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softshrimpy · 9 months

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How To Woo A Hot Principal

Step 10: Accusations and Heartache

Summary: Working at the Weathervane was exactly what you needed. The routine, the people, your co-workers. It certainly helped that a certain tall, blonde, fucking gorgeous woman happened to frequent the cafe. Now some may call hopelessly flirting with your customers inappropriate behavior.

But truly, when it came to Larissa Weems, who could blame you?

Two chapters in one day? A treat...a hurt-filled treat... BUT A TREAT. Also the icon @misssmephisto really just about wrote this chapter so pls give her all the love and thanks. She has the sexiest brain🦐✨

Tags: @variant-2402 @the-bagel24 @eveymay @kimiinou @muffintopxs @h-doodles @bbykens @lilfartbox1 @bigolgay @winterfireblond

(pls let me know if you want to be tagged/ I missed you!)

Chapter 9

Cross Posted on AO3 here

HTWAHP Masterlist

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Larissa had been working nonstop since the night of the Rave’n. Eugene had been admitted to the hospital shortly after Yoko had burst through the office doors. He was barely alive when they found him and had been stuck in a coma since. The doctors were able to stitch his wounds but whether he’d pull through was still unknown. You could tell she was stressed out, you honestly would’ve been way worse if you were in her situation.

You hadn’t seen her much in the last two days, she was almost always holed up in her office either on the phone, stuck in meetings or answering emails. You still brought her her morning coffee, but where before she would chat with you and give you a sweet little kiss, now she at best acknowledges you with an apologetic smile and more often was so busy she would barely notice you were there.

Her actions hurt more than you were willing to admit to yourself. You knew you weren’t the reason for her late nights and cold shoulder but a large nagging part of your brain couldn’t help but carry some guilt with your inability to help her.

But tonight would be different. After stewing in your emotions all morning, you decided on one way you could help. You left straight after your shift at the Weathervane to pick up ingredients and then rushed home to start cooking. You thought making her a nice, home-cooked dinner could help, she definitely needed a break and she probably hadn’t eaten very well in the last few days.

You managed to get everything ready in record time, packed it into a container and set off to Larissa’s. You knew she was stuck in a meeting until late tonight so you had plenty of time to get to her quarters and set everything up.

Everything was looking great. You had set up a cute little candle-lit dinner, complete with Larissa’s favourite wine and a fancy store-bought dessert. You somehow timed it so well that just as you were finishing up you heard Larissa enter her office. You check everything over once again and then peek your head through the door to her office.

She’s sitting at her desk, frowning at something on her laptop. She looks exhausted, more exhausted than you’ve ever seen her. Her shoulders are so tense they look like they may snap and the bags under her eyes darker than you’ve ever seen them. She definitely needs a break.

“Hey, fancy seeing you here.” You smile, stepping into the room.

“Hm? Oh hello, darling.” She says, barely glancing away from the screen.

“So uh, I know you’re busy and all but I thought maybe we could have a quick dinner? I’ve got everything ready and-“

“I can’t darling. This work really is urgent.” She interrupts.

“I-I know. It’s just, well we haven’t spent any time together recently and I’m sure you could use something to eat-“ you try.

She sighs, and you flinch at the sound.

“I-I just think you could use a break-“

“I don’t have time for that! These monster attacks are getting worse and the sheriff is breathing down my neck because he’s convinced it’s one of my students! So, no, I cannot waste my time on a silly little dinner.” She yells.

“I-I just…” you mumble, “I just wanted to help.”

“Well, you’re not helping! You can’t fix everything and your presence sure as hell hasn’t been making anything easier around here,” she continued, rubbing her eyes.

You took a step backwards, holding your breath for a moment and counting backwards in an effort to calm yourself. A trick you’d learned growing up after your parents had expressed their distaste for your anger one too many times.

“Larissa, I don’t understand. I thought-I’ve just been trying to make things easier for you. I never meant-“ You explained, trying t figure out what it was you had done.

Slamming her laptop shut, Larissa stood. She was deathly quiet before uttering the words “First, you distract me from my duties as Headmistress leading to not one but two separate attacks on my students whilst they were under my watch-“

“Larissa what-“ you stutter, retreating back towards the main office doors as her daunting figure draws closer.

“Secondly, you play this stupid game with my emotions blinding me to the truth of your actions. And then-“ she laughs “you try and distract me from the evidence with a silly dinner! I bet you’re just looking for an opportunity to see the evidence of your involvement and destroy this school from the inside out.”

You still at her words, your heart stopping in your chest. You don’t know where this is coming from and can feel yourself getting angrier. You glared up at her, clenching your shaking fists and promptly losing your shit.

“What the fuck Larissa?! You’re not making any fucking sense. I mean- What- why would I try to ‘destroy evidence’? And in what fucking universe am I involved in the attacks? I care about the kids here, I care about you! So, I don’t understand where you get off on taking everything I’ve done for you and turning it into some fucked up, cruel joke- but this is- Why the fuck would you think that??” you yell.

A beat passed, the two of you staring intently at each other.

“Why?” She questions, her voice neutral and calm. “Because you’re the Hyde. And it’s all part of your sick little game. I don’t know who your master is or if you’re the one in control but I don’t care. The nightmares of blood and destruction, the exhaustion, your funny little ‘medication’” her voice began to rise. “All clear signs, all of them. And you thought planting them as some innocent little suggestion would make me look past them but not anymore. I will never, ever allow you back into this school, on these grounds ever again, you vile beast.” Spitting the final word with disgust, Larissa turned, her heels clicking on the wooden floor as she returned to her desk.

“I’ll take your silence as an omission. Now get out, run back to your master Hyde, the sheriff will be here any moment.” She sneers, leaning back on her desk to glare at you.

Without realising it tears were running down your face, your whole body visibly shaking as you tried and begged yourself to hold it together.

“I didn’t-“ you sniffle, trying and failing miserably at holding in your tears. “I love you.”

Her face twitches at that, you can barely see through the pools in your eyes. She lifts her head, staring directly into your eyes, nothing but hatred and a deep sadness being held in her blue orbs.

“Get out.” She murmurs.

“But Larissa please I-“

“Just go!” She yells, slamming her hand on her desk.

You flinch at the noise before running from her office. Any tiny pieces of your heart that hadn’t shattered at the beginning of her rant are now very much in tiny shards. Your chest feels tight and you honestly have no idea where you’re going. You just know she doesn’t want you there, she thinks you’re some killer monster thing. She hates you.

You’re running as fast as you can, not even vaguely aware of your surroundings. You can feel branches scratch your face and the crunch of dying leaves beneath your feet, the smell of dirt and a storm yet to come surround you. Eventually you trip, falling to your knees in the middle of the woods outside Nevermore. Your entire body shakes as you sob, burying your face in your hands as you cry and cry and cry. Everything hurts. And nothing makes sense.

You just wanted to help, you wanted to make her happy.

Everything felt numb. The forest around you seemed to have stilled in your honour, exhausted and worn out from the winds that had been battering its leaves. It was dark and cold but you couldn’t bring yourself to move, simply stuck as time moved around you and the atmosphere of the woods consumed you.

You didn’t know how long it had been, not that you cared either. You’d left your phone on Larissa’s table ready to play some smooth, warming jazz by an artist you’d found called Miss D. She had the perfect voice, deep and romantic, exactly the tone you’d wanted to set for dinner. Your eyes burn at the thought, with no tears left to cry all that was created was a stinging pain.

As your brain accepted the soreness around your eyes, you slowly become aware of the way your hands and body ache after your run through the woods. It was too dark to see the true damage but you knew you’d be feeling the result for the next few days. The weight of everything sat on your chest, grief buried in your bones making your whole body feel heavy and immobile.

How could she think that of you?

Consumed in your thoughts, knees buried in the earth below you, you failed to hear your name being called. The voice grew more desperate, louder as you slowly turned your head in the direction of the disturbance.

Marylin? What’s she doing here? She shouldn’t be out here…didn’t all of the attacks happen in the woods? You really should warn her or something…

Your body didn’t seem to give a damn, aching inside and out, as you attempted to stand and make your way over to the fuzzy image of Marylin before you. If it weren’t for her boots and hair, you don’t think your brain would have seen her in the dark of the night.

You dug your fingernails into the trunk of a nearby tree, trying to use it as leverage to pull yourself up. The moon began to emerge from the clouds above casting an eerie shadow across the clearing around you.

Wait a second…why is Marylin moving so weirdly? She seems panicked, terrified even… Why is she waving at you like that?

Her fuzzy outline becomes clearer as the moonlight strikes her frame.

She looks like she’s shouting. What is she-?

Oh.

You felt it before you saw it. If you had been a bit more aware you’d have heard the loud snapping of twigs from behind you followed by a low growl. If only you’d been more aware you would have heard the ear-piercing cry of no leave her lips.

But you didn’t.

Your head lolled down, your eyes finally focusing. Five massive claws were buried through your stomach as a burning, blinding pain consumed your senses.

Well that certainly wasn’t good

You feel your body get lifted before being thrown across the clearing you had been in, slamming against a tree. You fall into a crumpled heap at the base of it, your body twisted at an unnatural angle. Someone was screaming, it almost shocks you when you realize it’s you. You can vaguely hear angry, panicked yelling somewhere around you, but things are blurring together quite rapidly.

You’re going to die.

You realize this as you lay there. Finally, your brain is shutting down. You chuckle morbidly at the thought, the sound more akin to a gurgle as warm blood spills out of your mouth like some fucked up comedic skit. Your fingers that once clung to the cold, living dirt now gently lay upon the warm wound that was going to end you.

As the darkness of the forest consumed your vision, you thought you’d started to hear Larissa, her delicate voice whispering words you couldn’t make out. Your fingers twitch as you remembered the soft fur of your family cat, her small paws making the dough on your stomach. People of your past swept across your vision as the buzz of Larissa’s voice permeated your brain.

And then there was silence. There was just you and the night sky.

Until a muddied red thing enters your vision.

Marylin is still here, she needs to run, she’s in danger, you should warn her…

Your eyes roll towards her, her face entering your vision as she leans over you. Her features are somehow both fuzzy and clear, making you want to close your eyes and rest for a bit. Her lips were moving, but you can’t make out a single word she could be saying. Her face leaves your vision, her red boots re-entering it. The colour reminds you of Larissa’s lipstick.

You hope she knows you love her.

#larissa weems x reader #htwahp #larissa weems #principal weems #principal weems x reader

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softsnzstuff · 2 years

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Taking a Sick Day

Fandom: Stranger Things, Doctor Office AU (pre-Steddie)

Summary: Doctor Eddie finally takes a sick day, but keeps heckling Steve and Robin about whether or not Billy is messing up his charts.

Word count: ~740

Notes: Lol didn’t mean to post two Doctor AU fics back to back but I’m not mad about it.

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Robin and Eddie had a unique friendship. Though she’d only met him through work, he was humorous, teased Steve with her, and answered her silly medical questions in their down time. Today, however, he was getting on her last nerve.

***

It started yesterday morning as a tickle, an incessant need to clear his throat, before building quickly into an irritable mood and achy body. Everyone in the office saw it coming from miles away… everyone except Eddie who refused to admit defeat.

By the afternoon, he was face down on his desk, that Steve decided to bite the bullet. The two of them had been much flirtier lately and if anyone could get through to Eddie it would be Steve.

The younger man came up behind him, rubbing his shoulders. “Hey Doc, you’re looking a little worse for wear. You should take the day off tomorrow.”

“Can’t.” Came a murmur from the motionless form at the desk.

“Why not?”

The older man sat up and swiveled his hair to face Steve. His face was much paler than normal. “Because doctors don’t get sick.”

Steve made a long skeptical noise.

“I just mean- patients are sick. I can’t get sick because who’s gonna take care of them??” He elaborated.

“We’ll call in Hargrove. I mean he’ll be pissed but when is he not?” He continued, “Plus if you’ve got the flu going around, you’ll only be putting them at risk.”

Eddie sighed and ran a hand through his hair, nodding. “Okay. If you can get Hargrove in, I’ll take a day. But I’m coming back Monday!”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

***

Robins phone was vibrating nonstop since 7:30am. She opened it quickly to see no less than 6 text messages from Eddie.

Can you make sure Hargrove gives the medicine instructions to both Mr AND Mrs.Norris? Hell forget if you only tell him.

Also don’t let Billy touch my charts.

Or mess up my desk.

I think I saw Mrs.Gregory on the schedule too, she likes to be in exam room 3 if possible…

Lollipops are in the top left cupboard of my desk but don’t tell Steve

Oh and also can you make sure to forward me any scans from the patients?”

She sighed and clicked the phone off only for the desk phone to ring.

“Thanks for calling Hawkins Medical, Robin speaking-”

“Robin I need you to listen very closely okay?”

“Eddie is that you?”

“Yeah, you weren’t answering my texts. I’m going to tell you something important, you might want paper to write it down so HNG’tsschiEW! G’tsch’IEW!”

Robin pulled the phone away from her ear, wincing. “Geez doc, warn me next time you’re about to blow out my ear drums.” She joked.

“That’s…ndot medically possible. Listen okay this is imbportant.”

“Eddie. We got it okay? I have all your notes. I’m not letting Billy close to my charts. Your patients are my patients, I know what they need, remember?”

There was silence on the other line as Eddie seemed to be thinking, “yeah okay. snFF But can you ask Steve to send me the-”

“Hold on.” Robin covered the mic end of the phone, “Hey Dingus! There’s a call for you at my desk!”

Steve padded over in his light blue scrubs, looking more confused than anything. “Make it fast or Hargrove is gonna kill me.” He mumbled.

She handed him the phone and he held it to his ear, “hello?”

“Steve-o! It’s Eddie. I need you to-”

“You’re at home for a reason you know. It’s so you can rest. So you know… do that. I’m sure Robin will protect your charts with her life - yes, she told me.”

Robin elbowed him as she typed at her computer, getting ready to verify insurance for Monday’s patients. She couldn’t hear Eddie, but could only guess by what Steve was saying.

“It’s called taking a sick day for a reason, Eds…. I know you want to be here…. Just. Try and get some rest okay? For me? …. Yes I’ll still bring you soup after work. Okay. Bye.”

Robin raised her eyebrows at Steve as he hung up her desk phone. “What?” He asked.

“Nothing…you’re bringing Doctor Rockstar some soup later?” she smirked.

Steve smirked back and went to call in the next patient for Doctor Hargrove, “wouldn’t you like to know.”

#sicktember 2022 #s/tranger t/hings #e/ddie m/unson #s/teve h/arrington #kb au’s #doctors office au #doctor!eddie #doctor!billy #pa!nancy #receptionist!robin #nurse!steve #snzblr #steddiesnz #fruity 4 #sickfic

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moodybluemood · 2 years

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Hello and welcome!

In all honesty, I don’t know how much I’ll post on this account but I wanted a place to post random writing thoughts and maybe snippets of things I don’t want to post on AO3. I’ve had previous blogs in the past but I wanted a fresh start, all shiny and new, and I wanted a writing space that wasn’t so unmeshed with personal posts. This is all in the pursuit of keeping a happy headspace.

Anyway, if you’re here from AO3 and you probably are because I haven’t linked this anywhere else, let me answer a few things.

Are you still writing your fics?

The answer is yes, largely. Have I updated any of them in the past year? No. I’ll get to that in a bit. But am I working on them? Death Is Not The End has several chapters I’m currently writing at once and There Is A Town is actively being continued. I don’t have any intentions on stopping, even if I sometimes crawl to a halt. As for other JJBA fics, I am very slowly finishing most of them. The only one I’ve discarded for certain is a post-breakup Promaggio fic because I wound up taking them in a vastly different direction and I actually yanked a lot of my prior Prosciutto characterization for Bruno. La Squadra Special Mission is on hiatus for the foreseeable future but I won’t say it’s abandoned just yet. I no longer have Word and it’s a pain writing it on other platforms. More importantly, I honestly have not been in the brainspace to write something like that for a long time and I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll get that back. It might be a relic of an older sense of humor, I don’t know. I haven’t read it in a long time and I don’t know if it’d reflect something I’d write today.

Do you plan on interacting with the fandom much?

I don’t know. We’ll see. I got into Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures as a distraction from something terrible in my life, I started writing JJBA fic in a bizarre attempt to cope with something that might be obvious if you’ve ever read 90% of my work, and I latched too hard emotionally on aspects of the fandom despite interacting very little with it. It wasn’t the healthiest. It got to the point that I was angry and stressed all the time and it got to the point where it triggered mild paranoia. There were other reasons too. It killed most of my motivation to write. I had to take a step back and reevaluate how I interact or don’t interact with the Internet. I am making active attempts to form social connections but I am also making active attempts to not poke around too much with fandom as a general concept. Fandom in general is a refuge for people who might be experiencing hard times in their life but it’s also something that can easily become unhealthy.

Why did your fic updates slow down so much?

I started writing fic in late 2018 and then I started posting the bulk of my fic in earnest in 2019. Most of my work revolves around death and grieving. Both are ultimately tied up in the reasons why I write; to a certain extent, I have really only written when I’ve been grieving something, even if it wasn’t a death.

So then, 2020. You know the drill. Some people I spoke to suddenly vanished and I don’t have closure there. I suddenly worked strange hours all by myself and then I was thrust back into working in an office full-time way before I should’ve been back. Coworkers I could previously tolerate became radicalized and I listened to a nonstop brigade of general dumbassery about the virus and blatant homophobia & transphobia. When you’re stressed and upset all the time, the very act of writing frustrates you.

2021. My mom got sick. She’s better now, though she just got over her second bout of covid and she might not ever be where she was at before, but it’s the sort of thing that really punches you in the gut. A month or so later, I went to a doctor’s appointment for an ear infection and came out with the idea that I might have a thyroid issue. This somehow turned into an entire year of what seemed like nonstop medical appointments. Last year, I had:

A thyroid ultrasound

A heart ultrasound

An ultrasound of my carotid artery

A leg ultrasound for reasons I don’t even know, honestly

A CT scan

A visit to an endocrinologist who dismissed me in three minutes while barely looking at my records

Two breast ultrasounds

Two mammograms

God knows how many vials of blood drawn

Some other embarrassing things

And some stuff I’m probably forgetting

I spent a good chunk of the past year thinking I probably had cancer. The end diagnosis? A tumor that probably isn’t cancer, a heart that pumps blood a little weird, and as for anyone else, all my other weird findings were literally never following up on. It was a lot of money spent and a lot of stress.

I think you can see why I didn’t want to write about death.

The good thing is that I finally started medication for some things that have been ruining my life. I take an anti-anxiety medicine that helps with my ADHD and anxiety. I can talk to people now. I don’t constantly think about all the embarrassing things in my life anymore. I’ve finally been able to take initiative to leave bad situations and move towards things I want in life. I still have a lot of issues and maladaptive behavior I’m trying to unlearn, but I’m doing okay now. Life is a lot better. I moved in with my SO, I’m a dog step-parent, and I’m happier than I ever been.

I think I feel okay to write fic now. I’m not writing it for the same reasons. I’m writing it for the fun of it now.

What’s the deal with Blixa Bagna?

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let me tell you what the people really want to know. He was never supposed to be in any of my fics except for a few mentions here or there. However, someone was a dick to me once about putting an OC in my fic, so I decided that any time someone complained about Blixa or I saw a post complaining about OCs, I would simply put him in the fic more. Blixa’s not my self-insert actually because if he was my self-insert, he’d be with Tomoko instead of Risotto. He’s just a goth joke that got wildly out of hand and now he’s a blorbo from my head whose characterization changes a ton over the course of writing.

Anything else to share?

One of these days, I’m going to make an alternate account. It will have no ties to my main writing account. I will post the most batshit fic ever and leave. You’ll never know.

Anyway, there you go. Might wind up posting on this a lot, might only post a little. We’ll see.

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thegirlonpeetamellark · 3 years

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Christmas Break - Part 1

Surprise!! After a looong time away Court returns to Everlark fic world with a little holiday treat for everyone - enjoy! :)

Hi everyone. So 2020 has sucked. For me, the beginning of quarantine was actually a bit of a gift. Being home gave me the gift of time, something I haven’t had much of as my daughters (who were very little when I started writing in this fandom) have gotten older. While I never stopped writing, it was a struggle to find long enough chunks of time to get into a flow. I started writing again with earnest. Not all of it was my fanfiction; some of it was my original work. El keeps me posted on the humbling and kind asks she gets about my writing. I felt bad that despite my increased writing, I still wasn’t ready to update any WIPs. But I did remember a story I had started for the final holiday PiP that I was never able to get past the first page (due to lack of time that year) and to my surprise, it started flowing. I had every intention of finishing it and having El post it as a gift to this fandom. But once my school went “back” in October and hybrid learning started, that was it. My time was gone. And further, my family experienced the very sudden and non-Covid-related death of my aunt. So while I have nearly half of this story written, it’s not done. But it will be, very soon, since it is a one-shot. As with all my stories, it took on a life of its own and it needs more love. So what I have for the readers who have loyally followed me is the first part, the part that involves Christmas. It’s my hope to have a second part posted in a week or two, so that by the time that part posts, a final part is nearly done.

Thank you for your asks and your patience, and thank you to El, one of my favorite people in this world and the best thing my time in this fandom has given me. Thank you for your encouragement. Our friendship means the world to me.

Here’s to a better 2021. Love to you all. Court

Christmas Break

Fuck, not again, Peeta grouses as the opening notes of that insidious Mariah Carey song pipe through the loudspeaker. That’s the third time in the last two hours. He’s all for holiday spirit, but if he never hears this fucking song again it will be too soon.

Leaning his forehead against the cold pane of glass, he peers out of the fourth-story window into the darkened sky. When he had arrived at work a few hours ago, the snow had just been starting to fall; a slow, lazy tumble of flakes. Now it’s coming down in a tumultuous swirl. It figures Panem would finally see a white Christmas his first Christmas Eve on rotation in the emergency room. No doubt the weather is partially to blame for the crush of bodies crowding the waiting room tonight.

Peeta walks away from the window and opens the cabinet where he stashes his Clif bars. The economy-sized box looks suspiciously closer to empty than it did the other day. He’s heard complaints from other doctors and nurses that snacks are pilfered on a regular basis and was warned to label his own boxes. But he had forgone the warnings. If someone needed an energy bar badly enough to steal one, what was the $20 he had spent on them at Costco. He snags one and unwraps it.

He’s just raised it to his mouth when his Apple watch pings and his silenced cell phone pulses insistently against his thigh. Heaving a loud sigh, he sets down the energy bar and withdraws the phone from his pocket.

“Mom, you’ve got exactly 60 seconds,” he grits out. He doesn’t even need to look at the screen to confirm it’s her. She’s called twice already tonight, calls he’s ignored with good reason, but somehow his mother thinks a phone call from her trumps any actual emergencies her doctor son could be dealing with. Which, tonight, have been nonstop since his shift began at six.

“Please tell me you ate something,” she begins.

“I was just about to, when you called,” he replies. “I’ve only got a couple of minutes. It’s been utter chaos for the last four hours.”

“We missed you at dinner. I can’t remember the last Christmas Eve when I didn’t have all three of my boys together.” Peeta closes his eyes. All these years my mother has been gushing about having a doctor in the family, and yet she never stopped to consider the ramifications of actually having a doctor in the family, he thinks. Particularly its impact on holiday gatherings. She obviously hadn’t learned anything from this past Thanksgiving, as now, just a month later, she’s already dumping a fresh guilt trip on him for missing another family dinner.

She continues, “And Jackson and Maxwell were just devastated when they heard you weren’t coming, until I assured them they’d see you tomorrow. We will see you tomorrow, yes?”

Peeta suppresses another exasperated sigh and breaks off a chunk of the Clif bar. “Yes, Mom, I’ll be there.” And though it’s childish, he crams the bar into his mouth and mumbles around it, “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.” His chewing masks the sarcasm that weighs down the words.

“Excellent. We need an updated family portrait before Everly and Rye have to leave for her parents’ house.” Placated, his mother moves to ends the call, but not before getting in a less-than-subtle comment about how much she adores his brother Rye’s fiancée and how happy she is Rye is settling down.

Staring at the disconnected call flashing on the screen, Peeta tries not to let the remark get to him. Mostly because he knows it’s a lie. His mother has complained more than once about Everly and how she’s not good enough for Rye. Peeta knows the dig was directed at him. He hasn’t truly had a serious girlfriend since junior year of college; just a few casual relationships that barely qualified as relationships. He doesn’t know how his mother expects him to meet someone with the hours he keeps. And his father, for as close as they are, never seems willing to jump to Peeta’s defense.

Taking a deep breath to let his irritation suffuse, he jams his phone back in his pocket and scarfs down the rest of his pathetic dinner. All three bites of it. Then he uses the restroom, dutifully washes his hand, and stalks out of the staff lounge, his short break over.

As he strides up the corridor, he hears loud shouting coming from the ER waiting room.

“…should be asleep in her bed, waiting for Santa Claus to come, but instead, we’re still here waiting for someone to take a look at her arm! It’s been over two hours! Don’t you people have any compassion? Or is Ebenezer Freaking Scrooge running this place tonight?”

Curious, Peeta veers towards the reception desk, where his eyes land on the ranting woman. She’s young, probably no older than her mid-twenties, and in spite of the fact that her dark hair is spilling out of a messy braid and she’s not wearing any makeup, Peeta is immediately struck by her beauty. The rosy flush to her cheeks from her tirade actually makes her even prettier. She’s cradling a toddler and protectively shielding the little girl’s right arm. The toddler’s blonde head rests on her mother’s shoulder, her thumb wedged into her tiny pink mouth. Her left arm clutches a stuffed orange cat. She looks tired. Actually, both mother and daughter do.

“Miss, I understand your frustration, I really do,” the receptionist says calmly, her eyes cutting to Peeta as he stops by her side. He reads the name on the file on top of the stack, the next patient scheduled to be seen: MCMURPHY, JOSEPH. Clearly not the little girl in front of him.

“I don’t think you do!” the young mother cries, her eyes flashing steel. “She’s three, she’s in pain, and she’s scared. And what’s more, I’ve seen at least five people go ahead of us who came in after us!”

“That’s not how the emergency room works, miss,” the receptionist replies. She drums her fingertips on the desk, offering the young mother a tight smile.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” the young mother adds, an edge of desperation creeping into her tone. Discreetly, Peeta moves around the receptionist’s chair, scanning the desktop until he spies the stack of files for the patients awaiting admission. While the receptionist continues to give the young mother the run-around, he thumbs through the stack, searching. His eyes land on what he’s looking for: a date of birth. His lips tip up. Bingo. This has to be it: HAWTHORNE, IVY ANN.

At the exact second his hand snatches Ivy’s file from the pile and slips the other one in amongst the stack, the young mother’s eyes lock on his. Her gaze narrows. He can see the exhaustion all over her beautiful face. Her full lips twitch, her countenance suspicious as they stare at one another.

“Ivy Hawthorne?” Peeta taps the file he had extricated. An immediate flicker of relief lights the young mother’s mercury eyes, and that lush mouth breaks into a grateful, relieved smile. The receptionist’s neck snaps up. “I’ve got this,” he adds, his tone leaving no room for her to argue with him. It’s not protocol for Peeta to take a patient directly, but it’s also not blatantly against the rules. Sure, it might mean a little more work for him, but if it means he can get this little girl home sooner on Christmas Eve, it’s worth it.

He smiles at the little girl. “Ivy, I’m Doctor Mellark. I’m going to help make you feel better, okay?” She nods once but doesn’t lift her head from her mother’s shoulder. Peeta’s arm sweeps to the side, ushering the young mother and Ivy past the desk. He scans the hallway and spies a partially drawn curtain halfway up the corridor. He leads them to the available partition and close the curtain behind them. As he turns to face them, he nearly slams into the woman. She hasn’t moved, and her luminous grey eyes fasten to his. She looks as if she’s going to say something, but several seconds pass and she’s still quiet, still watching him. The silence starts to become uncomfortable. Peeta clears his throat.

“If you’d have a seat, please, Mrs. Hawthorne. You can hold her while I get some more information from you.”

The young woman’s lips part slightly, again appearing as if she wants to say something, but instead she shuffles forward and Peeta waits while she settles on the edge of the hospital bed, gingerly adjusting Ivy so she’s sitting sideways across her mother’s lap.

Peeta sinks down onto the stool and scoots towards the edge of the bed. This close he has a much better look at Ivy’s mother. She really is a beautiful young woman, and given how adorable Ivy is Peeta assumes her husband is probably also very attractive. He feels a twinge of jealousy. Lucky bastard. Pretty wife, cute kid…probably has a nice little house and a golden retriever too. Living the dream. His dream, if he allows himself to admit it to anyone but his mother. If he was being perfectly honest, he had always envisioned himself married by now.

“How old are you, Ivy?” he ask, even though he knows from her chart and her mother’s declaration that she’s three years old. She hesitates, and still clutching the stuffed cat, manages to display three fingers. Peeta smiles at her again.

“I have a nephew who is the exact same age as you are. He told me just last week that he’s a big boy now. Are you a big girl, Ivy?” He keeps his tone gentle, hoping it will put her at ease with him. She nods, her big blue eyes lightening imperceptibly. “I thought so. Can you be a big girl and tell me what happened to your arm?”

Her mother answers automatically, “She fell. I was only gone—” Peeta holds up his palm. He has the triage nurse’s initial assessment, so he knows Ivy’s arm is likely broken. What he doesn’t know is how the arm got broken. And those details he needs to try to get from Ivy herself. Kids her age always tell the truth when it comes to how they were injured, and unfortunately it’s part of Peeta’s job to make sure there isn’t a more sinister reason she’s in the E.R. tonight, no matter how sweet and innocent her mother appears. He’s already had a few encounters with suspected child abuse, though his gut tells him that isn’t the case with Ivy Hawthorne.

“Please. I would like Ivy to tell me how it happened.”

Something dangerous flints in Ivy’s mother’s now stormy grey eyes.

“She. Fell.” The words are curt, enunciated coolly, but her voice is soft and Peeta can tell she’s keeping her temper in check for the benefit of her daughter. Eyes still pinned to his, she inhales deeply. A second later, her shoulders relax. “Go ahead and tell the nice doctor how you hurt your arm,” she whispers, stroking Ivy’s curls.

“I was trying to see Santa,” Ivy replies, her tongue tripping in a lisp on the “S’s.”

“What do you mean by that?” he prompts her.

Ivy scrunches up her button nose. “I was trying to see up the chimney. ‘Cause the chimney at Aunt Katniss’s house is so skinny and Santa Claus is real fat and I don’t know how he’s gonna fit down it to bring me my presents!” Her blue eyes brim with tears and her lower lip starts to tremble. Peeta reaches over and pats her knee.

“I wouldn’t worry about that, sweetheart. Santa Claus is magic. He’ll get you your presents, no matter what the chimney looks like.” He exchanges a look with her mother.

“It was all my fault,” she says quietly. “I went in the kitchen, to get the cookies and milk—”

“And the carrots! For Rudolph and the other reindeer!” Ivy chimes in, her eyes shiny wet.

“I never should have left her alone, not even for a second. This is my fault. It’s my fault. She wouldn’t have slipped and fallen off the hearth if I had been watching her.” Guilt chokes her words, and it sounds as if she’s close to tears.

“Accidents happen, Mrs. Hawthorne,” Peeta says empathetically, “that’s why there are emergency rooms.” She presses her lips together, her brows knitting.

“It’s Everdeen,” she says quietly. Peeta drops his eyes to Ivy’s chart, and furrows his brows, his gaze wandering to the young woman’s left hand. No ring. A brief thrill curls through him at the thought that she’s single. Asshole, he immediately chides himself. So not what you should be thinking about right now. He scans the chart more carefully and shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” he begins, “but this lists Primrose Hawthorne as the mother, under the Parent/Guardian information, and a Rory Hawthorne as the father. I just assumed—”

She cuts him off. “Primrose Hawthorne was her mother. But I’m not Primrose Hawthorne. I’m Katniss. Katniss Everdeen. I’m her aunt. I should be listed as her primary emergency contact.” She swallows and squeezes her eyes shut briefly. When she opens them, they plead with his. Peeta glances down at Ivy, and then raises his eyes to Katniss again. The guilt that was clouding those silver irises a moment ago has dissipated, replaced with anguish. He doesn’t know what the full story is here, but he didn’t miss Katniss’s usage of the past tense in referring to Ivy’s mother. So he honors her silent appeal not to ask questions.

“Okay, Ivy, you fell, and you landed on your arm? I bet that hurt,” Peeta says to the little girl, but his gaze stays fastens on Katniss. She gives him the faintest smile and mouths, “Thank you.”

~*~*~*~

An hour later, the orthopedist informs Peeta that Ivy Hawthorne is ready for his approval to be discharged. Not wanting to keep her and her aunt waiting any later than necessary, he sets down the X-ray he had been studying, and heads back to where Ivy is.

Standing outside the curtain, he hears quiet singing. He draws back the curtain and sees Katniss seated on the bed, with Ivy nestled in her lap. A bright pink cast safely cocoons the girl’s arm. Her blonde head rests on Katniss’s shoulder. Her eyes are closed, and her little body rises and falls with the deep breathing of sleep.

Katniss continues to sing, unaware of Peeta’s presence. He doesn’t recognize the tune she’s singing. It’s not a Christmas carol, at least not one he’s ever heard before, but he continues to listen, captivated by her voice. It’s soft and decidedly feminine, but there’s raspy undercurrent to it that gives him chills. It’s like the first sip of a rich, smoky bourbon.

Gingerly, he tiptoes towards the bed and stands before her for several more minutes, until Katniss finally lifts her eyes. She immediately stops singing. Peeta smiles and nods towards Ivy.

“Someone is worn out,” he whispers. Katniss’s lips twitch into a chagrinned smile.

“I’m sure the second we get home she’ll be wide awake and it’ll take forever to get her into bed. She was already amped up about Santa Claus before this.” She tips her head and gestures with her chin towards Ivy’s arm.

“Warm milk. With a little bit of cinnamon,” he suggests.

“Really?” Her eyes round. “Cinnamon? That really works?” Disbelief clouds her words. He shrugs sheepishly.

“I have no idea. No kids. And I’ve never had much trouble sleeping. I’m usually asleep the minute my head hits the pillow. But I’ve heard from a friend with a toddler that it does the trick.” He waits for her to say something—anything—in response, but she doesn’t. Her gaze is back on the sleeping toddler in her arms.

Watching her stare tenderly at her niece causes something unexpected to claw at Peeta’s chest and he’s overwhelmed by a fierce compulsion to want to keep her here, to get to know more about her. It’s been a long time since he felt this kind of instant attraction to a woman. Why couldn’t he have met her under different circumstances?

“Are we all done, doctor?”

Peeta startles from his thoughts and offers Katniss an apologetic smile.

“Yes, sorry. You are good to go as soon as you sign here—” He holds the clipboard at an angle, to allow her to sign without having to disturb Ivy, “and here.” He flips the sheet back to the second page and she scrawls her name across the line there, too. Normally a nurse would go over discharge papers and protocol with patients, but Peeta had taken it upon himself to grab Ivy’s. He needed to spend every possible minute in Katniss’s presence.

Once the release forms are complete, he review the plan for Ivy’s follow-up care, including how to manage any pain she has and when she’ll need to return to have the cast removed. Katniss listens attentively.

When he’s finished, she stands up slowly, her movements tentative so as not to jostle Ivy. A sigh parts the little girl’s lips and she stirs, but she remains asleep. God, she’s cute, Peeta thinks.

“Thank you, Dr. Mellark,” Katniss says softly. “For everything. I know what you did…” She falters. “I mean, I know we, ah, weren’t next, and ah…” Peeta waves a hand dismissively, sensing her discomfort with his hijacking of the queued patients.

“It was my pleasure,” he replies. “Little girls should be home on Christmas Eve. Waiting for Santa.” He echoes Katniss’s earlier words. “I hope he’s good to her.”

He doesn’t miss the forlorn expression that flits across Katniss’s face as she glances down at her sleeping niece.

“He can’t bring her what she wants most, but he’ll try,” she murmurs and moves towards the open curtain. Just before she steps out into the hall, she pauses and turns to face Peeta.

“Merry Christmas,” she adds.

“Merry Christmas,” he concurs. With a faint smile, she steps around the curtain. It rustles in her wake and resettles. Peeta exhales and slumps against the wall, regret washing through him, followed by a stronger wave of sadness at seeing Katniss go. If it hadn’t been for Ivy, he might have concocted some kind of delay to keep Katniss here longer, found some excuse to pry more information out of her. Like if she’s single. A surge of adrenaline spikes in his blood. He can’t let her go this easily.

He bolts out into the corridor, scanning the bustling hallway for any sign of Katniss and Ivy, but they’ve vanished. Disappointed, his shoulders slump as he trudges towards the nurses’ station to hand off Ivy’s file.

It’s probably best, a nagging little voice inside him taunts, and he reluctantly concedes that it probably is. As much as he’d love to finally shut his mother up and find a woman that he’d want to spend more than a night with, it’s not fair to subject one to the kind of schedule he has to keep. New doctors are low-man-on-the-totem-pole. He’s had mostly graveyard shifts and he’s often on call. It’s his dream to have a pediatric practice, but he’s well aware that he’ll have to toil for a couple of years to get on track to make that dream a reality.

A few minutes later, en route to his next examination, Peeta spies Johanna, one of the triage nurses, coming out of the room Ivy had occupied. His eyes immediately narrow when his gaze lands on her left arm.

“Was that in there?” He motions towards the vacated room and then nods towards the stuffed cat Johanna has wedged under her armpit.

“What, the cat? Yeah. It must have fallen under the bed. I’ll take it to the station, in case someone comes back to claim it.”

Ivy’s cherubic little face flashes in Peeta’s mind. He remember how fiercely she had been clutching that cat, and how she had reluctantly agreed to put it down when it had been time for Delly, another one of the triage nurses, to take her for X-rays.

Peeta’s pulse quickens and he immediately thrusts his hand towards Johanna. “I’ll take it,” he says impulsively. She wrinkles her nose and cocks her head, her hazel eyes intensely scrutinizing him. Though they have a casual friendship, Johanna is far too insightful for her own good. Peeta doesn’t really need her questioning his motives for taking possession of the toy.

“The little girl it belongs to goes to preschool with Max. I’ll make sure he takes it to her after the holiday break.” Fuck, that lie flew off his tongue so easily he almost believes it himself. Johanna shrugs and tosses Peeta the cat.

“Suit yourself. One less thing to overflow the Lost and Found.” She strides past him and disappears into Triage 6. He stares down at the stuffed animal. His heart skips another beat and a slow smile tugs at his mouth.

~*~*~*~

Stifling another yawn, Peeta squints at the numbers above the garage. He’s definitely in the right place. He kills the engine and sits for a moment, glancing at the clock on the navigation system. It’s quarter after nine. Early, but not obscenely so. When his shift had ended at six am, he had driven home and fought the urge to crawl into bed; instead, he grabbed a quick shower and freshened up. True, part of him hadn’t wanted to see Katniss Everdeen again looking like the bedraggled, exhausted mess he was at the end of a rotation, and also true, he was going to have to clean up before he’s due at his parents’ house at one. But he also knew he couldn’t really have shown up at Katniss’s house at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning, even if he suspects Ivy likely had her up by then. He recalls, with a wistful smile, that Christmas morning was the one morning he and his brothers were always awake before his father. It was only a question of which Mellark brother was going to be the first to rouse the others. Him being the youngest, it was usually him, he admits with a wider grin.

He quietly exits his car, careful not to slam the door, and gingerly steps across the icy driveway. He pauses at the un-shoveled front walk, where a pristine blanket of snow blocks his path. “Shit,” he whispers, gritting his teeth as he takes the first step. His foot plunges into the deep drift, up to nearly his calf. He braces himself and takes a huge step, hoping to eat up the distance in a few long strides. Fortunately, it’s not a long front walk. He reaches the also un-shoveled front steps and carefully ascends them. He contemplates ringing the doorbell, but instead raps his knuckles against the door. His breath pipes out in white plumes and he rubs his palms together for warmth as he waits.

No one comes to the door, at least not immediately. Peeta lifts his fist again, but just before his knuckles can connect with the wood again, the front door opens a crack and he’s suddenly looking at Katniss. Those silver eyes round almost comically as recognition lights them.

“D-Doctor Mellark? Wh-what are you….”

“Hi. Merry Christmas,” he begins. “I thought Ivy would be missing this.” He smiles and holds up the stuffed cat.

Katniss stares at him, her lips parting faintly, and shock and confusion war on her pretty face. But then her grey eyes darken with what Peeta can only describe as restrained fury.

She opens the door fully and glares at him.

“You had Ivy’s cat?” she accuses.

“Uh…yeah…” he stammers, his own confusion welling. Why is she so angry? “My nephew…he has a bear. Otis. Can’t sleep without that thing. I thought if Ivy is anything like Max…well, she’d be missing this.” He holds the cat out to Katniss. She snatches it so violently that she stumbles backwards. Peeta is equally jarred, but his jolt is from the very brief brush of Katniss’s fingers against his when she had grabbed the toy.

But Katniss gives him no time to revel in the feeling.

“So this is why no one at the hospital had a goddamned clue what I was talking about when I called there looking for this cat an hour ago!” she spits.

Shit, Peeta thinks, an uneasy feeling clawing its way into his gut.

“Why the fuck—” He can’t help but notice her slight hesitation before she lobs the obscenity at him. “—would you take my niece’s cat? Is this something normal people do?” She’s shivering visibly as she rants, a clear consequence of stepping onto her front porch wearing nothing but green plaid pajama pants and a threadbare black Henley shirt.

“I….I…” He shakes his head. He’s not even sure how to defend his actions. He can’t very well tell her his ulterior motives in bringing the stuffed cat back to her niece. Not now. He definitely fucked this up.

“I was just trying to be nice. That I’d save you a trip on Christmas morning,” he finishes lamely.

Katniss’s nostrils flare and her jaw flexes. “Christmas morning,” she mutters, just barely audible over the clattering of her teeth. “Did it occur to you, Dr. Mellark, that I might be looking for Ivy’s cat and I might call the hospital looking for this cat?” She shakes the toy in his face. “And did it occur to you that, in spite of all the toys she had just opened, Ivy might be bawling and throwing a fit because Buttercup was missing?”

Buttercup, he has to assume, is the stuffed cat.

She pauses, as if waiting for him to defend himself, but all he can do is swallow against the lump crowding his throat.

So she continues, “They made me think I was crazy—but not until after they left me on hold for 20 minutes while I tried to calm a wailing toddler. And then they said there was no toy matching this description in the Lost and Found. And that’s because you had it!” Her eyes are a maelstrom now, but he notices that an edge of frustration has crept into her furious tone.

“And now Ivy doesn’t have it. So thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Mellark. Merry Christmas.” And before Peeta can release the breath he’s been holding during her outburst and plead his case, she whirls around, her disheveled braid lancing through the air like a whip, and slams the door behind her. Stunned, Peeta can only stare at the wreath on the door as he processes what just happened.

What. The. Fuck.

Heart pounding, gut churning, Peeta retreats to his car. He takes a few minutes to absorb the shock of his encounter with Katniss, his mind reeling through the accusations she made. He never would have expected her to react like this. So much for any shot with Katniss Everdeen.

He finally gathers his composure and navigates out of her complex. As he drives, his mind continues replaying Katniss’s words over and over, and he finds one thing nags at him.

And now Ivy doesn’t have it.

Those words don’t make much sense to him. He just gave the stuffed animal back to Katniss. She can give it back to Ivy. She’ll have it now. In her wrath, Katniss just wasn’t being rational, he decides.

But her words continue to haunt him off and on for the rest of the day. Along with persistent images of Katniss that further torment him. She is never far from his conscious thoughts. As he sits down next to the fireplace in his parents’ house with a tumbler of scotch to exchange gifts with his brothers and his nephews, he finds himself wondering who Katniss is celebrating with. Ivy, obviously. But does she have other family?

By the time the Mellarks all settle around the table for dinner, he’s conjured up the notion that Katniss may not be married, but she surely has a devoted boyfriend who is showering her with gifts at this very moment. Her mood is infinitely better than what Peeta witnessed earlier. She’s probably dressed nice for him, and he’s sitting around her dining room table with Katniss and Ivy, like a makeshift family.

His mother’s irritation is palpable when she has to command his attention twice to try and draw him into the discussion centered on Rye’s upcoming wedding. Peeta murmurs the apology he knows she expects and feigns his dutiful brotherly interest for Rye’s benefit the remainder of the meal. But a dull ache has taken up residence in the center of his chest and he realizes just how badly he wants what his brothers have.

He just won’t be having it with Katniss Everdeen.

#everlark #the hunger games #everlark fanfiction #court81981

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rhysismydaddy · 4 years

Text

The Bodyguard (Elorcan)

MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE SHIP.

I wrote a lot of Elorcan a while ago on my phone and realized I’ve literally been posting Nessian nonstop, so we’ll take a little break.

I have no idea how many parts this is going to be, but it’s a bit more of a slow burn than my usual fics, so probably 5ish. Not much happens in this part, but it get’s more interesting lol. Let me know if you want to be tagged :)

Part 2 | Part 3

______________________________________________________________

Elide rolled out of bed Monday morning to the sound of a loud, incessant banging on her front door. How someone was managing to put that much aggression and frustration into a simple knock baffled her.

She swung it open and yelled, “What the hell do you want?”

When she looked up--and up and up and up--to the man standing in front of her, she instantly regretted her choice of tone.

This was not a man you yelled at. Hell, this was not a man you poked with a very, very long stick.

The stranger towered above her, making all five feet of her feet insignificant. He had long dark hair pulled back in a bun, tan skin, and eyes that looked almost black. Chiseled cheek bones, a jaw set in a scowl, and head to toe black clothing completed the look.

Elide didn’t know how to feel about his appearance, actually.

It was definitely abrasive and intimidating. Or to most it would be. She’d lost her fear of “scary” men a while ago. She knew firsthand the most innocent looking man could be the most sadistic.

And yet, beneath all the black clothing and deep scowl, the man standing in front of her was also attractive in a dangerous, rough way.

But what the hell did he want?

“Elide Lochan?” he asked, his voice conveying everything written across his face effortlessly.

“Um, yes?” How did he know who she was?

“I’m with The Galathynius Guarship. I’ve been assigned to watch over you.” He seemed satisfied with that explanation, but she sure as hell wasn’t.

“Galathynius? As in Aelin Galathynius?”

If possible, his scowl got deeper. “The one and only. But more specifically, I owe the whipped little bitch who calls himself her husband a favor.”

“Hold on,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Rowan sent you?”

This was beyond weird. Aelin was one of her best friends, but she didn’t spend all that much time around her husband.

The man in front of her sighed, so much aggression in the one simple sound. “I suspect that he was told to cash in the favor in this specific way by a certain fire-breathing bitch queen, but yes, he was the one who called me.”

“Okay, but why?”

His eyes met hers, and she somehow knew what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. It didn’t soften the words in the slightest, though.

“He found you.”

Fuck.

An involuntary shiver ran over her, but she hid it behind a stretch. “How do they know?”

“Rowan said they’ve been watching your uncle for a while, and that he just bought an apartment in the city. He’s also made inquiries into this complex about you, and a black sedan has been spotted canvassing the building you work in.”

He said it all in that same cold, almost bored tone, and for some reason, that kept the panic at bay.

Elide straightened her spine and put on her best smile. “Thank you for telling me. I don’t need a bodyguard, though.”

He shrugged one massive shoulder. “I don’t care.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“I owe Whitehorn a favor, and this is what the bastard asked for, so I don’t particularly care if you think you don’t need a bodyguard, although I expect that to be false.” He looked her head to toe as he said that last part, and her blood started to boil.

She wanted him gone. Now.

Glaring at him, she snatched her phone and dialed Aelin’s number.

“Hi, Elide. You know it’s like six in the morning, right?”

“Believe me, I’m not happy to be awake at this hour, either. I was woken up by...” she realized she didn’t know the man’s name. “someone pounding on the door. He says he’s my new bodyguard and that you had something to do with it.”

“His name is Lorcan Salvaterre.”

She sighed, continuing to glare at him. “Well, I appreciate the thought, but tell Lorcan Salvaterre to piss off. I’ve been on my own my entire life, and I’m fine.”

“Barely,” Aelin said quietly.

She paused, ignoring that train of thought, then tried a different tactic. “You know he’s like ten feet tall right?” Lorcan rolled his eyes. “How am I supposed to keep a low profile with him following me?”

Aelin laughed softly. “He’s a tall, insufferable bastard, but he’ll keep you safe. At this point, your uncle’s seen where you live and work, so keeping a low profile doesn’t exactly matter.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “But-”

“Listen.” There was a little fire in her best friend’s tone now. “I do not plan on repeating what happened two years ago. Ever. So until we figure out how to throw Vernon in a deep, dark hole no one will ever find him in, Lorcan stays. Just ignore him.”

“Easier said than done,” she muttered back.

She could practically see Aelin’s smile. “Good luck. Stay safe.”

The line clicked dead, and she threw her phone on her couch in defeat.

“Your powers of persuasion are truly something magnificent,” Lorcan Salvaterre told her in a mocking tone. “I’m tall? Seriously? That’s the best you could come up with?”

“It’s 6 AM and I’m tired,” she defended, suddenly annoyed. “But I’m already up, so I guess I’ll just go to work early.”

She shut the door in his face so she wouldn’t have to even think about inviting him in.

Damn.

Damn damn damn!

This was so frustrating. She felt... helpless and desperate and trapped. Everyone in her life was trying to keep her safe, but she found herself wanting to be alone and independent for once in her life.

And she was afraid.

After finally escaping her uncle’s country estate and moving to the city, she’d sworn she’d never let him make her feel like this again.

And yet, just the mention of him being in the same city as her made her tremble with fear. Fear, and more than a little rage.

Elide stepped under the shower spray, closing her eyes. Images from her lifetime of misery flickered through her mind, and unlike usual, she didn’t even bother blocking them out.

They played like a montage in her head, showing her all the reasons she had to be afraid of her uncle.

Her parents funeral. The first time Vernon had asked her to come to his office. The hidden bruises. The ruined ankle from the time he’d refused to let her go to the doctor and get the bone set. The scars on her wrists and ankles from her chains.

The emotional scars from everything else.

She squeezed her eyes closed, shut off the onslaught of memories, and stepped out of the shower.

As usual, she put on jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, even though it was almost summer. Even though she’d made peace with her scars, she didn’t want people to see and gawk. She got a few odd looks for being dressed so heavily, but it kept her more comfortable, so Elide didn’t care.

She straightened her dark hair, swiped on a little makeup, and grabbed her bag.

When she opened the door again, Lorcan was still standing there, leaning against the wall across from her. He didn’t even seem to notice her very conservative apparel, but his eyes swept over her face, studying her closely.

“Ready?”

She nodded, a little nervous by how observant he seemed, but followed as he turned and walked towards the stairs.

Living on the second floor had a few advantages, but the biggest had to be that she didn’t have to wait for the slow ass elevator that almost never worked. Soon, they were out on the street, walking towards her building.

Feeling like a million eyes were on her now that she was in public, she tugged on her sleeves and ducked her head.

“They’re probably staring at me, not you,” Lorcan said with a grimace.

Oh, there was no “probably” about it.

Everyone--everyone--was looking at the man strolling next to her. Some with blatant fear on their faces, some just in shock.

She supposed she couldn’t really blame them. He was large and imposing and looked like he could snap anyone in half who dared to cross him.

The attention still made her uncomfortable. She preferred to go through life unnoticed, and Lorcan was like a magnet to both men and women’s attention.

Spotting her favorite coffee shop, she almost cried in relief. She tugged on Lorcan’s arm, and he followed her inside, dark eyes scanning everyone there for signs of a threat.

Considering this was the most hippie, backwater place in the city, it was a short search.

“Hey, Elide,” the woman behind the counter said with a smile.

Elide smiled back. “Hey, Asterin.”

Asterin was one of her best friends in the city. They’d met in the hospital’s mandatory group therapy for people who had suffered certain times of “trauma” and had instantly bonded over their shared hate of one of the nurses.

“Same as usual?”

She nodded, then turned to Lorcan. “Do you want anything?”

“No,” he responded, eyes hovering on Asterin as if she were a threat.

Granted, her friend was in her usual all black, mostly leather attire and had multiple piercings gracing her beautiful face, but this was Asterin for crying out loud. She was more than a little protective of Elide.

“Who’s the mutt?” the object of his attention asked in a too-friendly voice.

Elide sighed, unsure how to explain. If Asterin knew her uncle was in town, things were bound to get a little haywire.

“It’s a long story,” she dodged, sliding a bill across the counter. Her friend looked at her like she’d grown two heads.

“When’s the last time I charged you?”

Never.

She stuck it in the tip jar, making Asterin roll her eyes. A moment later, she brought back her vanilla latte and said, “I’ll see you Friday, right?”

For a moment, she didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, but it came rushing back a second later. Friday. Concert. Asterin’s band. “Yeah, sure.”

She could feel Lorcan’s eyes narrow, but she pulled him out before he could cause a scene.

“What’s happening Friday?” he asked as soon as they were outside.

Taking a deep drink of her coffee, she replied, “Asterin’s band is having a concert at MSK.”

He brooded for a minute over this information. “No. A crowded area is not exactly safe for you right now.”

Elide stopped walking, her eyebrows high on her forehead. “No? No?”

He was fucking crazy if he thought she’d do whatever he wanted just because he’d been assigned to follow her around.

Lorcan repeated the word, and she saw red.

“You are not going to tell me what I can and cannot do, you stupidly large bastard. I’ve spent my entire life with someone who did that for me, and I won’t put up with it for a second longer.”

He sighed, and that just pissed her off more.

“If you’re not confident in your skills to guard me in a crowded area, then maybe you shouldn't be here,” she snapped.

His dark eyes narrowed. “I’m more than confident in myself, Elide. That doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid to put yourself in unnecessary danger.”

She just rolled her eyes and stormed away, well aware his long legs would catch up to her in a second. “I’m going.”

“Fucking hell. You mean we’re going,” he corrected with a gruff.

She smirked. “At least you won’t have to buy any new clothes. They’re a pretty goth band.”

Elide didn’t need to look to know his scowl deepened, and the thought brought a bright smile to her face as she walked into her office building.

“Morning, Elide,” the receptionist, Tom, called. She waved back.

Lorcan did not.

He just followed her down the hallway to the suit labeled Perranth Wellness Center, through the lobby and staff kitchen, and into her office. When she tried to shut the door behind her, his hand shot out above her head and stopped it. “I’m coming in.”

“You most certainly are not.”

He showed her she was, in fact, incorrect in that statement by pushing her out of the way and strolling in. Her office was exactly what it was supposed to be: calm, relaxed, covered in plants, and home to a comfy black sofa, two chairs, and a desk.

As a therapist, it was all pretty much standard.

Lorcan dragged one of the chairs into a corner near her bookcase, then sat down.

“You can’t stay in here! I have appointments today!”

He gave her a strange look. “I assumed as much. I’m fine here.”

Elide pinched the bridge of her nose to keep from strangling him. “I’m bound by doctor-patient confidentiality. You legally cannot be in here.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not leaving you in here with a bunch of crazy people.”

“They aren’t crazy! They just talk about their problems.”

The look on his face said that statement proved his point. “I can assure you I won’t care what they say.”

“I am not losing my license because you have some insane idea that my clients are violent!”

Suddenly he was on his feet, towering over her, looking at her as if she were a naive little girl. “Elide. Has it not occurred to you Vernon could send someone as a fake client to get to you?”

No.

“I’m safe here,” she lied. She wasn’t safe anywhere.

“If you actually believed that, then why do you have a knife strapped under your desk?”

How the hell had he found that? He hadn’t even searched the place!

She bit her lip, trying to figure out how to diffuse this situation. “I’m getting the idea you’re not up for negotiation on this point.” He shook his head like the stubborn asshat he was. “Fine. You can stay as long as you tell people you’re shadowing to become a therapist yourself.”

His dark eyebrows shot up. “I don’t exactly fit the bill for a therapist.”

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.” The dark attire and permanent scowl were sure to raise some brows, but it was the only option. Elide rolled her eyes and tried to calm down. “Try smiling or something.”

He looked as if she’d suggested he run naked through the city in the dead of winter, but before he could argue, a knock on the door sounded. “Dr. Lochan? Your eight o’clock is here.”

She shoved Lorcan to the chair in the corner, and he plopped down with a sigh.

“Send him in!”

This would be interesting.

Twenty minutes later, Elide corrected her statement from interesting to big fat mistake.

Her client, Wayne Jefferies, kept looking towards the corner Lorcan was situated in, eyes wide. As someone who had a strong fear of practically everything that moved, this situation was less than ideal.

He tilted his ear toward something she couldn’t see, then whispered, “He’s here to kill me.”

Wayne was also a raging schizophrenic.

“No one is here to kill you, Wayne. Close your eyes and focus on the sound of my voice.” Once he did, she turned around and shot a glare over her shoulder at the hulking brute. Stop it, she mouthed.

His brow scrunched. Stop what?

Scaring him!

Before he could mouth something back, Wayne’s eyes shot open. “They’re saying I should kill him first.”

Oh, good gracious.

“Feel free to try,” Lorcan said in a low voice.

Wayne jumped to his feet, thrusting an accusatory finger towards the corner. “See! He’s after me!”

“If I was after you, you’d be dead,” her very helpful protector reasoned.

Wayne paused, then opened his mouth to shout something else. Before he could, Elide said gently, “Sit down, Wayne. No one here is going to hurt you. I promise. Shut the voices out and imagine a wall being built around your mind, keeping you safe.”

Her client was silent, so she turned around and glared at Lorcan. He just rolled his eyes, then leaned back and closed them.

This was going to be a long day.

After three other appointments, which had gone a little smoother actually, Elide was exhausted. Hearing about other people’s problems both helped rationalize hers and drained her.

She walked to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, Lorcan following behind dutifully.

“Dr. Lochan! Got a package for you,” Tom said, handing her a thin package.

Before Lorcan could snatch it up, she grabbed a knife and cut it open, revealing what was inside.

Yet another mistake.

A handwritten note in beautiful, recognizable calligraphy, read: I’ll see you soon.

It was a promise, threat, and taunt all in one. How like Vernon.

Knowing he would never send just a little threat, she ignored the dread unfurling in her stomach and flipped the card over.

And stared down at a black and white picture of herself, asleep in bed.

The covers were thrown back, exposing her bare legs, and her shirt had ridden up while she slept. She looked young and innocent. Vulnerable.

But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that it had been taken from directly in front of the bed. Inside her room.

The angle of the camera made that obvious. It also revealed that the person who’d taken the picture had done so with painstaking care, getting just the right angle to make it look as if a lover had taken it.

Bile rose in her throat as she stared at it, trying desperately to figure out how they’d gotten inside her apartment.

And why hadn’t they just taken her then and there?

Lorcan snatched the note and picture out of her hands, jaw locking tightly. He studied the photo, the note, everything. “I’ll search the apartment when we get back. They can’t get to you with me there.”

His confidence was unwavering and let her relax a little. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

But somehow, in the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t. This was just the beginning for Vernon.

He’d always enjoyed the thrill of making her as terrified as possible before finally unleashing whatever sick desire he had planned out. The waiting was half the fun for him.

And he’d just let her know he could get to her whenever, wherever. No matter who was around.

It was a strong opening move, she had to admit. The obviously-desired fear was there, pushing on her chest, making it difficult to breathe.

But there was something else, something new. Something that had only developed in the year she’d been free.

It was rage, sure. But it was a cold, calculated rage that only came with one thing.

Revenge.

______________________________________________________________

ooOOooh dramatic ending for the win.

Part 2

@ladywitchling @perseusannabeth @studyliketate @cursebreaker29 @over300books @justgiu12 @maastrash @a-bit-of-a-cactus @aesthetics-11 @bamchickawowow @b00kworm @sleeping-and-books @musicmaam @savemesoon8 @hizqueen4life

#elorcan #elorcan fanfiction #lorcan #lord lorcan lochan #lorcan salvaterre #elide #elide lochan #elide x lorcan #lorcan lochan #tog #tog fanfiction #throne of glass #throne of glass series #throne of glass fanfiction #acotar

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birdsaesthetic · 3 years

Text

First impression

Summary: Post-series, Jeller and parenthood—not something perfect or shiny or promising. It’s troublesome, but it’s so realistic.

A/N: This idea is inspired from a similar experience I had with my nephew whom I had to take care of the majority of my time back in the days—worst memories. So I know how that exactly feels like; only the brave ones can get through it... I hope this makes you feel something, whatever that feeling might be. On fanfiction

----

As she kept pushing, Jane thought that nothing could be any more painful than this, not whips or chains, not even gunshots, all of which she'd been put through before.

Moments later, newborn cries filled the labor room, and Kurt bursted into tears of relief and joy. He immediately turned his glossy eyes to his wife who was still catching her breath, and in a voice that was almost broken and shaking he told her that they had the most beautiful baby boy ever. Through her exhaustion Jane grinned at him, then she let her eyes leave his to take in her baby that was being carefully put on her bare skin. In that very moment, she couldn't help but cry the sweetest tears she'd never known, all the pain of moments before melting away. He might be only minutes old by now, their baby, but as his tiny mouth widened, he continued crying along with his mother, though his cries were much louder despite his tiny body in comparison to his mother.

All their friends visited later that day, brought gifts, and offered help when needed. And Bethany, with her mother, flew the hundred miles to New York only to see her brother and give him the softest of kisses.

The first two weeks for Jane after having given birth to Peter went so quiet. Peaceful. She spent most days either sleeping, snuggled in bed with her newborn baby pressed so close to her chest she could feel his soft, wet breath, or laying down in a rest position with her newborn baby being still close within her hand reach to anticipate his every need—though he didn't need a lot. Breastfeeding and changing. That was all.

As for Kurt, during those first two weeks, he took a vacation from his regular work to be willingly spending all his time and effort on nursing both Jane and his newborn baby.

"That's the least I could do," he told Jane one morning, as he brought her a fresh meal all the way to bed, to which she smiled before dotting kisses on his hand, that was big, almost the size of his newborn baby.

Peter seemed so quiet, often asleep and would flutter his eyes open maybe twice a day. And during these rare times his parents would circle up around him and gaze down with all smiles, making comments regarding his looks. "He's got your eyes!" Jane chuckled, and Kurt smiled then said, "It's such an honor to acknowledge that."

"For me, it's such a pleasure to acknowledge that I'll have another set of beautiful eyes resembling yours to look at daily," she said with a smirk, and Kurt blushed for a fraction of a second, then kissed his wife, then his son. Alternatively, the two planted soft kisses on the tender skin of their newborn baby, and slid their pinky fingers into his open hands and watched as he responded and curled his little hands around them.

They were the happiest little family, until those first two weeks passed, then they saw hell on earth...

Though healthy, good taken care of, and clean, Peter decided to erupt in prolonged, ear-shattering cries, completed with clenched fists, and flailing legs and an unhappy red face.

They checked his diapers and temperature every hour. They tried direct breastfeeding and got out the thermometer. They cuddled and cooed. They did everything that came to their minds that any newborn baby would need—except if their baby wasn't a normal one and had a supernatural power therefore had special needs or something!

Babies his age cry and fuss sometimes, it's known and normal. But the way their baby did it, never seemed to be anything near normal. It was as if he wanted to suffocate himself and die—for hours he'd cry and resist every effort they make to soothe his tears until his little face was red with his mouth stretching wide and the cries became unbearably louder.

It was stressful, overwhelming, and tiring daily, for Jane and Kurt. They—both of them, adults—couldn't even do anything that seemed to please him. Jane, already having afterbirth pains, had multiple breakdowns a day because of it, and sometimes she covered her ears with a pillow or cried along with him, out of hopelessness. There was a sense of shame and sadness and just those deep emotions that she was very not familiar with when her baby cried like this, nonstop. It was as though he was telling her that he needed help, that he was hurting, but she wouldn't even know how or what to begin with...

And Kurt, every time he tried to hold his crying baby close, bobbing and swaying to unheard music, humming a lullaby, quite composed, quite serene, he could swear his baby's cries got louder at all these attempts. He then would lay him down and make funny faces to get him to laugh, to simply make him feel something different, but still...

God, how could a four-kilo creature make such loud noises? It sounded like the screeching of an angry cat, only growing harsher and louder as Kurt tried his best to subside him.

Just recently, while Kurt alone stayed up the night to accompany Peter as he cried, the bell rang, to which Kurt cursed under his breath, having some ideas of who might be at the door this late hour. This time around, it was again their neighbor, a college student in his twenties who seemed impatient and annoyed as he complained about their baby's loud cries and how it was like listening to nails on a chalkboard.

"I have responsibilities and shit to do and classes to prepare for! I need to get some sleep. I need peace!" He rumbled and rumbled, because it was his right as a neighbor to be given that. Peace.

"Sorry. I know, sorry. He's just...a little sick," Kurt tried to explain himself, and his baby boy, fumbling in his words. Huffing in the other side of the doorway, their neighbor walked away then, and before Kurt closed the door, the urgency he felt was tremendously overwhelming. He wanted to sprint, speed, and hop into the car to zoom with his baby in his arms to the nearest pharmacy and find just the right medicine to cure the problem within him. What the cure was called and how much it'd cost mattered the least to Kurt.

Christ, he had to do something. There must be something serious with him, or else what would trigger this sort of crying? The noise the little one made included a falsetto trilling that did something to him. It seemed to reach into the skull through his ears, to grasp his brain stem, to shake the inner core of their being. Kurt looked down at his son, and although he seemed apoplectic as he cried and screamed, Kurt hugged him tight and promised that he'd do everything to help him as soon as possible.

This Monday evening, after having settled Peter down in his bed and gazed into his angelic, relaxed face as he finally slept, Jane sighed in relief. It was so quiet now, save for his breathing that was merely audible, which sounded nice, knowing he was breathing. Alive. She felt tempted to bend down and kiss each cheek, but she feared it'd make him fuss. Then, as she made her way to the living room, she got a call from Tasha, who'd been calling her every now and then these days, chatting and sharing motherhood tips and tricks.

"Hey! How is it going?" Tasha shouted in enthusiasm. And from the end of the line, Jane's voice came as a sigh, low and sad. "Not good."

"Is everything okay? Is Peter okay?" Tasha worried.

"No, he's...not okay. And we don't even know what's wrong with him. But we've already booked an appointment for him tomorrow's morning to see his doctor."

"What's it with him?"

"We don't even know! He cries a lot. All the time." Jane was at the edge of crying at this very moment, before Tasha rushed to say, "Ohh, your baby is probably colic, Jane."

"What does that mean?"

"It means your baby cries a lot as you just said!"

"But that still doesn't explain why!"

"For no reason, really! He just wants to cry, right?"

"Yeah, exactly! That's all it seems. But how do you know that? Is Scott—or was Scott like that?"

"No, I wouldn't say he was, but I know some parents struggle with that."

"Do you know what they would do to ease their babies? Kurt and I would literally do anything and everything only to..."

"Oh, Jane, listen. Every baby seems to be different. Don't worry about it! He won't stay forever like that! But you should still get him to the doctor to make sure he's actually and physically all fine, and if he was, you may feel relieved, because thankfully he'd only be colic."

"Thankfully?"

"I mean...that sucks, still. But you know that's better than something else. Sometimes serious!"

Jane was silent for a long moment, her mind working fast, and her body started sweating at the thought of Peter seriously sick, and his crying had been indicating something permanent.

"Hey? Are you still there?"

"Hey... yeah,"

"You okay? Or need company? I just snuck out of my place after Scott slept only to get some groceries, but if you need company, I'll be heading to you instead!"

"No, no. Thank you, Tasha. Kurt is actually coming within minutes. And honestly, we haven't had some quiet time together for—I don't even remember for how long! But judging from that, it must have been for a while... Anyway. Sorry, I forgot to ask you about Scott! How is he doing?"

"Ugh, he's fine. He's just addicted to sugar, loves chocolate and candy so much! That's why I don't bring him with me grocery shopping anymore—he knows where to find the chocolate there by now!"

Jane smiled. "At least it makes him happy."

"It actually makes him energetic and annoying at nights. But anyway, I should let you rest. Bye for now, and good night. Also, don't worry much!"

"Okay. Good night."

After some time, the door was opened and there was Kurt emerging through it with many bags of groceries hanging in both hands. "Hey," he greeted, stumbling on his way to the kitchen so he could put the groceries away. Jane watched him do so as she greeted him back with a low voice that he didn't probably hear.

Then, panting, Kurt approached her with easy footsteps. "It's quiet, rarely!" he commented, after having seated next to her on the couch.

"He's asleep."

"Good." Sighing, he shifted here and there until he was lying down, using Jane's lap as a pillow. She looked down at him with a frown as he closed his eyes. "Are you sleeping?"

"I had a rough day..." he mumbled, his eyes still closed.

"Get up, and tell me about it. I'm sure it's much more interesting than mine that I spent it literally just listening to your kid cry."

"When he cries, he's only my kid, huh? Also, don't forget that his appointment is tomorrow morning!"

"I didn't. And, um, I might know what's wrong with him,"

"What's it?" Kurt opened his eyes to the fullest now to look up at Jane. "Um, I was just talking with Tasha before you came, and when I told her, I almost thought she wouldn't believe me, but then she said that Peter might be colic."

"What does that even mean?"

"Meaning that he cries, a lot!"

"Why?"

"I don't know. For no reason? Or maybe it's something phenotypic?"

Kurt winced. "His doctor will know better."

They slept feeling hopeful that night. Ever since they booked that appointment, they had this promising sensation of hope, that they'd know, for sure, what was the problem, therefore fix it—well, or so they thought.

The hope continued to the next day while the doctor looked over their son and examined him carefully. Peter was awake and strangely calm at the time. He didn't have a fever nor had any other sign of illness, the doctor said.

"Just colic," The doctor then added.

Ha! Oh, colic. Great.

The doctor's casual dismissal contrasted with the parents' urgency. "So how do you cure it?" Jane asked impatiently, and she had to cover her mouth and grip then regrip Kurt's hand after the doctor said a cure might not exist, and they'd have to get through it.

The doctor further explained that, statistically, this happens to about one in every five babies in the world, most often in the evenings and nights than mornings in babies aged three weeks to three months. It happens more in countries that are developed than those that aren't, and no one really knows as to why—though at this point they were hardly listening, their inner voice screaming overpowered anything else around them.

They took their baby, went home, and spent the rest of the day listening to Peter wail while the earth spun and the sun set and rose on the other side of the world and wars were won and lost and revolutions happened.

The reality was tough to adapt to, however they were patient, put the maximum effort to give more and have less, of course. Though every time they looked down at him, hushing, his face was unrelaxed, his fists were clenched tight and his abdomen was tense from the discomfort he was undergoing all alone, a four-kilo infant. He really seemed like a very sad baby; there was no light in his eyes, only tears, which reflected on Jane and Kurt's souls, and made them sad parents, too.

They went to ask more pediatricians and friends for help, knowledge. They read more about Baby Colic, seeking any useful tips and tricks. They tried alternative treatments—Kurt swaying all around the apartment to unheard music while holding little Peter to his chest as he wailed, Jane messaging over his back with care and holding him with his bare skin against her own so close to allow him to feel contained, loved. Safe. And yet, it didn't stop. He didn't stop crying, deploying this tool of weaponized sound that was truly like listening to an alarm going off that could drive someone sane and resilient like Jane and Kurt crazy.

In the peak of it it affected their lives: Jane stopped her working-life completely, though she'd, in fact, intended to do so for the first few months of Peter's life only to be spending such a pleasant, lovely time with him in these early stages, and to witness every little change that'd happen to him—but she never had ever thought this would feel like a burden, and the most stressful thing imaginable. After all, she was the one to have mentioned wanting a baby first, not Kurt. What felt like years ago, she'd told him that she wanted a baby with him, that it was the perfect time to do it now, and Kurt didn't really say much in response. Instead, he exchanged loving gazes with her, brought her closer to him, kissed her so deeply she could still feel the staying power of it till this day, and then he made love to her right away. No protection for the first time. It'd been only her and him and pure desire but nothing else. And they'd kept doing the same thing until one day they got what they wanted.

It affected their daily routine: One slept at nights while the other watched after him in another room. They took turns and shifts, not even once they had the slightest sympathy toward each other when they interrupted each other's sleep in the middle of the night to begin handling Peter.

It affected their relationship: They needed each other right at that hard time, Jane and Kurt. But when Kurt came home from work and Jane was wrung out from listening to it for hours, needing hugs and back rubs and words of encouragement, support, instead, they fought. They fought because something horrible was happening to their son and they lacked the power to stop it. They fought because they were frustrated and exhausted. They fought because they were frightened and tense all the time.

More than once Kurt hated the idea of returning back home after work, which went against his every instinct as a parent. As a husband, too. But sometimes—such as this time on Thursday—he felt like, if he went home after this long, unbearable day at work, he might lose his mind. He seriously might. So he called home and explained to Jane that he had some extra pepper work to do and so he might come a bit late. Jane wanted to argue. She wanted to disapprove—because she needed him at home and needed his help immediately. But she wasn't in a position to do so, since Peter's crying voice overpowered hers though she was shouting on the phone as if she were calling from an outdated device from decades ago where the connection was primeval only so that Kurt could hear her...

She just snapped then, after a full minute of trying, hung up and let go of it. It was no use; she'd scream and Peter would scream even louder and Kurt would also scream that he couldn't hear anything of what Jane was saying and it would look as though they were all in a contest...

And then, Kurt, feeling like an asshole driving the car, went to a quiet place and had a few drinks on that Thursday evening, one after another until he felt light-headed, carefree. Of all places nearby he'd chosen a place that was so far away from home, as if trying to get away from his little son's screams, or maybe he was afraid of getting busted by Jane at any given moment.

When he eventually drove home, several hours later, and as he approached the front door, he could hear his own son's howls from outside. His own heart clenched to that, and he wanted to run away already, or close his ears, or simply just sit there at the doorstep and not have to face it.

He unlocked the door and, almost running, he followed the cries to his bedroom. He was stunned for a moment to see both of them crying, Peter hysterically, Jane quietly. What he did next, and without asking what was going on, was take them both in his arms and cry along with them, repeatedly whispering his sorrow in Jane's ear, that he was gone enjoying himself out there while she lived in this chaos all alone.

When Peter ultimately calmed down under his father's repetitive and soothing strokes, both Jane and Kurt had already calmed down. But they didn't say a word afterward. They didn't look at each other, either—she didn't want to see his face and he couldn't look at hers. Instead, they just stared down at him, their little baby, sleeping now. Snoring, even. After all that hysterical crying he let out, now he seemed somehow in ease, his cheeks rosy, his forehead unclenched, his fists open, and his chest rising and falling in a way that was so reassuring.

They kept admiring the rare, beautiful sight of him like that for a while, having almost forgotten about what just happened mere minutes ago, that they, the parents, were both crying along with their baby, that they were completely hopeless. And then, slowly but surely, Peter smiled the tiniest of smiles in his sleep. It was an unconscious smile, they knew, but it put a similar smile on their faces, to have captured that exact moment in the middle of the madness. It spread hope in the air between them, that genuine, small smile of his.

Still silent, still staring down at sleeping Peter, they await another smile to appear on Peter's tiny lips; it'd been something unmatched. But then he didn't. Jane ran a feather-like hand over his head and brushed his soft hair to fix its pattern to one side instead of being flipped in every direction. Kurt, then, reached out for the same hand of hers and took it to him, which made her look up at him, finally, dark circles under her eyes from the same exhaustion daily. It was an unwilling or rather angry look she gave him. But she had to flutter her eyes before shutting them close as he started kissing her on that hand, and inhaling it, and scraping his own growing beard against it.

As much as Jane wanted to withdraw from his touch, and as much as she was truly upset with him now, she tried to find some comfort in this approach. She couldn't remember the last time they had a quiet, intimate moment like this together, and doubted if Kurt could remember. They'd been giving more and having less. They'd been fighting each other and discouraged. They'd been waking up in the mornings to the sound of Peter's cries, and at nights sleeping to the same sound, Peter's cries, and in the hours in between barely catching their breaths. That'd been going on for months now.

She pulled her hand away, after a moment, not aggressively, just about reluctantly. And then she lifted Peter and gingerly forced him into his father's arms. "Go settle him down in his bed, and spend whatever remains of the night there with him," she ordered, her voice low yet demanding. Here, she'd absolutely meant to sting him and trouble him and bother him. Also, she thought, if he was about to say one word of protest, or simply just groan, or if his face twisted the slightest in displeasure, she would take a deep breath, gather her strength, and smack him hard enough on the face to leave a permanent damage there so when Peter would grow up one day and ask why did his father have this injury mark, Jane would dryly say, "Because once, when you've needed your father the most, he failed you, honey—and me."

But then he was calm, as he looked at her and simply nodded. "I will."

He departed then, and did, indeed, spend the remaining of the night with his little baby, the one he'd just failed, the one he'd also just promised that he would never fail again even if it'd bring his life to an end.

What really was so cruel about their baby being colic was that it was part of the first impression, and just from that they were tempted to infer that the rest of it, being a parent, was going to be even harder—that this was how difficult it is to be a parent!

But with a combination of patience, time and effort, the unexplainable, unceasing crying went away—it stopped. It was hell on earth—oh, God only knows—and then it was over. One night as winter approached, when Peter was four months old, he fell asleep and they got to talking and realized that he hadn't cried! Not tonight, nor the night before. A week went by, then two. It was a month before they really believed things changed. Just like that, it was over. That would've been great to be reminded of when they were in the middle of it—the fact that colic was temporary!

Now, Peter, five months old, smiled and giggled and only fussed when he actually needed something. He was responsive, too, when his parents brought him toys, or sang for him, or made funny faces to him as they fed him. Everything went back to normal, their lives, their routine, and most importantly their relationship. And with Peter in a perfect condition now, he bounded them together even stronger.

A/N: If you made it this far, please let me know what you think of it!

#blindspot #jeller #blindspotfic #my other fics

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oimoi-op · 3 years

Note

when were you diagnosed with t1d?

Ok, so storytime! Short answer is, as of today, barely over two months ago.

(Very long post warning y’all, contains hospital mention and extensive, possibly upsetting descriptions of health conditions, specifically DKA)

My family doesn’t really have a history of T1D or even T2D, though my second-cousin-once-removed has had T1D for over a decade now. So, there was never any reason for me to try and get tests done for it. The only sign I really had up until last semester was two copies of a variant of an HLA gene that I knew about from a 23andMe report (which, according to the report, put me at a higher risk for celiac’s and nothing else), but of course at that time I had no idea that that could mean anything serious; after all, that sort of thing only happens to other people, right?

My college started in-person classes in the latter half of August. By October, I started feeling tired, having a lack of appetite, and needing water very, very badly. I actually went to my school’s clinic, and my erratic heartbeat prompted the doctor to recommend me for a Covid-19 test. My school’s protocols meant that I had to quarantine at my home (since I live within two hours of campus) until I got a negative test result. At home, I was drinking water all the time and sleeping constantly, and my parents had commented on how I’d been losing weight. I thought these were all good things. I had been slightly overweight at my high school graduation, and I’d always heard that drinking a lot of water is good for you, so I thought I was actually in excellent health even if I kind of felt like shit most of the time.

Well. Uh. I was wrong.

When finals came around in mid-November, I was just fucking tired. I’d get a decent eight hours of sleep and still have to take naps during the day. Hell, I was even late for work because I slept through one of my nap alarms. Studying was a pain in the ass. Attending classes was a pain in the ass. Staying awake for Zoom classes was a pain in the ass. I was waking up at 5 am to go to the bathroom, and then I would drink the rest of my water, refill it, drink half of it again, and then go back to sleep. Finally, November 20th rolled around, and I got to leave campus. It was my birthday (yeah I am a Scorpio and that weirds all of my friends out lol), and my parents took me to Fusion. And I just...couldn’t eat at all? I love hibachi, but I couldn’t even eat half of my food. The chef even got me a delicious banana split that I had to basically bully my younger sister into eating with me.

For the next week, I was sleeping about 18 hours a day. I didn’t think this was weird because I’d just had finals so yeah, it makes sense that I would be tired after exams and whatnot. I went shopping with my mom, sister, and sister’s bff. We were only out for a few hours, but I was fucking wiped out y’all, like in pain. Thanksgiving arrived, and again, I love food, I love eating, but I was not hungry in the slightest. I basically had to force myself to eat some of my favorite holiday foods just so I wouldn’t offend my mom, and then I didn’t eat for the day.

The very next morning, I was puking my guts out.

This started a pattern for the next few days: I would eat chicken noodle soup or some other food, sleep like the dead, and throw up every morning and every night. I started chugging large bottles of Gatorade constantly (which, if you know about diabetes and its health complications, did not help my situation in the slightest). I started breathing erratically after very little exertion. Like, I’m talking standing up and stretching brought about heavy, labored breathing. I weighed myself on my parents’ scale, and I was under 130 lbs. Now, for some people this might seem like a lot, but due to my height and build I could fucking see some of my ribs. That was when I started to realize that something was very, very wrong, but “losing weight is good” and I didn’t want my parents to laugh at me for voicing concerns (though, for all their faults, in hindsight, I doubt they would’ve). Yeah. Don’t do that, folks, that’s not a good mindset to have.

On Sunday, my mom took me to town to get tested for Covid. This was despite me saying that I didn’t have symptoms (which I knew very well due to some of my friends catching it at school). Rapid test came back negative, so I did a culture test. Hell, while I was sitting in the damn chair, I was about to pass out. I asked for a nausea pill but my mouth was too dry for it to dissolve. I got a cup of water, downed it all, and felt like my throat was on fire. For the rest of the day I felt so, so awful. At some point I was walking toward my bed in my room and I fucking fell. I’m fucking lucky there was carpet.

Regarding the rest of that night, things start to get blurry, for the lack of a better term. I legitimately cannot recall everything that happened that night or the following two days, so I will just try to explain it in the way I remember it best.

Around...midnight or one??? I was on fucking fire, so I went to my bathroom and decided to lie on the floor. The floor was hardwood and not at all cold, and it wasn’t fucking comfortable even in that state, but I was just in so much pain I didn’t even care. My mom must’ve heard because she found me there and asked me what I was doing. I said something about the floor. She asked me to go back to bed, but I must’ve scared her because she asked me if I wanted her to lie in the bed with me. I don’t remember what I said to her, but we were in the bed and she was trying to hug me, but she was too warm and so I told her to stop. I kept feeling this burning just below my chest, like there was acid in me (which I guess wasn’t too far off), so I would randomly sit up to try and alleviate the pain and not cry. I remember asking my mom to take me to the hospital in the morning.

My mom put me in the truck (I think around 5 am is what she told me). I remembered hearing my dad. I was lying down. Then I was awake, but I was on the floor. I thought this was wrong so I tried to tell my mom that but I guess I couldn’t talk. Then I was in a hospital bed, the ER I assume. My mom gave me some water with a sponge, and I was just so fucking thirsty. Then I was in the ICU hooked up to a bunch of machines. I didn’t know what was going on, but my mom kept giving me water with that sponge. That is all I remember from Monday.

I remember a little bit more from Tuesday. My mom said something about diabetes, but that didn’t make any sense to me because I wasn’t “fat” and I’d been losing weight, even! What had I done to get diabetes? I was thirsty and tired, so I slept a lot. At some point I really needed to use the restroom so I unhooked my IV???? (I mean I must’ve disconnected myself somehow but I can’t remember the details) which set off a shit ton of alarms and people were Very Concerned and kept asking me Why Did You Do That? But I just needed to go to the restroom, and they told me to use the Red Button to Call the Nurse (it was already there, and I now realize that we’d probably had a similar conversation about the Red Button to Call the Nurse possibly multiple times before this) in the future. A Chopped Teen Tournament from 2017 was playing on the TV nonstop. There were commercials for CGMs. I thought that God wasn’t being very funny about the whole thing.

As of now I remember even less of Wednesday, but I know that felt better. There was this diabetes specialist who kept talking about insulin and life at college moving forward, but I wasn’t really there, either because of being so out of it for health reasons, disassociating, or a combination of the two. My mom told me she had emailed a professor so he would give me an extension on an assignment that was due by then, and I remember crying because I thought that was just so nice of him. That night, this guy got me in a wheelchair and put me in another room, which I would later learn was the ACU. My night nurse was this nice woman named Tanya, who had a very thick Eastern European accent. She got me orange juice to take some potassium pills, but it felt like swallowing rocks. I didn’t really get a lot of sleep, so I was awake when the nurses changed shifts. I remember one of them expressing surprise that I was out of the ICU so early.

My mom took longer to come that day because nobody had told her I’d been moved. I’d had plain Cheerios and orange juice for breakfast, but I couldn’t really eat because my throat hurt so badly. I talked to a lot of doctors. I guess at this point or somewhere near it I accepted that I had diabetes, but it wasn’t really real until the same diabetes specialist was going over carbs. I thought I was never going to eat shit I liked ever again. I really wanted a fucking McChicken sandwich. I signed some papers for Medicaid because I had aged out of the CHIP while in the hospital. I finally texted my friends and explained to them what had happened. I was so fucking tired.

I got out the next day, so that was Thursday. Normally, I would’ve been in the hospital much longer (especially because my Medicaid hadn’t been approved, meaning no insurance had approved of my insulin yet), but Covid cases were on the rise and the hospital wanted me out of there. The diabetes specialist and one of my nurses snuck me two fast-acting and two basal insulin pens, and I was out. I ate half a McChicken, a small fry, and drank my first Diet Coke. It tasted like diesel mixed with piss.

That’s the gist of it. The hospital staff was very nice and thoughtful the entire time, I think. I felt as though everyone involved cared about my health a lot.

For those of you who aren’t T1D or just don’t know, what I experienced is called DKA, short for diabetic ketoacidosis. To simplify, I was very close to entering a diabetic coma. My sister later told me that our dad had said (I assume a doctor had told my mother, who, in turn, had told him) that I was “approximately 45 minutes” away from death. DKA happens when a diabetic (usually a T1D like me) has too much blood sugar in their body due to them lacking the insulin necessary to break the sugar down, so their body breaks down their fat reserves and muscle to get the energy it needs. This is why I lost around 50 pounds over the course of a few months (I was 118 lbs. when I entered the hospital, the lowest I’ve been since grade school). I was officially diagnosed with T1D on November 30th, just ten days after my 19th birthday, which is a little older than normal I believe. It’s...well, it’s not fun, but I feel very grateful for my large support system, and tomorrow I’m trying out a CGM for the first time and applying for both it and a pump, so things are really looking up

#personal #iamapincushion #t1d #type one diabetes #type one diabetic #dka #diabetic ketoacidosis #tw hospital #tw dka #i don't think you meant me for to respond with such a long answer #but #well #it's something i've been wanting to post for a while now and this seemed like a good opportunity

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autumnhobbit · 3 years

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for those of you who might like to know the story, I figured I'd post it both for myself and whoever else, but I'll tag it personal and other such so you don't have to see it if it's triggering/you just don't care to.

so the long and short of it is that from about age 9 up I was always overweight, and I guess from like age 14 or so it was more noticeable, although I was constantly harangued at the pediatrician about it before I was even that chubby. From 13-19 I wore size 16 jeans, and consistently if I ever changed sizes it was just to a larger size. Even before I was genuinely pretty overweight though I always felt super overweight compared to other people, hated how I looked but desperately wanted to be beautiful at the same time, the usual boring stuff.

In the summer of 2017 I woke up one morning nauseated for no apparent reason, and it didn't stop for a long time. I believe now this was my first experience with IBS, although I've never been diagnosed despite my doctor shuffling me from test to test. I had tried to eat healthier in spring of that year but gained weight instead of lost it. But in the month of June I lost 10 pounds without trying, and was at first congratulated before they realized I had nothing to do with it. 3 or 4 tests that didn't give any answers followed, and I figured I'd just have to live with it because I always do.

What really made the difference for me was when I took a job as barn help at a stable, because I was working nonstop physical tasks for 7 hours a day for 10 months. Even with that, I think it took a good six months before i started noticing my size changing. Partly because I just couldn't believe it. Even after it was solidified that my old clothes were falling off me, I still by reflex went for bigger stuff because I had no sense of my own size whatsoever. I'd automatically go to the XL section of Goodwill only to realize everything there would be too big.

I quit that job in fall of 2018 and didn't get another job until summer of 2019, and somehow during that time I didn't gain weight, despite not changing my diet or portion sizing, and losing my activity level. Working at a sealant factory, the lines I wound up on were also fairly physically demanding, which I enjoyed, and my weight stayed around 150 for the first 8 months I was there.

Then the pandemic happened, and I was moved to an automatic line for a month or so. Despite feeling like I was working harder there, I had to stand still longer, and between that, and another automatic I was switched to, I gained a little bit. I'd say maybe 5-10ish pounds. That was where I was at when I got married in September and quit my job.

From September to maybe January, I gained back all of it and then some. If my scale is right, which God only knows, I've been stuck at like 195 pounds, despite trying keto out of desperation and having a multiple week migraine, and despite restricting calories and exercising for the past 3 months. I know it's silly to expect to lose it all in that short a time, but I don't expect that. I would just like to see progress, but I'm not. And I can't help but feel like the entire thing was a one-time only thing. I never lost weight before of my own volition or attempt, despite everyone nagging me. I wish I could, but I don't know how, because nothing I've tried works.

This on top of other things has wreaked havoc on my mental health. I guess maybe I'd hoped I'd be able to keep the weight off forever once it was gone, but I didn't, and I blame myself for it whether it was actually my fault or not. And I felt better about myself when I was thinner, and people treated me better. It's pretty effed up that I only tolerate myself if certain things are currently present, but that's how my psyche works for the moment and I haven't had any luck trying to change it.

Now I'm just desperately trying to figure out how to lose weight again and wishing I hadn't ever been thin in the first place because now it just torments me. It's been exhausting and on top of that I've been dealing with what I suspect is depression, and I have no idea what to do. I know if I go to my doctor I'll just be dismissed.

#personal #cw weight #long post #sorry i dont know what this is

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truerescreatuconfessions · 3 years

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The past few days have been like a slap in the face so I'm sorry but I'm have to say this. I apologize to everyone but this is going to be long. I am aware that Pat will probably never see this post so it's pointless, but I have to say it anyway.

First, I'm going to start with a positive. Thank you to Lilith for being brave enough to pass on that anon message to Pat. Thank you also to Burrito for giving us a place to voice our concerns where they can't be shut down, whether Pat chooses to listen or not.

Now to business. I'll start with you Pat, on the off chance that you'll someday read this somehow. As people have said, no one is complaining about your recolor OAK. Please stop trying to turn it to that because it's not that. What we are complaining about is the absolute silence with which Dan received not one but 6 OAKs. The fact that many people on staff had no idea this was an option while Rumor, who I'll get to in a bit, also got one. I have spoken to many staff and ex-staff and not a single one of them knew that OAKs were ever part of staff pay or rewards. The ones I've spoken to also hadn't ever heard of this OAK test in any way. The way it was handled with Dan covering it up and saying "we were testing to see if there was interest" was clearly him backpedaling and now it just sounds like people are just rushing around to cover his ass. I don't have to repeat what at least a dozen people have said on this blog but I will. You don't gauge interest by quietly adding a dozen OAKs to the site and saying "oh, if someone finds them completely by accident then people are interested, otherwise no one cares." You gauge interest by posting a poll, by asking people in a place where everyone can voice it, and by making it front-and-center. I know you said you aren't talking about the subject anymore, but you skirted around the sheer number of OAKs Dan got by pretending we didn't say anything about them.

About the bans you claim "never happened." There is screenshot evidence from Kina, dozens and dozens of them, that Dan cheated for her and others. Ok, screenshots can be doctored, what about the video she sent in? Was that also doctored? If those right there aren't compelling enough evidence to ban Dan, why were four people banned for screenshots? Hell, Zuzu, Shinigami, and Shinohara were all banned for speculating that Dan was cheating during the name clearing. Zuzu was allowed to return, the other three were not. What rules did they break? Did they cheat? No, they talked, exactly like you constantly encourage us to do, about how they felt and what they thought was going on. They were banned. So please Pat, never tell us that "no one is banned for voicing an opinion" because that is categorically untrue.

You might tell us there are other reasons behind the scenes. Ok, let's say that's true. Why were they banned within a day or so of those screenshots coming to light? Why was that the catalyst moment? No one else was banned and unless they had a secret cheating ring with exactly 0 other people involved it sure sounds like those screenshots were the reason.

Also please never say Dan doesn't give special treatment to people. Rumor has been banned multiple times for cheating and abusing staff tools. He still gets an OAK. Omni is a known hacker, still enjoying the site like nothing ever happened. Juke was literally banned for running a hate blog, which is still active when anyone is brave enough to post on it, currently not only back but on staff.

When Rumor was banned, he got to move all his pets to Dan's account and they were kindly returned when he was allowed back on the site. Kina also moved all her pets before she was banned but that was determined to be "unfair" and "not allowed" so they were all returned to her account. Then a conveniently-timed name clearing happened.

Let's look at that name clearing for a second. Dan repeatedly and constantly told us that he was busy and didn't have time to refresh on the site all day for the clearing. Amazingly, he was online for every single clearing. Every last one of them. The odds of that are astronomical when you consider he claims he sleeps, eats, goes out with friends, and works 8 hours a day. He also got tons of incredible, high-value names. These facts are the reason Hell and the rest suspected him of cheating in the first place and honestly that seems like a fair assumption.

You say we need to speak up, but we did. Half a dozen people on that discord said they felt horrible about something and you basically swept it under the rug by saying "oh, it took longer than planned and we didn't say anything publicly but it'll be there soon I promise. Now never speak to me about this again and I refuse to respond anymore." There's been no information anywhere on Res about anything regarding this other than a quick post Dan made only after he was called out multiple times for the number of OAKs he suddenly had.

A minor complaint that I've seen a dozen times on the SB is that new items keep getting quietly released so anyone that does quests suddenly finds themselves failing them because they don't have the items stocked up. Honestly makes me happy I don't waste time with quests. Maybe one or two items doesn't warrant a full update, but isn't that exactly what the changelog is for? For minor additions, fixes, updates, etc?

Another minor complaint I've heard from a few sources is that people continue to spam the SB with copy paste from the site. There was even a forum post about it that no staff addressed, unless that's changed since I last checked. I've seen it happen constantly while staff are on the SB with no policing of it. Why should users listen to this rule, which was added because enough people complained about it happening, when staff don't bother to uphold it?

Now to Rumor. His latest blog honestly boils my blood in so many ways. If his real information was given out and doxxed then that is absolutely disgusting and I do not stand for that. No one deserves it. I am starting this section by saying that because I want to make it clear that it's not ok that that happened, if it did. That doesn't mean I like him or agree with any other part of that blog.

Yes, I'm sure he worked long hours as a CM. You know who else did? Gunmetal, Dess, a bunch of other CMs. Someone else? All the artists, all the support and mods, all the writers. His blog makes it sound like it was just him putting in the hours and that it was purely his idea about all those events. Remember, before we got to a point where staff didn't know what was going on with events because no staff talk, staff used to all contribute together to events. Or maybe they didn't, I don't know, but they at least knew what was going on so I assume they had some input. I remember a time when asking on the SB about an event with staff around, regardless of their position, meant you could get an answer. Nowadays we have staff that have less idea than the users what's going on with an event. Staff like development, who you would assume would know everything about the event that they helped create, or mods, who should probably at least get an overview of the event if they're going to be able to help users.

Speaking of other staff helping with events. Is Rumor pretending he wrote every piece of those events on his own? Why are no writers mentioned anywhere in his list of people that spent many long hours working? He obviously can't pretend he drew everything for the event, but is he implying he wrote everything?

You say people on that list are "deserving" of OAKs Rumor. Schemes has been staff for almost no time compared to some of the old staff that you decided didn't deserve listing. Juke was banned and then unbanned, obviously more deserving than the ex-staff that still frequent the site and have never been in trouble.

Now let's turn to the thing that made me want to scream. You say to "just speak up" more. I've seen at least 8 different people, off the top of my head, told to "stop talking about it" in the SB when they voice a concern and it goes on longer than one or two sentences. Not a single one of the people I'm thinking of was being rude or starting something, they were trying to express themselves and basically being told to shut up. Often they're told to "take it to the forums" which works about as well as just saying it out loud in a room alone. No one reads the forums. Or at least very few people. Staff never responds to suggestions, not staff that can make those changes anyway, mods do sometimes and rarely an artist. Posting in the suggestions forum is like yelling into the void and hoping the void yells back. The absolute only way to be heard in the suggestion forum is advertising it nonstop on the SB and even that barely gets any staff looking.

You say this lack of communication is the reason many people have quit? Yes, that's very true, the exact opposite way you imply. People have left the site often because their feelings are silenced and their opinions completely ignored. No one reads their posts, staff don't respond to them except to tell them they're wrong or to tell them to stop talking about things, and their friends get banned for nothing while staff are allowed to continue cheating with no consequences. So you're right about that, people do leave over the lack of communication, but it's the lack of communication and understanding from staff that drives them away.

I know Pat will probably never see this, but if he does, or if someone is brave enough to link it, maybe he'll hear it. At this point considering his reactions to the people that are trying so very hard to make their voices heard on the Discord I doubt it but I can always hope.

#Rescon #RescreatuConfessions #TrueRescreatuConfessions #patrick #lilith #burrito #dan #rumor #kina #hell #zuzu #shinigami #shinohara #omni #juke #gunmetal #dess #schemes

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cartoonfangirl1218 · 3 years

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If Bombshells ever returned, maybe to explore the aftereffects of the war. Here are some superheroines and supervillainesses that could join the fight into the new era. The Cold War.

Jesse Quick; Jesse would totally join the families providing their homes to the displaced Jews of Europe while at the same time protecting her city from all sorts of crime. But her storyline might come with learning that in her need to help everyone and solving everyone's problems since she has the technology and the privlege, well... kinda appears as a white savior. At least to Lisa Snart which brings me to...

Golden Glider: Well I think we can all guess that Lisa has a Jewish-like last name and while her big bro, Captain Cold, Leonard was working with the Nazis, I am so arguing that he was just conveinately converting in order to save his skin and his sister's. Anyway with her brother in jail and Europe in shambles after the war, Lisa can travel to America with other displaced Jews. Some families were kind enough to "foster" these peoples which is where Jesse comes in. Well Lisa isn't the type to accept the "pity" and dislikes how priviliged a life, Jesse leads. Then comes a whole new yet classic Flash vs the Rogues rivalry.

Nyssa ah Gul: How can we forget another misplaced Jew. Well not Jew but Ra ah Gul's other daughter, Nyssa, whose entire adopted family died in the concentration camps while Ra was off whatevering with the Lazerus Pit. But since Ra's long gone from the picture, I suppose Nyssa will have to seek answers from Talia about why she didn't try to help her or contact her after finding out they were sisters.

Mya: Meanwhile after WWII, India is revving up for a revolution after being used and abused by the British Empire in a war they didn't even want to be in. And after being in the war, STILL treated like second class citizens. That's why Myra, prodigy of Shiva is up to lead a revolution for her people.

Gypsy: Let’s not forget about all the other groups that Nazis were prejudiced against. Cynthia Reynolds or "Gypsy" as the SS slurred against her and her Romanian family. But with Europe's landscape in disarray, Cynthia can use her earth-bending powers to help and educate people that she is more than the fortune telling, pick pocketing stereotype that the world believes.

Volcana: Now I know we didn't really get into Italy's part in WWII, but someone with volcano powers would totally be working in Italy, specifically Pompeii. The one issue is that, like in her origin story, she was working for Mussolini against her will and the Italian still wants their "super weapon" under lock and key in case of WWIII.

Thorn: Meanwhile the late 40s-early 50s is totally not a time to be woman with a mental illness. Especially when the "understanding" doctors try to lobtomize you. So Roselyn Forrest's double personality disorder is a big problem in her life. Especially since her second personality is a scythe weilding maniac and her uncle wants to put her in an institution. Added to the fact that she is still suffering under Irish discrimination. Hopefully the Batgirls can help, not only change child labor laws, but views on mental illness too. Giganta: A gorilla turned into a girl. Why shouldn't that be an experiment by the crazy Americans or Russians in a way to beat each other as the world superpower. Well technically the Russians wanted to send a gorilla into space and beat the Americans, but they thought a woman astronaut (or as they called cosmonaut) would make them look better. (All true look up Valentina , first woman in space). But besides being part of the space race, Giganta can bring spotlight to Africa where she was born, and which is being divided by the major world powers for exploitation.

Crimson Fox: Constance D' Amis, French heiress would be part of the small army of woman workers during the YALTA conferance trying to get their say into how to rebuild Europe for the benefit of all. Who knows, maybe she even talked to Selina Delgatti. Hey French heiresses and Italian heiresses must know each other. Plus she expels hormones that can make anyone under her thrall which leads me to...

Queen Bee: Another pheromone expelling woman. A villainess though. Africa wasn't the only one being exploited and colonized. The former Ottoman Empire was being exploited for its oil and Lebenon is taken over by the French (Basically ample reason for Constance to go to Lebenon and fight Queen Bee). And the former queen is certainly not above going to the Russians to fight the US/Europe to get her country back. Or just team up with Lex Luthor to take down Supergirl and get her country back. I just imagine Lex and --- to be like an evil Mr.Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet okay. All suave, witty banter. It makes sense in my head.

Catherine Colbert: A bit like Lois Lane, Catherine is an everygirl. Well if the everygirl was a daughter of an dimplomat and had her sights on making a name for herself in NASA and trying to avoid the pressures of mysgonistic men that woman aren't fit for government. Being told that she is too emotional and should stay in the kicthen, Catherine rebelled by becoming a stone faced, cutting ice queen in the diplomacy track and also a horrible cook. Artemis and Cheshire: I'm taking a bit from the YJ story in that Artemis and Cheshire are half-french, half-Vietnamese. Since their abusive father was loyal to the Nazis, he disowned them and cast off their Vietnamese mother in Japanese concentration camps. While Artemis made it to America and tried to stay on the good ol American democratic way (while fighting petty looters in the streets of Gotham as one does), Cheshire went to Vietnam where she works as an assasin, for the communists and the non-communists. It doesn't matter to her as long as she gets paid. But times are changing in Vietnam as the fights about communism between the North Vietnamese and South escalate.

Lady Blackhawk: Zinda Blake, hero of WWII and the Blackhawk brigade comes home to nothing. No money. No pension. No respect. Life as a veteran has no perks since no one has money to pay in Europe. Plus she'd still be trying to adjust to civilian life after nonstop combat and the inevitable PTSD while the Germany she loved is split into two. Hopefully Rudi and Helen will help to keep her in a safe place until she can get back on her feet. Miss Martian: While I don't know whose in Harley, Ivy and Viktoria's circus, I feel like Miss Martian would find a safe haven there. While she did not experience the WWII, she did experience a similar prejudice and genocide on Mars being a white martian so I bet she can help with reprations. Or just join Starfire on the fire squad...wait nevermind. Fire is Martian weakness. Well at least have her and Starfire being alien girlfriends exploring the strange Earth world together.

Rocket: Again, haven't had the joy of reading the final vol of Bombshells United so I don't know exactly what Bumblebee has been up to nor the racism she had probably experienced. But Raquel would be in a similar boat. An African American teen in an unjust pre-Civil Rights movement society with the added difficulties of teen mom hood. I really want some spotlight on her whether she joins the Batgirls or strike out on her own or helps Icon just like in the comics.

Mercy Graves: Alongside Lex wherever he is, I want a similar debut to what Mercy did in JL. Mercy takes over LexCorps during Luthor's absence, absolutely crushes it and makes it more of a success than Luthor ever did because she is not obsessed with the Kryptonian heroes. Maybe she even teams up with Waller? Who knows? Or even have two heads, Mercy Graves and Lena Luthor, making millions and making plans, evil or no, always ending on top.

Silver Banshee: A woman whose screams causes people to age. How they could NOT use her in a war, I do not know. But I picture Siobhan's arc going something like after her family dies in battle or something or other, she taps into her genetic banshee powers. Fueled with grief/cynicsm/vengeance she travels around the Iron Curtain, causing death since death is a mercy compared to living in destitute misery.

Plastique and Roxy Rocket: One is a Canadian explosives expert, another just really, really loves rockets. Both would be very useful on either side of the Cold War. They're traditionally illanesses so I could see them as double agents like Cheshire, working for whoever pays the most for their time.

Roulette: Roulette’s big thing is gambling on illegal cage fighting activities. Well lets up the ante by having her big gamble being stoking US/Russian tensions. After all the longer the war goes on, the more she gets paid for her information on the other side, her contacts for weapons, her spies etc. She'd be rolling in dough, and loving it even when under threat of nuclear destruction.

Fire and Ice: No idea how the heck they would fit in to a post WWII world. But let's suppose they want to escape Brazil and Antartica respectively to be able to help out in the aftermath after doing nothing during the war. Jessica Cruz and Aresia vs Star Sapphire Meanwhile with Hal Jordan out of the picture, let's have the infamous Green Lantern vs Star Sapphire rivalry again.

Lady Shiva: Street fighter, assassin, mother of the future Batwoman, Cassandra Cain. Lady Shiva must be part of the Cold War. She is bit of a anti-hero so I doubt anyone would know where her loyalties truly lie, but she'd be on the side of whoever her daughter wishes to protect.

Cassandra Cain: The new Black Bat, continue Katy Kane's work, and the Batgirl's work, and all the work that needs to be done after WWII. She's the new heroine.

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youwerenevermeanttofeelalone · 4 years

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Gladly | Bucky Barnes

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Plus Size Reader

Word Count: 1.8k

Modern AU

Summary: you receive an unexpected call while on a very well-needed vacation.

Request: do you listen to asmr boyfriend roleplay (on yt)? Some of them would be great as fics.

Warnings: mentions of alcohol, surely language, fluff, mentions of panic and anxiety, like a single sexual mention.

Based off these YouTube videos: one two | Gif credit @sebastiansource

❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎

Slipping his cellphone into his back pocket, Bucky took a seat on a stool. The bar wasn’t too crowded anymore yet the snippets of chatter, the clinking of glasses and the sounds of pool balls clashing livened up the place.

Sam and Steve hadn’t stopped teasing him since he said he’d call his friend. Sam couldn’t shut up about it, making question after question.

“You guys aren’t going to let this go, huh?” Bucky sighed heavily, motioning for them to allow him to take his shot. His friends watched him in expectancy. “Man,” he sighed. “Yes, I have feelings for her.”

“I knew it!”

“Shut up, Wilson,” Bucky barked.

Steve stifled a laugh, “I did too, Buck.”

“Is it that obvious?” He asked, scared of their answer. Both his friends nodded their heads. “I hope she hasn’t noticed, she’s my best friend! No offense to you guys but she’s... just different.”

Bucky asked for a beer, wanting to have something in his hands, needing it before going insane. Steve must’ve known what it meant because he stopped Sam from pressuring Bucky to continue speaking. Once the bottle was in his grasp and he had taken a sip, he told them the rest.

“I can be actually me with her and not feel like I have to hold back like how I am right now with you but better because with her it happens always and I’ve never felt that with other people, that’s a big reason why I like her. I��m comfortable being me, she makes me like myself and it doesn’t feel right if I don’t talk to her, if I don’t see her....”

“Why don’t you tell her?” Steve inquired as to if the solution was in Bucky’s hands. Oh, how Bucky wished.

Every time people said the two of you should date he had to play coy when the only thing he wanted was to tell you that he was up for it if you wanted, that he wanted to give you the world if you let him. If only it was that easy.

“I don’t wanna ruin what we have, Stevie. It’s a good thing. Imagine if she doesn’t feel the same?” Bucky changed his voice to emphasize, “hey, best friend who I wanna secretly make out with! Light of my eyes! Highlight of my existence!” He traced the bottle up and down with his index and middle fingers, catching its sweat. “You see what I’m getting at here? I’ve thought of laying it all out on the table and just— I’m scared of losing her. It’s my worst nightmare. We have a good connection, why would I do anything to jeopardize that when she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me?” He choked up at the end, inwardly cursing for opening up that much.

“You okay?” Steve and Sam asked at the same time.

“I’m fine,” Bucky rasped, “I’m gonna take a cab home.” He withdrew his cellphone, sobering up upon looking at the screen “shit! Oh, fuck!”

“What did you do, dumbass?”

“Shut the fuck up, Wilson!” He exclaimed, in panic.

Fuck, how he could be so dumb to butt-dial you? Putting the phone on his ear, he swallowed saliva. “Uh... hi.” A nervous laugh escaped him. “Uhm, how much of that did you hear?”

You sat up on the bed, placing your free hand on your chest as the beating of your heart thickened to the point where you were 40% sure you were in the brink of a panic attack out of how much adrenaline was pumping through your veins. Still, you confessed, “all of it.

“Great,” he gritted, “fucking great.”

“Is it true?” You mumbled the question, not wanting to get ideas into your head.

“Every word,” he breathed.

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“How you feel,” you instructed him, looking up at the yellow sunray hitting the ceiling due to the window’s angle.

Bucky breathed a laugh, “I’m in love with you.”

❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎・・・・・❖︎

Bucky cursed under his breath. He was the biggest dumbass he knew, not even Sam was at his level of stupidity. He was sure now the spectrum for dumbassery would be from one to Bucky and he had to learn how to live with it.

He always forgot to do things, you often told him he needed to be more organized — he was getting better but he had a long way to go. He should’ve bought that spare phone charger to keep in the car like you had told him to, he also should’ve changed his car’s battery like you also had told him to. And because he hadn’t done what you told him, because he was a dumbass, you were trapped in the middle of nowhere in a dead car.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, closing the door as he got back into the car, “I imagine this isn’t how you wanted your night back to go.”

You let out a small laugh, “it’s okay.”

“You’re not mad?”

“No, it’s not your fault.”

He shrugged, “I dunno, part of me thinks you are. At least I am mad at myself.”

“That’s enough punishment, Bucky. Besides, the night is nice.”

It truly was, the weather wasn’t too chilly nor warm at all. Although you were in the middle of nowhere you weren’t bothered, you never got to be surrounded by so much nature, there were even fireflies that you hadn’t seen since you were a teenager.

There wasn’t anyone you would rather be stuck in the middle of nowhere than with Bucky. It probably was a good thing that you were, that way the topic couldn’t be avoided.

You had been anxious to get back after his call. You still didn’t quite believe it to be true, what could he have seen in you? A part of you thought he had been talking about someone else and had lied to you to spare your feelings — it wouldn’t be the first time someone feigned being attracted to you, that seemed to be a common experience in fat folks.

“Are we acknowledging the elephant in the room?”

Bucky stuttered, swallowing the excess of saliva he had started producing out of nervousness when the car died. “I was hoping you wouldn’t want to talk about that. I’m scared of what’s going to happen if we do.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

You clarified, “what do you want from me?”

“It’s... hard not to think about you. I don’t mean it sexually— I mean,” he huffed, “that too, but I’m talking about your feelings. What you want, what you need, how awkward this is, do you hate me? Are you moving out of the country because you don’t want to have me near you? I wouldn’t blame you—“ he stopped himself to take a breath, he was sure you wouldn’t judge him.

Bucky couldn’t remember the last time he had been so nervous, the first time he had to go to the doctor by himself was close, after all, he remembered being terrified, but that had been different. His happiness hadn’t depended on that, or the most important person in his life, or his motivation to put up with himself and others. It wasn’t always easy for him to stay focused, how messy the world was didn’t help, but you always had a way of encouraging him — to be better, kinder, more patient, to sometimes not be too selfless, to give his best.

“I wanna be your boyfriend,” he dared to let it out. All of it. “I want to do cute coupley shit with you, hold your hand, have my arm around you all the time, kiss the back of your hand while we drive like in the movies and go on dates and do romantic stuff for you. Prepare a candlelit dinner that I cooked myself after I put up with Sam’s cooking lessons because my cuisine sucks at the moment. And like... drive you to work or pick you up from work and go visit your parents with you and cuddle you at night and...” he breathed in, deeply, hoping he hadn’t fucked it all up. “That’s what I want.”

“I want that too,”

“Don’t just say that, (Y/N). You don’t have to spare my feelings.”

“James,” you said sternly. He finally looked at you in the eyes. “I want you. I feel the same way as you.”

“Since when?!” He blurted.

“Since the beginning.” Who wouldn’t have fallen for him upon merely meeting him? Bucky was gorgeous and so nice one thought to be dreaming when in his presence.

“Are you fucking kidding me? All this time all I had to do was tell you?”

You nodded, pursing your lips to keep your laugh in for you didn’t want him to think you were making fun of him.

“I was too scared to tell you how I felt. I love you, being friends is awesome but this is not platonic love, it hasn’t been for a long time. I figured that if I fucked it up there was no going back and I didn’t want to lose you, that’s why I waited so long”

“You technically didn’t—“

He shushed you. “I know, I know it was an accident. Don’t remind me. I think I’m gonna pass out soon from the adrenaline I’m feeling, is that normal? I just feel so happy!”

“Are you drunk again?”

“No. I am always happy with you but right now I’m at another level.” He said it easily like he was talking about the weather.

You marveled at it. How open he was with you — you shouldn’t have been surprised after everything you had heard him say to and about you, yet there you were in sheer awe of how comfortable he was around you, how free.

He cleared his throat. “Uhmmm... this might be awkward, and you can say no, but can I kiss you?” You nodded, saying yes verbally. Bucky continued talking, “ I’ve been nonstop thinking about kissing you since I saw you get off the plane. Are you sure? You’re not doing this just to patronize me?”

You were about to explode. “Kiss me already, Barnes.”

He leaned in, hovering over the console of the car. Bucky placed his hand on the side of your face, he had the intention of teasing you but he didn’t have the patience himself at that moment. He covered your lips with his, heavily so, devouring your mouth as he kissed you with everything he had to give. You kissed back as passionately, taking him by the collar of his jacket.

“Does this mean we’re a thing now? I don’t know,” he asked through a huff, “I wasn’t expecting this to happen. I’m lost. I don’t know what to do. I did not plan for this.”

“Just kiss me again.”

“Gladly.”

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x plus size reader #plus size reader #plus size fanfiction #bucky barnes #james barnes #the winter soldier #marvel x reader #marvel x plus size reader

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sheliesshattered · 3 years

Text

Time And Relative Dimension

Clara/Twelve post-Flatline AU. Part 5 of the on-going s8 AU series For As Long As We Get, but can be read as a stand-alone. 6300 words, Twelfth Doctor POV. Emotional hurt/comfort, domestic fluff, newlyweds navigating married life. A late entry for Whouffle Week 2020 for the prompt: dancing. Available on AO3 under the same title and username.

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Time And Relative Dimension

“Right,” Clara sighed as she stood in the open doorway of the TARDIS. “I need to— to look at my lesson plans for the week, and do some laundry in a machine I know won’t try to ‘improve’ my clothes as it washes them.”

The Doctor looked up from the controls he was fiddling with on the console, his mind full of a nascent idea for a modification to the TARDIS that he suspected was probably more trouble than it was worth. “So you said this morning,” he replied, confused. “That’s why we came back to your flat.”

“Right,” she said again, sounding tired. “I’m also going to have a shower, I think. Given... all that.” She gestured vaguely, evidently referring to the hours they’d just spent in Bristol and their encounter with the Boneless.

“Take your time,” he shrugged, most of his attention on the navigation system. Landing in Bristol had been entirely unintentional, and while he’d long since stopped questioning the TARDIS when she decided his presence was needed somewhere other than where he’d aimed for, it might be useful if the console could at least warn him that their destination had changed. Maybe if he rerouted the nav computer...

“Just don’t—” Clara’s voice broke in a way that he associated with five-foot-one and crying, but when he glanced back at her, her expression was carefully blank, her gaze fixed in the middle distance. “Don’t leave,” she went on, steadier. “Stay where I can find you.”

He had thought that much was obvious, but she seemed to be waiting for an answer, so he said, “Yes, boss.”

She nodded once and stepped out into her flat, leaving the TARDIS doors open. It was a habit he didn’t usually engage in, leaving the doors open for anything other than coming and going — the TARDIS was safer with the real-time envelope sealed, and picked up fewer stray cats that way — but as with most things, exceptions could be made for Clara. For whatever reason, she wanted to know where he was, wanted assurances that the TARDIS wouldn’t leave without her, and keeping the doors open seemed like a simple way of achieving that.

For a time the Doctor lost himself in his tinkering, letting his thoughts wander as he began and then abandoned several different improvements to the settings and readouts. He heard the shower start and the water shut off a while later, heard Clara moving quietly around the sitting room just beyond the TARDIS doors, papers rustling and books closing. It was comforting in a way he hadn’t expected, the small connection of sound, knowing that his Clara was just outside, engaged in her own projects while he pursued his.

He had never considered himself someone who enjoyed domestic life. He’d raised a family on Gallifrey, yes, but it was so long ago now that it felt like a dream, half-forgotten upon waking. Since then his relationships had been anything but domestic, and he’d spent so many centuries running from everything boring and ordinary that he had never thought he could want anything else. There was always more of the universe to see, more to experience, people to save and civilisations to discover, and he had never been particularly adept at staying in one place.

In many ways, Clara was a perfect match for him in that, as in so much else. After the Orient Express, they had hidden away in the TARDIS for a few days, but eventually the universe had called to them, and as often as not it was Clara leading the way out into the unknown. She was as insatiable as he was, despite her need for more sleep and frequent meals, and it had only been the realisation that they had been travelling nonstop for nearly a month that had finally convinced them to wrap up their honeymoon trip and find their way back to Earth, back to the normal life she’d left behind when they’d run off to get married.

But even in the midst of their extended honeymoon, one adventure flowing into the next, they had discovered a rhythm to their life together that hadn’t been there before, a pattern to their days and an ease with each other, existing in a dimension that belonged entirely to them. He shouldn’t have been surprised, then, to find that it continued here, unchanged whether set against the wonders of the universe or the mundanity of Clara’s flat. He still didn’t crave domesticity, would still rather skip over the boring days than experience time in a straight line. But with Clara there weren’t any boring days. Just quiet, sweet in-between days where being with her was enough.

Too quiet, the Doctor realised, pausing with his hand half outstretched for the sonic screwdriver. The soft noises from the sitting room had stopped. No more slide of paper against paper or creak of sofa cushions. He held his breath, listening for any sounds from the flat outside, but was greeted with absolute silence.

Concerned, he got up from his workbench and went to the TARDIS doors and looked out. Clara’s school papers were still spread across the coffee table, but there was no sign of Clara herself. He stepped into the sitting room, frowning, and listened more intently. It hardly seemed likely that she would have left the flat without telling him, especially after asking that he not leave, either. Maybe she had just slipped into the bedroom for something? Gone to make herself tea?

Ah, there it was, the distant clink of dishes drifting down the hallway from the kitchen. He followed the sounds, anxious to see his wife again for reasons he couldn’t quite name. There was no logic behind this feeling, this worry that nagged at him for the few short seconds it took to walk down the hall and through the doorway to the kitchen. But he knew better than to dismiss that sort of gut-level instinct.

Clara was there, of course, a mixing bowl and whisk in her hands, her back towards him. The Doctor smiled at the sight of her, but his happy greeting stalled on the tip of his tongue when he caught another quiet noise in the stillness of the flat: a sniffle, wet and broken sounding.

“Clara?” he called to her, that instinctual worry ballooning into something much more fearsome.

She startled at his voice, shoulders tensing, and turned to look at him across the width of the kitchen, her eyes red-rimmed and overlarge. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said, her voice rough.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What are you doing in here?”

In one motion she swiped at the tearstains on her face and then gestured to the ingredients spread across the worktop, as though the latter would distract him from the former. “I’m making a soufflé,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the universe. Like she hadn’t clearly been hiding in the kitchen crying silently and hoping he wouldn’t notice.

Despite everything that had changed over the last weeks, he was still uncertain of what to do with five-foot-one and crying, unsure of how to comfort Clara when confronted with unexplained tears. But her obvious deflection only made it clear to him that the one thing he couldn’t do was leave her to cry alone. There had been points in their relationship when maybe he wouldn’t have called it out, when he might have allowed her to hide behind an excuse like that. But they were far beyond that, now.

“Is there usually this much crying involved in making a soufflé?” he asked, trying to keep his voice gentle despite his growing worry.

She huffed out an annoyed, tear-thick sigh and turned her attention back to aggressively whisking the batter in the mixing bowl. “It’s called stress baking, Doctor,” she said after a moment, not looking at him.

“I can see that. I’m just not sure I understand why.”

Clara sighed again. “Could you just—”

“No,” he said firmly, knowing what she was about to say. “No, I will not leave you alone in here to cry into your soufflé. Rule two: we don’t walk away from each other. So tell me what’s going on.”

He watched her in profile as she looked up at the ceiling, clenching her jaw and blinking back tears, and that instinctual worry snagged in his chest, growing ever larger. Whatever this was it seemed serious, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that he was going to abandon her to deal with it on her own.

“Honestly, Clara,” he pressed when she didn’t reply, “I’m not going anywhere, so you might as well tell me.”

“I was nearly widowed today!” she snapped in response, gaze back her on mixing bowl, her vehemence surprising him. “In Bristol, of all places! When the TARDIS was on the tracks, and that train came and I couldn’t hear you anymore, I thought—” She cut herself off with a sharp shake of her head as tears filled her eyes again, channelling her emotions instead into stirring the soufflé batter with more force than necessary.

Oh. He hadn’t given any thought to how that must have looked from her perspective. It had been a tense moment on his end, completely out of power, stranded with a train bearing down on him. He had only barely managed to put the TARDIS into siege mode with a fraction of a second to spare. And even then, his situation had still been dire, stuck inside the shrinking ship, life support failing, and no way to communicate with Clara. “You thought I’d—”

“It’s rule one!” she interrupted him, whisk scraping harshly against the mixing bowl in the stillness of the kitchen. “Rule one is no dying! Regenerating would be bad enough, but something like that? Could you have even regenerated through it?” she demanded.

He blinked at her mutely, finally beginning to understand the source of her tears. In the rush of defeating their two-dimensional enemy, he hadn’t wanted to consider how narrowly they had avoided disaster, but thinking about it now, he knew she was right. If her gamble with harnessing the power of the Boneless hadn’t paid off, or if she hadn’t been so quick and clever in thinking of it, those might well have been his final moments.

There in the midst of it, he hadn’t been able to face that reality, and had allowed himself only the vaguest of goodbyes to Clara, unsure if she could even hear him. But in retrospect the moment stood out vividly, a tipping point that could have just as easily gone the other way. And he had done that to her, to his Clara, frightened her and nearly abandoned her for good. There was no choice he would have made differently, no clue they had missed that would have allowed them to solve the mystery earlier and avoid the danger entirely, but he still felt the weight of the guilt of having put her through that.

“For as long as we get,” she went on, her tone sharp. “That’s what we agreed on. I just thought it would be longer than four weeks.”

Her words spurred him into action, and without pausing to second-guess himself, the Doctor crossed the kitchen towards her in a few long strides and wrapped his arms around her from behind. “Clara. Clara,” he said, stilling her frantic motion with the whisk, curling his chin over her shoulder and holding her close. “It is longer than four weeks,” he said gently. “We’re still here. Both of us. We’re alright. We get longer than four weeks.”

For a moment it seemed as though she would argue the point, but then she sagged against him, leaving the mixing bowl on the worktop and leaning back against his chest. She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out slowly. “I know. I know, it’s just— If I’d lost you today, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said, tears still thick in her voice.

With his cheek pressed to hers, the Doctor caught what seemed to be the second half of that sentence, a fragment of a thought ricocheting through Clara’s mind, unspoken: I don’t know what I would have told them.

“Told who what?” he asked without thinking.

She tensed in the circle of his arms, turning her head and pulling away just enough to break skin contact. “Doctor,” she hissed, holding herself rigid.

Startled, he released her and stepped back, only just realising what he’d done. “Sorry,” he said in a low voice, shaking his head even though she still had her back towards him, her arms now braced against the edge of the worktop. “I forget, sometimes,” he said, “that you haven’t had any training in this sort of telepathic contact, that you don’t know how to shield your thoughts from me. I shouldn’t have—” He cut himself off, shaking his head again. “Sorry.”

Clara pushed to standing and swiped at the tears on her face. “You just surprised me is all,” she said levelly, turning to him. “I’m still not used to all, all that. Not used to being quite so transparent to you.”

He watched her for a long moment, wondering if she really didn’t know how much he still struggled to read her at times, even with their newfound telepathy. “I could show you how to guard your mind,” he offered, “how to block me out.”

She glanced up at him and shook her head, looking away again. “That is the last thing I want. It’s an adjustment, is all. And I won’t adjust to it if I just construct new walls to hide behind. No more hiding, no more lying, that’s what we agreed, after all.”

“You’re still entitled to some privacy, Clara.”

“I don’t want privacy from you,” she insisted. “Truly, I don’t. I want to share my life with you — my thoughts, my plans, my hopes and worries, all of it. Not just the good things, but the bad, too. And I am trying, Doctor. It’s like I have to relearn everything now, I spent so long forcing myself to hide how I feel about you.”

“Since I told you I wasn’t your boyfriend,” he said, not quite a question.

“Since long before that,” she said seriously, looking up at him and holding his gaze. “Emma Grayling said something to me, when we were investigating Caliburn House, that made me realise how obvious I was about my feelings for you.”

“You’d known me barely a month at that point,” he said, scowling in confusion.

Clara raised an eyebrow at him. “And exactly how long did it take you?” She smiled a little and shook her head, saving him from having to pinpoint the answer to that question. “If something had happened to you today,” she went on, looking away and crossing her arms over her chest, clearly struggling with the words, “I don’t know what I would have told everyone else in my life. The people I work with, my dad and my gran, everyone I know. How I would have explained my grief to them. As far as they’re concerned, I just broke up with Danny a week ago. They don’t even know who you are, not really, not in the ways that count.”

“You want to tell them,” the Doctor said. “About me. About us.”

She sighed and considered it. “I should probably figure out a way to tell my family some version of the truth,” she said, finding his gaze again. “But everyone else? No, I don’t particularly want to tell them. They’re not entitled to this part of my life, I shouldn’t have to justify myself to them. But today just made it clear that...” She seemed to weigh her words for a moment, then said, “It made the disconnect between the two sides of my life starkly obvious. This morning when we decided to come back to Earth, I had every intention of teaching for a week before joining you in the TARDIS again. Now I don’t know if I could stand it, being away from you for that long, and you out there on your own, getting into who knows what sort of trouble without me.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “I’m not going to leave you here, Clara,” he said. “If you’re staying, I’m staying.”

“But— but you hate staying in one place!” she objected, shocked. “You always have, and it only seems to have gotten worse since you regenerated.”

“It’s not just about me,” he shrugged. “The idea is to build a life together, yes? Well, part of your life is here, so part of my life is here, too. If you want to stay for a week to teach, we’ll stay.”

“You would do that for me?” she asked, voice wavering.

“Clara, the far more dangerous question at this point is what I wouldn’t do for you. Staying in London for a week at a time doesn’t even come close to making the list.”

She gazed up at him, her eyes large, tears beginning to form.

“Don’t, with the eyes,” he told her, trying to head off another round of crying. “How do you do that with the eyes? It’s like they inflate!”

“Shush, shut up,” she said, shaking her head and crossing the kitchen towards him. She rose up on her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, but rather than the kiss he expected, she pressed her forehead to his.

I love you, he heard her voice say in his mind, the words coming through with such clarity that he was certain she was intentionally projecting them. But behind the words, he could feel the depth of her emotion as well, layered and complex in ways those small syllables could never encapsulate.

Every good day, every bad day, he told her, backing it up with his feelings for her as well.

She took a shaky breath into their shared space. “What do we think this one counts as?” she asked quietly. “Good day or bad day?”

“Well, we saved a lot of people,” the Doctor replied, “and neither of us died, so I think we have to mark it down as a good day. The murder of your soufflé notwithstanding.”

Clara huffed out a small laugh, still tear-tinged but sounding lighter than before. “You’re right, I’m afraid my attempt at gently folding in the meringue didn’t quite go to plan.”

“Yes, well, that’s par for the course when it comes to your soufflés. It’s always something — burned or mangled or just deflated.”

She leaned back to look at him. “Someday I am going to make you a perfect soufflé, and then you are going to have to take back every unkind thing you’ve ever said about my baking.”

“And when that day comes I will,” he said with a grin.

“Can’t you just sonic it or something?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at the abandoned mixing bowl, not moving away from him.

“The sonic doesn’t do soufflés, Clara.”

She shot him a cheeky look. “Well, maybe it ought to do.”

Smiling at her fondly, the Doctor leaned in to kiss her, letting his love for her seep through his skin and into hers. He could feel the open door between their minds, the connection that had sprung into existence when she had accepted his marriage proposal, but kept himself carefully on his side of the line, not wanting to overwhelm her again. Clara, it seemed, had other ideas, her consciousness barrelling through that door to meet his as she curled her fingers into the short hair over his collar and deepened the kiss.

It was still new to him as well, having Clara in his mind after so many years alone. He welcomed her in, wordlessly communicating all the joy he felt at her presence. The weeks since their wedding had been the happiest of his life, not because of the places they’d visited or the people they’d saved, but because of her. Because of Clara, and this little universe that existed only between the two of them, a dimension all its own.

When they broke apart for air, Clara settled back onto her heels, letting her hands slide down to rest over his hearts. “We get longer than four weeks,” she said, repeating his earlier words, “but it has been a wonderful four weeks, hasn’t it?”

“The next four will be wonderful, too. Even if we spend the whole time here in London, doing boring things like murdering soufflés and teaching English literature to pudding brains.” He leaned down to press a light kiss to the end of her nose. “Our life doesn’t have to be all outwitting killer mummies and defeating invasions of two-dimensional beings. We can take the time for quiet days together, too.”

Clara gazed up at him for a moment. “I have an idea,” she said, smoothing her hands up to his shoulders and back down to his hearts. “Something that will put today solidly in the good category.”

He raised his eyebrows at her in question, wondering if she was thinking what he was thinking — if she was also calculating how long it would take them to get to their bedroom on the TARDIS, or if they ought to make use of her flat’s bedroom instead.

“Not that,” she replied, laughing, “but I like where your mind is at, hold that thought for later. No, I was thinking...” She trailed off as she reached into the interior pocket of his coat and found it empty. Frowning slightly, she slid her hands into the exterior ones instead, rummaging through the contents of the bigger-on-the-inside pockets, clearly searching for something.

“Where’s the sonic?” she finally asked, up to her elbows in his coat pockets.

“I left it in the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, looking down at her with amusement.

She huffed out a sigh, withdrawing her arms. “Amendment to the rule about keeping your mobile on you: keep the sonic on you, too,” she said, as she turned and left the kitchen.

He trailed after her, down the hall, into the sitting room, and through the open doors of the TARDIS. “What do you need it for?”

“Easiest way to find the song I want,” she replied obliquely as she located the sonic on his workbench.

“Song?” he asked, blinking at her in confusion.

She gave him a playful look as she brushed past on her way to the TARDIS doors. “Mmhmm.”

“Do you not just have it on your mobile, like a normal person?” he said, following behind her. “Or have you still not figured out how to use iPlayer?”

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head. “Besides, this way is much more fun.”

The Doctor lingered in the open doorway and watched as Clara crossed her sitting room. “What exactly are you up to?” he asked.

She paused next to the wide bookshelf on the far wall, fiddling with the sonic. “Come dance with me,” she said, smiling at him over her shoulder.

“What?”

“I wanted to dance with you on the Orient Express, the day we got married,” she explained, still trying to find the right sonic setting. “There was that band doing covers of old Earth songs, and it was our honeymoon, and I wanted to dance with you. But then there was dinner, and champagne, and our private sleeping quarters...”

“And a killer mummy, and an AI with dubious moral ethics,” he added.

She laughed lightly. “Exactly. And I never did get the chance to dance with you. So—” She pointed the sonic at the radio on her bookshelf, which crackled to life and began to play something that felt like the 1940s, though he couldn’t quite place the song. Resting the sonic on the shelf beside the radio, she turned back to him. “Dance with me,” she said again, holding one hand out to him in invitation.

With his gaze fixed on Clara’s outstretched hand, the Doctor felt the moment draw out long, milliseconds stretching into millennia. So many of their adventures had begun this way, Clara beckoning him forward into the unknown, reaching her hand out to meet his. He could sense their future stretching away ahead of them, the as-yet unnumbered days that their life together would span, strung together by this one simple gesture, timeless in its simplicity but heavy with meaning. How many times had she offered him her hand, in all the days they had spent together? How many more times would she stand exactly like this, in all the days to come?

For one instant he hung there, suspended in the space between two heartbeats, and then he felt himself tilt forward, felt his body answering Clara’s call with the only response he could ever give her. It was the only truth that mattered, his hand in hers and the universe waiting to unfold before them. The birth of a star, or the death of a civilisation, or the quiet music echoing off the walls of Clara’s flat — it didn’t matter, so long as she was by his side.

Hold hands. That's what you're meant to do, he remembered telling Emma Grayling and Professor Palmer, that day at Caliburn House. Keep doing that and don't let go. That's the secret. Had he already been in love with Clara then, he wondered? Did he know that day that he had found the only hand he would ever want to hold again?

Time dilated, contracted, and his feet carried him across the short distance to Clara, the connection between their minds sparking to life as he slid his hand around hers. She smiled up at him and settled her other hand on his shoulder as his found the small of her back through instinct or some long-buried memory.

“I’m not sure I remember how to do this,” he told her, voice low.

“You’ll figure it out,” Clara replied confidently. She looked up at him, holding his gaze. “We will figure it out. The same way we do everything: together.”

He sighed. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It is easy, Doctor. It’s just me and you, no one to impress. All we have to do is sway a bit,” she said, gently urging him into motion, as the radio continued to croon in the background. “And maybe shuffle in a little circle here — mind the coffee table.”

“Yes, boss,” he said, following her lead, careful not to step on her bare toes with his boots.

“See? Easy as that,” Clara said as they fell into a slow rhythm in time with the music. She leaned into him, resting her head on his chest, and he held her closer in response.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“For what?”

“For not leaving me to cry on my own, earlier.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m pretty sure that’s part of the deal.”

“I wasn’t certain it would be part of the deal, with you,” she murmured. “But I’m glad it is.”

He hesitated then said in a similar tone, “I’m still not sure I’m any good at this.”

“Dancing?”

“Marriage. You said you feel like you have to relearn everything now — it’s the same for me. You are the furthest thing from transparent to me, Clara, and I haven’t the faintest idea how to handle any of this, really. I can promise I won’t leave you to cry on your own, but for everything else... We may just have to be patient with each other.”

“And figure it out together,” Clara added.

He smiled fondly, knowing the feeling would pass through his skin and into hers, even though she couldn’t see his face. “Exactly.”

They fell quiet for a time, swaying in slow circles in the small space between the bookshelf and the TARDIS. The song started again, but neither commented on it, content to lean into each other and let time pass around them unchecked. Little by little, the lyrics of the song filtered into the Doctor’s consciousness, repeated phrases catching his attention. He felt like he’d heard it before, the words tugging at a memory he couldn’t quite identify.

It’s still the same old story, A fight for love and glory, A case of do or die.

“What is this song?” he finally asked.

“It’s from Casablanca,” Clara said, humming a few bars along with the radio.

“Right,” he said, the memory crystalising in his mind. One of their Wednesdays together, early on, when Clara had insisted he park the TARDIS and stay with her rather than take her out on adventure. They had sat side by side on the Maitland’s sofa and watched the old black and white film, while Artie and Angie were asleep upstairs. “That’s one of the ones you like, isn’t it?”

She nodded against his chest. “It’s been one of my favourites since I was little. My mum introduced me to it. I love that movie, but I always wished—” She stopped, chuckling to herself, and he couldn’t quite make sense of the fragmented thoughts that flitted through her mind before she spoke again. “I always wished that Ilsa had been brave enough to choose Rick instead of Victor, at the end,” she went on, looking up at him. “Brave enough to see through Rick’s lies and choose the life she really wanted. And what do you know? When it came time for me to make my choice, I was brave enough.”

“...To be clear, I’m Rick in this scenario?”

Clara laughed quietly and rested her head against his chest again. “Yes, Doctor.”

He was silent a long moment, thinking on the comparison, on the sort of lies he might have been willing to tell Clara to keep her safe, and the lies he had told her to keep her at arm’s length. How easily he could have lost her, just as Rick lost Isla, if Clara hadn’t been brave enough to insist on the life she really wanted, and demand he do the same. How narrowly they had avoided tragedy to arrive at this moment.

“I’m afraid Casablanca is a bit too ingrained in Earth culture, both in this century and for the next few thousand years, to go back and change the ending now,” he told Clara. “But we could visit the set while they’re filming, if you like. Maybe get you cast as an extra, even.”

“Hmm, tempting,” she replied, pressing closer to him as they continued to sway to the music. “But only if you do it with me. Seems like the sort of thing that would be more fun together.”

He made a face. “Not sure I’m the acting type.”

“Oh, nothing huge, no lines or anything. Just us in the background of a shot inside Rick’s Café Américain. And then, as long as Casablanca survives, there will be a little bit of us on film. A little bit of evidence that we were here.” She looked up at him, something grave in her expression. “That we claimed this time as ours.”

For as long as we get, he heard in her voice, the open acknowledgement that however long they had together, it would always be too short. He wasn’t any more prepared to face it now than he had been earlier in the day, so he sidestepped her implication and said instead, “It might raise some questions, if anyone who knows you were to notice.”

Clara snorted derisively. “That’s assuming I’m even—” She stopped herself mid sentence, holding his gaze. He could feel the second half of that thought bubbling away under her skin, but carefully held himself back, offering her the privacy she had objected to earlier. She seemed to come to some sort of decision, then slowly and deliberately said, “That’s assuming I’m even still around for them to question.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, his eyebrows pulling together in confusion.

“I’ve been thinking about it the last few weeks and I...” She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip. “I don’t want to keep coming back here.”

“Where?”

“Earth. London, my ‘normal’ life. I don’t want to waste the days I have with you on trivial things.”

“Clara, what we did today wasn’t trivial. You saved a lot of people. Might have stopped an invasion of our entire dimension.”

“I know, you’re right. And if the TARDIS thinks there’s trouble in twenty-first century London, or Bristol, or wherever, then I’m fine with stopping by. But I don’t want to have two lives anymore.” She swallowed nervously then said in a rush, “I’m going to resign from Coal Hill at the end of the term, just before Christmas.”

He peered down at her, trying to understand what she was saying without relying on their telepathy to hear her thoughts. “But you love teaching,” he pointed out.

Clara shook her head. “I love literature, and helping people, and I’m good with children. Becoming a teacher was a calculated choice, back when I thought I needed to create a life of my own separate from you. But I don’t need that life now, Doctor. I don’t want it.”

“You don’t have to do this for me, or because you think I can’t stay in one place.”

“I’m not doing it for you, daft old man,” she said, smiling at him fondly. “It’s not that I think I owe you this or that you’re demanding it of me. I’m choosing this because I want to spend this time with you. Because we only get so much time, and I don’t want to waste it on planning lessons or marking papers or trying to explain my life to small-minded people.”

“You’re certain about this?”

“I wasn’t this morning, I thought I’d try a week back before I decided, but even just being here, looking at my lesson plans, after the morning we had... I don’t want to keep doing this. I don’t want to spend my days away from you, or force you to stay in London for a week at a time so I can teach. I want to get in the TARDIS and just go.”

“And cut all ties to your life on Earth?” he asked in disbelief, raising his eyebrows at her.

“When I told you on the moon that my future isn’t here on Earth, I meant it, Doctor. I’ve only grown more certain of that since we got married. I belong out there with you. I want to build our life together in the TARDIS, going wherever the whim takes us — wherever she thinks we’re needed.”

“But... your friends, your dad and your gran?”

“Like I said, I’ll find some version of the truth to tell them. And it’s not like we can’t stop by from time to time, come ‘round for dinner or something.” She looked up at him, a thoughtful line creasing her brow. “Do you do that? Do you come ‘round to people’s houses for dinner?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I do that?”

“I don't know. I thought you might find it boring.”

“Is it boring?”

She laughed. “I can’t imagine anything ever being boring when you’re involved.”

From the direction of the kitchen, there came a distant trilling, half obscured by the music playing through the radio. The Doctor cocked his head to one side, listening for the sound again. “Is that your mobile ringing?” he asked. “What happened to rule seven: keep your mobile on you?”

“Whoever it is can wait,” Clara said firmly. “Everyone I care to talk to at the moment is right here.” Through their telepathic link, he felt her mood shift, plummeting like a missed step at the bottom of a staircase. “Doctor... Do you not want me to live on the TARDIS full time?” she asked before he could wonder at the direction of her thoughts.

“Are you kidding me?” he replied, his reaction too immediate to find kinder words. “You’re the one who always insisted on only travelling on Wednesdays! Of course I want you to live on the TARDIS with me!”

A smile broke across her face, relief and joy that echoed back through the door between their minds.

“Clara, this last month together — our life could be like that always. But only if that’s what you want, too. Evenings like this,” he looked around her little sitting room, her school papers spread across the coffee table, the TARDIS settled snugly into one corner. “This can be part of our life, too. There aren’t any boring days when I’m with you, Clara. If you want to stay and teach, that won’t be boring, either.”

“I know what I want, Doctor. And I know now how to be brave enough to step up and take it. I want that life in the TARDIS with you, and I don’t want to waste any more time here than I have to.”

He watched her for a long moment, trying to gauge her emotions without intruding into her mind. “I just want you to be sure,” he said finally. “I don’t want you to have any regrets. I know what happened today scared you, but we don’t have to rush into this. You can take all the time you need.”

Clara drew in a deep breath and nodded. “There’s a month left until the end of term, and I have a few commitments I made weeks ago that I should keep. But after that?” She paused to consider, her gaze turning inward. “I’m ready to leave this behind, and build a life with you,” she said, looking up at him. “Just the two of us in the TARDIS, for however long we have together.”

Pausing their slow shuffled circles, the Doctor raised her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “For however long.”

#Whouffaldi #Twelve/Clara #Clara Oswald/Twelfth Doctor #Clara and the Doctor #Whouffle Week #Doctor Who #Doctor Who fanfic #Time And Relative Dimension #For As Long As We Get #available on AO3 under the same title and username #please comment and reblog!#my writing #AUs #Clara Oswald #Twelfth Doctor #so very married #in this case literally

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disneydeb1928 · 4 years

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One Piece Theory: Ancient Moon Kingdom

I began this theory, with a broader concept: “The Importance of the Moon in One Piece”. Within it, I was going to discuss all the ways that the moon is connected to the story of one piece. However, after beginning, I realized that I had already written a substantial amount on the first segment I wanted to discuss. So, I figured, I would just let it be its own discussion post, that I could refer back to once I get around to finishing the original concept.

With that being said, for this, I wanted to focus on a cover story: Enel’s Great Space Operations.

Summary: [Taken from Wiki] Having finally reached the moon, Enel encounters a group of small robots known as automata, as well as a vicious group of Space Pirates. After a series of events, Enel's Goro Goro no Mi powers wind up activating not only all of the automata, but their city as well, and the self-proclaimed God discovers his true roots.

The span of these covers occurred during the events of Thriller Bark and I would encourage you to read this story if you haven’t already.

Ancient Moon Civilization & Skypiea

Enel discovers, through the paintings on the wall, that there was an ancient city on the moon named Birka, where technology was highly advanced. This city was where the Skypieans, Shandorians, and Birkans hailed from. One day (at least 1,100 years ago), the three groups left the moon and headed to Earth due to lack of resources, leaving the Automata behind.

· Skypieans - Settled in the Sky Islands

· Shandorians - Made it as far as the Blue Sea and settled on the island of Jaya

· Birkans - Settled on a sky island far to the southeast from Skypiea

The Automata

The Automata are robot-like creatures that were created before the three angel races left the moon. What is interesting, is that, the art depicting this event shows both the angel races and the automata crying.

This would seem to indicate that the angel races weren’t happy that they had to leave the Automata behind and that it, perhaps, wasn’t by choice. There are a lot of reasons why a race of people would leave behind something they clearly loved. I think many people like to jump to the ‘they were left behind to protect something’, which is definitely a possibility. This could also explain what the space pirates were doing excavating in the first place. That could explain why their city was underground despite the wings on their back.

What is also interesting, is that, from the pictures, it seems as if that Automata were left on the moon awake. However, when we see them in the cover story (Ch. 468) it looks like they’ve been put into storage.

I find it interesting that there are depictions of what appear to be a lobster and a sea king (?) on the wall. In our world, I know that water can exist on the moon, but I don’t think they’ve ever confirmed the possible existence of oceans.

Finally, if you take a look at the balloon type instruments in their hands, you can make the assumption that that is how they traveled to earth. I say this, because this is how the Automata from earth managed to make it to the moon after the professor’s death.

The Space Pirates

As seen in the cover story, the Space Pirates are a group of animal-like aliens. Along with other strange creatures, they appear to mine the moon for anything they can find.

Connection to the Minks Theory

I think, visually, these so called ‘space pirates’ are very interesting. For starters, let’s explore their possible connection with the Mink Race. Both these two group of creatures share resemblance to animals. The first space pirate we are introduced to has a fox-like resemblance, according to the wiki. Interestingly enough, we have been introduced to a Fox Mink named Concelot.

Chapter 441 vs Concelot

Clearly there are some obvious differences, the main one being the shape of their snout. However, I definitely think they could pass as both being Fox Mink. I personally feel like the space pirate looks like a coyote, but a fox could work too. Some of the other possible animals include 2 alligators / crocodiles and one that looks like some type of bear-creature.

Another similarity is their use of electricity. All minks are able, though unknown means, to produce electric shocks known as Electro. They can emit this from their bodies or through weapons, such as swords and spears. This could be what the space pirate is using in the picture above.

Thirdly, the Mink Tribe is heavily influenced by the moon. It is through a full moon that they are able to enter into their Sulong form. It would make sense, that they have a deep rooted connection to the moon itself.

Cyborg Theory / Steampunk Elements

One of the most glaring details regarding these space pirates outside of their animalistic appearance are the circular devices that are located throughout their bodies. At first I thought these were clocks, but upon further inspection they are definitely gauges (in the red).

Another instance where we see a similar design of a gauge is when Lindbergh, one of the commanders of the Revolutionary Army is introduced. The design is the exact same.

Ironically (or possibly further evidence of a connection?), he is a short cat Mink.

[Note: It is supposed that Lindbergh was named after Charles Lindbergh, a man who was famous for making a nonstop flight from New York to Paris.]

Just for some background (and by that, I mean what I found on the internet), mechanical gauges are instruments that measure pressure, dimensions, levels, etc. Pressure gauges are used for checking the pressure of steam. Aesthetically, pressure gauges are very popular in steampunk fashion, which is where Oda seems to pull from, visually, when drawing the members of the Revolutionary Army. For example, the goggles that all of the RA members where are a staple of steampunk fashion. Steampunk, according to Wikipedia is “retrofuturistic” that “incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery”. It is most commonly seen in science fiction. Science fiction usually deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts, one of the most popular being space exploration and extraterrestrial life.

Is it possible that Lindbergh is from space? Yeah, at this point, I think anything is possible.

I have seen some people theorize that the gauges indicates the space pirates are some form of robots, which is also very possible. But that would lead to the question: Who built them? (more on that below)

The Connection to Vegapunk and Future Stories

Okay, this is when things begin to rev up. During Enel’s backstory, we learn that the current Automata (Spacey) was created by a man named Professor Tsukimi. In fact, he refers to that memory as “the day when I was born on Karakuri Island” (Ch. 448, Cover Story).

The first thing that needs to be addressed is that Spacey makes it sound as if he and the other three Automata were created from scratch and not discovered and fixed (The fact that they are slightly larger than the Automata found in hibernation on the moon and lack wings could be proof of this fact). This would mean that Tsukimi would need to have a point of reference to base his creations from. Furthermore, he would had to have a knowledge of the history of the moon and its Automata. According to the history recorded on the walls of Birka, all of the Automata were left behind on the moon (something all parties seemed very sad about). There are really only three places he could have gotten this knowledge:

1.) Traveling to the moon and seeing the history on the walls himself / Knowing someone who did

2.) Being there to experience it himself

3.) Through visiting Skypiea or the ruins of Shandora himself / Knowing someone who traveled there

All of these are technically possible (especially knowing One Piece). However, if you take a closer look at Tsukimi, it might shed some light on the subject.

On his robe, he has a small picture of a cloud. In the world of One Piece, we usually connect that back to Skypiea. Therefore, I think we are supposed to make the assumption that this old man has some connection to Skypiea / Shandora. However, the question still remains: Where did he get this information? After Shandora was defeated during the Void Century, a lot of their own history seems lost to them. Enel appeared to be the only one who believed in “Fairy Vearth”s existence. Most of Jaya doesn’t even believe of Skypiea’s existence. I also think it should be noted, that it’s not like he could have heard a story and create creatures that are so similar to the ones on the moon (at least, not to the scale at which he did). That man must have gotten hold of some type of schematics or have had previous run ins with similar Automata.

Secondly, if you needed another reason as to why this man will most likely be important later on in the story, just take a look at where it says he was from: Karakuri Island. Sound familiar? It should, because not only is it the island that Franky was sent to during the timeskip, but it is also the home of the infamous Doctor Vegapunk.

Brief Pause for Timeline Speculation

Another interesting thing to point out is, we are given no reference to where in the timeline the events of the Automata’s flashback occurred. All we can say definitely is that it occurred before the events of Thriller Bark (since that is when these cover pages were published). However, it is possible that the weather could gives us some hints. We know that Vegapunk once tried to install an in-ground heating system for his kingdom. That, plus the images we get of the island when Franky lands there seems to confirm that it is a winter island. I suppose it’s possible that it’s only cold during some parts of the year, but then why go to all the trouble of trying to control the weather? No, I think it’s safe to say that Karakuri island is usually snowy and cold. However, the Karakuri island we see in the Automata’s flashback paints a very different picture. There doesn’t appear to be any snow on the ground, and the foliage is drastically different to the one we see during Franky’s time on the island.

You see what appears to be bamboo in the panel above and even sakura petals during the funeral scene. It is totally possible that since these were published so in advanced to Franky’s trip to the island, that Oda hadn’t made up his mind on the design of the island and that could explain the differences.

However, we do know that the space pirates were already excavating on the moon at this point, since one of their explosions is what killed Tsukimi. This would actually lean towards the occurrences of their flashback occurring closer to the current storyline. Because, how long would it really take for the space pirates to find the ruins of the ancient moon kingdom? Not hundreds of years.

Resuming Actual Theory

Vegapunk is a character shrouded in mystery. Truly, the amount of information we have on Vegapunk is barely enough to fill his wiki page. He has yet to make an appearance in the story himself, however we get our first look at him that really only consists of his upper torso. In addition, one of the G-5 Marines states that he is an "old man", suggesting he is at an elderly age (Ch. 658).

However, during Punk Hazard, during Caesar Clown’s flashback, we get this figure on the side of the page that is supposedly of Vegapunk. Interestingly enough, this was replaced in the anime with a more innocuous shot of his arm.

I remember that this panel caused a lot of discussion when it came out. Because, if what we are looking at is Vegapunks head, that has a lot of implications towards the plot. For starters, let’s take a look at the different sections and their proportions.

If this is, in fact, a silhouette of his head and not Oda just throwing us for a loop, then he has a noticeably large forehead. Now, if you’re thinking ‘that isn’t crazy for the world of One Piece’, you would be 100% correct. Besides, Tsukimi has a crazy shaped head as well and they’re both from the same island. So, why is this important? Because, we have other pieces of the puzzle that help form a larger picture.

A.) Koby mentioned to Luffy that Dr. Vegapunk is at least 500 years ahead of current technology (Ch. 433) and we know from Franky’s time there, that Baldimore, the kingdom on Karakuri Island is known as the “future land” and that it specializes in advanced technology. It is unclear whether the kingdom earned that moniker due to Vegapunk’s infamy or whether it existed previously. Either way, it produced two geniuses (Vegapunk and Tsukimi).

B.) Tsukimi was able to create 4 Automata to almost the exact likeness of the ones on the moon

C.) Vegapunk has previously created animal cyborgs on Karakuri

D.) Vegapunk’s large forehead, while not unusual in the world of One Piece bears a striking resemblance to the jolly roger of the Space Pirates

E.) Many believe that the pressure gauges located across the Space Pirates bodies indicate that they are some type of cyborg (possible even based off of the monk race)

Is Vegapunk from space? Did he, during his travels as a young man, make the trip to the moon where he found the ruins of the ancient civilization and created cyborgs with the technology found there? No one but Oda knows. However, I will say this: I believe there are too many things connecting these stories together for them to be considered coincidences. These characters are related in some shape or form. Given the fact that this cover story ties directly back to Vegapunk we know that it’s going to be important, because we know that Vegapunk is important. If this side story is going to become pertinent later down the line, it is going to be through him.

#My OP Theories #one piece theory #one piece theories #op theory #op theories #one piece #op #the moon #enel #vegapunk #dr. vegapunk #ancient moon kingdom #karakuri island #franky #tsukimi #space pirates

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oblio-k · 3 years

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forgot to post my ficlet here about Odo finding one of his wacky Hundred siblings who landed in a civilization where they were worshipped instead of being an outcast,, also on ao3 under my handle BubbaKnowlton :^)

The Demigod / Worship

Odo tries his hardest to convince his-

Brother? Sibling? Cousin? Fellow Changeling?

-his fellow abandoned changeling that there is no reason for it nor any of their kind to live in fear and outcast any longer. The Dominion War has ended, the Federation and Bajorans are his friends. He offers protection, offers to teach it all he knows, so it can make a proper life for itself. He assumes that like Laas, like the other ones he’s found since the war ended, like all the changelings who died before becoming the Founders, that it has been persecuted by non-Changelings for its shape-shifting abilities, its inability to properly assume a humanoid form. All the infant changelings had been purposefully made defective.

He doesn’t expect that one of them had landed in the hands of a civilization that saw those defects as divine.

Heaven’s Guide to Armistice / The Surrendering Ultimate / Demigod Ever Shifting, listens to Odo, and then laughs. It presses Odo back, surrounding him in a cage of sharp spines and old bones and brilliant fire, and spins a tale he couldn’t have ever imagined, plunging hands deep into his chest and sharing everything.

Something alien is found in the orbit of a planet no one has ever seen and is brought to the surface. There, it is realized to be alive. When its shapeshifting abilities are discovered, the civilization realizes that what they hold is no alien being, but something from their most sacred legends, a demigod that can’t keep its shape. Heaven’s Guide to Armistice-

“You can call me Heaven, though-” the creature sings outside of the link.

-is brought to their high temple, and worshipped. Its shapeshifting is praised constantly, every need provided. The civilization sings of their legends, and Heaven believes wholeheartedly that it is indeed one of their deities. When it isn’t regenerating, it practices shifting nonstop, never taking a single form, never keeping a single part the same for longer than a few minutes. It still hasn’t taken just one form, it won’t take one form, it can’t.

Odo asks if it understands what it’s like to be something. He forces it to feel what he felt when he first understood what it was like to be a rock, a bird, a tree, a surface. Heaven screams and screams and screams.

The story continues.

Odo promises not to interrupt. Heaven is melting over him, dripping off of the walls, the ceilings. It’s everything, forcing itself to take up as much space as possible in order to keep him down, to make him listen, feel. They link together even more and Heaven finds it thrilling and repulsive. Odo doesn’t know what to think. He’s never felt a changeling like this.

As Heaven grew and learned, the civilization became more and more convinced that it was indeed their great demigod of legend. Their inability to assume one form matched with the legends- the demigod, born within the chaos of space, unable to cope with its immortality and lack of identity, instead tried to be everything, to appease the formless gods who had flung it into existence. But it could never appease them, for they loved and despised and envied their creation, who would survive their downfall and lead on into a new age.

It is worshipped for centuries, loved and cared for and celebrated. It turns into anything and everything, for endless praise. It’s everything to it, and as Odo feels the love, he understands why Heaven is so perplexed by their linking, which feels like the memory of its worship. Odo can feel that in the peak of the civilization, that worship even rivalled the feeling of the Great Link.

The death of that civilization, however, rivals the loss he’d felt being turned into a Solid, being barred from the Great Link. At least he’d had hope that maybe someday he would be forgiven and accepted by his people again. Alone on a desolate, poisoned world, Heaven had nothing. There it was, formless, forsaken. The civilization was gone, dead and rotting all around it. With the legends proven false, it doesn’t know what it is, what to do. It has nothing. No home, no companions, not even an identity.

Heaven shudders, everything reverting back to its gelatinous form. Odo can barely stay humanoid himself, overwhelmed with the grief, the betrayal, the loss.

“What am I?” Heaven demands of him, its voice reverberating through the room, through their link.

“A Changeling,” he tells it, letting it see all he knows about their people.

“A Founder,” Heaven concludes, taking on a shifting form, a being of bones and gore and fire, the demigod as detailed in ancient scrolls, its favorite form, “...A god. I really am a god.”

He tries to push that they’re not gods, but Heaven forces them to link even further, taking everything it can about the Founders, about the Vorta and Jem’Hadar. It feels the worship from Weyoun, feels the obedience from the Jem’Hadar child he’d tried to save. And from Heaven Odo can feel a hunger, a want. It’s overjoyed that all along it’s been a god, that the civilization was right. Its life wasn’t a lie, a misconception, just a misunderstanding. Heaven engulfs him completely in their link and all Odo can feel is the memory of worship. He fights against it, rejecting it with all of his willpower. Heaven is consumed by its need to be a god and wants Odo to understand, to help it. He refuses.

Heaven rips everything they can about the Vorta and Jem’Hadar, where they are and how they function. It learns what they need to survive, it learns their ritual and devotion. When it has finished taking the knowledge it needs, it ends their link while they’re still attached, ripping from him in an instant.

Odo comes to in a runabout, Dr. Bashir scanning him with a medical tricorder. He struggles to assume his humanoid form, and when he does, Bashir has to catch him from tumbling off of the biobed. He lays him down and asks, “Odo, what happened? I thought you were meeting with another Changeling.”

“I did.”

“There was no sign of another Changeling on the planet when we found you. Your runabout was destroyed, ripped to pieces, somehow.”

“It was Heaven.”

“Heaven?” Dr. Bashir repeats, confused.

Odo nods. “The other Changeling. Its name was Heaven. I’ve made a mistake, Doctor. I shouldn’t have linked with Heaven.”

“What do you mean? The other Changelings only understood that they would be safe in the Federation or on Bajor if you linked with them.”

“It wasn’t like the other changelings, afraid of solids, afraid of being with humanoids. It already believed that it was a god. So when I told it about the Founders, I only solidified its belief. It had been worshipped by an extinct civilization, somewhere in the beta quadrant.”

“You’ve been regenerating for 34 hours. Did it hurt you?”

“I don’t know. Linking with Heaven- it wasn’t like linking with the other Changelings, or with the Great Link. It forced me to see its memories, forced me to show it my memories.” He sits up. “We have to warn Starfleet- I think Heaven is planning to go after the Vorta and Jem’Hadar, to find new worshippers. It wanted to know everything about them.”

Bashir understands his worry, immediately going to a computer console to send a message. There were still Vorta and Jem’Hadar that worshipped Changelings as gods. If one showed up proclaiming to be one, it was bound to attract a following. And if Heaven got ahold of Jem’Hadar, there was a chance it would use them as the Founders once had, as soldiers. Odo hadn’t felt any conquering need from Heaven, but Heaven hadn’t shared all of the legends of its civilization in detail, the failed prophecy too painful. Perhaps the new age promised by the gods had been an age of expansion.

The doctor finishes sending the message and says, “It won’t do anyone any good to have another Founder running around, trying to be worshipped.”

“I’d like to find it again, try to explain the truth to it, that we’re not gods, before it can do anything harmful.”

#ds9 #star trek fic #oblio's fics #i love my guy Heaven so much i gotta write more about it & its vorta follower Viranan it ends up with...#Working on coming up w ideas for a sequel to this about another of the hundred who has no idea theyre a changeling & believe that theyre #a brood parasite of the species their adoptive parent is.

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arrivalation · 3 years

Text

2020: An Account

This year has been a nonstop, off-the-rails bullet train ride into what looked at first like chaos, but ultimately was a tearing down and reconstruction of my entire being. Because I know myself and I know I won’t remember much of this later, I’m recording it here. It’s hard to put some of this information out, but the universe regularly urges me to be more open. So here I go.

January

I got married.

It was, without contest, the absolute best day of my life. I’ve known since I was real little that I wanted to be married, that I wanted to be loved the way M loves me and to love someone just as much. I don’t know how to explain the feeling of having achieved that, and being able to share that with my entire circle. @abyssalsun made it down!! (my only regret is that @ladyoriza couldn’t make it, but I’m still so glad we got to make it to theirs). As often as I can, I revisit the memory of going to @chromecutie’s house afterward, thinking it’d just be the four of us there, and opening the door to find a whole impromptu surprise party happening. Everyone cheered for us when we came in. I played CAH with Mordred, my brother and his wife, and several friends from out of town. By all accounts, these people would never have been in the same room together, but they were, and it was transcendent. It’s been almost a year, and I still haven’t recovered from all the planning and stress; but now that I’m past it, I can say with relief that it was 100% worth it.

February

We bought a house.

Up until this point, I’d been planning a wedding, participating in house-buying stuff as best I could, interviewing for a job I ended up not taking, and dealing with life-long mental illness that was festering and reaching critical mass. But then stuff started wrapping up. The wedding happened. The house was ours. We moved in. I could finally fucking breathe. LMAO bitch you thought.

March

The pandemic reached us.

I guess by this point it had probably already been in the US for a couple months, idr. But it wasn’t until March that things really started happening. People started dying in droves. New cases spread like wildfire. I remember thinking that this would be the zombie apocalypse, because at this point, I don’t think the CDC knew much about the virus. In my anxious mind, that was a completely reasonable assumption. My boss had us all start working from home. We all thought it’d be just a couple weeks.

April

I settled into working from home.

It didn’t take me long to get used to it, maybe a week. I hadn’t yet gotten used to my new hour-long commute from the new house to work, and so working from home quickly became my new normal. But I didn’t know yet why working from home was so good for me. All I knew was that I now had the brain-space to process things. I had the energy to do yoga and cook and do hobbies, and the time to appreciate and care for the home I lived in. I could think more clearly because there was no one else around to distract me. There was sunlight I could bask in. I felt human for once, and that became vitally important and infinitely valuable to me. Despite that, I still struggled with extreme anxiety, panic attacks, and some of the worst depression I’ve suffered through since I was a teenager. Outside my house, everything was a fucking mess and no one had their shit together.

May

I went back to the office for a few weeks.

There was a lull in pandemic activity. My boss had us all start coming back to the office again. At this point, I couldn’t make heads or tails of reality anymore. Everything was changing, nothing was stable. I desperately needed to stay working from home, because that was the one thing that felt Good and Right, but I had no real argument other than, 'I just need to.' So imagine me, at this point a soggy, run-over sloppy joe, attempting to return to normal. As you might think, it was... bad. I cried and hurt all the time. I think I really freaked out my boss with the way I reacted to coming back to the office. But then the second wave hit, and we all went back to working from home again.

June

Uncle Mike died on the first day of the month.

My uncle had been sick for a while, but no one was expecting him to die so suddenly. None of us were ready for it.

I also died that day.

It might sound dramatic, but I mean it quite literally and honestly. Over the years, I had gained suspicion that I was on the autism spectrum. M graciously found me a psychiatrist that took my insurance (and happened to be right next door). I wasn’t even going in for that - I was seeking treatment for my anxiety and depression. But I had amassed a (very long) list of my symptoms, and I brought it with me and read it to my doctor. I wasn’t even a quarter of the way through the list when he stopped me. I’m paraphrasing here, but in effect, he said, “No, yeah, you’re definitely autistic.”

I remember the way my body felt. Like someone had detonated a bundle of TNT in my chest, and I was burning from the inside out. At the time, I didn’t realize this emotional immolation was purposeful and executed by the universe to get rid of this old structure and build a newer, better, stronger one. For about fifteen seconds after he said that, I was relieved that it had been that easy, that there was an explanation for everything that my ADHD didn’t explain. It made a ton of sense why my environment was so important to me. And then I felt something unnameable. It was obvious to my doctor that I was autistic. Had it been obvious to everyone else? Why hadn’t it been obvious to me? I read the rest of my symptoms to him in a daze. I don’t remember how the rest of the appointment went.

And then I burned quietly and ungracefully until I was a pile of ashes. I didn’t know this at the time, but apparently it’s common for newly-diagnosed autistic people to have such dramatic and painful reactions, especially if they weren’t well-informed on the condition. Which I wasn’t.

I started therapy.

I also started learning about my “flavor” of autism. It was arduous, embarrassing, isolating, and ugly. I became aware that I had been masking my whole life, and I was astounded by just how often I did so. What really crushed me was knowing that I’d always have to mask to protect myself. I also became hyper-aware of the things that made me Feel Bad. Inexplicably, I stopped being able to react to those things the way I used to. Previously, if something made a loud and unexpected sound, I would suppress my reaction, because it’s not cool to get mad about it. But I found I couldn’t do that anymore. I had no choice but to react the way I needed to react. I realize now that this was to make me aware of what things make me feel a certain way so I can either avoid them or learn better tools to deal with them.

The therapist I saw wasn’t specialized in autism, and she wasn’t any help in that area, but she did teach me some important things. Like, “Is it reasonable for me to feel ____?”

July

Black hole.

I don’t remember a whole lot from this month, except sifting my own ashes through my fingers and crying. Every day brought a new revelation, a new thing that clicked. All of it was helpful and very painful. My psychiatrist recommended medication, but I’d had a bad and long-lasting experience with medication as a teenager, so I suffered through the pain on my own.

I shouldn’t have. I got so low I didn’t want to be alive anymore. But I think it took reaching the bottom and feeling that much pain for me to get over my fear of pharmaceuticals.

I got into astrology.

I had been interested in it for most of my life, but it wasn’t until this point that I started studying it in depth. I discovered it was a language that I could use to translate so many things about my own life that I didn’t understand. It was a rulebook in a time when I desperately needed rules - but one just flexible enough that it taught me how to stop thinking in binary.

August

I got medicated.

There was a big adjustment period, of course. It didn’t cure me. But it did start to make things easier. And it helped to know that, even if I didn’t believe it at the time, I deserved to rest. I deserved not to feel so much emotional pain all the time.

I turned 30.

It was easily the second best day of my life. I learned a lot of important things, like that it’s important to be present, that I’m seen and loved (just the way I am!!), and that I deserve good things. M planned a whole day of surprises:

I woke up at my leisure and we had coffee on the couch. He got me a cute card with one of our inside jokes inside - I still have it.

We went to our favorite combination lunch place and bakery, which I believe was our first real outing since the pandemic started.

We stopped by a tattoo place. I almost got a tattoo.

He set me loose in Texas Art Supply.

We got dim sum for dinner.

We had a lovely virtual cocktail hour with @chromecutie.

He bought me an ipad!!

I became Spiritual™.

I had been agnostic for the past decade or so, slowly and subtly slipping into nihilism, without realizing how detrimental those ideas were to me. I’m not sure what I thought spirituality was before, but I wasn’t into it. I had always rolled my eyes at people who talked about “a higher power”, auras, and spirit guides, until I became that person.

My psychiatrist introduced some powerful ideas to me, ones that meshed well with my previously-existing idea of how the universe worked. I won’t get into details here. That’s a whole other post. Ask me though - I’d love to talk about it.

Anyway, I started (intermittently) meditating. I learned some exceptionally powerful stuff. I felt my scaffolding being erected.

September

I started learning who I am and why I am this way.

I started seeing a new therapist. She thinks like me. She follows my erratic, forking trains of thought. She sees me and offers real, actionable feedback and solutions. Working with her, I’ve gained the ability to see my life from a 30,000-foot view. I can see now why I’ve felt so lonely my whole life. I understand how my family’s dysfunction has shaped me. I know now that I have the opposite of a victim complex - by default, I believe I am so awful that I feel sorry for everyone who has to deal with me. Because that’s what I was taught to believe. Learning that I deserve to take up space, set boundaries, say no, and be wrong sometimes is still a hard lesson for me. But most days, I believe it now. It takes other people believing it and convincing me. I still need that reassurance often.

My parents sold my childhood home.

Mentally, emotionally, I still lived there. I was still the inverted victim, still beholden to my stepdad’s whims and my mom’s complete cognitive dissonance. This was a blinking neon sign from the universe that it was time to move out. My mom told me when the closing date was so I’d have time to drive down and look at the house one last time. I didn’t go, and I still don’t regret it.

I started learning my boundaries.

After my spiritual move-out, I learned I don’t have to jump when my stepdad holds out the little circus hoop. When he otherwise shows zero interest in my life but still baits me with passive-aggressive texts, I don’t have to answer!! What a concept! I don’t have to feel guilty for not talking to my mom more than I do. We have very little in common, and I still have a lot of things to work through regarding her.

I learned how not to be so reactive.

Or rather, I’m still learning. Something else I learned in therapy is that over the course of my life, I’ve developed a desperate need to defend myself and to justify every action or thought I have, even to myself. It’d been especially troubling at work. My RSD led me to felt stupid, incompetent, and unseen daily; if my boss complimented someone, I believed it also meant he thought I was stupid and bad and wrong, otherwise he would have complimented me too. If my boss said something that even remotely sounded like I’d done something wrong, I’d race to build an impenetrable defense: “This is the reason I did that. Here’s my line of thinking. Do you understand? Can you please understand?”

Now I know that so little of what everything everyone says or does at work is about me. I can appreciate a coworker’s accomplishment and also realize it doesn’t take away anything from me. I’m not stupid or incompetent, and I’m a valuable part of the team. A lot of times, my boss and I are on two different wavelengths - that’s because I think a lot faster, which can be frustrating for him sometimes. He doesn’t fully understand me, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong.

October

I let go of an old friend.

This was especially hard, because I had known this person for years. We’d gone through a lot together, and we’d shared some really important and emotional story plots and characters. I had agonized over whether I was truly important to her or not. It didn’t matter how much I loved her as a friend, or how badly I wanted us to be close again and remain close. I had learned to read the universe’s signs, and it was clear it was time to move on.

November

The election happened.

I was expecting things to turn out badly, but I still hoped for something good. And then something good did happen. I cried watching Harris’ speech. I felt a tenuous hope that things might finally start looking up, societally. I still haven’t really let myself fully embrace that hope, but every time I see a court shoot down another lawsuit, or hear about trump’s own conservative republican supporters tell him, “Okay, buddy, it’s time to step down,” I feel a little better.

M and I went non-monogamous.

There’s so much I want to say about this, but it’s for another post. Suffice it to say that like every other experience this year, it has been unexpectedly challenging and ultimately a catalyst for priceless growth. I’m unfathomably grateful that we’re doing this together, for the things we’ve learned so far, and for how much closer this experience has made us, even when I didn’t think we could get any closer.

Turns out I’m not gray-ace.

I had identified as such for a couple years, which was why we wanted to try non-monogamy in the first place. On the surface, it perfectly explained my sexual personality. But every time I told someone my identity, I felt inexplicably sad. When I read about others having “normal” sex drives and “normal” relations with their spouses, I felt jealous.

Turns out I’m just traumatized, lol. Walking along this non-mono path has unearthed a lot of things, including this gem.

December

This was our first married christmas in our new house.

One of the handful of good things the pandemic has done for me was allowing me to back up my boundaries with hard evidence. It’s been difficult dealing with my stepdad bullying me about not coming over for thanksgiving, and having my mom subtly guilt me into making plans for next year already. But what I needed this year was a quiet holiday, instead of the usual weeks-long chaos, and I got it. And it was fucking delightful. I’ve dreamed of days exactly like that one - spending a tranquil morning with my spouse, sipping coffee and listening to music and eating treats. Deciding exactly how we want our holidays to be, because we deserve to.

I’m scared of what’s to come in the new year. I’m still an anxious mess, and some days I’m not strong enough to pull myself out of the spirals I throw myself into. I’ve gotten used to the pandemic holding my hand, allowing me to shelter in my home, helping me enforce my boundaries, teaching me who I am. When it’s over, I don’t know what will happen or how I’ll react or what I’ll learn next. I’m not finished rebuilding, but I don’t think that’s the point. I’ll never be fully rebuilt. But at least I’m figuring out the new layout.

#personal #void-Avatar

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