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renohasbigtits · 3 years

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Omg your Iggy mpreg headcanon is so gooooddd! Will you consider to do another Iggy mpreg headcanon which takes place in the true ending?

Mpreg Ignis (Final Fantasy 15: True Ending Version)

AHAAHAHAHAH! I can’t believe that people really like the Mpreg Ignis Headcanon! Thank you so much!

Something you guys have probably noticed by now is that I’m not a huge fan of the true ending.

Not saying it’s bad, I just don’t like how:

•Noct dies

•Iggy is blind

•Ravus dies

I also don’t agree with the assumption that the alternative ending is a “happier ending” because Luna is still dead.

But I digress, I don’t think the ending is bad. it’s just not my favorite ending.

But I will do it. I will give the people what they want!

To make this one different than the Alternative ending this one will have;

•Ignis is Blind :(

•Noctis is dead (also Ravus)

•Ignis has his own restaurant because of course he should!!!

I guess this takes place two years after The light is restored. Idk you change that if ya want to.

Apologies if it’s similar to the Alternative version, I did try my best to make this one different!

Yes it’ll albaby’s are default Female but you can change it if you want to!

Alright alright, less talking, Let’s go!

(this does contain Mpreg =Male Pregnancy. Don’t like? Don’t read!)

•Look

•this man is a lot of things (hotter than satan is one of em.)

•but happy isn’t really one of them rn.

•Just broken up with his long time partner.

•things aren’t going well for him...

•than suddenly he’s getting sick!

• certain smells bother him, he’s throwing up every morning.

•it’s gotten to the point where he can’t really cook anymore at his restaurant. And he now has to supervise.

•not that it’s a huge issue since there are other amazing cooks there to help but Ignis does not like sitting on the sidelines.

•than a female co-worker, Shannon, asks Iggy what’s wrong, he tells her that he has a “strange illness”

•she asks what the symptoms are

•tiredness

•morning sickness

•Smell sensitivity

•Mood swings

•than she starts giggling.

•”Ignis, I’m a chef but I’m also a Mother of 3 kids.”

• “What are you imply, Pray tell?”

•”I think your Pregnant. You have the classic symptoms.”

•Ignis was dumbfounded. 𝘞𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘨𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘵?

•He made a Doctors appointment.

•After what feels like 𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴, The Doctor comes back with the results.

•”Mr Scientia, The results are in. You are Pregnant! Congratulations!”

•Ignis was not one to be speechless but this...

•he wasn’t sure what to do!!

•he wasn’t sure if he was ready for Parenthood.

•He was Blind and he couldn’t never see what his child would look like.

•or, if it was the right time....

•so he turned to his friends, Prompto and Gladiolus, for help.

•Prompto had to ask if Iggy’s joking

•he wasn’t obviously

•Gladio asks if Ignis has tried to get the other parent involved.

•Ignis did tried to do that.

•it didn’t go well...

•the other parent outwardly admitted that they did not want to be in the baby’s life.

•Well Fuck

•Poor Ignis (someone hug him 🥺)

•Prompto and Gladiolus, being the best friends they are decided then and there, that there gonna help Ignis, no matter what decision he makes.

•Shannon, the coworker in question, steps up and offers Ignis tips on pregnancy, since she knows it can be stressful, especially with your first one.

•Ignis really appreciates it.

•she’s also leads when Ignis has a doctors appointment or is too sick to be there.

•8 Weeks: Ignis + Pregnant = Moody Ignis

•Little things bother him more than usual.

•Ignis almost Lashed out Prompto because he did something that annoyed him.

•Shannon assured Prompto that this is just a mood swing and that he didn’t mean it.

•at this point, Ignis and Shannon have started become close due to the fact that she’s basically has become his right hand man (or woman)

•Her helping more also has taken any stress Iggy has had about it off his chest.

•Ignis couldn’t be more greatful.

•12 weeks: a small bump has started to show. So adorable!

•And of course, ya know Prompto is gonna take SO.MANY.PICS of Ignis’s bump growing.

•he’s gonna scrapbook it (rip his sd card tho)

•lris already has started making baby clothes. Girl clothes.

•15 weeks: You thought he was a mom before? Oh you ain’t seen nothing yet!

•he acts real fatherly (or motherly) to the youngest employee at the restaurant.

•good thing to because the poor guy is always a nervous reck.

•he has talent but very little confidence. So Ignis assuring him, helps a lot.

•Shannon is now basically his iggy’s real hand man (or woman)

•she helps, even when Ignis’s there.

•not just in work, but in his pregnancy too (I swear. I did not mean to create a character)

•giving him tips, things to help him, with baby supplies to buy. She’s the real mvp.

•(let’s skip a little)

•20 Weeks: Ignis has already started to feel her move. It 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 his heart. (I’ll see myself out 🚪)

•All joking aside, he was genuinely touched (that wasn’t a pun. I swear!) by feeling her kick.

•At this point, Ignis had already found out it’s a girl. (Again, you can change it if ya want to.)

•much to lris’s delight.

• THATS IT! HE’S MAKING A BUN IN THE OVEN! (>:)

•lord take the wheel....

• he tries to control himself, when it comes to his strange cravings (like pickles with peanut butter?? Wtf???)

•but he gives in when no one’s looking.

•𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘯 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘰

•”I Noticed Ignis.”

•”I don’t know why you are referring to.”

•25-28 weeks: he’s already getting bigger (don’t say that to his face tho.)

•if you think his work is being put on hold while being very pregnant, you clearly have never met Ignis.

•of course, he is being a little more easy on himself. Not walking around as much and Shannon makes a lot more decisions (with iggy’s trust)

•but he is a workaholic, so he’s working til he takes maternity leave.

•(I’m really trying to add Gladio to the story but lol)

•Prompto is already getting a new sd card cause he’s taking SO.MANY.PREGNANCY. PICS.

• “Prompto, if you don’t take any unnecessary pictures, you wouldn’t have to buy another sd car-

•”I AM NOT DELETING ANY OF THIS PICS MR MOM!”

•32 Weeks (I’m trying not to make this boring lol): He’s still working!!

•Ain't nothin' gonna break-a my stride, Nobody gonna slow me down!

•Shannon starts to get a bit worried.

•”Sir. I believe that you should take a break. Please”

•Ignis looked at his right hand and smile. “I should. Thank you Shannon.”

•36 weeks: He feels 𝘵 𝘪 𝘳 𝘦 𝘥

•his poor swollen feet :(

•thankfully, lris is secretly planning a baby shower.

•Everyone is coming.

•Shannon distracting him until she’s called to bring him over.

•when Ignis sees this, he’s tears up.

•"𝘪𝘧 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘕𝘰𝘤𝘵 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦."

• he gets so many adorable gifts.

•Prompto gets him a Chocobo Plush (classic)

•Gladio gets him a toy dagger. This son of a Bit-

•”Hey, you are never too early to start training!”

•Shannon got him a baby mobile.

•lris gotten him more baby clothes. Yay....(Am I the only one who can’t stand getting clothes as a gift?)

• lris had made an adorable cake. In his mind, Iggy admitted that she was as good as he was.

•this mf still working around the restaurant from his office.

•”Igg-Sir. Can we talk?”

•”Yes Shannon. And you can call me Ignis, were mutuals.”

•”Ignis. Promise me that when you enter in the third trimester, that you’ll take maternity leave. You’ll need to prepare for your baby.”

•Ignis was taken a back a bit. Yes, her concerns were valid but he didn’t wanna put everything on Shannon.

•”Ignis, I know that you don’t wanna put everything on me but...but you need to Focus on your daughter. You need to prepare.”

•”I-“

•”I’ll handle it. I know what I’m doing.” She smiled.

•Ignis chuckled back. “Really?” Getting up from his chair.

•”Well.” She left while looking back. “I have learned from the best.”

•Ignis laughed. He did taught her well. “Alright. I will. Thank you Shannon.”

•”don’t thank me si- Ignis. I’m just doing my job.”

•honestly Shannon has been a great support system for Ignis. Not just because she knows a thing or two or three about pregnancy, but she really has stepped up.

•Ignis considers her a great friend.

37 weeks: 9 months. He now has to get ready.

•it’s his last day at the restaurant. For awhile anyways.

•it’s actually really emotional. The employees are sad that they won’t see him for awhile but are happy that he’s taking time to be ready on fatherhood (**cough cough Motherhood cough cough**)

•To Ignis, There like a family, a family he gained when he lost so much.

•his eyesight

• and Noct

•After they’ve closed, they celebrate.

•Ignis and Shannon smiling at everyone.

•”I’m proud of you Sir.”

•Ignis smiled back. “Really?”

•”Yeah. Your the bravest person I’ve met.”

•”How, Pray tell?”

•”You may be blind but you certainly don’t act like it. You 𝗡𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥 let it stop you. I’m- I’m really proud of you.” She choked up.

•Ignis looked at her with his Emerald eyes and she looked back.

•”And I’m proud of you to, Shannon.”

•(let’s cut to the chase. Oooo. Foreshadowing.)•

•38 weeks: Ignis wonders how much his blindness will affect his daughter.

•he wasn’t lying when he said that his senses have grown. He basically doesn’t need any help.

•not that he wouldn’t have either way, but he doesn’t wanna be a burden on anyone. Including his daughter.

•Sometime during the day, Iggy starts feeling pain down his back.

•it wasn’t too bad, so he went on with his day.

•but the pain got worse.

•so bad that he started doing his deep breath’s.

•(y’all what it is!!)

•(weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee woooooooooooooooo 🚑)

•(that will never get old xD)

•The midwife tells him to get to the hospital, NOW!

•This is it.

•he has to be cut open....

• She was here.

•Ignis holding his daughter for the first time. Well, he broke down.

•he couldn’t see her but he was there to her hold her. He is there for her.

•”Hi Darling. I’m your Father.”

•she suddenly stopped crying and stared at his bad eye.

•After a week, hes able to take her home.

•And oh, If you thought Prompto took too many photos of Ignis’s pregnancy belly....oh boy.

•he immediately starts taking many, MANY MANY, Photos of her.

•she actually looked confused.

• Gladio joking said “so, when are we going to train her?”

•Ignis later made his food cold, on purpose later that night.

•Shannon got to hold her and fell in love with her immediately.

•”feels like holding my son for the first, all over again.” She said teared up.

•Over the years, She has grown to being a shy and a adorable little girl.

•She’s so helpful during work and is popular with the staff. They treat her like they’re siblings.

•She always tries to help Ignis’s blindness. Guiding him around.

•”Watch where your going Daddy.”

•Even tho, he can get around just fine. It warms his heart that she tries to help him.

•Of course, Ignis wishes that Noct could have Met her. Even once.

•but somehow, he believes that Noct is watching her in heaven.

•Noctis is so proud of his friend.

Wow! So long! Well I hoped ya like it. I hope the true ending version is just as good as the alternative version.

I thought it would be cute that he would have a restaurant. ^~^ Gladio got the right idea 💡

Also I did not mean to create a new character, Shannon, but eh why not? I grew attached to her over the story (she sounds like a like Karen but she’s a good Karen. I promise.) and who knows? She might show up in other Headcanons 😉

Also whether you ship her with Ignis, is up to you. Hehehe. I don’t blame you tho.

Anyways, I hoped who requested this, liked it 💙💜

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songfell-ut · 4 years

Text

Chapter 13, something luck something

I gave myself the feels, @lostmypotatoes send help

Link here.

“…AND THIS, MY INTREPID YOUNG FRIEND, IS…THE ROYAL GUARD!! NYEHHHHHH!”

They’d stopped at the head of the staircase in the Grand Hall. Her new skeleton friend had thrown his arms wide at a line of monsters standing motionless in shiny black armor, as proud as a child showing a visitor his favorite toys. “NYEHHH,” he added reverently.

The Royal Guard was quite impressive, like gleaming statues that could come to life and kill you, but Frisk wasn’t scared. She could see their ears poking out from their helmets, and some of them looked pretty silly: a couple of dogs, a cat, a rabbit, a bug, something like a lizard or dragon…

But then there was their Captain, who had just removed her helmet. She did not look silly. “UNDYNE!” Papyrus blared at the tall, eyepatched fish-woman. “THIS IS KRIS! SAY HELLO TO HIM! …ER, UNDYNE? HIS NAME IS KRIS, NYEH HEH! …HE IS A HUMAN! …NYEH? UNDYNE?”

No answer. Undyne’s scarred, scowling, evil-toothed countenance did not waver. Her webbed hand was clenched on the shaft of her spear, cerulean scales and mostly-yellow eye glittering in the witchlight. Even her red ponytail looked menacing as it fluttered in the breeze of passing dignitaries.

The human’s path was clear. Her expression went blank with determination. Frisk looked around and saw vases full of fresh flowers against the wall; as the monsters glanced at each other in confusion, the child selected a vase, tossed out the flowers, lugged the vase back to the Royal Guard Captain, and, with one almighty heave, threw the water right into Undyne’s face.

Frisk woke him even earlier than they’d planned, looking as though she hadn’t slept and sounding very businesslike. Sans was too groggy at first to remember last night, and before he could wonder if it had even happened, she was already laying out their plan for the day.

And…it was not what they had discussed yesterday. It was the opposite. “Lemme get this straight,” he said when she was finished. “Ya don’ wanna sneak out anymore. You wanna tell everyone an’ their mom that we’re takin’ the monsters back t’the Underground as a goodwill gesture in exchange for more cool monster stuff.”

“Yes.”

“So we’re goin’ out as a big deal that everyone knows about, on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“We’re gonna let ‘em think you already cleared it with the King ‘n everything’s fine?”

“Yes.”

“That’s…that’s a big fat lie.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes it is.”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Yuh-huh.”

“I’m not an idiot, Sans! If we disappeared without any indication whatsoever of where I’d gone, His Majesty would assume I’d been abducted and send soldiers after me. I just woke him up a few minutes ago and told him where we were going, and why.”

Something about the way she said it made him ask, “And he’s okay with it?”

Frisk smirked. “We’re going.”

Departing with a lot of fanfare actually took less effort than Sans expected. All he had to do was go down to the stables, announce that Her Eminence was leaving immediately on an important diplomatic mission, hand over her written instructions, and then stand back. For once, his scariness was a real advantage: by the time Frisk brought down the group of silent, shivering monsters, the wagons were already in place, the horses hitched up, and the cargo nearly loaded.

The priestess had been busy mobilizing a small army of assistants, which was a lot easier than their original plan to have him teleport everything from her room. Their provisions and gifts for the Underground were brought down and loaded according to the diagrams Frisk had drawn for the monsters: one wagon was for Ice Cap, who would travel with the majority of the food, while the other had Pyrope and Vulkin, who were wrapped in fireproof blankets and seated away from anything flammable. The other monsters would ride with them in order to stay warm—the canvas wagon covers were good for privacy, but didn’t keep out much of the wind.

Sans had made himself scarce while the work was going on, but when everyone and everything was in place, he stepped up to make Frisk get in with the flame monsters instead of riding up front in the lead wagon. She’d been standing in a corner of the freezing yard to supervise the last preparations; in her full High Priestess regalia, she was as impressive as ever, but he’d watched her closely and seen her trying not to cough.

As her personal guard, and her…whatever the hell they were now, it was his duty to not let her get sick again, but his official consideration was for her safety. They were traveling with a cortege of twelve guards, which would deter most attackers and also help clear traffic ahead of them, but there was no point in putting her on display for someone to take potshots.

They wheeled out of the castle gates and onto the main thoroughfare just after sunrise. Sans wasn’t a big fan of walking, or being in the cold, but his slippers and overcoat were mostly adequate. He wished he could poke his head into the wagon to check on Frisk, but she had asked him not to let the other monsters see him yet; besides, he heard her humming at a couple of points and figured she was busy keeping them calm. Pyrope was a twitchy little bastard, and Vulkin had a bad habit of “helping” via lava, so he’d just leave her to it.

The day passed, and to their pleasant surprise, they reached Frisk’s house on the outskirts of the city long before dark. That gave them more time than expected for Frisk to unload the monsters and shepherd them into the house; Sans grabbed enough food for that night and the morning, and the attendants took the wagons and horses to the nearest inn. Two guards took up positions outside the house before they locked the door for the night, and that was that.

None of the monsters had spoken or made eye contact with anyone all day, to Sans’ knowledge. As soon as they were gathered in the dining room, the priestess allowed him to step in and say, “Heya.”

Frisk retreated as the monsters came alive, swarming around the giant skeleton and all babbling at once in frantic relief. He had been somewhat scary to them in the relative peace of the Underground, but seeing him now was the best possible reassurance that the High Priestess had not been lying or playing some kind of sick game with them: they really would be home by the day after tomorrow.

After a few minutes, Frisk came back into the room, bare-headed and wearing a loose white gown, for Sans to re-introduce her as “Kris,” the not-really-a-boy from the human delegation. Six of the eight remembered her, and Pyrope got so excited that he left a couple of smoking holes in the carpet.

When everyone was done eating and talking, Frisk directed Ice Cap to the attic, where they could safely leave the little window open to keep it cold, while Sans built up the kitchen fire and made an asbestos-blanket fort for the flame monsters. The others sprawled out on the beds or any patch of floor they could, safe and well-fed; still, Sans noticed how uneasy they were, and understood what that was like. He just hoped they’d be able to feel safe again.

Once everyone was settled, Frisk was nowhere to be found. Of all the damn places she could’ve slept in, Sans finally found her wrapped up in her cloak in the bathtub. “Frisk,” he said accusingly.

She made a noise explaining that she was fine, a monster could have the remaining bed.

“Nope.” The priestess squeaked as he bent to scoop her up in both hands. “C’mon, kitten. Time ta sleep literally anywhere else.” Before she could object, he walked her into the smallest bedroom, dropped her onto the bed, and threw a comforter over her. “There. G’night.”

Frisk struggled to sit up. “Wait, where—”

Sans lay down on the floor and sighed noisily. “We’re not t’the Underground yet. Let’s just go ta sleep, okay?”

“…Okay. But, Sans—”

The boss monster emitted a loud, sustained fake snore, cut short by her pillow landing on his face.

Either the demon-child was still satisfied from the other night, or they were just too tired to be reachable, because they woke from a dreamless night to another stiff, sore day of travel.

The monsters were more animated today as they loaded into the wagons, which Frisk took as a good omen. Granted, there was a delay when Sans got too close to the draft horses and scared them so badly that the grooms had to unhitch them for a quick jog around the block, but the crowd gathering on the street to watch still cheered and waved as they set off.

It was another bitterly cold day, and as Frisk leaned into Vulkin, she tried not to think too much about spending the night in the no-man’s-land. King Stephin had still been sleepy when they talked yesterday morning, and the best objection he’d come up with on the spot had been the diplomatic ramifications of bringing so many humans so close to the Underground. She’d countered with the proposal that they leave all their attendants at the border and have Sans handle both security and transportation from then on, as he was a monster and knew the area well. The King tried to backpedal, but Frisk had gone on about a smaller group being faster and safer, attracting less attention, needing fewer provisions, etc., until he gave in.

“Very well. I will ask His Holiness to arrange the necessary financial matters for each monster,” the King had said coolly. “I am trusting you, Frisk, to bring back favorable news, and prove that this mission is any better than a child’s tantrum over not getting her way.”

“I wonder that Your Majesty has ever spent enough time with a child to see one,” she shot back, eliminating any chance of leaving him on a polite note.

Unfortunately, Frisk was now so busy thinking of that conversation – and trying to ignore the bruises she was accumulating from riding in a big, jouncing cargo wagon – that she forgot to mention it to Sans until they stopped for a break several miles outside the city. He’d started bemoaning the logistics they had to work out for that evening, trying to get all these guys fed and coordinated and bedded down and what they were going to do with the horses, and she had to cut him off with “They’re not coming.”

The guards and drivers looked up from their roadside sandwiches at a furious, smothered explosion of sound. They glanced at each other as the massive skeleton growled down at the priestess, but she didn’t seem worried, so they resumed eating as Sans carried on snarling and gesticulating.

Frisk could understand why he was upset, but the third time he ended a sentence with “—‘n did I mention I’m not a fuckin’ horse?!” was enough. “Sans,” she said, and he stopped. “Calm down and think about it. This may actually be safer. Have I ever shown you how I can hide something with a barrier?”

“Uh…” The boss monster shrugged crankily. “I know you’ve got a lotta different tricks.” Snort. “Any chance ya have somethin’ that’ll pull the wagons for us?”

“Yes. You.”

Sans blinked, and covered his face with one hand. “God damn it.”

Frisk turned her back to the guards so she could grin at him through the veil. “It takes a lot of strength, but if it’s just the two of us and the wagons, I could keep us completely hidden for short periods,” she said, more somberly. “In your opinion, is it safer to move by night, or camp outside the border till morning and then make as much time as we can?”

The skeleton tapped his dusty slipper on the grass, thinking out loud. “It’s probably better t’go at night. A lot of this place is so flat that you can see fer miles on a clear day. I can get by pretty well in the dark, so yer right. If we don’t have all of these dorks walkin’ with us ‘n makin’ noise, you’d just need ta cover up the wagons. It’s mostly bedrock out here, so with the wind blowin’ the sand around, we shouldn’t hafta worry about tracks.”

“I see. How far should we try to get tonight? I don’t think we can make it all in one push.”

“Not if I’m all we’ve got,” he grumbled. “Let’s get t’the fence and see how we’re doin’.”

Frisk had a word with the drivers; when they started again, they went at a quicker pace, the better to reach their destination and allow the men and horses time to get back to the nearest village before dark.

She grew more and more apprehensive as the hours passed, and finally dug out her satchel of clothing, asking the monsters to close their eyes so she could change into a more practical dress than her High Priestess leg-trap. Not long afterward, the wagon slowed and ground to a halt; they were at the border, a day’s journey from the Underground.

Sans waited till the other humans were almost out of sight to tell the monsters, “Come on out, guys.”

All but the flame monsters piled out to stretch their legs and wings while Sans ran a trace of red magic along the wire fencing. Frisk watched him pluck at a seemingly solid strand, revealing a length of twine holding two cut pieces together. “Humans go in ‘n out this way,” the skeleton informed her. “’s like havin’ a gate. They just untie it and tie it back up behind ‘em.”

Frisk shook her head and hugged herself tighter under her cloak. Sans didn’t have time to admire how the cold air had turned her cheeks red, or be really irritated at how the men had all gawked at her without her veil, but he did it anyway while the monsters got ready to resume their places. “So,” the skeleton said, resigned, “how’re we gonna do this crap?”

Five minutes later, Sans was trudging along in the fast-fading light, his hands shoved in his pockets, the wagon’s shafts wedged between his wrists and his hipbones so he could pull it in lieu of a horse. Frisk sat in the driver’s seat of the second wagon, whistling softly and watching the tufts of red magic keeping its shafts upright. Sans had to admit that the flat terrain and the laws of physics made it easy to keep the wagons going once they’d started…but it still sucked.

“Are you doing all right?” the priestess asked at one point.

“Neigh,” he responded, and she started snrrking so hard that he threatened to stop and make her pull the damn wagon. Then he had to deal with that mental imagery until it got darker and he could focus on maintaining a tiny speck of magic to sharpen his night vision. It was nearly a new moon out, perfect for moving in secrecy.

It happened some time after midnight. The monsters had fallen asleep; the priestess was dozing, and Sans was on the verge of stopping for the night when a shriek rang out from the wagon behind Frisk, who nearly fell off her seat. Sans had to lift her down for her to run back, leap into the wagon, and rouse Vulkin from a nightmare, humming urgently to quiet her.

“Shit,” Sans muttered as a torch flared in the distance. “Hey, kitten?”

She didn’t waste any time: a whistle raised a golden bubble around them, and Sans winced at the sheer power crackling through it. For the first time, he found he was less worried about being trapped inside a barrier than he was about the amount of magic it was costing her.

Minute after minute passed. Strange human voices drew way too close, and Sans could only stand there while Frisk held the spell steady, diverting enough magic to soothe the terrified monsters. The giant skeleton had no idea how she was blocking both sound and light and hiding the barrier’s presence from the other side while she hummed, but she did it, because the poachers soon concluded that it’d been a false alarm and wandered back the way they’d come. “They’re gone, sweetheart. Drop it,” Sans ordered, and he heard a ragged sound as the barrier evaporated.

That was enough. Sans set the wagons’ brakes, grabbed as many rocks as his remaining magic could carry, and formed stacks under the shafts to hold them upright, then stuck most of his head into the back of the wagon. “I’m so sorry,” whimpered Vulkin. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s not yer fault,” he said roughly. In the monster’s glow, he could see the priestess lying on the wagon floor, resting her head on her forearm as she struggled to catch her breath. “Hand ‘er over.”

Later, he would kick himself for dragging Frisk into the cold again, but he had to see for himself that she was okay. Sans bundled her under his coat and sat down against the wheel, folding her into the crook of his arm while he summoned up heat and softness, everything a skeleton usually couldn’t offer.

That was all well and good, but as she turned toward him, trying to reach up around his neck, something weird happened. He allowed her to stand on the ground and rest her weight against him, her arms sliding under his coat and over his bony shoulders; he’d almost gotten used to that amazing, fluttery, possessive thing his SOUL did when she was on him, but this time, it got physically warmer, and he felt like something was…leaving him? What—

Frisk’s whole body jerked. She pulled her head back enough to stare at him. “Sans? What did you do?!”

“I…” Sans had to close his sockets against a rush of dizziness. “I dunno.”

The priestess withdrew her arms and looked down at her hands. She raised one and snapped her fingers, and another barrier roared to life around them. “What the crap, Frisk?” Sans rasped. “Ya don’t have the strength fer that!”

“I do now,” she said blankly. “How…how did you give me magic directly? Is it—”

Just like that, the dizziness had become full-on vertigo. “Sansy needs t’go night-night,” the skeleton mumbled, and the darkness politely stepped up to pull him back down with it.

A band of poachers had made camp near the river. Their sentry glanced up from his breakfast, then leapt to his feet and called out as someone emerged from the morning mist. “Whoa! Easy, pal,” said the stranger, stopping a polite distance away and holding his hands up. “We’re not lookin’ for trouble. I’m just checkin’ somethin’.” He made a strange face, as if he wasn’t entirely sure how faces worked. “Have ya heard who’s s’posed to be out here right now?”

“Maybe,” the sentry admitted. He eyed the interloper’s oddly pale hair, the contrast it made with his black coat and red shirt, and lowered his crossbow. “Depends what you’ve heard.”

“Someone from the High Priestess is passin’ through, doin’ somethin’ with a buncha monsters,” said the newcomer, lowering his arms very slowly. “I was makin’ sure ya weren’t them. We’re pretty new at this, so—”

The sentry gave a bark of laughter. “Dumbass! It’s the High Priestess. She’s out here with nine or ten monsters, all by herself.”

“Really?” The stranger blinked too many times. “Hot damn.” He laughed, too, sort of. “Too bad we can’t get magic outta her, huh?”

The sentry leered at him in male camaraderie. “Ever seen her in person? I know what I’d get out of her!” He slapped his leg, oblivious to the stranger’s twitching eye and clenched fists. “Well, if you’re new to the business, take it from me: keep any humans you find and save ‘em for ransom, ‘specially her.”

Blink. “Ransom?”

“Yeah. Ransom,” the poacher said impatiently. “You know who her dad is, right?”

The pale-haired stranger blinked again. “Duke Whatshisface?”

“Seriously?” The sentry shook his head in disbelieving pity. “Her dad’s the King, dipshit. You never heard about it?” He gestured expansively with the crossbow, enjoying the stranger’s dumbfoundment. “No joke. The old man used to fuck anything that’d hold still long enough. There’s five or six kids left that we know of, and she’s his favorite.” His grin broadened. “You really didn’t know? Man, you’re fuckin’ stupid.” He flapped his hand. “Get out of here. Go on home before you trip ‘n kill yourself.”

In a daze, the stranger put his hands in his pockets and turned around. “Oh, by the way,” he said, and without warning, something erupted from the ground, impaling the sentry’s foot.

His screams brought his comrades running to see him clutching a huge white bone sticking out of the bedrock, and a stranger pointing wildly toward the river. “Holy crap, it came from over there!” he shouted. “It’s that big-ass skeleton thing! It’s definitely over there!”

Only one of the poachers tried to say, “Who’re you?” before another line of projectiles slammed into the ground heading away from them; he ran to follow the rest of the group, leaving the luckless sentry to try to wrestle the bone free. When he looked up to demand the stranger help him, there was no one there.

“Fuckin’ fuckstick,” Sans muttered to himself from a few hundred yards away, jerking a hand to summon more bones and make it seem like they were still under attack. “I oughta fuckin’…” He kicked a rock so hard that it hurt his stupid wimpy human toe.

Fuck-a-duck. He couldn’t go back to camp like this. With the mist covering him and the poachers haring off in the opposite direction, he could think things over for a minute, starting with whether Frisk had ever come out and said who her father was.

…No, she never had. He’d just remembered something about Rosa – who he now knew wasn’t even her mom – working for a duke, and reached a reasonable conclusion that was totally wrong. It was probably such an open secret that she either hadn’t thought to tell him or hadn’t wanted to in case he treated her any differently. She was probably sick of that already…

Sans was too lost in thought to see something moving in the mist, following him away from the poachers’ camp along the riverbank. When he absently turned to stare at the water, it vanished, only to reappear as he turned again.

So, Frisk had pulled this crazy stunt because there was nothing else she could do about the monsters being sold. According to everything Sans had seen, only the Cardinal or the King could go over her head; therefore, while Duke Whatshisass was in charge of doling the monsters out to new owners, it probably wasn’t him who’d actually decided to sell them. The Cardinal hadn’t bothered her since she said she’d be retiring, and she hadn’t mentioned him at all, which just left the King.

Sans had seen for himself how much the old man treated her like a daughter, go figure. Knowing Frisk, she’d probably told His Majesty to his face that she intended to free those monsters, and he’d decided to keep her out of serious legal trouble and also remind her who was boss by ordering them sold right away. No wonder she’d been willing to flip him the bird right back by stealing the monsters and getting public opinion on her side.

Against all logic, Sans felt his poofy lips curling upward. In a weird way, this was the push he needed to be a little less miserable about not deserving her and a bit more smug that she’d picked him over the zillion guys desperate to snag an illegitimate princess. At this point, she transcended the concept of anyone deserving her. He still thought he sucked, but so what? If he hadn’t imagined what she’d said the other night, then…

The mist was beginning to thin out as the sun came up. Sans paused and glanced behind him, but nothing was there. He turned back toward their camp, reaching for his chain. Better not confront her about something she hadn’t really been hiding in the first place, though now he was determined to ask about her m—

Only the hiss of something flying through the air alerted him in time to fling up a wall of bones, barely deflecting a blow aimed at his neck. Before he could even swear aloud, more things came at him, and he instinctively turned to run away from their camp.

“Hey! HEY!” a voice shouted. Sans’ human ears perked up at the sound. “Come back here, meat-wad!”

His aim wavered as he threw a wave of pointed bones behind him, just missing the figure in the mist. It easily caught one and threw it straight back at him, only to see it glance off another wall of bone. “You!” the figure snarled. “How did you get Sans’ magic? Where is he?! Tell me, you damn coward!”

Sans dodged another one. “Hey!” Dodge. “Hey, listen, ya crazy broad! It’s—”

“Sans?” They both froze at the sound of Frisk’s voice. “Sans, where are you?”

The boss monster finally understood that expression about blood running cold. Fighting chills, he turned his head and opened his mouth to tell Frisk to run.

That moment of distraction was all the figure needed: Frisk came up just in time to see a bone spin end over end and smash into the back of his head, nearly knocking him out.

The High Priestess had heard Sans’ attack on the poachers as she was balancing a frying pan on Vulkin, who’d volunteered to help cook breakfast. Frisk just prayed Sans could divert them without killing anyone, or that he would at least try.

Several minutes later, though, he hadn’t returned. She was passing the pancakes around and had retrieved the bucket for more water when she heard shouting. Her stomach lurched at the sound of bones breaking. Sans!

Telling the monsters to stay put, Frisk reflexively grasped the bucket handle and ran out of the warded camp, keeping another barrier ready. “Sans?” She looked around, squinting through the last tendrils of mist. “Sans, where are you?”

She saw him a split-second before someone threw one of his own bones straight back at him. Frisk choked on a scream as he hit the ground, blood darkening the sand. “Sa—"

“Hey. You.”

Frisk gulped as their attacker advanced on her from the edge of the water. “What’d you say about Sans, human? You know where he is?” The tall monster emerged from the mist, removing her helmet as she glared down with one mostly-yellow eye. “Oh, come on! Don’t tell me you took out a boss monster! How’d you do it? Cheating?” She almost spat the last word. “Start talking, you—”

“Undyne?” Despite her fear, Frisk smiled. “Undyne, it’s you!”

A spearpoint flashed in the air, stopping the priestess as she tried to step forward. “How’d you get my name? Did you torture it out of someone, human? Huh? Was it Sans?!” The spear poked at Frisk, forcing her backward. “Tell you what,” Undyne snapped, pivoting toward the human-shaped boss monster, who was still struggling to get up. “Let’s assume you care at all about your accomplice here. Either you tell me what I want to know, or…” The spear rose.

“No!” In sheer panic, Frisk threw a barrier between Sans and the other monster.

A moment later, she realized her mistake: Undyne had only been threatening him, but as she looked back at Frisk, her gaze was now murderous. “That’s it! That’s how you did it! You used a frickin’ barrier!” She stomped the ground so hard that Frisk felt the bedrock tremble. “I ought to gut you like a fish, you damn cheater! Do you hear me? A FISH!”

“Wait!” The priestess held up her hands, too distressed to be amused by Undyne’s choice of words. “Undyne, please! I’m—” She bit her lip. That wouldn’t work; Undyne wouldn’t believe that she was Kris. It might make her so angry that she’d try to kill them outright. Frisk racked her brains for some way to prove it—she had never shown Undyne her scars, but…

The Royal Guard Captain scowled deeper, this time in puzzlement, as Frisk stared at the bucket dangling from her forearm. “You’re what, human?” Undyne demanded.

Frisk swallowed hard. “I want to show you something,” she said, and took a deliberate side-step toward the water, ignoring the raised spear. “It’s not a barrier, and it’s not some kind of trick. Just watch, all right? And don’t hurt him!”

Undyne glanced around them in case this was a diversion, and at Sans, now lying still and silent. Frisk saw him, too, and her expression made Undyne lower her spear ever so slightly. “What is it? Make it quick!”

Frisk took a deep breath. To Undyne’s bewilderment, the human’s expression went neutral. She went to the river, dipped up a half bucket of water, carried it back to Undyne, and threw it into her face.

Through the haze of pain and gut-wrenching fear, Sans distantly heard Undyne yelling at Frisk, and he felt the barrier she put up to protect him. He wanted to shake her for thinking of him and not herself, and for showing Undyne she could do it. Then there was a dreadful silence, and he couldn’t get up to—

“NGAHHHHHHH!”

Sans threw himself forward, not quite gaining his feet. Hitting the ground again on all fours, he looked frantically for Undyne and whatever horrible things she was doing to—

Frisk was dangling, not from a spear’s bloody point, but from Undyne’s bear hug as the dripping-wet monster swung the human in time to a joyous bellow of “My little bestiiiiiiiiie!”

What the…no, never mind. With an effort, Sans pulled off his disguise and tried not to collapse as the world lurched sideways. “Ow,” he muttered, just to be part of the moment.

Undyne froze, not quite releasing Frisk. “Sans? What the—where’ve you been?” she demanded.

Sans’ glare would have set a lesser monster ablaze on the spot. “Almost gettin’ murdered by yer crazy ass!”

“Really?” Undyne looked puzzled. Then her face lit up. “Ohh, that was you! Ha!” She gave her giant-toothed grin. “Sorry about that, boss. How’d you do that? And why were you saying all that crap to that human back there?”

“I was tryin’ ta throw him off our trail! We’re the monsters and the High Priestess!” Sans sat up and raised one hand to heal his aching skull, indicating Frisk with the other. “Now let ‘er go before ya squeeze her t’death!”

“Hm? Oh, right.” Undyne set Frisk down, letting the priestess catch her breath. “So you’re Kris, huh?” The Captain planted her hand on one hip, watching Frisk brush herself off. “Did you know she was a girl?” she asked Sans.

“Nope. She had us all fooled.” Sans closed his eyes to focus his magic. Fuckin’ Undyne. If he hadn’t been a boss monster, that would’ve killed him!

“It wasn’t my idea,” Frisk protested as she picked up the bucket. “I was only ten, and they said it’d be safer. Can I help you with that, Sans?”

Undyne waved her spear. “Whatever! You’re here now! Ignore him, he’s being a big baby.” She glanced around. “Let’s move out before any more damn humans show up. No offense.” Frisk inclined her head. “You say you’ve got more people with you?”

If the monsters had been happy to see Sans, they nearly turned to dust when Undyne strolled into camp and announced that she would be escorting them the rest of the way home. Once everyone had calmed down, Sans had to admit the fish-lady knew how to get people moving: they scarfed down the remaining pancakes and some leftover oranges, then loaded right up and took off toward the Underground.

“Man…” Undyne was holding it together better than he had the first time he found himself inside a barrier, only betraying her fear of the dome overhead with a tighter grip and her eye darting back and forth. “I can’t believe it. She really is the High Priestess, huh?”

“Yep.” Sans was very pointedly nonchalant, sauntering along as the barrier crackled and the fish monster twitched. Served her right. “She coulda killed me a zillion times over, but she never did. Hell, I tried ta kill her a few times, an’ she smacked me down without hurtin’ me.”

Undyne shook her head. “It’s just…Kris is back, and he’s a she, and she’s the High Priestess, and she’s crazy strong…but she’s still Kris. It’s a lot to take in, you know?”

“Tell me about it.” Sans adjusted his grip on the shafts. He was pulling one wagon, and Undyne was pulling the other one alongside him; all it’d taken to get her going was a hint that she couldn’t do it. She was puffing a bit, but doing well now that they were moving. “So how’d you suddenly know it was her?” the skeleton asked.

“It was from the first time Papyrus introduced us,” Frisk said from the driver’s seat behind him. “I thought Undyne must’ve been upset because she was thirsty, so I grabbed a flower vase and tried giving her some water. …In her face.”

Sans guffawed, freeing one hand to slap his femur. “How’d that work out? Did the nice fish say ‘thank you’?”

“No, she just looked surprised. I thought she was feeling better, so I went back and—”

“The little punk tried to do it again! It was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen, but the kid wasn’t scared of me at all.” Undyne shook her head. “Then the King ordered us to be friends with the humans, so I figured I’d be the best damn friend Kris ever had.”

“And you were.” Frisk sighed. “When we get there, Undyne, I have something for you. In fact, we brought gifts for everyone. Did Alphys ever read the last two Adventure Lady novels?”

“Nah, and it’s been bugging her for years, the poor—” Undyne’s eye widened. “No. You didn’t!”

Sans let them chatter, profoundly grateful that they weren’t doing that weird thing where women hated each other for no reason. Having Undyne on their side, both physically and for moral support, was worth a dozen other monsters. “Did you get him that outfit?” she asked Frisk, nodding at the boss monster. “He’s been growing nonstop, so after a while, he just quit buying new clothes. It drives Papyrus nuts.”

“He’s my bodyguard, and it pays pretty well,” Frisk explained. “Those were a bonus for helping me shop for everyone.”

“Nice!” Undyne couldn’t reach over and smack him in congratulations, so she contented herself with jerking her head. “Good job, boss. Way to find a nice—what do humans call it? A ‘sugar mama’?”

Frisk burst out laughing and couldn’t stop, Undyne joining in as Sans sputtered. Stupid women, he thought sullenly. Why couldn’t they hate each other instead of giving him shit?

A few hours later, Undyne called a halt. “At this rate, we can get there by nightfall,” she said, offering a hand to the priestess half a second before him. “Er…do you have to, uh, go?”

Frisk looked uncomfortable enough for Undyne to nod hastily and point behind the wagon with her spear. “Not much privacy out here. We’ll just pretend you’re not doing anything, okay? Here, I’ll dig a hole for you.”

If that was awkward – and it was – it was nothing compared to the piscine monster making the others talk to cover the sound of Frisk’s business, then leaning over and whispering to Sans, very matter-of-fact, ��Is it just me, or is it weird that Kris turned out to be so damn cute?”

Sans wished the ground wasn’t so flat around here, because then he could find a nice big pit and jump right on in. Luckily, Frisk suddenly said to herself, “Oh, dirt, why now?” and stuck her head beneath the wagon to call, “Undyne? Can you please get the little gray bag out of my satchel for me?”

The Captain obligingly found the only satchel with human clothing in it, rummaged around, and tossed the bag over the wagon and into Frisk’s lap. The young woman mumbled her thanks, but sounded so aggravated that Undyne asked, “What’s up? Are you okay?”

A prolonged sigh. “It’s nothing, just a stupid, ridiculous thing that human females have to put up with.” Frisk came back around a few moments later, stuffing the bag into the satchel. “Now, once we reach the Underground, should we all come in through the Grand Hall, or should Sans and I go through the Ruins into Snowdin?”

Sans exchanged glances with Undyne, who was munching on a roasted potato as if it was an apple. “You’d probably better not go straight to Asgore,” she said reluctantly. “When Snowdrake came back, he was pretty messed up, and the King was…uh…”

“Not happy?” Sans guessed.

Undyne’s eye closed. “Yeah. Not happy.”

“We’ll tell him what happened,” piped up Vulkin from inside the wagon. “We all heard the humans talking. Lady Frisk’s in big trouble for bringing us home, but she’s doing it anyway.”

The monsters made generally affirmative noises, and Frisk managed a smile.

“You are?” Undyne scowled. “Here, we’ve got to get going if we want to make it home before dark. Why don’t you give me the whole story on the way?”

They did, starting with Frisk being brought to the convent after her stint in the Underground and her memories being removed at her father’s request— “Oh, crap, that’s right,” Undyne interrupted. “That scumbag said the King’s your dad. Is that true?”

Frisk looked down at Sans in alarm. “Yeah, that’s what the guy told me,” Sans confirmed, not turning his head. “He was talking about her being worth a lot for ransom.”

The priestess grimaced. “I might not be, after all this.” She swallowed. “I wasn’t sure if you knew. I’m sorry if I—”

Sans made himself shrug. “It’s fine, kit—kiddo. Not like ya ever actually lied about it.”

“I don’t get it,” said Undyne. “If your dad’s the king, why aren’t you a princess?”

“Because I was one of many, many children the king had with women he wasn’t married to,” Frisk replied. “To be a princess, I’d have to have come from his actual wife. The first queen died childless, and his second wife died having the Prince.”

Undyne started. “Wait, so he…with just anyone, and you didn’t even count? What the hell is wrong with humans?”

“There’s the million-g question,” Sans mumbled.

Frisk sighed. “Anyway,” she said, “once I stopped begging to go back to the Underground, I settled down and studied as hard as I could. I was ordained a priestess when I was sixteen—”

The story continued until it was time for Sans to pick up with how he’d been caught by a party of five sorcerers almost a month ago. “I figured I’d hang out in jail until someone came ta get me, then kill ‘em,” he said conversationally, “but guess who came strollin’ downstairs?”

“The Duke asked me for help. There was a huge monster in the cells, and no one could decide who would be suitable to take him,” said Frisk. “I figured he must be a boss monster, and I scared them with stories about how powerful he was and how lucky they were that he hadn’t destroyed half the castle already. Then I said I’d take care of him.”

“And you tried to kill her?” Undyne snapped at Sans.

“Tried to burn ‘er, squish her, and blast her,” the boss monster said, almost proudly. “Nothin’ worked. Next thing I knew, I’d signed up fer a month of bein’ a witch ta learn how to grow better crops.”

“Which turned out to be much closer to three weeks, thanks to His Majesty,” Frisk said sourly. “I had each of these monsters taken from humans who were mistreating them so badly that even the Church wouldn’t allow it anymore, and I brought them out here to keep them from being sold again.” Even over the sound of the wheels crunching on sandy rock, they could hear her teeth grinding. “The King knew what I wanted to do, but he thought I shouldn’t have to worry my pretty little head about it anymore, so here we are.”

Sans considered pointing out that the King probably just wanted to keep her out of trouble, but decided he’d rather not be murdered. Undyne’s sole contribution was “…Damn.”

They rolled along in silence. “In three days or so, we can go back to the village and pick up the grain and other things Sans ordered,” the priestess said. “It won’t feed the entire Underground, but it will help.”

“That reminds me, Undyne—ya know the big farm over that way with the maple trees?” Sans nodded in a direction. “She’s gonna get it fer us.”

The Captain gaped at him. “She what?”

“I shit you not,” said Sans. “The human who owned it croaked, an’ she’s been negotiatin’ ta buy it. Turns out bein’ High Priestess makes ya super rich.”

Undyne muttered something under her breath, taking a fresh grip on the wagon shafts. Then her head swiveled, and without being told, Frisk immediately began whistling again. The air around them, which had been a translucent gold, solidified until it was nearly opaque. “They can’t see or hear us at all?” asked the fish monster, glancing up warily.

Frisk shook her head, and paused long enough to say, “They’d have to literally be touching the barrier to know we’re here.”

“No kidding?” Undyne squinted to watch the far-off group of humans through the barrier. Sure enough, they were moving away. “So,” she said presently, “how long are you gonna stay this time? Another month?”

“’Bout ten days,” Sans answered for her.

Undyne nodded slowly. The whistling stopped, and the human said, “Yes, if all goes well. It depends how long Asgore will let us stay, and what we’ll be allowed to bring back to the castle afterwards.”

“‘We’?” repeated the Captain.

It took Sans a second to realize what Undyne was even asking. He and Frisk had yet to discuss whether he’d be coming back to the castle after her visit, but the possibility of leaving her hadn’t even occurred to him, and she obviously felt the same way. “Yeah, I’ve gotta learn more witchy crap,” he said, hiding his elation. “Plus, the more monster stuff she gets ta show the other humans, the less trouble she’ll get in fer cartin’ these guys off in the first place.”

“And I’m not pulling the wagons back on my own,” Frisk added.

“Got it,” Undyne murmured, and Sans breathed an inward sigh of relief. Another thing they needed to hash out: what to tell the other monsters about…whatever they were now. Everything still depended on him working on himself, didn’t it? It would be easier to learn to control his magic in the proper directions inside the Underground. Who knew? Maybe if he kept thinking happy thoughts and not actively loathing himself, it’d really be possible. Maybe, if he was in good enough shape by the time they straightened things with Asgore, they could really—

The priestess resumed whistling, snapping him out of it. Undyne began bobbing her head along with the melody, and immediately started getting the rhythm wrong, but Sans decided not to say anything; he had a lot more thinking to do before they got home.

Very much against her will, they left Undyne just out of sight of the Underground’s principal entrance. She would announce their arrival, see the monsters to each of their homes, and then report to Asgore; knowing the King would insist on the wagons being inspected before he allowed them inside, they would also remain here.

Undyne checked over the little group of monsters as they climbed out, then paused. “Hey. Sans? Are you…gonna talk to Her Majesty?”

Frisk knew a loaded question when she heard one. Sure enough, Sans took a much longer time to reply than usual. “Yeah, I kinda have to. If she’s asleep already, I’ll leave ‘er a note.”

“Okay.” The Captain picked up her helmet from one of the shafts, pulled it back on, and nodded to them. “I’ll be in Snowdin as soon as His Majesty’s done with me. Good luck, guys.”

“We’ll see you soon,” Frisk replied, giving her a smile and ignoring the butterflies in her stomach. This was it. They were here!

The monsters trotted off, and they very faintly heard Undyne hail the sentries from atop the rise. “Welp,” Sans said. “This way.” Frisk obediently grabbed her satchel, which she’d stuffed with apples and potatoes, and set off after him, trying to be happy and grateful and not on the verge of barfing.

It was another cold, boring day in Snowdin. The monsters were pretty sure they knew what was going to happen today – nothing – and that it was going to keep happening, and it was hard to care much about it anymore. Sure, Papyrus kept nattering about how Sans and a mysterious human had told him they were going to come back to the Underground soon and everything would be all right, but…Papyrus. The denizens of Snowdin carried on with nothing as usual, secure in the knowledge that—

Every monster in town stopped what they weren’t doing and looked around in confusion. Magic was building in the air like smoke from a barely contained fire; there was a hhhwp, and in the empty space in front of the skeleton brothers’ house, there now stood a boss monster in black slippers and a tiny human peeking out from beneath his overcoat. “I told you to wait,” she scolded him, moving the coat aside like a giant curtain.

“What? You were the one whinin’ about how cold it was,” retorted the skeleton.

“Hey!” To their surprise, Undyne sprang up from where she’d been sitting on the step. “Where have you nerds been?” she snapped. “It’s been five frickin’ hours! Were you talking to Her Majesty, or what?”

“Nah, we got lost in the Ruins,” said Sans. “Tori’s asleep, so I left her a note like I said. What’re you doin’ here already? Is everyone okay?”

Undyne looked at them narrowly, then said, “Yeah, it turned out Asgore was already in the Grand Hall, so we didn’t have to waste time finding him.” She had changed into the outfit Frisk remembered: a short jacket, wool shirt, long pants and red boots. “Everyone’s home by now. I left Ice Cap with his family a few minutes ago.”

Frisk nodded gratefully. “What did the King say?” she asked, setting her satchel down.

Undyne hesitated. “Well…he was happy to see everyone, but then they started talking about how the High Priestess was coming in through Snowdin, and he wasn’t happy anymore.”

“How not-happy is he, exactly?” Sans demanded. “Is Frisk in any danger?”

“Nope. The others kept going on about how you saved them from the other humans, and when I told him you were Kris, he got really quiet.” Undyne put her hands in her jacket pockets. “He said you could stay until we ‘know your true intentions.’ I have to babysit you, and he wants to talk to Sans as soon as possible, but that’s it.”

Sans and Frisk breathed sighs of relief. “Good enough,” said the boss monster. He stood on tiptoe, the better to see most of the way across Snowdin. “Where’s Pap?”

Shrug. “I don’t know. No one’s in the house. He must be at the store or something.”

Frisk rubbed her arms unconsciously, turning in circles to look around them, especially at the light-spangled house. “I can’t believe it,” she murmured. “I—” She swiped at her eyes.

The Royal Guard Captain stepped over to the High Priestess and put an arm around her shoulders. “You know what? May I be the first, K—Frisk, to say: welcome back.” She gave the human what was, for her, a gentle squeeze. “C’mon. We’ll introduce you to everyone again. We can take it nice and slow, no pressure to—HEY!” Undyne had spotted a nearby cluster of monsters staring at them. “What are you looking at? Haven’t you ever seen a human before? I know you have!” She pointed at Frisk, who was still tucked beneath her arm. “Remember Kris?”

Frisk quickly forgot her irritation as several monsters hurried over. “Kris! Bro!” One dinosaur-like creature shouldered its way through the crowd, hopping from foot to foot. “Is that really you? Do you remember me? Hi, Undyne!”

Of course she remembered Monster Kid, who was only a little bigger now, still wearing the same armless sweater—twelve years obviously didn’t go as fast for monsters as it did for humans! There was the bunny who ran the store, Gyftrot – stuff still dangling from his horns – a couple of the various dogs she’d petted and thrown sticks for…

Once the first wave of pleasantries had subsided, it was time to tell them the reason for her visit, what Sans had been up to, and why “Kris” had turned out to be a lady. She noticed a few of those who hadn’t greeted her falling back to go spread the news, but saw no signs of Papyrus.

She wasn’t the only one: right in the middle of a very important discussion on someone’s baby sister being ready to hatch soon, Sans let out a growl that shut everyone up at once. “Where’s my brother?” he asked.

Shrugs and mumbles all around. “He was staring at the river again,” volunteered Gyftrot.

Sans waited for more information, then nodded. “Okay, everyone,” he told the little crowd. “We’re gonna head inside for a minute. If anyone sees Pap, don’t tell him I’m back yet, don’t mention Kris, and don’t do anything to freak him out. Got it?”

A chorus of agreement. “Don’t freak out,” someone said helpfully to Papyrus, who had just stepped into view.

Papyrus froze, staring up at Sans. “BROTHER?” he said. Then: “BROTHER! NYEHHH HEH HEHHHHH!” He leaped up and threw his arms around Sans’ massive ribcage, doing a pullup of sheer joy. “YOU’RE HERE! YOU’RE REALLY HERE THIS TIME, LAZYBONES! I THOUGHT…THE GREAT PAPYRUS THOUGHT—”

“Yeah,” Sans mumbled. “Hey, Pap.” He hugged him back for a long moment, then glanced downward. “She said she’d bring me back safe, didn’t she?”

Papyrus looked at Frisk, who was grinning. He looked at Undyne, who was grinning and nodding. The younger skeleton released his brother and launched himself straight at his best friend, tackling her with a wail of “THANK YOU, UNDYYYYNE! NYEHH!” Before the Captain could correct him, Papyrus dropped her and caught Frisk up in a less forceful but similarly enthused hug. “THANK YOU, HUMAAAAN! I—” He stopped, and turned his head to look at her quizzically. “NYEH. WHY AM I THANKING YOU, HUMAN?”

“Ya met ‘er the last time we talked, Pap, in the dream,” Sans reminded him. “An’ you were right. She is Kris.”

Papyrus blinked, still holding on to her. “I SEE,” he said sagely. “NYEH HEH HEH! OF COURSE THE GREAT PAPYRUS WAS RIGHT! I…I…” His eyes rolled up, and Sans caught Frisk just before she hit the snow along with the fainting skeleton.

“Geez. He probably hasn’t eaten anything or slept in a couple days. No worries, we can fix that!” Undyne punched Sans reassuringly in the ribs, then bent and rummaged in her friend’s “armor,” helping herself to the house key before slinging Papyrus over her shoulder. “Listen up!” she shouted at the assembled monsters. “This is all very exciting, but these guys’ve been traveling for a couple days straight to bring the others back to us. We’ll see everyone in the morning, okay?” She poked Sans as he turned to teleport into the house. “Not you! Asgore’s waiting. Get your bony butt over to Alphys’ place before he comes looking for you.”

Frisk gripped his sleeve, but she made herself say calmly, “It’s fine. We’ll be here when you get back,” as she picked up her satchel.

He stared at her for a moment, then gently removed her hand, and was gone.

Undyne let them into the house, flipping the witchlights on and kicking the door shut as Frisk walked into the living room. It wasn’t the biggest or nicest of dwellings, and it didn’t help that Papyrus had probably been stress-cleaning—it would explain why the couch cushions were still damp from the last time he’d mopped them, and why the pet rock by the kitchen was barely visible under a pile of rock-candy shards. Had Sans set those out for his brother to use, just waiting for the pun to sneak up and hit him out of nowhere?

“Here you go, Pap,” Undyne said briskly, tramping up the stairs while Frisk marveled at how much smaller everything was than she remembered. The priestess heard her deposit Papyrus in his pirate-ship bed, slam the door behind her, and come back down to pull a kitchen chair out for Frisk. “Have a seat. Sorry, but they don’t have anything in the fridge.”

“That’s all right,” Frisk said. She unbuckled the satchel and offered Undyne an apple.

The Captain took it politely, but as Frisk glanced down to dig another one out for herself, the monster chomped the apple nearly in half, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “So,” she said casually, “what were you and Sans up to in the Ruins? No one’s dumb enough to just get lost in there for that long.”

Frisk felt her face grow stiff and hot. “I had to stop and rest because I used too much magic today,” she answered truthfully, and Undyne nodded. “I…actually, maybe you’d know this—is it possible for someone to directly give someone else some of their magic?”

The Captain paused, her eyebrows rising, a smile growing into a giant grin. “Haven’t you heard of—”

Frisk’s face got even hotter. “Not like that! I just mean, if you were weak and needed a little extra power, could, say, Asgore or Alphys give you a handshake, or a hug, and lend you some magic?”

“Nope. They couldn’t.” When Frisk looked skeptical, Undyne sighed, then made a fist. “Look, pretend this is my SOUL.” Another fist. “This one is…we’ll say Alphys.” Frisk wondered if it was her imagination, or if her friend’s face was turning red, almost purple under the smaller blue scales. “My body’s made of magic, and so is hers. But my SOUL is self-contained, and so is hers. Even if I took a chunk of my magic and handed it to Alphys—” She knocked her fists together. “Nothing would happen. She can heal me, but that’s just repairing damage, not giving me power that I could use to attack someone or do my own spells, assuming I knew any. There’s no way to combine or exchange magic unless you’re trying to have a kid, and that’s a whole different thing. It takes a lot of power and concentration, and…it’s different.” She was definitely purple now. “Why are you even asking?”

The priestess thought about it. She made a fist, and loosened her fingers until she could slide the fingers of her other hand through it. “After you left today, I was tired, and Sans gave me some of his magic again,” she said distantly. “Monsters can absorb a human SOUL, but…” Her fingers wiggled. “I don’t think it works both ways. Humans can’t take a monster’s SOUL, at least not directly into ourselves.”

Undyne suddenly looked very, very uncomfortable. “That’s true,” she commented, “for normal monsters. For Sans, the rules are a little different.”

Frisk was so startled that she dropped her hands. “Are you saying I was able to take some of his SOUL because I’m human and he’s a boss monster?!”

“Hell no!” the Captain snapped. More calmly, she said, “It doesn’t work like that. If you really took something from him that he couldn’t get back, he’d be acting a lot weaker, or he’d be dust already.” She shrugged. “If he did somehow give you magic and you had to wait for him to recover, and he did, then nah, there’s no permanent damage.”

That was something to think about. Frisk remembered last night, when she’d just wanted him to hold her. There was that jolt of energy, and he’d almost immediately passed out… She thought of a few hours back, when she’d gotten anxious and her magical exhaustion had suddenly kicked in, forcing her to sit down. Sans had – somewhat correctly – assumed that she was getting cold feet, gotten impatient, and picked her up, and when she turned to put her arms around him, it’d happened again.

Then, of course, they’d been in a uniquely ridiculous quandary where she was brimming with magic that wouldn’t help them get anywhere, and he couldn’t even stand up. Thank God she’d had something for him to eat in her satchel, or they might have been stuck out there all night waiting for him to recover. When she half-jokingly suggested she try giving his magic back to him, he’d almost bitten her head off.

Wait. Wait a second. If his magic was supposed to be so dark and terrible and evil, etc., how had she not felt anything like that from him, much less been poisoned? Frisk had the sudden, idiotic, schoolgirl-ish urge to giggle—did the good magic come out of the top half of his body, while the evil stuff came out of the other thing?

Undyne was shaking her head in wonder. “You need to tell all this to Alphys. She’d have a better idea of what’s—”

Crack went the window.

Both women whipped around at the sound of shouting outside. Undyne wasted no time, slamming her chair back and throwing the door open to roar, “What the hell is going on?”

A moment of quiet; it might have ended there if Frisk hadn’t peeked around her friend’s shoulder. A group of four or five young monsters stood a few yards away, holding stones, their body language scared but defiant. Their ringleader was a feathery snow monster who looked very familiar. “Chilldrake, isn’t it?” the human asked.

The hoodlums drew back as Undyne’s face darkened. “What do you want, kid?” she snapped. “If you’ve got a good reason for breaking Pap’s window, I’m listening!”

“We want her gone,” the drake said, shifting his feet and glaring at Frisk. “Haven’t you seen Snowdrake? He’s not Snowdrake anymore! How can you let a human in here after what they did to him?!”

“And what if she blows us up?” his friend added.

Undyne grabbed a spear from thin air and thrust it in the monsters’ direction. They shrank back, but stood their ground. “That’s not up to a bunch of kids like you,” the Royal Guard Captain snarled. “His Majesty said she could stay. Are you telling me you know better than Asgore?”

They shuffled back again, but a moment later, Chilldrake drew himself up. “Does he know she’s the humans’ High Priestess?” He raised his voice for the monsters standing nearby to hear: “Does he know she makes barriers?”

That got an anxious murmur going. Frisk felt sick; this was everything she’d been afraid of, no matter what Undyne said, or Sans. She glanced around instinctively, but he wasn’t there.

“He knows way more than you do, punk!” snarled Undyne. She advanced down the steps, leaving Frisk in the doorway. “Now get out of here before I get you out of here!”

“Fine!” Chilldrake shook his ruff, dancing a little in place. “If she’s here, it’s not safe anyway! We should all leave before she traps us and drags us off!”

The murmurs were louder and more upset now. The Royal Guard Captain looked at the other monsters in disbelief. “Guys, you were just telling her how glad you were to see her again! She’s the same damn person she was fifteen minutes ago! Are you going to listen to this little—”

“Is she really the High Priestess?” the shopkeeper asked Undyne.

The piscine monster’s face said it all. Too late, she snapped, “It doesn’t matter! She only uses her magic to—”

Everything happened at once. A stone came sailing over Undyne’s head, straight at Frisk, who did not stop to think that it was better to get a black eye or a bad cut than to confirm their worst fears. Reflex kicked in, and a barrier flared in front of her, pinging the rock away.

Her one piece of luck was that every monster froze in place instead of screaming or running to spread the tale of the human who had snuck Underground to use barriers on them—every monster but Chilldrake. “See?” he screamed, flapping his wings so hard that ice crystals flurried off them. “What did I just tell you?! Get out, human! We don’t want you here, and if I have to go tell His Majesty that you’re using barriers, I’ll—”

Whump.

It wasn’t a rock, or a spear, or a barrier. A ball of pure flame struck the ground in front of Chilldrake, who yelped and hopped backward, crashing into his friends.

The monsters’ heads turned toward the magic’s source, the edge of the field to Frisk’s right; each one immediately dropped to their knees or the equivalent thereof, with the hoodlums dropping the rocks and throwing themselves flat on their faces.

Undyne took one look, shook her hand to dispel the energy spear, and went to one knee as another monster advanced. “Your Majesty,” she said in wonder, then apprehension. Her head ducked. “Majesty, I can fully explain and take responsibility for—”

A gesture silenced her. The monster came to stand in front of the house, her amber eyes coming to rest on the High Priestess, features impassive.

Frisk’s heart constricted. She was suddenly ten years old again, not knowing whether to be afraid, whether she should bow or do something royal. She came down the steps, and to her horror, she found herself breathing harder, eyes prickling, throat tightening. “Lady Toriel,” she whispered.

Toriel folded her arms at the waist. She wore a plain robe, adorned only with the Delta Rune in white—the same thing Asriel had worn the day she fell into the Underground, only purple instead of black. The former Queen regarded Frisk for a long, terrible moment. “Where is the human named Kris?” she asked sternly.

It took all of Frisk’s training, all her experience as an exalted and lonely member of the Church’s highest echelon, to speak up. “The human child you knew was not a boy, and his name was not Kris. He was a girl, and his name was Frisk.” She swallowed. “I am Frisk.” Damn it, her voice wouldn’t stay steady. “I’m back, Lady Toriel. Please—”

Toriel took a step toward her. Another, and another. Her white-furred hand came up to brush Frisk’s hair from her face. The boss monster stared into her eyes…

And she stooped, opening her arms and folding Frisk into a huge, warm, cloud-soft hug.

Everything pent up behind Frisk’s defenses rose in a surge that crumbled the walls like wet paper. She still smelled like cinnamon and golden flowers, Frisk realized, and she wasn’t ashamed to grab hold of the velvet robe and get it soaked with tears again.

“My poor child,” the boss monster murmured, stroking Frisk’s hair as the priestess’ shoulders heaved. “My poor, dear girl. I’ve missed you so much.” She hugged her tighter. “I cannot tell you how very glad I am to see you again.”

Frisk was sobbing without restraint now, not caring what anyone saw or heard or thought of her. Toriel rested her hand on the back of the young woman’s head and looked up for the first time, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Am I to understand that this human is not welcome here?” She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. “Would anyone like to say anything?”

Chilldrake had collapsed in on himself. His beak moved, but all he could muster was “…High Priestess, Majesty.”

Toriel’s hand grew heavier. “Is this true, my child? You’ve become the High Priestess?”

Frisk didn’t have the courage to raise her head. She just nodded.

The boss monster inhaled, and sighed, her diaphragm moving under Frisk’s cheek. “Then we are very fortunate to have you, Frisk.” She glanced up, once. “Wouldn’t you agree, young man?”

Chilldrake did not nod so much as vibrate his head too fast for it to be visible.

“Splendid. We…what, my child?” Toriel listened as Frisk turned her head to mumble more clearly. “They broke Sans and Papyrus’ window? My word.”

Frisk didn’t see who rushed forward, but she heard a scramble to be the first to check the cracked glass and figure out how to fix or replace it or something right now.

Toriel waited for the priestess to get herself under control, then stepped back and took Frisk’s hand. “Captain,” she said, and Undyne was instantly on her feet, fist on her chest. “We have much to discuss. Please accompany us.” And with as much grace and ceremony as if the old house had been a marble palace, the boss monster went inside, allowing Undyne to glare once more at the crowd, then shut the door gently behind them.

#songfell man i love my mom but

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kianakrystlewrites · 4 years

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My Writing Journey

Hello my darlings ♡ Welcome to my blog! If you’ve found your way here, thank you so much for following me on my writing journey. It means the world to have you engage with me as I pave my way to publication. This post is something I’ve been wanting to write forever now, and I’m so delighted to share it with you. I believe when you reach a certain point during whatever path you’re on, it’s important to reflect on what brought you to where you are. For me, I am currently querying my first novel, LOVE LETTERS TO THE SEA (which will have its own blog post very soon). It has been such a challenging and reflective time for me, filled with mixed emotions and uncertainty. Regardless of the “bad days” when I am met with rejection after rejection, I am still so proud of myself for making it to this point. And believe it or not, there are “good days” too (like landing a spot on the Top 25 Pitches list for PitMad, and receiving full requests from agents I’m really excited about). And in those moments of success and fulfillment, I am always reminded of what started it all.

Like most writers, I’ve always loved English. There’s no need to get into that. But unlike a lot of writers, I fell in love with language before I fell in love with storytelling. I think what triggered my love for the sound of words was getting my heart broken . . . by my first love, by my family, by my friends at the time. Literature, lyrics, prose . . . those were the only things that made me feel whole. When I had nothing, I found comfort in how words fell off the tongue like honey and wine. It was like a secret language that only I could hear, which evoked a euphoria unlike anything else. When I’d read books like Romeo & Juliet or The Great Gatsby, I could feel myself turn pink with a warm glow. The prose from those stories struck me like a cord. It brought me to life. But there was one writer who shaped me above the rest, and she wasn’t even an author. She was a musician.

Lana Del Rey.

Do I even have to say more?

I fell in love with Lana unlike any boy I’d loved before. Her lyrics seemed to understand me in a way no one else did, and I resonated with her as if she were my best friend. I think my true awakening was listening to her music (her song Video Games saved my life during my darkest hours). It was enchanting. Her music told stories, and I’d paint them in my mind. I’d imagine myself as the main character of her songs, and daydream about my downfall in a poetic, romantic way. It all seems very melodramatic now, but she is the main reason I decided I wanted to be a writer.

I started with writing poetry, getting in touch with language and rhythm, familiarizing myself with how different words sounded next to each other. I think the biggest reason my prose is so lyrical now is because I was a poet before I was a fiction writer. But I didn’t want to just write poetry. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted be be like Lana. Her music wasn’t just music in my eyes. It was an aesthetic, a feeling, something so perfectly her that no one else could imitate it. Not even me.

I fell in love with fairytales next. I vividly recall one sunny afternoon with my best friend Sydney. We had spent the day at the beach, and when we came home, she read me fairytales on her bedroom floor. I remember wanting to escape, wanting to live in a dark and beautiful world where I was an enchantress and no one could hurt me. But I also fell in love with the lighter stories too. I wanted to be a princess. I still do. I wanted sweet days and sunshine and a prince charming who wouldn’t break my heart. Sometimes I would even think to myself . . . what if I��m supposed to be a princess on another planet?

Honestly, that was the first seed for LOVE LETTERS TO THE SEA.

More thoughts came soon after:

. . . What if my true love is already dead and he’s waiting for me on the other side? The side where I’m a princess! And on that other side, I’d be mind numbingly gorgeous! . . .

. . . Or, what if my true love has been dead for years and years, and only visits me as my guardian angel! We could never be together if that’s the case though . . . now could we? And that’s why I’m *doomed* to be single forever!!! . . .

But in the back of my mind, I always thought that idea was quite romantic. A guardian angel watching over me, in love with me. That’s why he never lets anything bad ever happen to me. He’s someone to protect me, someone to shield me from all the darkness I’ve been battling.

And then came the dreams.

I had a series of dreams every day for a week straight. It was always the same thing. I’d be drowning. I could feel myself dying, struggling to breathe. For some reason, the water was always beautiful, and I was strangely aware of that even while I was suffering. But then, this handsome man would reach down and save me, pulling me towards the surface. However, when we’d brake the water, I’d be in a different world. My dream world! The world where I was a princess, and I was beautiful! But most importantly . . . the world where I was reunited with my guardian angel.

I knew I had to write this story. I had to! Only . . . I didn’t know how. I wasn’t ready. It was one of those concepts that felt too big to pull off in the way I imagined it. But I also knew that this was the story of my heart. It was rooted in my traumas, something beautiful birthed by all my darkness. Only, I was 16. I hadn’t learned how to properly feel all the things I felt. I didn’t understand it, I didn’t understand me. But I knew I wanted to write about this beautiful girl from my dreams, filled with emotion and chaos and . . . love. At the end of the day, she was always filled with love.

I wasn’t bold enough to write the story of my dreams. And so . . . I daydreamed about it instead. I fell in love with the aesthetic of the story. I imagined the world first. I imagined her beauty. . . all of her dresses . . . her handsome guardian angel. I became obsessed with my main tumblr @bambi-la-bella ♡ I wanted to live in the images I collected. I created mood boards. I imagined worlds within those photographs. I dreamt of her adventures. I created scenarios in my head.

My writing has always been vivid and cinematic. I have Tumblr to thank for that. I always knew my aesthetic was meaningful in some sort of way, and I wanted my art to reflect it through and through. Present day, I’m building a whole brand surrounding my aesthetic, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

At the time, I still never felt like I could be a writer. Not the kind of writer I wanted to be. I didn’t think I could create fantasy or fairytales. I did try my hand at storytelling though. But I never touched LOVE LETTERS TO THE SEA. I would always write these shitty John Green inspired contemporaries about manic pixie dream girls and runaway teens who’d road trip across the world, escaping their problems instead of confronting them. I’d write about girls like Effy Stonem and Alaska Young, who were broken and beautiful, but not in the way my dream girl was . . . unlike her, they were missing one thing. They weren’t filled with love. I didn’t know how to channel it. I didn’t know how to love myself. All I knew was that I was destructive. I was chaos incarnate. And I wanted to be free.

Senior year, I gave up on writing for good.

I was extremely lost when I began college. It’s not something I want to get into, but I was so empty. Waking up every morning hurt. My second semester of freshman year, I decided to join a sorority. I was looking for friends, looking to feel like I belonged to something special. Only, I didn’t feel like I belonged . . . not really. I didn’t feel like myself. I don’t even really think I knew who I was at the time either. But I knew I wasn’t a pretty prefect instagram model. I wasn’t skinny and tiny like all my friends. I always felt a need to keep up with them. I wanted to look like them, act like them, be like them. I had no one else to look up to at that point. The thing is, they did made me feel special. When I was with them, I felt powerful, like nothing could hurt me. It was all an illusion. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t like them. Not in the way I wanted to be.

Then I came across Gabriella Demartino, and everything changed.

If you don’t know who Gabi is, she’s an American YouTuber who celebrates all things vintage, glam, and girly. I instantly became obsessed with her life and style. I began dressing like her, doing my makeup like her, embracing things I actually loved. She made me realize I didn’t care about raves or frat parties. I wanted to go to tea. I wanted to watch the Nutcracker Ballet and go vintage dress shopping. I wanted sleepovers with champagne and Audrey Hepburn films on repeat. In my greatest fantasies, I imagined shopping at Chanel, living in Paris, dining at Laduree! . . . Gabi made me realize I wanted to create a life worth living. I wanted to be me. I wanted to be the girl from my dreams from that once upon a time.

One winter day, Gabi posted this video she created for Christmas time. It was inspired by The Princess and the Pauper, and so whimsical to me. I wanted to live in that story. I wanted to twirl around in a lacy dress and munch on sugar cookies. I wanted to fall asleep by the fire with a ribbon in my hair and play dress up in her walk-in closet. I wanted to create something just like it. I wanted to . . . I wanted to write. After two years, I wanted to write.

♡ a picture from the video that inspired it all ♡

Here’s the tea . . . when I began writing LOVE LETTERS TO THE SEA (which back then was called SWEET ROSE), I was working at a dead end job. And when I say dead end, I mean DEAD. END. We had no manager. Our shop owner rarely ever stopped by. Nobody really cared about what we were supposed to be doing (we were a bunch of 18-20 year olds with no supervision) . . . and there was a computer. Right where the cash wrap was. I was alone during my shift. We had no customers that day. And so, I began to write . . . and write . . . and write. I wrote until I had my very first chapter about Lila Rose Li. Everything I’d learned in high school culminated to this very moment. My lyrical prose. My aesthetic. And my story. (which at the time was VERY different).

I was extremely proud of my first chapter! I wanted to share it with the world! I . . . I wanted to become an author.

I wanted to become an author.

That was always a dream I had in high school, but I never thought that it would ever come true. Instead, I was in a sorority, trying to be someone I wasn’t . . . studying fashion, which I was failing at and hated . . . but most importantly, I wasn’t being true to myself. Being an author was a dream I had that felt exclusively . . . mine.

I decided to take the whole writing thing seriously. And to do so, I told my friends so that they could hold me accountable. “Hey, I want to be a published author!” I said one day. I’m not sure if anyone actually took me seriously at the time, but I let them read my writing as I go, excited that I was writing for someone other than myself. However, Sydney would critique me as I went, which made me realize . . . oh shit. I’m still not ready to tell this story the way I want. Will I ever be ready? HOW will I ever be ready?

And so, I took the biggest risk I could. The year before I was supposed to graduate college, I decided to change my major to Creative Writing. My mother cried. She thought I was being absolutely ridiculous. She told me she’d never believe in me until I proved myself to her (news flash: present day she supports my writing immensely and prays for me to get a book deal every single night). But at the time . . . I was a disgrace. I was the dishonorable child who didn’t care what mom and dad thought. It’s true. I didn’t care. I’d risk it all to become the writer I always dreamt of being. Even if that meant my family hated me.

Despite the discourse with my family, this is still probably my favorite part of the journey — being a creative writing major, finding my people, my voice, and my best friend: @chloegracewrites ♡ It started with dinner parties with classmates I’d met in CW 301. We’d sit around a cheese plate, drink wine, and talk about our story ideas. It was the most wonderful time of my life. I finally felt like I fit in somewhere after searching forever. But when I met Chloe . . . I can’t even tell you how it changed my life.

The day I met her I felt like we were two halves of a whole. We bonded over our love for Laini Taylor, and eventually had our first “creative writing date” where we just gushed about writing instead of actually writing. Most of my brainstorming was done with her. She helped me realize ideas I hadn’t even fully formed yet. In fact, I plotted the concept for my final version of LOVE LETTERS TO THE SEA with her just about a year ago (In August, when I started my final draft). When I think of becoming a serious writer, I think of Chloe. I think about how she pushed me, and how she was the only one out of my peers I trusted to make me better. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

A lot happened before I actually started to get . . . good.

I’m not going to lie, when I first started my creative writing classes, I thought I was hot shit. Unlike my peers, I already had a style. I had a story and an aesthetic and I had a voice. Only . . . I didn’t realize that voice wasn’t good. I used to cry every time we had workshop. I didn’t understand that my peers were just trying to make me better. It wasn’t until my teacher turned mentor (let’s call him MDL) lit a damn fire beneath my ass. He returned my first writing assignment to me. I was less than enthused by the grade. Of course, I cried. I cried and cried and was probably known as the girl who cried! But above all, I was pissed! I wanted to be better than this. I knew I was better than this!

I thought about my parents. I remembered everything I sacrificed for my dreams. I thought of quitting my sorority, of quitting fashion, of leaving all my friends behind to follow my own path . . . but most importantly, I remembered that I wanted to be a writer. And if I wanted to be a writer, I sure as hell had to take things seriously.

My inner slytherin LEAPED out. I was vicious when it came to perfection. I would accept nothing less. In the end, I still cried. But I cried like Azula in the last episode of ATLA: upset that I didn’t win, upset that I wasn’t perfect. My obsession was sick, and yet . . . I was oddly proud of myself. I knew I’d stop at nothing to be the best writer I could be. I wrote twice every day: once in the morning, and once at night. Mind you, I had a job, went to school, and worked an internship at the time. Eventually, one of my professors broke me. He deemed me emotionally unstable. He called me a distraction to the rest of the class because of my perfectionism. And just like that, I realized how insane I’d gotten, and how obsessed with perfection I’d become. But even then, I was thankful. When I got kicked out of class, I scrapped my whole novel for the third time and began again.

Another fire was lit, and I was going to prove him wrong.

I decided I wanted to go to grad school to get my MFA in Childrens and Young Adult Writing at the New School in New York. Partially because this professor told me I wasn’t a “serious enough writer” for grad school and that I “needed help.” Boy did that make me mad! I’ll show you, I said to myself. I worked twice as hard, but this time, without the tears or self destruction. You know that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Miranda tells Andrea “you’re not working hard enough” after Andrea bent over backwards for her job? Well I had that moment too. And just like Andrea, I collected myself, and worked harder than hard. I was basically the Elle Woods of the Creative Writing Department, and I HAD to prove myself.

And boy, did I work hard as hell.

Remember that other professor, MDL? Oh yeah. By the end of the year, he went from being critical of my writing to praising it. He even offered me a mentorship (mind you, this was super cool because he’s an award winning author). I won’t give away too much, but I am so thankful for his guidance. By the end of that semester, one of my peers had told me something I’d never forget. She said, “You know Kiana, I’ve always admired how seriously you take criticism. I’m impressed with how hard you work to become the best writer you can be.” I was so proud of myself in that moment.

Although, I think I’m quite different now. After falling in love with my novel, it’s hard for me to accept anyone else’s opinion other than my own. But again . . . I’m getting ahead of myself.

That summer, August to be exact, my novel was no longer SWEET ROSE. It was no longer DEVIL’S ROSE, or DEVIL’S ROSE 2.0. It was . . . LOVE LETTERS TO THE SEA. I remember blurting out my ideas for the rewrite to Chloe, and having them not make sense out loud. She seemed to understand me though. For some reason, I think she always has, even when I don’t think I make any sense at all. We talked over my plot, and when I sat down to write . . . it felt like the story I always wanted to tell.

A year after my chaotic semester of getting kicked out of class with a permanent W on my transcript, I no longer felt the need to go to grad school. To my surprise, I was proud of how I’d evolved (plus COVID happened lol). However, all of that hard work from last year still paid off. I got accepted anyways with 50% of my tuition covered. It was a merit scholarship based on my application alone (BASED ON MY OPENING CHAPTERS OF LOVE LETTERS TO THE SEA)!!! I was in disbelief! Take that mr. professor who said I wasn’t serious enough for grad school!

By the time I finished writing my novel in May of 2020, I felt like my story was a work of art. It was my story. The story of my heart. And I had finally created the version of it I’d always dreamed of. But again, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Flashback to March of 2020, my life began to change even more. I joined writing Twitter pre-COVID, and found my community. With the pandemic going on, I began to create a lot of online friendships. I was connecting with so many other writers, and I learned a lot from them all.

But my most successful online friendship wasn’t found through Twitter. It was through here on Tumblr. I was convinced I had met my soulmate: @wistful-giselle ♡

Speaking to Giselle felt like every Lana Del Rey song I’d ever listened to. It felt like reading Romeo & Juliet and The Great Gatsby for the first time again. She spun poetry unlike anything I had ever read (and is a great inspiration behind my prose). She reminded me that my writing isn’t just about the story . . . it’s about the language too. She inspired me to make sure every page was perfumed and lyrical, and before sending my novel out to readers, I did one big revision with her in mind. I wanted to impress myself, but I also wanted to impress her. She was the most talented writer I had ever met.

Giselle ended up being the first person to ever read my novel from start to finish (and in a single sitting too). For that, she holds a special place in my heart.

Then came my beta readers. Another person read it all in one sitting: Chloe. Then another. And another. And another. In total, five people read my entire novel in one whole sitting. I was speechless. I still am. Even my CPs flooded me with praise and compliments. I didn’t realize it at the time, but within two weeks, I thought that I was ready to query because of the successful response I had.

I believed in myself, and in my eyes, I thought my novel was perfect (especially because of the validation from readers). Looking back on it now, I’m not entirely sure I was ready. I think that perhaps I was overly confident. Maybe, I still am.

I started querying in July of this year. I cannot even speak to the amount of rejections I received between now and then. People told me I was ready. They said that agents would swoop me up immediately. In fact, I thought I’d be agented in about a week or so! Boy was I wrong. That’s not how things work at all.

This part of my journey is probably the darkest. I don’t think I was ever really prepared for it. Rejection, after rejection, after rejection came. I started to lose hope after only a month. I was confused. I didn’t understand what was wrong with my novel. I still don’t really understand it. LOVE LETTERS TO THE SEA is everything I ever wanted it to be. It’s everything I worked so hard at perfecting. It’s just like how I feel about Lana’s music: so perfectly me that nobody else could ever imitate it. I love my story. I think I always will.

I know I might appear to be doing well on social media to some of you despite all of the rejections. To people who don’t know the details of my life, I probably even seem successful. During SFFpit, I was the top tweet of the whole contest with over 300+ retweets and 7 requests (there were more, those were just the ones that I was interested in).

In the end, they were all rejections.

I never wanted anyone to know that. I’m so thankful for my following, I don’t want to let anyone down. But at the end of the day, I also want to be authentic with my audience. I want you to know that even I fail.

In March of 2020, I started with 200 followers on my Twitter account. By September of 2020, I’d grown my following to 1,000+ followers, which I am so thankful for. I know that number may not seem like a lot to some people, but as someone who has never had a rapidly growing following, it means the world to me. I love everyone who supports me more than they’ll ever know.

I see everything. I notice how many of you there are who tell me you can’t wait to see my book on the shelves. I see your praise and encouragement and support. I read all of your messages. I respond to every one, or at least I try. Sometimes I don’t feel like I deserve it. But I am so, so thankful for it all. It’s the reason I keep believing in myself, even in my darkest hours.

All I’ve ever wanted is to feel seen.

And I do. I feel seen by all of you. But I also feel like a fraud sometimes. The truth is, even I get rejections. A lot of them. More than you would think from the outside looking in. And yeah, it hurts. It hurts because I love my story. It hurts because I believe in myself. It hurts because you believe in me too.

So why aren’t I there yet?

I don’t think I’ve ever felt true heartbreak until now. Querying is the most vulnerable, brutal thing I’ve ever put myself through.

But it does get better. There are some good days too. You might think I’m just being dramatic since the present day marker of this journey actually ends on a very happy note. But that’s the thing about querying. It’s up and down, up and down. It’s unpredictable and scary and it takes a lot of guts to do. But enough on that.

This post is getting long, so I’m not going to go into detail about pitch contests. All you need to know is that I participated in a huge contest called PitMad, and to my suprise, I made it into the top 25 tweets of the contest, with 400+ retweets and about 8 agent requests.

And even more surprising, I f*cked up my queries on accident, and still received several fulls 3 days later (lol). My point is, maybe it’s not all about being “perfect”. Maybe it’s about having a story you love and believe in, and finding the right match for it. 90% of my rejections are based on my story “not being the right fit.” It doesn’t mean my story is bad. It just means I haven’t found the right person to represent me. I know I have a strong story that I love deeply, and that others love deeply too. It wasn’t until my fulls started coming in that I began believing in myself again. Thankfully, I have a group of wonderful people who never once stopped believing in me, even when my light dimmed out. (you know who you are ♡).

I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t even know if my fulls will turn into offers. All I can do is believe in myself, and know that my story is good enough for someone to want to represent it. And hey, if it doesn’t work out, I can always revise. I did it once before . . . in college, when I was still pushing myself to grow. Sometimes I forget that we never really stop growing. There is always room to evolve.

Maybe I was right to believe in my novel so fiercely. Maybe I was wrong.

Honestly, only time can tell. I have a hopeful feeling about my recent requests, and I am very excited about the agents viewing my work. But I also know how devastating querying is. I don’t want to let myself down. Falling from grace and reaching my lowest lows has taught me that I’m not perfect. In fact, there’s no such thing as perfect. I am constantly evolving, and this isn’t the end of my journey.

It’s just the beginning.

Love Always,

Kiana ♡

#writingcommunity #writing #youngadultwriting #writingjourney #fantasywriters #fantasy writing #young adult #writing blog #querying #queryinglitagents #lana del rey #gabi demartino

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villanevest · 5 years

Text

You’re Mine [pt.1] - villanelle’s perspective in 2x08

okay so i've seen a lot of freaking out post-finale and i want to say: it's all alright. yes, it was a pretty shocking ending, but honestly, i think it was really good for the characters, and for the show. before anybody yells at me for saying that, i'm going to be explaining myself in three posts. in this post, we're going to be looking at villanelle’s perspective on the events of the episode, and next post, we’ll look at eve's, and this will hopefully make their actions a little clearer, and villaneve's future seem less uncertain. in another post, i'll explain why these kinds of tough, dramatic choices are important for the overall health of the show.

let the deep dive begin. VILLANELLE’s thoughts and feelings in the finale villanelle's first really significant scene this episode is the aaron-villanelle-eve showdown at breakfast. remember that last night was villanelle and aaron's conversation about being voids (2x07), and now that she's seen the murder tape, villanelle really feels like she's got a clean read on aaron -- enough to predict and manipulate him, as she would anyone else. seeing raymond's picture tells her it's time to get out, so she essentially invites eve in to supervise the end of the operation. villanelle has the power -- she's seen aaron's kill technique and clearly decided she can beat him, if it comes to a struggle -- and she's comfortable with the confrontation.

and then aaron offers for her to come work for him. crucially, he frames it as, "you'll never be bored again [with me]". we know for villanelle, boredom is her great vice -- she falls into it easily, it controls her, and she's trying desperately to escape it. aaron's offer in undeniably tempting -- we've seen all through 2x07 the luxury on offer -- but it's when he says "all of it" that villanelle makes up her mind.

because eve would hate her if she went with aaron, and it can't be "all of it" if "everything" doesn't include eve. here, she decides that eve, on her own, makes villanelle feel more alive/less bored than any material object or orchestrated murder aaron can provide. that's why she turns to eve -- she's saying, look what i'll give up for you.

i dont think she'd necessarily have killed aaron if he hadn't asked her to hurt eve. he might've been a good option to keep on the backburner in case eve ever gave her the green light. but he's a threat, so she gets rid of him. eve freaks out, and villanelle tries to comfort her, as best as she knows how.

"it's okay", "i'll take care of it", reassuring physical contact. she's probably a bit smug too because now she's killed two people in front of eve, and eve's only upset because of their operation, not because of the murder; for villanelle, this is another indication that violence is not a problem to eve.

i think after this, though, villanelle becomes a bit worried that eve feels like she doesn't have control, which she knows is something eve needs (see: 2x06, when eve was micromanaging the mission). we’ll get back to this. villanelle tries to keep the keel level -- she skirts around the picture of raymond, not wanting to pile on, and slaps eve to start her out of her tailspin. from villanelle's perspective, the morning has probably not been ideal, but it's running fairly smoothly. so villanelle makes her first overture, both because it's what she's wanted this whole time (since konstantin said, "if anything happens, you and eve are on your own"), and because she thinks it'll stop eve from running in to danger.

once she realises eve is serious about it mattering, she stops protesting, and starts helping. and then she runs into konstantin, the second most important person in the world to her, and in her mind, he betrays her. she tells him that she and eve are the same. this is particularly notable at this juncture, because he has just picked his family over villanelle; this comment is partly a bite-back -- villanelle believes she will be eve's first choice, even if she wasn’t his.

then we have the hotel fight with raymond, which again, only really begins once he threatens eve.

unrelated, but i believe raymond's claim "i'm a real somebody" may prove vital in season 3. is he perhaps a high-ranking member of the twelve who likes to indulge in a little recreational axe murder? if yes, then eve may have real problems on that front later.

when raymond is strangling her, villanelle is definitely in a bad way. i dont think, at that point, she has the strength or cognizance to reach for the gun. then eve hits raymond with an axe, and villanelle gets a second to breathe. this is where we get a callback to her saying, "you wanted to save me. and you did." if villanelle is concerned eve feels a lack of control, then this is a chance to return it to her. her encouraging eve to kill raymond is motivated by more than just practicality. firstly, villanelle needs to prove herself right to konstantin -- after he's shaken her faith, she needs absolute unwavering certainty that she and eve are the same. secondly, it binds them, just like the stabbing did in season one. thirdly, villanelle finds a liberation and excitement and power in killing, and she wants to give eve a chance to feel that. finally, and least significantly, i think villanelle probably just found the idea of eve killing someone hot and wanted to watch.

eve starts going into shock again, so villanelle gets her away from the sensory input -- takes off her bloodied shirt and directs her quickly from the scene. she's very gentle and physical in this moment, both because she wants to take care of eve and make sure she feels safe, and because she feels closer to eve than ever before. "like us".

villanelle holds onto eve as they move through rome. she has already turned down one chance (with konstantin's car) to run away without eve, and she's definitely not losing her, especially now. in the tunnels, she lets eve smash through the wall alone, because she can tell she needs a way to get out her excess energy and deal with the overload of sensation.

but the gravity of eve's response is more than villanelle expected. she thought eve would probably panic a little, and then right herself. even though they're both on the psychopathy spectrum, villanelle (in addition to being further along that spectrum) was raised with very little moral framework, whereas eve has spent the last forty years assimilated to society and ideas of good/bad, and these are integral to her sense of self.

but eve says "yeah", she is okay, and villanelle kind of assumes that things are alright, after this beat of catharsis. eve is taking a bit longer to process, but that's fine. maybe villanelle can take her mind off it, right? so she starts with talking about dinner, and then pitches her big idea: alaska.

villanelle has probably been entertaining the abstract idea of "alaska" for a while. she has either watched or help eve lose tethers to her old life (e.g. niko), and villanelle wants a way to make their new connection permanent. she doesn't want eve to vanish like anna did. she picks alaska itself because of the snow globe, which as i said in another post, makes her think that eve's been there before, and liked it enough to buy a souvenir. also, it's in america, so eve would feel like she was on home turf. villanelle clearly prefers europe, but i think alaska has a faraway allure, and she's prepared to compromise.

she reminds eve that they could be normal as another way of allaying her worries post-murder. she's saying, not everything has to change, don't stress, you don't have to kill all the time. we can have half my life and half yours.

and then eve sees the gun. villanelle knows that not shooting raymond was manipulative, otherwise she wouldn't try and distract eve from the fact she had a weapon all along. then she defends, "you had it under control" -- like i mentioned before, she’s trying to return power to eve, remind her of her agency, assure that she's not spiralling.

in this situation, villanelle sees herself like the babysitter who has lied to the child about holding on to the back of the bike to get them to ride without training wheels -- it's for their own good, to teach them their own capabilities. it made me think this:

and then:

this really cemented for me that villanelle saw raymond's death as almost a gift to eve, a way to give her something she'd been missing, that villanelle was SURE she'd, if not necessarily immediately enjoy, then find valuable and help her understand herself. which is why she says she's proud -- she thinks eve has had a personal growth moment. she tells eve, "you made us safe", which mirrors, "you wanted to save me and you did". the "we can look after ourselves now" not only affirms their similarities, but is villanelle's way of saying, you can hold your own, you're in control, which she thinks eve needs to hear. but eve replies that she's going home, leaving. the exact thing villanelle wanted NOT to happen. it's a rejection of what villanelle sees as a big shared experience for them (raymond's death), and of "alaska", which translates to a rejection of villanelle herself. then we have this:

which i think shows a lot of villanelle's character development this season. she's clearly feeling a lot here, but primarily hurt (eve doesn't want her) and fear (eve will leave; she's not enough). konstantin just abandoned her too, by her measure, so villanelle's already more emotionally unstable than she's been. BUT. she takes a breath, and she tries to reopen lines of communication.

when eve says villanelle wants her to be a mess, i think that upsets villanelle quite a bit, because we've been shown that eve is most exciting and attractive to her when she has agency and power, and also because from villanelle's perspective, she's spent half the time trying to STOP eve from becoming a mess. she's held her and reassured her. villanelle wants to steady her again. villanelle does believe that eve wanted this: wanted to kill raymond, maybe wanted alaska, certainly wanted villanelle. part of what makes villanelle so fun for us to watch is her short-sightedness and impatience, but here all that means is that she hasn't got the long-term empathy to see how this might be utterly rearranging eve's worldview. as we'll talk about in eve's post, eve has actually recovered remarkably well (villanelle's efforts to return her sense of control have worked, and she begins to dominate this exchange, and feel confident again), but she's experiencing A LOT of cognitive dissonance (she's a killer / doesn't think of herself as a killer), and she turns that into anger, and projects that anger onto villanelle. a perfectly justified trauma response. villanelle genuinely doesn't understand why eve is having such a strong reaction to this. it'd be like if you thought your friend would really like chocolate, so you left some on the table for them, and then they got mad at you for making them break their diet, which you'd thought they were never actually serious about. no, that's not at all what it's like in actuality, but it's essentially how villanelle is reading this. "you love me." "no." again, villanelle tries one last way of reaching out, and putting herself on the line to prove to eve how serious she is -- "i love you."

but eve tells her she doesn't, that she doesn't know what love is. and that really angers villanelle, because after so long doubting herself, knowing she's a psychopath and wondering how authentic her emotional experience is, she FINALLY got closure last night, with aaron. as we discussed in my post about that, she now believes what she feels is real, and so it's especially crushing to have it questioned by eve. but in this heated, stressful exchange, when she feels rejected after everything (especially considering how attached she probably was to "alaska"), she retreats to the relatively emotionless security of the "i / it".

villanelle's sense of entitlement comes screaming through here. from her point of view, she's done so much for eve. just hours earlier at breakfast, she chose eve over aaron's offer of everything else money can buy. she had the alaska plan. she supported eve when she wanted to go back into the death-trap hotel and get the recordings. villanelle is SURE she's done EVERYTHING right. she's played the game perfectly and is somehow still losing. she's not used to losing, to failing, to not having what she wants. villanelle is addicted to instant gratification (she wants something, she gets it asap), and eve has been the only exception. she worked for her. but the extra time and effort is suddenly for nothing.

and so villanelle does the only thing she can think of, and she moves eve from the category of "special"/"wanted"/"important" to "not special"/"not wanted"/"not important". it's literally emotional triage. yes, villanelle feels things more than aaron, more than most psychopaths, but what she still does have is an ability to mute those feelings, if not entirely, then by quite a lot. so she shoots eve. the logic probably is that if eve isn't around, then villanelle can reconstruct the narrative -- there's nobody else eve's with instead of her, because eve's gone; eve would probably have come back by now if she could, etc. but she doesn't commit entirely, because she doesn't aim to kill. instead, she chooses to replicate how eve stabbed her, because it's something eve "think[s] about all the time". this becomes a don't forget me. it's a think about this, too. is it also an expression of anger? absolutely. villanelle's default is destruction. eve hurt her. she wants to hurt eve. it's a childish tit-for-tat equation. villanelle externalises her feelings, because she can't reckon with them when they're all inside. if she's hungry or annoyed or bored then someone's going to know about it. and here, there is her instinct, and the gun is already in her hand.

she fires.

will villanelle regret this? will she rationalise it? will she stay angry at eve or reconsider? i'll get into that in my write-up about narrative choices for the show. i've also posted another one of these about eve, and how eve's thinking and feeling (check #villanevest writes). i'm a fan of both eve and villanelle, and i think they were acting in ways that made sense to them. i get that we want them to be happy, but i think it's ignoring a lot of context to blame one or the other of them. remember, killing eve is a show about dangerous and irrational people doing dangerous and irrational things.

#ke #killing eve #killing eve spoilers #ke spoilers #killing eve finale #killing eve 2x08 #ke 2x08 #ke finale #villanelle #eve polastri #villaneve #villanevest #villanevest writes #villainever writes #villanelle x eve #eve x villanelle

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nokomiss · 4 years

Note

Gonna take this as an opportunity to request a rare pair. Either May/Tony or May/Rhodey for “volunteer chaperones”

It was a mistake. A complete, total, absolute mistake. May was never, ever doing this again.

She looked around, overwhelmed. Yep. She was still surrounded by teenagers armed with battle robots they’d built themselves. Allegedly they were all to remain at their workstations with proper protective equipment, but they were teenagers. They were absolutely not going to wait until the competition to try out their lasers and saws on each other.

“Peter, I’m gonna tap out,” May said, trying not to wince as Peter’s robot unfurled a whirring blade and attempted to cut a piece of lumber in half. “I’ve gone through too much to watch you chop off a thumb now.”

“My thumb is nowhere near the blade,” Peter said, waving his hands in a manner she supposed was meant to be reassuring. “Besides, you never know, it could grow back.” He gave her a shit-eating grin, and May nobly managed to refrain from calling her kid an asshole.

“Chaperones are allowed coffee breaks, right?” May looked longingly towards the exit.

“You’re supposed to supervise me the whole time I am engaging the robot,” Peter recited, making air quotes with his fingers. “It’s in the Teen Battle Robot Competition handbook.”

May rolled her eyes at him. “I’ll be gone ten minutes, tops. Cover for me.”

“May!” Peter hissed, adorably frazzled for someone who fought crime on the regular. She ignored him and wove her way through the crowd, trying not to focus on the terrifying murder robots the children were creating all around her. This was so seriously not her thing. She slipped on her sunglasses and headed out the door, aiming for the nearest coffee shop.

She aimed to be gone for ten minutes, though thanks to the line and the fact that she really didn’t want to return to robot hell immediately, it stretched out past half an hour. She finally returned, iced coffee in hand, pushing through the door while scanning the room for Peter.

Instead she ran directly into someone. Her hand holding the coffee bumped into her chest, covering her top with iced coffee.

“Shit!.” She shook droplets of coffee off her hand as she transferred the cup to her dry hand, and patted at her shirt with the napkin she’d had wrapped around the cup.

“By all means, save the shirt, screw the bystander.”

It couldn’t be. May looked slowly up, still dabbing the napkin at her chest, to see Tony Stark standing there, grinning at her.

“What are you doing here?” Crap, that was rude. May tried not to be rude to Tony, because while he could be supremely irritating and smug, he had done things for her kid that she could never repay him for. But… what was he doing here? And dressed like, well.. A farmer. She quietly chose not to question it too much. Besides, this was her time with Peter, as ill-suited to the outing as she might be.

“Same as you, I assume,” Tony said, flagging down someone who magically had a towel on hand. He offered it to her with a, “I can help if you want.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, thanks,” May said, but she accepted the towel. She dried up the worst of the spill -- it was sheer luck that she was wearing a dark top that wouldn’t stain, merely clung to her damply. Tony seemed to appreciate it, though she raised an eyebrow at him when she noticed him looking. He had the decency to quit immediately.

May didn’t love the idea of Tony popping in and taking over her time with Peter, though, no matter how little she was enjoying the killer robots. It was exactly up his alley, and she should bow gracefully out, but… “I hope you aren’t here to be Peter’s chaperone. I’ve got that covered.”

“And bless you for it, that kid is a disaster,” Tony said fondly. “I’m here for that sarcastic little bastard over there.” He gestured towards a kid in a faded AC/DC shirt who was using a controller to aim what appeared to be a ray gun mounted atop his robot at the ceiling.

“You don’t have a kid,” May said with certainty.

“Nope,” Tony agreed. “But Harley’s a kid I watch out for, and he’s almost as bright as your kid.”

Pride laced his words, and he was watching the boy with a soft fondness that made May feel immediately guilty for her own possessiveness moments before. She of all people should understand the bond you could forge with a child not of your own blood, and know the legitimacy of such a bond.

“He have superpowers too?”

“Nope, and it’s probably a good thing,” Tony said cheerfully. “Think Peter will notice I’m here?”

“You think he hasn’t already?” May said. It was the right answer, Tony’s eyes lit up in a genuine way that made it clear to her how often she saw him playacting at happiness.

“Come on, I’ll introduce you to Harley,” Tony offered. “Unless you want me to get you out of those wet clothes first?” He waggled his eyebrows in a way that was so over-the-top that May just laughed.

“Shockingly I didn’t bring a wardrobe change to a day outing. It’ll dry.” Hopefully she wouldn’t smell too awful when it did.

“Here.” Tony shrugged off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders like a letterman’s jacket before she could think to protest. Despite the rough material, it was warm and smelled like Tony -- expensive and a little much -- but May didn’t take it off.

She didn’t even want to, which… was something she would have to examine more closely. She was no stranger to gallant gestures, and she didn’t normally accept them from people she wasn’t interested in. Tony was a force of nature, she told herself. He wouldn’t accept it back even if you tried.

Plus, there were way too many teenage boys in the room for her to really want to walk around in a cold, wet shirt that clung uncomfortably.

Tony flung his arm over her shoulder, apparently deciding that if his jacket was allowed to do so, so was he, and he led her over to the kid he’d claimed.

Harley was the polar opposite from Peter -- confident, sarcastic in a biting way, and treated Tony like he was any other human being. It was a sharp contrast to the hero worship Peter tended towards, and the shyness and sweetness that she was always worried was going to be worn away by the world they lived in. But watching Harley and Tony together made it obvious that deep down Harley was another kid who had been given the short stick by life and was trying his best to carve his own path through it.

Harley also kept giving her what could only kindly be called the stink eye. It took her a moment to work out why -- he’d watched Tony stroll up with his arm around her shoulder, she was wearing Tony’s jacket like they were going steady, and it was fairly obvious that her expertise was not in mechanical engineering.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what the kid was assuming about her, and May couldn’t figure out a casual way to tell him how very wrong he was. Finally she settled on, “I gotta go see how Peter’s robot is coming along.”

“You know he’s actually lined up to battle Harley’s robot,” Tony said, and it was obvious from Harley’s confused expression that Tony had not divulged his connection with the competition.

He looked back and forth between them. “Who’s this Peter kid?”

“An intern,” Tony replied smoothly.

Harley was clearly not satisfied with this answer. “You’ve never offered me an internship.”

“This is a different thing,” Tony replied. May winced; Tony was entirely too new to managing teenagers to understand what he’d just done. Harley’s expression darkened and May knew without a doubt that Peter’s robot was a dead machine rolling.

“I’m just going to head back over there,” May said, gesturing vaguely towards Peter’s distant station and hurrying off before she got somehow wrapped up in the argument Harley was about to start.

She hustled off, and only realized she was still wearing Tony’s jacket with Peter raised an eyebrow at her.

“I ran into Tony -- literally-- and dumped my coffee on myself,” she explained.

“Very, uh, gentlemanly of him to offer his coat,” Peter said,. “And why was he even here? He hasn’t said hi to me.” He checked his phone, where she could only see messages from Ned bemoaning his parents for choosing this weekend for a family trip.

“Apparently,” May said, stretching out the word to show it was news to her, too, “he’s mentoring a kid in this competition. I didn’t get the details.”

May marvelled as Peter’s expression became a mirror for one Harley had worn moments before. Tony really knew how to pick ‘em.

“What? What kid?” Peter stood on his tippy-toes, looking around to try to spot Tony. His expression darkened even more when he found him. “That kid? He’s the three-time champion! Last year his robot managed to freeze and set his opponent on fire simultaneously!”

May’s eyebrows raised. “You know him?”

“Some other kids were talking about him earlier,” Peter explained. “They somehow didn’t mention that Tony was with him.”

May thought back to Tony’s appearance and he had appeared more low-key than usual. The jacket she was still wearing was denim, which… she wouldn’t have thought was in Tony’s wardrobe at all, honestly. “I think he’s in disguise.”

“Huh,” Peter said. “I didn’t know he knew how to do that.”

“To be fair, I only realized it in retrospect.” May shrugged. “I think the fact that he isn’t announcing his presence is doing most of the disguise work for him. No one would believe Tony Stark would show up at a battle robot competition and not try to win.”

“He is though,” Peter said darkly. “With that kid.”

“Well,” May said, looking at Peter’s robot, “guess we just have to kick that kid’s ass.”

Peter grinned.

An hour later -- and the time seemed to magically fly by much faster than before, now that May had a goal in mind -- it was time for Peter’s first battle. He wasn’t up against Harley until the third round, and May felt a little proud that Tony had assumed Peter would make it through to the finals without any help. Her boy was brilliant, and it always gave her a warm feeling when others acknowledged it, too.

Especially Tony, but she would never, ever tell him that.

Peter’s robot destroyed his competition in under a minute, and twenty minutes later, in his semifinal round, he took out a robot that seemed to be made entirely of buzzsaws in an agonizing three minute match.

He won, though, and they settled in to watch the competition. Harley’s robot had destroyed his first competitor in thirty seconds, and in this battle, he revealed that he’d somehow installed a flame launcher on the underside that melted the wiring on the robot he was fighting in the semifinal.

Finally, it came down to Harley and Peter. Tony was beaming proudly, and May had no idea how anyone failed to notice it was him, flannel or no.

“Kick his ass, kiddo,” May told Peter encouragingly. “You’ve got this.”

Peter gave her a double-thumbs up, and marched into battle.

May slid over to where Tony was watching, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as their kids prepared to destroy each other. “Hope you’re prepared for defeat.”

“You know I can’t pick favorites,” Tony said, “except for how there’s no chance in hell that Harley’s not gonna win this.”

“Wanna bet?” May said teasingly.

“Why, Ms. Parker, I wouldn’t have taken you for a gambling woman, but yes, yes I do,” Tony said. “My kid wins, I get to take you out for that dinner.”

Tony had been threatening to take her out to dinner for months. “And if my kid wins?” she asked.

“Why, you have to take me out, of course. Terms have to be fair.” Tony’s grin should make her want to smack him, but May had found that the bastard tended to grow on you.

She considered it half a moment, but… what the hell. She held out her hand to shake on it.

When she turned back to the rink, she noticed that both Peter and Harley were giving them the stinkeye, even as the ref counted down for the battle to begin.

Once it did, there was absolute carnage. May saw a streak of fluid that looked alarmingly like blood arc through the air after a saw unfurled off Peter’s robot and surprise-attacked Harley’s. Then as Harley’s robot retaliated, there was fire and sparks. When the smoke cleared, both robots were incapacitated.

“A tie!” declared the ref, much to the disappointment of both boys.

May glanced over at Tony. “Guess it’s a draw.”

“So we have to do two dinners, obviously,” Tony said without skipping a beat.

From the corner of her eye, she could see Harley and Peter turn towards each other, and she was proud to see Peter offer Harley a handshake. A moment’s hesitation, eyes cast towards Tony, but Harley shook firmly. She had a feeling that was not going to turn out great for Tony.

“It’s a date.” Tony continued, looking so overly confident that May knew that he was hoping that she’d agree.

May’s attention crashed back into focus on the man in front of her. This could go so very badly, and there was Peter to think about, for when things inevitably crashed and burned, but…

May had made most of her best decisions in life on impulse, and she knew what she wanted to say. “Pick me up at seven.”

#my fic #mcu #may/tony #prompt response #sorry this took forever!#but here it is #angel-gidget

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pitiless-achilles-wept · 4 years

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All I want for Christmas...is a working cancer treatment

Hello friends,

It's getting to be that time of the year again. No, not Christmas, although I'm reliably informed that it will indeed be happening again and soon (a thing I, who haven't bought or made a single gift yet, can't quite believe). It was this time last year that I first called my doctor about the mass in my breast that had become too large--and too tender and painful--to ignore any further. They didn't see me right away...because of the holidays and because for someone with my risk level (basically 0 - at age 34 with not a single person in my family with breast or ovarian cancer) it didn't seem urgent. It was.

And now, tomorrow (Tuesday the 17th), I'll be heading into my oncologist appointment at Penn expecting to hear, based on the results of my scans from Friday the 13th (spooky!) that the initial tumor has gotten bigger again and that I will need to leave the clinical trial and pursue other options. I'm expecting this, though I hope desperately to be wrong, and have a visit to my supervising oncologist at Dana-Farber in Boston planned for the 19th. From there I'll go to Christmas with my parents and New Year's with a friend in Colorado before returning home to whatever new treatment 2020 has in store.

Now, obviously I hate that I'm going through this at all. After I heard about the tumor growth last month I was crushed that I hadn't even managed to make the average time that participants in this particular trial found to make a positive difference (6 months...I got 4). And I still am crushed. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm over it ,or not furious, or not disappointed. But what I especially hate right now is that it feels seasonal and like it's going to ruin my holidays again and stretch on through all the coldest and most miserable months...just like last year. It's a series of bleak anniversaries that I was already dreading even when things were going well. And now that they're not, well, you can imagine how dread is compounded with fear, anger, and sadness.

Since not all of you were there (and since this blog did not exist) let me tell you a little about what it was like at this time last year. [Account below the cut]

As I said above, it was around now (December 19th, actually) that I first called my GP's office to talk to them about the lump I had been aware of (but not really concerned by) for a few weeks. It's likely that it was around for far longer than that - long enough, certainly, for me to be diagnosed Stage 4 from the start. There are a lot of reasons why I didn't "catch it" earlier. (I actually hate this phrasing. It makes it sound like I could or should have been more vigilant and thus bear responsibility for my own illness.) I won't go into them here except to say that the previous year had itself been the worst of my entire life. There was a lot of loss and it's not really an exaggeration to say that it annihilated me. But I was able, with the support of friends and family, to reconstitute myself. I was proud of having done it too. What I didn't realize, though, was that in rebuilding myself some parts were coming back...wrong, almost as though psychic damage had been written on a cellular level.

“Did you know?" "Could you tell?" Nearly everyone asks me these questions, or some variation on them, at some point. I would say that I’d like to ban them from all discussions except that they are all I think of all day, asking myself: Did I know? Could I tell? And (more accusatory) “Why didn’t I know? Why couldn’t I tell?”. Despite knowing better, I still often believe that I brought this upon myself. I believe that I should have noticed sooner or, when I did notice, I should have acted faster. But, the thing was, I just couldn’t stand for another thing to go so horribly wrong in my life. So when I look back at this time, the time before I was aware of a lump in my breast, I can hardly fault myself for not noticing. I first felt that something was wrong with the swelling in my breast that would not go down around Thanksgiving 2018. I Googled furiously and convinced myself repeatedly that it was probably hormones, a cyst, or an infection. I assessed my risk factors (0) and and the chance that something so terrible would happen to me right after this other terrible thing had happened.

Surely, I felt, the universe couldn’t be that cruel.

I called in mid-December and my doctor’s office told me it would be hard to fit me in around the holidays. What I described sounded like it was probably benign and, since my risk level was so low and since I had even had it confirmed that I was cancer-free in 2016 (when they did a spinal tap because my chronic fatigue was so bad and my white blood cell counts so high), they advised me just to come in when I was back in January. I stayed in St. Louis for a memorial service, celebrating the life of the woman who was effectively another grandmother to me--my parents’ oldest and dearest friend--and had a strange feeling the whole time. I remember sitting among her very many friends and family, surrounded by photographs and poetry and music and all the signs of how loved she was, thinking with an improbable certainty that people would soon be remembering me this way and hoping that they would say I had positively affected their lives as much as she had.

Meanwhile, the swelling was huge. It was hot to the touch and ached like a bruise. I tried to see this as a good thing; heat and redness mean infection, which meant it was probably mastitis. I was worried enough to call my parents’ doctor to ask if I should go into the cancer center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He said the same things about how unlikely it was and how it was probably infected. I saw my doctor when I returned and, worried, she nonetheless prescribed me a course of antibiotics. She was also hoping, I think, not to be confronted with the truth.

The antibiotics upset my stomach terribly as did my constant anxiety. After five days with no effect, she gave me a stronger one, which also did nothing. It was now ten days since I had talked to her, a full month since I had first called. She sent me for a biopsy. It was on the 21st of January. On the 24th I heard that the tumor was cancerous. On the 28th, I heard that my cancer was also in my lungs and that I would need more scans and MRIs to determine the full extent of the metastasis. Then the terrifying and seemingly endless cycle of scans and bad news began. I don’t want to rehearse that here, though these months hold a series of bad anniversaries for me. What I want to do is to say that, at a certain point, of course I knew. Unlike most people in my life, who regarded the biopsy almost as a formality, I absolutely thought that I had cancer. Maybe it was just because I try to prepare myself for the worst. (I was still notably unprepared for this.) But maybe it was because I knew my body, even on a subconscious level, and could tell something was amiss.

I do have a sense, too, of when treatments are working or not. I can’t tell you the extent of why I know, often, but the tumor itself is one indicator. It’s very large and when things aren’t working it gets even larger. It ambiently hurts all the time, in a way that is subtle and that it is easy to almost (but never) forget and that is too minimal to mention to people. (Actually, these past two days it has hurt so badly that it feels like someone punched me. I cannot take this to be a good sign.) Since I heard my latest results from my doctor a month ago the tumor has gotten bigger. I probe it all the time, examining myself in the mirror from different angles--bra off, bra on--like when I was so desperately hoping to grow real breasts in middle school. I assess how far it sticks out in one position vs. another and how red it is at certain times. I try to convince myself that the pain is hormonal, that the apparent growth is how I am standing. But that’s just repeating what I was doing at this same time last year, casting around hopefully for an explanation that isn’t the one I fear.

For tomorrow, I hope for the best, but I expect the worst. It may be that you think I’m too worried too soon; I know some of you may. And let me tell you that, although it's contrary to my nature in general, I would love to be wrong. I hope I am. I will do my best to share news here, even in a short post, since I know that those of you along for the journey will be anxious to know too. For tonight, I'm scared. I'm better able to cope with bad news once I know what it is and am able to make a plan or a choice - to exert some control. And I'm certainly (sad to say) not feeling much of the spirit of Christmas, which is a shame since I actually love it. If you have extra love or cheer or, heck, any Miracles on 34th Street (I'm willing to commute!) please send them my way.

Love, Bex

#my life as a cancer patient #breast cancer #stage 4 #mbc #health update #clinical trials #personal #bex writes

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sheeple · 4 years

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The intern | 9: Birthday parties

GIFS NOT MINE. THIS IS ALL FICTION. Genre(s): intern!au / fluff / mild angst Group(s): NCT / Red Velvet Pairing(s): Moon Taeil x fem!reader Summary: The new Elysion Publishings intern is the youngest they ever had. It’s not a problem until she grabs the attention of the IT guy. Warning(s): Age-gap of five years [Masterlist] [Mini masterlist]

The moment I set a foot into the office on my birthday, I knew that this isn’t a day I would forget anytime soon.

As I walk into my department, I get scooped up by Johnny and set on a chair, as he and Taeyong roll me around the office.

I laugh loudly as they push me in a conference room and set me at the far end of the table, a big cup of tea shoved under my nose by Wendy as she gives me a kiss on my cheek, whispering ‘happy birthday’.

My colleagues from the D&D department start to come in, all giving me a bright smile and a birthday card written by all.

“Firstly, we want to wish our youngest intern in like ever a very happy birthday as today, is the day she finally turns twenty!”, announces Johnny and everyone cheers.

“That’s why”, continues Taeyong, going to stand next to Johnny, “we’ve prepared something special for you.”

They both step aside and Wendy presses a button on her laptop. The screen behind them lits up and their faces appear on the screen.

“To our dear dongsaeng, happy birthday and may there follow up many more!”, says Wendy cheerful, throwing confetti in the air.

Taeyong coughs and sticks his tongue out, fishing a piece of paper from it.

“Your big, strong oppa here. Don’t worry little one, you are so you and are already so wise! You probably have more brain cells than all of us combined.” Taeyong joke earns him a hit from both Wendy and Johnny as he pouts.

“As the nitwit was saying”, butts Johnny in. “We want to wish you a happy birthday. May you receive many presents and positivity today and don’t let anyone tell you you aren’t the most badass for moving across the world.”

They end with a loud ‘Fighting!’ before the two guys begin to scream loudly and Wendy ends the video.

I laugh loudly while whipping away a couple of tears.

Other of my colleagues follow up with all positive messages about how they wish me the best, even when I’m going back home.

Mark and Lucas appear next with loud screams. I can understand only a little part of it since both of them are hyper and giggling all the way.

Next, are Yuta, Doyoung, and Winwin. They all wish me a very happy birthday and tell me to hang out with them soon.

As the video switches, we see Team Leader Byun appear on the screen and we all cheer, Mr Byun giving us a shy smile.

“Dear (Y/n), I am truly happy that Kim placed you under my supervision because I never had a better intern then you. You radiate that you enjoy what you do and it shows, giving some of the best work. And I─”

Just as Byun wants to say something, the door bursts open and Team Leader Shin storms in. He grabs the camera and runs away with it.

We all laugh loudly and I clutch my stomach, the whole sight of two grown men chasing each other amuses me immensely.

After Shin lost Byun, he turns towards the camera with a half-smirk. “Well, happy birthday miss (L/n). I wish you much luck and happiness for the remainder of your life. Also, know that a spot on my team is always open”, he says with a wink before we hear Byun scream high-pitched ‘Shin Youngmin!’. The video ends at that and we all laugh at them.

Next thing is my family and friends from back home. My tears fill with eyes as they all tell me they miss me and ask me to come home quick.

My mom sends me lots of love and my dad... he told me he’s proud of me. A smile creeps on my face and I wipe away a tear with the back of my hand. Wendy gives me a napkin and I take it gratefully.

The last one starts pitch black before a voice says, “Is this thing even on?”

I freeze in my chair as I realize it’s Taeil. We hear some rustling before there is a sight; Taeil stands extremely close to the camera with a concentrated look on his face. It’s cute.

“How does this thing even work? Ah, there! He... hey, (Y/n), it’s me. Well, that’s something you already figured out I guess.” Taeil scratches the back of his neck while looking down.

A couple of people snicker as I am concentrated on what he’s going to say next.

“First of all, happy birthday. Second, thank you for coming in my life. It has been so much brighter thanks to you and I just... seem a lot happier than first. That’s what my friends tell me though...”

He flips his hair, that has fallen before his eyes, back while licking his lips. The simple action makes my heart flutter.

“Let’s hang out a lot and”, he coughs awkwardly, “be great friends. Bye-bye!” He quickly waves goodbye before turning the camera off.

I look speechless at the now black screen. That was really something else. My heart in my chest beats rapidly and a swarm of butterflies rage like a hurricane through my body.

Johnny and Taeyong roll me back to my desk and help me settle for the day, not letting me walk towards the coffee machine to grab tea or sugar or anything.

And that’s how it’s going the whole day; the two dorks trailing behind me like a bunch of puppies and every time I want to do something other than my work, they do it for me.

At lunch, I finally manage to shake the two off by rushing into the stairway and walking slowly up a level before taking an elevator to the roof.

I let myself fall onto one of the Fatboys that are scattered around the rooftop, mostly in pairs of two and three, sometimes four.

I close my eyes and breath deeply in and out, ignoring the chiming of my phone as I know it’s either Taeyong or Johnny.

A shadow is cast over me and I frown, sad that someone found me. I groan and open my eyes, surprised to see it’s Taeil.

He stands tall over me with his head cocked to the side and hands in his dark jeans, jeans jacket over a bright orange sweater. He looks effortlessly handsome just standing there, but he always does that.

I sit up and scoot over a bit, making some room for him to sit next to me. And he does so.

He places himself next to me, grabbing my legs and placing them over his own. Once he’s content with the position we’re in, he turns towards me with a smile.

“How’s the birthday girl doing?”

I see the genuine smile on his lips and in his eyes, which makes my lips form into a bright smile.

“Pretty great. The day is more hectic than normal since Tae and John won’t stop babying me.” I pout and lean my head on his shoulder, cuddling closer to his body heath.

I don’t know why, but it feels right, cuddling with Taeil. It’s like everything falls in place and it’s just him and me. As if we’re two jigsaw puzzle pieces that fit snugly together.

“Is that why you came here?”, he questions while brushing away a strand of hair from my cheek with a small smile.

I nod. “To escape everyone, even just for a moment.”

Taeil frowns. “Oh, well, then I’ll leave you alone. I imagine that you wouldn’t want to see me too.”

I grab his arm before he can move and pull him closer towards me. “You are going nowhere. You are... the only person That can’t disturb me, ever.” A blush spread on my face as I admit it. I squeal softly and hide my face against his arm.

He chuckles before petting my head. “And I would never dare to leave you.”

I look up shocked at his words and we lock eyes. He leans slowly towards me and I do the same. Our lips are just mere centimetres away from each other before touching.

But just they do that, the doors of the terrace burst open and Taeyong and Johnny burst in.

I let out a small yell and push him away, my own force pushing me off the Fatboy. I fall backwards and land on my back with a huff of air escaping my lungs.

“Are you okay?” Johnny rushes towards me with concern in his eyes as he helps me off the ground, brushing the dust off my back.

My cheeks are heated as Taeil and I look away from each other, his eyes focused on one of the bushes and mine on the sky.

“I eh... I’m going now. See you tonight”, says Taeil before he quickly rushes away.

“Fucking jerk”, I curse while kicking against Taeyongs ass. Johnny laughs but stops as soon as he sees my glare.

“What even are you doing here?”, I question with folded arms as I walk towards the elevators.

“We came to get you since Team Leader Byun needed you. But it seems like we interrupted something far more important”, grins Taeyong slyly.

I glare at him. “Nothing happened. And don’t you two dare to say anything about this to Wendy.”

The tallest of the two frowns. “But... why? This is good, right? It means that your silly little crush is─”

I point my finger cautionary at the two guys. “Not. A. Word. She won’t let me live if she knows we... just zip it.”

The two guys smirk and look at each other, the look at in their eyes raises questions in me.

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hideandspeaknow · 4 years

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Heartbreak Putting Me Back on Sertraline

I stopped taking my medication last week. The love of my life left me 7 weeks ago because after 4 and half years of telling me he loved me every single day, including the morning of the day he left, he turned around one random day and said he didn’t love me and hadn’t for about 2 years. Every little thing or look he’d given me, where I felt loved or saw love in his eyes, was a lie. I felt every connection every single day like electricity and you can’t fake that. Every time I mentioned something like getting a dog with me, moving out, asking me to marry him, having sex with me, he just said he was forcing it. All the moments I treasured and that gave me a new lease of life were being ripped from me.

One of the main reasons we got on so well all those years ago was because we both felt like we didn’t fit in with our families and that we didn’t care about money. When I didn’t have the money to move out with him, he told me to anyway, that he would always look after me. He didn’t like me buying things for myself, he’d always buy me them and I saw this as love and kindness. He’d even offer me money for things like catching a train and I’d tell him no. He even said his work mates told him he had a golden misses because theirs rinses them for every penny and he can’t even give me money. Then the day he left he basically told me he felt used for his money. Another blow to my mental health. I’d spent years telling him money didn’t matter to me, to stop spending it on me or giving it me. Did it just go over his head?

So I said that when I had the money I would pay him for the furniture he left behind and he made a dig about how I owe him a lot more than that. Another blow, because I never asked for a penny, he always insisted and said he would look after me and then because he’s decided he doesn’t love me, he wanted it all back? Did he want the time spent with me back to? It would never even cross my mind to ask for all the money back for the presents and food I bought, so why did it him? Why was money the main issue for him leaving now, when he’d said for years money didn’t matter?

I got myself a job after he left and when I told him he scoffed. That pain I’ll never forget, it was like a cold sinking feeling that shot from my heart right into the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t get a job before because Loki needed 24 hour supervision and he said whatever job I got it wouldn’t make more than him if he had to stay at home with Loki some of the days, which was fair enough, it was true, so I worked for him from home. I thought I’d done something really good getting myself this job and was proud of myself and I got knocked down with a scoff and a “funny how you can get a job once I’ve left.” Coming from someone I am in love with was a hard blow on it’s own, but saying it knowing I looked after Loki and he told me I wouldn’t earn more was an entirely different blow.

Anyway, so I agreed and said I’d get him the money somehow and he told me it didn’t matter that he was sorry. Why bring it up then? And then because I was left in the shit, lost my job and with rent to pay he offered me money to get me by, which was very kind, but to which I said no, like always and he got offended. It was breaking me that it was being used against me and that I couldn’t win. It was also really mentally confusing. I was trying to deal with the fact he was leaving me, but then also couldn’t work out what he wanted money or not?

It doesn’t make sense? Yes I know, it doesn’t make sense to me either.

It was almost as if in a day he was a completely different person and when I said I feel like he’s just trying to be mean so that I move on quicker, he told me to stop fishing there’s nothing there. He’s never treated me so low in all our years together. I felt confused, broken and worthless. Nothing snaps in a person like that within the time it takes to go to work and come home. I’d literally die for him and that hasn’t changed in the 7 weeks since he left. I still want him back with every breath I take, because at the end of the day I’m not one to walk away when there’s obviously some inner struggle going on.

I assumed it was because he had mental health issues, so I was being understanding. Over the years I’ve picked him up, told him to get help, take a step back from work or go to the doctors, he always said no. One day he got low about his friends, so I messaged them and they said they’d talk to him. They never did. I was the one who picked him up, cared for him, loved him and showed him that I would be there come rain or shine. That I’d hold him when things got dark for him and make sure he knew he was loved. He fell out with his family, I told him he’d need to build a bridge and start talking, he’d tell me no. I just wanted the best for him always, because I am so in love with him. I never felt like it was a chore or a burden, I love him and I love supporting him, always. Then he left and used all these things against me and all I wanted was for him to get help.

It absolutely crippled me. To the point I felt like I was suffocating. Every. Single. Day.

And it’s not him whose made me feel this way. I’ve done it to myself. Everything he said was right. If time had gone by and his friends hadn’t contacted, I should have harassed them again. If he bought me something after saying no, I should have returned it. I should have rang the doctors for him to get him onto medication or counselling. I shouldn’t have moved out until I had the money. I should have done more to work around not being able to work. Maybe find a job working nights whilst he did days. I just know now that I should have done so much more. I am the reason I wasn’t enough. I am the reason now that the person I pictured myself growing old with and travelling the world with has left me. It’s my fault my mental health is so low.

But it’s not like i spend all my time wallowing. I am bettering myself. I booked my driving theory and started lessons, so that I can share in the driving. I got myself a job so that he wouldn’t feel the need to spend money. I’ve got self help to show that I know I can depend on myself. I’m trying so hard to come back as a better person and my fear is that it’s all for nothing.

I still want him back so bad. I forgive him for everything he’s said and done. I don’t believe for a second he means any of it or that he doesn’t love me. He wouldn’t let me out after dark because he wanted me safe, and sometimes the way he’d touch me... just no. I know, even if mental health is blocking him now, I know he loves me.

Anyway, I was talking about medication. The first two weeks was very hard on me. I was dying to know how he was doing and wasn’t getting anything back, so I got myself put onto different medication whilst I dealt with the heartbreak and was on a counselling waiting list. I was having a lot of crippling panic attacks multiple times a day, I lost 2 stone and wasn’t eating and I honestly just didn’t see the point in anything. It’s not that my happiness was dependant on someone else, but losing the person you’re in love with is really mentally damning.

I stopped taking my medication because I still felt really low whilst on it. It’s not that it wasn’t working, but I figured there was no point in the medication since it’s not going to take my pain away, only dull the chemical imbalance in my brain. About four days after I came off it, I found myself curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor at 1:00am, crying my eyes out, legs shaking uncontrollably, staring at my wrists, begging myself not to do anything stupid. I won. It took me 45 minutes, but I gave myself a talking to and picked myself up. He might not even care anymore if i did go through with it, since i haven’t even been asked how i’m doing, but in my head I told myself that if I ended my life he would blame himself and I wouldn’t be able to be here to tell him otherwise. I wouldn’t be able to tell him that I did it because I can’t deal with my own pain. I could never do that to someone I love. He saved me without even knowing. I love him so much that life is worth living.

I’ve spent the days since battling with myself on whether I want to go back on my medication. The fact I’ve been waking up everyday feeling numb and crying was a big selling point. So, I took the leap this morning and went back to my old medication, Sertraline instead of the new one’s I got put on and I’ve never felt so ill. About a couple hours after I started taking them again I just went really dizzy and have thrown up twice.

#depression #sertraline #self help #mental health #heartbreak #love #side effects #breakup

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mama-m1na · 4 years

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Apocalypse: Chapter 19

~~~XIX~~~

It was around noon when Cloud and Rhamina began eating their lunch that consisted of whatever leftovers they had found in the fridge since neither of them were really in the mood for cooking.

Tifa was the first of the other females to wake up, walking down into the kitchen with squinted eyes and a massive headache that earned her a pitying smile from the younger ravenette from where she sat.

"How you feeling, Tifa?" the eighteen-year-old asked, securing her hair into a ponytail with a black butterfly clip as the brunette took a seat on the opposite side of the ex-SOLDIER with a groan.

"Like I just got hit by a truck," the twenty-year-old woman replied as she hid her face in her hands, the younger female standing up to close the curtains closest to the dining table to help with the headache.

"Well now you know to never play drinking games with us ever again," the ravenette chuckled as she heated up some food and brought her a glass of water, earning a small thanks in return.

"Yeah, but the both of you drank as much as we did or maybe a little more," Tifa started, eyeing the couple as they seemed perfectly fine and unaffected by the heavy amounts of alcohol they consumed the previous night, "I don't understand how neither of you are feeling miserable right now."

"It's all the mako," Cloud said, giving the explanation for himself with a shrug as he glanced over at his very hungover friend, "it increased my alcohol tolerance, same thing with all the other SOLDIER's."

"I honestly don't have a definite explanation for me," the younger female said, also with a shrug and a bright smile on her lips, "But I guess it would probably have to do with my powers."

"I see... How lucky," Tifa groaned as she just laid herself face down on the table, enjoying the cool temperature of the glossy wooden surface.

The ravenette bit her bottom lip, resisting the urge to say something along the lines of 'That's rough, buddy', instead deciding to focus on what was left of her meal and ate it in silence.

Once everyone was finished with their meals, the eighteen-year-old took care of the dishes as the blond stood up from his seat and moved to fasten his buster sword to its usual spot on his back.

Setting a newly filled glass of water in front of the brunette, Rhamina gave her an encouraging look as she said, "We're going to be out for a bit so take care of yourself and the others... And remember to stay hydrated."

"Alright, will do when they wake up," the woman sighed as she tried to return the teen's usual smile and gave the pair a small wave, "I'll see you guys later. Stay safe."

"We will," the teen replied as the pair walked to the front door where she took a few moments to put on and properly lave up her black combat boots before they set out on their short journey.

For once, the sun was out and shining down on the usually depressing looking island, something that the teenager wasn't used to, but she didn't complain as it wasn't too hot outside yet.

"You're looking for Knov again, right?" the male asked as he followed the teen down the dirt trail into the forest she was so familiar with, "How are you planning on trying to find him exactly?"

"Oh we won't be the ones finding him," she chuckled with a closed eye smile, that would concern him if he didn't really know her, "If anything, he'll be the one to find us if he so chooses. This is his forest after all."

"Great," the male huffed as he shook his head with his arms crossed over his chest, causing the female to look back at him with a raised brow.

"What did he actually say to you?" she questioned with her head tilted to the side, slowing down to fall in step with the blond, "I know he can be very blunt about new things coming into his territory."

Before the male could make his reply, they came upon the clearing with the pond in which he and Kerstin had found the eighteen-year-old last time they came out to the forest; and as if waiting for their arrival, the large forest spirit just sat by the edge of the water, looking in their direction as they appeared.

"Knov!" the teenager called as she rushed forward to greet the large canine, her human companion hanging back a couple of meters as he just watched their interactions from where he stood.

The wolf bowed its head towards the girl as the ravenette reached up to pet him and bury her hands in the creature's soft, fluffy, fur, not that it minded whatsoever at this point in its existence.

The twenty-one-year-old huffed at the canine's reaction, knowing that if the female weren't there to supervise them, then he would immediately turn fangs and claws against the human male.

"I see that you've finally awakened completely this time around," the deep, disembodied voice spoke as the female pulled back in surprise with a look of slight confusion on her soft features.

"This... time?" she echoed, tilting her head to the side, "Are you meaning to say that we've met each other before? As in, met in a previous life? Because I don't remember that at whatsoever."

"We have... However, my name at the time was 'Berkrut' not 'Knov'," the wolf replied, a look of recognition spreading slowly across the eighteen-year-old's face, "And I never took up a form like this in that life."

"I guess that makes sense," the female chuckled, earning a raised brow from the blond as she turned around to look out over the pond and fully take in the serene atmosphere that it offered.

As if sensing the male's confusion, she said, "In one of my past lives, I was born into a pack of Lycans, those who had the power to shift into wolves, and the one that was known as Berkrut was the alpha of our pack."

"A strong leader and a fierce warrior," she continued, turning around to face the blond with a proud smile on her face, "He was someone that everyone in the pack looked up to."

"Do not forget that you were a fierce warrior as well," the wold spoke with a huff as he leaned down to nudge the girl on the shoulder, "One of the best in the pack, besides me of course."

"Maybe, but only up until that one Harvest Moon," the female shrugged, earning a deep growl from the canine as she calmly walked over to stand next to Cloud with a neutral expression on his face.

"I still regret not being able to shred those humans on the spot," he snarled, once again sparking a new confusion in the human male that had stayed quiet throughout this entire encounter.

"What happened?" he asked, looking over at the ravenette who stood to his right as she worked to redo the ponytail, making sure that the clip was in tightly and that her hair didn't fly into her face again.

"There was a human village close to our village that didn't exactly like being neighbors with a pack of wild and monstrous Lycans," she explained, "But we had a treaty that basically explained that no harm would come to them if they left us alone and left us with enough game to hunt while staying out of our territory."

"Of course, some humans decided to ignore that treaty and ventured into our hunting grounds anyways," Rhamina continued, "and of course seeing as they violated the treaty, they were immediately killed."

"The humans took it as an unwarranted attack even though they were given many warnings," Knov huffed, golden irises glowing slightly, "So on the night of the nearest Harvest Moon, they attacked out own village with the intent of at least killing all of our pus, if not the entire pack."

Cloud's eyes narrowed at the arrogance of the villagers described, they reminded him heavily of the arrogant people who worked in the higher ranking departments of the Shinra company.

"We, of course, fought back and there were no deaths amongst the pack, but the humans had those among them who could wield magic tools, so many of us were gravely injured," the ravenette explained, "including myself."

The blond could feel the rage building within him as he just looked at the flat expression of the female telling the story, knowing those memories were not good ones.

"They took my eyes," she continued bluntly, as she turned her head to glare at the ground below her, "Physically tore them out of my skull and left me ties up on the ground in hopes that I would just bleed out and die... That nature would finish me off as they ran from the rest of my pack that were coming for me."

"That's... disgusting," the male scoffed in response as a scowl formed on his usually stoic face.

"It was, but we were able to bring them to justice quite quickly," Knov spoke, eyes narrowing at the memories of how many in his pack were injured that night, "We held no mercy for them after that."

"It was quite satisfying to hear that the entire village of humans was wiped out at the time, but it was a shame that I couldn't participate," the eighteen-year-old sighed as she shook her head in disappointment before pivoting towards the wolf, "But that's behind us now and I came to ask you something, Knov."

Facing the large canine with a serious expression, she asked, "How long have you known that I was Death?"

"Since the moment you first stepped into my territory as a child all those years ago," he replied without missing a single beat, "How could I not know your true identity, when your soul remains the exact same as the one I was guided to upon my own passing as a physical mortal being."

"True," Rhamina chuckled with a shrug, "Almost every being present in every world in existence, has come to me at least once, almost every being has lived a life in the past before they are reborn into the beings they are in the present."

"Kind of like you, Cloud," she spoke as she faced him as she faced the man, "You've seen me once before you came to this world, but unlike the others, that was the only time you've come to me."

"Huh?" the male hummed as the ravenette leaned forward to look straight into his mako-contaminated irises as he tried to keep up with the concepts that she was explaining to him.

Brown irises speckled with metallic, golden, flecks as they bore straight into the male's very being.

"Your soul is new, hun," she continued in a soft tone as her hand reached up to cup his cheek, providing him with a familiar warmth that he had become comfortable very with, "This is your very first life you're living right now."

With that information in the air, a bitter taste refused to leave her mouth as she thought about the situation that the male was thrown into and what she had seen when she first looked into his memories.

She then clicked her tongue in annoyance as she turned away, thinking, 'It's his very first life and he had the lack of being drawn into this mess of a world... What the hell are you thinking fate?!'

While Cloud sensed the sudden irritation that had grasped the female, he didn't know what he could say as he still tried to comprehend the information he was given a few moments prior.

"Child," Knov said, catching her attention once more, "I believe you brought the man with you for a reason, did you not?"

She turned to the blond with a small, worried, frown before saying, "I did, but I'm not sure you would want to see anymore. I'm sure this has been quite a lot for you already."

At the male's silence, the female sighed and said, "I'm sorry, this whole thing must be like a whole bombshell being dropped on you."

"I didn't mean to-" "No, it's fine," the twenty-one-year-old spoke, cutting off the female's nervous rambling as she looked at him with widened eyes, "I want to know more about this."

Soon enough, the girl's look of shock melted into a bright smile as she reached up to the new pendant that hung over her heart, where the bell used to be.

"Alright then!" she chirped before black ice began encasing her figure again, but once she was fully covered it broke away to reveal her true form, dressed in the form-fitting clothes that Mandallyth wore, accented by her vulpine appendages flicking and moving around in her new surroundings.

"This is my 'true' or 'God' form," she explained as she flicked some of her hair back over her shoulder, the nine tails moving calmly behind her, "It's like my execution form got a major upgrade, but in all honesty, it is my original form."

"The only reason I can stay in a human form for so long is because of my talisman," Rhamina continued, holding her pendant up as Cloud stepped closer, "It temporarily houses a majority of my powers until I'm back in this form."

"And why is that?" he asked, having to look up to maintain eye contact since her boots had five-inch heels on them.

"Because, well... human bodies are a bit... fragile," she started, eyed darting around at the trees and various greenery as she tried to find the right words to explain what she wanted, "they just aren't meant to handle the power of a god... It's like filling a balloon with water, fill it too much and it would eventually pop."

"Then why don't you just stay in this form?" the blond questioned with a shrug as he noticed the female's tails softly wagging behind her at the attention she was getting.

"While it would be much easier if I did, it wouldn't be such a good idea in this or any human-inhabited world for that matter," the ravenette replied as she shook her head, "Many have a grudge against Death and I would rather not deal with them at this point in time."

The male let out an amused huff as a small smile appeared on his face, asking, "That's pretty lazy for a god, isn't it?"

"Maybe to human standards, but I'm actually putting in the effort to live unlike the other gods that just watch from a different dimension," she chuckled with an equally amused grin on her face.

"Speaking of which," she mused before snapping her fingers, a purple magic circle appearing in the air beside her.

From the circle a deep bark echoed out before a large, much larger than Knov, the creature came forward to stand next to the ravenette.

"This is my mount, Kanon!" the female chirped as she pat the beast's shoulder, seeming completely unfazed at its intimidating presence.

The creature stood well above the height of the three present and appeared to be some kind of fluffy canine with black, grey, and white fur to accompany its icy blue eyes.

On its back was a piece of cream-colored fur to keep it comfortable with the saddle and while it was fully harnessed, that didn't stop her from glaring down at the human male that stood across from them.

Noticing the beast's behavior, the ravenette held her arm out in front of its chest as she said, "Kanon, this is Knov and Cloud... They're my friends of mine."

Kanon let out a huff before lifting its nose to sniff the air and immediately all of its fur stood up as its eyes narrowed, baring its teeth at the blond.

"Cloud, back up!" the female ordered as she held onto the creature's reigns and as her tails moved to block the beast from moving forward.

"What's happening?" he asked, doing as requested as he prepared to draw his buster sword.

"I'm pretty sure she can smell me on you and vice versa," the female explained calmly as her mount continued to struggle against her hold with loud growls, "She obviously doesn't like that."

'Well she'll have to get over it,' the male thought with a scoff as he watched Rhamina fully stand in between the two with her tails fanned out so that they couldn't see each other at all.

"Kanon, honey, I want you to be able to stay out of the pocket dimension, but you have to behave," he heard her say from behind the wall, You can't just eat anyone you don't like."

This resulted in a loud bark from the canine before a sigh left the female's mouth.

"Do not use my own saying against me! I don't actually eat people!"

A small smirk appeared on the male's face as she continued talking to the beast, noticing that she sounded like a mother scolding her child for misbehaving.

When she lowered her tails she was still holding onto Kanon's reigns and the beast was still glaring at him, but she was sitting down.

"So what is she?" the male asked, earning a warning growl from the canine as he took a step forward, Rhamina gripping tighter onto the reigns in her hands.

"She is one of Death's Reapers," Knov answered, nodding in respect towards the larger canine, "Death spirits tasked with guiding and protecting souls as they make their journey to meet Death."

"They are very loyal and protective, "he continued as the other spirit sat a little bit straighter, "Very good for what they are tasked."

"Yep, Kanon is a good girl most of the time," the ravenette cooed as she scratched the side of her mount's neck, "but you can't be eating my friends all the time."

Kanon only responded by dropping all of her weight onto the female next to her, earning a yelp as she was suddenly pinned to the ground by the weight of one of her Reapers.

Her pointed ears flicked in annoyance before she looked to the blond with a pout on her face as he met her gaze with an amused grin.

"I don't know why you're laughing, Cloud... She still wants to eat you," she huffed as Kanon rested her head on the female's stomach, "She's just trying to distract me so she can get the chance."

"I'd like to see her try," the blond replied as he locked eyes with the canine.

"Cloud, no. Please don't challenge her," Rhamina warned as her tails moved to remove the large canine from her form, "I'm serious, she's my mount for a reason."

"I don't doubt that," he shrugged as the ravenette stood up, shaking her head even though she was quite amused.

"We should probably start heading back to the house," she sighed after looking up to see how much the sun had moved since they came outside.

"Alright, Kanon," the female spoke as she turned to the canine, "you're going to have to do the thing because you're not going to fit through the door like that."

The Reaper rolled her eyes, but begrudgingly stood up and let black smoke surround her figure.

When the smoke cleared, a large Russian Bear Dog stood where the mount would be with blue eyes looking up at her master.

"Good girl," the ravenette praised before a soft purple light engulfed her form once more before she stood once again in her human form.

"Ready to go?" she asked as she turned to the twenty-one-year-old with a bright smile on her face.

The male nodded and the teen turned to say goodbye tot he forest spirit before they began walking down the path with her walking in between Kanon and Cloud.

It was mostly quiet on the walk back, save for the random comments the female would make as they walked, but none of them really minded.

When they finally got back to the house, it was around three in the afternoon and everyone else was awake.

"Mina, what the fuck is that?" Tijarah asked as she was walking over to the kitchen, pausing only when she saw the canine that stood at the height of the owner's waist.

"This is Kanon!" the ravenette introduced, placing a hand on the dog's head, "She's a death spirit!"

"Mina, that thins is a full ass bear," Sam commented from her spot on the smaller couch, earning a snarl from the canine.

"Keep talking shit and you're going to lose a hand," the older teen warned as she unlaced and took off her boots, gaining a small bark of agreement from Kanon as she placed them to the side where no one would trip on them... hopefully...

"So I get that she's a death spirit, but why is she here right now?" the younger Filipino questioned as Cloud and her Sibling walked over to sit at the second couch.

"She's my mount like I said earlier," the older female said with a shrug as she tucked her legs underneath herself and pulled her phone out of her pocket.

"Excuse me?" the dark-skinned teenager asked, momentarily choking on the chips she had just started to eat, "she's your fucking what?"

"You mean you ride that thing into battle?!" Kerstin exclaimed, pointing at the dog who was laying on the floor by the ravenette.

"Yeah, this isn't her only form, dipshits," the eighteen-year-old stated as she looked up from her phone to see the shocked looked of her siblings, "I just needed her to fit through the door and in the house."

"Wait, do we have mounts too?" the green-eyed female asked, shock turned to excitement when the ravenette nodded her head.

"Of course, we aren't called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for nothing," she shrugged in response, "Although, Tijarah was the only one with an actual thing that resembled a horse."

"What do we have?" Kerstin asked with her voice laced with pure enthusiasm, as Kanon merely rolled her eyes at the familiar souls.

"Kerstin, you had this giant lizard thing, Sam had a lion with fucking bird wings, and Tijarah had this huge as, jet black, carnivorous horse," Rhamina replied, causing Tifa's eyes to widen with slight worry.

"You can only summon them when you get your shit together though," she continued, looking over at the older female with a sympathetic smile, "so go and do that first before you bring about chaos with your mounts."

"And how exactly do we do that?" the Mexican asked as she typed something into her phone.

"You'll get clues if you pay attention," the ravenette replied, "but for sure the rest of you will have to wake up soon... Once one of us wakes up, the others are sure to follow shortly afterward."

The rest of the day passed like that until everyone got ready for bed and went up to their respective rooms.

Cloud wasn't exactly happy about it, but Kanon had wormed her way into his room before he could close the door, so now she just sat on the floor by Rhamina's side of the bed with what looked to be a smirk on her face.

"At least she isn't trying to take your spot on the bed," the female chuckled as the male laid down next to her with a huff.

The blond said nothing as he wrapped his arms around the girl's waist to pull her closer.

"Honestly though, I'm really sorry about her attitude," she whispered as she curled up against him, "she doesn't really like anyone."

"I don't care," the male huffed, "as long as she's able to protect you and doesn't get in my way, then it doesn't matter."

A smile crept its way up onto the female's face as her eyes closed, whispering, "I love you, Cloud."

"I..." the male started, looking at the girl in his hold with a soft look in his eyes, "I love you too."

The ravenette tensed, feeling her face heat up again as her heart started pounding against her chest, but she soon relaxed again as a giddy feeling filled her being.

The next morning, the blond felt a little warmer than usual, but it wasn't unpleasant until he felt something swipe across his back.

His eyes snapped open in alarm as he jolted slightly, causing the eighteen-year-old to wake up as well.

"What's wrong?" she groaned, still slightly sleepy, as blue eyes caught onto what he had felt.

Cloud let out a sigh as one of the female's black tails retracted to lay across the female's lap, one of her ears twitching as she yawned.

"Your tails," he said, pointing to the various appendages attached to her upon seeing her confused glance.

Following the male's finger, the teen's eyes widened with a small gasp before she reached up to the top of her head to her vulpine ears.

"Goddammit," the hissed, sitting up and ignoring the amused look Kanon gave her from the floor as she willed her inhuman parts to vanish.

"I'm sorry about that," the female sighed as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, one strap of her camisole slipping off of her shoulder, "That just happens apparently."

"It's fine, they just surprised me was all," the blond shrugged, looking over at the ravenette who had raised a brow at him.

"So you're fine with the fluff blanket?" she questioned with an innocently curious gaze, tilting her head to the side.

"I guess, but are you really calling it that?" the male shot back as he stretched before removing the blanket from himself and standing up.

"As long as my sisters don't catch wind of it then ti's fine," the teen replied, reaching over for her phone, "I will not tolerate being called fucking cute."

In response, the large black and white dos, let out a huff as she rolled her eyes, earning a glare from Rhamina.

"Oh shut up, Kanon, you're a literal fluff ball!"

~~~Fin. Chapter 19~~~

Masterlist

#Apocalpse #Chapter 19 #Final Fantasy #Final Fantasy 7 #Final Fantasy 7 Remake #Final Fantasy VII #Final Fantasy VII Remake #FFVII #ffvii remake #ff7 #ff7 remake #Fanfiction #Fanfic #Cloud #Cloud Strife #Cloud Strife x OC

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izzyovercoffee · 5 years

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Prompt number: 14. “I can't come back.” Fandom: Republic Commando Rating: PG Warnings/Tags: none that I can tell, ask to tag if need Summary: Bardan keeps Parja company at the shop on a rainy day. Notes: if I get any details wrong... my bad. also if it wasn’t clear... a lot of my repcomm writing is set in an Etain-lives AU, mostly bc her death makes zero sense in the narrative

Bardan lies on an old, well-loved chaise stitched together with the itching fabric sourced from the local farmers. The lights overhead blink in periodic outages---in tandem with the crack of thunder outside and the brilliant flashes through a single window at the far end of the machine shop. One hand facing up, lazy, a device slowly rotates a few centimeters above his palm.

It’s not what he meant when he offered to help, earlier, but Parja insists he helps by lying there and “holding” the device.

To be honest, he’s not really sure what it does---and he doesn’t ask.

She stands about two arms’ length from the chaise, arms crossed over her chest. Her tightly braided hair falls over one shoulder, the braids adorned with polished, painted beads that match her usual armor.

“It’s not doing it,” she says, at length, after another two cracks across the sky outside. “Damn.”

“What’s it supposed to do?” he asks, curious.

“Shock you,” she says.

He looks away from the swaying, blinking lights, to the not-quite-cubed device in his hands.

“Ah,” he says. “Well, it’s definitely not doing that.”

“Is it doing anything?”

He frowns in the direction of the device, and raises his hand higher. A small effect on the force and it rotates a tad faster over his palm. He waits a few seconds, watching it spin, and turns his head to look at her.

“No,” he says.

“Damn,” she says again.

Parja moves forward to pluck the device from its rotation above his hand, and shakes it between two fingers as she walks back to her worktable. He watches her go, lowering his hand over his chest while he adjusts the one cradling behind his head.

“Need me to do anything else?” he asks.

“Just stay there,” she says, and sets the device down on the table. She reaches for something else---her toolbox---and appears to switch her attention to another project. “Maybe tell me a story.”

He’s not very good at stories. Mereel’s better at that sort of thing, and he’s a long, long way from Mandalorian Space.

“I don’t have any stories off the top of my head, Parja,” he says, and wonders at what else he could, should, be doing.

It almost feels like a waste, to lie here and do nothing when he could be outside, doing something. Filling up the time. Helping someone else. Helping Fi. Helping Etain. Helping the other Bralor, under whose care he placed Arla in spite of Kal’s disapproval.

She moves across the machine shop as the storm clouds outside finally open up, and the torrential downpour crackles over the metal roofing of the establishment. Parja stops at an old speeder, one in obvious and desperate need of TLC---as Mereel likes to put it, tender loving care---and kneels by the engine.

“Do you ever miss it?”

“Parja,” he says, “You’re never this vague.”

“Bard’ika,” she says, imitating the way he says her name, “I know this is a touchy subject for you. I’m trying to be tactful.”

“Please don’t worry about my feelings.”

“Someone has to.”

He frowns, and tilts his head to look back towards the ceiling, to the source of the ungentle drumming of the rains.

The quiet drags on---broken only by the storm---as Parja begins her work on the speeder.

Bardan thinks about what she could possibly mean. Miss it. Miss what? The Order? The War? The Core?

Someone has to. And what’s that supposed to mean, too?

“That’s not fair,” he says. “You’re not the only one who cares.”

She sighs, and then sets down one of her tools noisily onto the open toolbox lying on the hard ground.

“I know,” she says. “But of the two of us in here, it feels like I’m the only one.”

Alright. He can’t have this conversation lying down.

He shifts, to groaning tired muscles, and sits up. His legs swing over the edge of the chair, and his feet touch the floor with a soft, barely-there scuffle. His fingers loosely interlace, hanging with his elbows at either knee and hands between them.

Parja reaches out, to gently tug a stool over to herself so she can sit, and face both him and the speeder.

“I just want you to ask me plainly,” he says, “because the Order only ever talked in circles.”

The look she gives him is… studying. Curious. He can feel the gentle tug of that curiosity, that need, that urge to take apart and piece things together. It’s the look she wears when she plans to work on and rebuild old broken things and restore them to new---or, as she often says to him, better than new. Different, not wanting to reach for the impossible---not aspiring to be unbroken---but to have that brokenness shine through in its new form.

It’s in everything she does.

It sometimes reminds him of how things could be, should be, but not how things were---in the Jedi Order, that is.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and means it. He knows she means it, even without the unintentional taste of it on the force. “I haven’t met many ex-Jedi. I don’t know what the Order was like.”

He feels the shrug rise his shoulders even despite not intending to do so---a bad habit he’s picked up from Mereel, maybe. Or Jaing.

“I do miss it,” Bardan admits. “In the same way I miss a place, or a memory, through the lens of nostalgia---and then I endeavor to remember what it actually was like, when I feel myself doing so.”

Parja hums in response, neither an interruption nor a comment but an acknowledgement she hears him as she returns her attention on the project. She’s still listening---he knows this, too, from experience rather than any crutch to lean on through the force.

So he continues. “But the Order was… there was a very real pressure, there, to adhere to standards that many of us couldn’t keep, or couldn’t reach. A standard that the… Masters, themselves, did not keep. And the consequences…”

He pauses, chewing on the thought, feeling the weight of the pain in his chest and focusing on that pain as it threatens to claw its way up his throat. He lets himself experience it, feels it consume him, and allows it to dissipate.

Parja waits, reaching down for another tool as she works.

“...they were severe,” he says. “They always spoke of support, of acceptance, of love. And yet, those who needed it the most---the ones who couldn’t grasp the force easily, or what they were asked to do---were denied it, and dismissed.”

Parja pauses in her ministrations to look at him. “Dismissed?”

“No longer able to become Jedi,” he answers, and then frowns. He corrects himself: “Sorry. No longer allowed to become Jedi. Instead, they were sent to work elsewhere, under the supervision of the Order.”

“Work?” she asks, tense. “They failed, and they weren’t sent home?”

He feels a bitter smile infect his frown and doesn’t fight it. “Too dangerous, when touched by the force, to be let loose on the universe. And because we were all taken as young, young children---many didn’t know they could simply leave.”

He almost laughs.

“Many,” he adds, “Even if they knew they could, had nothing to their name, and no way to contact the family they were taken from. We’re not allowed possessions, in the Order, and absolutely no contact with family. I still don’t know if mine are alive. I wouldn’t know how to contact them, if they were.”

A bitter anger runs under that thought. A hurt, like betrayal, in his heart---but he also understands. He wants to think, to believe, that his birth family had no choice---that they sent him to The Order for a better life. Many were taken because, no matter what, it guarantees a better life.

Or it did, before... before the end.

Parja sets down her tool, and shifts on her stool to look at him fully.

“You have a family now,” she says. She looks down, to the ground, and back up at him as another crack of lightning, then thunder, booms outside. “But I’m sure if you asked Mereel…”

“I don’t want to,” he says, firm. “I’ve thought about it. I don’t want to.”

She purses her lips and nods, and doesn’t say whatever it is she’s thinking though he can see she’s thinking something. She’ll probably gnaw on it for a few days, and then blurt it out the next time he visits the shop, and…

And Bardan finds he’s perfectly happy with waiting until then.

“I’m free of the manipulation,” he says, unable and unwilling to hold the bitterness from his tone. “Free from having the phantom of failure wielded as a whip. And free from simply accepting that the death of good men should not somehow weigh on my conscience.”

Free, he thinks, from having the threat of attachments being found out, used against him, to keep him isolated and placid and content. Complicit.

Parja places a hand on the speeder beside her, and beckons him look at it. He rises from the chaise to join her.

“This speeder,” she says as she gently pats the top edge of the dented, rusted metal, “once belonged to a well known racer in the underground circuits, in Nar Shaddaa.”

“It’s a long way from Nar Shaddaa,” he says, surprised.

She smiles at him. “This racer pushed this poor speeder beyond its limitations. Do you see this damage, here?” Her gloved hands trace the places where the metal curls outwards, as if burst from the inside out. “And here?”

Bardan looks at the damage. “I do.”

“Sometimes,” she says, “when pushed too hard, too far, for too long---with no stops in between---the speeder will respond in any way it can to release the tension.”

She doesn’t explain, and he doesn’t need her to.

“The driver died,” she continues. “This speeder would have been left in a junk pile, if not for someone who saw its beauty, its real potential, under all its supposed failures, and rescued it. She brought it here, to me, and asked for me to restore it in whatever way I see fit.”

Parja, proud in her talents, in her ability, and her side projects, gently pats the speeder. “But I’m not fixing it up to race, because it was never meant to race. It was meant to ride, and to duck in and out between the trees.”

And she looks at him. “And there are no trees on Nar Shaddaa.”

He looks at the speeder.

There are no trees on Nar Shaddaa.

“Am I really helping,” he asks, “coming here, and lying on your couch while you work?”

“Yes. More than you know.” She reaches out, and gently takes his hand in hers. “More than you can know.”

She squeezes his hand, and then lets him go.

He lingers, unsure, but stands after a moment passes and returns to the couch. He sits down, first, and watches her attention pull away from him to return to her project. He watches her begin her work, sensing it’ll be some time before she’ll want to talk again, and takes a moment to breathe. To think. To settle.

And then he lies back down, one hand behind his head and another on his chest, and watches the ceiling lights sway as the storm outside rages on.

#writing: fictober19 #writing: repcomm #c: Bardan Jusik #c: Parja Bralor #writing: mine

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megbox · 4 years

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2019 Year in Review

Previous Posts: (2018) (2017) (2016) (2015) (2014) (2013) (2012) (2011)

It’s actually kind of interesting how... less interesting these year-in-reviews get as I get older. Depending on how you look at it, 2019 was somewhat of an unremarkable year. I spent much of it tragically broke, I didn’t get the opportunity to do much traveling. But at the same time, not having these flashy, colourful experiences to write about all the time makes me value the easy, simple things more. It forces me to be a bit more reflective about how the day-to-day life I am carving out for myself teaches me things and about the person I am becoming.

Far and away, the most positive thing to come out of 2019 has been that I am real deals social worker now. I have the best job in the entire world. I have “RSW” in my email signature and on my business cards. I do work that is meaningful to me every single day. There is so much to learn but I’m in the right place to be learning it. And I am really proud of myself for getting here ❤️

January

Unlike the last few years, 2019 began on a high note. The millisecond that student loan hit my direct deposit, I took a little trip to Jasper to visit my friend Oliver who was teaching snowboarding at Marmot Basin for the season. I braved some very treacherous roads to make it to Jasper. It took me nearly eight hours. Highway 93 was closed so I had to take the long route and basically white-knuckled it the whole way. But it was so worth it. I found myself later that evening in a dorm room full of young Scandinavian people, downing American Vintage iced teas and feeling like I was at a frat party. We went to this club called Four Peaks and they played Rasputin by Boney M and everyone went crazy. I hooked up with this gorgeous Danish ski instructor named Rasmus. He was so beautiful. I am proud of that one, honestly. Oliver and I went skiing and hiking and we went to Earl’s and he tried a Caeser. By the end of the weekend, I think we maybe ran out of things to talk about. But it was really cool to see him and to hear about the last few years of his life and how excited he was to move to New Zealand to be with his girlfriend (whom he met on the same trip where he and I met, in Hawaii!)

On January 14, I started my second practicum. It was a sad transition. My time at CommunityWise had been so great that anything new was going to pale in comparison but my new placement was especially bad. It was so slow there. My computer hadn’t been updated in years and I didn’t have access to anything for weeks. My supervisor was barely around (not her fault, though. She was finishing her MSW, had two young children, was the team lead for both family centres in the city and had two practicum students to supervise. Girl was busy). I remember one morning while I was helping one of the caseworkers with some menial task like organizing the food pantry, and I was just so frustrated, I kind of asked her point-blank, “Is this practicum meant to be more self-directed?” and I just started crying as I asked it. I kind of… whimpered it. It was awkward but from that point on, they made way more of an effort to give me tasks and engage me in the work that was being done there. Lesson learned: you get what you ask for.

February The first weekend of February is what we would call a “power weekend.” Looking back on these actions now, I cringe. However, at the time, I was pretty stoked. I slept with a friend from podcast club after a house party. For ease, I will refer to him as W. W had asked me out twice prior to this happening. I actually said yes, and we had plans to get drinks, but his best friend ended up going through a breakup the night before and he cancelled last minute. So then we slept together. Drunkenly. And it wasn’t… good. I chalked it up to the drunkenness. We went out on a real date, I made sure to have like one glass of wine maximum. He was lovely and great company and he taught me how to play crib but… you know that feeling when you’re like god, I wish I was enjoying this but I am just not enjoying this. It was like that all night. And it felt heavy. If I am being completely honest, there was also this strange moment that night where I had the thought, “he kind of looks like my grandfather if he were younger” and there is truly no recovering from that kind of realization.

February was also a terrible month because I had no days off. I will go to my grave angry about being required to work for free in my practicums. I was doing 32+ unpaid hours at this boring practicum and then working evenings and weekends at Famoso whenever I could. And Famoso was dead, so I wasn’t even making good money. This was also where I began to start witnessing things in my practicum that started to fuck with me. At first, I thought I was just having trouble sleeping. But over time in seminar and debriefs with my social work friends who were going through the same thing I realized that it was the oh-so-pleasant combination of vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue.

Over the reading week, I went to Fernie with Maddy and her friends for a ski/party weekend and that was truly awesome. One of those weekends where your ribs ache for days once you’re back because you laughed so hard. Some highlights:

It snowed 60cm the night before we skied. It was powder up to your waist.

• Maddy��s friend Melissa liked our bartender at the hostel. She took his phone and texted herself from it so he would have her number and vice versa. Then she got so drunk that later the same evening, she was looking at the text and forgot that she had sent it to herself so she texted back, “Who is this?” Also LOL #Bryna.

• I took nudes of Maddy in the hostel shower to send to the guy she was seeing at the time. LOL. What are friends for?

• Maddy and I met this set of twins who are the definition of gym bros. Identical twins. We ended up hooking up with them. At the same time. In our bunk bed at the hostel. We high fived. I later fell off the top bunk. We gave them a beer for the road when they left. All year long, we send one another their Instagram posts and stories whenever it’s them flexing in the gym mirror and just laugh about, “we really slept with those guys.”

March

In March, I got the flu. It was very annoying. I had to miss practicum (meaning I’d have to make up the hours somehow later). I stated binge watching Grey’s Anatomy.

I ended things with W. It was kind of harsh but it needed to be done. I need to stop breaking up with people in the weeks prior to my birthday because we had a total Dave-Simard-2.0 situation where W told me he had purchased a birthday present for me and he still wanted to give it to me.

I also ran the St. Patrick’s Day Road Race again!!! Good times as always.

Practicum got much better in March. I had many things to do. I got to design the curriculum for and facilitate a six-week girl’s group. I assisted with the planning and running of a series of community tax clinics which was cool. Except the guy from the agency whose project it was is a creep. He kept telling me all of these stories that were incredibly inappropriate given the fact that we knew each other only in a professional sense. He made many comments about women’s bodies and appearances that were gross. And I got left in some pretty unsafe situations all by myself. AND he made me pay out of pocket for snacks for one of the tax clinics and never reimbursed me for that. I kind of forgot about that until just now. Wow.

April

April was a big month!

I went to Portland for my birthday weekend with Matt and Connor. When I think back to this trip, it was lovely, but mostly what I remember is a lot of beer, a lot of rain, and being hungover. Portland is a really cool city. I wasn’t totally expecting to be confronted with as much homelessness and substance use as I was but, that’s my privilege talking. Some highlights from the trip include:

• The “Flower in the Kettle” IPA I had.

• The mascarpone, corn and lobster agnolotti I had for my birthday dinner at A Cena. Recommended to me by a trusted friend I worked with at Famoso. So rich. SO FUCKING GOOD.

• Meeting this really drunk real estate agent at a dive bar and convincing her that Matt and Connor were both my boyfriends. I still have her business card in my wallet. I am unsure why.

• The Weezer concert was honestly awesome.

• Matt actually trying out the guyliner.

• Meeting some random guy when I went to get gum at a corner store. His name was Dan. He was old. His girlfriend had kicked him out and he was just walking around. He’d been in prison for a lot of his life. We had a good chat. I got his phone number and now we have each other on Facebook.

• In the airport on the way home, Matt and I were so overtired that absolutely everything was hilarious. The gif game (the gif of Kevin from The Office dropping the bucket of chili. “Me in Thailand”), and the beginning of when I got let in to the “KEVIN!!!!” joke. I had tears in my eyes.

• Connor yelled at me in a pizza restauraunt LOL (sorry Connor. I know you Ctrl+F your name. But this was memorable to me.)

In the middle of April, I FINISHED MY PRACTICUM HOURS AND EFFECTIVELY GOT MY DEGREE. I cannot describe to you how good it felt to be driving home from one of those tax clinics after my third twelve-hour day (making up practicum hours is fun) knowing I never had to go back. Knowing that soon enough, I’d get to work on all the same cool projects but actually get paid for my time.

We visited Saskatoon for Easter, which would turn out to be the last time I got to see my Baba. She was very ill, and both of us knew that it would likely be the last time, so I did get to say my goodbyes. It was very difficult and I sobbed for a lot of the ride home. It’s a weird feeling, when someone you love has been so ill for so long, and you begin to see their condition really deteriorate. When the idea of life without that person starts to become a reality. There was almost an… acceptance? It sounds so callous to say and it’s way more complex than this but also somewhat of a relief in the finality of it. I don’t know. It was a lot.

April was also when I started interviewing for social work jobs. I had two interviews. The first one was at CCASA, essentially for what I thought was my dream job. I have never psyched myself out so hard for anything in my life. I thought about that interview and that interview alone for weeks. I studied harder than I have for any test ever. When the time came for the interview, I was so nervous. I became this meek and mild version of myself. It was honestly devastating. But of course, had I gotten that job, I would never have interviewed at the University of Calgary. My boss-to-be called me for a pre-interview while I was on shift at Famoso. It was busy, too. But I just said fuck it and ducked into the back and talked to her on the phone for twenty minutes. She invited me for an interview a week later where I had to give a five-minute presentation on managing stress as a student. Rock on.

May

On May 1, I got offered THE JOB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY! It was truly one of the happiest moments of my life. There is nothing more satisfying and exciting than actually attaining something you’ve been dreaming of for so long. It was for a one year contract on a maternity leave coverage, facilitating community trainings around suicide prevention, helping skills, all that good stuff. I was going to be on salary. I was going to have benefits. I WAS GOING TO BE ABLE TO WALK TO WORK AND HAVE A REAL CAREER THAT I WOULD BE PROUD OF AND EXCITED ABOUT.

I hung up the phone after accepting the job, texted all the requisite people about the good news, and then immediately drove to Famoso to quit. My boss at Famoso was angry with me because I did not give two weeks notice. I said I would work out the rest of my scheduled shifts. He was a jerk, he yelled at me in frustration saying, “You work here for five fucking years, we accommodate every trip, every vacation, every practicum and you don’t even have the courtesy to give me two weeks notice?!” It wasn’t a big deal though. He was just being an asshole. And hey, Steve, you’re still an asshole!

So my last day serving tables at Famoso Westhills was May 3, 2019. I’m usually not good with goodbyes but it was the easiest thing in the world to just walk out of there at the end of the night knowing I would never be back. I had ten days until I started my actual job at the University (a bit of an oversight on my part because I had ~no money~ so what the fuck was I going to do with ten days).

My grandmother passed away on May 19, 2019. Back to Saskatoon on May 28 for the funeral. It was really fucking sad and really fucking weird to see all of my cousins crying. My grandma also had a big Catholic funeral and none of us are particularly religious and as the direct relatives of the deceased we were at the front of the church and it was really obvious none of us had any idea when to kneel vs. stand and didn’t know any of the words or tunes to the songs.

On a happier note, my brother was accepted into medical school in May. Not that I ever doubted my brother would be a successful person, but this just really solidified it. Dr. MacKay.

June

June was rather uneventful. I was honestly so cripplingly broke at this point, and it was so long before I actually saw a full salaried paycheck. I had to borrow money from my parents just to like, function. And pay my bills. It was embarrassing. But I was working full time and learning so many cool things about the job that it made it alright.

I walked the stage on the first week of June and accepted my BSW degree. I didn’t want to go but it was actually a pretty awesome and happy occasion.

The other big thing that happened in June is that Maddy moved to Australia. It sucks that I only met Maddy in the summer of 2018. She is so awesome and we became so close so quickly. I genuinely love her so much and spending time with her is so easy and fun, it was really sad when she left knowing that it was highly possible she may never return or at least not for several YEARS.

July

By July, my new job was in full swing. I was facilitating trainings every other day (so much public speaking experience!), I was sitting on a committee, every day was new and challenging and exciting.

My dad had a giant party for his 60th birthday, with some friends even coming from Saskatoon. They rented a limousine that took us to the Black Diamond hotel because apparently my parents have some kind of significance there. I did a shot with my grandfather? We played pool and Big Buck hunter? None of my friends came but all of my brother’s friends came and I honestly think that it turned the tables in terms of who my parents’ favourites are in terms of friends.

I also had an awesome weekend at Folk Festival mostly with Kendal and Lachlan but also featuring guest appearances from Chad and Gillian. Podcast club pals. There is just nothing better than folk festival, honestly. Food trucks and music in the sun and drinking sangria from a flask and admiring everyone’s cool outfits and getting a tan and listening to concerts all day. I had a nap in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday and it was like the most glorious 45 minutes of my entire year.

August

Oh, no. August. I was still cripplingly broke (it takes a long time to catch up to a point where your entire paycheck is not just going to paying back things you’ve borrowed) and I made the utterly stupid decision to go to a music festival.

Big Valley Jamboree, baby. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the best weekend that I am never ever doing again. Some highlights:

• Mere minutes after arriving, I watched a man vomit.

• The “Tony Keith” joke really took off. Lucas and I were so #inone on the Friday night we kept yelling and trying to start chants (“old man graphics!” is my personal favourite in response to Toby Keith’s random, pro-military Americana concert graphics).

• I gave my phone to somebody and then wandered off in search of this stupid boy’s campsite. I got very, very lost. The BVJ campground is a large place. I had no idea where I was going and was literally just stumbling through the dark and the mud. I ended up in the middle of some middle-aged Newfoundlanders’ campsite. They welcomed me. They offered me and sandwich and several beers. We chatted for like an hour. It was the best. I walked for SO LONG and finally found my own campsite. But we’re talking literally hours of walking around blind and disoriented. There were a few moments when I genuinely thought I was going to have to wait until the sun came up.

• A few less-than-classy moments in porta potties.

• The HANGOVERS. Jesus lord. I couldn’t survive.

• Airwaves guy was great and I also had a really good buffalo chicken poutine thing that I remember fondly.

In happier and much more professional news, I facilitated my first Community Helpers training in August. I was very nervous. Like, stay up all night the night before nervous. And we had some technical difficulties with setting up. But my coworker / work BFF Jeannie was there and she was a great support to me. She ran and got me a coffee and a banana bread because I hadn’t eaten and was so so stressed. And she encouraged me through the whole thing. It went really really well. I almost choked up at the end while thanking the participants for coming and explaining how it was my first training and they were such a great group to do it with.

The squad was all super broke so we turned to free activities. It was very wholesome. We spent many afternoons and evenings reading in Prince’s Island Park with snacks. We went to Shakespeare in the park. We went hiking.

A lot of my friends moved away in August. Such is life when your friends are all academics or have bright futures that are not confined to the Calgary city limits. Sydney moved to Victoria to start her PhD and we had a nice day at Elbow Falls eating berries and then having dinner with my family. Adam and Kendal both moved to Ottawa to start a fancy new government job and an MSW degree, respectively. I am really really proud of all of my friends but I miss them, too. Calgary is not the same without these people.

On the flip side – a new roommate moved in! Maddie left to move to Red Deer to be with Joel and so our new roommate was a French exchange student named Aurore. She arrived and was shocked to see that none of the advertised furniture was in her room except for one limp mattress. Karla and I hadn’t even known she was coming because my landlord sucks, but we helped her get her things together and then ordered her some Skip the Dishes. She was exhausted. And sweet. And was starting a block week MBA class the next day in her second language. I felt for her.

September

In September, the inklings of me moving into a different role at the university were planted. My boss called me in to her office one afternoon and shut the door. I was terrified but she said to me, “you’re not in trouble. Actually, just the opposite.” She brought up the recent vacancies in the job I now hold (lol: spoilers) and said, “Just think about it. I just want you to know that there would be no hard feelings if you chose to apply for the role.” I was flattered but also caught off guard. I did not think I was qualified for the job. I had virtually no client experience in either of my practicums. I wasn’t even registered with the ACSW at this point. And I loved my old job and my health promotion coworkers so so much. But also… I was on a twelve month contract. And the person away on leave was definitely coming back. I was “strongly encouraged” to get registered with the college.

It was honestly such a mess. They gently nudged me towards applying for the role, I was torn. Then they told me it probably wouldn’t work because I wasn’t yet registered with the ACSW, and even if I did register would still only be provisional. I felt an odd sense of relief at that, and had totally psyched myself out of being able to do the job at that point. At the last minute, I was told “just submit an application to keep our options open.” I did so. I got an interview. I interviewed (and it was SO fucking stressful…. Interviewing with people you already work with is 10x worse than interviewing with strangers. I tell ya.). And… I got the job!!! Not only did I get the job, I got a full-time, permanent contract (there were two positions, one full-time and one on a longer contract. I was told from the beginning I would just be applying for the longer contract but I ended up getting the FULL TIME ONE.) It was a HUGE boost to my confidence and again, one of the happiest days of the year.

September was also just absolutely insane for work. So many orientation presentations, students reaching out wanting to get involved, starting all of the volunteer programs, planning. I was so, so, so SO FREAKING TIRED. But we did lots of fun things. Like we took Aurore and her friend Cecile to Banff, had them try Caesers and Beaver Tails and all kinds of Canadian things.

October

On my last day in my old role, my coworkers decorated my desk with a homemade banner and got me desserts. We went to McDonald’s for a feast and sat in the Hub and made jokes. It felt really special and I was really touched.

On October 7, I started my new-but-also-kind-of-the-same job. I was very nervous and there was a lot to learn right from the get go. And it was so… strange. I HAD MY OWN OFFICE. WITH MY NAME ON THE DOOR AND EVERYTHING. The imposter syndrome hit me like a tsunami. I was extremely stressed, extremely overwhelmed. But my teammates and my boss are great. They understand I’m new not just to the role but to the field. They were (and are) so kind and patient with me and answer all of my questions.

For Thanksgiving, we went to Banff. We had beers and did a little bowling at High Rollers and then went to the Rimrock for dinner. It was very nice. A few weeks later, I hosted my own friendsgiving dinner and roasted a turkey! And spent all day decorating my parents’ house and the table to look fancy. Everything turned out really really well. I was super stoked. Note to self: throw more dinner parties.

November:

What I recall from November is just… stress. The case management / social worker life came at me real hard, real fast. I had to call CFS for the first time. My client did not want me to. It was hard. I did not cope well. My coping strategy was to fuck off to Lake Louise (?) for a weekend in a hostel and drink two bottles of wine with some random sorority girls from Chicago. And tears.

The cooking phase was in full swing at this point. Eggs benedict, soft pretzels, curry, French onion soup, gnocchi, prosciutto apple blue cheese chicken, apple and chai galettes.

The third week of November was also when I decided to start training for the half marathon. I found a plan online and set out to follow it and honestly, it’s been great. I usually don’t stick to exercise routines for longer than a month because I tend to go too hard, too fast and I overdo it and I let one hungover day derail me. But this plan wasn’t focused on distance but rather time spent running. So rather than, “I have to run 5km” today it’s, “I have to run for 45 minutes today.” I thought I’d hate that but I actually really like it. It encourages me to go a little slower and just run out the clock, at whatever pace. And the speed is building gradually, and naturally.

December:

Aaaand December!

December has been so much marathon training. Today, I am entering my seventh week of consistent running and exercise. That is a badass accomplishment for me. I am very pleased. I even managed to do my runs in Saskatoon on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Aurore left back to Paris. She had a birthday party at the house with all of her international friends and we went for sushi and looked at Christmas lights in the rich people neighborhoods before she returned home. She ended up being so wonderful. I will miss her.

I went to Radium for a weekend with Kennedy, Matt, Amanda, and their friend Katie. The takeaways from this experience are: I am excited to get to spend more time with Kennedy and Amanda and to become better friends with them, I think I like smoking weed now, and skiing is the best.

2020:

To be completely honest, my life is pretty good. I sometimes wish I had somebody to share it with, and that’s something I hope to be a little better about in 2020 is putting myself out there in more of a meaningful way.

I also am super excited to continue down this path with my career and to develop personally and professionally as a social worker. There is truly so much to learn and I’m really motivated and excited right now to do well at this which is an awesome feeling. I do need to work on not taking my work home with me so much, about separating the social work life from the personal life. Setting boundaries and all that good stuff.

I’m hopefully going to run my first half marathon in 2020. May 31. The countdown is on. Excited to cross that item off the bucket list and experience the rush of crossing the finish line! That endorphin high is going to be insane.

And I want to keep developing my cooking skills. Though they may be small, they are mighty. I want to try and learn how to make fresh pasta dough. LOL. Simple goals.

Anyways... thank you 2019 for all you have brought me and taught me. I am grateful for the life I get to the live and the experiences I get to have. And I’m super stoked to see where 2020 takes me.

#megbox #personal #year in review #2019

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