hospitals

Genomic data—once in consumable and action form—is information that clinicians will be excited to tap into, says one leading CMIO

Earlier this year, University Hospitals, an integrated health system in northern Ohio, took a big step into the world of precision medicine when it entered into an agreement with an Allscripts subsidiary with the goal to bring genomic data into the clinical workflow.

According to University Hospitals officials, the genomic data points were already part of the EHR (electronic health record) system, but with the 2bPrecise delivery program— an offering from 2bPrecise LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Allscripts—patient information will be more accessible to physicians allowing for the data to be part of the medical record and subsequently shape and tailor the best treatment or therapy options for patients.

University Hospitals (UH) serves the needs of patients through an integrated network of 18 hospitals, more than 50 outpatient health centers and 200 physician offices in 15 counties throughout northern Ohio. According to UH’s Jeffrey Sunshine, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical information officer (CMIO), the collaboration is another step in the journey to make healthcare as personalized as possible for all patients.

Indeed, Sunshine says that the collaboration “fits squarely in the larger strategy of providing patient-centered health, wellness and care. That’s been our strategy for quite some time, and precision medicine, which is becoming more commonly used, means something a little different every time it’s used for every different person,” he says. And the broader question, Sunshine adds, is “How do we provide the best tools we can for each patient? That [concept] is what’s driving this.”

The new system also will allow UH to use the gene data to better align tests and treatments for patients that have a history of cholesterol or psychiatric markers, as well as other conditions that genomic markers could provide the best treatment avenues, officials have noted.

Having an Effect on Patient Care

University Hospitals is no stranger to precision medicine initiatives with the most common uses cases currently taking place in oncology, Sunshine notes. In oncology settings, when suitable, “We will take advantage of markers of the patient or the tumor to make best recommendations of appropriate therapy, or preventive measures, based on who you are, our ability understand your genetic code, and/or what’s growing in ill form. And that is precise to the circumstances for the patient. Precision medicine not only means genetically modified care, but it’s most often used in that context right now,” he explains.

Sunshine specifically points to three areas he believes this initiative, and precision medicine more broadly, will have a positive impact on patient care. The first involves when there is a specific disease for which something in a patient’s genetic markers might let clinicians know that either the patient has that disease and has a genetic marker that says he or she should be treated differently because of that marker; or the patient is at high risk for something bad and a preventative measure could be taken, he explains.

What’s more, he notes, there is already evidence in oncology, and growing elsewhere, that “not everyone will respond the same to the drugs we might recommend for you, and we all understand that. But there is starting to be a growing experience that certain genetic markers can definitively predict for certain drugs that the drug won’t work or that it’s the wrong dose, so it could help us be very specific about the drug or dosage you should get,” Sunshine says. And that’s not limited to oncology; it crosses lots of domains. For example, he offers, there is growing evidence in the psychiatric domain that for certain gene markers, certain drugs won’t work, or that the dosage should be changed dramatically.

The third area that Sunshine points to is in preventive screening, where one might find through genetic markers that a certain patient is in a class of patients, who without that screening, clinicians wouldn’t have known are at a much higher risk for a disease. “So we should screen you more,” he attests. “And maybe that screening test has a certain cost that no one thinks we can afford for all U.S. citizens, but for 1,000 patients in the U.S. who need it, it’s a perfectly rational use of healthcare dollars,” he says.

To this end, speaking to the increasing pressure to lower healthcare costs, Sunshine believes that more personalized healthcare will be a big step in the right direction. “We've gone almost as far as we can on doing the same thing for everyone the same way, and now we have to figure out how to do it uniquely for the individual, because everyone doesn’t need everything, and we can’t afford to do everything for everyone." Therein lies the opportunity to be smart about it, Sunshine says, and figure out who needs what, at what highest priority, and what’s the best thing to do for that person or group of people. “And that opens a wide-open universe,” he says.

From an industry-wide perspective, Sunshine believes that CMIOs at integrated health systems like UH would say that they are doing “some form of precision medicine.” But it’s an ongoing development everywhere, he notes, adding that right now, precision medicine is probably not a top-three priority in in any organization’s broad outlook, but if narrowed down to a patient-centered care or patient engagement perspective, then it ranks high on that list. “With everything happening around EHRs, there is a lot of short-term attention on that, so some organizations are more or less along the strategy or momentum phase, but no one has a fully mature [precision medicine] model out there,” he says.

Going forward, Sunshine feels that to be successful in precision medicine endeavors, a continuous improvement culture will be needed—or as he explains it, “the culture that wants you to focus attention on having to do tomorrow different than today; a ‘get us to the future’ mentality.”

And perhaps even more important than that is making this data available and actionable for the front lines of care—a task that Sunshine puts squarely on himself and others in his position. “Primary care [physicians] would be excited to know if there were markers that could be obtained so they can alter their pharmaceutical approach to high cholesterol, hypertension or cardiac prevention for that patient,” he says. “If we, or anyone, who wants to do this can deliver that in a consumable and actionable form, the excitement and curiosity is waiting to be tapped.”

/news-item/innovation/town-hall-ventures-close-first-fund-115-million

Town Hall Ventures Close First Fund at $115 Million

Adds Landmark Health, Bright Health, Strive Health to Portfolio

Town Hall Ventures, an investment firm built to address the healthcare challenges of the most vulnerable Americans, has closed its first fund at $115 million.

The founding partners — Trevor Price, Andy Slavitt, and David Whelan — announced the firm’s formation on May 7, 2018, at the HLTH Conference in Las Vegas. Their goal is to help build companies to improve care in Medicare, Medicaid, and risk-based care, and in addressing complex conditions and social determinants of health.

The fund and its limited partners represent multiple large nonprofit health systems and payors, along with entrepreneurs, executives and investors.

Town Hall also disclosed investments in three companies:

• Landmark Health LLC, which provides home-based care to high-acuity Medicare, Medicaid, and Dual Eligible populations who are frail and chronically ill. Landmark’s new CEO, Nick Loporcaro, was recruited by Trevor Price and Oxeon Partners, and the company is backed by General Atlantic and Francisco Partners.

• Bright Health Inc., a technology-enabled health insurance plan that is built in partnership with leading health systems. Bright’s CEO is Bob Sheehy, former CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and the company is backed by NEA, Bessemer Ventures, and Flare Capital Partners.

• Strive Health LLC, a leading provider of chronic kidney disease solutions, focused on transforming healthcare and patients’ lives through early engagement, comprehensive coordinated care, and expanded treatment options. The company's co-founder and CEO is Chris Riopelle. The concept for the business was developed with the co-founders inside the Oxeon Venture Studio and backed by lead investor NEA.

Existing investments include:

• Cityblock Health Inc., which provides primary care, behavioral health, and human services to address unmet health and social needs in urban populations.

• Somatus Inc., which provides treatment and new models of care for patients with chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease.

• Welbe Health LLC, a provider of integrated medical and social services to frail seniors who qualify for PACE.

• Aetion, Inc., a provider of real-world analytics and evidence to help biopharma companies and payors better understand how drugs work in the real world to enable value-based care.

Town Hall also announced that Ann Hickey has joined the firm as a vice president. She previously worked at Audax Group, Oak Hill Capital Partners, Castlight Health, and, most recently, Archimedes Health Investors.

Town Hall is led by Andy Slavitt, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) and Group Executive Vice President of Optum; Trevor Price, Founder and CEO of Oxeon Holdings – the parent company to Oxeon Partners, a retained executive search firm – and Oxeon Ventures, an investment firm and venture studio; and David Whelan, Managing General Partner of predecessor firm Oxeon Ventures and former General Partner and CFO of investment firm Accretive LLC.

/article/innovation/partners-healthcare-bringing-digital-transformation-clinical-care

At Partners HealthCare, Bringing Digital Transformation to Clinical Care

Last spring, Partners HealthCare, founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Massachusetts General Hospital, and California-based software company Persistent Systems, announced a strategic collaboration to develop a new industry-wide open-source platform with the goal of bringing digital transformation to clinical care.

Indeed, with the digital platform, Partners’ leaders hope to enable greater exchange of information across healthcare providers everywhere, and make available open source applications to any health system. At the time of the 2017 announcement, officials said that the co-developed digital platform will be based on Substitutable Medical Applications & Reusable Technologies (SMART), an open, standards-based technology platform along with Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). “The platform will enable provider systems across the country to rapidly and cost effectively deploy industry-leading best practices in clinical care across their ecosystems,” according to the announcement.

Healthcare Informatics Managing Editor Rajiv Leventhal recently spoke with Sandy Aronson, executive director of information technology at Partners Healthcare, about this collaboration, its specific goals and outlook, and how things have come along so far. Below are excerpts of that discussion.

What would you say is the greatest significance behind this collaboration?

I have been at Partners for about 15 years, and the first 13 of those years were primarily focused on the clinical use of genetics and genomics. In that space, we created a suite of applications that was architected differently than health IT applications are typically architected. These were applications that helped with the generation of interpreted reports for genetics and genomics sequencing test results. So, where normally in health IT applications you create a transaction system and then try to bolt a knowledge base on top of it to the extent you can, we decided to architect this in the opposite way.

We built a knowledge base that deeply modeled the tests that a laboratory offers, the genes that are covered by that test, variants known to exist in these genes, variants that are learned over time, and the state of knowledge linking those variances to clinically relevant facts—so disease states, drug response, drug efficacy, etc. So we built this deep knowledge base and built a transaction system on top of it, and made a rule that you can’t report out test results unless you keep the knowledge base up-to-date and consistent with your test results. And that enables you to automate the generation of reports.

But as a result, we wound up with this continually-updated knowledge base, so based on that we created what would now be a SMART on FHIR app that plugs into the EHR [electronic health record] and provides clinicians with alerts if something new and potentially clinically relevant is learned about a variant previously identified in one of their patients. So it created this notion of a knowledge base alert being interjected into clinical care.

We studied this and found that clinicians liked it, but the rate at which this learned was dependent on the number of transactions that flow through the system, because that’s how geneticists would gather the data that would enable them to improve their assessment of variants. So we registered this as a medical device, distributed it outside of Partners, and networked the different instances together, so it could learn not just based on our volume, but other folks’ volume as well. Ultimately, we sold that to Sunquest [Information Systems]. The thing we feel was most important was creating this infrastructure that facilitated new clinical processes and captured, shared, and federated data in a way that enabled learning to care.

After having done that, we took a step back and said OK, what should we do next? The infrastructure we built was very specific to issues where genetics and genomics are the major components to deciding what to do for a patient. So we wanted to look at all of the things that made that infrastructure hard to do, and build a platform to make it easier to build things like GeneInsight [an IT platform company owned and developed by Partners], and then distribute that platform, so that in addition to building examples of a similar infrastructure, others can build those examples, too. We wanted that platform to make it easier to distribute apps that are created by different folks in different organizations, ultimately with the goal of networking those apps together.

We are at a unique point in time where you have these new data types coming online that can be helpful to the care delivery process, you have algorithmic-based medicine starting to come into use, both machine learning-based and not, and you have people looking at transformative ideas on how to alter clinical processes where in order to incorporate these new data types and incorporate algorithmic-based approaches to care, you need new kinds of IT support in order to enable these transitions to occur. And that creates an opportunity, not only related to the specific transitions, but also to start collecting data for specific clinical problems in a much finer-grained way that lays the groundwork for these networks that can build the data that’s required to underlie continuous learning processes.

All of this is happening in a time with incredible cost pressure in healthcare, which does constrain internal investment but also makes organizations far less resistant to change. The goal here is to fundamentally enable clinicals to evolve their practices, their care, new data, ideas, and techniques in ways they haven’t done in the past.

And how are you working with Persistent Systems on this, specifically?

We are building this platform together. The platform is called HIP, or health innovation platform, and the platform itself will be open-source, and it sits on top of the current clinical IT ecosystem. You interface it to underlying systems, and then it handles things like some aspects of security, authentication, and HIPAA, but also access to data as well as incorporating shared algorithms.

The goal is having different places hook up the platform, and once it is hooked up, it should create a uniform surface on top of the platform so that apps built on top of the platform become more shareable and distributable. We are now focused on both building the platform and building certain apps. And the apps get interjected to the EHR as SMART on FHIR apps.

Can you give some examples and details of the apps that are being built?

One example is that we have been working with BWH’s cardiology [department] on this program that they have, where if you look at heart failure, which affects about 2 percent of the population and has a very high mortality rate with a great deal of costs associated with it, there are guidelines that have been shown to really be helpful, yet very few people are treated in a way that actually adheres to guidelines. And that’s because the process of getting them to guideline-based care involves this drug selection and titration process that requires a lot of interaction, some of which can make patients unconformable.

But as it turns out, you can instantiate a process where you use patient navigators to take patients through this drug selection and titration process, interacting with them far more frequently than a cardiologist would ever be able to, to get them to guidelines. It’s a data-intensive process. So we are providing support for that program through the HIP platform today and we are really focused on deepening that support.

What are your goals in the next 12 to 24 months regarding this partnership? What would you like to see happen?

The ideal world is that our group and Persistent Systems will continue to add more capabilities to the platform, and that the platform is reducing costs. So many clinicians have ideas on how to fundamentally improve care but they can’t put those ideas into use without these kinds of IT interventions.

One thing I hope is that this will continuously reduce the cost of building those interventions and as a result, our team, and others, too, will develop more of these apps. We hope to see some cross-institutional adoption of apps built here and elsewhere, that the sharing will begin at the app level and ideally, in two years or so, we will be having real conversations about how we can get the networking between apps really going.

See more on Innovation

Source

https://www.healthcare-informatics.com/news-item/innovation/onc-announces-recipients-two-health-it-awards?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+healthcare-informatics+%28Healthcare+Informatics%29

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avengerscompound · 5 years

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The Unicorn - Chapter 8

The Unicorn: A Pepperony Fanfic PREVIOUS

Series Masterlist

Buy me a coffee with Ko-fi Word Count: 1566

Pairing: Tony Stark x F!Reader x Pepper Potts

Warnings: Talk of infertility.

Synopsis: A few months pass since the three of you started down the path of polyamory. When Pepper is still not pregnant Tony starts to question if he ever is going to get the family he wants.

Chapter 8

“It’ll be fine, Pepper. I promise we’ll work this out. Like the doctor said. There’s a lot of options.” Tony said as he walked beside her. He knew she needed more comfort than what he was giving. He’d just hit that level of stress where his brain went into overdrive trying to think of how to fix it.

He couldn't even put his arm around her because his body couldn't keep still to let him do it.

They had been trying to get pregnant the old-fashioned way for two months since the decision had been made to close the once open relationship they had with you. It was closer to nine if you counted the time she stopped taking birth control and they were just seeing what would happen.

When her period had come in month two they decided to see a doctor and all these words had been thrown at them, older couples, gene therapy, hostile uterus, surgery, IVF. It was a lot to take in and they had both come out feeling confused and a little damaged.

“We’ll just move things as quickly as we can. Organize that surgery soon and then you can take those pills she said. If that doesn’t work IVF. We can do that. There are always surrogates.” Tony babbled as he gesticulated wildly.

“Tony, please…” Pepper sighed.

Tony opened the door to let her in. “I’m just saying this doesn’t mean we can’t have kids. We can.” He stopped suddenly and looked at her, a feeling of dread falling on him. “Can’t we? You still want to don’t you?”

Pepper slumped on the couch and ran her hands down her face. “I just need time to process, Tony.”

He tapped his fingers on the palm of his hands as he held them straight by his side. The whole dream of getting a loving and supportive family seemed to be slipping away and he didn’t know what to do. He knew this was something that was hard for Pepper to deal with too. It wasn’t like he was the one that would have to go through all the medical treatments and then be stuck carrying a baby for nine months. Still, she had said she wanted this. Now he wasn’t sure if she wanted it as badly as he did.

There was a knock on the door and Tony jumped and wheeled around. He was on edge. The urge to go disappear into the lab was intense. Actually, what he really wanted to do was put on a suit and blow some shit up. If the first was a bad idea, the second would have him divorced faster than he could say his own name.

He pulled the door open to see you. “Hey, Tony,” You said stepping through the door and kissing his cheek. “How’d everything go?” You looked between them and the bright smile that had been on your face dropped. You took Tony’s hand and he let you lead him to the couch where you sat down next to Pepper. You put your arm around her and she melted against you, putting her head on your breasts. He had never seen Pepper this vulnerable before.

“What did they say?” You asked.

“That we waited too long. We’re too old.” Pepper said.

You pressed your lips to the top of her head. “The doctor said there were options. They wanted to do surgery to see what was happening in there. Then there were different options. Fertility Drugs. IVF.” Tony explained.

“It’s a lot to take in, huh?” You said softly.

Pepper nodded her head. Tony had never been so happy that they had met you as he was in this moment. He was broken. He knew he was. As much as he wanted to be enough for Pepper there were always these moments where he realized there as a piece of him missing and he would never quite be. “I feel like we left it too late I was just focused on my career and Tony was … well, Tony. And now we’re both closer to 50 than 40 and we’ve left it too long. That isn’t meant for us.”

It felt like Tony’s heart had been ripped out. Of course. Of course, that would be true. If he had meant to get a loving family he would have been born into one. You tightened your fingers and held Pepper tighter to you. “Hey, don’t say that. It’s not true. You can’t just rush things because society says you get married and have kids. Do you really think either of you was ready for them even 5 years ago?”

Pepper shook her head.

“You’re ready now, and maybe they’re not ready yet either but it’s gonna happen. Just gotta figure out the logistics.” You said.

Pepper looked up at you for a moment before bringing her lips to yours. You pulled Tony in and he snuggled in between the two of you. When Pepper broke the kiss with you, she moved to him. Their kiss was slow and deep and full of the promise that they weren’t giving up on this.

When she finally pulled away both you and Pepper settled cuddled against him. “Besides.” You said. “You have me, and I’m totally old enough to be your kid.”

Tony snorted, while Pepper smacked your arm. “Don’t say things like that. It’s creepy.” She said.

“What? I’m not the one cruising for younger women.” You teased.

“No, you’re just cruising the funeral homes for old coots.” Tony teased, tickling your side.

Pepper hummed and rubbed both his and your thigh. “I want us to go public,” she said.

You started at her and blinked slowly while Tony sat up straighter. “What?” You asked.

“The three of us. I want to not hide it anymore.” Pepper said.

“Are you sure, Pepper? You know it’s not going to be me that gets shit for this. I can already picture it. I’m back to my old ways, you’re the hard done by wife who’s getting pushed out.” Tony said.

Pepper shrugged. “I kinda get that anyway, Tony.”

“I don’t.” You said.

They both looked at you and Pepper frowned. “We won’t do it if you don’t want to.”

“I didn’t say that,” You shot back quickly. “I just… I need to think. It’s alright for both of you. You don’t really have anything to lose. You’re established. You run a billion dollar company. I’m just starting out.”

Pepper kissed your shoulder. “If it helps I’ve been through it. In the end, what matters is your work. Which you excel at. People can say whatever you want, but when you solve the climate change problem …”

You laughed and buried your face in Tony’s shoulder. “That’s it? I just gotta solve climate change and no one will question my skills? No pressure or anything?” You mumbled.

Pepper chuckled. “You know what I mean. The work will speak for itself.”

You sighed and Tony’s arms tightened around you. “How would we do it exactly? Press release?” You asked.

“No. I don’t want to do it like that.” Tony said. “Kinda would rather them try and figure it out.”

“I thought we could just go out. Be seen together. There's a gala Tony and I are supposed to attend in a couple of days. You could come too.” Pepper suggested.

“A gala?” You asked. “What would I wear?”

“Don't worry about that. We can get you a dress. If that's what you want to do.” Tony said. He could actually picture the three of you together on a red carpet. He liked the way it looked in his head. His arms around the two of you. You both stopping for photos together. The stolen kisses taken, uncaring about who saw or who didn’t. It was a nice picture.

You huffed, blowing a lock of hair from your brow. “I just… I need to think about it. Is that okay?”

“Of course, honey,” Pepper said rubbing your back.

Tony pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “Whenever you’re ready.” He agreed. “But think about it, all the big parties. Nice clothes. Meeting celebrities.”

“You got me, Tony. That’s exactly why I’m here.” You said.

“Or we can stop pretending that we are something we’re not. We can just be in a normal relationship.” Pepper said.

You whined and rested your head against her. “I don’t think it’s ever going to be that.”

“You know what I mean,” Pepper said. “We can just be us no matter where we are.”

“So like, if I see you in the hall, I can stop and kiss you?” You asked ghosting your lips down her long neck.

“Yes,” She hummed.

“And if I wanted to just slap Tony’s ass in the lab, that’d be okay?” You teased.

“That’s already okay. All my friends slap my ass.” Tony joked.

You laughed. “Good to know.”

“We can just be together, and not a secret. We can show affection to each other.” Pepper said.

You hummed. “That does sound good.” You relaxed down against Tony with your arms wrapped around Pepper. Tony gently played with your hair as you caressed Pepper’s stomach. “You’ll get me a dress?”

“Yeah, we’ll get you a dress,” Tony replied.

You sighed happily and looked at both of them. “Okay, let’s do this then. Let’s go public.”

// NEXT

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