#and there were Other Children and i got so stressed that i had a meltdown and told the teacher i didnt know how to read | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

clanwarrior-tumbly · 11 months

Note

Hello dear! It's been a long time :)

I've read some of your Mandela Catalog fanfics and they are amazing!

I would like to make a request, how about the Reader (who was a friend of the Murray's and took care of Adam after the divorce as Lynn didn't have much time to spend with him) take custody of him after his parents died?

Adam at least grew up with someone :) and the Reader always sang songs when he got sad about his parents...

But the events are the same as the Mandela Catalog (Volume 1 and 2 etc.)

In the meantime, the Reader ends up dying for an Alternative, after months of the Reader's death, the events of volume 2 happen and then the events of Mandela Catalyst happen.

Basically, Thatcher finds Adam singing one of the songs that the Reader sang to him to calm him down, but since it's not the Reader singing...he can't calm down at all .

Just Angst in general...sorry :)

Oh boy this one hurt a LOT to write. Strap in and be ready for (several) different timeskips (and a whole lot of angst)

.........

--September 1992--

"Hey, [y/n]. I'm so sorry to bother you, but-"

"It's okay. What's up? Do you need me to watch him for a bit?"

"...I actually needed to talk to you about something important, but he hasn't stopped crying, and...shit...I-I just need a little bit of help if that's alright. I can't calm him down."

Hearing Lynn's exhausted sigh over the phone, you frowned slightly. It especially pained your heart to hear her son's wailing in the background, yet you realized she called you around this specific hour last time..with the exact same problem.

It was strange, honestly.

You would've thought she'd figured out what was going on with Adam by now.

"Wasn't Jude there earlier? Don't tell me he bailed and that's why he's-"

"No. He actually showed up this time and watched him while I was in a meeting. Everything was fine..a-and Adam didn't make any fuss when he left. But now he just started up the waterworks again and...god, I don't know what to do anymore.."

"Well you tell the little guy to hang tight, okay?" You reassured her as you grabbed your keys, jacket, and shoes. "I'm on my way over."

"Thank you so much, [y/n]..I'm sorry about this-"

"Don't be. It's not your fault. I'll see you in a few."

"Alright, see you soon."

After hanging up the phone, you headed out the door and got into your vehicle, driving to the Murray's residence.

You've been close friends with Jude and Lynn, having supported them through nearly every milestone of their relationship: when they had their son, when they got married, and....when they unfortunately went through a divorce two years later.

To this day, you still weren't sure what caused their relationship to crash and burn. They were highschool sweethearts who hoped to move into the big city and have kids--the kind of dream any couple would wanna live out.

But then they became incredibly stressed over raising just one child alone, and thought rushing into marriage would resolve things quickly.

Instead, it only caused more friction between them.

Regardless, you still wanted to help them out. So you've offered to watch Adam for a few hours while Lynn went to work, or if she just needed to get out of the house and take a breather.

He's a good kid...aside from being either quiet or having huge crying fits with consistent patterns to them. You suspected he saw something scary and violent on television once and hasn't recovered since.

Lynn mentioned a toddler stress assessment he took, showing his scores ranging from low to zero, indicating he didn't respond to the stimuli properly. She would have been more concerned if other children his age didn't share similar results, all apparently due to them being witnesses to a "phenomena".

Whatever it was, it must've been traumatic enough for him to have these meltdowns seemingly out of the blue.

But you always succeeded at calming him down. Lynn mom had yet to see your methods, though she's convinced you're some kind of "miracle worker", doing a better job at parenting than she or Jude could.

Fortunately, she was going to find out today.

You arrived at the house, exchanging sympathetic smiles with the exhausted mother before she led you to Adam's room. There, he was in the corner bawling his eyes out.

"Adam, sweetie? Someone's here to see you." She cooed, but to no avail as he didn't even look up at her. Sighing in defeat, she stepped aside when you reassured her you'll handle it.

"Hey, buddy. It's me again." You spoke softly, kneeling down on the floor in front of Adam. For a moment, he fell silent and glanced up at you, hiccupping on occasion.

But when you opened your arms up to him, he started crying even louder and clung to you tightly. "Oh it's okay, kiddo. Shhh, I'm here." You hushed, holding him as you stood back up. "[Y/n]'s here now."

He could only blubber your name in response, snot and tears dribbling down his face as he nuzzled into your shoulder. You rubbed his back, wishing you could take away whatever made him this upset.

Since that wasn't possible, you did the only thing you could do in that moment.

And that was sing.

More specifically, sing a song you heard on the radio earlier today. It's one of your favorites, which always helps you calm down after a stressful day; surely it'll help Adam in his case, too.

Although your voice was soft and quiet, it managed to reach his ears as you sang to him, and eventually it worked its magic. His sobs died into sniffles, and then sniffles into silence.

You smiled. "Did you like that one? That's one of my favorites."

He nodded, now resting his head on your shoulder and closing his puffy eyes as you kept rubbing his back, humming softly. Before you knew it, he was fast asleep.

"....are you serious? I've tried singing to him and it does nothing!" Lynn whispered, astonished you were able to resolve that in a minute, when usually it took her an hour.

"Sorry, I guess he likes my voice better." You chuckled lightly, before your eyes shifted around the room. "Where do you want him? The crib as usual?"

"...as usual. I know he's supposed to be grown out of it, but he refuses to sleep anywhere else."

"It'll happen eventually, I'm sure." You set Adam down, making sure the pillow was comfortably underneath his head. Then you turned back to Lynn. "So...you wanted to talk about something?"

"It's..on the kitchen table." She muttered, confusing you as she turned and walked out the room.

You followed her to the aforementioned section of the house, noticing documents on the table. One mentioned child custody, which was signed by her and Jude...but also had a third blank line on it as well.

"Jude and I had a long talk, and...we both decided that if, god forbid, anything should happen to us and we can't be here to take care of Adam...we'd make you his legal guardian." She explained. "I know it's a lot to ask of you right now and I doubt we'll even need this, but-"

"I'll sign it."

She blinked. "R-Really? I mean..there's no rush. If you need time to think about it-"

"My mind's been made up. With those broadcasts having everyone on edge, it's better to be safe than sorry. But I hope it won't come to that." You picked up the pen, clicking it as you sat down to read the document. "I just sign here? Do I have to go to the court?"

"No, you can just sign it and I'll bring it to them tomorrow." She swallowed the lump in her throat, choking back tears of relief. "I-I just want Adam to grow up in a better place and..we trust that you can do that should it be necessary."

Nodding in understanding, you signed the paper, slipping it back into the folder before you gave Lynn a hug. "If this helps you guys out, then it's fine with me. Does Adam know?"

"W-We're gonna tell him about it, soon. But..thank you so, so much, [y/n]. This means a lot to us."

"Of course, I'm here for you and him till the very end."

--One Week Later--

"Lynn? Are you alright? I was driving by and noticed your door was wide open."

"......"

"Lynn? Jude? You guys here?"

"........"

"....Adam?"

"........"

"Anybody home at all? Hello?"

"........."

"C'mon, this isn't.....wha....o-oh my god. LYNN!! No, no, no, no, no!! What the fuck?!! Why would you...y-you....?! Oh Christ, I'm gonna be sick....I need to call 911-"

"[Y/n]? Where's momma...?"

"A-Adam! Don't go in there. Thank god you're okay, but wha...what are you doing out here by yourself??"

"...looking for my new friend."

"Huh? But..sweetheart, there's no one here but us."

"Not even momma?"

"N-No. She's..gone away for a while. And dad, too. But do you remember that talk we had about me looking after you?"

"Mhm."

"Well, that...starts now. I'll be taking care of you for a little while, okay?"

"Okay."

"Good, good..now let's go home."

--January 2002--

It's been 10 years since the worst night of your life, as well as Adam's.

You lost two of your best friends, and he lost his family.

The sight of Lynn's hanging corpse was forever burned into your mind, and you were still unsure of Jude's whereabouts to this very day. He was never found by the police..although you felt like they were too scared to investigate further and give victims like yourself the proper justice.

Nevertheless, you had a promise to keep. And so you've done your best to raise Adam as his legal guardian. Signing those documents all those years ago certainly streamlined the process of you gaining custody over him, and he didn't protest over it.

You never did tell him what actually happened that night. You don't think you'll ever be able to.

All you said was that you found him alone in that house and took him with you, clueless as to where his parents are. It was only partially a lie, yet you still felt guilty.

You tried giving him a normal life away from Mandela County, as it was simply too dangerous to live there. He grew out of the unusual behavioral patterns of his toddler years, thank goodness, and continued being a generally good kid.

In school, he took up a hobby in filmmaking, while also gaining interest in ghost-hunting shows and other subjects related to paranormal activity, including online forums discussing Alternates.

Although concerned about this interest he's been pursuing, you supported his passions.

After turning 14, he reached that "teen angst" state of his life where he was going through lots of changes and constantly flipping moods like a light switch.

And when you picked him up from school today, that bad attitude reared its ugly head for you to see.

He didn't greet you after getting in the car, keeping his headphones on as he stared outside the window, seething red. You did notice a small group of jocks, one of whom seemed to have a nosebleed while the rest scowled at your son, only to see you were staring at them too. They quickly scampered back onto the campus grounds.

But what you didn't notice was Adam rolling down his sleeves to hide his bruised knuckles.

As soon as you both got home, he threw his backpack onto the nearest table and stormed off to his room without speaking a single word to you.

Now any other parent wouldn't have tolerated his disrespect. But rather than chastise him when you knew he was already feeling shitty, you calmly walked towards his bedroom door.

It was partially open, though you gently knocked just to be polite. "Hey, kid..may I come in?"

"....sure. Whatever."

You pushed the door open more, entering to find Adam curled up on his bed, staring down at his music player as he shuffled through some songs. "Glad to see you're using the MP3 I got you for Christmas."

He didn't respond to that, instead burying his face into his knees and keeping his hood drawn over his head.

You sat beside him, knowing that you'd have to choose your next words very carefully from here on out. 'Wish there was some guidebook on caring for a grumpy teenage boy..but I'll have to figure this one out myself..'

"So..what're you listening to?" You asked, hoping to start up some kind of conversation.

"...if you care so much..it's Radiohead." His voice was slightly muffled, but you understood him as your eyes lit up.

"Oh! I love that band."

"You do?"

"Of course! You think I'm too old to enjoy it?" You feigned hurt, although when you heard him sniffle quietly, you sighed and rested a hand on his back. "Look, I noticed those kids staring when I picked you up. They look like the same jerks I used to meet in school. Did...they say anything to you?"

For a few long moments, he was silent, but eventually answered.

"They called me an orphan, so I punched one of them."

Your heart sunk. "Wha--Adam, you gotta be more careful. You could've gotten hurt or expelled-"

"So what? I'm supposed to just take it?" He glared up at you, his eyes red and watery. "I can't defend myself?"

"...that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that there's other ways we can deal with them without violence. But I agree that what they said was wrong." Frowning, you gently brushed his curly bangs to the side. "They shouldn't be using orphan as an insult."

"Yeah. They think both my parents are dead, but they're liars. My mom's still out there, and if she comes back we can prove them wrong."

Ah.

You could feel this familiar conversation starting up again, but this time you weren't sure if Adam was going to be placated by your answer anymore. The more he pressed about it, the more he got suspicious and tired of the same excuses.

"....are we ever gonna go back to Mandela and try to find her, [y/n]?"

You shook your head. "I'm sorry, Adam. But you know we can't. I...have no clue where we'd even start."

"Then why doesn't she try to find us, instead? She must have escaped those things by now..unless she gave up on me."

"Wha--" You blinked, having no idea how he could've drawn that conclusion so quickly. "What made you think-?"

"I-I mean..it makes sense, right? It's been ten damn years and she hasn't tried looking for us once?" He started getting agitated, taking off his headphones as they no longer comforted him. "Maybe she wanted me out of her life for good. I mean...I'm the reason her and dad divorced."

"Adam, their divorce wasn't your fault at all. I knew your mom for a long time, and she loved you a lot-"

"Then why does it feel like she abandoned me?!!" He snapped, throwing his music devices onto the mattress before scowling at you. "Just tell me the truth, [y/n]!! I can take it. If she said I was a burden, then fucking TELL ME!!"

You took your hand off his back the moment he started shouting, feeling yourself tensing up.

The one thing you hoped not to do was make him angry, and yet here he was...lashing out. But you tried not to take it too personally and stayed quiet.

Not long after his explosion, Adam saw the look on your face and instantly felt remorseful for snapping like that. His face began burning with embarrassment as he looked away, fresh tears welling up in his eyes.

"..I'm sorry, I...I just-"

"I know you didn't mean it. It's alright." You carefully wrapped your arm around him, bringing him closer to you. "But you were never a burden to her. That's the truth. She loved you and wanted you to have a better life..one that she couldn't provide. I know you don't understand everything right now, but one day it's all gonna make sense. I can promise you that, son."

He sniffled and tucked his face between your neck and shoulder, trying to stifle his sobs as he mumbled about still missing her so badly. You held him even closer, feeling the poor kid shaking in your arms.

Luckily, you knew exactly how to remedy this situation.

"Adam?"

"Y..yeah?"

"...do you want me to sing to you like I did before? I know you got your music player, but..my voice might help you feel a little better."

For a moment he was quiet, but you felt him nod against your neck. You smiled and kissed the top of his hood, before quietly singing one of his favorite songs:

"Such a pretty house, and such a pretty garden. No alarms and no surprises. No alarms and no surprises...."

He closed his eyes as he listened to your soft voice, tears dampening the collar of your shirt. He felt like he did nothing to deserve you or all of this love after the way he acted earlier.

You could've left him alone, or got angry right back at him.

But you didn't.

You never stopped being there for him.

After Adam calmed down a few minutes later, you let him go and saw him wipe at his face with his sleeve. While still embarrassed to be seen like this, he did feel a lot better. "Y-You...still got it." He chuckled. "You ever think about becoming a singer? Like in a band or something?"

"In my dreams, yeah. But I told ya I'm a big Radiohead fan." You smirked.

"Alright, alright..I guess you're not too "old" to like it." He rolled his eyes, but eventually leaned back onto your shoulder, relaxing. "Thanks again, [y/n]. I-I..really needed that."

"Anytime." You gently hugged him to you. "I'm here whenever you need me, son. I promise we'll go back to Mandela when it's safer."

"Together?"

"Together."

--September 2008--

You couldn't believe it.

You couldn't.

Fucking.

Believe it.

Adam went behind your back and did exactly what you told him not to do.

He left for to Mandela County in the middle of the night, taking a stolen car. Although he did leave you a note saying he was going on a "BPS mission" with Jonah and promised to be back in several days, you were still quite infuriated.

Especially since you've been meaning to talk to him about this little "group" of his.

All this time, you thought it was just some afterschool club he attended that helped him make friends and even find a girlfriend. He told you all they did was chat about ghosts and research paranormal stuff and nothing more.

But he's been using it as a cover-up to hunt down the Alternates who ruined so many lives, breaking several laws while doing so.

You only learned about all this through Evelin, who called your cell phone just a few minutes ago. The poor girl was in tears, explaining that she and Adam had a huge fight, and apparently he told her some....very hurtful things.

Things you'd never believe would come out of your son's mouth.

You didn't raise him this way at all.

You raised him to be a better person, not a rebel who thinks he can talk to girls with such disrespect and run away from home.

Why would he do this all of the sudden?

Did he just get too impatient?

Did he not trust you anymore?

What ever happened to the promise that you'll go to Mandela together?

Regardless, you apologized to Evelin for Adam's behavior before hanging up. Then you called his number, and he surprisingly answered within the first ring.

Usually it took three.

"Hey, [y/n]. What's up?"

""What's up?"" You mimicked, already growing annoyed. ""What's up" is that your girlfriend called me and said you insulted her. All because she didn't like these little "ghost hunts" you've been doing??"

"Oh fuck, did she really tell you about all our problems?" He groaned. "Look, I'm not the bad guy here. I swear. We had a petty argument and she freaked out on ME, and then I got a little defensive. That's all."

"...a "little"? You made her cry, Adam. I had to help her calm down before she could even talk to me."

"....well it's not my fault if she's too damn sensitive."

You couldn't believe how heartless he sounded, but you didn't wanna stay on this topic forever.

So you sighed, sitting down on the sofa as you wondered how you can convince him to stop these ridiculous "hunts". "Listen, son. I just think this is consuming your life too much-"

"But this IS my life, [y/n]! Jonah and I have been making some serious bank from this! Believe it or not, paranormal investigating IS a real job-"

"But it's not a safe one." You interrupted. "I know how badly you want closure on your mother, but those things won't give you any answers. They're only going to kill you if-"

"I stared at one dead in the face and it didn't attack me."

You froze, feeling your heart drop into your stomach. "...what?"

"Yeah! I found out I'm sorta "immune" to M.A.D or whatever, and I have footage of it!" He bragged. "It didn't hurt me at all. We had a pretty funny staring contest. I can send you proof of it so you don't have to worry about me."

"....I don't want "proof", Adam. I want you to come home."

"....not until I find out the truth for myself." Suddenly his tone turned spiteful. "Unless you know something that I don't."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not a dumb kid anymore, [y/n]. If there's something YOU knew about that night that you didn't wanna tell me before...now's the time."

For a few long moments, you were silent as you thought over his words, although his snarky response made your blood boil even more.

At this point you were fed up you were with him sneaking behind your back like this and breaking his promise. You only sheltered the truth of that night from him for this long because you knew how deeply it would hurt him.

But now he was practically goading you into laying it all out.

Maybe that's what you should do. Just to finally put this to rest and make him give up on these stupid "investigations". He was searching for someone who wasn't even alive anymore.

He may hate you, but if this is what he wanted...it's what he'll get.

"I'm sorry, Adam. But-"

All of the sudden, a loud sound akin to static noise crackled right into your eardrum, causing you to flinch and hold the phone far away from you.

Only then did you notice an unknown caller ID had popped up, the ringtone playing normally. You declined it and tried calling Adam back, but the same mysterious number showed up again before you could even dial anything.

You had no choice but to answer the stranger.

"Hello? Yes?"

"This is no longer your place to spill secrets, I'm afraid." A male's voice, staticky and coarse, droned in your ear. "Only I will reveal everything to our prophet soon enough."

"....your prophet? Who the hell is this?" Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "I think you got the wrong number. I don't know any "prophet". Goodbye."

Hanging up, you hoped to put an end to that discussion and reach out to Adam once more-

"Of course you do, [y/n]. He's the son you've taken under your wing."

Every muscle in your body tensed.

The same voice was now inside your own home.

Your eyes searched the living room until you noticed the TV flickering to life, the screen displaying a hooded man with a face that looked as if it were melting.

"How do you know about him?" You scowled. "Don't tell me...you're the creep who kidnapped all those kids back in-"

"You played right into our hands. You've passed our test. I must say you've raised him well..keeping him in the dark about his truth." The Intruder taunted. "But it's time you open your eyes and recognize the favor you've done for us."

"...what favor? What does any of this have to do with Adam?!"

"From the moment you saw that boy's poor mother...he ceased to exist, too. I had taken him only for a moment, and gave you back something you promised to protect. But you've been living a lie, [y/n]. Your "son" was never actually him."

"You mean to tell me he's......?" Your heart dropped into your stomach, realizing what he was implying. But you clenched your fists. "N-No. You're lying."

"You had already failed them before you even realized it." The TV glitched to show the shadow of a certain woman with her neck broken, before displaying an image of the Murray house, before it reverted back to the Intruder's face. "You could've joined them, but we wanted to see how he'd grow under your watchful eye. Now thanks to you, we know we can blend into mankind and watch it rot from the inside out. And soon we'll awaken him, too, and rejoice."

"I don't believe you." You tried keeping your voice steady and calm, knowing he was attempting to inflict M.A.D on you. "If you think he's going to be anything like you freaks...you're dead wrong."

"Oh, but he will. He must. It's his fate."

"If he's one of you, then why would he care for the real Adam's mother like she was his?! And on that note...was hanging her just your little "distraction" so you could-?!"

"You accuse me as if I pulled the rope." He scoffed. "But I didn't. She just lost all hope and faith in finding him. That poor mother, too distraught at the sight of her missing infant---distraught at the sight of her missing infant, missing infant, missing infantmissinginfantMISSINGMISSINGMISSINGMISSINGMISSING...."

His voice suddenly began repeating on a loop, corrupted messages and symbols covering the screen. Through it all, you were still able to make out his haunting gaze and widening grin.

The only way he disappeared was when you grabbed a nearby chair and smashed the glass with it, shattering the screen to pieces. Electric sparks and smoke sputtered out of the TV, but besides that...it was finally silent again.

You huffed and took several steps back.

Yet you had little time to fully process everything he told you as your phone rang again. You hesitantly checked it, only to become relieved at seeing's Adam's number and quickly answered it.

"A-Adam! Are you okay?"

"Yeah, um..are you? What happened? You just hung up on me.." He sounded rather concerned.

"I didn't mean to. S-Something must've disconnected our call.." You scrambled to grab your keys, convinced he was in danger.

'Damnit, I swore I was gonna stay away from Mandela, but if he's still there....and HE knows about him-.'

However before you could get your shoes, you stopped and felt a sudden chill run up your spine.

One that left you with the feeling that you weren't alone anymore.

Your gaze slowly went to the front door, where a tall humanoid figure lurked in the nearest corner. It was overtaken by a huge shadow, although the whites of its elongated eyes were still visible, staring back at you.

Adam's concerned "hellos" on the other end fell on deaf ears as you watched the creature limp out from the darkness, revealing itself to be the most horrifying attempt at human mimicry possible.

The worst part?

It looked just like you.

"I'm here whenever you need me, son." It echoed your voice, stalking towards you and forcing you away from the front door, back into the kitchen area. "Something must've disconnected our call-l-l!"

"Who the hell was that? What's going on?!"

Finally hearing your son again, you swallowed back tears as you shakily reached for a large knife, keeping the phone in a tight grip.

This was it for you.

You've just been a pawn in their plans all along.

The Intruder had intentions to kill you with M.A.D by revealing you've basically raised an Alternate for them, and if that despair alone didn't end your life.....then this beast that somehow got inside your home will surely finish the job.

But screw that. Screw all of them.

You'll fight till your last breath if you must.

Your only regret is leaving Adam all alone when he's already lost so much in his life...but you didn't want him to think you resented him.

"I-I have to go. I'm sorry if I sounded harsh back there. I just want you to make the right choices. But if this BPS stuff makes you happy, then..keep doing what you're doing. Just be careful, okay?"

"Uh, sure. But why are you talking like that, [y/n]??" His voice was growing more worrisome. "Look, I'm sorry. I-I swear I'll come back home soon-"

"Don't worry about me...I'll be okay." You smiled shakily, not taking your eyes off the creature closing in. "Just take care of yourself out there. This world's cruel, but I know you'll kick it in the ass."

"Just wait a damn second! Don't g-!"

"Goodbye, my son. I love you."

You ended the call, dropping the phone to the ground and holding the knife with both hands, finally ready to accept your fate.

The Alternate howled with laughter, before it lunged at you with its claws and jaws wide open.

"GOODBYE-E-E!!!!"

"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!!!!"

"Uh-oh! Bad decision, [y/n]!"

--January 16th, 2009--

Adam staggered through the front door to his home, famished, dehydrated, exhausted....

And burdened with knowledge that made him want to die.

Only a few months ago, you disappeared after that concerning phone conversation you two exchanged. He hasn't heard your voice since, and when he returned to Werksha..you were nowhere to be found.

There was no sign of a break-in, or anything of that sort..but Adam was convinced you were taken just like his mom was--obviously by one of the Alternates.

So he went back to Mandela to continue his investigations alongside Jonah, growing desperate for answers. There had to be at least one who knew what happened to you and where you are.

His obsession with these hunts only worsened, turning him into a crueler person around those who questioned his reasons for "chasing" after Alternates. Evelin did break off the relationship for good, seeing as he was too far gone to even reason with.

He knows you would've been disappointed in him...but surely you'd understand why he'd do this. You understood him better than anyone.

You said it yourself. As long as he was careful, he can do whatever he wanted!

Yet nothing ever turned up.

Until the day he and Jonah agreed to help put a cat's spirit to rest, the "owner" offering them $500 a night if they stayed for three in total...

That investigation ended in a huge argument in which Jonah brought up your name and his mother, setting him off and indirectly causing his best friend's death.

And then he was all alone again, but acted like none of it bothered him and tried to quell BPS' online following with a memorial video.

Days later, the Intruder contacted him on his laptop and unveiled the truth about his existence--the same truth he told you before you died.

"Your skin is not your own."

"You're not the real you."

Those words were drilled into Adam's mind, and he could feel his own body going through an agonizing metamorphosis as he forced himself to drive back to Werksha one last time.

He barely was able to drag himself out of the van and through the front door.

But that's when he was greeted by a grisly sight:

Your rotting corpse slumped against the wall, a bloody knife in your palm and a deep slash wound across your throat, your clothes caked in dried blood.

You were never missing.

You died.

And whatever monster brought you back here decided to present you as some twisted "gift" for him.

Adam collapsed and screamed so loudly that it shattered the lights he turned on, deciding right there that he didn't wanna live this way anymore. He couldn't. He didn't wanna become one of them.

He wanted to join you while he still had his humanity left.

Yet despite all his attempts to end his misery, including using the same knife you used to stab himself and consuming enough bleach cleaner he found under the sink to make him vomit his guts out......nothing was working.

His body didn't fail him like he expected.

He still felt his bones breaking in all the wrong ways, and now his insides fucking burned like an inferno.

Eventually, Adam stopped and instead covered your body with his BPS hoodie, sobbing about how sorry he was for not being here for you, before he managed to crawl his way into his room--his one place of comfort.

Having no strength to climb onto the mattress, he just slumped next to his bed, leaning against the nightstand for support. He made the mistake of looking into the cracked mirror beside him...and wailed as he saw the same monster that robbed you of life staring straight back at him:

A gaunt, skinny husk of a boy with pupils of light and a horrifying facial expression that's impossible for humans to mimic.

God, he wishes he spent more time with you...had he known all of this was going to happen..

Did you know he was an Alternate? Is that why you were afraid of him coming back to Mandela?

What would you do if you found him like this?

Would you still hold him?

Would you still sing to him?

Or....

'That's it...I can sing...' He realized, slowly quieting down as he recalled all the times you sang to him whenever he was saddened in the past.

If you were able to calm him down easily, then surely he can calm himself down in a similar way in this situation. It's just his own voice this time around; it couldn't be that much different...right?

It was worth a try.

"...s-such...a...pretty house...and...and such a pretty gardennn...."

He ignored the creaking of the front door being opened, and the footsteps that echoed through the house, slowly approaching his room.

"No..alarms-s-s....and no....a-and no....!"

Suddenly Adam began hyperventilating, eyes filling with tears as he struggled to finish the line, despising the way it sounded.

It wasn't the same.

It wasn't your voice.

It was a voice that wasn't even his own. Just a broken and flawed attempt to mimic the real Adam's--the one who never even got a shot at life before it was stolen away from him.

If this didn't help him..then nothing could..

He wanted you back.

He needed your voice to sing and comfort him, just as you've done all those years ago.

He needed you.

But you're never coming back again.

Up to this point, a certain ex-lieutenant officer with a vendetta against the Alternates entered the bedroom, shining the light around until he found this kid sitting all alone and....

Singing a Radiohead song?

He realized his ears weren't deceiving him, but just as he attempted to confirm his identity-

Adam's jaw unhinged without warning, stretching to impossible proportions as he looked directly into his eyes, screaming and crying out with all the grief left in him:

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!"

#clanask #mandela catalogue x reader #tmc x reader #adam murray #parent reader #platonic #tw body horror #tw suicide mention #tw reader death #angst #hurt/comfort

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robininthelabyrinth · 9 months

Text

The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 19

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

———————————————————————-

Maintain your own discipline.

Be hard on yourself, be easy on others.

Lan Qiren’s foundation had always been his sect rules. They had been his refuge as a child, when he had had such difficulty in connecting with or even understanding his peers or his seniors, and they remained his reliance as an adult, particularly in times of stress. In every step he had taken in his life, the rules had been with him, providing guidance and support – a source of strength, a source of serenity, a source of unshakable stability.

He was not going to let anything, or anyone, take that away from him.

“Xichen, Wangji,” he said once his nephews were both on the ground, keeping his tone as even as possible. Have affection and gratitude. “It is good to see you.”

“They’re safe and wholly intact,” Cangse Sanren said proudly. She’d arrived not long after Wen Ruohan, hopping off her own sword with a brief stutter in her legs that suggested she had been going a little faster than she was entirely comfortable with. “Just as promised. We even got them out of an active war zone! Uh, not that we knew it was going to be a war zone when we were heading there, in my defense. Actually, we were just doing a spot of night-hunting with them – I mean, nothing serious, just a few jiangshi, a couple of small ghosts…”

She looked hopefully at him.

“Thank you for bringing them back to me,” Lan Qiren said politely. Have courtesy and integrity. Be grateful. No improper behavior. “I appreciate your efforts and your care.”

For some reason, Cangse Sanren’s face fell.

“Oh, he is so mad,” she muttered to Wen Ruohan, who had been completely silent since landing, which was unusual for him. He also hadn’t taken his eyes off of Lan Qiren, which…probably meant something? Hopefully not that he was angry that Lan Qiren had demanded that He Zhong help get him released from the cells of the Fire Palace to await his return. “He’s really mad. You didn’t say he was this mad.”

The rules said Do not succumb to rage.

On the other hand, they also said Be genuine and unedited.

“Shufu isn’t mad,” Lan Xichen piped up before Lan Qiren could say anything. “He’s disappointed.”

Lan Qiren shook his head. Do not tell lies.

“No, Xichen,” he said, voice still completely even. Calm. Factual. “This time, I am mad.”

“…oh.”

“Not at you, nor at Wangji,” he clarified. “I am very pleased to see that you are both well, and that you have made it here without coming to harm. I am equally pleased that you have made friends. I regret that I do not have time to properly meet them now. Rooms will be prepared for all the children so that you can go to rest – ”

He paused briefly to allow for interruption, but when Wen Ruohan said nothing, decided to continue. He was being a little presumptuous, both in cutting the introduction so short and in taking on the role of host, which rightfully belonged to Wen Ruohan as the master of the Nightless City. Technically, it belonged to him as well, as Wen Ruohan’s husband, but they hadn’t had to deal with any guests of consequence during the past few months and the subject of hosting duties had never come up.

No matter.

“When you are recovered, I believe there was a suggestion that you would be introduced to Wen Chao, Wen-er-gongzi. Please make every effort to get along with him.”

“Because he is our shumu’s son?” Lan Wangji asked.

Lan Qiren blinked, having for whatever reason not expected his nephews to use such an intimate term of address for Wen Ruohan. It caused the smallest hairline fracture in his composure – no.

Maintain your own discipline. Maintain. Maintain.

If Lan Qiren relaxed his vigilance long enough to have emotions of any sort, positive or negative, he was going to shatter. He was barely holding it together as it was. If he shattered now, he would immediately have a meltdown, and afterwards he would be useless for some time. If that happened, he would not be able to convey the vital information he had obtained, and he had to convey it. Everyone and everything was depending on him.

His nephews, his sect, even his beloved – he was not about to let them down. He wasn’t.

Lan Qiren had already had one fit shortly after learning what he had, and it had greatly impeded his efforts to get out of the Fire Palace and to a place where he could be of actual use. He Zhong had needed to be convinced that giving Lan Qiren time to rest and recover was not the right approach – calling a doctor was out of the question, of course, since providing medical care to someone officially imprisoned in the Fire Palace without first obtaining permission was a surefire way to get in trouble, no matter their rank. Under the circumstances, despite everyone’s general agreement that Wen Ruohan would regret his actions eventually, no one wanted to risk violating protocol in the event of him still being angry when he returned.

Lan Qiren understood, he supposed, but he also found it to be unbelievably inconvenient.

In the end, it had taken him an unconscionably long time to convince He Zhong that enforced rest would be counterproductive, and that he should instead simply provide him with enough cold water to rinse himself properly, a change of clothing from his quarters, and something he could use to brace his ankle, as well as some freedom of movement. It had then taken even longer for He Zhong to actually accomplish those tasks, since a mere guard from the Fire Palace, particularly one who did not have the Wen surname, was not considered especially high ranking.

In the end, He Zhong had only succeeded because he’d happened to think of approaching Shen Mingbi to petition for her assistance, presumably based on her somewhat more cooperative behavior during the wives’ visit to the Fire Palace. Lan Qiren would not have thought that an effective stratagem, given Shen Mingbi’s general antipathy towards him, but it had worked, and according to He Zhong the only price she had set on her assistance was his promise to join her for dinner – which was where he was right now, in fact.

(The whole thing was utterly inexplicable to Lan Qiren. Perhaps she lacked friends?)

The whole thing had taken far too long. The delay had led Lan Qiren into another fit, this time one of panic, generated by all the ghastly things he could imagine were happening in the outside world to everyone he loved at that very moment, but of course that second fit in turn only delayed him still more.

A third delay, at this point, would be both unhelpful and extremely distressing.

“I’ll escort the children to their rooms,” Wei Changze volunteered, giving his wife and Wen Ruohan a meaningful look that escaped Lan Qiren completely. “You should probably go…talk. Good luck.” A brief pause, and then he said to Wen Ruohan, a little diffidently, “It was nice knowing you.”

That was a little odd: Lan Qiren hadn’t been aware that Wei Changze was on such good terms with Wen Ruohan. Perhaps they had had an opportunity to bond during their journey to the Nightless City?

No matter.

Lan Qiren watched the children go for perhaps an additional moment longer than he should have – another hairline fracture in his brutal self-control, this one larger, still unacceptable. As soon as he noticed, he reined himself in at once.

“As I said,” he resumed, “we have much to discuss – ”

“Inside,” Wen Ruohan said abruptly, practically biting off the word. “Now.”

Lan Qiren considered and then nodded. He hadn’t been thinking straight, trying to have a discussion like this out here – the Nightless City was not safe, it was full of potential traitors, like the one who had tricked Wen Ruohan. Far better that they retreat to Wen Ruohan’s study, where privacy arrays could be set up in relatively short order. They could all go there, the two of them and Cangse Sanren, who seemed disinclined to leave and who Lan Qiren knew from experience was very difficult to dissuade once she’d decided to stay; once there, they could have the critical discussion they needed to have.

Oddly enough, Wen Ruohan did not lead the way to his main study.

Instead, he led them to his bedroom, or rather to their bedroom, the one they shared, and once they’d arrived, he snapped, “Sit on the bed,” at Lan Qiren, who frowned disapprovingly at him.

“Now is not the time. There are more important things – ” he started to say, but Wen Ruohan interrupted him once more.

“Sit. Down.”

He was practically growling. Perhaps he was angry that Lan Qiren had left the Fire Palace without permission.

“Maybe you should sit,” Cangse Sanren said, which Lan Qiren had not been expecting. “It won’t delay the conversation, Qiren-gege, I promise. I’ll put up privacy talismans, all right? You sit.”

Lan Qiren reluctantly sat down. He was then surprised all over again – no, not surprised, he couldn’t be surprised, he couldn’t be anything, he couldn’t feel anything, he had to stay composed, he had to tell them – when Wen Ruohan did not sit down next to him, or at the desk, or anywhere reasonable, but instead lowered himself down onto the floor next to the bed.

It wasn’t until Wen Ruohan reached out with surprisingly gentle hands to take his injured ankle into his lap and started unwrapping the hastily patched-together brace that Lan Qiren realized what was going on.

“I do not require medical assistance,” he said impatiently. “I have to tell you – I found – there is – ”

To his horror, Lan Qiren found his voice cracking as he tried to put into words what he had discovered.

No, he thought frantically, no, not now. I will not succumb now. I will not fail them.

I will not!

He forced himself back to steadiness, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Wen Ruohan was watching him with a dark expression on his face, stormy, almost malevolent. It was as if he were angry, though the anger was not quite the same as any Lan Qiren had seen on him before. It did not seem to be directed at Lan Qiren, though he couldn’t imagine who else might be the subject of it at the moment.

No matter.

At a minimum, Wen Ruohan’s rage did not slow the steady and sure movement of his hands in treating Lan Qiren’s ankle, nor diminish the quality of his medical skills, and most importantly it did not seem to be impeding his willingness to listen to what Lan Qiren had to say. That was what mattered. He was here, he was listening, and Lan Qiren could tell him what he needed to know.

Now Lan Qiren just needed – he needed to actually say it.

After a moment, Lan Qiren cleared his throat and started again. “Cangse Sanren, you mentioned that you were going to go explore rumored hauntings in a mine in the vicinity of Xixiang, did you not?”

“I did,” Cangse Sanren confirmed, looking puzzled. Presumably she had not thought that he was going to start there. “It’s definitely haunted. Fixing it is…still an ongoing project, let’s say. We passed by it on the way here. Why? Is it important?”

“Immensely so,” Lan Qiren admitted, and felt bile rise up in the back of his throat the way it had been doing on a regular basis since he had realized what must have happened. That someone in his Gusu Lan sect, his sect that so prided itself on virtue and righteousness, had gotten involved in such a vile and disgusting thing, carelessly pursuing greed, closing their eyes to the evil they themselves were causing, and that evil compounding to such a degree that it was now causing hauntings, in direct violation to their duties as cultivators – it was almost unspeakable, particularly for someone like Lan Qiren, who loved his sect and his sect’s rules as much as he did. He felt nauseated every time he thought of it. “I believe…I have recently discovered some information that gives me reason to believe that what happened in that mine has something to do with – ”

With my brother’s madness.

“– with my Gusu Lan sect,” he concluded, finding himself unable to say the words directly. “Or, rather, with someone in my Gusu Lan sect.”

“Gusu Lan?” Wen Ruohan said, his voice sharp. “You’re thinking of Gusu Lan right now?”

“That makes sense, actually,” Cangse Sanren said, only a beat later. “That explains why the ghosts there bear a grudge against the Gusu Lan bloodline.”

“They what?” Wen Ruohan twisted to scowl at her. “You never mentioned that to me.”

“It didn’t seem like a you problem. It’s Lan Qiren’s family, not yours.”

“He is my – ” Wen Ruohan cut himself off, somewhat uncharacteristically. His scowl did not abate. “That would have been useful information. I would have expected you to share it."

“I don’t actually work for you, remember? Anyway, I didn't want to go into my theories about the massacre around the children, so I thought - Qiren! Are you all right?"

Lan Qiren's vision had temporarily gone hazy, with black spots around the edges as he fought down a wave of intense nausea, the burning bile in the back of his throat changing to something fishy and metallic. He’d known that there were hauntings there, but he had not realized, had not fully accepted, had not let himself think of what that might mean; he had hoped, he supposed, that it was just a matter of resentment accumulating, of evil acts drawing down their just rewards. But ghosts with a bloodline grudge – that meant that they blamed his sect, his family, for their unjust deaths. Add to that what Cangse Sanren had said regarding there being evidence of a massacre...

There could really only be one conclusion. A massacre at a mine owned in the name of Gusu Lan, a massacre which had left behind ghosts hungry for vengeance against Gusu Lan – yes, there could be only one reason for that.

Someone had done this.

Someone had done this in his sect’s name.

Someone had taken cultivators from their homes, likely entire families, and forced them to work in their mines in order to extract valuable ore while eking out a profit. Someone had then killed those people, though whether it was related to the work itself or as part of some sort of cover-up remained to be discovered. That didn’t change the fact that it had happened, and happened because of Gusu Lan.

Whoever had done this, anyone that had even contributed to this, anyone in his sect who was involved in it in any way, they all had to be punished. They had to be, due punishment and due justice, or else – or else what was the point –

Wen Ruohan abruptly rose up onto his knees and slammed his palm straight into Lan Qiren’s midsection, knocking all the air right out of him. Lan Qiren was taken completely by surprise, unable to put up any defense or resistance; he had no choice but to simply take the blow, spitting out the mouthful of blood that had already pooled in his mouth, and then brace himself for the pain –

There wasn’t any pain.

He blinked, and looked down.

Wen Ruohan’s palm was pressed firmly against his lower abdomen, right over his dantian, and he was transferring him spiritual energy. Though perhaps transferring was the wrong word: it was if he had merely opened the floodgates and was simply pouring his power into Lan Qiren directly, the spiritual energy filling him up as if he were a too-small container, the pulsing warmth of Wen Ruohan’s yang-based cultivation style heating Lan Qiren’s blood as it did, warming him from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been so cold.

“Congratulations,” Wen Ruohan said, voice immensely flat. He was angry once more. “You just came within a hair’s breadth of a qi deviation. Genuinely, this time. Never do that again.”

Lan Qiren felt embarrassed. The warmth of Wen Ruohan’s power was rapidly clearing his head, allowing some space for something other than panic and mortification and despair.

He took another deep breath, this time using it to circulate his own spiritual energy in a cleansing, spirit-settling routine, and when he finally felt calm enough to continue, shook his head.

“Forgive me. I will try to control myself better in the future,” he said, and did not understand why both Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren scowled at him as if he had said something wrong. “It is not important at the moment – ”

“Not important –!” “How can you say –?!”

“It is not,” Lan Qiren stressed. “The matter of the mine is of utmost importance, and not merely as a historical note or part of the resolution of an ongoing night-hunt. I believe that it can explain the way my brother has been behaving.”

“Your brother?” Wen Ruohan said, sounding surprised. “Do you even know what your brother is currently doing? He’s trying to destroy my sect.”

Lan Qiren winced.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s exaggerating,” Cangse Sanren said at once.

“Exaggerating?! He’s set me up as having started an insane war against the entire world, he’s gotten the other Great Sects to take up arms against me – ”

“And now that you’re not there, they won’t have an excuse to do anything,” she said tartly. “You’ll go back with the rest of your army, claim it was nothing but a mistake, and scare them all into agreeing to a ceasefire. You might take a loss, to be sure, and it might be embarrassing, but Qingheng-jun would have to be dreaming if he thought that something like this would be enough to destroy either you or your sect.”

“I agree,” Lan Qiren said quietly. “I am afraid that the impact on the Wen sect is only incidental to my brother’s real intention.”

They both stared at him. After a moment, Wen Ruohan pulled his hand away and rose to sit on the bed beside Lan Qiren, while Cangse Sanren pulled up a stool and sat in front of him.

“Let’s do this chronologically, the way we would when solving a night-hunt,” she said firmly, and Wen Ruohan inclined his head in silent agreement with her approach. “All right, Qiren, tell me: what happened with the mine? Ten years ago was around the start of your brother’s seclusion, and what happened with the mine must have happened a little bit before that. Was he involved?”

“Not that I know of. But He Kexin was.” He shut his eyes for a moment. The context was necessary, he knew, but he had spent so long keeping his sect’s secrets, his brother’s secrets, that it still felt like a betrayal when he haltingly explained: “She was his wife. She was a rogue cultivator, or said she was, and while he was still courting her, she – she went inside the Cloud Recesses and murdered one of our sect elders. One of our teachers. The evidence was clearly against her, but there was never any trial.”

He swallowed.

“Rather than let her face justice and be executed, my brother married her, and they both entered seclusion as penance. Permanent seclusion, particularly for her.”

Neither Wen Ruohan nor Cangse Sanren said anything. Lan Qiren was grateful.

“She died recently,” he continued. His lips and tongue felt strangely numb, reciting the facts of it as if he were a junior disciple reporting on a night-hunt, telling the tales of other people’s tragedies. Only this time, the tragedy was his own. “It was by her own hand; I was the one who found her body. That was the inciting incident that led my brother to return to the world.”

“You think there was something suspicious about her death?” Cangse Sanren asked, her hands folded together in her lap, her too-sharp fingernails vivid against the backs of her hands, her thumbs rubbing together as she listened. “That maybe it wasn’t suicide?”

“No, I was her sole connection to the outside world, it couldn’t have been anything else. Her sword was beside her, still wet with –” He broke off, unable to complete the sentence; he instead resumed at a different point. “At any rate, there was no indication from her that such an action was coming, in terms of depression or otherwise. It only recently occurred to me that she could have been incited to do it, goaded into it or even forced into it, perhaps through a letter containing threats or something of the sort. Anyway, it does not matter what actually happened. What matters is what my brother believes happened, and who he blames for it. And…what he intends to do to the ones he blames.”

“Annihilation,” Wen Ruohan said, his voice uncharacteristically soft and distant. He was staring off into space, seemingly consumed by some ancient memory. “Complete destruction, without mercy or regret. A broken-hearted Lan on the path of just revenge will not rest until they have obliterated the cause of their grief.”

As I would for you, if it were you, Lan Qiren thought painfully. Though you would not believe me.

“I have no direct evidence for it, but my intuition tells me that it is all somehow related to what happened in that mine,” he said, focusing on the current situation. “He Kexin’s death…in fact, I have even started to wonder whether the murder she committed, or perhaps more correctly was accused of committing, if that could somehow also be related to the crimes being perpetrated at the mine. I was not present at the time – I had gone away on business for the sect, some ridiculous negotiation or something; I don’t remember exactly what. It was all over by the time I returned, and the result of that whole affair was a matter that caused me great pain, so I never sought out or learned the details. That is my failing. But it seems to me that my brother’s plans all center around the area near the Xixiang mine: Quanjiao, Jiujiang…”

“Yuexi as well,” Wen Ruohan supplied grimly, nodding. “I was the one who suggested that we reach an agreement for support in a war of conquest, but Qingheng-jun was the one who suggested Quanjiao Liu as his target. Given the natural land formations in the area and where the Quanjiao Liu sect resides, when the Lan sect forces come down from Gusu, they will be the first to reach Xixiang. It’s a natural resting point on the way.”

Lan Qiren nodded. “And once there…”

“Wait, wait, how would this all work?” Cangse Sanren asked, looking between the two of them. “According to what Qiren has said, Quanjiao Liu isn’t the sect that was implicated in the mine, or in He Kexin’s eventual death as a consequence of it; Gusu Lan is. Qingheng-jun is Gusu Lan’s sect leader. Even if he wanted to revenge himself on those involved with the mine, he doesn’t need to go to such lengths! Can’t he just order the execution of whoever it was that did it?”

“That assumes he blames only the individuals involved,” Wen Ruohan said. “If I were in that situation, I would hardly limit myself to that. I can see the argument now: Gusu Lan speaks of virtue in the day yet acts corruptly in the dark, condemns his wife for the crimes she committed but permits those that put her into the situation to get away cleanly – the situation they put her and him into, since as a devoted lover and a Lan he would feel he had no choice but to rescue his love even at such a high cost. And yet, not satisfied with permitting the one great injustice, they came once more, this time to violate their peaceful seclusion and rob his beloved not only of her freedom but now even of her very life…” He shook his head. “Hypocrisy is always the more bitter when it comes from those that you hold in high esteem.”

Lan Qiren bowed his head. That was also the conclusion he had reached.

His brother not only wanted him dead, whether because he had been the leader of the sect in all those years yet never remedied their fault or for other reasons of his own, but had aimed his ire against their sect – and not merely the wrongdoers, which would have been understandable, but against the entirety of their sect.

Their Gusu Lan sect.

His Gusu Lan sect.

“That all seems rather extreme,” Cangse Sanren objected. “To blame his own sect…to seek to harm his own sect…!”

“Ten years is a great deal of time to be alone and stewing upon all your wrongs. Madness and heartbreak can lead a man to contemplate acts of great cruelty.” Wen Ruohan’s lips curled up, though he wasn’t really smiling. “Trust me.”

Lan Qiren’s heart throbbed in his chest. He did. No one else might, and he might be a fool for doing so, yet another madman in love, but he did. He trusted Wen Ruohan, even though his body still bore the marks of Wen Ruohan’s distrust of him.

Cangse Sanren scowled again. “I understand what you mean, but still…”

“I agree with Lan Qiren,” Wen Ruohan overrode Cangse Sanren easily. “Qingheng-jun’s war strategy makes little sense if he were not trying to cause harm to the Lan sect. He deliberately released information to the local sects to initiate a war that would draw the attention of the entire cultivation world – even putting aside the fact that I will accuse him of slander and trickery, it would be remarkably foolish for him to kick up a fuss in that precise area, especially right after there were rumors of hauntings, if he did not intend for the world to uncover what is there. It does not seem to matter overmuch to him that such a revelation would be a tremendous loss of face for Gusu Lan.”

That struck a chord in Lan Qiren’s memory.

“That is not the only time,” he murmured. “Much of his behavior recently has been – foolish, if you think of it from the perspective of someone who should be guarding the best interests of the Gusu Lan sect. So many of the things he has done have risked losing face for the sect. Marrying me out, not warning the sect about what he did, accusing me in public of taking his children…”

Wen Ruohan made a strangled noise deep in the back of his throat.

“That damn Wang Liu,” he spat out when they looked askance at him. His hands had tightened into fists, and he was glaring into the air, his gaze murderous. “He was the spy that – he was a traitor in my ranks, seemingly spying for me on Gusu Lan but in fact spying on me. Probably for Lanling Jin, though I believe now on behalf of Qingheng-jun.”

He was the one that had tricked Wen Ruohan into believing the worst about Lan Qiren, Lan Qiren assumed, and presumably also the one who had gotten Wen Ruohan to go to Jiujiang to set off the trap his brother had laid for him. One of Wen Ruohan’s own spies…yes, that tracked; they were the ones Wen Ruohan trusted the most. It seemed almost unbelievable that his brother would destroy such a valuable asset just to set up this trap, particularly given that Wen Ruohan seemed to have slipped out of the worst part of it with relative ease.

No, it was unbelievable. Lan Qiren’s brother was not a fool, except perhaps when it came to love. If he had done something, there was a reason – they just hadn’t figured out what that reason was yet.

“I was particularly reminded just now of a fact that appears in retrospect to be very unusual,” Wen Ruohan said. “At the Lotus Pier, during the discussion conference, it was Wang Liu who first informed me that the Lan sect heirs could not be found in the Cloud Recesses.”

Lan Qiren’s head jerked up.

“Are you saying he gave Xichen and Wangji to you deliberately? To you?” he exclaimed. “It is one thing to send me here, accepting or perhaps even hoping that I would end my days in your Fire Palace, but those are his sons – not only his sons, but the sect heirs! The next generation!”

Wen Ruohan’s face had spasmed as Lan Qiren spoke, and he looked down at his still-clenched fists with a grimace, looking as though he’d bitten into something bitter.

“Uh, Qiren-gege,” Cangse Sanren said, sounding amused. “You asked me to bring them here, too, remember? Anyway, I hate to poke a hole in the excellent theory the two of you are drawing up, but you’ve forgotten one thing: your brother is still Gusu Lan’s sect leader. If he really wanted to obliterate the sect, he has any number of far easier options he could take – I mean, just in terms of pure practicality, he could just poison your water source, couldn’t he?”

Lan Qiren scowled at her. “Thank you for that gruesome image, Cangse Sanren.”

The thought of everyone he loved choking to death, faces gone purple and foam on their lips – the bodies falling where they lay along the serene paths of the Cloud Recesses – no one left to bury the bodies, drawing in flies as the rot set in – the beauty of the place forever marred –

Cangse Sanren winced, looking embarrassed and, for once, a little ashamed of herself. “Yes, well, you know. Always a pleasure to trouble you, Qiren-gege.”

“Water source,” Wen Ruohan suddenly said. He was staring out into space again. “Water source. Redirection. The enhancement arrays!”

Lan Qiren frowned at him, not understanding. “Arrays? What are you talking about?”

He reached up to stroke his beard.

Cangse Sanren gave him a sharp look, and he abruptly remembered that he had been hiding that hand on purpose – it was the one missing the two smallest nails. He glanced at Wen Ruohan, who was still distracted by whatever revelation he was having, carefully completed the action to avoid drawing his attention, then tucked his hand back into his sleeve, giving Cangse Sanren a pointed look that encouraged her to disregard what she had noticed.

“I snuck Sect Leader Wen out of Jiujiang through the furthest tunnels left by the mine,” Cangse Sanren explained, clearly deciding not to ask any questions for the time being, though the set of her jaw suggested she was definitely going to bring it up again later on. “Spiritual iron, you know how it is; the tunnels go on for quite a while. While we were passing through, he noticed that some of the arrays in the mine weren’t suppression arrays – wait, did I mention the suppression arrays? The whole mine was full of them.”

Lan Qiren grimaced. Enough arrays to constitute a mine “full” of them suggested that it was more than merely a single person involved on the part of Gusu Lan, led by someone quite high-ranking.

Probably a sect elder, though he hadn’t had the time or resources to figure out who. No one else would have been able to get away with using the name of the sect rather than their own in purchasing the mine. Certainly no one else would have been able to conceal such a big matter from Lan Qiren when he had had the role of sect leader, and yet conceal it they had…

“Anyway, on top of the suppression arrays, all of which were at least ten years old, there were apparently a bunch of new arrays, these ones only a few months old at most. Sect Leader Wen said that they were enhancement arrays, the sort that you use to set up gate wards so that you can direct them from the inside, and…uh…something about water? For damming rivers?”

“Redirection arrays,” Wen Ruohan corrected her. He looked somewhere between appalled and begrudgingly impressed, which meant whatever he’d figured out was probably an utter atrocity on a scale that Lan Qiren could scarcely begin to contemplate – he had that sort of personality. “You use them for redirecting rivers, particularly when there’s a risk of flood, or when you’re trying to build up a dam. They’re exceptionally effective, if very much a blunt instrument, with no flexibility. However, you would never use them in a mine.”

Lan Qiren didn’t understand.

Judging from her face, neither did Cangse Sanren.

“There’s a reservoir not far from the mountain with the mine?” she offered. “Is that relevant?”

The expression on Wen Ruohan’s face shifted a little bit further towards “begrudgingly impressed.”

“Whatever the plan is, it is apparently even more unconscionable than we’d previously imagined,” Lan Qiren observed, suddenly and rather inappropriately touched by that dreadful feeling of mixed chagrin and fondness that he had developed when faced with Wen Ruohan’s ridiculousness. He brutally suppressed the feeling at once: even if it were not horribly inappropriate given the serious subject of their conversation, he suspected that Wen Ruohan would not be open to receiving any indications of his regard at the moment. If his reasoning regarding the motivation behind Wen Ruohan’s reaction was correct, his feelings were likely to be a sensitive subject. “I assume these redirection arrays are going to be used for something other than their intended purpose? Why would they not be used in a mine?”

Wen Ruohan’s lips twitched. “Consider the power required to redirect or dam up a river – to take all of that force of rushing water and change the direction in which it flows. Now imagine instead that you apply that force and power to the earth, which is far less flexible than water. Earth will not flow. It will break.”

“Uh-huh,” Cangse Sanren said. “So, what happens next? An earthquake or something?”

She paused, her lazy expression freezing and shifting into horror as she absorbed the implications of what she had just said. Lan Qiren was right there alongside her.

The mental image coming to mind was as bad as the one he’d had about the poison.

“An earthquake,” Wen Ruohan confirmed with macabre relish. “Even merely painting the new arrays will have knocked some of the original suppression arrays loose. Initial activation of the new arrays, filling them up with power to make them ready to use, would knock all the old ones down, dismantling them all in a single sweep, every single one of those arrays lined up along all those unstable tunnels. Full activation would try to twist those tunnels as if they were a riverbed – the whole mountain would start to tear in two, creating avalanches and landslides, churning up mud and rocks like water in the rapids, sending them down upon the local populace like the sudden onset of a flood. Add to that the presence of a reservoir, and you don’t just have a local catastrophe, but one capable of tainting the water for the entire area all around…!” He shook his head. “Nature itself would have trouble conceiving of a more calamitous disaster.”

“But why?” Lan Qiren cried out, trying to stand up – unsuccessfully, as Wen Ruohan caught him by the shoulders and Cangse Sanren reached out to press down on his knees, both of them holding him down. “Why would he do such a thing? Why – those are innocent lives in the valley! They’re not even cultivators! They have nothing to do with He Kexin, nothing to do with Gusu Lan – why would he harm them?”

“He’s mad. What other reason does he need?” was Wen Ruohan’s cynical answer.

“Ghosts,” Cangse Sanren said.

“…that is not a traditional reason for murder,” Wen Ruohan said, voice droll. “Rather the opposite; it’s usually more of a consequence. Ghosts?”

“No, not that, ghosts. The ghosts.” Cangse Sanren pulled back her hands and pressed the heels of both palms against her eyes as if it would help her think better. “The ghosts in the mine! They have a grudge against the Lan bloodline!”

“So you mentioned,” Lan Qiren said, feeling sick all over again. Who even knew how many were there? And all of them aimed at his sect, at his family, and with justice on their side, which automatically weakened the spells his Lan sect would use against them, stripping his kinsmen of their defenses without their knowing… “We all know what such a thing must signify, of course – ”

Cangse Sanren waved her hands in front of him, forcing him into silence, and leaped to her feet, starting to pace frantically, incoherently mumbling to herself at top speed as she worked out whatever idea she’d gotten.

(“Why does she get to pace and I don’t?” Lan Qiren asked Wen Ruohan, only half-serious.

“Shut up,” Wen Ruohan said.

“It seems unfair – ”

“People who nearly suffered qi deviation do not get a say.”)

Finally Cangse Sanren came to a halt, turning to look down at them both.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Both of you, maybe you’re right. Maybe Qingheng-jun, that jerk, really does want to destroy Gusu Lan. Madness is as madness does, after all. But let’s take Sect Leader Wen as an example: being cruel or being mad doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy being in power, right?”

“Power is very nice, yes,” Wen Ruohan said, voice extremely dry.

She ignored him. “For Qingheng-jun, destroying Gusu Lan means destroying his own power base, just when he’d finally gotten it back. Isn’t that a pity? Isn’t that a waste?”

“If he is intent on revenge, he may not care for such considerations,” Lan Qiren pointed out.

“That’s true. But what if he did?What if there was a way to achieve both goals: to destroy the sect but still keep his power?”

“How?” Lan Qiren asked.

She pointed at his face, apparently uncaring of how extremely rude such a gesture was. “You nearly had a qi deviation just now, Qiren-gege,” she said. “Why? What were you thinking?”

Lan Qiren blinked, having not expected the question.

“I – I was thinking of justice,” he said, and shrugged helplessly. “Only that my sect must find whoever from Gusu Lan was involved in the tragedy at the mine and punish them. We must. Or else…I mean…what would be the point? Our rules are clear. They say – ”

Cangse Sanren held up her hand again, once more calling for silence.

“That’s it,” she announced. “That’s how you do it.”

Lan Qiren stared at her blankly.

“I understand,” Wen Ruohan said, which was good because Lan Qiren most certainly did not. He was frowning again. “Qingheng-jun does intend to obliterate Gusu Lan, only his intention is not to do so through the loss of its reputation or the rampant murder of its disciples. He intends to destroy its heart.”

“Its heart?” Lan Qiren asked.

Wen Ruohan’s eyes flickered over to him. He pressed his lips together tightly, his jaw working; he did not answer the question.

“The rules, Lan Qiren,” Cangse Sanren said, her voice as gentle as it ever got. “Your Lan sect rules.”

Lan Qiren opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“We’re all orthodox cultivators, but your family rules are what makes your Gusu Lan sect unique,” she continued. “That’s what makes you you. And you, you of all Lan, are the exemplar of what it means to be devoted to those rules, the quintessential example of what it means to be a Lan of Gusu Lan.”

Maybe that’s why he hates you so much, she meant, and Lan Qiren – understood.

Now it was his turn to clench his hands into fists.

“I see,” he said, striving for calm – and getting it, but only because Wen Ruohan reached for his wrist and started transferring spiritual energy to him once more without saying a word. “I see. But I do not understand. The rules…the rules are merely principles. Even if our Wall of Discipline was destroyed, even if all of our most precious books were burned, the rules would still exist as long as there was someone left upon the earth that remembered them. How could he destroy them?”

“That’s the really nasty bit,” Cangse Sanren said, as if a plot that involved deliberately causing an earthquake had not yet reached the pinnacle of its evil. “The ghosts in the mine, and their bloodline grudge: that’s how it’ll happen. Initial activation to damage the suppression arrays, full activation to cause a landslide…”

She shook her head.

“I’m going out of order. Take a step back: look at it how an outsider would. Gusu Lan starts a war of conquest – sure, they try to blame Qishan Wen for it at first, but eventually the truth comes out, they were the ones that started it. They arrive in full force in Xixiang, a natural resting point. While they’re there, some ghosts start attacking them. That part’s not hard, the ones that already escaped from the suppression arrays won’t be able to resist the presence of that much Lan blood; they’ll be driven by their bloodline grudge to attack at once. Naturally, like any good cultivators, the Lan sect will respond at once to the presence of evil, initiating a counterattack.”

Lan Qiren nodded, following along.

“Only then, by apparent coincidence, something goes wrong. A minor earthquake, or so it seems. The suppression arrays, which they don’t know exist, are destroyed. Suddenly, for no reason they know of, all the ghosts get loose. All the ghosts attack. The Lan are taken by surprise by an offensive force far beyond their expectations, one that bears a grudge against them specifically. They have no choice but to counterattack with bigger moves, formations, arrays…”

“And then a major earthquake hits, seemingly in response to their actions.” Lan Qiren squeezed his eyes shut as hard as he could, causing himself pain in his temples. “The effects are devastating: destruction of human life in the local vicinity, death and misery in countless number, and on top of that the poisoning of the reservoir, promising years of hardship for all those that survive…it would seem as if it were their fault. They would think it was their fault.”

“What’s the point, otherwise?” Cangse Sanren echoed his earlier words. “Without justice, without honor, what’s the point of having all those rules? What’s the point of all that restriction and restraint, all those instructions designed to show you how to be righteous and virtuous, to show you how to be a good person, if in the end you still cause such atrocities with your own two hands…?”

Lan Qiren wanted to throw up.

It was – it was unthinkable. The guilt his Lan sect disciples would feel at what they thought they’d caused, the blame – and then, if his brother chose that moment, that moment, to reveal the truth of what had happened in the mine, to place the blame even more firmly on the corruption he believed underlaid the principles of Gusu Lan…

How had his brother put it, back in the Lotus Pier, when he had been enraged beyond reason, hurling accusations at Lan Qiren? Shameless and spoiled, he’d called him. Your so-inflexible righteousness scarcely hiding the rot of your hypocrisy…

Lan Qiren had had nearly three meltdowns simply after having found out about what some rotten apple in his sect had done in his sect’s name, and he had the assurance of knowing that he was not personally complicit in that crime. If he had thought that he was complicit, that he had contributed to it – he wasn’t sure he’d be able to live with himself.

The lonely mountains amidst the clouds, the mellow lake with the sweet calls of birds, that beautiful scenery of Gusu. Who could lay eyes upon such a scene and retain their serenity if they believed that their sins had split stone and poisoned water? Which among them would ever be able to go home again?

“It’s really very clever,” Wen Ruohan remarked. “The Lan sect would be decimated. Those who are like Lan Qiren here would likely die rather than give up on their rules or internal sense of order, and it doesn’t really matter whether they’d die directly through the shock of qi deviation or merely through suicide. But most of the rest of them would survive, broken-hearted and numb, and in so doing they would be the perfect captive audience for a charismatic sect leader. Pair that with a timely ‘discovery’ of what happened in the mine, which he could use as an excuse to execute any of the sect elders that do not stand with him, whether they were involved or not, and then there’s no one left to stop him. Unencumbered by the past or any restraint, Qingheng-jun would then be free to lead the whole Lan sect into a brand-new era, shaping them all in his own image and to his own liking…no, it really is very clever.”

He chuckled to himself, not noticing the appalled expression Cangse Sanren sent his way.

“You know what’s really well done? He even accounted for the fact that such a decimation would weaken his sect’s strength,” he said, waving a hand as he sketched it out. “This whole war business, getting me trapped in Jiujiang, setting me up…I’d wondered why he would be willing to burn such a valuable spy for a plan that wouldn’t work to destroy me, but this? This makes it all make sense. If everything had worked the way he planned, it might have been worth it. If I hadn’t been able to retreat through the mine, if I’d had no other choice but to start the war in reality, if I’d gone ahead and attacked the other sects to use their defenses as my own –”

Wait, had he really been considering that as an option?!

No, wait, he was Wen Ruohan. Of course he had. If anything, it was more a surprise that he’d refrained.

“ – if I’d done that, acted the way I always act, the way everyone expects me to act, then the other Great Sects wouldn’t have been able to pull back without killing me, or at least making a solid effort at doing so. A war between us at this stage would have no real victors. Whether or not the other sects did manage to take me down, it would have caused significant casualties on all sides. And then all five of the Great Sects would be weakened at once – the Lan through internal devastation, the others through war – so no one is left to take advantage of Gusu Lan’s weakness. Clever! Very clever. Very, very clever.”

“Are you finding this funny?” Cangse Sanren asked, then turned to Lan Qiren. “Is he finding this funny?”

Her tone suggested that she had more questions about Lan Qiren’s taste than anything else.

Lan Qiren had been asking himself the very same question. Unfortunately the answer seemed to be that it was a little like watching a cat enthusiastically batting at a toy mouse, rolling around in ecstatic murderous bliss – horrifying in its implication, watching a creature relishing its own potential cruelty to another living being, but somehow in its own way also strangely endearing.

He shrugged apologetically at her. As long as Wen Ruohan wasn’t getting any ideas of his own from this debacle…

“I have always appreciated art,” Wen Ruohan said haughtily, finally noticing their expressions. “Even when I am its target. Regardless of its vile aims, you must admit that the plan is skillfully made.”

“Well, I’d hope so, given that Qingheng-jun seems to have spent quite a few years of his seclusion doing little else but thinking of it.” Cangse Sanren rolled her eyes and tossed herself back onto her stool. “All right. Enough speculation. Even if this isn’t his plan, the potential consequences of us being right about it are so dire that we have no choice but to act as if it is. So the next question is, how do we stop it?”

“Our priority must be to prevent the disaster,” Lan Qiren said at once. “Even putting aside the psychological impact on my Gusu Lan sect, the loss of innocent life alone is unthinkable, and one cannot stop a landslide once it has begun. Preserving innocent lives must always come first.”

“That’s easier said than done, though,” Wen Ruohan pointed out. “Enhancement arrays are used to set up gate wards for good reason: the core array could be located anywhere, and only by stopping the core array will you be able to guarantee that it will not go off. Otherwise, the only way to stop the disaster is to dismantle each of the enhancement arrays individually, which is an extremely time-consuming process for most people.”

Cangse Sanren rolled her eyes. “Not for you, I assume.”

“What can I say? I am exceptionally powerful and exceedingly talented…though admittedly that many arrays would take quite a bit of time even for me. Anyway, my point is, we can’t just go around trying to break a bunch of arrays in the middle of a war zone. We would be set upon at once. The disaster cannot be our priority; stopping the war must take precedence.”

“Don’t forget the ghosts,” Cangse Sanren said with a frown. “If it’s a massacre of cultivators, especially the types of cultivators that are rogue cultivators or from small sects without soul-calming treasures or rituals, that means there are a lot of ghosts, and powerful ghosts, too. Even if we managed to stop the impending natural disaster, those ghosts being released would be a calamity in and of itself – and we’re all cultivators, aren’t we? Fighting evil takes precedence even over war.”

“Not if the war is itself perceived as fighting evil,” Wen Ruohan objected. “It’s not as if we’re still talking about a war of conquest here. And let us not forget, my Wen sect’s army is still there. Without my presence, they can stir up confusion and buy time, but eventually they will be overrun and taken prisoner, and I will have to buy them back at great cost.”

“That’s not the priority.”

“It is a priority,” Lan Qiren interjected, voice firm. “The Wen sect cultivators are innocent lives as well, Cangse Sanren. It is not their fault that my brother has decided to use them as a pawn in his strategy.”

She shrugged carelessly. “No, but it’s not the fault of those small sects in the area either, is it? They’re all probably burning through their family treasures at this very instant, trying to defend themselves from the Wen sect and its very deserved reputation – and it’ll be much worse when the other Great Sects get there. It always is, for the small sects. We have to move fast.”

“There’s a limit to how fast we can go. I can and will summon the rest of my army, but gathering and moving them will take some time.”

“We may not have the time. How long before the Lan sect forces reach Xixiang and trigger the first step in the trap…? They may be there already, even as we speak.” Lan Qiren shook his head, putting it all together in his head. There was only one solution he could devise to their situation, but Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren were not going to like it…

No matter.

He would convince them. He had to.

“The real issue here is not any one of the ones we have identified,” he said, “but rather the combination of all of them. It is that interconnectivity that makes my brother’s plan so difficult to oppose: we have too many problems to face, each of them equally important. We are all right, and all wrong – there is no precedence here, no order or hierarchy that can be established.”

He paused briefly.

“That means that the appropriate solution is – ”

“Absolutely not.”

Lan Qiren sighed as Wen Ruohan sat up straight and glared balefully at him. He had expected this.

Cangse Sanren looked between the two of them, and scowled. “What is it? What’s his suggestion?”

“He is suggesting that we split our forces,” Wen Ruohan spat out.

She blinked. “That seems…reasonable enough? When you’ve got both multiple problems and multiple problem-solvers…?”

“Oh yes, it’s very reasonable,” Wen Ruohan said. “Extremely reasonable. So reasonable, in fact, that there is no reason not to make the suggestion straightforwardly – and even someone as pedantic as our Lan Qiren does not talk in circles for no reason. Which means that there is a reason, and the reason is that he thinks that we’re going to dislike the split he is going to propose. And that means…”

“Lan Qiren,” Cangse Sanren exclaimed. “You cannot possibly be thinking of going somewhere by yourself!”

“It is the only logical conclusion,” Lan Qiren said firmly. “Between the two of you, you can sort out the main problems we are facing: the war, the arrays, the disaster, the ghosts. That leaves us with only one problem that you have not yet accounted for. The problem that lies behind all the others.”

“…your brother.”

“My brother,” Lan Qiren agreed.

They sat there in silence for a little while, Lan Qiren mentally going over his arguments as Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren both visibly seethed.

“I see your logic,” Cangse Sanren finally said, the words bitten out through her teeth. “He hates you, doesn’t he? I haven’t seen that much of it directly myself, only what I’ve heard and pieced together, but that type of hatred – that’s irrational. That’s what you’re going for, isn’t it?”

“It is irrational,” Wen Ruohan confirmed, though his lips were twisted into a grimace. “Qingheng-jun’s actions against Lan Qiren specifically have consistently gone beyond what might be expected from a sane man, much less as part of a strategic plot. I relied upon that tendency of his myself when I negotiated our marriage, and again later on; it appears to be as reliable as the sunrise. I agree that it is unquestionable that if there is anyone he will deviate from his plan for, it is Lan Qiren.”

Good. “Then you see – ”

“That does not mean that I agree that you should go confront him. Where would you even go? He is undoubtedly in the midst of the Lan sect encampment, and, surname aside, you are no longer a Lan. You belong to my Wen sect, and our sects are currently at war.” Wen Ruohan shook his head firmly. “If you try to go talk to him, he will simply have his disciples take you prisoner and use you as a hostage against me.”

Lan Qiren was distracted for a brief moment, wondering if such a ploy would work. More than likely, Wen Ruohan would just laugh in the messenger’s face at their gall in thinking they had a handle on him…no, he was being too cruel, both to himself and to Wen Ruohan. He personally thought it plausible that Wen Ruohan felt something for him, though he was likely in firm denial about it, but even if he didn’t, his overweening pride would never permit him to tolerate an insult to someone he had publicly claimed as one of his own.

“He will not be in the encampment,” he said instead. “He will be on his own, just as I will be.”

“What makes you so sure?” Cangse Sanren asked.

“Because this is his revenge. Because even in the Lotus Pier, he did not give an order, he took action himself, and knowing what I now know, I would expect nothing less.” Lan Qiren did not look at Wen Ruohan, not wanting to give himself away. “Nothing else would be enough.”

He had not had the leisure, if one could call it that, in the panicked interval between his discovery and the arrival of Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren and the rest to really sit down and imagine what it would be like for him if Wen Ruohan died. Even though he had heard the rumors that were currently flying through the Nightless City with abandon about what was going on in Jiujiang, the incipient war, the movement of all the Great Sects, the possible consequences, he had always remained confident that Wen Ruohan, at least, would remain untouched – he knew that the man was not mad, after all, and between his personal power and his paranoia, Wen Ruohan would be hard to pin down. He was practically a god, or at least he was always saying he was, and he unquestionably was the most powerful man in the cultivation world. What could harm him? What could possibly kill him, other than a clever betrayal such as this?

To think of it…

Lan Qiren did not want to think of it.

It was like thinking of something happening to one of his nephews, unthinkable and gut-wrenching.

It was also not helpful.

“That is why I must go face him alone,” he said, forcing himself to resume the conversation at hand. “Wen Ruohan correctly identified that the ideal approach to settling this issue without bloodshed would be to stop my brother from activating the core array in the first place. He will not go anywhere near that array if he believes he is being watched – under such circumstances, when faced with the choice between doing it personally or having it not be done at all, he would resort to ordering someone else to do it. But if the only one watching him is me…”

“Madness is as madness does,” Wen Ruohan said. “Cruelty is as cruelty does, too. If it’s you, he wouldn’t stop. On the contrary, he would probably take you there himself just for the pleasure of seeing the look on your face while he does it.”

Lan Qiren swallowed.

“Yes,” he said, and the voice inside his head that was still the child that had looked up to his distant but glorious elder brother cried out Why do you hate me so? “Yes, I agree. And that will give me the opportunity to find the core array, and, if I can, a way to stop him from activating it.”

“Qiren, I hate to remind you, but you didn’t exactly come out on top the last time you and your brother had a conversation, and that was when he was making an effort not to reveal himself as being completely insane,” Cangse Sanren said. She was nervously gnawing on her lower lip with her teeth. “I’m not even talking about the fact that he’s supposed to be this amazing swordsman that can put you to shame without blinking twice even before he went into seclusion to do nothing but focus on his cultivation for ten years, I mean that you ended up with internal injuries over a chat. And you’re in worse shape now than you were then – don’t think I didn’t see what happened to your hand!”

“Your hand?” Wen Ruohan said sharply, immediately reaching up to grab Lan Qiren’s arms and pulling them out in front of him, revealing his mangled fingers. “What happened – ”

“You do not get a say on this,” Lan Qiren informed him. “For what I think should be obvious reasons.”

Wen Ruohan’s face paled, but to give him credit for stubbornness, he carried on regardless. “They should not have touched you – ”

“You are not going to punish them for doing what you ordered them to do.” It was those poor seamstresses all over again. “The problem is not that people you have assigned a given task have carried out that task, even if the task happens to be torture. The problem is that you have a place devoted specifically to torturing people.”

“Wait, the Fire Palace?” Cangse Sanren said. “Are we talking about the Fire Palace? He put you in the Fire Palace?! Qiren – ”

“Please do not intervene in my marital affairs, Cangse Sanren.”

“This isn’t a marital affair, this is bullshit – ”

“Cangse Sanren, no vulgar language!”

“Yes, keep your nose and your mouth out of this,” Wen Ruohan said. “It’s none of your business – ”

“Qiren is my friend – ”

“Will you both be quiet?!” Lan Qiren shouted at the top of his lungs. “Now is not the time!”

Reluctantly, both Wen Ruohan and Cangse Sanren shut their mouths, though they looked unresigned.

Lan Qiren glared at them both.

After a little while, when they finally started to look a little more sheepish than angry, he finally spoke.

“He is my brother,” he said. “It is my sect he is seeking to destroy. My rules. Both of you know me well. You must know what it means to me, what he is doing. What it means to me personally.”

They knew. He could see it on their faces – they knew.

“You want to hold me back because you care for me. I understand that. But sending me against him is our best chance at stopping what is going to happen, and stopping what is going to happen is the most important thing right now. If my brother succeeds…if he breaks my sect…”

He pressed his lips together. He did not want to say it.

Not because it wasn’t true – do not tell lies – but because he knew it would hurt them both, these two people who, other than his nephews, at times seemed to be the only people left in the world who whole-heartedly cared for him.

But it was true.

“If my brother destroys my Gusu Lan sect, he will destroy me, too.”

It was just as Wen Ruohan had said: once the Lan sect’s heart was gone, once the rules were gone, those people like Lan Qiren would not be able to survive. Whether through qi deviation or by turning their swords against themselves, just as He Kexin had done… Lan Qiren had been sect leader. Sect leader, and for ten years – his sect had been more than merely his home, more than merely his family. It had been his constant companion, always in his thoughts; it had been as close to him as any wife or husband could ever be.

He had given his sect his entire life.

How could he do any less now?

“Fine,” Wen Ruohan said. His hands were fists again. “Fine. Have it your way. We’ll handle the rest of it, while you go to confront your brother.”

“Thank you,” Lan Qiren said, bowing his head.

And only then did he let himself begin to feel afraid.

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

A/N: just so you all know, this is what is currently going on with the dinner: He Zhong: So like. The Sect Leader's totally obsessed with Lan Qiren, huh. Shen Mingbi: Yeah, no kidding. He Zhong: Ugh. Man. Now I'm even MORE convinced he's going to have me murdered! long exhale Anyway, thanks for letting me rant. Shen Mingbi: No problem, you're hot. Want to have sex? He Zhong: …would that not make the Sect Leader even more likely to kill me? Shen Mingbi: Honestly? Probably makes it less.

#mdzs #lan qiren #wen ruohan #cangse sanren #my fic #my fics #Megafic

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thistlesofgrace · 5 months

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Whenever I find myself bothered by something I try to understand why I feel a certain way and what the root cause of the issue may be.

Last week, my brother and his wife (who never make the drive to come visit in the town we live in, always have to go to them) came up for dinner. Felt odd, but discovered it was to announce they are pregnant. It’s very early - like 6 weeks along. My mom was very excited for them. I’m not sure I’d announce so soon, but they did.

I too am excited for them but I would be lying if one of my immediate responses wasn’t “oh man, another year about them.” Ouch, Hannah, why?

I recognize the feelings from that come from, they got married last April and for over a year leading up to the wedding, there were all kinds of events, trips and projects. My brother married someone who has high expectations and they spend a lot of money, in my opinion, keeping up with their friends. In fact, while I was going through peak stress meltdown from my former job and some health issues, they guilted me into creating custom corn hole boards for them for their wedding. It was somewhat expensive and something that took several weekends to complete. They also repeatedly used M’s handyman skills to help build an elaborate display wall that held all their champagne glasses at their wedding. It was fancy. And they sold it for like $1000. Profited off M’s labor 🫡

Back during the planning (I’m not kidding there was a wedding binder and wedding Wednesdays!) they decided that they’d have the maid of honor and best man give speeches. To my own surprise, my feelings were hurt by that and I actually spoke up and said that I wanted to give a speech. I’m your own sibling and I’m great with words (and funny!) Come on! My brother acted like he had no idea that I would even be interested which was wild to me.

So they made room in their very tight wedding schedule to allow me to give a speech. And out of the 3 speeches given, it was pretty obvious I was the only one who put time, thought and practice into mine. Go figure.

Anyway. I think this is all good background information to process my feelings regarding last nights events.

Last night we went to dinner with them and they started talking about baby names. Knowing my brother, he’s not sitting around pondering names of his future children but his wife immediately spouted off “their” list. Which contained TWO of my most favored names that I’ve been vocal about since the early days M and I got together. I know at some point, I would have shared this information with her/them.

My face had to have been obvious, I was shocked. But then it occurred to me. I have become such a side character in their lives and everything is about them. It kind of made me spiral and rethink about their wedding. And how they ditched my birthday in October to be with their friends instead. And they didn’t come to our Christmas because it was more important to go to her families for the second consecutive year. It just seems to be a theme but the name thing really had me internally screaming. It’s not even a common name, and the way she immediately looked at me and said “I found it in some book..”

To make the conversation even more cringe worthy, his wife asked if my best friend had given birth yet. Yep. 7 months ago. I’ve posted tons of pictures, talked about them endlessly and even traveled to visit. It took some serious self control not to ask to leave the table.

While I’m not currently pregnant (that I know of) I just felt unseen and small to the person that has known me my entire life. And somewhat because of who he has chosen as a partner.

I swear if they really choose my favorite name, I’ll make some unhinged comment about how weird it will be for two cousins to have the same first name. 🤣 At this rate it’s not like they’ll know each other that well or be in the same school systems.

And finally. Perhaps just for myself to note, I don’t think anything they do is out of maliciousness, I truly think they are just living in their own world and none of this is apparent to her. My brother might have some ability to reflect, if a conversation takes place. But we never really spend much time having meaningful conversations and I hate to make him feel bad.

So instead I’ll write it down here.

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meretrifles · 10 months

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further public library of ruina rambles (i've got plenty of time to think about this shit and new material every workday):

it starts when a fairly high-ranking city official stumbles across her when she's just barely started, someone powerful enough to make it very clear the city could wreck angela's shit at this stage if they chose to. but you know, they say instead, it's interesting that this is a library. actually by law we're supposed to have a public library, but we haven't managed to keep one open in quite some time. if you took on the role, we might be persuaded to ignore these... irregularities. what do you say? angela knows full well this is a trap, but doesn't have much choice if she wants to live. also, a would roll over in his grave, not that she thinks about that or anything.

the abnormalities are still there. in fact they're still booked and put on the shelf where anybody can find them. who knows, maybe they were looking for a pug monster.

angela tosses any measured plan she had to wake up the librarians directly out the window within a week, they're all out by the time roland shows up. she takes a management role and does not look back. do not ever call her 'manager', though.

all the librarians technically have their own roles, though they can also get pulled into whatever is needed at any time; in irl libraryland, this is known as the "other duties as assigned" curse.

angela is still trying to reclaim the light, but due to the public libraries act, she can't book anybody unless they actively attack staff, guests, or library property while in the library itself. this throws more of a wrench into her plans than she expected but still happens with depressing frequency.

as a result of the vast amounts of emotional stress and instability added by all this, librarian meltdowns are back. which generally trigger angela because a) everything and b) excuse me, you dare pull your fucking bullshit for the eleven billionth time WHEN MY SUFFERING IS RIGHT HERE REEEEE. so it turns into a giant 3-way fight between librarian, angela, and team could we maybe not die today tyvm. they all know approximately half of each other's buttons (and think they know 3/4), it's a giant clusterfuck but everyone lives and maybe at least some of them learn something.

roland figures out like the equivalent of halfway through something that was really just as true in canon: he can't top this. none of his plans were truly worse than this garbage fire. and now he's trapped in it too. his mental breakdown is slow and inexorable.

the irl public libraries in general... are desperate to fill all the gaps and cracks in the infrastructure they see. we do all want that one perfect book. the answer to the question. what that book with the blue cover was. to be a place where kids can run screaming freely and people can study in quiet. to give mittens to the cold and find housing for the lost. we want that one perfect answer. it doesn't exist. it can't, it isn't possible. the book you loved in childhood won't read the same as an adult. the children who can't keep quiet will hurt the children who can't stand noise. you can't have both the drug dealers and the people trying to get clean, the marginalized and the bigots, all equally welcome. there is no one perfect book. so what i wonder is... what happens if you stop looking. if you stop trying to be everything, and be what you are without regrets. i suspect that what you are (that "just a library") is actually quite enough, and if you stop focusing on doing more than you can, you'll find that around and within you are the answers you actually need. this is both literal, a metaphor, a political statement, and a statement of the theme/endgame of the AU.

#library of ruina #public library of ruina #bad librarian!!#like i'm probably gonna continue at a measured pace unless stopped #i also have shitty doodles #you might think i'm being self-deprecating but these are doodles by a non-artist using shitty materials while on the job so i mean it #i draw a lot of netzach cause he gets the easy drug jokes #and i'm still learning how tf everyone looks

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maikaartwork · 7 months

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15 people, 15 questions

@thornescratch tagged me in this, and since I have the first day off in like, three weeks today, I feel inclined to share - thanks for wanting to know stuff about me thorne!

1. Are you named after anyone?

Not to my knowledge. I was supposed to be given a different name, but the priest didn't agree to it (I live in a weird country and the 80s were even weirder), so I got the second choice on my parents' list.

2. When was the last time you cried?

Pretty recently, actually, the stress of the last few weeks made me a bit meltdown-y, despite the calming effects of the cool medication that makes me generally chill.

3. Do you have kids?

I have a cat daughter. For a long time I wanted children, but it never worked out. Now I feel a bit too old and a bit too single for the childbearing endeavor and decided to focus on doing cool shit that I enjoy and on being the weird auncle to my friends' kids. If I ever have the means, I would like to adopt.

4. What sports do you play/have played?

Currently - nothing except transportational rollerblading. I used to do offroad biking, basketball and swimming. If it counts, I was also a competition level sharpshooter.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

I should insert a sarcastic remark here but the truth is: I try, but I'm bad at it. My brand of neurospiciness makes it very hard for me to detect sarcasm sometimes in others and honestly, it makes me wonder if I'm ever doing it right. Also makes me nervous that people will not get that I'm being sarcastic and get offended.

6. What's the first thing you notice about people?

Nails, posture, hairstyle, tattoos, demeanor, accessories, type of creasing on their face, amount of makeup, amount of dandruff and animal hair on their clothes, shirt print. All at the same time. Neurospicy.

7. What’s your eye color?

Brown changing into hazelnut, depending on lighting and, apparently, moood.

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Happy endings.

9. Any talents?

I got good at reading people's hidden needs. I'm really good at searching out information and fixing computer issues. I'm well-trained in customer service. I guess I draw good, too? I'm a fast learner and good with organizing shit.

10. Where were you born?

Poland, a medium sized-city down in the Silesia region

11. What are your hobbies?

Reading, drawing, playing ttrpg, learning obscure facts, observing people

12. Do you have any pets? My cat daughter, Piu (pronounced Pew) and a cornsnake named Noodle that has a pattern on his head that some say looks like a heart and others say looks like a dick.

13. How tall are you? 168 cm

14. Favorite subject in school?

Art, English, Biology (this one mostly because in middle school I had a REALLY cool teacher that sparked my love for the subject that holds to this day)

15. Dream job? What I do now, actually - tattooing and drawing dumb shit on the side. After finishing my management bachelor's I never thought I'd go that way but here we are and honestly, I couldn't be happier. When I ever get too old or too bored with it, I'll become a Marie Kondo-style helper for those in need of organizing their spaces, I think.

No pressure tags: I saw some of my friends being tagged in this already, but I would love to learn more about @legitcookie @sidekick-hero @luna-fortunaa @maxinemaxmayfield @pink-luna-moth @xirayn @becomingfoxes @atmilliways @eriquin @stacetanicpanic and anyone that wants to tag themselves in lieu of the last five tags (sorry, I am sick, brain foggy, remembering nicknames hard)

#tag game

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wildermouse · 2 years

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another general question for autistic folk:

how are you with working a job? do you have a job? are you able to have a job?

i finally got my first proper job at age 22, working at a big daycare with all ages of children and directly with around 8+ staff each day, but interacting with around 12-16 staff on the daily, plus around 50 children + all their parents every day. it was okay some days, good some days even, though the interacting with staff was always very draining and overwhelming for me. the best days were the days i worked alone with a smaller group of children for 10hrs. i rarely found interacting with the children exhausting, but as soon as i had to work with other staff i was just a mess of internal anxiety. i was pretty good at powering through and masking it until i got home. i was so tired i would fall asleep immediately, didn’t have mental or physical energy for any hobbies. my eating disorder got out of hand many times as well. especially before work, i would have ‘meltdowns’ or anxiety attacks or whatever you wanna call it. i would cry, i would punch myself, i would punch the car window, i would punch my wall. i was scared and overwhelmed and tired and i did not wanna work. it began to really take its toll and i started having (more civilized) breakdowns at work. i lowkey snapped at a close coworker for asking me too many questions i didn’t have answers to and broke down sobbing and had to take a break - this was during the christmas party for the kids. one time i broke down in the yard while i was watching the children because another close coworker came over and asked how i was doing. she had to hug me until i stopped crying. shortly after, i quit. i gave like 2 months notice and actually planned on going back once i’d had a few months break, but life happened and i ended up moving.

i was working there for over 2 years, which is way longer than i thought i would, and it’s now been a year and a half(?) since i stopped working, but i cannot see myself having another job. i don’t want it, and i don’t feel like i can handle it. i know all of my mental & physical energy would be consumed by it, even if it was just part time. i do make art and sell it to make some income (i’m not very consistently motivated with it, i’m still sorting my brain out) and though it sucks not being able to support myself fully financially (i still live at home, though i do pay rent) and not having financial freedom to do whatever i want, i am so much less stressed & anxious being at home doing my art. my art is something i did not have any energy for while i was working.

what i’ve learned after looking back on it was the biggest factor leading to me reaching my limit was the daily interactions with coworkers. the constant small talk (seriously, i would dread the ‘hey how are you’ ‘i’m good how are you’ constantly every single day), the trying to figure out what they want me to do, the having to call people or go find people to ask them questions. working with all those children isn’t what pushed me over the edge, it was socializing with my adult coworkers every day. + having to wake up early and have my whole day taken up by something i didn’t want to do.

for now i plan to try and be and stay more consistent with my art & my shop, and depending on my living situation i’ll maybe go work at a barn cleaning stalls & paddocks for some extra cash. i have no plans to return to a ‘proper’ job. and i don’t see an issue with this the way our society does, the only issue is this world is too fucking expensive and i can’t afford to live.

so yeah just wondering what your experiences are with working and if you do have a job and if you feel unable to work like i do

#autism #autistic #asd #audhd #actually austistic #autistic adult

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zizidowntherabbithole · 3 months

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If You're Lonely Come be Lonely with me

Carlos and Tk have been fighting for months. Small fights. Stupid fights. But they're becoming more frequent, and the consequences are becoming more serious. Tk's four months pregnant, and they have three children already, so he's stressed out of his mind, but he also tends to forget that Carlos is also stressed out.

He washed his APD hoodie after work two weeks ago, and Tk had a meltdown. He just started crying and when Carlos tried to comfort he hissed at him. Why was he sobbing over the APD hoodie being wased? Because it wouldn't smell like alpha and Carlos would have to wear it before he could wear it.

And Carlos got upset with him about it because really!? He shouted at him, which, in hindsight, maybe that wasn't the brightest idea on his part. Because it just made his pregnant mate more upset, cry harder, and then inevitably throw up all over the floor.

Carlos slept on the couch to give the omega space.

The next morning went smoother but then they got in a fight again over something stupid that now he can't even remember.

For two weeks they were fighting over stupid shit at least once a day.

Carlos knew they were fighting a lot more than they ever have in the past, but he didn't expect to come home and find divorce papers on the kitchen table. Divorce papers Tk's already signed. He feels like he's just been punched in the gut. His heart.

When his oldest, Adrienne, toddles over to him to say goodnight, he wants to cry. "Say goodnight to Papa," comes Tk's soft voice as he walks into the living room with their twin boys on his chest.

"Night Papa," Adrienne whispers as Carlos picks her up to give her a hug. He squeezes her gently, she purrs and snuggles into him.

"Goodnight, Adrienne," he murmurs. "You brush your teeth?"

"Mhm," she hums, grinning real wide to show her white teeth.

"Good," he smiles, setting her down. She hugs Tk's legs before running off into her bedroom.

The twins, Bentley and Gabriel, are still falling asleep on Tk's chest. He brings them over to get hugs and kisses from Carlos before taking them to their nursery. "Night, babies," Tk whispers, tucking them in and giving them kisses.

"Night mama," they whisper while he gets them,

"Snug, as a bug, in a rug," he coos.

He goes in to kiss Adrienne goodnight one more time before padding back out to Carlos, cracking both of their bedroom doors so they have have just a tiny bit of hallway light as their nightlight.

"Hey," he whispers to Carlos.

Carlos feels like he's in between falling and crying, and just shutting off. He looks at Tk with cow eyes, and the omega can feel his heartache. "Tk... why?" he whispers. "Why did you- I don't understand. Baby, why? Tell me what to do to fix this, please."

Tk shakes his head, wiping his cheek before he can start crying himself. "The babies were picking up on the fighting," he says. "We've just- there's just something wrong between us and I don't know what it is but I don't think this is working anymore and I don't want them to see it anymore."

"So you want a divorce?" Carlos asks. "Tk, how it that helping them? That is what your parents did and did it help? No. It didn't." He's on the verge of growling at him.

"I would rather my parents divorced then at each other's throats," he whispers. "They're young. We can make this work, make this easy for them. So they'll get used to it."

"Adrienne is four and the boys are two," he says, "that's old enough to know there's something wrong. That's old enough to be confused. That's old enough for the change to not be easy for them."

"Carlos we just can't do this anymore," he says. "Okay?"

"No. Not okay," he whispers, pulling Tk close by his biceps. "Tk please. Give us some time to work this out. Go to counselling? I don't even know how this started- please baby. I am begging you."

Tk's lip wobbles and he shakes his head. "I'm sorry."

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priestessofspiders · 8 months

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My Son's Reflection Is Wrong

I have always been afraid of mirrors, ever since I was a young child. I knew it was irrational of course. I never was afraid when I would see my reflection in a puddle or on the darkened window of a shop as I walked down the street. It was specifically mirrors which made me uncomfortable. I always feared that I would see something other than myself looking back at me.

This explains why I was less than thrilled to find the large, antique silver mirror in the bedroom of the house I was renting. Were it my own place I would have thrown it out then and there, leaving it on the curb and relying solely upon the mirror in the modern and well-kept bathroom for all necessary reflective purposes. Alas, I didn't think my landlord would think too highly of his tenant tossing out expensive antique furniture, so I contented myself to simply move it into a spare room.

I had moved to the house for the simple reason that it was fairly cheap and I didn't have much other choice. My husband passed away earlier that year due to a heart condition, leaving me simultaneously a widow and solely responsible for the care of my son, Chester. Fortunately, my husband's life insurance policy turned out to be reasonably generous, but I still needed to downgrade our living situation if I was to take care of Chester without another source of income. Beyond the obvious fact that I have now been left to raise a child without the assistance of a spouse, there is another reason why I cannot supplement my funds by taking on a job; Chester is autistic.

I want to make it very clear, I'm not an "Autism Mom". I loathe the self-absorbed whiners who spend every spare second complaining about the immense burden of raising an autistic child, who bellyache endlessly about how difficult their lives are. I hate all the videos of exasperated parents recording their child's meltdown on camera, to show to all the world how difficult it is for them. I am disgusted whenever I see some selfish moron recommend ABA "therapy" to keep unruly autistic children's more unconventional behaviors in check. My son is not a cross to bear, not a weight on my shoulders. He is my child, and I love him.

I won't deny it can be difficult sometimes, but I can only imagine how hard it is for him. I find the terms "high functioning" and "low functioning" are relatively useless descriptors. Like most things in life, it is a tad more complicated than that. Chester is, generally speaking, nonverbal, and I've never known him to say more than 20 words in a single day. In addition, he tends to get overstimulated quite quickly from loud noises, and often flaps his hands as a form of stimming, especially when he is having some difficulty expressing what he wants. The only behavior of his which ever actually frustrates me is his elopement, which in the context of autism means that he has a tendency to wander off or run away whenever he feels stressed. We work around these traits, and I think generally I've been able to make life quite comfortable for him.

Chester has always shown quite an aptitude for reading and writing, despite his relatively young age of only 9 years old at the time we moved. When he needed something that cannot be articulated through gestures or single words, he would write it down on a whiteboard I've given him for this purpose. To help with his sensory issues regarding loud noises, I purchased a set of ear plugs for him, the same sort that one would wear at a gun range to prevent hearing loss. These generally aren't necessary within the confines of the house, but on those occasions when we do go out in public, I genuinely think they help him quite a bit.

Given his condition, combined with the relative isolation of our new rural home, it has been necessary to homeschool Chester, though that hasn't really been any sort of a problem. Before I got married I spent a few years teaching elementary school, so I already have the required skills. I've always believed in a somewhat more active approach to learning than some of my peers, and since our new home is located directly next to a forest, this was fairly easy to accomplish.

The house itself was rather old, built in the 1920s if my landlord was to be believed. While recently renovated to a more modern standard at some point in the preceding decades, it still has an air of oldness to it, something in the angles and general structure of the place. The main feature that seemed significantly out of place was the wrought iron fence that surrounded the house, a far cry from the traditional wooden fence I was used to from a life in the suburbs. There was no formal gate that led out to the forest behind the house, just a gap in the fencing with a small pile of rusting iron posts nearby. I never asked the landlord about it, but judging by a stump outside the boundaries of the backyard, I assumed a tree must have fallen down and damaged it.

Children don't want to sit still and be lectured, they want to be outside, to run around and be active. I'd always try to teach Chester his lessons in a way that connected to the forest. I'd lift up logs and show him all the squirming creatures underneath so I could teach him all the differences between them. I'd have him count the rings of a fallen tree and teach him about the things that happened in the tree's long and storied life. I know that sometimes he would get bored, while I do believe kids love learning, I'm not an idiot. I know that sometimes children just want to run and play, but I genuinely do believe he got more out of our lessons in the woods than he would have gotten from a traditional school environment.

Even outside of the context of Chester's lessons, we spent a lot of time in those woods, slipping out through the gap in the fence into the forest beyond. There was something so peaceful about that place, it felt remarkably untouched by the civilization that bordered it. I'm not sure exactly how far the forest extended, but it always seemed to go on forever, like if you just kept walking you could go the whole rest of your life surrounded by trees. I always kept a fairly close eye on Chester when we were out there. As much as I loved the place, I did often worry that he would simply run off, but there was never anything stressful enough in the woods to make him do so. The only real concern was to make sure he took of his shoes once he got back to the house, as otherwise he would track dirt inside, making quite the mess.

Things went on the way I described them for about a year after my husband's passing. In between my caring for Chester and all the mundane errands of modern life, I attended therapy and worked to move on from the loss. I began to make peace with the fact that he was gone. Chester and I celebrated his 10th birthday out in the woods, moving to the backyard once night fell so we could finish off the evening roasting hot dogs over the firepit while I read him some relatively tame ghost stories. Chester didn't like scary movies or violent video games, but gently spooky stories, the sort that send a pleasant chill down your spine, made him quite happy. I believe I was reading out The Mezzotint to him when we heard the music.

It was a soft, strange sound, a faint piping emanating out from the forest beyond, gentle yet eerie somehow. The faint notes reminded me of the sound of panpipes, but not quite. If I listened very closely, I could almost discern a faint drumming as well. Chester looked out into the darkness beyond the fire, flapping his hands gently. He didn't seem upset or scared, just faintly awestruck. "Fairies", I heard him whisper.

I felt somewhat uncomfortable as we both looked out into the blackness of the forest. The sound of crickets had died utterly as soon as the piping began, and we sat in silence, listening to that peculiar and otherworldly performance. It felt like something out of a dream, and I don't think it would be possible for me to recall the melody in any real detail. It was ephemeral somehow, slipping through the cracks of my memory like water through a sieve even as I listened.

At some point the music ceased, and the crickets returned to their chirping. I led Chester back inside and tucked him gently into bed. I've never been especially afraid of intruders, given how far away we were from any major population center, but that night I double checked that all the doors and windows in the house were firmly locked.

- - -

I didn't sleep well that night. I'll admit I'd still not gotten used to sleeping alone, and often had difficulty falling asleep, but this felt different somehow. It seemed that whenever I was close to finally falling unconscious, I'd see a shadow pass across the wall, or hear something just on the very edge of my perception, something that reminded me faintly of music. Whenever I'd jolt up in bed, looking or listening for what I thought had disturbed me, there was nothing there. At some point I must have finally fallen asleep, because found myself blinking out the daylight from my uncovered window, groggy and irritable. My skull throbbed with a terrible headache. My alarm clock hadn't gone off, it seemed to have become unplugged in the night. Possibly in my tossing and turning the cord had somehow come out of the socket.

It was in the late morning, far later than I usually woke up, and Chester was frustrated because he hadn't had breakfast yet. He didn't say anything, but he seemed glum and looked at me with justifiable annoyance and hunger. I did my best to prepare him some scrambled eggs and bacon, but in my pain and fatigue I managed to burn the bacon and cook the eggs to an unpleasant, rubbery consistency. I deeply regret what happened next.

I swore about the bacon, the eggs, the pan, the stove, the landlord, my dead husband, anyone and anything that could conceivably be even somewhat to blame for the ruined breakfast. I know it was wrong to react like that in front of my son, I know it was immature, but I was tired, in pain, and just wished desperately I could go back to bed.

When I'd finished with my profanity-laced rant, I heard the back door closing and looked out the window to see Chester fleeing out into the forest, visibly distressed.

"Shit," I muttered to myself, and ran out the door after him, calling for him to come back. I tripped on one of the fallen iron fence posts and fell to the ground, knocking the air from my lungs. When I recovered enough to stand up, Chester was long gone, vanished among the trees.

I looked through those woods for hours. As I've described earlier, I don't know how large the forest behind my house is, but it still feels odd that in all that time I never saw him. Chester's only 10 years old, he isn't some sort of Olympic sprinter, and the foliage isn't so thick that I could have lost him that easily. I kept wandering among the trees, shouting out Chester's name with increasing panic. Sometimes I thought I'd hear a branch snapping or a child's giggle, and I would turn about, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the sound's source, but there would be nothing there. It was fairly far along in the afternoon when I finally decided to head back and call the police.

Despite how long I'd spent in the forest, it was a remarkably quick walk back to the house. It felt almost as if the walk into the woods was somehow further than the walk out. I opened the door and started moving to the bedroom to get my phone, when I suddenly saw Chester sitting on the couch, reading a book.

I nearly wept with relief and rushed to hug him, apologizing over and over for scaring him and asking if he was okay. I was so happy to see my son again I wasn't even angry with him for running off.

"I'm alright mom. I'm really sorry for running off, I was just scared. I won't do that again, please don't be angry" said Chester, tears welling up in his eyes.

I froze.

Chester rarely spoke more than a single word at a time. His longest sentences I could remember before this were maybe 3 or 4 words long at most. This was utterly unprecedented, and I had no idea how to react whatsoever.

"Mom? Are you okay?" he asked, looking at me with a confused look on his face.

- - -

The next week went by very strangely. To be very clear, autism isn't something that just goes away. It's not a disease, it's not something that can be "cured". And yet, Chester no longer showed any signs of his previous behavior whatsoever.

His personality seemed intact. The sort of things he now spoke aloud seemed relatively in keeping with the sentences he would have previously written on the whiteboard. He still had the same love of reading, the same interest in ghost stories, he still played with the same toys. In all respects he was the exact same boy as before, simply now he was neurotypical.

He didn't have to wear earplugs out in public anymore, and true to his word he never ran off when under stress. He didn't even flap his hands, he just kept them calmly at his sides. It was totally surreal.

One day I was teaching him his lessons out in the woods, and he told me "Mom? I think I want to go to regular school. I want to be with the other kids." I was completely taken aback. Chester had never showed even the slightest interest in going to a public school before this, and on the few occasions he'd had to interact with other children, he'd been far too shy to play with them. Of course I told him I'd be happy to send him to school, what else was I supposed to say? That night I sent off emails to the nearest schools in the area, asking about late enrollment.

It was the second week after Chester's sudden and unprecedented transformation that I began to notice something else that was strange. Despite the fact that we were spending a decent amount of time outside in the woods, Chester never left any dirty footprints in the house anymore. It wasn't that he had suddenly become more careful about taking his shoes off, he was still running inside with his sneakers on the same as he always had, but there was never any dirt or mud. I just assumed at the time he must have been wiping his shoes off while I wasn't looking, and in all honesty I didn't pay it much mind. It's only in retrospect, knowing what I do now, that this sticks out in my mind.

He also didn't eat very much anymore. He didn't snack at all, and whenever I prepared him his meals, he only ate very small portions. He never showed any signs of weakness or that he was losing weight, so I didn't bother him about it, there would be no point in forcing him to eat more than he wanted to, but it did strike me as very odd.

It wasn't until the incident with the mirror that I realized that it wasn't my son.

I was looking for some books I'd packed away in cardboard boxes in the spare room. There wasn't a lot of space on the bookshelf in the living room, so I tended to switch out the books on a semi-regular basis for ones kept in the spare room, aside from a handful of mainstays. It was while I was doing so that Chester walked over to the doorway and asked me where I had put his toy robot. I looked up from what I was doing to answer him, when I caught something out of the corner of my eye, something deeply wrong. It was the old silver mirror, pointed towards the doorway. It wasn't reflecting my son.

I turned to look closer, my words dying on my lips as I gazed at the figure in the mirror, the old terror I'd always felt looking into such things resurfacing suddenly and violently.

The thing was dressed in Chester's clothes, but that was about the only real resemblance the thing bore to him. It was a crude marionette, carved from untreated and unpainted wood, clumps of bark still clinging to it in places. The mouth had a jaw like that of a ventriloquist dummy, albeit with crooked teeth made from sharp flints jammed into the wood. I saw bits of old food stuck to the teeth and mouth, remnants of meals I had cooked earlier in the day. The eyes were simple holes with bits of colored glass, like marbles, held within. It was suspended above the ground by an inch or two by thick brown twine, like the sort one would use to close a package in days before packing tape.

I stared in stunned silence at the mirror before turning around, only to find Chester standing there, head cocked slightly in confusion. "Are you okay mom?" he asked, with concern in his voice. I turned once again to the mirror, seeing the horrible puppet thing once again. I wanted to vomit as I watched its jaw work up and down mockingly. "I'm sorry, I'll find it myself, I didn't mean to bother you" it said, before jerkily "walking" down the hallway to Chester's bedroom.

- - -

That night I watched "Chester" carefully in the bathroom mirror when he brushed his teeth, but there didn't seem to be anything strange about him at all. He moved like a person, not a puppet, and when I gently squeezed his shoulder I felt flesh and bone underneath the fabric of his clothes, not hard wood and bark.

I didn't sleep. Creepy as it may sound, I just sat in Chester's room and watched that thing lay in bed, snoring. It seemed to be asleep. I stayed there all night, just watching, until it woke up the next morning, asking me what I was doing. I didn't respond, and left without making breakfast. It's not like it would have needed it.

I wasn't even sure where I was going at first, I was just driving to clear my head. I eventually realized I was en route to an antique store the next town over. I'd visited the store a few times before, looking for bits of furniture and the like immediately after moving. I didn't know why I was headed there now, but it felt almost as if I were being drawn there somehow. I pulled into the parking lot and left my car, pushing through the shop's door with the tinkling of a bell.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for, I just wandered the store in a daze, looking around all the various bits of junk and knick knacks with disinterest. The whole store reeked of musty books and wood polish, the smell lulling me into a sort of trance as I meandered among the shelves stacked with discarded history. Eventually though, I found something that struck my eye. It was a small old hand mirror with the telltale tarnishing of real silver. It seemed to call to me somehow, and in my numbed state I didn't even fear the blank-eyed reflection that looked back at me. I picked it up and looked at the price tag. 50 dollars. More than it was worth, but not too unreasonable. I picked it up and brought it to the counter, paying in cash.

The store's proprietor, a thin old woman with graying hair and enormous spectacles, chuckled at me as she rang me up. "Planning on making a vampire hunting kit ma'am?" she asked.

"What?" I replied, the completely bizarre question startling me out of my stupor.

"Just a little joke. Halloween's coming up, and once a few years back I had a gentleman come in here and buy up all sorts of strange stuff. I asked him what he needed it for, and he told me he was going to dress up as Abraham van Helsing for the occasion. He said he was making a vampire hunting kit. One of the items he bought was an old hand mirror, rather like this one. He asked me if it was real silver, and I told him yes, but asked why that mattered, I figured silver was always the sort of thing one would use for werewolves, not vampires. He told me that the reason why vampires didn't show their reflections in mirrors was that in the old days they were made of silver, and that silver was a symbol of purity. He said that if vampires were real and walking about nowadays, they'd be reflected back just fine, since nearly all modern mirrors are made with aluminum. Doesn't tarnish I suppose."

My mind flashed to "Chester" brushing his teeth in the bathroom mirror, face as normal as could be reflecting back at me, before recalling the terrifying thing I'd seen in the old silver mirror. The old woman must have noticed me go pale, she asked me if I was alright. I nodded and left with the mirror, driving back home.

I got back at around lunchtime, and the thing that pretended to be my son asked me if I was okay, and if we would be having lunch soon. I angled the mirror so I could see its face, and saw that crude puppet mouth wagging in vague time with its speech. I told it to wait at the dinner table, and that I would be with it in a few minutes. It did as I said, sitting down and pretending to read a book with its glass eyes.

I reached into the kitchen drawer and pulled out a pair of butcher's scissors. With the scissors in one hand and the hand mirror in the other, I walked up behind the puppet thing, carefully angling the mirror so I could see where the strings connected to its wooden body. I looked to see where the strings led, to see if I could get a glance at the puppeteer, but it just seemed to extend impossibly into the ceiling, passing through the plaster like a fishing line through water.

It didn't notice what I was doing until I'd already cut the first string, one connected to its left arm. It screeched in what sounded like pain, a horrible distorted cry that was a mix of mad piping and a child's scream. It swiped at me with the right arm, but I was too fast for it. After all, it was only wood and strings, and I was alive. I cut the other arm free, and both now fell limp at its sides. Next I went for the legs, snipping the strings both in quick succession. Glancing up from the mirror, I saw what looked like my son floating in the air slightly, mouth wide open as it screamed. I cut the strings connected its jaw and head, and the thing collapsed to the floor in a silent heap. The illusion had been broken, and all that lay before me was a broken puppet. Far away in the distance, I could hear the sound of pipes playing faintly in the woods, a haunting melody which I cannot quite recall.

- - -

I knew I couldn't go to the police with any of this. Who would believe a woman who claimed that her son had been replaced by a puppet? I'd be institutionalized at best, arrested for child abuse at worst, and that's assuming they ever managed to find the real Chester. I spent the rest of the day frantically researching on the internet, typing inane phrases like "child replaced puppet music pipes" or "puppet mirror child double" into the search engine, getting almost nothing useful in response, until eventually I came across some old website detailing European folklore. Specifically, the page on changelings.

I read about medieval peasants convinced their children had been replaced with those of fairies, how their real children had been taken to the woods to be raised by the monsters which stole them. I read of the ways one could protect oneself from the so-called "fair folk", of their hatred of iron. I remembered the wrought iron fence that surrounded the house, the conspicuous gap where a tree must have broken through as it fell.

I've written this in case I don't come back. I've written this so that if I'm never found, they don't think I just performed a murder-suicide in the woods out of grief. I love my son dearly, and I am going to save him from the monsters that took him from me. I can hear the hideous music of their eldritch pipes drifting through the trees, mocking me. I'm taking one of the broken iron posts with me. The tip is sharp as a spear.

#horror fiction #horror #horror story #mirrors #fairies #changelings

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fire-to-fire · 1 year

Text

Christian Summer Camp Horror Stories, Volunteer Edition:

Major TWs in Tags

They did not employ a nurse or have anyone with formal first aid training working there.

They had a policy to keep children at camp even if they were throwing up. You were never to call their parents.

They had a lift that was broken and everyone knew just to watch carefully for the signs that it was about to free fall while you were using it so you could hold on.

We were supposed to have breaks (1 half hour per 12+ hour day) but they didn’t always happen. Those who worked through breaks got praise and those who complained about not having them got shamed.

Volunteers had to surrender their cell phones and were not allowed to call home except on weekends, even then they had to use the phone in the hallway so everyone could hear you.

If we had a problem we were not to talk to our families and friends back home but instead the owner of the camp who was our “mother” while we were at camp.

The volunteer form had the option to mark what you were not willing to do but it meant nothing once you got there. You’d be spiritually pressured into doing what they wanted eventually.

Mental breakdowns of volunteers were actually pretty common. Once a volunteer ran away and slept in a nearby field for the night. Another time a volunteer locked himself in the boys dorms and didn’t let anyone else in for an entire day. Another cried every night from the stress. I myself had a meltdown in front of the rest of staff after leadership assigned me something I wasn’t capable of and then ignored me when I tried to tell them.

When my volunteer time was up they made a public announcement that I was leaving to try and shame me into staying longer. When it didn’t work they made a member of leadership take me on a private walk and try to talk me into staying longer. When even that didn’t work, I got cornered by the owner who tried to spiritually manipulate me into staying longer.

The co-owner physically assaulted me as a 14 year old and then bullied me the rest of the time I volunteered there (which was years).

The co-owner also called an Asian camper “China” the whole time she was there because he couldn’t remember her name.

The camp as a whole was also racist towards the indigenous campers (regularly stated they were all thieves and trouble makers).

They had a dress code for volunteers but it was mostly just for the women. They had a policy that if a male volunteer complained, a female volunteer could be forced to change- even if she was already following dress code.

They had a volunteer who was repeatedly aggressive with other volunteers (and leadership) but was allowed to stay because his mother worked there as well.

The same volunteer cut out a picture of Ellen from a cereal box and tacked it to the staff lounge wall. When asked about it he said he was “crucifying her for being a lesbian”. Nobody in leadership cared.

I was also there the day gay marriage got legalized in the United States and almost every volunteer started going through their Facebook and unfriending everyone who posted positively about it.

The year I left was the year they put in their policy that you couldn’t be gay and work there.

#Christian summer camp horror stories #apostate #ex christian #ex fundamentalist #religious trauma #ex fundie #christianity tw #vomiting mention tw #unsafe work practices #physical assault #spiritual abuse #racism tw #sexism tw #homophobia tw #spiritual abuse tw #physical assault tw #crucifixion mention tw

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leos-regression-cove · 2 years

Text

All the Lessons I Never Learned

10. Preparations (Part 2)

Synopsis: Thor is hit by the realities of having to move across the world to live with Loki and begins to have second thoughts when Frigga helps him sort through and pack up his playroom.

Word count: 1,775

Stand Alone?: No

Warnings: Anxiety/meltdowns

Notes: These angsty chapters are really hard to write while keeping Thor in character or without getting repetitive, but I'm pretty happy with this one.

Read it on AO3!

Thor had not gotten the easy part of this deal by any means.

The day after Loki went home, it all came crashing down like a tower of blocks.

First, there was the day when his mother had sat on the floor of his playroom and told him about a game they’d be playing called “yes or no”: She would hold up a toy, and Thor would say “yes” or “no”. The “yes” items would get sifted through with another game later if there were too many, but were generally going to be kept, and the “no” items would get put into a charity bin.

Well, the truth was, most items, even the “yes” ones, got thrown in the charity bin. With very few exceptions, it was going to be easier to simply give Loki a list of “yes” items and a large check to have him simply repurchase most pieces of Thor’s bedroom and playroom. Only a few special things would be going with him, like the play kitchen, which had been especially made for him and would take far too long to re-order. The other things making the journey would be a smattering of beloved and irreplaceable toys, some favorite books, and his wardrobe, as Frigga considered shopping for him to be too much of a pain to put off on poor Loki.

Unbeknownst to Thor, she had also already decided on many of the toys before even giving Thor the option, tossing old things that were broken or that Thor had never touched, a couple still in packaging. Casualties of this included many trains, other vehicles of all sorts, and a couple dolls that had come with doll furniture or clothes Thor had wanted for his snake.

It had been since the three youngest children were all in the home that this game had been played. Thor hardly remembered that, and he had never needed to get rid of much.

But now, Thor had more decisions he needed to make: Which dozen out of the hundreds of picture books did he actually like? Which building block set was better? Duplo or traditional wood? Did he really need all those puzzles? What about the play silks and rainbow ribbons? How about the stuffed animals which were used as padding and pillows and not as friends?

The task was horribly overwhelming for such a small little. He wished that the choice wasn’t even his, but also knew that it would be so much worst if it wasn’t. He wasn’t aware that that was already the case.

“He was such a good boy about it-- a big strong, brave boy,” Frigga wrote Loki afterwards. “Look at this!” she sent over a photo of the much less full room.

“And no tantrum?” Loki asked back.

“Well… no, there was definitely a tantrum,” she admitted.

After said tantrum, they had begun the process of disassembling the items Thor did want to keep and began putting them in boxes.

Not much of that got done today though, as Frigga lost her steam and needed a break. She was tired and old. All of the energy, mental and physical, was being drained from her through this process.

“Loki!” Thor had yelled on a facetime call, taking the phone out of his mother’s hands. “Loki! Mumma’s been really sleepy and daddy’s been busy so I’m a big boy. I built boxes all by myself an’ put away blocks an’ books ‘cuz m’ a big kid!” he bragged, not realizing that running around with the phone was very shaky and jarring, nearly making his brother need to turn away for fear that he’d be sick.

“You put your blocks away already?” Loki asked. Slightly in that impressed tone adults offer young children and also in that concerned voice that was Loki’s own stress. The voice that said “Oh my God this wasn’t just a stress nightmare. This is actually happening.”

“Yeah. An’ morrow daddy saided he’ll help wit my big toy bins an’ putem away. Mjolnir’s baby furniture, too. Um I getta use the wench!”

“Wrench,” Frigga corrected him, with a laugh, taking the phone back out of his hands and letting him flop down on the couch next to her.

Thor took the big plush snake, which was haphazardly wiggled into a baby-doll romper-- the tail in through a leg hole and the head poking out of the neck-hole-- and snuggled it close to him, letting his mother wrap her arms around his neck, pulling him just barely into the frame of the camera.

“Mumma! Mumma!” Thor had yelled the next day after coming home from school.

“Hm?”

“Mumma call Loki! Call Loki!”

“Loki’s working today,” she told him.

“But… he’s gotta see boxes! Big boxes! Upstairs!”

“Why don’t we send him pictures?”

“Okay!” the little grinned, clapping and beckoning his mother up.

After he was sure she was following him, he ran to the playroom as if it would look entirely different from when he left, but to be fair, it did.

Frigga and Odin had had a couple movers come in and take a few of the things that had to be moved. Only a couple boxes of kept things, the pieces like the doll furniture and a bunch of the smaller toys, were packed into a corner of the room, while the rest sat almost empty.

Thor paused, suddenly realizing the magnitude of how much was gone.

The carpet had indents where the playground and train table had been, and the bookshelf which had once also been alive with extra bins of toys, particularly nice arts and crafts projects from school, board games, and DVDs of movies-- even a couple of video games that were deemed okay for the preschool age group-- was now almost entirely empty with the exception of a couple of small knick-knacks.

Thor whipped around to see if his mother knew about this.

She seemed entirely indifferent to it.

“Where’s playground? Where’s my trains?” The poor dear didn’t sound angry, not at first, but genuinely confused and sad, as if he didn’t know they wouldn’t stay.

“Loki doesn’t have room for all that extra stuff so we’re just taking the essentials, darling,” Frigga said as if it meant nothing; As if she were talking with an adult.

“Give it back!” he whined.

“They’re already gone, honey. It’s alright, it’s just things.-- Look at how much progress we’ve made though! The whole room’s packed! You did such a good job!”--

There was a noise that reminded the woman of when both Loki and Thor were both small. The scream-crying Loki would make when he was only a baby. It wasn’t one of the angry, frustrated yells of a preschooler or toddler tantrum, but a shriek; a screech of grief that disolved into a melty pile of tears. Not a blowup but a meltdown.

The little slunk down to the floor, but he made no moves to violently thrash or hold his breath or break anything, but instead he just wailed and cried. At first, he was sitting, and made an attempt to wipe away his tears, snot, and spittle, all the sorts of fluids that tended to happen when a little cried.

Frigga pet his back at first, slowly crouching down next to him. She did not speak until he pushed her away.

“All gone,” was the only phrase he could squeak out before falling backwards into a laying position.

The mother tried to hide her sigh as she stood back up and took a few seconds to take photos of the room and the distressed little for Loki.

Thor hid his face once he noticed and rolled over onto his side away from her.

As phone photography subject matter began to lack, Frigga got him a pillow out of an unsealed box, and grabbed the snake plush from atop the cradle box, and dropped them by him before squatting down again and making sure he felt comforted just enough.

Thor screamed into the pillow and tried to use it like a massive tissue.

He flipped over onto his belly, planting his face into the pillow, and hugged Mjolnir underneath his chest and tummy.

This was just all too much.

When Thor was originally told of this new chapter in his life, some parts of it felt distant. Even packing up some of his toys felt far away-- and he had played the “yes or no” game before. But now, to see the room as it was: empty, and, in some ways, decaying, was something just shy of traumatizing. Paint in some spots had faded more than others, and was starting to peel in some of the corners by the crown molding. Where the play kitchen had stood against the wall, it was still a brilliant white.

There was something haunting, dire, and incredibly lonely about all of it. To know it was coming to an end. To know that this piece of life was over, and yet still being unable to grow up, to grow out of the disorganized mania and phase of discovery that was being three or four.

It took a little while, but eventually Thor wound himself back down, bawling wails turning to shaky, sniffly whines.

The lucky part was that it made getting him down for his nap a little bit easier, and taking him out of the ex-playroom was a nice change of pace. It was one of the few days that there wasn’t a fight or a new fit from it, as he was just simply too tired. If Frigga hadn’t encouraged him to be a proper boy, he may have just fallen asleep right on the floor of his playroom on the damp pillow.

His bedroom was almost entirely intact, with the exception of the fairy lights and the picture books on his shelf being packed away. Most of the rest would come tomorrow, with the final touches being added just after that so they’d be all ready by Friday afternoon, just after the barnehage got out for the day to give the little one plenty of time for goodbyes.

Frigga sat at the foot of the toddler’s bed, and briefly looked around the room, surveying what she needed to help the boy pack and how they were going to go about it. The little was snuggling himself into bed and getting comfortable under the covers as she did so.

There wasn’t much she needed to do after that, just tuck in the blankets around him and give him a loving kiss on the forehead before maybe reading a picture book and turning off the lights.

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shreddedparchment · 3 years

Text

A Wife for Thor Pt.18

Annulment

03/06/2021

Pairing: King!Thor x Reader Word Count: 6,291

Warnings: angst, pregnancy, broken marriages, depression, abandonment, little bits of fluff, supportive Loki

A/N: After I finished the last chapter, I went right to work on this one because the mood was good and I’ve been wanting to get these chapters out since the very beginning. These are the moments that drive me to write fics. The point of contention when everything gets messy. I hope you enjoy it, thank you so much for your comments and reblogs. Since I posted this one so quickly after the one before I will be replying to the comments on this one instead of the one before. I hope you can forgive me! <3 Thanks for reblogging if you do, it seriously helps SO much. xoxo

If you were ever in question as to whether you had a fight or flight instinct when faced with stressful situations, you now know that your instinct is to freeze.

You’re immobilized by the terror that’s tearing through you. Nothing feels real at this moment when your whole world has suddenly come crashing down.

Only seconds have passed but you quickly push your meltdown as deep within you as you can.

One hand placed on your belly in an absentminded caress of the baby growing inside, you reach for the door to go in and tell Thor you’re pregnant. It doesn’t matter that Jane is pregnant too.

You’re his wife. This little one inside you is the heir to the New Asgardian throne. And yet, your mind starts to add up the time that Jane might have become pregnant and her baby would come first.

Her child would be heir, not yours. Legitimate or not. These days, that stands for nothing.

So, despite knowing that you’ll have to deal with Jane for the rest of your life as she is the mother of your husband’s first child, it’s really not all that bad.

He loves you.

Thor loves you.

While you process this sudden revelation, the conversation on the other side of the door continues not waiting for you to come to get a grip.

“Are you certain?”

“Do you doubt her?” Thor demands, sounding frustrated and stressed.

“Yes,” Loki says passionately, “I would doubt anyone that I have not seen in several months.

“What reason would she have to lie?” Thor begs, genuinely looking for an excuse that will make this untrue. “She has never wanted the responsibility of the throne. She has always spoken of having children as a distant possibility. Not an assurance. The last thing Jane would want is a baby.”

“When did you even have the opportunity to bed her? Did you secretly make her your mistress?”

“No!” Thor gasps, as if the idea of cheating on you is ridiculous. “No, I-it was the day I went to end things with her when Y/N accepted my proposal.”

“So, you slept with Jane and then came back home and bedded your new fiance on the same day?”

“I’m not proud of that fact,” Thor admits.

“Regardless, even if you did sleep with her, you need to have her examined, Thor. You cannot take her on her word, not with so much on the line.”

“Fine,” Thor agrees, “But I’m certain that she isn’t lying. She’s been tired and sluggish since she arrived, her appetite strange, and this past week she’s been sick at every meeting, unable to hold down any of her lunch.”

A deep sigh from Loki tells you he’s resigned to Thor’s judgement. Jane is pregnant.

“What will you do?” Loki asks.

The quiet tone of their voices more dire than the passionate denial Thor’s voice had been just a moment ago.

You should go in now. You’ll tell him that you don’t care that Jane is pregnant. You’ll support him and assure him that if he wants them to move into the palace or maybe one of the houses on the palace grounds, you won’t mind! In fact, it will be better so that your babies can grow together as true siblings.

“Y/N is not pregnant yet,” Thor says slowly, his voice calculating.

He’s thinking hard.

“What is your point, brother?” Loki demands, sounding defensive.

“If-” Thor breathes in deep, but when he speaks, the words tumble out sure and decided. “If I am to do right by Jane’s and my child, if I am to legitimize my heir, I’ll-”

He hesitates, your heart thrumming so fast and hard that you can hear it’s beat in your ears as your brain throbs.

“I’ll get an annulment. The basis of which will be that Y/N has been unable to provide me with an heir. I’ll get sworn statements from her doctors that our-our bodies are not compatible and since Jane is already pregnant-”

You take a step as if to run but freeze because you know you can’t do this. No. You can’t face this. Not here. Not this close to him and her and all of this stupid royal bullshit that you never asked for but got anyway.

As you fracture from the inside, you paint a calm smile on your face and while you pull it off, you can’t disguise the exhaustion that pokes through. You take several feet back from the door, giving yourself a good length of hallway to walk.

You straighten up, stand as tall as you can, and move towards the parted door, “Thor?”

There’s a rush of movement from inside as you reach the war room and you try to keep your hand from trembling as you reach down and pull the door open.

Inside, Loki stands ramrod straight, hands behind his back and his face carefully devoid of any kind of expression other than his normal neutral.

Thor turns away from his desk, forcing a smile for you until he sees your face and his own falls quickly.

You know he doesn’t think you overheard him because you’d given yourself plenty of distance so that he and Loki could stop talking before you were close enough to hear anything.

But he knows something is wrong and he moves towards you, right hand extended to take hold of your arm.

Trying not to make it obvious, you meander towards one of the tall wooden chairs by the war table and sit down before Thor can touch you.

“What is it, cherub? Are you ill?” Thor wonders, moving towards you.

Feigning interest in the small models of the outposts that the Warriors Three occupy across the planet, you get up and move away from him again as you lean down to look at the one in the United States.

“I’m-to be honest, I am feeling a little under the weather,” you nod, sighing as you give him a quick pained smile.

You clear your throat, hoping that it sounds like you’ve got a tickle.

“I’ll send for the doctor,” Thor moves towards the cord by the door but you stand up straight quickly and shake your head.

“No, Thor, don’t. I think maybe I just need some rest?” you nod, smiling at him again but it still just looks painful. “I came to ask you if it would be okay for me to go stay at my house for a little while? Maybe a week or so? Just so that I can get some proper sleep and-and maybe find out if it’s really me getting sick or I’m just stressed out about this park project?”

“I thought the park was almost done?” Loki checks.

“And it is,” you nod at him. “But we’ve had so much trouble with the import of several of the plants that I’d wanted to have in the wildflower corner of the park and the fountains are still giving us trouble so, I-I just need a few days to get away from it.”

You turn back to Thor who isn’t looking at you anymore but has his hand pressed to his mouth as he loses himself in thought.

As you watch him contemplate and weigh his options, wondering if he should seize this very convenient opportunity you’ve intentionally given him to make up his mind on what to do about Jane and her baby, you very nearly break.

Your lip quivers and in your desire to hide it, you move back towards the door and feign a quick peek out as if looking for someone.

“Thor?” you prod, getting a hold of yourself and turn to fix him with your expectant gaze. “Is that okay? Can I take a few days to just rest up?”

He snaps out of his thoughts and his face softens. You see the Thor who’d just had you perched on his lap, arm around your waist.

“Of course, cherub, if you need some time then you should take it.”

The sadness that fills you is urged on by the knowledge that before Jane’s pregnancy was revealed, Thor would have insisted he come with you.

There is no way that he would have let you go off on your own.

As he moves towards you, this time you make sure not to budge as he places his hands gently on your arms.

He cups the left side of your face, stroking your cheek with his large thumb before he makes to lean in towards you.

Instead of pulling away or making it look too obvious, you press your face in against his chest and he strokes your back as you successfully juke his kiss.

“No, don’t kiss me. I-I threw up and I haven’t brushed my teeth,” you pretend to fuss.

“You know I don’t care, cherub,” Thor nudges you back a little.

“Well, I do.”

You shake your head at him, delving deep into your soul to scrounge up whatever pieces of it you can find and give him a small pout instead.

“Alright,” Thor gives in, but he still leans down and presses his lips to your cheek and then your forehead before you’re pulling away from him to edge towards the door.

“I should go if I want to catch the next flight out,” you tell him.

“Y/N,” he calls and you stop by the door to look back at him, wishing he’d just let you go so that you can fall apart alone and away from all the eyes of the palace.

Thor clenches his hand into a tight fist, gently tapping it against the war table as you wait.

“I love you.”

You blink, give him a quick forced smile, and sigh because despite the heartache you’re drowning in, “I love you too, Thor. So much.”

As you walk away, you know that nothing will ever be the same. In a week’s time, you might not even be Queen anymore. Wouldn’t that be something?

~~~~~~~~~~

You’re given a bodyguard. Well, more like a friend who can kick serious ass. Hilde was happy to volunteer.

“Something’s up,” she observes as she escorts you into the airport gate.

Normally you’d have set up for a private plane, or Thor would have.

But he has other things on his mind.

“What do you mean?” you ask her, clearing your throat again for the fifth time since you left the palace in order to uphold the pretense of feeling sick.

“Your face is all wrong, you’re not saying something.”

“I have nothing to hide, Hilde. I’m just tired. I feel weak and beaten. I feel like I can’t catch my breath. Like I’ll crack if I’m not careful enough to hold myself together.”

All of this is true. You do feel like you’re about to crumble to pieces. Nothing you just said is a lie. You’re not hiding anything, just waiting. In a week’s time, you’ll know where you stand. And then you can tell Hilde everything.

“How long have you felt this way?” Hilde wonders, real concern painting her tone.

“Not long,” you tell her. “It just started today, actually. About two hours ago?”

“There’s something more,” she refuses to believe that you’re only sick. “It’s like you’re running from something.”

“What would I be running from, Hilde? My luxurious and comfortable life? My loving husband? My sweet and loyal people? My life is perfect. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.

“I have a family. The only thing I’ve ever wanted. Why would I run from that? Unless of course, I’m being kicked out?”

Hilde fixes you with a look of complete confusion.

As you hand over your ticket to the man at the gate, you force a smile on your friend.

“If I were being kicked out, I’d run before they could get the chance to give me the boot. Then at least it was my choice and not someone forcing me to go away.”

“Why would anyone kick you out? It’s not possible, Your Majesty. You are Queen of New Asgard. Or did you forget?”

“I don’t think it’s possible for me to ever forget my time as Queen. I think I’ll remember it until the day I die.”

Hilde takes your arm, turning you to face her with subtle force, “Oi, what aren’t you telling me?”

You swallow hard, pushing your sorrow down until you can ignore it a little better.

“I’m-I’m not hiding anything, seriously. I’m just tired, Hilde. Being Queen is harder than I ever thought it could be and even though I love being married to Thor, the stresses of doing my job as Queen have reached a point where it’s boiling over.

“I just need a break...from everyone, Hilde. Even you.”

“What did I do?!” she demands, offended.

“Nothing. You’ve been one of the good parts of being Queen, but I just need a little break from Asgard as a whole. I spent my entire childhood and teenage years alone with no one to rely on me but me.

“I just need to be alone for a bit. One week. That’s all I want. So...I know that Thor won’t be happy about it but now that you’ve seen me onto the plane-”

“I am not leaving you alone,” Hilde frowns, almost angry at you for even asking.

“David is meeting me when the plane lands and then driving me home himself. I’ll be fine being alone for just the flight,” it’s a plea as much as it is a reassurance. “Please, Hilde. Please? Please?”

The higher your pitch gets, the more she breaks, turning sympathetic.

“Please, Hilde? Please?”

She growls and rolls her eyes, holding out your carryon bag--a large brown duffel bag stuffed with clothes--so that you can take it.

“Thor is going to be pissed at me,” she grumbles. “And it’s all your fault.”

You take your bag, hang it on your shoulder, and quickly pull her in to kiss her cheek.

“Thank you, Hilde. I’ll text you as soon as I land. I promise.”

“You’d better, or I’ll come find you and stick at your side like paste.”

A stewardess comes out to peek down at you and you hurry off before Hilde can change her mind.

In no time at all, you’re in your seat, the plane up and the air, and New Asgard--Thor and his annulment of your marriage--is fading fast behind you.

When you land, no one is there to meet you.

A necessary lie. You'll have to call David in the morning and let him know what's happening. He's your lawyer and if Thor goes through with his plan, you'll need to be legally ready.

You're hit with a stab of hurt that your previously loving marriage has taken such a shift.

Still, you feel bad for lying to Hilde, but when you’d said you needed your alone time, you’d meant it.

You rent a car with your own money, ignoring the shiny black credit card that Thor had given you during your honeymoon shopping trip. The last thing you need is them tracing your movements when you just want to be left alone.

The drive home is lengthy but the peace it brings you is welcome.

Four hours of no one but yourself, the music on your radio, and endless grassy hills and small town charms streaking past your windows like long lost friends.

After an hour of driving you stop at a roadside diner. You buy a bag full of fries, smear them in lines of ketchup, grab a lemonade to go, and text Hilde that you’re with David and on your way home.

After another hour, you stop again. This time at a decently sized convenience store, newly built. It's a truck stop really and you take the chance to use the bathroom then loiter by your car as you tap the screen of your phone with your thumb, waking it up over and over again. Unable to make up your mind.

Your wallpaper taunts you. A picture of you sitting between Thor’s legs on your massive bed, his arms wrapped around you as your left hand is placed to his cheek as he kisses yours, your other arm extended as you take the picture.

It’s difficult to find the courage to unlock your phone, scroll through your contacts, and press the little phone to dial Thor.

He doesn’t pick up right away.

Sadly your marriage already feels like a past life. It feels dead. Like a good dream you’ve woken up from and you just know if you try and go back to sleep to keep it going, it’ll only turn into a nightmare.

The phone rings and rings. It goes to voicemail.

It hurts. So much more than you expected it to hurt and your tears overflow leaving salty trails along your cheeks as you hiccup and try not to sob out loud.

You lean and cry against your car for the longest two minutes of your life before your phone is ringing and vibrating in your hand.

It’s Thor, and for a second, you consider not answering. You consider disappearing. Just fading into the wilderness. Abandoning your car right here. Never making it to your little house. It's so tempting in the moment to give up your throne, which will soon be taken away from you, and start your life again.

How long would they look for you? Would they eventually assume you're dead?

Still, you know that Dr. Wilson and Dr. Alric would spill the beans and if Thor knew...

You press your free hand to your stomach and know that you can’t just vanish. This life will follow you wherever you go and as painful as it is, you’re not sorry for the baby you’ve made.

You swallow your sobbing and with all of the other things you’re not allowed to feel right now or you’ll give yourself away, bury it deep down inside.

Gliding your finger across the screen, you answer the phone and press it to your ear.

“My love,” Thor gasps, sounding stressed or tired? Labored breathing.

Your mind goes to dark places and you chase away the nasty images your mind thinks up before you can let them hurt you more.

How can he still call me that?!

“I’m sorry I didn’t answer. Forgive me. I'd left my phone on my desk and I had my hands full of books.”

Your mouth won’t open. It won’t speak.

You realize all of a sudden that you don’t want to talk to Thor. You’re so angry at him. You’re hurt and betrayed and everything he’s ever told you is a lie.

“Y/N?” he sounds so confused.

“I’m here,” you manage.

“How are you feeling, cherub?”

Stop calling me that!

“I’m not great,” you sigh, sagging against the car. “I just wanted to call you to tell you that I’m with David and we’re on our way to my house. We stopped at the store to go to the bathroom, so I thought I’d call you.”

“Wait, David? Why is David with you? Where is Brunnhilde?” Thor asks, his heavy breathing still loud.

“I asked her to stay behind,” you explain. “Look, Thor I don’t really feel well enough for talking. I just didn’t want you to worry. I promised I’d call.”

“Why would she let you go alone?” Thor demands, shouting into whatever room he’s in. “Loki! Where is Brunnhilde? Get her up here!”

“I have to go, Thor. David’s waiting. I’ll call you later, okay?”

“Wait. Don’t hang up yet, cherub. Do you have a doctor to see you close to home?” Thor frets, and you can’t stand it.

“I’m coming, David!” you pretend to call, the convenience store clerk currently throwing the trash looks at you then turns his head back and forth as if searching for who you might be talking to. “Bye, Thor.”

“No, wait, love. Don’t hang-”

His voice is cut off and yet his deep tone still rings in your ears as if he were standing right beside you.

Your heart cries out for him. You wish he was there with you but then your brain reminds you that your time with Thor is already over.

The clerk is still looking at you and you give him a quick shake of your head.

“Sorry,” you start. “Bad breakup.”

He nods sympathetically as you get back in your care then gives you a wave as you drive off, setting back off into the night.

You’re not driving twenty minutes before your phone dings. A text.

Then again. And again. And again. Too many texts come through and you can’t stand it.

You reach over and completely shut it off.

~~~~~~~~~~

It’s midnight when you finally get up from bed.

There’s no escaping Thor even here in your own home. Your honeymoon memories are everywhere here.

The bed. The shower. The closet--Thor was eager one morning. The kitchen. The backyard. Every room has a memory. Not all of them sex, but all of them just as poignant and meaningful.

Or so you’d thought.

You wander down the hall to your kitchen, flipping the switch as you enter and make a beeline for the vintage fridge.

“Shit-” you sigh, not even opening it as you remember that there will be no food until you go shopping for some.

You take a peek, just to confirm, and all that's inside is a half empty jar of pickles on the door.

Irritated, you move towards the pantry and grab the first box of cereal you see, pop it open and plunge your hand inside.

You scoop a bit into your mouth but just as you begin to crunch, your mouth falters at the sight of Loki sitting on one of your island stools where he clearly wasn't before, a gentle smile to compliment the knowing sharpness in his eyes.

“You heard us, didn’t you?”

You try not to react to his question, because it’s not a question. Just confirmation of what he clearly already guessed.

“You’re not really here, are you?” You finish chewing, taking more cereal into your mouth after you swallow.

You’re starving. You should have bought some burgers at that diner to reheat and eat tonight and tomorrow.

“No,” Loki confirms. “I'm...checking in. Thor doesn’t know. He’s pretty oblivious, actually. Other things on his mind.”

“Like pregnant ex-girlfriends whose baby will have a stronger claim over the Asgardian throne than mine?”

There’s a bitterness in your voice but you don’t feel sorry for it. You’re not going to hide how hurt you are.

Loki’s face finally breaks as he realizes what you mean. He gives you a small startled blink before he’s got control of his expression again.

“Don’t tell him, Loki.”

“He deserves to know.”

“Does he?” you demand, voice rising in your anger. “And I don’t deserve to know about Jane being pregnant?”

“He would have told you,” Loki assures you.

“When?” You demand, eyes stinging. “When he needed my signature on the annulment papers?”

“He’s not decided on anything yet.”

“Oh, my god! As if that even fucking matters!” you get up, throwing the box of cereal into the garbage.

They’re stale.

“The point is he thinks it’s a good idea. I married him. I thought he welcomed me into his family. I thought I belonged with him, and you and Hilde and Heimdall, but I’m just some fucking guest after all, aren’t I?”

“You’re overreacting,” Loki chastises you.

You pick up a nearby mug and chuck it at him. It goes through him and breaks against the wall behind him.

“Don’t tell me that I’m overreacting when my husband is thinking about legally erasing all traces of our marriage!

"I trusted him," you reach up and jab at your own chest somewhat painfully.

"I thought what we had was worth keeping and protecting. I was already making plans to move Jane and her baby into the palace so that our kids could grow up together, as a family but he doesn’t want that.

“He doesn’t want me in his life if he’s already got another heir lined up so why should I tell him? If he doesn’t want me without this baby then he has no right wanting me with it!”

Loki lets you shout, he lets you break down. He doesn’t judge you for it either, but he reads into it. Too much, and you hate him for it.

You don't want to be reasonable. This doesn't feel like the time for reason. You're shattered.

“He loves you, Y/N. His choice is made-”

“For the child, yes. I get that. That doesn’t make it hurt any less. And maybe I shouldn’t be angry for him doing right by his baby when I’m carrying one of my own, but I am angry. It hurts to know that in moments he was able to make the choice to end our marriage.

“He’s my husband and I am his wife. Does that seriously mean nothing?”

Loki shakes his head, “I’ve already told you that he hasn’t decided anything, yet.”

“You don’t get it, and I don’t know that you can understand what even considering the option of annulment means for us as a couple.”

Loki sighs, “I want you to listen to me very clearly, Y/N. I say this with as much love as a brother can feel for his sister. You need to understand and you need to accept that you and Thor are not a normal couple. Thor is, first and foremost, a king.

“He is beholden to his people and he needs to ensure our position on this planet because we don’t have a home anymore. We are refugees and this is our home now. It is Thor’s job to protect that on behalf of all of us by any means necessary. Choices like these are the reason that my brother resisted the throne for so long.

“As a King, all of the love in the world cannot keep him from making the choices that will benefit our people, even if the choice should hurt him in the process.”

You’re shaking with tears as Loki speaks, shaking your head as you press your hand against your tummy. Your thoughts are full of the baby growing within you and the helpless feeling that presses down on you.

“That’s why this baby changes things, Y/N. You must tell him that you’re pregnant if you are going to keep him for yourself. If you want your marriage to survive this, you can’t keep this from him.”

Shaking your head, you turn away from him to fill a small glass with water and take a small drink.

Yes, you need to tell Thor that you’re pregnant. As wounded as your pride is, you can’t keep him in the dark forever.

“My Queen?” Loki urges you, calling you by your title probably to remind you that like Thor, you have obligations even if you don’t like or want them.

“Fine,” you sigh. “I’ll tell him, but not yet. Just give me this week, Loki. Please.”

When you turn to look at him again, he’s softer with his gaze.

“You’re going to let him suffer for his idea of the annulment,” he guesses.

“No,” you shake your head. “This isn’t for Thor. This is for me. Just because I understand the reason he thought of an annulment doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt anymore.

“If I saw him right now, I couldn’t even talk to him, Loki. He might have betrayed me for good reasons, but he’s still betrayed me. He still accepted, even for a few moments, that giving me up was the best thing he could do.

“And maybe it’s because he’s the-the first person that I’ve ever loved, and maybe I’m still looking at our very arranged marriage with some girl’s view of romance but I can’t separate his duty from my hurt and I-I don’t know that I can ever forgive him.”

"I suppose that's fair," Loki sighs. “I won’t say anything, I promise. But I’m going to make sure that he’s here on Friday. From there, it’s your duty as mother to a future prince or princess of Asgard to tell Thor about your pregnancy.”

You move to sit next to him, giving the bits and pieces of the mug you’d thrown at him a look as you settle.

“I’m sorry I threw a cup at your head.".

Loki smirks, “Would you believe me when I tell you that it’s happened before?”

You almost smile, “Yes. I believe it.”

Loki chuckles but you can't return the sentiment. For you, the world is still ending.

“Can you do me a favor, sister?” Loki asks, his term of endearment warms you a little.

Even if Thor found it easily to cast you off, you’re happy that Loki sees you so permanently a part of his family.

“Something tells me I’m not going to be happy about it, but sure.”

“Turn on your phone,” he glances at the phone sitting at the center of the island only inches away from you where you’d left it to avoid temptation. “Thor won’t shut up about how you’re not replying. If you really want to cherish some time alone, it would be better if you answered him. If he’s worried, he can get here within the hour. I don't suppose you want that."

"No," you shudder..

"Oh, and make sure you use your black card. He’ll be checking to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.”

You roll your eyes, the rift between you and Thor already so big you can’t see a way to fix it.

“This contradiction of Thor loving me so much he’s worried to death and his ability to decide on annulling our marriage is hard to swallow. What’s he going to do when we’re not married anymore and I’m living here and he’s married to Jane?”

“That will never happen, Y/N seeing as you’re going to tell him that you’re pregnant and he won’t go through with an annulment.” Loki insists.

“What if he does?” you wonder. “Jane’s baby was conceived first. They’ll be heir to the throne. Not mine. What if Thor decides that an annulment is still the best course of action?”

“Then I think I’ll have to reconsider my pledge to serve him as my King. But he won’t go through with it, I promise you. Trust me. I know him. Thor is too soft hearted to hurt you like that.”

“He already hurt me, Loki. It’s just the finality of a follow through that I’m waiting for.”

“You’re so eager to be abandoned,” Loki observes, frustrated with you.

“It just feels like I already have been. I’m sorry if that bothers you, but I can’t help how I feel. Haven’t you ever thought you belonged somewhere only to find out that you’re not as accepted as you thought?”

Loki thinks for a moment, his silence heavy with memory, “I have.”

“And how long did it take you to get over it?”

Loki grins, meeting your eyes with a bit of resignation.

“A long time,” he admits.

“And mine just happened today. You expect me to be over it already? Get bent, Loki.”

Loki chuckles.

“You have a point. I’m sorry, I’ve been looking at this through the lens of being my brother’s advisor. I’ll try and do better.”

His promise is genuine and it makes you feel better that you have at least one person on your side.

“Thank you, Loki,” you sigh. “I know this isn’t an easy spot for you to be in, between me and Thor. I appreciate you coming to check on me.”

“It’s my pleasure. Thor might not have noticed the way you refused to touch him when you left today but I was instantly sure that you’d heard everything. Does it bother you that he slept with her and you on the same day?”

“Not as much as I thought it would,” you admit. “Even without him explicitly saying it, I knew that he’d been with her. I knew that it was likely that he’d slept with her. They were in love. Maybe him more than her, but they didn’t break up because they wanted to. They broke up because he needed to get married and Jane wasn’t ready to do that.

“If Thor had made more of an attempt to delay our wedding, maybe Jane would have come to him sooner with her news and Thor and I would never have gotten married. I wouldn’t be pregnant, and this would all be much less messy.”

“I’m glad he didn’t wait. I’d rather have you as a sister than Jane. She’s nice but you’re much better suited to be Queen.”

“Until my King pisses me off and I run off for a week,” you tease.

“This is an exceptional situation,” Loki nods. “I don’t think if anyone else were in your shoes, they would be any less hurt than you by the news of Jane’s baby. If she is pregnant.”

You look at him, interest piqued.

“You said something like that before, that Jane should get tested to make sure she’s pregnant. What makes you think she might not be?”

“Nothing in particular. She might be. I just really don’t want her to be. I like you for Thor, Y/N. As far as I’m concerned, you’re Asgardian now.”

“I wish Thor thought like you do.”

“He does think it, Y/N. He’s just thrown off balance right now. Give him a little time and tell him about your child. His child, and it will clear up his mind. His judgement is compromised by the fact that he has an heir from the woman he once loved and the woman he now loves has had no luck in conceiving one. Or so he thinks.”

“I already told you that I’ll tell him, Loki. I just want some time.” you sigh.

“I know. We’re talking in circles. I’ll go, let you get some rest.”

You turn to watch him, slowly he begins to dissolve into slow moving golden swirls mixed with a tinge of green.

“Oh, and check your fridge again. I’ve left you a present.”

Just as quickly as he’d shown up, he’s gone.

With a heavy heart you remember the favor he asked of you and turn on your phone.

Twenty texts chime in and you quickly scroll through them.

They’re all from Thor, save for two from Hilde.

Hilde: Thanks. Be careful.

Hilde: Snitch!

All of Thor’s are variations of the same message.

Thor: Please reply, cherub.

Thor: Are you asleep?

Thor: I’m sorry if I’m waking you up.

Thor: Are you home yet?

Thor: Are you safe?

It isn’t until the last few messages that his frenzy of worry seems to change. More resigned to your lack of response. Probably believing that you are actually asleep.

Thor: I miss you already, cherub. I can’t tell you how strange it is to lay in our bed without you.

Thor: I don’t think there’s been a night since we married aside from my visit to the outposts that I have not had your perfect body pressed to mine.

Thor: My heart aches without you.

Thor: My body craves in your absence.

Thor: My soul is empty. You are my very essence now, my sweet cherub.

Thor: I hope you’re not very ill. I could not stand to lose you.

You sob, reading his texts through paints a drastic contrast between his deep voice crying for annulment and the loving, doting, sweet husband who sent you these messages.

His text voice is also so different from the way he talks. You can hear the way he might have talked to you if he hadn’t spent so much time with the Avengers and other humans here on Earth. Jane probably heard him speak like this out loud when they first met.

She’d been his first contact with this planet.

Wiping at your tears, you clutch the phone to your chest for a moment before focusing your blurry eyes on the screen again to keep reading.

Thor: I’ve never known how essential you are to my life until this moment. I need you at my side. I am most certain of it now.

Thor: I would give my life for you. I will keep you close from now on. I don’t know if I can last a week without you, my love. Don’t hate me if I come to you tomorrow.

Thor: Loki has just told me that he’s come to see that you’ve settled into your home safely. I really need him to teach me that trick. He says you need rest and that you already have a doctor coming by in the morning.

Thor: Please tell me what they say once they’ve seen you.

Thor: Loki keeps yelling at me to let you sleep.

Thor: Goodnight, cherub. I love you. More than my life.

Thor: Please text me in the morning.

Thor: It’s Loki. I’ve taken his phone. I’ll make sure he leaves you alone for the full week. Thank you for turning your phone on.

Y/N: I’m fine, Thor. Just very tired.

And because it’s true and if you don’t say it, he’ll get suspicious:

Y/N: I love you, too.

You sniffle and lock your phone.

“Jerk,” you grieve, and move to the fridge.

Opening it again, you’re surprised to find it fully stocked this time with all of your favorite foods and treats.

Loki is seriously the best brother-in-law in the universe.

#king!thor x reader #thor x reader #royal au #arranged marriage au #a wife for thor #king!thor x reader fic #king!thor x reader fanfic #king!thor x reader fanfiction #king!thor x you #thor x reader fanfiction #thor x reader fanfic #thor x reader fic #thor x you #marvel au #marvel fanfiction #a wife for thor pt18 #loki #loki laufeyson

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alwaysahiccupandastrid · 3 years

Text

How Bad is Sia’s “Music” really?

I watched it illegally (because there was no way I was paying for that bullshit) and found out. It’s not as bad as we thought... It’s worse.

TW for ableism, Sia, drugs, alcohol, just in general a terrible movie, meltdowns, blackface

Literally the first thing you hear while they’re showing the production companies is THOSE stereotypical noises. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll know what I mean.

And yes, she does this for the WHOLE fucking movie

What was the need to show her in her underwear? Maddie Ziegler was 14 when this was made, so what was the need??? And why did Sia prolong the scene by having her hitting herself?

Less than a minute in and my reaction was already “what the fuck is this shit?”

So the opening number not only had stereotypical exaggerated facial expression, it has Maddie in BLACKFACE?!? And with culturally appropriated hair?!?

The exaggerated facial expressions are literally constant and I took photos during the film to show it, more later, but I’ll keep mentioning it

ITS LITERALLY THE WHOLE FUCKING TIME SHE IS ON SCREEN

Even her way of walking is fucking offensive, Jesus Christ

The vocalisations just had me cringing so hard, I cannot describe how awful it made me feel

Why do all the neighbours need to be paid off and help her when she goes for a walk? I don’t-

Yes, by about the five minute mark I was already seriously debating all my life decisions. It was that bad.

Kate Hudson really didn’t give a fuck that her grandma died

I will keep saying it but WHY are the facial expressions/vocalisations CONSTANT?!! Literally they do not stop at all. I work with a child who is actually similar to this in that he’s nonverbal and he makes similar noises/faces, but the way they’re in this movie is so over-exaggerated?!? And even the kid I work with doesn’t do it 24/7?!?

Sia, calling your characters Zu and Music doesn’t make them interesting in the slightest. They’re still painfully terrible and one dimensional

Literally ONE minute after being left alone with her autistic sister, Zu calls the mental health service asking if they could “theoretically” “pick up” her sister?!? Like she wants to get rid of her already?!?

“A magical little girl” - autism isn’t a magical power?!? And Music is a young woman, not a little girl?!? Why are you infantilising her?!?

Okay I’m not being funny but this choreography is NOT hard. ANYONE can do it, so claiming that you needed to hire a dancer to be Music because of the numbers is literally bullshit (and even so, there are so many amazing autistic actors and dancers?!?)

20 minutes in and I wanted to give up

So she had her first meltdown because her hair didn’t get braided immediately and that’s... certainly interesting??

The fact that Leslie Odom’s character says “I’m going to crush you now”?!?

AND THEN HE FUCKING PICKS HER UP AND FULL-BODILY PINS HER DOWN ONTO THE FLOOR

“I’m crushing her with my love” - oh fuck you, just fuck you

So Sia lied, the restraint scenes were NOT removed and there was no warning. She’s a fucking POS liar

I have no idea why he’s called Ebo or why he has such a cliche African accent?!? I might have missed out on why because I was busy trying not to bang my head into the table while I watched this film but just... yikes

“He (his brother) liked to be held” - YEAH, HELD. NOT FUCKING CRUSHED

“He is dead now” - IM NOT FUCKING SURPRISED IF YOU CRUSHED HIM LIKE THAT

The constant babying and patronizing of the autistic character is so exhausting to watch. I’m so tired

“Planning on sending her to the people pound but I guess I’ll keep her a little longer” - SHE WAS JOKING BUT THAT WAS NOT EVEN REMOTELY A FUNNY JOKE. NOT EVEN IN AN AWKWARD WAY

STOP THE FACES IM-

^ YEAH, Sia, totally a fucking love letter to the autistic community here ^

So Zu finds this necklace she made as a kid that had a little dog on it, and she says to Music, “He had seizures too, just like you”... MELTDOWNS AND SEIZURES ARE NOT EVEN REMOTELY THE SAME FUCK THIS MOVIE-

It’s like Sia is trying to make the movie funny but it’s really not at all

Is Zu implying that Music is autistic because the mum was a junkie?!?

For real though, the dialogue in general is so fucking awful and cringey. Whoever wrote this should never be allowed to write again

Did she seriously leave her autistic sister alone to talk to who I’m presuming was her dealer or loan shark?!?

Also why is he - a white dude - wearing cornrows?!?

So who is the film really about? The autistic girl or the older sister saviour? I think we all know the answer to that one

WHY IS SHE WALKING AROUND WITH HER TEETH JUTTING OUT LIKE THAT ALL THE TIME

The musical numbers are literally so painful to watch. The overly bright colours, the flashing... my eyes were hurting and so was my brain

Autism representation aside for a second, the musical numbers/choreography are all fucking atrocious. Ditto for the costumes

LIKE WHAT THE FUCK WERE THE PINK OOMPA LOOMPA FRUIT THINGS?!? THEY LOOK LIKE THE PINK VERSIONS OF VIOLET BEAUREGARDE THE BLUEBERRY

I wanted to cry by this point, this movie is far more awful than I thought

“I’m not saying she doesn’t want to change, I’m saying she can’t” - FUCK YOU. Why is it okay for him to assume what she can or can’t do

Can I just say that autistic people aren’t constantly in a coked up wonderland state?!! We don’t see the world as a wonderland fantasy world 24/7?!!

“She can hear you from two rooms away” / *shows her listening through two brick walls to a conversation* — Also, we don’t have super fucking sonic hearing?? WE CANT HEAR THROUGH FUCKING BRICK WALLS?!?

“She can understand everything you’re saying to her” - she’s autistic not fucking deaf

Less than 45 minutes in, there’s another meltdown in the park

“I’m not climbing on top of a small screaming white girl in public” - yeah please fucking don’t

So Zu fucking pins her down with her weight 🤦‍♀️

“She doesn’t know who she’s hitting” - IM SORRY WHAT

EBO LITERALLY SAID “TREAT HER LIKE A BEAR” when talking her through the prone restraint, I fucking CANNOT

“Tell her she’s safe” - NOT IF YOU FUCKING RESTRAIN HER LIKE THAT SHE IS NOT

The fact that she gets up, smiling and happy after a meltdown and immediately is excited to get a snow cone... I can honestly say that after a meltdown, I am in no way happy or smiling. I am often not very verbal and I’m withdrawn/not myself for at least several hours, usually the rest of the day. Fuck this film

This film is literally just about Zu, and Music is there for a plot device to give her character development. That’s all she’s there for.

Love how Sia shoehorned Zu being suicidal in there. You know, just to try and make her more easy to sympathize with (it doesn’t work)

This film is literally just a 1 hour 47 minute Sia music video with ZERO plot

WHY WERE THEY WEARING PILLOW DIAPERS IN ONE NUMBER-

I really did not feel into the side plot with that guy who was fighting but it was still better than the actual movie so...

I am SO DONE with the NON STOP CONSTANT vocal shit. So tired.

LOJ’s only role in this film is to be the stereotypical wise black guy who assists a white woman’s story. There’s like hardly any other depth there

The Ebo/Zu romance is so fucking stupid and pointless and out of NOWHERE. I couldn’t even tell if they were into each other or not

I was already so bored of the musical numbers by this point. They added NOTHING to the plot but they pretended they did, and I was so over it. And it’s not because I’m not “creative enough” or anything to understand, I love musicals and I think it could have been cool if done right... but it wasn’t. They were a mess. It’s just bad.

Sia really tried to pretend her movie was deep but really it’s a shallow mess

So Zu is meeting rich drug clients and says to Music “try not to have one of your freak outs up there” and “if you could try to get it out now”... FUCKING YIKES. It’s not an on/off button, shut the fuck up

YEP THIS WAS THE SIA CAMEO FUCK THAT BITCH

The fact that she just calls “DRUG DEALER?!? DRUG DEALER IS THAT YOU”, fucking end this please-

I fucking hate this bitch I’m dead serious

“We’re gonna send them to Haiti cause there’s been an earthquake. All these buildings fell down, children’s bones were dislocated” - WHY WAS SHE SO CHEERFUL ABOUT IT

“Gonna buy a shit load of pain meds, gonna but them on my private plane” - FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOU

“Pop stars without borders” - Sia thinks she’s so clever but I would give anything to punch her I swear-

ANOTHER MUSICAL NUMBER JUST STOP IM BEGGING YOU

There’s this awkward conversation/bit with Zu and her drug dealer/loanshark about his outfit that was clearly meant to be funny but was just flat and painful

Yep, Sia really showed Music eating chewing gum off the underside of a park bench. Of course.

Look, the kid I work with does similar stuff by putting literally anything and everything in his mouth but like... why would you put that in your movie?

And there’s no indication before this that Music puts everything and anything in her mouth, she just randomly decides to get on her knees, under the bench and eat chewing gum, like she calculates that it’s there and gets it???

She has a THIRD meltdown after an allergic reaction to a bee sting and her sister just yells at her before realizing... I’m not here for this movie, I feel like I drifted off and was not really there

So Zu got angry because she left the drugs at the park but she’s not that upset that her sister had an allergic reaction???

Zu gets absolutely drunk because a) she lost Sia’s drugs and b) she’s stressed out by her autistic sister... wow, great message, Sia!

She really fucked off and left her sister alone to go clubbing/on a bender

The less said about the musical number here the better

Sia’s movie also checks the box of having stereotypical Asian parents, specifically stereotypical Asian dad being harsh/angry and hitting his wife!

ALSO HE PUSHED AND KILLED HIS SON WTF IS HAPPENING

Less than 3 minutes after the last, there’s a musical number that I think was about this side character going to heaven... another shitty Sia-esque number

The patterns during the number made my brain hurt.

Also there are so many autistic actors who can also dance, and yet Sia chose the neurotypical one because ✨ N E P O T I S M ✨

I just want to know how it was deemed necessary to show the fact the autistic character peed/wet herself? I mean... ??? It’s just so undignified and not at all necessary to the plot. Nothing happens after that, it just moves onto the next scene and it didn’t do anything

“I have no one” - 1) YOUR FUCKING SISTER. 2) GEE I FUCKING WONDER WHY, couldn’t be that you’re a shitty human being?!?

There’s a scene where Music is walking and she does ALL the stereotypical behaviours at once... just YIKES

Zu somehow stopped another meltdown just by grabbing Music by the shoulders and sitting her down???

Aaand yep. Another shitty musical number

Zu really goes to put her sister in a fucking facility and claims it’ll be “better for her” - BULLSHIT. Better for Zu, maybe, not Music.

Ah yes - the girl who the characters have said has problems with routines being changed/change in general... you’re now going to fuck up her routine by dumping her in a facility. Perfect Plan.

The nonverbal autistic girl suddenly speaking to say “don’t go” - you can just predict it from the off, can’t you?

Love that as soon as Music starts talking, Zu is like “fuck it, I’ll keep her!”

Zu really went and crashed Ebo’s brothers wedding... in a fucking bralette... YIKES

“I almost gave Music away” - SHE IS NOT A DOG YOU DONT GIVE PEOPLE AWAY

“We should sing a song” - PLEASE DO FUCKING NOT

Also that kiss/romance montage between Zu and Ebo was the CRINGIEST fucking shit ever

This movie seems to be implying that Music has locked in syndrome or something, like she’s locked in her own head or whatever it’s called, and I just... *sigh*

Oh and now Music magically fucking sings in a room FULL of strangers... this is literally embarrassing, please let this end

I mean it, this movie was fucking painful to watch on ever level

She got a service dog puppy which... okay?

Oh look, it’s the only decent song on the soundtrack but with an absolutely shitty over-stimulatory music video with the credits!

I can only name 5 characters in this film. Maybe 7 at a push, but even then I would be guessing

AND YEP SHE THANKED AUTISM SPEAKS OVER THE CREDITS. FUCK YOU SIA 🖕🏻

Let me reiterate: this is a movie about a neurotypical former drug addict whose character development comes from the autistic character, from having an autistic sister she has to take care of. I’m so tired.

We are NOT plot devices or tools for character development. Not once does anyone in this film treat Music like a human being - she’s treated as a burden, a problem, and then like a pet that they decide to keep. Not once is the film focused on how she is feeling - it’s always about Zu or Ebo. The performance itself was so over exaggerated and it made me want to cry when I watched it because this is how the world sees us, and this movie will make it ten times worse. It’s stuff like this that made me think “I don’t want to be labelled as autistic because people will think I’m a certain way”, that made me wait so long before going to the GP to get a referral.

As I said, poor autistic representation aside, the movie is just so appallingly bad. It truly is one of the worst films I’ve watched. If you’re going to watch it, please don’t - or, if you want to because you want to see how bad it is/to raise awareness/critical posts, at least do it illegally. Do not give Sia your money.

#sia #music #music 2021 #music movie #autism #tw ableism #tw meltdown #tw blackface #anti sia #lol sia

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