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nyxerebus · 3 years

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Unlikely Companions (Daryl Dixon x Female reader/ PLATONIC! Carl x Reader)

Summary: Carl was running for his life, being chased by walkers after he went on his own looking for Sophia. When he is corned by the walker a stranger woman saves him. She is looking for her Fiancee for the old world, but offers her help returning him to the farm. They bond over the days in the woods and she learns she might have another reason to find the farm.

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“Carl?” Lori shouted across the farm. She hadn’t seen the boy all day and was starting to get nervous. “Have you seen Carl?” Maggie shook her head. “Not since breakfast” She answered in her southern accent. “Maybe he is with Rick? Or Shane?” Lori just nodded, but didn’t feel any safer. Where was her son?

Carl was running for his life. The two walkers were closing inn. He knew better than to shout and call for help, knowing it would probably attract even more walkers, but right now he didn’t care. “MOM!” He quickened his pace. “DAD!” Two walkers turned into four as two more appeared at his side. Tears was now streaming down his face as he was sure he was going to die here. He looked back again, ready to face death. But the walkers didn’t close inn on him. Instead arrow after arrow filled the air and all the walkers dropped. When Carl turned back around, fully expecting to see Daryl standing there, was surprised to see a stranger. “Are you okay?” The stranger asked him. Carl looked up at the woman. He was inn shock and didn’t know what to say. “You got a group? A family” She continued to ask him. When she tried to approach him, he backed up. “Hey, you don’t need to worry, I won’t do you any harm. Look” She dropped her cross bow and unleased her knife from her holster. When both fell to the ground, she could see him relaxing more. “Can I ask your name?”

“Carl, Carl Grimes”

“Well, Carl Grimes. I’m (Y/N) (L/N). I’m looking for my fiancée. But I can help you return back to you family. Someone as young as you shouldn’t be out here alone”.

Carl was still unsure about her. Remembering her mother’s speech about stranger danger. But those were the rules of the old world. Here in the new world they should accept help form anyone who invites it, right? After thinking it through, he nodded. “Okay, okay. This is a good start. How far away is your camp?” Carl looked down, a bit embarrassed. “I don’t know”

“Do you know the directions?” He shook his head. “Well shit, looks like were in quiet a pickle huh?” She smiled at him, trying to ease him. “I don’t know this area, never been here before. So, I say we head in one direction and hope for the best. What do you think?” He nodded. “Great! Lets go then!”

And so they started to wander. (Y/N) in front, with Carl a meter behind. “Sooo, do you have a favourite movie or something?” He just stared at her. “What! Come on, were going to be stuck with each other for a while, might as well get to know each other”. After a minute of silence, he spoke. “Iron Man”

“That’s a good movie! Mine is probably that or Pride and Prejudice”. Carl scrunched up his nose almost in disgust. “But that’s so girly! All they do is talk about their feelings and kiss!” She looked back at him, offended by his remarks. “And!? It’s a great love story that is still relevant to this day” She played up her offence more hoping it would make him laugh. It did. “Its still so girly” He said between giggles. “Never mind, were is the nearest walker. I’m feeding you to it” (Y/N)’s giggling was now a full on laughter. “Nooo!” Carl was laughing too. (Y/N) was relieved he was laughing, afraid the incident had traumatized him badly.

Back at the farm, panic was settling inn as no one knew were Carl was. “Who was the last to see him?” Rick asked the group. “I saw him after breakfast” Andrea spoke up, she and Carol was comforting Lori, who was having a full blown break down. “He probably went out looking for Sophia alone” All looked to Shane. “I’m mean why else would he suddenly leave”.

“I think your right, but he is still healing from the gun wound, he wouldn’t get far. And if a walker got him, he wouldn’t have much fight in him”.

“My baby!” Lori cried out in agony. “We need to send out search groups, he couldn’t have gone far”. Everyone agreed with Rick. “And with some luck we might find Sophia as well” Daryl nodded at Carol. She smiled back.

The sun had set and the night was creeping closer. (Y/N) had set up an alert system around the small camp they built for the night. Barb wire around them with empty cans tied up. They would rattle if a walker came close and waking them up. It was how (Y/N) had been sleeping every night.

“Go to sleep, I’ll look out for walkers” (Y/N) said leaned back against a tree. She had laid down her sleeping bag that he could use. “I wont fall asleep” Carl complained. “Try”.

“Can you tell me a story” She looked at him weird. “Aren’t you a bit old for fairy tales?”

“Not fairy tales, stories about your life, from before this?” She still looked at him weirdly. “My mom used to tell me stories from her collage days so I could fall asleep when I was younger. Can you please?” When he looked at her with those poppy eyes, (even though it was hard to see with only their small campfire as a light source), who could say no?

“Okay kid, one story than you go to sleep. Deal?” He nodded “What do you want to know?”

“You are engaged right, how was the proposal?” She giggled at the memory but started to tell about the best day of her life:

“Daryl! What are we doing here?” She was a bit frustrated as the redneck pulled her along the streets. It was midday and pretty damn hot. She pulled down her dress skirt as the wind picked up. “Have some patience’ damn woman” She giggled at his bruteness. One of the things she loved about the man, one of many. When they stopped in front of a new bookshop, he could see the hearts in her eyes. “I dint know they opened a new bookshop here!” She exclaimed. “Saw it last night and thought you might like it” Lies. He had known they were opening here for the past month, doing everything in his power to make sure you dint know. They actually had opening night a week ago.

Now it was her turn to drag him along. It surprised her to see the shop empty, seeing as the streets were pretty full. But she didn’t think much of it. Running between shelves after shelves, the one book in hand turning into two, than four and now finally six books. But when she turned around, all the books fell too the floor. Because there before her was her lovely boyfriend, down on one knee with a ring between his fingers. “Oh my god” She whispered into the silent shop. As if on cue, the speakers played her favourite song.

“(Y/N) (L/N), you are the love of my life. And I just want to be your man’ for the rest of your life. And, shit you know I aint’ good with my emotions, but when I’m with ya’ it seems so easy. Shit, I’m messing it all up” He was stumbling over his own words, clearly forgetting a pre-rehearsed speech. “no, please continue” tears were forming in her eyes. “I love ya’ (Y/N), my Sunshine. You book crazy mad woman. I love everything about ya’. So, will ya’ marry me?” He was ready for a rejection, ready to see her walk out of his life forever. But she didn’t.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, a million times yes” Tears were streaming down her face. He stood up and kissed her. His arm wrapping around her waist, bending her down a bit so he could kiss her more passionately. Like in the movies. They only broke off so he could slip the ring on her finger, it fit her perfectly.

“Did he rent out the bookshop?” Carl asked, clearly very invested. “Yeah, cost him way too much, but he didn’t care. That idiot was never good with money” She giggled at the memories. “What about after, what did you guys do?”

“Nah nah nah, the deal was one story than you go to sleep. I can tell you more tomorrow”. Carl huffed in annoyance but turned around in the sleeping bag. “Good night”

“Good night Carl”.

“Rick, it’s been a whole night! Where is he?” Lori was completely lost; she hadn’t slept all night. To worried about where her son was. “What if his trapped, oh god! What if those walkers got him?”

“We can’t think like that! He is fine. He has to be” Rick did everything he could to try and look confident and comfort his wife, but the worry was eating him up as well. The same thoughts were running through his head as well. Those terrible images of his baby boy being ripped apart by the walkers.

“Okay, open your mouth” Carl did as instruct and tried to catch the berry she threw into his mouth. She missed, but only with an inch! “You suck!” Carl teased her. “Hey! I’m not the one with a tiny mouth!” She teased back. “Alright, lets start walking big man”. He nodded and helped her clean up the camp. “Can I ask a question?” The boy asked as they continued to walk. “Sure”

“What happened between you and your fiancée? Why aren’t you together now?”

She took a deep breath. “When the outbreak happened, we weren’t together. He was off god know where with his brother, probably bailing him out or something-” Carl looked at her questioning, “That’s another story. But yeah, we weren’t together. I was at campus and that turned into a mess, I lots a lot of friends there. Mass panic and everybody evacuated. I and a couple of other students bunkered up a dorm room. Living of the instant noodles and beer we found. That lasted maybe 4 days. So, we left and split off, I wanted to go into the woods, where he would be and the rest wanted to go to back to Atlanta. And since than I have been looking for him. Living in the woods like a mad man.” Tears started to form in her eyes when she relived the horrible times at the campus.

“Sorry I asked”. He looked down. “Its alright” She smiled at him. “What were you studying?”

“Heh, literature. Not much help in the apocalypse, I guess”.

“Than how did you learn to use the bow and hunt?”

“He taught me” She smiled at the memory, and thanked him desperately for teaching her:

“Why do I need to learn this? I live in the city, I will never hunt or live in the woods!” Daryl just scuffed at her and placed the bow he bought in her hands. He had brought her out to the woods after her classes to teach her hunting. “ya’ need to be able to fend for yourself and feed yourself” She just looked him with a raise brow, but eventually gave in. “Fine, fine. Teach me”. A smirk played out on his face, happy with his little victory. Truth be told, he needed to know that you could fend for yourself and be independent, in and out of the city. It eased him at night, in a weird way. “Why cant I learn the crossbow like you?”

“First bow, than crossbow. Alright Sunshine’”

Shoooo! The arrow flew through the air and hit the squirl in the head. “Score!” (Y/N) exclaimed. She fastened the squirrel two her belt, joining the five others she had shot. “We eating good tonight!” Carl looked at the squirrels with a lot of scepticisms. “What? Don’t tell me you’re a picky eater”

“No, it just looks so weird like that” They bickered back and front while they walked in the direction, they thought the farm was inn. They had changed their direction a couple of times, hoping to get closer and see sign of life.

They had spent the entire day walking, and as the night came closer they found a spot to camp up. Carl set up the wires while (Y/N) started a fire to cook the squirrels. While they ate, Carl told her about his family and the people they were in the camp with. “What the hell! You got shot?!”

“Yeah!” Carl had a proud grin on his face, finally having something that made him look cool. “Shit, man your tougher than me if you can bounce back like that”. He laughed and continued to brag about the experience. It was a nice conversation. He talked a bunch about his family, mostly about his dad. Clearly his hero. But than he mentioned a familiar name.

“Wait! Daryl? Daryl with a crossbow?” Carl just nodded. “Does he have a west with angel wings? Brother named Merle?” When Carl nodded again. Tears started to from in her eyes. She was going to be reunited with Daryl, her Daryl. He was alive. That night when Carl finally fell asleep, her mind wandered to all the amazing memories with the man.

It was cold in the room. The window was wide open and letting the moonshine lighting up the small bedroom. (Y/N) and Daryl was huddled together for warmth on the bed. It had been an long night. From a failed date after the place Daryl wanted to take her to was closed, she got catcalled which ended up with her having to drag Daryl of the stranger. And when they got home, he showed her his scars. She was the first romantic partner he had ever shown. The night ended with their naked, sweaty bodies pressed together, while both worked to please the other. It was their first night together, her first night with anyone. When they lied down together basking in the aftermath of their climax, it was one of the happiest times in her life. He wrapped his arms around her and puller her on top of him. Her head resting on his chest, with his arms wrapped around her, caressing her back with one hand, the other squeezing her thigh. “I love ya Sunshine”.

“(Y/N)!”

“(Y/N)! Wake up!” Carl shook her awake. “What’s happening” She immediately reached for her bow and charged it ahead of her, ready to attack any enemy that threatened them. “I can see the farm!” The night had made it harder to see a head of them, but now that the sun was lighting up the world, they could see the farm a head of them. (Y/N) realised her bow and the breath she was holding. They packed up the camp at record time, both wanting to reach the farm as quickly as possible. The walk over to the farm was quiet. When they reached the outcast of the woods, a voice stopped them from going any further.

“Well, well, well, look at that. Do you guys see this fine piece of ass” A man walked out from behind a tree with a gun raised at them both. Three other guys came out, all with their weapons raised. “Sure do boss. Haven’t seen a woman this fine in what feels like ages. I’m just aching to be inside of her”.

(Y/N) placed herself protectively in front of Carl. “What do you guys want? Our food, weapons? You can have that, just leave us alone” Her voice trembled a little afraid of what they will do to them. “Oh, we don’t need your left overs or those teeth pickers you call knifes, no baby. We want something different” He grabbed his crotch when he said the last part. “Carl, run”.

“What? I cant leave-” “Carl! Run!” One of the guys tackled her down. Holding her down on the ground. “Get the kid” The boss said to the guy closest to Carl. “RUN!” She shouted before her mouth was covered. Carl finally ran away, when the guy ordered to catch him started to run after him.

When he made it out of the forest and ran across the fields to the farm, he started to shout out for help. “MOM! DAD!”.

“Do you guys hear that?” Glenn asked the group as they sat around planning the move for the day. “That’s Carl” Lori ran towards the field and saw her son running across it being chased by a stranger.

“Carl!” All the guys saw it too and started to run to Carl. The guy chasing him, saw the men running towards him and turned around to warn the others. “Carl!” Rick finally got to hug his son after being missing for 3 days. But the hug was cut short when Carl pushed free. “We need to head back, (Y/N), the girl that helped me is back there and the guys are attacking her!” He pulled his fathers hand and started to move back to the woods, but Daryl stopped him.

“(Y/N), as in (Y/N) (L/N)?” When Carl nodded Daryl took off and ran towards the forest. The others followed, but this time Carl was pushed back behind them. When they got closer they could hear her voice yelling for them to get off. They reached the area Daryl did not hesitate to shoot the guys around her, holding her down while the main guy was cutting up her clothes. When she got her hands free, she leaped on the last guy and grabbed her knife they had forgotten to remove from her belt. When he was pushed to the ground she didn’t hesitate to stab him in the chest. She didn’t stop after one, two three or four. Blood splashed on her face and torned shirt. Her hands were covered in blood.

Rick took a step forward, but stepped on a twig that snaped in two. She leaped up and raised the knife up, ready to protect herself against another attacker. But when she saw Daryl standing there, she dropped the knife. Sobs wracked through her body and she took a stumbling step forward. Daryl closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms around her waist. He didn’t care that she was covered in blood, just happy that she was safe. She was alive.

Her knees buckled and she fell down, taking him with her. They were both on their knees holding each other and crying into each other’s necks. Right now, nobody else mattered. Not Rick, Glenn or Shane who was staring at the scene in front of them. Not the bodies of her attackers lying around them. No one. Only them as they held each other for the first time. It seemed as Carl had led her back to her family just as much as she had helped him back to his.

A/N: Part 2 is out! You can read it here : Part 2

Please ignore any spelling mistakes as English is not my first language :)

#the walking dead daryl #daryl x y/n #daryl x you #daryl fanfiction #daryl dixon #daryl x reader #the walking dead #twd #carl grimes

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emiewritesthings · 3 years

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the story of our life (2) - jay halstead

jay halstead x fem!reader

part one

masterlist

series summary: in which jay finds an old video camera and him and y/n decide to document their life as it progresses

a/n: this is about a year too late, but i finally got around to writing a part two to this, i was overwhelmed by the support last time. hope you enjoy :)

31st december 2013

if there was one thing that y/n hated, it was making small talk with a bunch of her neighbours. she knew how mean that sounded, but it was the truth. it was the way they worded their questions to serve both as jabs for informations with a hint of an insult, whilst covering it up with the largest fake smile that they could muster up. it was something mrs franklin, the 45 year old, mother of 4 had gotten well practised at, as y/n had the displeasure of finding out.

"so, how's the job hunt going? i know after you dropped out of university it must have been quite a struggle to keep afloat? isn't that why you are still living here with your mom?" she sneered, as she sipped innocently on the cheap bottle of wine y/n's mom had personally assigned just for her consumption. y/n had to restrain herself from slapping the glass clean out of her hand as she remembered what her mother had instilled in her for the last week in preparation for this exact moment.

"oops, i think i hear my mom calling. enjoy your night, yeah?" she stay posed, as she flashed one more faux smile before striding away from the living room and into the kitchen where she grabbed whatever was closest and downed it as quick as she could, frowning at the permanent numbness that hollowed out her entire body.

her head was ringing from the chatter that filled the house, and that would most likely continue until the new year had been welcomed in. the laughter and smiles that were being thrown around didn't sit right with y/n, for what was another year if it was just going to be like the last two. her life had imploded in her hands leaving nothing but a body behind that had no choice but to survive.

"y/n!" someone called out from the other room, however before they had a chance to find her, y/n grabbed two beers from the fridge and shimmied out the back door. the sudden fan of cold december air on her face made her entire chest burn, but y/n liked it, at least it broke the monotony. even if it was just for a couple minutes.

avoiding eye contacts with everyone she passed, y/n found herself rounding her own house until she was stood in the driveway of the neighbouring one. a small smile etching itself on her face as her eyes were met with the old, rotten porch swing that was missing the woman that would be doing her crossword or simply sipping on a cup of coffee no matter the hour. a shiver ran down the woman's back, realising there would not be another moment that she got to see that again.

the house had stayed the same even after all these years, the same paint was chipping away and the wood door was still damaged from where a football had hit it repeatedly during the early years of their sons' lives. however unlike the busy chaos that had once been habituated in the abode, no lights could be seen, no life. just a dull darkness that highlighted how the house she once had known, the family, couldn't be any more different.

pushing past the knot in her stomach, y/n approached the gate to the back garden that was slightly ajar. as she investigated further, a small smile etched itself upon her lips as she was met with two white plastic garden chairs, in one sat pat halstead, whilst the other remained empty.

"well, well, i thought your mother would have chained you to your seat to stop you from pulling a fast one." pat teased, as his eyes strayed away from the dark sky to inspect the woman. patting the seat besides him, the twenty something year old collapsed down into it, before handing one of the cans over to the man, receiving a whispered 'thank you'.

"she got distracted by the mini quiches like an hour ago and i haven't seen her since. couldn't stay there much longer, celia and claire were debating whose husband was the biggest deadbeat." she sighed, as the pair clinked their cans together before they took a longing sip of the liquid, and slipped further down the slightly cracked plastic. her eyes were drawn upwards into the pre-midnight bleakness. however where the winter clouds usually suffocated it, there was a small breaking where two stars shone proudly above them.

"beautiful aren't they?" pat pointed out, clearly confirming y/n's thoughts that the two stars had been the same thing that had caught his interest when she first arrived. running a hand over the wiry beard he had grown over the last two years, his eyes began to water. "uh, sometimes i like to think it's liz and your old man up there, sure she would be chatting his ear off about you and your brother. as well as watching over our jay wherever he may be."

y/n was taken off guard by the older man's comments, but she tried to contain it. in the years she had known pat halstead, it was extremely rare that he voiced his honest opinion about anything. or at least one that wasn't followed by a sarcastic grumble or insult. but to talk about his wife and his son, as well as his best friend, with such emotion brought tears to y/n's eyes.

"you haven't heard from him have you?" she asked in a whisper, not knowing if she truly wanted the answer. the last communication she had with the youngest halstead had been throughout the last period of his mother's life until a little after the funeral, however after not receiving a reply once again and her life on a down spiral she surrendered.

"no, no i haven't," however y/n couldn't help notice that something didn't seem right. maybe it was the way that he shuffled in his chair, refusing to pull his eyes away from the sky to meet her own sad ones. however before she got the chance to confront him, he brought himself to his feet. "wait one moment, i have something for you." watching as he disappeared back into the house, y/n tried to figure out what was going on with him? maybe he wasn't sleeping again? it had been the same for months after the funeral, but she thought he was healing just slightly. she really hoped he had been.

a couple moments later, pat reemerged this time the thing he held in his hands had stolen every inch of y/n's focus. the metal lump that held a thousand memories was being cradled, similar to the way she had been holding it when he had handed it to pat. the sound of his wife's voice in the last clip was something that pat had severed for the last year and a half. it was the thing he would fall asleep to and the thing he would play when he woke up. his liz was still alive in the camera, she was still his liz.

"i thought- i thought you-." y/n couldn't muster up a single thought to vocalise as she was passed the camera. her eyes ran over each dint, scratch, stain that had been acquired over the years. every memory she severed had the image of the red flashing light in it, and yet the person in those videos was someone she no longer recognised.

"this is your life, and i know it feels like it's over, but you have so much to live for and if these videos don't show you that then i don't know what else will." in a rush of uncontrollable emotion, pat wrapped his arms around the daughter he never had and held her as she let out a quiet sob, unsure how to feel.

returning to their seats, pat held y/n's hand as they sat for what felt like days watching the sky deepen. as pat seemed to pray to the heavens that his liz was alright, y/n let her mind run ablaze with unresolved thoughts and emotions as she watched video after video.

it was moments before 2014 came along when her phone let out a painful shrill in search of attention. letting out a small groan, she pulled it from her back pocket, pausing the prom video to answer.

"hello?" she answered.

"y/n where are you? come on, the countdowns about to begin!" her mother yelled clearly unable to hear herself. sighing, looking over to pat who seemed to be hiding something in his eyes, she agreed before hanging up the phone.

"it's not too late for you to come with me you know..." she fluttered her eyes in a humorous attempt at convincing him. the deep chuckle that arose from pat's chest spoke enough for her to work out what was coming next.

"as much as i would love to chit chat with celia and clare over a mini quiche, i'm gonna have to decline." pushing herself off the chair, she leaned over to kiss his cheek softly, pulling away to see the small smile.

"happy new year, pat."

"happy new year, y/n."

the moment she reappeared in her house, she was pretty much been jostled around. somehow the camera that she had walked in with had disappeared from her gasp, and she had made her way to her mother's sight closest to the tv as the countdown clock appeared on the screen. the way her mother smiled at her was slightly unnerving, she knew the woman better than anyone in this world, and just like pat, she was hiding something.

"ten!" they began to chant.

"nine!"

"eight!"

"seven!" a drink was pushed into her hands, which she concerningly took without hesitation. she wasn't even sure who gave it her, but a drink was exactly what she needed right now.

"six!"

"five!"

"four!"

"three!"

"two!"

"one!" suddenly the tv screen was a picturesque screen of fireworks exploding around the country before the whole room erupted in a cheer.

"happy new year!" suddenly everyone was locking lips with their loved ones, friends and whoever was closest to them. however y/n tried to step back, and disappear into the crowd offering a couple of smiles until suddenly she hit something, or someone.

"shit, i'm sorry." she immediately gasped as the drink she was holding splashed against the dress she was wearing, however when she turned to look at her victim her mouth dried out.

there, stood in her living room was jay halstead, in the same uniform that she had last seen him stood in on her doorstep the day he left. what felt like the whole world silencing was actually just everyone in the room turning to look at the pair of them, smiling as they watched the reunion of the couple that never was. however they neither jay or y/n could pull there eyes away from their counterpart.

for a moment they were 17 again, teenagers that didn't know a thing about the world whilst experiencing it together. but this was different, for they were older now. jay's face was more mature, with stumble around his jaw that made him look more in his twenties. y/n's hair was much longer and ever so slightly darker, but jay remembered how the winter did that to her.

"hi." jay smiled, reaching forward to move stands of her hair behind her ears to avoid it from covering up those eyes that were far more fragmented than they had been before. but then again y/n saw the exact same distortion in his own, like half a heart that was on the edge of collapsing.

but at the sound of his voice, y/n fell face first into reality. she remembered every unanswered letter, the loss of hope when she laid in bed completely alone wondering if he was even still alive. she recalled the nights she would sleep on the hospital chair besides his dying mother praying to every god out there that he would be brought back in time to to say goodbye. but it didn't happen, she was left in a void and she didn't know if she would ever be able to get out.

"i-i need to go." she suddenly mumbled, quickly brushing past the army ranger and through the crowd. the awkward, confrontational silence that remained in the room was already enough to tip her over the edge, which only worsened when she saw the red flashing light. stood on the stairs filming the whole debacle was her little brother, who wasn't so little anymore. noticing the shift in mood, he awkwardly lowered it and offered her a sad smile, before she escaped out the door.

what are you doing, she thought, you finally get him back and you are trying to create distance between you two? that was just one of the many nags that bounced off each memory relaying in her mind. so this was what was wrong with pat, he must of known. he knew what was planned, and he said nothing. y/n couldn't blame him, there was no one in this city that would have predicted that she would just walk out like that, well maybe one but he had only just rejoined her life so she couldn't be sure.

her feet lead her to where her heart wanted to be, she cursed herself out for being so stupid as to wear a dress and not grab a jacket during her whole walk out. but the bite of the wind wore off the more blocks that passed until she reached the old creaky gate.

pushing against the metal, even in the pitch black she knew her way. the amount of times she had ended up late at night in this very place gave her that advantage. as she approached the engraved slab that she had helped pat pay for, a sob raked through her body.

"god i wish you could be here right now," crouching down, she leaned forward to run her cold fingertips over the 'ELIZABETH HALSTEAD' scripture. mrs halstead always knew what to say, in any situation. jay and y/n used to blame it on the abundance of dr phil episodes she had watched over the years. yet there was a depth to her words that made your problem feel shared rather than suffocating. "although i'm sure you would be cursing me out right about now for being such an idiot." she thought out loud, remembering what the woman had said when she had told her about the kiss she had shared with the older's son.

she had joked about how it took long enough and what she was going to wear to their wedding, neither of them considering the possibility that she wouldn't get chance for her theory to prosper.

"if that's true, then she must despise me right now." the sudden introduction to the deep voice nearly produced a scream from the woman that turned to see jay staring longingly at the gravestone. just as he brought his eyes to her's, she quickly turned back around, running her hands over her face wondering if he would disappear and all of this would have just been a dream. only it wasn't it was something much more chaotic, filled with resentment, love and the unknown.

"your mom loved you and will more than anything, i don't think she could despise you if she tired," she hummed through a sigh, as jay took a seat besides her. similar to how she had, he leaned forward to run his fingertips over the softened stone, muttering something that he hoped only his mother would hear.

"i really fucked up, y/n/n," hearing the crack rip through his voice, had y/n's head snapping over to him as his shoulders shook slightly as he wrestled with his sadness. "i wasn't here when she needed me most, i wasn't here when you needed me most. she was dying and i wasn't even there to tell her i loved her, what kind of son am i?" the torment that was present in jay's eyes as he turned to look at the only woman that was on the earth to love him ate at y/n's soul, as she found herself wrapping her arms around him, comforting him like he did after the death of her father.

"you a son that made his mother unconditionally proud. she never stopped telling one everyone at hospital about her boys." swiping tears away from under his eyes, ignorant to her own that burnt a trail down her skin.

"i'm not the same guy that left 5 years ago, what i've seen, what i've done-," jay let out a deep breath trying not to fall into the a box of memories he wish he could set alight and never have to face ever again. thankfully the feeling of y/n's fingers tracing nothing in particular against his back grounded him, reminding him that he had been reunited with his home, with his family, with his first and only love. "i got out of there, but that doesn't mean that the war in my mind isn't still on going."

y/n wished she had the answer, a solution, something to help him but she just didn't know what to say. instead she pulled him in tighter, feeling every tip in the think material of the uniform. a uniform that wasn't the jay she knew, but the jay that the army had created, but she knew underneath the camo was still the boy that held her when she feared the lightening outside, or the teenager that broke bryson ellis' nose after he spread rumours about their brief romantic encounter. he was her saviour, he always had been.

"your letters, i did get them. got each one of them in my bag, used to read them before i went to bed. i tried writing back, but i couldn't think of anything to say. i couldn't make anything better and i didn't want you to worry, but i realise that i only made everything worse. i'm just so sorry." pulling away, now it was jay's turn to hold her. in fact he pulled her so close that she was practically in his lap, embracing his body heat with open arms.

"everything's changed, jay," she mumbled, her forehead resting on his chest as she spoke softly. "your mom's gone, your dad's lost, and- and then you and me. last time we saw each other we kissed, we kissed. i- just, i don't know what's happening but i can't stop it." for a moment they both sat there, taking in just how much had changed since they had last been y/n and jay not y/n and jay.

with much care, jay placed his hands around her jay prompting her to look at him. the intense look in his eyes didn't falter for a minute, as he admired the swirls of colour in her's.

"i have been in love with you my entire life, and that is one thing that will never change." declaring his love for y/n y/l/n had always been something jay fantasised about, even as he was stood in a war zone, however never had he imagined it would be in a grave yard nearly an hour into the new year as they fought against the frost. but then again, he didn't care where he was in the world as long as he was by the side of his girl, his love, his y/n.

in a rash moment of euphoria, y/n grabbed his face and pushed his lips against his as if making her own statement to the universe. every ounce of her own soul fuelled itself into something so powerful that was out of the pair's hands. as jay moved his lips against her own, the meaning burnt their insides until they had no choice but to pull away to catch their breath.

with their foreheads touching, for the first time in what felt like 5 years a genuine grin was mirrored on the pairs lips.

"i'm in love with you too." y/n breathed out ruggedly, clearly catching jay by suprised as his eyes widened before the smile on his face got wider.

"wait really?" those had been the words he had wished to hear for every birthday since he was 11, now hearing them made everything a little more brighter. his heart was bumping so quickly, y/n could feel it against her own, yet she said nothing, too caught up in the moment.

"i think it was ignorant of me to think i wasn't years ago. you are it for me, jay halstead." she smiled leaning forward to press another kiss on his lips, this time though it felt as though she was putting the final period on the end of a chapter that neither of them wanted to experience again. for this was a new beginning, the beginning of the story of their lives, together.

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yn-dreamlife · 4 years

Text

Our Princess

Ok so like I don't know if ya’ll have seen the interview or whe=atever where BTS dresses up as Princes and then proceed to like kiss each other on the cheek and stuff but imagine like you're there and they dress you up as a princess and like.... yeah. (Heres the interview if you haven't seen it)

BTS x reader (OT7 x reader)

Genre: fluff

Warnings: fluff, low-key smut/lemon, mentions of smut, cuteness, nicknames, eventual shy reader use of the word daddy/daddies (like once)

Images not mine just found them on the internet but I did make the collage.

As I sneak into the back of the building I have to stifle a gleeful giggle at the sound of my boyfriends laughter. I can tell at this moment its Namjoon and Taehyng laughing and my heart swells at the thought of them.

I truly am blessed to have such seven amazing boyfriends. And im blessed to have a friend who's willing to sneak me into this interview, of course I could have just told them the truth and come with them but this would be better.

I just got back from my world tour and while most of it they where with me the last month (give or take) they had to return home. They called me to ask when I would be home and when I heard they where having an interview at the place my friend works I quickly lied so I could surprise them.

They’ve done it to me tons of times before, it’s only fair I get to do the same. And hey if this happens to be how we officially tell the fans we’re together then I’m okay with that. Sadly im not actually sure what this interview is and y/f/n wouldn't tell me.

“y/f/n!” I groan as she drags me away from where my feet were already carrying me.

“Sorry y/n/n but I gotta get you in the proper attire first.” She says winking.

I look at her suspiciously “you’re not sending me out in lingerie or some shit right?” She sputters before quickly yelling at me in a hushed whisper how they don't do that here and I couldn't help but chuckle, “just checking.”

She rolls her eyes pushing me into a room and locking the door behind us, sometimes the boys need to leave an interview during break just to be alone and it would ruin the surprise of me being here if one barged in.

As I finally look around I gape at the big ball gown right in the center. “Woah! What lucky duck gets to where that?!” I gasp admiring the beautiful dark blue dress.

“You” She states like its a simple fact like humans need to breathe.

“M-me- What?!” I look at her dumb founded and she just smiles.

“Mmmhmmm!” She hum happily pulling it off the mannequin. I waste no time undressing and quickly putting the dress on before she changes her mind or something.

I feel giddy as the dress slides on my body. “y-y/f/n” I stutter out staring at myself in the mirror as she quickly applies some makeup and puts my hair up in an elegant updo.

“Hmm?” she hums.

“I look-” You pause truly speechless.

“Absolutely amazing?” You nod silently, “of course you do! With me as your stylist where could you go wrong?!” She chirps happily as she looks at her watch.

“Are we to late? Did this take to long?!” I ask worried trying to ignore my growing disappointment.

“What?! No! Just trying to see if they’re all dressed and ready. You’re going to be the last one to go as our surprise guest.... and it looks like its time!” She says as her phone chimes.

I stand up hands sweaty so I wipe them on a towel. “Wont they see me as I enter?”

She shakes her head, “no they’ll be turned around and blindfolded incase someone tries to peak.” She says winking, “oh and you will be too!”

“What?!” I exclaim shocked.

“Yep... haha kinda for the whole beginning half.” she says scratching the back of her neck.

“W-wha -why?!” I asked in a hush voice as she leads me out of the room.

“You’ll see.” She whispers placing a silky blindfold carefully on my face, not tight enough to ruin my makeup. I sigh as we continue walking.

“Alright boys! Are you guys excited?!” y/f/n asks excitedly. she whispers for you to sit back and you do so carefully.

“Yes!” Jungkook says excitedly. “I want to see this mysterious beautiful princess!” I can hear the smile in his voice and ignore the slight ache. ‘He’s doin it for the fans, they dint know about us yet.’ I remind myself.

“May I ask a question?” I hear Namjoon ask.

“Of course!” y/f/n says.

“How old is this princess?” He asks I assume I’m supposed to answer but a hand is slapped over my mouth before I can do so.

“She’s around all of your age!” she says quickly as Namjoon hums thoughtfully. You nod remebering they don't know its you yet.

“Can I please please please take the blindfold off now?!” I hear Hoseok asks and I almost ‘aww’ at him but I refrain.

“No.” y/f/n, states simply. “-First” she says cutting of there groans of frustration. “I want you to guess who it is.” She says, “Or who you hope for it to be.”

“Papa Mochi!” I hear Jimin cheer happily and I almost bust out laughing but I quickly cover my mouth.

“That’s a guy!” y/f/n says exasperated like she's heard this all day.

“fine!” he groans, “ummm Kumiko!” Jimin says.

“Is that just a random person?” She asks and when I don't hear anything but a sigh from her I assume he just shrugged. I shake my head smiling as I listen to a bunch of random names leave there lips.

“Kaede” I hear Namjoon next.

“Iva” Jungkook says

“Koge” Jin spoke next.

Now it was Hobis turn “Rai”

Taehyng waited a second before also replying, “Risako”

“Ishi” Yoongi speaks calmly.

“What do you all just have a random store of names in your head?!” Y/f/n asks exasperated. I can hear the smirk in her voice when she speaks next, “Surprised none you said your best friends name.”

“She’s still on tour.” Tae says rather roughly.

“Calm,” Namjoon whispers but I still caught it, ‘just how close to them am I?’ I wonder reaching my hand out only to meet the fabric of someones shirt.

“Wah!” He exclaims and I recognize it as Taehyung. ‘So I’m very close.’ I think to myself. “Uh thanks...” he mutters moving his shoulder away. ‘cute.’ I think.

“Jeez sore subject haha sorry folks,” she pauses and clears her throat before continuing. “Anywho go ahead and take off the blindfolds!” She says and as I go to reach for my own a hand on my wrists stops me.

“Not you m-lady.” She says in a fake accent. I hit her hand away pouting.

‘Lame.’ I think to myself bitterly.

“If she can't see us why is it fair we get to see her?” Yoongi questioned. ‘Thank you!’ I thought exasperated. She groans.

“ugh! fine! Party pooper, you can keep your mask on too!” She chirps and my shoulders sag, ‘so much for that.’

“Fine” he says and I can hear him sit back down. I hear the others collectively gasp as I assume they remove there masks.

“What? Who is it?” Namjoon speaks this time, ‘so he kept his blindfold on too.’

“You two are gonna wanna see this!” I hear Jungkook say and I can hear the grin in his voice. It makes me smile and I wave shyly biting my lip.

“Y-Y/n?!” I hear them both exclaim. My grin widens.

“Y/f/n get this damn blindfold off me I want to see my bo-” I cut myself off, “My boys!” I say in a rush. She groans

“Okay but you'll have to wear it again for one of our games.” She states matter-o-factly. I Quickly rip it off and my smile gets impossibly larger as I see them all standing there.

“Look at all of you!” I say grinning as I stare at all of them in there prince outfits. A noticeable warmth spreading to my cheeks, ‘shit they look really good.’

Before I can think more on how amazing they look I am quickly picked up and spun around by Namjoon. I laugh gleefully as he does so, me and him spent the least amount of time together on FaceTime over the past few weeks sadly, both busy at the wrong times. But that doesn't mean we didnt catch each other eventually.

“Why didnt you tell us you where coming?” Jimin asks swiping in as soon as joon set me down to hug me and the rest of the boys followed.

“To surprise you of course!” I say grabbing Yoongis cold hand as he pulls away.

“Well it worked!” kook exclaimed.

“Yeah this is almost as good as papa mocha right jimin-ah?” Hobbi says nudging him.

“Hey don't be like that!” He says as he stares at me helplessly. I laugh at this.

“No, no I think chim would have preferred Papa Mocha right Jin?” I say looking at the handsome man.

He smirks, “I dunno... maybe” I laugh bending over slightly as I do so missing the way all there yes where trained on me.

“Alrght alright, enough of the gooey best-friend stuff!” y/f/n says. “We’re gonna take a break to give you seven time to prepare and poor y/n here time to enjoy herself before our next game.” she says about to walk away.

“Wait! Whats the next game?!” I ask.

“You’ll see.” As the cameras are turned off we are all sent away, the boys walk with my to ‘my room’ but we all know cameras where there to catch what would be said and whatnot so we stopped in the middle of both and I turned to all of them smiling widely.

“You should have told us!” Taehyng grumbles as he clings onto you from behind nuzzling his head into your neck.

“If I did that I wouldn't have been able to see you get all angry at the thought of me being away any longer.” I said bopping his nose and his own cheeks reddened.

“Oh yeah, guess you heard that huh?” I make a mhm sound and he hides further in my neck as I giggle.

“So kookie was I pretty enough to be worth it? Was I a good enough mysetery beauty princess?” I ask, he bends down cupping my cheek, “The only one who fits the bill,” he whispers placing a kiss on my lips.

“Hey knock it off!” I say as a blush creeps its way onto my cheeks. They all laugh at that.

We go to our own rooms and I sit waiting impatiently. Ten or so minutes later y/f/n comes back and pulls me into the room again and sits me back in the chair.

“Okay so our next game is called... drumroll please!” All the boys smack there hands on there thighs, “Blush-rush!” She declares.

“What?! Oh no!” I say exasperated “grrr curse you y/f/n!” I say shaking my fist at her as the boys laugh.

“Yeah yeah thats the witches job not yours m-lady.” I scoff. “Ok! theres two rounds! One action round and one verbal round! y/n sets the boundaries, and you boys follow them but otherwise your good. Your goal? Make y/n blush as long and as deeply as possible.” She says looking to you to set the rules.

“Ok obviously you boys know the no-no squares.” You say simply and they all chuckle nodding. “Okay, uhhhh I guess..Oh! No yelling in my ear!” You glare at Jungkook then remembering when you where still best friends and he screamed in your ear to wake you up, while acting out how he would wake his future girlfriend.

He holds his hand up defensively and I shake my head at him smiling. “I don't know! You guys know me, so you know whats to far!” I said shrugging. They all nodded smiling, they know old boundaries of when we where trying to hide it from the fans are off the table, we’ve seen the theories and there isn't any negativity towards them so we figured why not.

If it comes out it comes out, if not then thats okay to. We’re happy ether way, it was a group decision.

“Alrighty then lets get going!” She says smiling. “Boys pick which one you do first-” she gets cut off by an enthusiastic Namjoon.

“Words!” He says quickly and all the boys quickly nod in agreement. I can't help but laugh.

“Alrighty then y/n back on with the blindfold.” I groan but put it on anyways.

it’s a long moment of silence before I hear anything at all, quickly thoughts of being alone flood into my mind but are quickly washed away by someones breathe hot on my ear.

“Baby girl,” Instantly I recognize Jin, “you should have told us you where coming, we could have welcomed you home properly.” my eyes widen beneath my mask knowing full well what usually happens when we reunite.

I clear my throat trying to avoid the blush on my cheeks. “Don't try to hide it princess,” Namjoon says his voice deep and on my other side, I can feel the warmth from the two bodies next to me. “You always react so well, such a beautiful blush.”

This time I can't stop my cheeks from turning pink. “Little one~” It’s Jungkook, completely different from the excited adorable one who just minutes ago was excited to see a mysterious princess “doing so good, you’ve barely blushed so far.” He purrs but then chuckles deeply “Or you weren't blushing.” I groan slightly as I shift in my seat.

‘Damnit only three of them have-’ “Hello Kitten,” ‘Yoongi, shit’. “Look at you, don't you look so pretty?” He says and I know if he could he would run his hands threw my hair right now.

“Hello my little flower,” I hear another voice right next to my ear, ‘hello hobi’ I chuckle. “Something funny? Or you just like the way we’re making you feel?” I don't answer and he just chuckles at that.

“Hello my little angel~” Jimin practically purrs into my ear just like Yoongi. “I love your dress, it would look better on my bedroom floor though, don't you think?” I try to shake off his words but of course the blush continues to grow.

I know who has to be coming next and I’m not surprised when I hear his deep voice, “Hi baby, are you happy to be surrounded by your daddies?” He whispers in my ear and by now the blush has moved down my necks and up to my ears.

“Yes how are-” Jin gets cut off by y/f/n.

“Alright alright!” She cuts in, “jeez guys I said make her blush, not kill her... you seven jeesh.” She pulls the blindfold off and I look up to see all seven of them around me smirks on there faces.

‘uh-oh’ I look down not able to stare at them any longer, its to much I’m already warm enough. I didnt think they would be so.... suggestive.

They chuckle as they see my cheeks warming up again. “I have to go cool off in the bathroom!” I say quickly standing up and moving to the hallway. I lean against a wall breathing deeply.

“Damn you.” I sigh as I cover my face, even the after thought makes me blush.

“y/n?” I hear y/f/n, I look up at her smiling softly. “We can't make it a silent part, no one would no what they said and we all sign privacy policy contracts.” She said seriously.

“Oh it’s fine I just was shocked really,” I huff out a laugh, “but lets make it silent, I want to see what our fans come up with.” She grins nodding.

I go back out smiling reassuringly at the boys who all relax visibly. I sit back in the seat preparing myself for the next round. I breathe deeply as y/f/n gives the all clear as I watch Hobi approach.

Truth be told I don't know what I was expecting but I wasn't expecting him to just sand in-front of me forcing eye contact, thats for sure. So when it got to be to much I quickly looked away, and thats how I knew I fell into the trap. His finger making its way under my chin to turn my face towards him as he leans in closer.

And just when I think he might kiss me he pulls way smirking and I purse my lips to prevent a smile. So caught up in the moment I didn't realize Yoongi slipped behind me until I felt his hands move down my exposed shoulders only to go back up and move towards my collar bones. Goosebumps forming on my heated flesh.

He drew his hands away drawing them close to my throat. Jimin also comes up not hesitating to move his hand from my cheek to my neck where he hovers placing slight pressure from his finger tips almost like from one of the first few videos he took of my where instead of doing the face smooshy thing he went and choked me.

I know my face is beat red by now but there is still four more to go. I smile as Jungkook comes up to me, he wouldn't do anything to bad- I’m instantly proven wrong as his arms go around my middle, feather light touches moving over my sides the same way he does when I’m blindfolded and- ‘nope! don't go there then you WILL blush more!’ He smirks triumphantly knowing that was enough.

Taehyung is much more.... pg I suppose as he peppers my face with kisses repeatedly, but I realize that that he was just to prepare me for when Namjoon sneaks up behind my sticking his face in my neck. He is sure to hide what exactly he’s doing by his position but I feel his lips moving up and down my neck going to the spot by my ear.

Jin is the last, and what he does is simple but effective. He simply takes me off the chair and places me right onto his lap, and of course once again by now my face is beet red and they’ve surely beaten me since Hobi, but it was more fun to let them all go.

After that the interview was basically done we stayed for about an hour more before we all decided to drive home. I was in my car with just Jungkook and Namjoon while the others went in there car. Im sitting in the back in Namjoon’s lap, yes there was a perfectly good seat beside him but honestly neither one of them cared and I loved the contact.

We where stopped at a stop light the conversation at a comfortable silence when I spoke up. “You guys where very... open.” I say as I hide my face in Joons neck. he chuckles his hands moving up and down my back.

“What can we say, not seeing you for, what a month? Add onto that the opportunity to publicly do anything we want with you, well we have to do everything we can.” he said smirking squeezing my hips.

“Well not everything.” Jungkook says winking in the rear view mirror and once again I blush as a giggle leaves my lips.

It’s a week later when I go onto youtube and find the latest conspiracy video for the eight of us shockingly. It’s videos of us over the whole time we had been dating, proof of the long time relationship. I smile as I show the boys and we reminisce on the old videos.

I decide to post a picture on my instagram from the interview, one of the seven of them in there costumes and then one of me with each of them alone, namjoons was one of my favorites, not that I didnt love them all of them but one of the camera men caught the moment he picked me up and spun me around and I knew I would always treasure it. I put the caption, “My princes.”

Seeing this they put a picture on there official insta saying “Our princess.” No one truly asked any questions, they all just knew. The comments where filled with friends saying finally, and fans agreeing saying how happy they where. And we where too. We truly would have a happily ever after.

Hey guys my request an taglist’s are always open! Thank you!

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awhilesince · 3 years

Text

Tuesday, 11 December 1838

8 10/..

12 1/4

fine white frosty morning – and seen out at 9 1/4 at which hour Fahrenheit 40 1/2° and breakfast in 3/4 hour –

then had Mark Hepworth who had waited ten minutes – paid me for the 3 horses sold yesterday at Bradford fair – (no! Mangnal sold at home before he (Mark) went to Bradford) – the gray (bought in 1835? of Cooper, York) £12.18.0 Blind gin (had put out a jack spavin £6.3.0 and Mangnal £9.10.0 and the 2 pigs £5 with a turn again of 1/. which I of course gave Mark and gave him a sovereign for his Trouble of selling the horses – will lend me one of his till he gets me one – thinks of going to York fair next week –

then had Holt for a moment – thought he had best see what Harper at the Stump X Cross would board and lodge Mr Hird’s Engine-men for – Had Throp – stood talking outside the door – and then left A– [Ann] to see his bill settled while I had Joseph Mann about his account during the time he was waiting of Robert Norton’s making him a straight edge for the Engine men who begin today to put up the Engine – Holt called for a minute on returning – Harper will board and lodge the men at 12/. a week each man – reasonable enough for he says they will want five pints of beer a day –

A– [Ann] rode off to Cliff hill at 11 1/2 – I wrote the above of today – and at accounts till 1 when went down to Mr Parker for about 40 minutes – came to know whether I would put off navigation stock selling to 1 February at 431 per share upon which I should have no Expense it being for a Mrs Wells who lived away years as housekeeper with the late Mr Wiliam Mitchell of Booth Town – selling at present 3 1/12 shares at 440 = 1356 – Expense 7 = £1349 + the interest to 1 February = at 4 per cent say one month £4.10.0 Ditto ditto at 431 = 1329 + 9 per cent dividend 28 = £1357 no Expense but loss of interest – to let Mr Parker know Tomorrow night whether to sell immediately or not

Told P– [Parker] the story of Greenwood’s stopping his midsummer’s rent towards his bill for papering etc at Northgate – and desired him to see him G– [Greenwood] about the Northgate land rent which is to be placed to his account – said the H–x [Halifax] fields ought to be £16 per annum – hoped to be able to pay Mr Wainhouse £500 this Xmas or beginning of next year –

Messieurs Busfield incumbent of Coley and Mr Wilson church warden waited almost from the 1st of Mr Parker’s coming – came to ask A– [Ann] and myself to subscribe towards warming Coley church – I declined for myself said I would Tell Miss W– [Walker] but that if she chose to give anything she would send it – and if not, they would suppose she intended to decline like myself giving anything – 3 or 4 minutes with the gentlemens –

then out with Robert Mann – 1000 bricks wanted for the Engine house at Listerwick – to be taken from the pile left in the garden – out with Robert – with him in the ground above the low fish pond (with Robert from 12 50/.. to about 1 1/2 when came back expecting Holt) – and at the Conery – walling 5 feet high against the Allen Car and against the upper Conery would be 5/. a rood – 10 loads (2 horse) per rood of stone – would be 9d [pence] a yard getting at Hipperholme quarry – would go 7 times a day to bottom of Allen Car – and 6 I should think to the Conery –

had just written the last 20 lines at 2 p.m. – then at accounts and memoranda till 2 40/.. having had small parcel from Mr Harper York continuing working drawing for Tower study Chimney piece and 2 pages civil letter – enclosing the account of Messieurs Sturgess that I had the other day – Booth had best send his accounts before Mr H– [Harper] comes – will be here on Wednesday the 18th instant –

‘Have you seen the inscriptive embellishment Mr Crossland has affixed to the external frieze of the large room at Northgate? I wrote to him about it, but instead of removing it he only changed the letters from black to gold – I told him if he had not had your sanction, I thought you would not approve of it and I suppose he thought golding the letters would make them more palatable’ –

As C– [Crossland] chooses to embellish his own way, I will let alone mine – I will do no more – neither paint nor anything – I conclude he suits the taste of his customers – I have not seen the place since my return – Had just so far at 2 50/.. – It seems to me that

3 1/12 shares at £440 = 1356.0.0

1 months interest at 4 per cent 4.10.0

1360.10.0

Expense 10/. per cent on purchase) monthly to be paid to Mr Ridsdale) common on selling suppose) 7.0.0

1353.10.0

3 1/12 shares at £431 = 1329.0.0

9 per cent x months Dividend 27.15.0

1356.5.0

no Expense save loss of) 1 months interest) 4.10.0

1352.5.0

wrote to Messieurs P– [Parker] and A– [Adam] tonight to say Sell immediately – had just written and determined thus at 3 5/.. –

from 3 1/4 to 4 10/.. wrote 3 pages to Mrs Duffin –

‘Shibden hall – Tuesday 11 December 1838. my dear Mrs Duffin – It was very good of you to write to me so soon – I am sorry to say, you may be sure I want you to do me some favour, or my own idle pen would not greet you again thus early – But I give you trouble, I must set down a word or two that concern me more at heart than all I have to ask for – I had no idea that yourself and Mr Duffin had suffered so much, – the one from idleness, the other from musing and anxiety – I do hope with all my spirit that we may recover our strength entirely, the utmost strength one can expect, at 68, and that even at a perceived twenty years later, a life so valued as that of our excellent friend, may still eke out for some while longer – I owe much to Mr Duffin – I know, and think of, am grateful for it – and, come when it may, the hour that must deprive us all of him who has done so much for us and many, you will not perhaps have truer sympathy from others than from me – But give my love, and kind regards, and say for me all you think will be most agreeable – I am glad Isabella received my letter – tell her with my love, it would give me great pleasure to hear from her; but I neither think of nor expect it – I should be glad to see her here – but ….. now for domestic wants and troubles – may I ask you to send Thomas to the Register offices (unless he knows somebody likely to suit us) to inquire for a footman – and may I ask you still more? to see the man, and do for us as you would do for yourself (if you dare dare so much) assured of thus thus doing us the greatest service – the wages and clothes you would give – the requisites you would require – honest, sober, willing to stay at home, good temporaril ‘if such good luck may be within reach – the house is still so unfinished, that a stranger would suppose all yet to do – It is my miserable task for oak-wainscot that is in fault – but in an eight-centenary house like this, I like not plaster and paper – we have hardly them to stir in – Think of us without maid, (left our Frenchwoman in Paris) footman, good cook or good kitchen maid – Yet we have roast necks of mutton, and cutlets, and the like, and keep body and soul together by dint of a certain good fellowship between the latter not dependent upon dainty eating – I am glad how Eliza Raine is so well – I have brought my papers from Paris, but have not had time to look into them – But for you, I do not think I should give myself one moments trouble on the subject of the eventual disposition of her property – I may not survive her – I cannot fancy Mrs Anne looking too old to have at least some reminder of prettiness! – I remember her only as she used to be – I wish I could do this kindness to all the world – Love to Mr Duffin and the Norcliffes, etc Ever affectionately yours AL– Anne Lister Miss Walker’s kind regards’ –

had just written so far at 4 35/.. – then wrote ‘Messieurs P– Parker and A– Adam solicitors H–x [Halifax]’ Shibden hall – Tuesday evening 11 x December 1838 –

‘Sir – I think you had best sell the navigation stock immediately – I am, Sir, etc etc etc A Lister’ –

A– [Ann] returned about 4 3/4 and staid with me a few minutes – then went downstairs and gave the working drawing of the Tower Chimney piece – out in the farm yard a few minutes with John – A– [Ann] sent for me – she wrote to Mrs William Henry Rawson to say Mrs Ann Walker much better and would be glad to see her any time –

dinner at 6 1/4 – coffee between 8 and 9 – skimmed over the paper – came upstairs at 10 35/.. – fine day – thick fog in the afternoon from between 3 and 4 – Fahrenheit 40° in my study at 10 35/.. p.m. – with A– [Ann] till after 12 –

Samuel Booth poorly – John took to the post this evening my letter to ‘Mrs Duffin Petergate York’ and my note to P– [Parker] and A– [Adam]

reference number: SH:7/ML/E/22/0079, SH:7/ML/E/22/0080

#annelistercodebreaker #annelister #annwalker #december1838

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sabraeal · 4 years

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With Ribs Laid Open

A companion to Creatures of a Brief Season, written for @inkybookwyrm who won 5th place in my 500 followers raffle! She requested some Obi backstory for the daemon AU, which I was only too happy to oblige. This fic has literally been a year in the making (2019 was a terrible year guys), and I’m happy I finally get to share it with all of you!

There are few moments that Od Ana considers precious, those few memories tucked into the secret place in her heart to be pulled out when the hour seems dark or the fog of misery hangs low. She and Obi have walked a long path together, but it has not been one of comforts, of quiet talks, of soft touches.

It has not been one of trust.

At least, not until now. Maybe all of this would be easier if that hadn’t changed.

“Did you know,” Shirayuki begins in that bright way of hers, eyes shining, “that birds have four-chambered hearts?”

She hadn’t. It had never occurred to her that such a thing might matter one way or the the other. After all, a blade stopped one from beating no matter how many it had, and that was the only metric that mattered.

But she didn’t say such things to Shirayuki. Anyone else-- and certainly Suzu-- she would have, but Shirayuki...

Never. Not when she tip-taps her slender finger right against the bone of her breast and makes the world light up like Longest Night.

“Usually it’s only mammals,” she continues, one dimple dinting her cheek. It’s a good thing Obi isn’t here; he thinks so loudly about how he wants to put his mouth to it. “But birds do too. Just like humans.”

It’s a significant point to make, she knows, but she can’t fathom why, not until Shirayuki casts her gaze toward where Obi stands, Little Ryuu perched on his fur-clad shoulders as he reaches for the top shelf, Perkunas’s pointed face staring up from his feet, and she says, “Your heart beats just like Obi’s.”

Od Ana thinks of that now as she spirals over the forests, feeling along the ache of her tether. Her own bird heart beats in her chest the same way Obi’s does, blood in, blood out, lub dub, lub dub. And though Shirayuki would huff to hear it, mincing politely through yet another the brain in the center of thought lecture, it feels the same pain his does too. The distress that thrums through her veins is as much his as it is her own.

She clicks her beak, annoyed. You’d think it’d make finding him easier.

Her eyesight is acute, enough to count the hairs on the rabbit dodging through the forest’s underbrush, but that amounts to less than nothing when Obi doesn’t want to be found.

Which he doesn’t. That part he’s made abundantly clear.

She swings lower, just above the trees now, relying less on her physical sense and more on the game of hot-cold she plays with the tether, triangulating her human by the amount of nonsense she can feel rattling her teeth as she gets closer.

Od Ana knows the rumors by now, how the guards and maids at Wistal whisper behind their hands when they see her in flight. Their tether’s broken, the most ignorant will say, they’re soulless, the both of them. The smarter ones will watch with fearful expressions as she swoops past, murmuring, I heard only those Samese witches have daemons like that.

It doesn’t bother her. When it had been just the two of them, clawing tooth and nail through the underground, those whispers had kept a fair share of blades in their sheaths.

She could only wish it did the same with wagging tongues and loose lips in the castle. Still, it changes nothing; their tether exists, as strong as any other, just...stretched.

A feature she regrets every time he pulls something like this.

She descends into the forest itself, gently spiraling through the canopy. He’s nearby, she can feel it, but Obi’s fond of hiding in plain sight, tucking himself into a branch or shouldering into a hollow. It takes hours to find him like that; it was a habit that had come in handy before they’d come here, but now--

Now he’s standing in the clearing, plain as day, still clad in his dress blacks.

Huh.

Her landing is ungainly, a series of hops as she tries to negotiate the forest floor, but it seems important to meet him as he is, to face him head on like a knight instead folded in the branches, like a shadow.

His back is to her, but she can tell by the set of his shoulders that he knows she’s here, that he’s been waiting. His placard is buttoned up to the chin, not a single one loose; she hardly recognizes him.

He’s no longer the starving boy he was. Od Ana doesn’t quite know what sort of man he’s becoming, but she likes it. Like the fact they’ve lived long enough to see it happen. “Two years is a long time.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t even twitch.

“A long time to miss someone,” she presses.

“Master will get used to it.” His voice is hollow, falling flat as he strains for his usual humor. “That’s what Sir said, anyway.”

Her feet shuffle in the soft fill beneath them. “Will you?”

His chin jerks, so stiff; a puppet tugged by its strings. He’d moved like that today when Shirayuki looked to him, expectant and resigned. She’d jumped to surprise when he’d tottered toward her on stilted legs, arms reaching out like a clock figure about to clang its cymbals more than a man trying to embrace a woman but--

Her chest has sparked like tinder when Shirayuki touched him, when her arms wrapped around him like he belonged.

Would he miss his mistress? She knows the answer as well as her own feathers. But still, still...

Some poisons need to be sucked out before they fester. It’s the same for truths, as well.

“He’ll ask you to go.” It’s superfluous to say it; their tether wouldn’t be all twisted up in knots if Obi didn’t know that. It’s not the melancholy that’s choking him, it’s the guilt.

“He will,” he says, too late, too light. There should be a joke to follow, a crack at the prince’s prowess, but--

There’s only silence.

Od Ana tires of these games, as if she is not another part of him, as if she is not acutely aware of how he feels. She just doesn’t know what he’s thinking. “What will you say?”

The silence stretches. “Obi?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, too quick.

She blinks. “Sorry?”

His head turns just so, the sun catching the gold in his eyes until they burn. “I promised I would never bring you so close again.”

The air burns when she sucks it into her lungs, each breath coming harder, shallower than the last. Wolves are big, bigger than anything she’s allowed herself to become, but it doesn’t solve her exhaustion, or the way the cuts on his legs sear into her own.

Blood still ran down his legs in fresh rivulets when they left the master’s compound, staunched only by the scraps of cloth she’d helped wrap around them with her dexterous monkey paws. If master had been willing to wound him so easily, over so little-- well, they did not have time for them to heal.

Slaves did not get shoes, at least not the ones that worked inside, but he’d wrapped old laundry around those too, three layers thick. The snow seeped in anyway, soaking the cloth through before the compound had even rolled over the horizon. That had given way to chills, and now a painful numbness the burns her own paws as she walks.

He lost the ability to walk a mile ago; he is human, and his body gives out long before his heart. She had to sneak under him as a mouse and change to a wolf to get him on her back, and now she wishes that she could be something bigger, something warmer instead. A polar bear, like the ones men said roamed the northern tundra, or maybe even one of the dogs witches keep, if she dared.

It’s all just dreams. He may be small and undersized, but so is she. Food may not nourish her as it does him, but there are other ways for a soul to starve. As much as hunger has stunted him, privation has stunted her as well.

“This is stupid,” she says finally, the words lost in the wind. A waste of breath, but anything is better than the silence, than listening to the thin strain of his breathing. “We should just go to the border. There are people there, that’s what the traders say. They’ll help us.”

“This is the only way,” he insists, stubborn, the words muffled in her fur. “People will just hand us straight back to the slave-catchers for coin.”

“Not in Clarines,” she huffs, “it’s different there.”

“People are the same everywhere.” His fingers clutch tightly into her pelt. “It’s the only way.”

“How will they even find us?” It’s the doubt that been nagging at her since they left, since he first mentioned what he might do if they ran. “How will they even know? It’s not as if they sit around this wood, is it? Just waiting around for little boys to wander out? They’re w--”

“I don’t know,” he admits, heart racing in her chest. “But they do.” His breath pulses out of him, ragged. “They have to.”

“What are you thinking?” Od Ana’s claws dig into the window’s sill, if only so that she might not sink them into his own neck. “You want to go! Or did you forget?”

Obi’s back stands to her, hunched as he packs his trunk. His movements are stiff, unnatural, like a puppet in a market show. “No, I didn’t forget.”

“Then why are we heading south?”

He stills, back straight as a poker, hands clenched around a pair of trousers. Even from where she sits she can see his jaw clench.

“You want to be with her.” The words are sharp as an arrow’s head; he flinches as they hit. “I can feel it.”

“I never said I didn’t.” He sighs, a tight hiss between his teeth as he drops the bundle in and reaches for another. “It’s just...complicated.”

Only because he insists on it. “Do you want to stay?”

“Yes.” He shakes his head, almost violent. “No. I don’t know. I don’t want to stay here. I want to-- to--”

Words may fail him, but his heart beats in her breast too. “You want to stay with Shirayuki.” At his pained expression, she adds, “And Zen.”

A breath pants from him chest, like she hit him. “Yes.”

Od Ana leaps from the sill, swooping to his bedpost. It’s strange now; bare months ago she had perched in the same place as Obi pried up the board that would hide their stash. They’d kept a rucksack in there, stuffed to the brim with whatever supplied they could pilfer without getting caught: food, clothes, things to trade. She’d spent weeks flying above the roofs, picking out the best routes to escape, which exits were guarded least. They’d been so certain it was only a matter of time.

And the food had gone bad. They’d replaced it that first time, and every week after, over and over until--

Until they stopped.

From where she sits she sees Obi too, hand clutching his shoulder, mouth bared in a rictus of pain, and with a chill she knows-- he’s scared.

Abruptly, Od Ana is too. They aren’t like this. They’ve never not had an escape ready. They aren’t the sort of people who do this, who stay. They aren’t the sort of people who have homes.

And yet there’s a seed that sits in his pocket, heavy against his thigh. Even if he never plants it, it’s already taken root.

They belong here. Or at least, they want to.

“It doesn’t feel right to go. Not right now.” Obi’s chin jerks to the side, every line of his face tortured. “Not when I feel this way, and Master...”

Her wings itch at the title. She’ll never understand how he can bear to say it, how he can apply it to any man and not have his skin crawl at the sound. How even after all that they’ve been through, he can give his leash-- his fealty to someone so fully.

Zen is a good man, a good prince, but still, still--

“It would be lying.” Obi’s lips press together, another white scar slashed across his face. “I can’t feel this way and go.”

Od Ana is loath to let any man stand above them again. “The prince is a good man, but you don’t owe him anything.” Her beak clicks, annoyed. “Especially not your heart.”

He huffs out a laugh. “That’s good advice.”

They say that daemons are man’s soul made flesh, an expression of their truest nature. Od Ana doesn’t often brook with scholars, doesn’t often delve into the philosophy of the spheres, but she’ll allow that she knows Obi better than he knows himself.

He closes the trunk, slipping leather through its catches, and offers it a pained smile. A quick series of raps completes the ritual, and he leaves, a spring to his step and a shadow to his shoulders he just can’t shake.

Od Ana knows what happens to good advice he’d given:

It goes unheard.

He’s been gone too long.

She’d been a fool to let him go. She should have dragged him to the border, kicking and screaming if she had to, finding anyone who would take them south, as far from the mountains as they could. It would have been better to take their chances with tradesmen and thieves, to risk discovery by the slave-catchers. Anything but letting him walk away from her.

He’d rolled off her back, staggering to his feet with skin more blue than bronze. He’d given her that cocky smile, the one that had seen them punished more often than she could count, and limped through the pines.

He’d left blood on the snow.

It’s gone now, if she’d thought to find it. The wind’s picked up and the storm with it; she can feel the way it stings his skin, the way the cold has sunk bone deep, but--

But she can’t see him. Only the mad flurry of snow and the muted green of the fir around them. And--

And, oh, she knows the moment he reaches the end of their tether.

It’s a game all children play, even those who slaved under master’s thumb: how far can you be from your daemon? One at a time they go, human children huddling as they watch their friend turn down a hall or disappear into the wood. They all shriek when the daemon does, then laugh, and then the game is over.

But it’s not playtime, not anymore.

It’s quick, a bee’s sting; he takes a step and shies back, breath caught in his throat. He’s gone farther, though. In their games he’d never stopped at the first bite, stretching the taffy of their tether until they were breathless, until black had threatened to eclipse their vision.

And he doesn’t shy from it now. His next step is deliberate, and the next.

It hurts more than the whip.

The muscle beneath her skin roils, each step a spasm as she rushes toward the wood, her only thought to close the gap, to end the pain--

She bounces off, as if the boundary were made of glass.

A second attempt sends a shock through her, enough to rattle her teeth, but it’s better than the pain of this separation, than the way her body is stretched to its utmost. She races, running her shoulder into the boundary, trying to find a place where the magic is weak, where it gives, but it’s no use, no use.

The pain is searing now, and she cannot hold her shape, losing the wolf to a mouse, the mouse to a butterfly--

She drops to the ground, pain too much to bear. Her shape will not stop, will not ease, and darkness rings her visions, gaining ground with each of his steps. But still, still, he will not stop, will not give up--

As her breath tears from her lungs, light leaving her vision, the last thing she feels is not the pain, not the cold, but, but--

The weight of settling.

There are no sailors on the deck tonight.

“You asked him up here, alone?” Od Ana asks, every word sharp as she shuffles on the rail. “Haven’t we been over this? You don’t need to do this. You don’t owe him--”

“It’s not about owing.” She expects the words to be scathing, to be angry, but instead they are oddly flat, almost resigned. “Or about what I need to do. I’m trying figure out...”

He lets out a long breath, hand clenched beside her. “I’m trying to figure out what I want to do.”

“Obi.”

Obi turns, but Od Ana only needs to drag her gaze up, watching warily as the prince of Clarines emerges from the lower berths.

“This is the first time you’ve called for me.” The prince’s mouth lifts at a corner, amused. Fondly so, Od Ana will give him. “You want to end the postponement, I hope.”

A luminous pair of eyes emerges behind him, followed by the sleek, golden coat of his lioness. Od Ana shifts, wings raising subtly as Feronia prowls closer, her gaze fixed to where she’s perched. She clicks her beak, agitated. They might be daemons, outside the savage circle of predator and prey, but a bird will never sit easy with a cat.

“Yes.” Obi’s voice is strong now, determined, and even though she cannot see his face, she feels his fondness for the man before them. “Actually, I already made my decision a long time ago.”

She hisses, annoyed. Now that’s news to her.

Obi gives her a quelling glance before he turns back to the rail, gaze fixing out toward the night’s horizon. “I told you there’s something I had to tell you myself.”

“Before you do that.” The prince keeps a careful distance, almost wary. “There’s something I’d like to ask you first.”

There’s a tension in the air that itches, that feels like the press of bars, of the snap of a trap. This is how it ever is with these royals; as clear as the air is one minute, the very next can be a test.

Od Ana tires of taking them.

“Obi, you...” The prince hesitates, and there is not a part of Obi’s body that is not tense, that is not braced for impact. “...Like me, don’t you?”

“Yes.” The tension snaps like a whip’s crack, Obi’s mouth cocked in a grin.

“T-that was quick!” Zen’s face flushes cherry red, and oh, he should have known better than to ask Obi about what he likes. “Though it’s-- fine, I guess.”

Obi tilts his head, grin easy. “Is that all?”

Zen goes still, only the wind moving him, and the air is so thick she could choke on it, so heavy with expectation that she wishes Obi could turn to a bird as well, and they could fly from here--

“What about Shirayuki?”

Lie, she wills, but oh, she knows that smile, knows that Obi never hesitates to stick the knife even, even when it’s his own back--

“Yes,” Obi says, easy as a breath. “I love Miss.”

He’s never known pain like this.

Master has kept him hungry, has kept him tired, has beaten him until he’s little more than a bruise, but none of it has ever left him so empty as this, so alone. His stomach churns, boiling at a ceaseless roil as he stumbles toward the boundary. It’s a miracle he’s come so far on his feet, but they are too numb to warn him of the root he turns his ankle on, and he sprawls, face-first, on the thick snow beneath him.

He won’t make it. He’s come so close to death before, only for fate to save him for another day, but now, now--

His luck runs out.

He can’t feel her. He can’t feel her.

Maybe he’s already dead.

No, it can’t be. His breath rasps out of his lungs, misting on the air as he drags himself forward. Death wouldn’t hurt as much as this.

There’s no way to know when he’s passed the boundary, if he’s past it. When he’d entered, it’d been like walking through a cobweb in the dark, a faint shiver across his skin, but coming out--

Who knows. He no longer has her, and every tree looks like another.

He throws himself to his back, squinting up into the snow, into the dregs of the storm, and sees only endless gray. His breath fogs above him, but it’s weak, thready. One of these will be his last.

“Please,” he calls out, even though it’s no more than a whisper. “Please.”

The only answer is his own echo, lost in the wood.

She had been right. She always was. There was no way for them to know where he is, no way for them to even know he took this test. He’d taken rumor for reality, and now he’ll die as he never lived: alone.

A dark shadow circles overhead, wings nearly blotting out what light falls from the sky, and oh, he’s heard of this too. Birds circling above a wounded animals, waiting for them to die so their feast might be fresh. It makes sense, in the end; he’s only ever been an animal, never a boy. Maybe the scavengers will find some satisfaction in him, the way his master never had.

His stomach growls, and he can’t help it, he laughs. More likely they’ll go hungry picking his bones.

It drops closer, closer, until something impossibly huge soars over him, landing with a soft crush in the snow.

He rolls, curious to the last. He is not disappointed.

It’s looms before him on the path, the size of a small child, feathers glimmering in the bare light of the forest. Not a single one is the same color, dappled in black and whites, and browns and golds, and as it breathes its topography changes. It meets his eyes, just as gold as his own, and sweeps open its wings to the height of a man.

It’s majestic. He’s blessed to have it as his last sight on this earth.

It drops what it carries in its beak, splattering crimson across the fresh snow. He squints to see it, a large body and long ears: a rabbit carcass. It’s so fresh it still steams in the air.

He stares, mouth salivating, and wonders if the gods mean to mock him as well as bless him with this feast for crows.

“Look,” she says, snapping her beak in triumph. “I can hunt for you now!”

His breath stops in his chest, and-- and yes, he feels her, their tether stretched like a muscle over-used. “It’s you.”

She cocks her head, and in her eyes, humor shines. “Who else would come to you here?”

He’d thought himself near death, on his last legs, but somehow he stands, somehow he runs to her, throwing his arms around her warm body. “You’re so big.”

“Then you best get tall to match,” she teases, wings fluttering around them. Already he feels more alive than he has in days, in years. This is his daemon, and she is glorious. “I won’t have people laughing at me tipping you over when I perch.”

He picks up the carcass, finger numb. “Then I guess you’ll need--”

His words catch in his throat as he sees them, the men first, impossibly giant dogs at their hips, and then the red-wrapped figured next to them.

“--more rabbits,” he finishes weakly. They were here. They had been found.

One of the red women step forward, face utterly obscured by her scarves.

“Congratulations,” she says, voice ageless, “you have passed.”

The porcelain is chill against Obi’s fingers; it shocks him after all this time to feel it, to have bare hands. But there is no other way he can come to her, not now, not when she said, I have a feeling I’ll see you there, and this is his answer.

“You could have worn gloves,” Od Ana snips, shuffling on the step next to him. “It’s cold out.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t.”

Hidden hands have something to hide, and for once, he isn’t that man. Not with her. Not with what he needs to say.

“If you’d just done it last night it would already be over,” she continues, as if he hadn’t spoken at all. Od’s greatest talent by far is ignoring him. “And we’d be inside.”

“You have feathers.” He turns the mask over in his fingers. His hands may need to hide nothing, but his face always says too much in front of her. “You’re warm enough.”

“Shows what you know.” She clicks her beak, like she’s thinking about crunching one of his fingers. “I--”

“Last night it was snowing, I think--”

Her voice chimes like bells down the hall, and he nearly fumbles the mask trying to get it up, to get it to hide his face.

“--so now it’s completely white outside--”

He knows the moment she sees him, her breath catching so loudly that it nearly echoes in the arcade, and oh, he had worried shouldn’t wouldn’t recognize him even if he’s worn this fancy get up before, but no, no--

His miss would know him anywhere.

“Little Ryuu.” It’s so much safer to talk to him than to Miss, than to look anywhere near her while his eyes sting. “Did you shut the windows?”

“Mm,” he hums, but it’s lost in the way Miss shouts, “Obi!”

The name sings through him, from his chest to his toes and back, and even though it’s not his, it suddenly feels like it is, like--

Like he’s home.

His fingers tug at the cord, and he turns less for drama, and more because taking any moment longer to see her is torture, like being in that forest all over again, alone and in agony.

“Mistress,” he says, watching the way she glows, feeling the way he lights back, “I drifted in with the snow.”

#obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #Creatures of a Brief Season #daemon au #this was so incredibly fun to write #and joanna had actually been needling me about it for a while #so i'm glad I finally got a chance to put it to page

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nie7027 · 5 years

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DadReigenweek 6: Tea | Hobbies

Again, sorry for not posting anything yesterday but i had another exam to study for (someone free me from this)

Heres day 6: tea? hobbies? A little bit of both again with Tome this time.

I’ll post tomorrow day 7: free day and if you have followed my stories so far you know it’s Ritsu’s turn (so if someone has any idea what should i write hit me up because i have no idea what to do for it)

I hope you enjoy it and please ignore the fact i know nothing about correctly preparing tea (i literally failed my japanese exams not because i dint understand them but because i had no idea of how tto prepare tead and there was a concerning amount of question related to that)

Tea and Hobbies

“TOME” Reigen shrieked from the kitchenette where he was searching for a towel to move the keetle to the counter without burning himself

“What?” she replied from her spot n the couch, not taking her eyes off her handheld videogame.

“YOU FORGOT TO TURN THE STOVE OFF AGAIN””

“What??” she said finally standing and poking her head through the doorframe “I did not-uuhh”

Reigen, after finally finding a towel, was holding an empty keetle. The tea had long evaporated.

“What are we going to serve our clients now?” Reigen lamented pinching the bridge of his nose

“We can make more…” Tome said carefully. she didn’t undertand why Reigen was making such a big deal out of this.

“Tome, this is the fourth time this week” he then pointed to the black stains that were starting to form at the kettles sides “at this rate it’ll become useless and we can’t afford to buy a new one every week. Why did you even use the highest flame?”

“I didn’t know…” Tome admitted and it was true, actually this was the first time she had to prepare tea “and you said you wanted to preserve the tea hot for any customer that might walk in”

“I said hot, not scalding! and for that you just need to heat it with a small flame” he turned to the stove and showed her how to adjust the flame until he seemed it appropriately “Like this”

“And you don’t even have to leave it like that all day! You could raise the flames a little, leave it there some minutes while I talk with the customers and with that would be enough”

Tome firmly nodded actually payin attention to Reigen’s words “I’ll make sure to do that next time”

“You better do” Reigen grimaced when a dark thought crossed his mind “I just hope the bills don’t come too high this month”

Tome actually gulped at that “You can take it from my pay…”

Reigen looked away keenly aware of how little he paid her “Yeah...it won’t be enough” he said without thinking.

He wasn’t expecting to see troubled expression on Tome’s face when he turned to face her again “Hey! What’s wrong?”

“I...It’s wasn’t my intention to cause you this much trouble.” she muttered “ You probably would prefer Mob being here, I bet he knows how to make some dumb tea”

Reigen sighed “Mod has done this for years, of course he knows how to make tea..but that’s the least of the problems. It’s really dangerous to leave the stove on unsupervised, specially with the highest flame and while you are alone. Haven’t your parents told you this?”

Tome shaked her head and Reigen had to sigh again. Between Teru, Shou, himself and now Tome he was starting to believe the Kageyamas were the only good parents in this world.

“Well now you know” He grabbed Tome by her shoulder and making sure the keetle had cooled down he handed it to Tome "Now go wash it while i do some actual work here. and make sure you get all the burnt leaves off from it. We don't want to serve that tastes bad to our future clients"

He left Tome to wash her mess in the kitchenette and headed to office main room where he caught sight of Tome’s forgotten videogame.

She probably forgot the tea playing that thing. Reigen couldn't understood how she could get so immersed in that thing.

Actually, he thought grabbing the small device and looking at it, he had never understood what was so entertaining of these things.

Except for his brief involvement while trying to beat that one spirit, he had never played videogames. He was more of a outdoors type of guy.

While his classmates and everyone got excited talking about ‘The legend of Mario’ and ‘the pokey men’ he...actually now that he thought about it it was probably because he didn’t have friends who invited him over to play…STILL Serizawa semed to like them too and Reigen doubted he had some else to play with.

What was so interesting about these things??

Reigen had no idea and he was about to leave the game when suddenly it slipped of his hands (damn sweaty hands) and in his haste to catch it he accidentally pressed a button.

The game returned to life, its lively sounds and colourful animations contrasting with the horror Reigen felt when he saw the character Tome was playing fall of a platform to his absolute demise and the message “Game Over” appearing on the screen while a sad music played.

Tome was going to kill him

As quickly as he could he selected the “play again” option but everything was wrong. Reigen could swore the landscape where the character appeared didn’t look like the one Tome had been and if he noticed then she absolutely would.

Reigen didn’t have another choice. He would have to play it and return the character to where it had been before Tome finished washing the dishes.

He had beaten that videogame’s spirit. How difficult could it be?

Very apparently.

Figuring the mechanics of the game and each button’s function hadn’t been difficult, the problem arised when the first enemy showed and in a quick movement killed Reigen’s character, the game over screen appearing again.

Reigen selected the “play again” option played one more time. He died.

By the fifth time he was able to defeat the enemy with the help of some green potion he found but it wan’t enough for the wave of enemy that approached him near the bridge.

He was starting to get used to “Game over” screen but that wouldn’t do, he was nowhere near the scenery Tome had previously been.

Reigen frowned, if he was going to do this he needed to find more of those useful green potions and once he decided he had enough he marched back to bridge and fough the swarm of enemies, barely surviving.

There was another wave but from the previous victory Reigen had learned a new move and gained some ‘experience points’ which greatly helped him this time.

He kept advancing, crossing towns and climbing mountains, fighting off nastier enemies and talking with the random villagers he found, some of them giving him good tips.

It had been a while since he died but he didn’t notice until he entered a castle that vaguely looked familiar and defeated the monster thus gaining the the holier sword, and enhanced version of the one he had.

Reigen celebrated, pumping a fist on the air but was interrumpting by someone clearing their throat.

“I thought you said you had work to do” a smug Tome said watching him from above her handheld game.

With a whiplash Reigen returned to reality.

Now it was Reigen’s turn to clear his throat “Of course I am working! THis was just...uhh- err”

Reigen didn’t have to think in what to say because Tome’s eyes fell to the screen and lightened “You won the Holy Sword??” she said pointing at the game “Wow, I am impressed! Have you already rescued your friend?”

“My friend?!”

“Yeah, the one who was kidnapped! “she said excitedly “With that sword you can go to the Dead’s forest now”

“I don’t know where the Dead Forest is”

“Duh, you have to go and ask the old wise man”

“The old wise man?”

“Yeah! You had to have encountered him already? Big beard? Lives at the side of the second town-”

“Oh! the one who sold me 10 potions?”

“10 potions?? No, he sells you-YOU CHOSE THE POTIONS INSTEAD OF THE SHIELD? “ Tome shaked her head and pinched the bridge of her nose “Alright, we can work with that. You at least asked him to teach you how to use a bow”

“Of course I did! Who do you take me for?”

“Good”

Reigen wasn’t expecting to learn more from Tome than she did from him that day. But at least they had something to talk about with Serizawa the next day.

#dadreigenweek2019 #mob psycho 100 #reigen arataka #kurata tome #you cant tell me reigen wont fall for the false sense of archievement games give you #tome strikes me as the kind of person who doesnt know everyday stuff you are supposed to know like cooking #she is a kid so it makes sense but she should know something #i dont think she has bad parents just either they leave her alone too much time or enable her a little too much #mp100 #nie's writing

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whatdoesshedotothem · 3 years

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Wednesday 4 July 1838

6 ¾

10 40

were to have been off at 8 – could not get our passport till 9 – very fine morning – breakfast at 8 ¼ left Josephine – took George, and A- and I (with merely our night things, a change of linen and our journal books in one sac de nuit) off at 9 50 in a calêche and 3 horses for St. Jean de Luz having our passport visaed for Spain at the French mairie, and at our own consulate and that of Spain – A- and I both in good spirits – A- had taken of letter paper to date to her sister from St. Sebastien – excellent road – very pretty interesting drive – the mountains fine on our left and in less than an hour about 10 ¾ the sea fine on our right – at 11 20 passed the poste aux chevaux at Bidart (1 ½ poste) and Tamarisk hedges – at St. Jean de Luz (1 ½ p. more) chez M. Junca, maitre de poste aux chevaux, hotel de la poste, at 12 50 – gave him the letter from our host M. Theodore Détroyat à Bayonne, begged him to arrange all about our passport – not safe to go by land – must go by a sea – in a steamer if there happened to be one – if not there might be a boat going – or we might hire one – M. Junca un petit homme vif – sent off a woman to see about a boat – the boats not here, but ½ hour off – ordered a mutton cutlet for A- and she having

SH:7/ML/E/21/0139

fastened her door, I went into the nice little town for ¼ hour – singular church – one large lofty vaulted space – the large organ and large organ-loft to contain the clergy at the west end and the high altar in a richly-covered gilded bay or apse at the east end – 3 oak ballustred oak-pillar supported galleries on each side – the 1st gallery perhaps 5 yards from the ground (the floor boarded) and the 2 above about 4 yards each from the lower gallery and from each other and about 2 or 3 yards perhaps from the square of the roof – called at the poste aux letters – the courier goes Fridays and Tuesdays but now goes by land – so that the idea of crossing with the courier is at an end – on my returning found A- had put on stocking for fear of monsieur how unlucky on my return A- had had her cutlet, and M. Junca had heard of a Patron de Chaloupe (Captain of a boat) just going to start for St. Sebastian with a little cargo and would return on Friday – ended by agreeing to give him 50/. for a boat to ourselves to return with us tomorrow or if we chose to stay till Friday to give him 55/. – Corrigo [or Conigo] Eguia, Patron de Chaloupe a Spaniard but très honnete [honnête ] homme that M. Junca knew well and could count upon – we could not be better – to be ready in ½ hour – A- and I walked down to the church to spend the time there – she made a little sketch of the exterior while I stood by watching a man making linen-listing sandal-soles, and a woman sitting by him serving on the bit of upper-linen (coarse string stitched together by button-hole stitch) to cover the toes – Mr. Junca came to see us embark on the quai in the grande place –

Embark at St. Jean de Luz

written out Monday eight

on one side the house where the d. of Wellington spent 2 or 3 months – on another the old chateau like house while Louis xvi. lodged and on another the house where the infante of Spain his bride Marie Thérèse lodged – A- seeing no rowers hoped there were rowers – yes! four – she had not thought the boat was so small (a little chaloupe about the size of a Scarbro’ cobble) – however we embarked at 2 – there is always a little surf at the entrance of the little harbour – I saw A- was nervous – our little sail made us lean a little on one side every now and then and there was little bit of up and down – A- grasped my hand – said she could not bear it – would return – there was no danger – the afternoon was beautiful – the little wind or air was in our favour and it was a pity poor A-‘s nerves were not stronger – but I saw she was right to return – our captain could only speak Spanish – I had difficulty in making him understand that he must put in at Choco (the fort of ) I really could not make him understand to turn back – but by dint of ‘timore – ella – morire – io –pagare – intrate [rientrate]’ pointing to the fort of Socoa (pronounced as if Choco (tschoco)) I got him to put in there – there was no time to deliberate – besides our 4 rowers we had a stripling boy and a lad about 12 or 13 on board – left the latter to go back with A- and carry her cloak and the travelling bag – took out merely my night-chemise and cap and 50 francs and left all the rest with A- except my umbrella and parasol and 2 cloaks – asked her if she would like me not to go – said if she had least wish for me to stay, I would – no! she had rather I went – in 5 minutes poor A- was landed, and left, and I was re-embarked and off at 2 35 – In a moment I had lost sight of her – and I was pitching in the bay of [?] in a small open boat with a Spanish smuggler (for such is Corrigo) and 3 Spanish rowers and one old French basque rower and my servant George! – about ½ dozen words of French were all our crew could muster and about as Many English (‘good bye – very quick’) – in 40 minutes (at 3 ¼) Andaye (pronounced Andāiah) in sight (a village or little town – with a little tower (church tower or steeple?) and at 3 35 lost sight of Fontarabia (Fontarrābbĭa) [Hondarribia? ]nearer the sea than Andaye and on high ground – looking like a convent, or fort, or what? Irun (could hardly distinguish the building) forms the apex of the triangle between the two (at Andaye and Fontaribia) at the foot of the high 3 or 4 pointed torso or crest of mountain that is so striking from the top of Bayonne cathedral – at 3 35 re-embarked at Socoa – in 40 minutes (3 ¼) Andaye in sight – lost sight of Fontarabia at 3 35 – and ten minutes before this had had the 1st distant glimpse of St. Sebastian or rather the high tower (fort) on the top of the hill on the west of the harbour – the tower of Biarrits’ (pronounced Bēeăris) closes the wide bay towards Bayonne – and the rocky pointe de Figuieras [Figueres?] shuts out the embouchure of the Bidassoa (on which are Andaye and Fontaribia) – Sick at 5 20 – fine as is the afternoon and I quite warm the sea here seems to me as swelling as it was the night we went to Antwerp – land at 6 ¼ - having passed the citadel-rock and high conical little rock doubled the island and entered the harbour to the westwards of it between it and the tower fort – 2 English steamers in the service of the queen of Spain lying at anchor – [?] up to the jetties under the west side of the town, and landed by stairs so narrow, deep, and rough one could hardly get up – at the Fonda (n°5 Plaza ricja (place vielle) reuve Inciarte) in 10 minutes at 6 35 – queer dirty looking place Corrigo introduced me to the especial care of the people – I could not tell which was the mistress – several women sat together at a large table full of washed but apparently ungot up linen – the daughter (Luisa) could speak French – asked her to send someone with me to see the town and citadel, and to let me have dinner – she said she would go with me herself and sent a woman to shew me my room – it was au 3me but lofty, and large enough – one common chair and ditto table and ditto bedstead, no curtains – no look of comfort – I was down again among the women in a few minutes but had to wait till young lady was dressed (1/2 hour) when she and Madama appeared in their mantillas quite dressed for promenade – the old lady was one who had been driven from the country – lost all she had and come into the ville, and was at the Fonda I could not make out on what terms – but the young lady could not trust herself with me and George without a madama – I said I was sorry they had made so much toilette and that I really was ashamed of my travelling costume – However the young lady aetatis 18 looked very well pleased and out we sallied – to the church – one large lofty domed space unbroken by anything save the large organ and its large loft at the west end – the clergy (now 21) sat or officiated the organ loft – the bay or apse of the high altar one mass of gilt carving – and a lessen altar on each side of it, transept-wise – imposing looking interior – large odd heavy old plain building outside with 2 low west towers – then to the citadel very few soldiers – saw perhaps a dozen – several people walking along the traverse walks along the rocky hill side – towards the sea one or 2 tombs – that and among 2 [?] of Sir Oliver de Lancy railed off – I went up to read the inscriptions but a solider called me back – not allowed to go! the sea-view very fine from one side – the tower as if laid down upon a map on the other – the grand place (arcaded) and another place and one or 2 straight streets all round round them seemed to compose the ville – 3 convents destroyed by the carlists (the girl said) and houses in all directions unroofed

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and made unhabitable by them (for fear of xtians should take shelter in them) gave all around a look of ruin – one whole village just on this side the river on the road to Hernani quite destroyed – could go very safely to Hernani now – no carlists between here and there – could also go to Passages – but no farther – asked the girl to get me a guide to Hernani in the morning – determined to be off at 6 and back in time to breakfast and embark at 11 – out from 7 5 to about before 9 when I had seen all there was to see – had to wait a little for dinner – they seemed to expect George to dine with me, but on my saying it was not selon [?] habitude, he fined in the kitchen or somewhere, and I told the young Louisa to come and sit by me or I should be triste – I had soup, ham, chicken and potatoes – I dined on the 1st and a little cheese and bread, nothing else looking tolerable – finding no chance of a guide who could speak word of anything but Spanish took a man to shew me the way (not far) and off about 9 20 to our consul – not at home – would return at 11 to supper – this would not do – at the moment 2 English officers went upstairs – spoke to one them – said what I was come for, and begged to have a solider to accompany me in the morning – the officer very civil – Lieutenant of the artillery as I afterwards found – promised me a solider at 6 tomorrow am – returned to the fonda and went upstairs with the fille to see my bed prepared – ready by 9 ¾ - very fine day – doubted for a moment whether to undress – my sheets not feeling very dry – took them off

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lenific · 6 years

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A Season Of Miracles

@nropay asked Emma & Gold, “Are you really going to do that on Christmas?”

Set in Makes Three. Ao3 link.

—

One of the many drawbacks of Storybrooke was that he couldn’t avoid a stubborn princess by dint of magicking himself - or, more likely, the girl - away to distant parts. Even Belle, much as he’d loved her, had occasionally been banished to her library when Rumpelstiltskin couldn’t make time for her.

(The difference being that when Belle tracked him down again, and she often did, he didn’t really mind.)

Now, however, there was no avoiding Miss Swan as she stood between him and the door of his own shop. Acquainted with that obstinate tilt of her chin after countless meetings with her father in their summer palace, Rumpelstiltskin resigned himself to a conversation - wheels already turning to see how to use this development to push the Savior in the right direction.

At least he had the advantage of throwing the first salvo.

“Ah, come to tell me you’re finished with the weekly report before closing time? What a pleasant surprise.”

Emma stood taller, unaware that opponents of bigger size had ceased to be a concern for Rumpelstiltskin centuries ago, and crossed her arms over her chest. “You know why I’m here, Gold.”

He met her glare with a raised eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I just came from Mary Margaret’s.” Her mouth flattened. “Honestly, Gold. You’re not this much of a hard-ass.”

He blanked his features, allowing none of his own distaste for the role the curse had imposed on him. Regina might have granted him financial security and the status of a rich man in a small town, but she had made sure to cut him off all the tenuous alliances Belle had convinced him to build in the year before the curse was cast. Charming and his wife - separated as they were in this world - counted among Mr. Gold’s most frequent victims. “Care to elucidate, Miss Swan?”

Their eyes met, hers shining with the thirst for justice that ran in her blood, while he kept his gaze clear of anything that wasn’t a landlord secure of his rights within a contractual relationship with a tenant - particularly one who’d missed two payments in a row.

Never mind that Mary Margaret hadn’t been able to catch up in twenty-eight years.

At last Emma broke the silent battle of wills. “Look, I know you love and breathe formality, but you’ve granted an extension at least once in your lifetime.”

He tightened his lips, aware of her meaning. “And I got a hard-working housekeeper for my trouble,” he replied, tightening his grip on the handle of his cane at the thought of the maddeningly distant woman Belle had become under the curse. With a scoff, he returned his thoughts to the matter at hand. “Surely you’re not suggesting I offer Miss Blanchard a similar deal? If I gave a job to every person who owed me money… That’s just poor business sense, Miss Swan.”

“Surely,” she replied, imitating his patronizing tone, “you can see that Mary Margaret is nothing like the other people you’ve sent me after. She doesn’t drink; she doesn’t gamble; she certainly isn’t a penny-pincher with less brains than what God gave a mouse…” She took a deep breath, shaking off the annoyance of her encounter with the cursed version of Midas, and continued, “Mary Margaret is a primary school teacher, for God’s sake, and a damn good one from what Henry tells me.”

“Then teaching is truly a dreadful career, if she can’t afford to pay her rent.”

Emma glanced down, hunching her shoulders guiltily for a second before she straightened again. “Yeah, well. Somehow the bank got wind that a minor had used her credit card, and even more strangely, a clause has popped up that blocks her from using it until the situation clears up.” She huffed with exasperation. “Regina isn’t helping out.”

“I’m shocked,” Rumpelstiltskin muttered, though it was obvious to both that he wasn’t. “However, that makes no difference to me.”

Her anger made a swift return, but Rumpelstiltskin still was shocked to see a thread of disappointment in her manner. She had expected him to offer a deal, he realized. Unlike her parents, Emma didn’t see a problem in his penchant for trading his help for something of equal value; a side-effect of growing up in a world where having strings attached to a favor was the norm.

“Come on, Gold,” she insisted. “You can’t be looking forward to handing out an eviction notice, not to Mary Margaret. You’re not that cold-hearted.”

He counted it as a personal triumph that she honestly believed that, even after everything she must have heard about him in town. Belle would be proud of the lengths he’d gone to, to earn a measure of the Savior’s trust.

“I don’t,” he agreed, meeting her eye and letting her gauge his sincerity. “However,” he continued when she exhaled, unable to give her the easy solution she wanted since showing lenience to Miss Blanchard after twenty-eight years of apathy would rile up Regina and point her closer to the discovery of his true identity, “there is still a contract signed in Miss Blanchard’s own hand.”

“A reprieve-”

“Would be a fool’s choice. The next thing I know, I’ll have a line of people outside asking for the same.” He raised a hand to stop her reply, shading his voice with a hint of friendliness. “Miss Swan, you are a smart woman; you have lived in Storybrooke long enough, and most of that time has been spent chasing down the more outstanding debtors and hearing them whine about how they spent the money they owed me. You, more than anyone, know how many people would happily cheat me off my payments. Can you tell me in all honesty that I’m wrong?”

Emma pursed her lips. “No one actually needs to know,” she muttered.

Rumpelstiltskin chuckled. The odds of any version of Snow White keeping a secret were on par with her daughter believing in magic without proof. “I understand Miss Blanchard is your friend,” he said, shaking his head, “but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

“Are you really going to do this on Christmas?” At his stare, she shrugged. “With only three days to go, you might as well.”

“Your friend will be better served by using those days to pack and move on, so she can spend Christmas Eve in her new home. A cheaper one.” No need to tell Emma how her mother had spent decades moving from one small, ill-fitted apartment to the next, always with one foot on the street. “Now, if you excuse me-” he waved at Emma to stand aside- “I really can’t afford to waste more time.”

Unsurprisingly, the girl didn’t move. “Come on, Gold. You’ve helped me before, and I have the feeling you enjoy thwarting Regina even more than Henry does.” He couldn’t help the curl of his lips at that understatement, and Emma pounced on his apparent flash of good mood. “See? Anyone can see that evicting Mary Margaret will make Regina happy. For whatever perverse reason, she’s decided that Mary Margaret is the source of her troubles, like I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her!”

That twist of phrase, so true in the most literal of senses, wrung out a chuckle from deep in his chest.

His amusement gave Emma new wings. “Help me out here, Gold. Please.”

He couldn’t give her more than the barest hint. The idea itself had be her own initiative, or he’d leave himself open to Regina’s scrutiny when she came sniffing at Snow White’s change of luck. “I’m sorry, Miss Swan,” he said, locking gazes with her, “as I told you before, there is nothing I can do.”

He saw her eyes widen, taking in his meaning. “But what can I possibly…?”

Rumpelstiltskin tilted his head, taking advantage of her distraction to ease past her. “I have no idea what you mean,” he told her, and could tell by her suspicious expression that she wasn’t buying that. She opened her mouth to question him further, but he was already letting himself through the door. “Have a good night, Miss Swan!”

Emma didn’t chase after him, which prompted a sigh of relief. The last thing he needed was a public argument, but he’d wagered that the suggestion that she could act in Mary Margaret’s defense would keep her in place as she worked it out.

If all went well, mother and daughter would be living under the same roof for the first time in their lives. It was a long shot, but Emma building stronger ties within Storybrooke might hasten the process of her accepting her quest; and even if it didn’t…

Well.

It still would give Snow White more of an insight of her adult daughter, by the time the curse had broken. Speaking as a parent who longed to reunite with his own child, Rumpelstiltskin thought it was an acceptable exchange for twenty-eight years of making Miss Blanchard miserable every end of the month.

Merry Christmas, Your Majesty.

And if Mr. Gold chose the long route to reach Miss Blanchard’s apartment, and perhaps stopped by a store or two to look for appropriate gifts for a young, beautiful woman and her three-year-old child… Well, it was the season for miracles after all, right?

The End 25/12/17

#ar: makes three #ch: rumpelstiltskin #ch: emma swan #minor rumbelle

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martian-m · 7 years

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Feline

Pairing: Cheryl Blossom x reader Word count: 2,624 A/N: Requested by anon! hiya anon! hope you enjoy this fic hihu

MY REQUESTS ARE OPEN UNTIL JUNE 2 YO

It’s been exactly five years right now, August 14, 2024, since me and Cheryl graduated from NYU school of Law while also passing the New York bar exam which in lieu certified us into being lawyers. Talk about goals right? Well, currently we are in our mid-twenties, 25, and have been together for the longest time – 7 years. No, we are not married yet. Just to give a brief recap, we started dating by Junior year after the fiasco of finding out the killer of Jason Blossom, my best friend and brother of Cher. ((She hates that nickname if anyone else says it, but if it’s only me then she can tolerate it))

I walk down the sidewalk of the city that never sleeps, New York, in my tailor-fit suit, minding my own business and trying to come up with a plan that would make our flat/living space livelier. After 5 minutes of trying in vain to come up with an idea, I dialed Veronica’s number. ‘Riiiing’ ‘Riiiing’ ‘Rii – “This is Mrs. Veronica Cooper-Lodge speaking,”

“Hey V, it’s (Y/N)” “(Y/N)!! BETTY HUN, (Y/N)’S ON THE PHONE WITH ME” Veronica yelled away from the phone. *voice in the background* “shush V, you’re gonna wake up Xavier” “sorry, but come over here!!” Veronica replied half whispering and half yelling. “Hello (Y/N), aka Godmother of Xavier, oh thank you by the way for his mini batman costume, he loves it soooo much!” Betty finally replied through the phone as I was placed in speaker mode. “No problem Betts, anything for my nephew. Anyway, I need your advice guys” I replied with a sigh. As soon as you launch into your dilemma with Cheryl wanting your living space to be livelier and “lacks a certain element”, you sigh running your hand through your hair as you finish updating V&B on the happenings between you and Cheryl, “so, what do you guys think?” “buy her flowers?” Betty says. “no, no…ummm…do you guys have a pet? Veronica asked. “no, we don’t have. Why??” I replied slightly confused why the subject suddenly changed. “that’s it!!! Get a pet!..but what pet though….” Veronica asked loudly. “maybe a cat? Since they poop in their own sandbox and are somewhat trained, not that I have anything against dogs.” Betty suggested. “not because she digs pussy as well?” Veronica asked while laughing “oh my god Ronnie” Betty commented while laughing at the crude joke as you could hear an audible slap through the phone. “you guys always crack me up at the same time are super helpful, I miss you all.” “aw (Y/N), we miss you too. You and Cheryl should come by and visit us! Archie, Val, Teresa, and Juggie are coming by the end of August and I’m absolutely sure Xavier would be excited to see you both” Betty replied. “You mean he’d be excited to see Cheryl?”, I replied with amusement evident in my voice. “Aw (Y/N) of course he’d be excited to see you too!” Veronica replied while giggling. “Alright, alright. We’ll be sure to visit you three in California by the end of August.” I replied as I lightly chuckled. “ see you soon (Y/N)!” Betty replied. “YEAH AND GET THE PUSSYCA-“ Veronica replied loudly as Betty hit the end call button.

Shaking my head at the antics of my childhood friends, I immediately searched for the nearest pet shop so I could adopt a pet feline in need of a home. I am now a woman on a mission. [after 5 hours] After looking at the various cats for adoption, I took in this 8 month old munchkin cat that immediately came up to me as I stepped into the area for the cats to interact with the possibility of being adopted. A lot of them shied away from me but this one cat, named Tibby, came up to me to smell my loafers and slacks until she rubbed her whole body on my leg. ‘I need a 5 lint removers….’ as I thought to myself, but as she looked up to me I instantly melted seeing her hazel – almost amber eyes. Let’s just say I instantly adopted her and went on a shopping spree for all the cat necessities.

As I drove back to the flat, I let out Tibby to nestle on my lap while I was driving. I could already tell that this cat was gonna be spoiled and pampered all the time, by me. I just hope Cheryl will love her as much as I already do. Biting my lip I speed dialed Cheryl and connected the call to my Bluetooth earpiece since it was later than usual that I came home. Knowing she would start to worry, flood me with texts, and call nonstop if I dint contact her first. The first ring didn’t even get through as she answered the call immediately, “Riiii- Baby? Where are you?? Are you okay?? Are you on your wa-“ Cheryl rambled on as worry flooded her voice. “Hey hey. Babe, I’m totally fine. Yes, I’m driving, using my earpiece mind you and I’m on my way home. I just went shopping for something both of us would maybe find joy in?” I cut her off to somewhat relieve her from worrying too much. After Jason’s death, she became more worried than usual, it isn’t bad or anything, I find it quite endearing. “oh God. That’s great to hear. Oh? What did you get??” Relief immediately flooded her voice. “you’re gonna find out soon as I get home” I replied adding a tune to the words as a teased her, knowing she loves surprises. “you’re such a tease (Y/N). I’m cooking dinnerrrr~ you better come home soon!” Cheryl replied amusement apparent in her voice. “yes love, I’m actually 5 minutes away. Just gonna park the car and head up to you. I love you! See you!” I somewhat hastily replied as Tibby started yawn and meow at the same time as to reaching up my earpiece. “I love you too, baby. See you!” Appearing to not notice my hurried reply, she replied cheerily. I always let her end the call. A soon as she did, I let out a breathe of relief and peered down at Tibby, who was just seated at my lap looking at me as well. I tried to place her in the cage but as I opened the door to the cage she immediately nestled on my shoulder. Apparently not having the heart to take her off my shoulder, I proceeded to get all the things I ‘cat necessities’ bought and reached the elevator. As soon as the doors to the elevator opened, I somewhat wished it didn’t since the only person occupying the elevator was the same floor neighbor, Katy Harrison. I’m not practically fond of her since Cheryl discussed this theory that Katy likes me. All I know is that if your girl doesn’t like that girl, you don’t ever interact with her at all. But alas, as I loaded the things on the elevator with Tibby on my shoulder, she just had to help me while peering on the feline currently somewhat growling at her.

‘This is secretly Cheryl’s spirit animal’ I joked to myself. I didn’t have to say what floor since she lives on the same floor as me and Cheryl. So nodded my thanks to her, again I regretted my decision. I guess she took it as an invitation to talk to me. I mentally kick myself. We started off with small talk on how my day was and all, I didn’t ask her on how hers was. Until she had the sneaky audacity to ask me out, “So (Y/N), there’s this event I’m hosting tomorrow night.. and I was wondering if you wanted to attend it? You can bring Cherry with you.” “I’m sorry Kaitlyn, I’m going out with Cheryl tomorrow night.” Yes, I purposely said her name wrong. I mean she knows Cheryl and I know she knows my girlfriend’s name so I don’t take the show of disrespect lightly. As we approached out floor I gripped tightly the bags to dash out the elevator as soon as it opens to not give her the chance to reply. ‘Ding’ I gripped my bags, cat tower and dashed the fuck outta there. I was walking fast to the door of my flat, until I heard heels clicking my way…meaning this Katy lady was coming at my direction. ‘Fuck’ I thought as I dinged the doorbell of the flat knowing Cheryl is there. The steps where getting closer. ‘Fuck fuck fuck’ I repeated to myself, finally I heard the door unlock and click open with Cheryl my goddess about to greet me with a hug, but saw Tibby perched on my shoulder peering down curiously at her. “Babe, who’s this?” Cheryl questioned with a smirk showing her amusement. “Her name is Tibby and SURPRISE!!!” Trying in vain to do the jazz hands, until the moment was destroyed as we heard a cough behind me. As I stepped in to step behind Cheryl, we saw Katy at by the door. Holding one of the bags I accidentally left in the elevator in my sudden rush trying to leave. Glancing at Cheryl, I saw this expression I hadn’t seen since high school. Hey ‘ice queen bitch face’ as she labeled it to be. I groaned to internally to myself while Tibby was sensing my internal struggle. I took her off my shoulder and held her in my arm as I placed a hand on Cheryl’s shoulder. Katy started to talk not even giving recognition to Cheryl which in turn I guess fueled Cheryl’s anger, “Hey (Y/N), you left this in the elevator” “Tha-“ “Thank you Katherine, we’ll just have dinner okay? Byee” Taking the bag and slamming the door on her face, Cheryl turned around to look at me as she placed a hand on my face, “She didn’t try anything did she?” Cheryl questioned. “well after she tragically tried to ask me out and being rejected again” I replied as I pulled her close to me while kissing her forehead while avoiding squishing Tibby.

“I swear. Why can’t she just get someone who isn’t taken?? Ughh”Cheryl closed her eyes as she pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration but slowly breathed out slowly. Opening her eyes to look at me and Tibby, “I’m glad you’re home, let’s go eat dinner before it gets cold” grabbing my free hand leading me to the dining area with Tibby still in my other arm.

[Cheryl’s POV]

Plans were cancelled yet AGAIN. Tossing my phone on the bed, I lie on my back again feeling the disappointment wash away and get replaced with annoyance. It’s not like I haven’t noticed the lack of affection, communication, and attention I was getting from (Y/N). She was taking my (Y/N) away from me ever since she arrived here. I thought she would be harmless but no, that cat has been nothing but a girlfriend stealer.

“UGHHHHHHHHHHH” I groaned loudly. I need my girlfriend too you know? I mean being with here for 8 years has me expecting her to pop the question anytime now, not bringing a cat home. As I roll my eyes, I could hear the door of our flat open and close, signaling that (Y/N) and the fucking cat arrived home. “Cheryl! Babe, I’m home!” Deciding not to respond, I turned my back away from the bedroom door hugging a pillow next to me as I somewhat pout. Hearing the footsteps coming closer I still retained my position. I felt the bed dip in the opposite side and feel (Y/N) crawling to me, with her chin resting on my shoulder and the front of her body flush against my back she started to apologize and talk, “ Babe, I’m so sorry for cancelling our plans for tonight….I bought Chinese food, your favorite, a tub of Vanilla ice cream and also downloaded the movies and series’ you’ve been dying to watch……are you still mad? Do you forgive me?”

Turning to look at her, my annoyance and anger slipped away as I saw the genuine sincerity of how (Y/N) truly is sorry. Also, the fact that I can’t stay mad at her for too long. I mean what the heck, 8 years together and you’re bound to be each other’s soft spot. Instead I sigh and smile at her, “Well apology accepted and I’m glad that you’re home but that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook that easily” I kissed her on the cheek while bounding off to the living room to settle on the couch knowing (Y/N)’s gonna set up everything. ~ After a marathon of Friends, (Y/N) suddenly went to the bathroom before asking me if I could get Tibby for her, Rolling my eyes once again, I called Tibby’s name only to be attacked from below as she jumped on my legs. Yelping at the surprise attack, Tibby immediately nestled on my lap. Glaring at the cat while I pet her fur I suddenly felt this weird lump on her neck. Investigating thee weird lump, it came out to be a fortune cookie. Confused, I cracked it open to see a folded paper inside. I put the cracked fortune cookie at one side as I begin to unfold the paper. As I scanned it, I was stunned as I read the few lines,

‘ Me and Chandler share few similar sentiments as Chandler loves Monica and how I love you, Turn around.’

Shocked I stood up and turned around to find, my love, my rock and my one and only on one knee as she was surrounded by various flowers in boxes, only opening up to me so I could step in the circle of bouquets,

“From the moment I saw you in freshman year as I came back to Riverdale, my heart knew something in secret that my mind and I wasn’t privy to until a year and a half later as we started dating, it’s that you are my soulmate, my one true love. People look for this kind of love for the rest of their lives and I am grateful to God that I found it with you. I love you with all my heart, mind, soul, and I will choose you and us every day through the up’s and down’s.”- (Y/N) let a shaky breathe out and wiped the corner of her right eye while continuing. “As Chandler said to Monica, “You make me happier than I ever thought I could be and if you let me, I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you feel the same way”….. so Cheryl Blossom, will you allow me to be the Chandler to your Monica?” Crying freely I stepped into the circle of flowers and nodded as I couldn’t trust me voice at the moment. (Y/N) took the ring out of the Tiffany’s box and slid it on my ring finger. It was a perfect fit. (Y/N) suddenly lifted me up in her arms as she kissed me deeply and took me back to the couch so that we could continue watching Friends. Tibby made her way to us and perched herself on my lap, I smiled at the cat while scratching the back of her ear gently knowing she played a major part in this all. ‘I guess I’m starting to like you after all’ I thought to myself. Closing my eyes with comfort in my heart knowing this is for the long run and this isn’t the end of the surprises life has in store for us.

#cheryl blossom #cheryl blossom x reader #cheryl #veronica #beronica #veronica lodge #veronica x reader #veronica lodge x reader #betty cooper #betty #betty cooper x reader #riverdale #jughead #archie #varchie #homo #gay

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kim-drawings · 7 years

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Morticia E-294

omg i made her head to big XD but it suits her weirdly enough XD. alot of people have been asking to make a sort of profile picture of my rick and morticia along with a description so they can understand it better and also for possible rp's? well thats what they said. so i decided to do her in a new style of mine that i created a bit. in issue two i'll use the new style cause the old one is bothering me alot XD. so here she is.

Morticia:

- she is 13 years old, so practicly a teenager.

- she likes jokes and puns. she smiles alot and just beeing happy most of the time.

- she hass never been romanticly treated before. a crush only once but it wasnt very majurly.

- she knows a little bit how to fight and to defend herself. shse likes to use her enviroment or her wits to win a fight or to get out of sticky situations.

- she likes to helpt those who ask for help (because she thinks its rude to just butt in)

- she coopes up alot of negative emotions and keeps it cooped up. she only talks about it to her rick doll and now with her new rick, he’ll force her to talk about it to releaf herself from some stress and burden.

- she hass a custome made rick doll. every rick looks alike but she wanted the hair to be the same as her original rick. she keeps the doll mostly in her bedroom. she holds it during her sleep or whenever she feels negative emotions she just holds it in her arms.

- she’s a healing morticia or healing M for short references. basicly she is like a therapist for other Rick’s and mortys. she does it in her own way. she lets them talk and tell their stories, unless they get uncomfortable talking all the time then she asks questions. but after that she gives them a little advice and tells them that they can decide wether or not to follow her advice or not. she also comes to check up on guard Rick’s and Guard Mortys for their mental check ups. Somethimes she is called in to check other departments then the guards one. thats why she can easely communicate with other Rick’s and Mortys now. though new ones always seem to catch her offguard.

- she really hates check up. Doesent matter if Doctor Rick, surgeon Rick or even emergancy Rick does them. She just doesent like the check ups.

- she doesent like guns at all but she’ll use one if ever needed.

- she hass never seen a Summer before and would be suprised if she saw one though.

- she is afraid of Beth because she hass a drunk addiction, wich turns her into a voilent drunkard.

- she isnt afraid of Jerry though, because she knows he’s a scaredy cat.

- Jessica in her dimensions is a guy called Jesse and is the biggest bully in the school. he tries to act though and once made a huge mistake towards Morticia, to belong with the cool kids. but got beaten up by her and became the laughing stock for a short while. Morticia doesent like Jesse at all, no matter what he does.

- her Rick (Rick E-294 who died) was a really kindhearted person. he stayed sober for many years until Beth visited him one day and he reverted back to beeing an alcoholist.

Morticia’s past:

- A long time ago before Morticia got born, there were 2 teenagers. the girl was called Beth and Jerry. They fell in love and Jerry got Beth pregnant. They both used to live in the old house were Rick E-294 lived in to. Jerry and Beth never got married even if Beth was pregnant. they left the house after they discovered that Beth had a misscariage. They pursued their dreams and eventually turned them in reality. But they left Rick all alone in the house, thinking they gave him freedome to do whatever the hell he wanted to do. anyways Beth became a succesfull heartsurgeon and Jerry became a succesfull movie maker. They never lived togheter though cause their relationship wasnt stable anyways. One day though, Jerry and Beth mett again at a reward ceremonie. Needlessly to say that they both got very drunk and one thing led to another. Jerry got Beth pregnant again, but Beth who blamed Jerry, forced him to help her during the preganancy. after several months a baby girl was born. Beth and Jerry werent really happy with the baby, but still named her Morticia. They never filled in her last name for the sake of their careers. They kept the fact that Morticia was their child a secret from the press and other people. They raised her until she was 3 years old and then just left her on the doorstep of rick’s house. Rick who was suprised to see her, dint need that long to figure out who she was and were she came from. He took her in and loved her like a reall grandpa would love hiss grandchild. He thought her everything she needed to know and even had to bring her to school. He really dint want that, but he knew that she needed school to develope more social skills. One day when Morticia was 5 years old, she came home from a long day at school. She found her Rick passed out on the floor, from the alcohol. It was the first time ever she saw Rick in such a state so she panicked and tried to wake him up. What she dint know was that Beth was in the house to. Beth became violent towards Morticia and for some reason was very jealouse and angry at Morticia. Beth even tried to kill her by choking her, but Morticia struggled and got free from Beths grip. Morticia ran upstairs and ran into her bedroom. Once she was inside she locked the door and hidden under her bed, since she thought it was her safespot. Beth ran after her but got locked outside, in a fist of anger she started to bang onto the door and tried to barge in. Beth started yelling harmfull words and even demanded that Morticia came out of the room. Suddenly everything went quiet for a few minutes before Rick knocked 3 times on the door gently and said that it was safe to come out now. Morticia heard hiss voice and crawled out from underneath her bed, she ran towards the door and unlocked it. She opend the door and hugged her Rick who was crying and apologized towards her multiple times. He promised her that no one else would ever hurt her ever again. After that he and Beth argued over what she did and how wrong it was, eventually it ended in Rick sending Beth away and told her to never come back again. After that day Rick was never the same again. He gave into the lust for alcohol into hiss system and started drinking more and more. He eventually became her abuser, he hit her and somethimes it was so hard that something would snap inside her body. He would cut her arms for some unknown reason, he pulled her hair out so her hair would become shorter. No matter what he did to her, she still loved him as her grandpa. Because she knew her Rick was in there somewhere, he somethimes would surface from all the layers of alcohol and just be himself, even if it was for a short moment she still enyoied it. She would forgive him every time he did something bad to her, but she couldnt help but secretly cry in her bedroom. Morticia had to learn how to cook by herself so she would get something in her system since Rick stopped taking care of her all in one. One day when she was 7 years old, Rick was out of booze and took Morticia to a dimension filled with weird looking creatures. He took her to a bar wich was also filled with weird looking creatures. He was talking to a bartender called Bobligzafruck, but everyone had to call him Bob since hiss name was often misspronounced. Anyways, Rick ordered alot of booze but dint want to pay for it. So he shoved it all in a bag and threw Morticia into the crowd of aliens so he could escape. Lucky for her Bob caught her and even offered her a place to stay in hiss apartment. Bob gave her a necklace wich had a translator stone on it that literly translates everything even animal language. Morticia was so gratefull towards Bob that she started to work there and even earn a bit of money. After 2 years 2 guard rick’s and one guard morty came into the dimension to haul Morticia to the citadel of Rick’s. Bob dint like the idea ofcours since she considered him like a father, she reashured him everything would be fine. She was brought to dr.Rick for a full body check up, hiss Morty scanned her body and she dint know what was on that little screen but they had these worried look on their faces. Dr.Rick asked me if those aliens dealed some damage towards her. Since hiss scanner reveals past damages that are now either fully healed or still healing, they leave specific marks before they completely dissapear. Anywyas, she was to tired from work to even care so she just told him the truth that it was her own Rick that dealed the damages to her. After that they carried her to the council of Rick’s, were she saw her own Rick standing there. Her Rick was accussed of abussing other Mortys that belonged to other Rick’s. The council already received her file on their watches as they then declared that Rick was to be send to the machine of unspeakable doom, while Morticia was free to go home. Rick snapped and tried to attack her, but before she could comprehend the situation, a shot was released at her rick’s chest. He fell onto hiss knees and told her he was sorry for everything and that she had to be a good girl now. She forgave him and told him that she loved him. Rick slumped into a sort of hug and told her he loved her to, he passed hiss portal to morticia, before he died. Hiss body got dragged away from her while she was still watching. She cooped up all the sadness and frustration from the situation inside of her and had to move on if she wanted to survive. The one who shot him was guard Rick, now known as captain Rick. Guard Rick was the one to bring her home and even gave her the Rick entrance badge. He said that he was sorry for killing her Rick and that this was the only thing he could give her. She told him that she forgave him because he was only doing hiss job and asked him what the badge was for. He basicly told her that he knew she had the portal gun and whenever she needed to visit the citadel she just hass to carry the badge with her so she could come in and out without any problems from the system. It took her years to move on properly but she still is a little touchy on the subject of her own Rick. She hass been Rickless for a few years.

pocket mortys:

- She was there because Mysterious Rick made her leave her dimension, cause he wanted to catch her. But she defeated hiss cat Morty. After that Mysterious Rick wanted to catch her everythime he found her. But she used her enviroment, wits and feminine charms to avoid getting captured. Mysterious Rick eventually couldnt find her anymore so he spreaded a anonymouse rumour about an elussive Morticia. After that she just had to hide deeply into a forest so she could safe the batteries of her portal gun to go back home after the whole event was done. But no matter where she went into the forest, alot of diffrent Rick’s found her but there was something she observed when they found her and tried to capture her. They never look up into the tree’s because they asume that all Mortys and Morticia’s stay onto the ground. This was perfect for her. She climbed into the tree’s and even made a lasso from the vains so she could swing from tree to tree if ever needed. There was a time though were she was washing herself in the lake and a teenage Rick found her. Hiss face turned red and he was very startled by that. She took full advantage of that and made him turn around. she quickly got out and dressed. Before leaving she gave him a kiss on the cheek to confusse him and told him he was a sweetheart for letting her escape. She ran and climbed up her lasso and hauled the lasso in. She then blushed herself, super hard cause she dint believe what just happend and why did she do that kiss thing. Needless to say that during the pocket Morty event she had to see if she was alone of not. She also dissarmed traps to get to free food and left a thank you leaf on them. She frustrated alot of Rick’s. She also helped other Mortys to escape and be safe. She never got caught, never got chipped and learned alot during that event. After that it was announced that Pocket Mortys hass ended and that every Morty should report to Surgeon Rick. But as stubborn she was, she went to the portal where all the other Mortys were gathered. She really dint like check ups but she allowed surgeon Rick to do one either way. After that she went home and charged up her portal gun.

fall of the citadel of Rick’s

- It was a pretty normal day, if u dint count the monthly check up by dr.Rick. She just left hiss office and was on her way to the Morty bar to get something to drink. All of a sudden the citadel got teleported into the galactic federal prison. It dint take long for the citadel to be overrun by criminals. She stumbled onto a bleeding guard Rick, she had to take a deep breath to keep calm and help this Rick out. This Guard Rick was groaning from the pain, she did the best she could and looked at hiss portal gun. She took it and send him to her dimension in her house and threw the portal gun after him. She found a laser gun and picked it up. She doesent like guns but she had to use it for this situation. She ran around with it and had to kill some criminals, she never killed before and this was her first time that she did. But she kept herself calm because she was gathering Ricks and Mortys togheter so they could escape with her. Eventually they ran into a dead end, it was blocked of because of the rubble. She opend up a portal and send every Rick and Morty she gathered into the portal wich led to her house. Before she left she saw one more Rick who was shooting furiously at all the criminals. This was bad, she dint want to leave this Rick behind but he was so consumed by anger that she wondered if she could bring him back or not. She dint have much time as the criminals were aproaching. She ran over to that Rick and tugged hiss coat. That Rick looked at her as she had this worried look on her face. Morticia basicly told him that he needed to calm down and come with her through the portal unless he wanted to die or something. This Rick just calmed down and staired at her. She just took hiss free hand and pulled him along. They both ran through the portal and it closed right behind them. Everyone in her house was beeing chaotic and she really dint like that. She stood on a table and told everyone to calm the fuck down. She told them that yess the citadel is destroyed and they might lost their Mortyc or Rick’s but right now everyone should help eichother. She knew she dint had much to offer but she told them to stay in her house untileverything was over. They caved in and helped eichother out by taking care of the wounded first and then some food. Yeah she dint have much food so she had to order in a bunch of it. This went on for several months, but atleest everyone started to cooperate togheter instead of fighting of everything. She also made shure everyone had somewhere to sleep, even if she had to give up her own room for it. She mostly slept on the ground with a pillow and a small blanket since she gave the big ones to her geusts. Some of the Rick’s had to help her because somethimes she was to tired to even order out some food. Basicly her healing Morticia kinda kicked of from there, not officcially though but alot of Rick’s and Mortys inside her house started talking to her seperatly from the rest and she just listend and gave them advice whenever needed. After those months passed, some guard Rick’s and mortys came to her house to teleport everyone inside it to the Dome of Rick’s. The dome is suppossed to be a temporary place for all Rick’s and Mortys to go to until they rebuild a better Citadel of Rick’s. That guard Rick who thought of this plan to build a dome on an empty planet filled with all sorts of plants and animals, but no citizens + it was outside federal juristiction. This guard Rick became Captain Rick and was also the one who gave her a healing M badge. Morticia isnt the only one though, there are several more out there who received this badge. Since that day she hass been working as a healing Morticia and is always ready for new appointments.

#r and m info

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imkerf-uffle-d · 7 years

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❝Well, as long as that’s what you want.❞

Here’s the post about Kimarra’s pet wrat I promised @fluffynexu (bc seriously your worldbuilding is phenomenal!) which then turned into a pseudo-drabble when I got this prompt, which then ended up being a thousand words long. Her name is Jen’asha, which means “Dark Victory” in Sith, as in “Through victory, my chains are broken.”

I would like to preface this by saying I am in no way an expert on genetics, but I am an expert on bullshitting the effects of magic, such as Sith alchemy. So if this in inaccurate, blame it on the Sith.

Kimarra was beginning to rethink her decision to buy a wrat. With every step she took behind the employee showing her around the store, she felt like burying her head further and further into the too-high collar of her robes until she disappeared entirely. Everything about this place—from the accents as polished as the employees’ uniforms, to the sheer size of each wrat’s enclosure—told her it catered to old money, and any minute now she expected her guide to take a closer look at the dints in her lightsaber or the cybernetics in her temples and throw her from the building.

When even a non-Force-sensitive wrat handler could make her feel the same way Darth Thanaton had when he condescended to her over Sith tradition, perhaps she really didn’t deserve her accidentally inherited title.

As the guide prattled on about pedigree and the ISWF and other things that held no meaning to Kimarra, her eyes wandered among the rows of cages built into every shelf. Something in the far corner grabbed her attention almost immediately—a small white wrat off by itself. This wrat’s cage sat on the floor below the much larger, much fancier cages on display, and unlike the others with their walls of near-invisible ray shielding, this one was made of wire mesh, and was empty save for the wrat.

“What about that one?” she interrupted her guide and pointed at the cage. Immediately she wished she hadn’t, knowing her lack of etiquette betrayed her poor upbringing.

The guide looked taken aback for a moment, before he recovered his air of pompousness. “Ah, I am terribly sorry, my Lord. That wrat should have been removed by now,” he said, “Whoever is responsible for that oversight shall be punished accordingly.”

Kimarra hummed in apparent approval and strode past him towards the wrat. “Tell me what is wrong with it. Is it sick?” she said. If she was to forget her tact, she may as well try to pass it off as Sith superiority.

“In a way,” the guide sneered, after a moment’s pause as he caught up to her, “It suffers from a genetic mutation that makes it unfit to sell. As I’m sure you know, the aborsim breed is distinguished for its bareback or capped markings, but this one has a dark patch that only covers its chin.”

As Kimarra closed the gap between herself and the wrat, she saw what he meant. Nearly every centimeter of its fur appeared to be pure white, with only a sliver of gray peeking out over its slim nose. The wrat was small, with sleek fur and a forked tail. It was curled up on the woodchips lining its cage, staring into the middle distance with dull, red eyes, and it hardly reacted to Kimarra’s approach beyond a halfhearted twitch of its ears. Kimarra knew the dangers of anthropomorphizing animals, but it looked like it would rather be anywhere else in the galaxy than stuck in this cramped metal cage.

“How did this happen?” she asked, matching the guide’s conceited tone.

“I will personally see to the punishment for—”

“No, I meant: how did the mutation happen?” she said.

“Yes, my Lord,” the guide said quickly, “I assure you, it is not for want of good breeding. Regrettably, this can happen in even the best of bloodlines.”

“I see.” Kimarra stared at the wrat, unwilling or unable to tear her eyes away. “Tell me about it.”

“Ex—excuse me?” the guide asked.

“The wrat. I want you to tell me about it,” she said, “Sex, age, anything.”

The guide blinked speechlessly at her for a moment before beginning the same spiel he had given for all the others, doing little to hide his disapproval. “This is a female white-and-platinum aborsim, thirty centimeters in hight and forty-two-point-five centimeters in length. At last weighing it was eleven and a half kilograms. It is thirteen months old. We, er…” He paused to clear his throat. “We would have disposed of it much earlier had we not mistakenly believed we could correct the defect in its coat pattern using Sith alchemy.”

He continued, but Kimarra hardly heard him past the first sentence. The poor girl looked miserable cooped up here where she wasn’t wanted. All for what? A perceived fault in something predetermined before she was even born.

The entire point of coming here, Kimarra had to remind herself, was for the status symbol of owning a purebred wrat. This reject would do nothing for her social standing—it might hurt her, even—and she couldn’t afford to grow attached to it simply because she could relate to its predicament. The dangers of anthropomorphizing, indeed.

And yet…

“By ‘dispose of,’ you mean…?” she asked, letting the question trail off for dramatic effect.

“Ah, yes,” the guide said, looking uncomfortable as he searched for the best way to continue, “We have a sister establishment east of the city that breeds tuk’ata—”

“Say no more.” Kimarra raised her hand to cut him off. “What would it cost me to buy her?”

This time the guide’s jaw actually fell open, and it took several seconds for him to regain the power of speech. “My Lord,” he spluttered, “We sell any number of other wrats much more… suitable for a woman of your station. Why, right over here we have a magnificent papibell—” He tried to direct her attention to a cage a few meters away, but Kimarra was already pulling her credit chip from her pocket, loaded up with all the money she’d inherited from Darth Zash.

“But I am asking about this one,” she said, loading every syllable with a Sith’s scorn.

“Well…” the guide eventually said, slowly, “as long as that’s what you want.”

#ivy plays swtor #swtor #answered #my writing #oc: kimarra

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skia-oura · 7 years

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Orange Lilies, 3/?

A/N: twO AND A HALF MONTHS LATER, the next chapter! This is set to be fairly slow development, so things are still in that gear-up stage. Also! We get to see a certain Henry reincarnation this go around :D

Prologue // Previous // Next

Ao3 ff.net

2. Brownies for Hepsa

Saying yes to Meung-soo had been easier than Bentley thought it would be. Her reply to his suggestion, though still a little distant, felt more relaxed, more human, than the last message. She had also agreed to lunch at Tarannala’s Treasury, though it seemed that Mikael wouldn’t be coming with her; apparently, he had work at home and couldn’t make the trip over from Switzerland. Bentley found himself looking forward to the meeting, oddly enough. He was interested enough that on Saturday he found himself at an outside table at Trannala’s early, fingers curled around a tall glass of complimentary, cherry-infused water, waiting for his Aunt to arrive.

On the table, his phone vibrated. He took a sip of water, then murmured, “Open, show message.”

The phone expanded with a quiet sshhf, the screen blinking to life before his messages were selected by the phone’s program. He was glad to have remembered to set the phone to silent before coming out; the family at the table next to him seemed very straight-laced, the kind that stared loud strangers into submission. Bentley shifted in his chair so that his back was more to them, and read the message.

Oh my god ben they have the new stars of wood and gold, they have the new swg I’m going to die I’m so happy.

Bentley snorted, his shoulders lifting with humor. He reached for the phone and typed back a quick reply telling Torako that she could buy it if she wanted, but don’t expect him to read any kind of Twin Souls related drudgery, and he didn’t care how good the prose was.

Moments later, his phone vibrated in his hand and he looked down at it.

Hey now, even TYRONE is excited about it. Tyrone.

Don’t care, he typed back. And you’re bluffing, he might not hate Stars of Wood and Gold, but he doesn’t actually like it.

He set the phone down and took a sip of his water again. Half of the reason to go to Tarannala’s, he thought, was this right here. Thanks be for complimentary cherry water. The phone buzzed, twice, and he went to read the message—in all-caps, so Dipper was borrowing Torako’s device—when he heard his name.

“Bentley?”

Bentley looked up into the face of a woman he didn’t know. She was clutching the strap of a small purse in her hand, thin bracelets glinting off her wrist. The spots of light let through the revolving canopy above the table tracked slow and smooth across the curves of her wide face and the faux-cotton texture of her light jacket. She had crow’s feet around her eyes, but he thought that he could see his mother’s nose—seen only in photos and in the bridge of his own—in the way hers lay on her face.

“Aunt Meung-soo?” he asked, standing up on reflex.

She smiled, and it curved her cheeks up to crease her eyes from the bottom. “Flesh and bone,” she said. She pulled out a chair, which was old-fashioned and four-legged. Single-limb chairs were way more stable, but it was part of Tarannala’s antiquated charm. “I thought it might be you; you look a lot like your father, though you’re built more like my Soo-jan.”

Bentley smiled back, ignoring the sudden pang of pain in his heart, and sat down himself His chair dipped far enough down on its levitators that it touched the ground before stabilizing again. “Soo-jan is my Mom, right? Susan?”

Meung-soo nodded, sliding her hand against the edge of the table to bring up the menu and alert the waitstaff to a new customer. It flickered into existence in front of her, and she met his eyes over the top of it. “Yes. She went by both, but Philip called her Susan more often than not so I’m unsurprised that he would refer to her that way. Did you talk about her much, if you don’t mind me asking?”

His hand found his phone, and he traced his thumb up and down the side closest. He could try. “Not…not much. Just that she was out on a Dip and the excavation site turned dangerous quicker than expected. That Dad liked her laugh and that she sang me to sleep every night. Little things.”

Bentley fell quiet. Dad had always gotten the softest, strangest expression on his face when he talked about Mom, Bentley remembered. He remembered fuzzy pajamas and his hands on the photo album’s screen, Dad’s warmth against his back and his arm wrapped around Bentley’s torso, like he was afraid to let Bentley go, and—

He looked down at the phone, at Dipper’s message. IT DOESN’T HAVE US ALL FUCKING THIS TIME, it read. Of course Dipper knew that already, without having even read a single word. He found himself taking a deep breath and anchoring himself to the words. HALLEFUCKINGLULIJAH IF TORA MAKES ME SUFFER THROUGH IT I MIGHT NOT DESPISE EVERY SECOND.

He wasn’t quite sure what ‘hallefuckinglulijah’ meant, but Dipper had said it enough times for Bentley to think it was some kind of curse, or maybe a prayer. It could have been anything, with Dipper.

Meung-soo laughed, and the self-depreciating edge to it made Bentley look up at her, startled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I told myself I wouldn’t bring up sore subjects right away, and here I am. This was more about us getting to know each other, not dwelling in the past.”

“It’s…understandable,” Bentley said. He noticed that he menu in front of her was gone; she must have sent in her request to the shop. His sandwich would come out at the same time as whatever she ordered would.

They were silent a while longer, the space between them awkward. Bentley stared at his water glass, watched the condensation bead down the outside of it, and listened to the chatter around. The table next to them, with the stern family, were discussing the failure of the local Petty Matter Investigative Squad to hold up their promises to return missing pets to their homes, and dear goodness where would Pretty have gone that was so impossible to find? Their youngest kept making babbling noises, though; when set against the self-righteous indignance, it made Bentley grin to himself.

“So,” Meung-soo said, and Bentley refocused on her, losing the thread of conversation regarding how little Pretty would never run away. He took a sip of his water. She glanced away and then back at him, eyes dark and warm and a little unsure. “What do you do, Bentley?”

Work questions. He knew this line of conversation well. “I’m a practical researcher at Niklakka Labs; most of what I do is taking theory—”sometimes from idiots who didn’t know what they were doing, so he had to fix the theory and he hated pure theory—“and putting it into practice until we get the right combination of sigils.”

Meung-soo’s eyebrows rose. “Sigils? That’s a rather odd choice, even if it is on the rise. What made you want to study that?”

He tilted his head and lifted a hand to shake it back and forth. On the table, his phone vibrated, but he didn’t pick it up. “I was good at it, and I enjoy it. Also, it’s really handy and it’s not something a lot of people know how to do well. Most can’t even tell sigils apart from other writing-based magics.”

“Can you show me something easy?” She asked, leaning forward so that her elbows were planted against the table. Light slid across the forearms of her jacket, grass-green against shadow. “I don’t know much about sigils.”

Bentley felt his eyebrows twitch up a little. Usually, people changed the subject after hearing what Bentley’s job was. “Okay,” he said, and he picked the phone up off the table. She come? Asked Torako. He shot off a quick reply, and then pulled up a DrawNote tab and full-screened it.

“So this,” he drew an upright triangle with a stylus materialized by the program, “is commonly recognized as the alchemical symbol for fire, but it serves the same purpose as a sigil. And if you draw an activation line through it—” A small burst of flame flickered to life above the screen, not powerful enough to make a dint in Bentley’s energy or damage anything. It disappeared quickly, but when he glanced at Meung-soo, she looked enraptured. “It releases the energy pent up in the symbol.”

“So I could do that on my phone too?” She reached for her purse, eyes still on his hands.

“Definitely not,” Bentley said. “Mine is warded and prepped for sigil work because of my job; because my school had them on all the issued tablets, but it is an extra fee and has to be specially requested.”

“Oh,” she said. “How much extra?”

“It depends on the power levels. The school issued tablets weren’t too expensive, from what I remember, but,” Bentley trailed off. He popped off the case of his phone and leaned across the table to show Meung-soo the sigils chained along its edge, tiny and delicate. “Mine has protections as strong as we know how to make. Something like the fire sigil I just showed you would be much less intricate, and much less expensive.”

Meung-soo traced a line of sigils, all carefully activated with a single, complicated line. She hummed, eyes narrowed in concentration. “This must have cost a lot, then.”

Bentley shrugged and looked away. The edges of his mouth twitched up. “Not really. Just my effort.”

She raised her head, and he looked back at her. “You did this?”

He nodded.

“But they’re so tiny!” Meung-soo bent closer to the phone, like she could absorb all the secrets of the craft if she could just get her eyes near enough. “I thought this was machine crafted!”

“No, sigils need more of a sentient touch,” Bentley said.

“Ah!” Meung-soo snapped her fingers twice and pulled far enough away from the phone to catch his eye again. “But wait, if sigils are anything like wards, then they need sentient energy to work right?”

“Yes,” Bentley said. His eyebrows were raised. “Not many people know that wards need SE, much less think to make that connection.”

Meung-soo tilted her head and went back in to study the sigil chain. “I’m a Magitechnician who works in Practical Applications; I have to know my wards.”

Bentley passed her his phone and leaned back. He took a sip of his cherry water. “Aren’t there people working to integrate sigils more into that kind of thing?”

“In some places—North Africa has been at the forefront of that push, but it’s pretty fledgling. I think what puts companies off is how personal everything about sigils is.” She very carefully drew the back of one manicured nail against the string of sigils; Bentley wondered where she went to get that kind of nail job, and how much it would cost to get one himself. “Taking what you said about sigils needing to be drawn instead of machine-made, that makes sense. I hadn’t considered that.”

Bentley nodded. He curled his fingers around the glass and watched Meung-soo. Her eyes gleamed, even in the spotted light, and she was hunched over like he did whenever he was particularly engrossed in something. Meung-soo was smiling, her expression unreserved the way it hadn’t been when she’d first walked up.

Maybe, Bentley thought, something really would come of this.

The next day, Torako knocked on Officer Nathan’s apartment door, her briefcase in one hand and Bentley under her arm. Dipper was crowded in front of them, and held the tray of brownies in two hands.

“I could have blipped us here,” he groused, human skin on and already sweaty. They had walked over, the day unusually warm for early April.

“And what about Torako’s job makes that a good idea?” Bentley murmured from by Dipper’s shoulder.

“It wouldn’t be that noticeable,” Dipper said.

“Says the little shit who wasn’t up five nights in a row not only proofing the entire apartment, but sewing careful and very difficult sigils into everybody’s clothing. Sewing. Not drawing, sewing.” It had been several months since Torako nearly tripped the station’s detectors, and Bentley still wasn’t over it.

“Shush,” Torako whispered. “We are here to be a very normal family who does very normal things in their time off like baking brownies and visiting people who have recently been attacked.”

“Somehow I don’t think that last part is exactly normal, Tora.”

Dipper snickered. Torako kicked him in the ankle, and he hissed a little. She was saved from immediate retribution by the door opening, and Officer Nathan’s voice saying, “Please come in.”

“Thank you very much for having us!” Torako said, herding Bentley and Dipper into the apartment. “We brought brownies, just in case that would cheer Holly up.”

“She can’t have solids yet, but I’ll place them in stasis so that she can enjoy them when she recovers.” Officer Nathan looked—it was hard to tell with him, but he looked tired. Torako didn’t pause or let on that she’d noticed, but she did. “Thank you all for coming.”

“Can’t have solids?” Bentley asked. She pulled off her shoes, and when she kneeled to put them down she absentmindedly tugged at Bentley’s laces. He braced himself on her back and toed out of them so that Torako could set his next to hers.

“They got her in the throat,” Officer Nathan said. “Used some kind of substance that makes healing harder. Holly was bad enough, but this made it worse.”

Torako tugged at Dipper’s shoes, and he ruffled her hair in thanks before taking them off.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Dipper said. She could tell by the tone that he was biting something back, and Torako wondered at how far he’d come since she’d met him years ago, bloody and demonic and hovering over Bentley protectively in the wake of a situation that still gave her nightmares.

She set Dipper’s loafers on the other side of Bentley’s shoes, and then stood to see Dipper pass Officer Nathan the brownies. “Is she resting right now?”

Officer Nathan’s lips pulled back in a smile. She could see the glinting of his iron teeth in the crack. “No. She’s lively today, and has the Mindword app on her tablet. If you want, she’s in the bedroom at the end of the hall.”

“We’ll go say hi, then,” Torako said. She pushed the briefcase, which she’d set on the floor, closer to the line of shoes and set a hand each on Dipper’s and Bentley’s backs. “Again, thank you for having us.”

Officer Nathan nodded. “I’ll let you say hi to her,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Dipper was warm under her hand, his outdated formal shirt a little stiff against her palm. Under her right hand was Bentley in one of his favorite, but also nicer jackets. If she moved her hand, Torako knew that she’d feel the embroidery shift under her hand, pushed into action by the pressure of her fingers. Other people might not know looking at it, but Bentley had embroidered it, and it was full of sigils—Torako couldn’t even name all of them.

Up along the back of her neck, she could feel the residual tingle of anti-demon wards.

“Tyrone,” Bentley said, “you don’t have to hold your arms like that anymore.”

Dipper snorted and very quickly folded his arms like he was hiding his hands. “Like what?”

“Like an idiot.”

Dipper stiffened under her hand. “Excuse you, I was solving complex calculus when I was twelve. What were you doing when you were twelve? Not that!”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Play nice, children,” Torako said. She looked to one side of the hall, where Officer Nathan had a series of moving and stationary images. One was of him and his wife, Hepsa; they were smiling, dressed in thin, traditional clothing that let the sunlight in through the fabric. They held a ball of rose-thorn vines in their hands between the two of them, and no blood was to be seen. He had explained the significance of it once to Torako, but she had forgotten what he’d said.

In the picture, Hepsa was round-faced and smiling, just a few centimeters shorter than her husband. When they got to the open bedroom door, she was barely recognizable under the red-orange bruises and the white bandage wrapped around her throat.

Bentley sucked in a breath and paused in the doorway. Dipper kept going forward, and Torako, with a spine tempered by a year of cult-hunting and all the pain that came with it, pressed against Bentley’s back and smiled. “Hey Mrs. Akuapem! We gave them to your husband to put in stasis, but we brought you some brownies for when you feel better!”

Hepsa smiled with one side of her mouth. The left half remained where it was. Paralysis from the holly weapon, Torako thought. Maybe complicated by the poison. She swallowed; the paralytic should have worn off by now.

Bentley found his feet again, and stepped forward. “I—I’m so sorry that this happened, I can’t believe that somebody would do this.”

The woman on the bed huffed and patted the bed with her hands—first palm down, then palm up. The left hand was slower to move than the right, but at least it moved.

Dipper sighed, dragged a stool over, and sat on it, knees apart and an inch from the bed. Torako couldn’t see his face from her position by the door, but she imagined that he was looking Hepsa up and down, taking in her aura. “Long recovery, huh?”

Hepsa made a sort of gravelly gurgling in the back of her throat and reached out to the bedside table for her tablet. There was a glowing IV device in her arm, undoubtedly connected to the floating bag of solution in the corner. It wouldn’t be a saline drip, but Torako didn’t know what Asanbosam were prescribed.

They waited for Hepsa to blink her eyes at the device, and she turned it around in one hand. The motions were more labored than Torako liked.

The worst part is that I’m missing a month of school, the tablet read. The children are just learning the incantation for firefly lights. I had looked forward to it.

Torako grinned. “Firefly lights? I remember learning that! I was shit at it, but it was a lot of fun. Bentley, were you any better?”

He looked over his shoulder at her, a little confused. “Torako, you know I was homeschooled. And,” his eyes got a little misty, “you know that Dad—”

Dipper reached over and tugged Bentley onto his lap. “YEAH I was homeschooled too, and the curriculum just wasn’t the same! In fact, we didn’t touch any incantations until I was like a teenager, it was the worst. I’ve never learned it!”

Hepsa’s eyes, faded green, widened. She blinked, and on the tablet: You’ve never learned? Neither of you?

“Neither of them,” Torako confirmed. It occurred to her that it was taking Officer Nathan a long time to put the brownies in stasis.

What a shame. Hepsa frowned, again with one side of her face, and tapped one stubby finger against the side of the tablet.

Bentley looked back at her, his arm slung over Dipper’s shoulder for balance. Torako flicked her eyes towards Hepsa, and then nodded at him. He frowned at her, obviously not getting what she was trying to tell him. He seemed more dense than usual—too many late nights?—so Torako huffed and set her hands on her hips.

“I’m sure that if you’re up to it, they’d love a quick lesson,” Torako put forward for both Dipper and Bentley. Bentley’s face lit up with understanding, and he turned back to Hepsa.

“Absolutely! But only if you have the energy.”

Hepsa already looked a little more solid, despite the fiery bruises showing even through her thick skin. She smiled, lifted her left hand very, very slowly to rub at the skin behind her long ears. I would like that, yes.

Dipper opened his mouth. “But I can’t do—”

Bentley hit Dipper’s shoulder too forcefully for Torako to fairly judge it a pat. “It’s okay Tyrone, I know that you’re self conscious about your inability to do much magic—his aptitude for it is really low—but this is a spell that Torako was able to do when she was six. Six. And you’re how old?”

Unsaid was are you saying that you, an immortal demon, are weaker than a six year old child with an aptitude that runs in the opposite direction of magic? Torako snorted.

Sure enough, Dipper bristled. “Twenty-seven,” he hissed out through clenched teeth. “And fine. Maybe something has changed in all these years.”

Hepsa, for a bed-ridden Asanbosam with a half-frozen face, could beam really well for having sharp, iron teeth. The first steps to the firefly spell were listed on the tablet within seconds, and Torako had to laugh out loud.

“I’ll leave you all to it,” Torako said, waving one hand and heading down the hall. She passed the wall of pictures and wondered if, once they got their own home, Bentley and Dipper would be up for something like that. A wall of them, over the years. She stopped, looked at a picture of Hepsa and Nathan dancing, decades younger and smiling, and wanted to be able to do that herself, decades in the future.

She shook off the thought as she peered into the kitchen. Officer Nathan was standing there, staring at the stasis container. He was hunched over, shoulders drawn in a way that unnerved Torako with their vulnerability. She knocked on the wall, and said, “Everything okay?”

Officer Nathan startled, his feet scraping against the floor as he turned. “Oh, Ms. Lam. Torako. Has it been long?”

“Not too,” she said. She stepped into the kitchen, her socks sliding a little with the lack of traction. “What’s up?”

He inhaled and leaned back against the countertop. He narrowed his eyes at her like he was watching her for the first time. It was, Torako realized in a flash of memory, like that cult member informant from forever ago: on the edge of trusting Torako but not sure if the leap forward was worth it. “It is…just a lot. Everything will be fine, don’t worry.”

“Of course it’s a lot, it’s about Hepsa.” She propped herself against the opposite counter, near an impressive collection of mugs, and slid her hands into her pockets. She relaxed her body, softened the tilt of her head. “It’s okay to have it feel like a lot.”

Officer Nathan snorted. “Hepsa is a big part of it. If I didn’t have a nurse to stay in when I am not home...”

Torako didn’t respond immediately. She watched how his hands gripped the counter, fingernails curling into (probably literally) the bottom edge of it. His knuckles were a thin, watered-down yellow with the pressure of his grip. She breathed in and out a few times, and then breached the silence.

“You’re worried,” she said. “About Hepsa. And about the case?”

He waited a few moments before responding. “And about the case.”

“Still nobody reported at the hospital?” Torako was worried, so the hint of it in her voice was genuine, and the frown on her face was real.

“No. And I’m in contact with them a lot.” He pulled one of his hands off the counter—sure enough, there was a dusting of something on the tips of his fingernails—and dragged it down his face.

Torako watched the way he inhaled. She was not used to this Officer Nathan. This Officer Nathan was less Officer Nathan, and more Nathan Akuapem who happened to be an officer. Maybe…

“Have things been happening around here, too?” Torako asked. She had a sudden thought: “Has somebody tried to break in?”

“No, no, nobody’s done that,” Nathan said. He looked her over again. She let him, doing her best to not stiffen under his gaze. Sometimes, when he looked that hard, she was reminded that his species had a history of devouring human beings—but that’s all it was. History. It was in the past, and she was going to keep it there.

She had good practice with that, too, considering the fact she lived with an actual demon. He breaks her arm, and what does Torako do? After a few break-downs and panic-attacks, she pulls herself together and demands snuggles, more sparring and returns to trusting him with her mind and body. She definitely wasn’t looking to do het chicken with Officer Nathan, but she was used to trusting a person over an instinct.

Finally, Nathan exhaled and set his hand back on the countertop. His knuckles were no longer pressed up against the skin. “You’re a good intern, Torako.”

“Why thank you,” she said.

“I do mean it,” he said. He shifted, started dragging his thumb across the bottom corner of the counter. He wasn’t looking at her. “You’re a good worker, even though you can push at the rules and cause a bit of trouble. And you’re a good person.”

Torako shifted, a little uncomfortable. “I…thank you. I know I can rub people the wrong way with my attitude, so I try, and it’s good to know that I’m succeeding with you at least, but…why are you telling me this now?

Nathan smiled a thin, worn smile at her. “Because…well, you’re right. About things going on here.”

Torako raised her eyebrows. “Nasty things?”

“Not really. Little things. They build up.”

She pulled her hands out of her pockets and set her elbows on the counter, slouching down a little to reach. Torako didn’t look away from Officer Nathan. “If you don’t mind me asking, what little things?”

Officer Nathan shook his head. “Nothing worrying, mostly personal. A few neighbors have been pestering me about their missing pets and insisting that I do something, and last night somebody broke into Milla’s store to steal a new fridge. They have been…vocal about the ineptitude of the police, to say the least.”

“The pets in last few days, I’m guessing?”

He nodded. “The pets could have run away, but the neighbors refuse to entertain that notion, and refuse to register their complaints with the right office no matter how often I suggest that. It is tiring.”

Torako grimaced. “I can’t really do anything about the neighbors or the store, but…would it help if we interns did some leg work for the case, at least? I mean, like, calling apartment owners up or meeting with them with quiet requests to check up on their residents, just in case.”

“It might,” Nathan said. He tipped his head back, the light from overhead easing the harsh shadows on his face. “I had been entertaining the idea myself.”

“I can send out an email tonight, to give everybody a heads-up.” Torako drummed her fingers over the countertop. “Oh! And I know you don’t like work stuff at home, so I’m really sorry to bring it up after this whole conversation, but I thought it might be good to hand you a copy of the research I’ve done—you mentioned having a personal office here?”

“As long as we don’t have to go through it,” Officer Nathan said, “I will be fine. Are the files out in the entryway?”

“Yes.” Torako pushed off the counter. Down the hall, she could hear Bentley laughing. “I’ll go get them for you.”

“Thank you, Torako.” Officer Nathan was smiling a little. She flashed one back and turned to leave the kitchen to grab her work case.

“Torako?”

She turned back, a hum in the back of her throat.

Officer Nathan’s eyes were soft at the edges. “Truly. Thank you.”

“Of course,” she said back, fingers curled around the doorway of the kitchen. “It’s not a problem.”

“Of course it’s not a problem!” Dipper insisted, Monday night in Southwest Canada, in what used to be Bellevue, Washington. “I love watching them!”

“Ah, Lata feels more them now? Good to know, thank you,” said Kanti Pines. She fingered the strap of her purse. “But are you sure you don’t mind watching her tonight? Alone?”

Dipper cracked a human grin at her. It always put Kanti and Reyansh at ease when he wore his human skin, even if it itched a little. Henry was worth it. “You can’t help a babysitter bailing, and Bentley and Torako both work tomorrow. I can handle it, I have all the time in the world on my hands!”

“If you’re sure,” Kanti said again. She pushed her hair behind her ear. If Dipper focused hard enough, he could see Reina in the cant of her nose. It was nice, to see the physical echoes of family in Mabel’s descendants. “Reynash, dearest, we need to go! The party starts in thirty minutes, and you know how traffic gets!”

“No! Papa can’t leave, he’s playing with me!”

Dipper grinned up the stairs. “What, you don’t want to play with Uncle Dipper?”

There was a pause, and then little feet thudded against the carpet upstairs, Reynash laughing behind them. Lata soon was at the top of the stairs, then was toddling their way down in large, unsteady steps.

“Lata, dearest, be careful,” Kanti said. She held out a hand. “Take your time, Uncle Dipper will still be here when you get down.”

The tiny leaves on Lata’s small antlers bounced with every step, even when they slowed down so that their mother was less likely to die of a heart attack.

More likely Alzheimer’s, Dipper thought, way back in the part of his mind that wouldn’t shut up. Maybe Lividon’s Cancer. 103 years left on that fleshsuit, tops.

Dipper smiled hard in the hopes that he’d stop thinking about that. “Lata! My most favorite nibling!”

“Uncle Dipper!” Lata smiled at him from where they stopped on the fifth step, open-mouthed and missing their bottom incisor. “Uncle Dipper, Uncle Dipper, are you my babysitter today?”

“Your parents thought I would be more fun—and they were right—so I blipped on by to spend some time with you!” Dipper held out his arms, and Lata jumped, wrapping their arms almost too tight around his neck. It was a little uncomfortable, but they were mine, my Henry, here and safe and mine so it was okay.

“Thank heavens you’re here,” Reynash said from the top of the stairs. Dipper looked over Lata’s shoulder to see him set a hand on the banister and begin to descend. His long braid was pulled over his shoulder, the tip of it swaying by his waist with each step. “Kanti was working herself into a panic attack before I suggested you.��

“I love to see Lata, but is this—oh,” Dipper said. Lata did that thing where they bit his ear really, really hard because they could and he winced. “Oh, this is an R-18 party?”

“Lata, darling, don’t bite your Uncle.” Reynash reached over and flicked Lata’s forehead, making them giggle. “But yes, it kind of is. A couple beers would be fine, but it’s our annual get-smashed-and-cry party, and we promised that we would be there. If somebody doesn’t have an autowheel option and needs a ride back, we’re the designateds.”

“But because it’s smash night, it might get a little…wild,” Kanti said. She pulled her purse over her shoulder and fussed with Reynash’s cropped jacket and long skirt. “Not appropriate for a five year old. We took tomorrow off work for a reason.”

“Of course not,” Dipper said, shifting Lata up further onto his chest. They were warm against him, and it settled awful visions of the Pines’ crashing and burning, or drinking so much they had alcohol poisoning, or—

“Thank you so much again,” Reynash said. He fiddled with the bottom of his braid and did his best to meet Dipper’s eyes. He was more successful than usual, which told Dipper that he hadn’t forgotten to put the illusion of white sclera and brown irises on for once. Reynash also had fewer bruises in his aura, more soft pinks and pale furples than rich browns and sickly greens.

They tried, so Dipper did his best to meet them in the middle.

“Again, I love seeing Lata!” Dipper grinned. “Even if they’re a nibble monster.”

“Rawr!” Lata said, uncomfortably close to his ear. They wriggled in his grip. “I’m a nibble monster! Fear me!”

Kanti held her fingers to her lips in a poor attempt to hide her smile. “Well, we should get going. If you can’t handle the nibble monster…”

“Your number is first drawer next to the fridge because Lata keeps climbing and pulling things off of it, and you figure they can’t get into the drawer but that trick’s only going to work for another week before they succeed at jimmying the lock and dumping everything onto the floor in a fit of frustration.”

There was an awkward beat of silence. Dipper swallowed and forgot to make his throat bob with the motion. The silence drew on. Rich brown seeped into being in Reynash’s aura, tiny little pinpricks. Whoops.

“…yes, it’s in the drawer by the fridge now.”

Lata tugged at his ear, ran their fingers over the rounded shell of it. “Uncle Dipper, why are your ears boring?”

Dipper didn’t respond, because it was then that Reynash drew Kanti closer, his hand on her waist. “I suppose that we’ll have to remember the drawer for later—Kanti, you ready?”

“Oh, yes, of course, just one more thing,” she said. She smiled at Dipper with the edges of her lips, and she was trying. “We’ll be back anywhere from midnight to one. Lata should be in bed by ten at the very latest.”

Dipper saluted. The moment he did, he saw the confusion on their faces reflected in their auras, but kept at it. “Aye aye, captain!”

Lata, a heartbeat after, copied his motion and giggled. Dipper felt his heart (metaphorically) melt, and his grin pulled wide across his face.

Reynash snickered a little, pulled a salute back even if he didn’t know what it was, and pulled Kanti out the door. They blew kisses to Lata over their shoulders and Lata kissed back, wriggling against Dipper.

They stood there a moment in silence, listening to Lata’s parents leave the driveway in their car. Once it was far away, Dipper felt Lata’s pudgy hands on his face, and let them turn his head. He looked into Lata’s eyes, dark brown and nothing like Henry’s. He wondered, in a small part of him, how long Lata would last. Henry hadn’t, not very long. The one before Lata had hours, and that was it.

Lata pouted. “Uncle Dipper, can you stop being boring now?”

“Is that what my monarch requests?”

They nodded once, their tiny antlers gleaming in the entryway light. “Yes. Stop being boring. I request it. I’m done doing bored stuff.”

Dipper snorted, and then shook his head. The human visage fell off of him, and he felt lighter. “As you command. And your next request?”

Lata grinned, tugged at his newly pointed ear and played with one of the earring studs in the cartilage. Dipper winced at a particularly enthusiastic tug, but Lata shushed and stroked it, so he didn’t admonish them.

“Can we…” Lata hummed, and then reached over Dipper’s shoulder to pull the ribbon out of his hair. He let them. “Can we see animals?”

“Like a zoo? Or an aquarium?”

Lata shook their head. “No! There was a doc-yuu-pan-try on the screen and there was striped horses and giraffes and cute rat-squirrels…um, I forget their name, but they were cute! And I was eating naan and asked Mommy where the fences were and she said there weren’t any and I wanna see.”

“Oh, like a safari? Or a free-roam park?”

Lata paused. “Yeah!” Lata, Dipper was sure, didn’t know what a safari or a free-roam park was. They had been out of the country twice with their parents, and both times that was to urban India to visit their great-grandparents.

This, of course, didn’t stop him from thinking about just blipping them over to, like, where the United Congo was. What stopped him from actually going through with the idea was the fact that it was one or two in the morning over there, and he wasn’t sure that was the best time to be taking a five year old into a free-roam park. They couldn’t see anything anyways.

“Mm, I want to take you, but it’s too late for the striped horses and giraffes and cute rat-squirrels.”

Lata scowled. “Not fair,” they said.

“They’re asleep,” Dipper countered.

“Are there others?” They asked, and ran their fingers through his hair. If he was lucky, they’d get distracted and decide to play salonist. Which Dipper was perfectly fine with, except he kind of wanted to go to a free-roam park now too.

“Well, yes.”

“Are the animals asleep there too?”

Dipper opened his mouth to say yes, thought of something, and then closed it. “Well,” he said. “There aren’t any striped horses, or striped giraffes, or regular giraffes, but there are some cool animals, yes.”

He really shouldn’t.

Lata looked away from his hair and stared at him, eyes wide. “Really? What kind of animals?”

“I really shouldn’t,” Dipper said.

“What kiiiind?” Lata whined. They grabbed his cheeks and squished them.

“Well,” he said, again. “There are kangaroos. And emus. And koalas. And stripe-backed manarans.”

He could have sworn that Lata’s eyes were sparkling. “Kangaroos?”

“Yes, kangaroos!”

“Can we go?” Lata came even closer, their nose pressed against his. He could hear their pulse in their neck, could practically smell the blood. They were desperate, he thought. Utterly desperate to go to see these animals.

“Well,” he said. “I can’t take you there without a deal. Australia’s far away.”

Lata leaned back, eyes set in determination. “Like Uncle Ben and Aunt Tora do with you, right?”

He shouldn’t encourage this. “Yes,” he said. He wondered how much he could pull out of this deal, how far he could bend it in his favor. He shouldn’t, but he did.

“Okay. Down, please,” Lata said.

Dipper set them down on the floor, and they clambered up the stairs, pants slowly shifting color with every step. He watched them disappear into their bedroom; he could just see the ceiling from where he was, knew that the walls were green and that the light cover was shaped like a little sun and hovered an inch from the ceiling. He knew that on Lata’s bedside table, there was a little figurine filled with light magic—Bentley’s last birthday present after Lata had started having nightmares about being trapped, about being hurt and watching a nice lady cry on an uncomfortable-looking bed.

Henry’s soul was still weak from Paloma’s incarnation a millennia ago. Dipper didn’t know how much that would affect Lata. Didn’t know how long they had. If they would crash under the pressure of living a few years from now, if they would be caught between the grill of a transporter and a forcefield when twenty-five and on the way to a fourth date with a person who really, really got them and loved them, if they would walk down the wrong street at the wrong time while the wrong person with the wrong Sight and the wrong ideas caught sight of them and pressed their face against a cobblestone street, forty-nine and just divorced and screaming as that wrong person ripped their antlers from their body, if they would be eighty-three and fall to a brand new sickness, brutal and quick and devastating and the price for healing something like that would be a soul, a soul, and Dipper had already loved the sensation of the soul in his palms when he killed it so what would it feel like to swallow it, to feel the warmth against the muscles of his esophagus and feel it be his his his really his really mine Henry—

“Uncle Dipper? Why do you look like that?”

Dipper blinked without actually blinking, and the world came back into focus around him. It took him a couple moments to actually take Lata in. “What?”

Lata’s lips were thinned, their eyes wary. They were on that fifth step again, but they didn’t come straight to him. “Like that. Did you go funny?”

“I,” Dipper started. He pressed his palm against his forehead, closed his eyes. “Probably. You have something for me so we can go to Australia?”

Lata nodded, excitement a little dampened. They raised a giant bag of suckers. “I have this! I had to hide it from Mommy and Papa, but Aunt Tora said it was a good in—investing, so here! I want to go to see the Kangaroos.”

That was a good point, Dipper thought. Kanti and Reynash wouldn’t want their kid in Australia. They hadn’t signed up for that.

But, Dipper thought there were four hours left until Lata absolutely had to be in bed. That was enough time to go to Australia and back. Definitely. Even if a giant bag of lollipops wasn’t that close to an even deal.

“Okay,” he said, “but you have to promise not to tell your parents, okay?”

Lata cheered, and held the bag out. “Kangaroos!”

“Kangaroos,” Dipper agreed, and took the bag in a flash of blue. Who knew? Maybe he could track down that Acacia reincarnation he’d sensed around that area while they were there.

#torako #bentley #dipper #transcendence au #tau fic #i wrote this in spurts of activity #that had lots and lots of inactivity between those spurts #lata #orange lilies

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tellytantra · 5 years

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(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Naina and Sameer fight for the quilt. She taunts him for wasting money and for taunting his wife. He calls her a fool to not know who he is. They argue over silly stuff. Sameer manages to take the quilt. She shouts after him to sleep downstairs from now on. He returns to tell her not to shout. I am sleepy. Devang asks his father if he dint scold Naina a little too much today. Mama ji says be glad your mom wasn’t here. She had told me that this marriage wont last for more than 6 months. Earlier they were mad for each other and now they will be mad at each other. I knew that Sameer cannot adjust in his life. We tried so hard but he was so eager to jump in this well. He will know the reality once this fever is down. Devang agrees. Why did you have to call him to factory? Mama ji tells him that he did that so as to make sure Sameer never challenges them for his right. He does not know anything and neither does his wife. Devand is relieved. Next morning, Sameer asks Naina why she left all the boxes open. I wont make this. She replies that she does not have many tantrums. I can manage with bread and milk. He taunts that it is because she wont have to took then. She nods. I was like this before marriage too. I dint change atleast. Your mind and mood remains bitter always. He says it will be so seeing your antics. Mami ji is right. Chachi ji has not taught you anything. I saw it since we got married. You might be a school topper but you fail in this exam. She walks away in a huff. Preeti tells her mother they cleaned the house well. Bela says we saw it with our eyes. We got insulted so much. We should have taught you and Naina beforehand. I will teach you everything from today onwards. Preeti asks her if she isn’t getting too serious. Bela says it isn’t easy to run a family / house. We are already worried because of Bhaisahab and Bhabhi ji. Preeti assures her that Sameer and Naina are great friends. He will manage everything. Bela says friendship and marriage are two different things. Sameer seemed Voiceover – Naina:It is said that Ma can sense the trouble that the kids are about to fall into. That day, Chachi ji felt some danger even after being so far from us whereas Sameer and I couldn’t see it even after staying together. Sameer finds Naina packing her bags. What is all this? She replies that she is showing him her true colours. You dint see it before marriage. He asks her why she is packing her suitcase. She replies that she does not wish to stay with him. You keep taunting me all the time. I dint know that your love will vanish in no time. I am going to my Chacha ji’s house. You cannot love me like him and make false promises. I don’t wish to stay with you. He taunts her for being egoistic and not saying sorry even once. She walks away while he is still talking. Bela is training Preeti on how to cook. She keeps a jug next to her. Preeti says I am not thirsty but Bela tells her to knead the dough with water. Make sure no flour is left on the plate. Preeti makes a face. Bela tells her to knead it in an equally fluffy manner. Preeti suggests inviting Naina over. Bela tells her against it. They receive a court order. Naina has packed her bag ignoring Sameer’s words and heads downstairs. He pretends to have experienced a jerk. She runs back to him in concern. He holds her hand. Don’t leave me. Fight with me, hit me but please don’t leave me. He hugs her tight. Nanu left me. I handled myself because you were iwht me. I handled myself when mom left me because you were with me. Who will take care of me if you leave me? I will break apart if you leave me ever! She asks him why he fights with her then. He promises not to fight with her ever again. I will always love you. Will you become my Cheeni ki Bori. He lifts her on his back. Hum Bane, Tum Bane song plays as he swirls her around the room. Kanji watches them in plain surprise. Sameer puts Naina down. Preeti asks her mother who is it. Bela sits down in shock. Preeti runs to her side seeing her thus. Bela murmurs that they will have to go to jail now. We got court order. Preeti reads it. Bela asks her for how long will they have to be in jail. Preeti says Tau ji sent it on Papa’s name. Bela panics and starts mumbling random stuff but Preeti gives her water. She calls Anand next. Voiceover – Naina:Preeti still tells everyone that incident with fun. On a serious note, it wasn’t wrong for Chachi ji to get scared. It was not a usual sight back in those days after all! Sameer asks Kanji where he was. You are coming back in 5 days. We got in so much trouble especially your Bhabhi. She got scolded so much. Kanji asks him who scolded her. He tells her not to talk too much. I will give you permanent leave if you take leave again. I cannot see Naina getting worried. He looks at Naina who smiles back at him. Kanji goes to do his work. Naina takes Sameer with her. Kanji is cleaning the kitchen. He is keeping staple food in the drawer. Sameer tells him to throw it and biscuit packets. They have been open for too long. Naina reasons they can eat it but Sameer does not want to eat them. Naina and Sameer give contradictory orders to poor Kanji. Sameer is throwing old / expired stuff away which upsets Naina. Food never expires. People expire. Kanji asks her if food also expires. Sameer points at the expiry date. Voiceover – Naina:Sameer saved our relationship from expiring that day after throwing food away but till when. We had our own ways of living / dealing with life. He knew how to spend money with both his hands and I knew how to save them. Naina stops Sameer. It is like disrespecting food. He reasons that they will fall ill if they eat this now. Kanji asks him if he too shouldn’t eat it. Sameer tells Naina to prepare his tiffin. It is my first day in office. January 1, 1995 – I couldn’t forget that day ever. I felt so grown up that day while making his lunch. I always dreamt of that day seeing Chachi ji prepare lunch for Chacha ji. That dream fulfilled that day. Precap: Sameer tells Naina she has time to talk to everyone except him. He makes her turn towards him and finds her in tears. What happened? She takes Anand’s name. Update Credit to: Pooja

http://cattybilli.blogspot.com/2019/04/yeh-un-dinon-ki-baat-hai-10th-april.html

#SEO #Local SEO training Yeh Un Dinon Ki Baat Hai 10th April 2019 Written Episode Update http://catty

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chanelmoon4 · 7 years

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june 27 2017

mms update on ppl stuff I guess. I rather not have my journals be about ppl but hey you can't avoid them. Like I said before hopefully ill have time to refer back to my past and talk about what has happen then because having children, being married, having a divorce and just changing my views about life is a lot and view important to me. Never really though I was a person tell all that happen to me. So grateful for it even though I wish it could have all been different

I had such a huge journal entry just stilling on my laptop then it had to freeze on me so ill try to cap up some things that have happen. It’s just not quite the same real calling memories after they have happened. When its fresh its the best. Then can tamper you emotions currently and make you type it different. Regardless it paints some kind of picture.

Lets start with Jake because I just know I need him gone.. Still wish I could be fiends with him but ya you just gotta learn to stay away from people that ultimately bring you down. You can't change ppl and you should try to. He likes where he's at too much and I'm not going to try and open his mind to know things. I've already done what I can with him. But I guess that why you meet half the ppl you do you. You somehow help each other in big or small ways and be on you way when it’s all said and done. Sad, but the more it happens to you the more you just let it happen and appreciate what is. I kept thinking we would naturally break off because he just always wanted to hang at his house sharing a room with his brother. But then his brother moved out and then it just became easier that way. It was cool but just still didn't help are stagnant communication. Half the time I just listen to the only things he knows and likes to talk about his fabricating work, car stuff and his x girlfriends being still about stuff not letting him see his sons. I like that he talks a lot actually but it was just so limited and so much opened up anger in him its just overwhelming. I can't blame him though both of the girls he has babies with complete crazies just not letting him see then just because there relationship went south. He works, he well doesn't drink anymore. Anyways those girls don't have room to talk because they have partied as well. Anyways lets get to the recent stiff. I hung out with him one night ya and this night we smoked. (Haven’t been doing anything like that but the opportunity arrived. my view about greens is wish washy I can live without it but its nice to have every blue moon. for now I'm going to keep it that way and I don't fee bad about it because its not controlling my life.) Then we got into this weird conversation about his x girlfriend with his kid Camille( uhhhhhhh and this is how me and Jake know each other from the past. actually embarrassing to say if I had to explain this to some one :( but she was one of my one and my best friend for a long time. there can be a whole book about her in my life but ill say one thing about her the try and make this shorter she is crazy. she. is. crazy! had a lot of boyfriends and kind what got me on a bad path. also went crazy on the end and had sex with my husband......... I didn't know tell about six months ago.... man I should do a journal entry about this but crap... k so ya anywise we broke off are friend ship around when link was one and haven't or will never talk to her sense) k! So ya Jake stated talking bout her and just problems and its awe all normal but then started saying g maybe she's only being crazy mean cause she still likes him and wants him to suffer rescue it dint work out and she has to live seeing him because they have a kid together now. Soooooo ya it got way weird and eventually I told him to stop and then rest of the night was weird. We have like a little text fight about it. Having him claim that it was about his son and that he was angry about that and all that. He somewhere inside would take that crazy girl back. Just the other day I was talking to ppl at work about relationships where this girl was talking about how her x would start talking bout other girls inform of her and how there were great or complicated. If your speaking about other ppl when your in a relationship then you mind isn't in the right spot and your setting yourself up to cheat. It’s been about 5 days we haven't even texted. Today he hit me up saying he was sorry and it was all about his some and trying to find a reason for her craziness. And I understand I would do the same in his position he is in just trying to figure out what’s going on in that crazy girls mind. I told him I need more space basically and left it as that. There’s more to all this but I'm summing up the best I can and without fixing all this grammar just to comfort myself about the five year old language I'm spitting out. (Quickly spitting out) I want space so we will see how long this last. He’s got anger problems so I know what he said wasn't meaningful. He wants to get back to kissing and such. Way over that. I could see me hanging out with him a time or to in the future before school starts but I really just need him to be gone. I hope I can be strong enough.

Ok mmm next is Jordan. Noting with him ha. Just hung out another time exchanged book had some good talk and that was it. He’s moving to st George and saw him at the pool once with a chick.. So that was kind of weird. He said he had a lesbian friend so that could have been her. Regardless I still didn't have enough feelings to wanna keep up with him and he the same. Let just hope I get my books back some time this fall

k. Damn it I'm going to try and be super honest with this section even though I don’t want to be now cause I gave some stupid hint on twitter that I was going got put shit on twitter so now I'm constantly scared that he did find this tumbler and could just crush my sole. He could expose this to ppl. He could think I'm a freak. I just don't know and now its really kinda sucks. But oh well. Regardless you can get away from ppl really easily and never see then again. I hardly ever see him anyway ( yay ready to make mistakes) I'm not really sure where to start sense my normal entry gets deleted. But he went to Scotland. I think he had a snap post or two that were suggestive. (Could have been to anyone) one I think was hi going on in his jeep alone with a song from Taylor swift saying “all you had to do was stay and a snap f sunset. Idk whey I think something with a sunset. I think that one I'm overanalyzing. (you gotta remember to take things into account but not also over do it. synchronicity really is everywhere but sometimes ppl accidently say things not trying to be offensive but then people end up taking it that way, that’s a really bad destructive habit!... so usually I just try and look for synchronicity but only the good ones. if it can come off as bad I just try to disregard it for the most part. idk... sometimes I do take things that he's trying to tell me he doesn't like me and signs that he doesn't but with him its different clue I think he knows the game or whatever bull crap and is just trying to tell me in some way. who know idk idk but anyways I love looking of the good signs in life and try not to get offensive less I feel its clear enough.. idk ) then shortly after sends a snap saying he's like on a lonely road by himself or something. I decided to respond and to invite him to this movie night thing with ppl from the pool and just said “don't make it too lonely.” then asked him to come to wonder women the next night. Surprisingly he said he could and that was good but a shocker. Just because I'm too chicken to ask him on that date date thing. I'm calling that night are date thing so it can be over with? :S soooooo weeewh there’s a lot I could say about the wonder women movies that was like super crazy synchronized with I guess a thingy we have? Like so much! It was awesome but god there’s something fucked up with me it was like hitting me in the face but yet I was not satisfied...!!! And if its still not making my bell completely ring I'm sure its not at all for him :///(I think I'm just angry I can just get alone time with I'm and don't know what’s going on) it was still way cool to see him. He tried bringing up this stuff about energy everywhere. 1 her want to talk more about it with me. 2 he's teasing me.idk. I wish I would have been more social with him but I have such a hard time singling jarred out for a long time with other people around us. It would just make it obvious and we were around work people. He coming back to work this fall and ya I just don't need people thinking I really like him. ( ah I hats saying that I like him. I like what I see and what might not completely mesh with him I still find so adorable..... I really really hope he thinks the same for me and not just a weird girl he can't avoid and doesn't want to be rude too. Sometimes I wish he would be just so I can really know. should be clear enough tho.. he's not talking to me lol oh well) so it was kinda stupid to finally invite him to hang out and have it with people from work. At one point before we walked into the theater are eyes met form a distant and we both and the super anxious look on are face. It was great! He openly said “sorry texting my family in a group text” that was kinda random and kinda a sign that he's not seeing anyone but who knows. Right as we walked into the theater I have know idea fucking why but I said under my breath not even thinking about anything in particular and he was near me “man I'm no good at this” and he did say something back it was strange and I feet like Emily heard. He said something like “don't worry about or neither am I” gaaaaaaahhh! Fucking shisdkfjsldkfj ha idk so trying to fast forward. We sat next to eachother and I forgot how ackward it is to sit next to people or a ton of people for that matter. Made me so anxious especially because I love snuggling in a theater and more used to that if I ever go. He moved his hand a lot but not in one of those stupid obvious positions waiting to be held. I wanted to um feel his energy more sting next to him more but there were too many distractions to decipher. I had my hands crossed really like the whole time. Again we were next to everyone from work I just couldn’t let them find out! It was so great seeing so many things unfold in that movies that correlated to him and I though! There seemed to be a lot but I really am not going to go through the whole move about it. I'm just going to watch it again when it comes out on DVD. The movies ended we all ackwardly walked out I was tired as shit at the time cause it was past 12. Talked bout some stuff about it and all went home.

(I need more paragraphs. so here’s one lol.) I've never had so much synchronicity show up in a crush like this ever I just like gotta like just like idk know and just give what I can idk idk.mad but I've been so so salty lately like really I was hitting a low then. Work had made me way more aggressive then I've ever been I really hate it. I don't want to be an angry aggressive person or overly dominate. But I'm afraid my surroundings have made me so ://////// I'm trying not to think about that to much and just think that its good for me to practice this and that I've been excelling at it well. The things are all of it will change soon enough with school this fall. I know ill be focus on other things and it will just keep changed. Especially if I quit my job this fall or winter. So back to captain it up with Jared. I've been so less centered again and so I think I had this small/ big peak of scarification with that movie that quickly faded right after it. Usually if anything happens between us I'm like back to liking him call over again. This time I just got just more frustrated. Probably because it was all another wonderful fantasy and not something that happened in real life that I could say we both experienced. I. Just. Want. To make things happen between us so I can have clarity that we are going to be friends or try for something more or just clear cut no so I can get the hell was form the pool and focus a little better. I waaaant that. Fucking shit! This person just fucked my brain up from stuff from the past or something and it’s just so easy to get sucked back into it. So I just need to get closer to this man or remove myself completely. Trying not to get angry about it. But ya so far he's just being a floater boy when I need answers. But the more I push the more I know going to make the answer no. It probably is a no anyways. I'm sure I'm annoying. I used to be cooler trust me. I swear ppl around u influence you so much and when I was reading more not around crazies at the pool. idk.... oh and really think I shouldn't have done this because I'm sure it passed him off.... if he even checks. I deleted all my tweets and hoping to plan to not tweet any more. or for a really really long time. I'm level headed I am. This just weird thing going on its just hard to communicate things and just make it look like crazy move. Hope I didn't fuck it up. Also were being stupid and sent music snaps that made it look like I didn't give a crap. I'm so mean!!!!! Seriously been so salty. ugh :(

Still get on tinder occasionally. I get likes of really cute looking guys on there to match up with frankly. Lots of them are just too far away or I just get scared and do not want to take the work to get to know new ppl. Plus I just HATE texting people long distance or just having got to know you bull crap on it. I rather have people come into my life. I just end up taking to people a few times then ignore them tell it stops. Oh well. I sorta like it that way anyway but I'm still looking and that’s good I guess. I just focus on one person at a time. that just kinda my thing its hard to get attached to several men and i do not like doing that. thats not what my life is all about attracting as many as i can like that!

gosh this was a lot and still not a lot i didn't ever get to say about what I've been learning lately in my books. not to mention i had a logged mediation finally. and holly shit i got soon much crap bit up in me its crazy. really you get keep up with that crap because you pick up negative crap from everywhere and hold in in you forever! i deeply feel if i can just get back to the real me things will work out better know matter what it is. I really need to find myself and be even more stable if anything in my life is going to go my way or if I'm going to be able to give myself to Jared/or any man. I really am quite a stable person, always have been. So it’s really frustrating for me to be stuck into something like this. Wish he could see that or that I could show him things that have helped me... but that’s only if you believe in that stuff. Or let you mind wander there enough to see truths in it. Knowledge truly is power... and takes a lot of responsibility to keep it...

Another things ill quickly say cause I've been spending way too much time on this one and I going over to my sisters tonight, 5 http has help me with my speech problem and is also a mood enhancer. I think I want stop taking it though because it’s like fix that seems like permanently but I'm more aggressive from it and almost more anxious... mother f. I probably should stop experimenting with things cause sometimes it really does backfire and isn't helpful but you know what if you don't try you will never know and there are so many things that I was scared to try or ppl would think is pointless/weird that ended up being awesome! The 5 http hasn't screwed with me that much but I learned form it and know it’s not a thing to take when your brain is already back to normal. Its thing to take if you actually are having depression had a car accident, addiction problems things like that. I took it and it seems to fix my problem but now its not helpful cause I back to normal and it’s overloading my brain. Also I found that one way to clean your entry is to take a bath with sea salt and baking soda and ya i can't pretty much say it seem like its cleans out you aura layers. But you must go in the sun afterwards. Cause it will also deplete you. I did it this morning and really everything was just so clear.... but it was bad to go to work right after. I freake’n sucked everything up :((that like my biggest problem somehow I absorbs everything weather its good or bad. for me seems like I just need to say clear of things. man I'm just hurting myself so much. holding onto a guy that doesn't even have strong feelings for me touring myself staying in all these toxic environments waiting on a silly dream that I don't know if I want anymore or will want when it all comes down to it. ..... and for some reason I just keep doing it. sheesh it must be for some reason. just a little longer and this thing lingering behind me will be all gone or unraveled.

Holly crap this one is huge. Ill spell check it for now and re read it later. lol it will be interesting to see all the stagnant sentences I've created.

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supporthosechi · 7 years

Text

Our Third Visit

Home again, whatever that means exactly. Moving for most people is terrible because it involves putting a bunch of small things into larger boxes, carefully wrapping delicate items—heirlooms, art, instruments, televisions, anything which is not really designed to be packed into a van or truck or other vehicle and moved any distance. It also can mean uprooting oneself, which obviously cuts both ways: no more favorite diner down the street, no more garden in the back, no window which catches the light in the morning just so, no paint on the walls which has been redone to suit moods or fancy, no immediate physical access to friends, family, and work left behind, all to be exchanged for comparable or better versions.

Our LeLe’s move shares variations on many of these characteristics. She moves from maximum to medium-minimum security, from 2000 fellow inmates to 500, from a facility housing people who will live out their natural lives within to those who will be there nine years or fewer. She leaves behind an ex-partner to become “fresh meat” at a new facility. She sacrifices friendships and a place where anything might be obtained to one where inmates are far more cautious and the state’s control is more ironclad. She cannot bring her paints, for which her nails have (temporarily) suffered, but the kitchen has a fryer and not everything is made of soy, by dint of which her skin has immediately cleared. She exchanges the promise of contract work to reduce her sentence, the possibility of working with animals or cosmetics for a kitchen job which pays next to nothing (from 15 to 20 to 30 dollars a month as she moves up the ranks, rapidly), and layoffs in prison labor which do not allow her sacrifice herself to menial labor to move towards swifter release. It’s a new place and there’s not much going on. We sometimes think of our jobs, our relationships, our apartments, the very contours of our lives as prisons, and it sometimes feels as if we move from one to the next. Alisha Walker’s situation has in some ways actually gotten worse with this move, and I can tell, and it tears at me, which in turn makes me feel dumb, because it tearing at me does nothing for her.

It is hard not to imagine what it was like for her arriving as we do, pulling through a proper town and into a different sort of stone and barbed wire hell. There is a funny little hut with some tables at the entrance and I momentarily lose track of where I am, thinking: “this would be a nice spot for Alisha to sit with her family.” The presence of the eerily immobile guard standing beneath a strangely folksy, wooden sign proclaiming “Staff Only” quickly dispels that notion. These are places of utmost control and power over, and any person who leaves them not wanting to smash, kill, and destroy after serving their time is either an incredible model of restraint from whom we all could learn that lesson at least, or else has had their spirit so utterly broken that it must take many soul-searching hours to find themselves anew outside. This being our first visit, we brace for different regulations and novel layers of arbitrary command to fight through to gain entry. We are not disappointed in this expectation. Our first time through the double glass doors finds paperwork and, interestingly, more people of color behind one desk than we saw at the entire facility at Logan. We are informed that one of our membership’s attire will bar her from entering, despite it being identical to what she wore on our last visit, and so I run back to the car to find something else she might wear, to no avail. After a trip to Target to buy something less revealing than thick black tights and a hooded sweatshirt (the dead cops t-shirt is fine, mind you), we make our second attempt, now being told that we need a second form of ID each, which I dutifully return to the car again and procure. The third try reveals that the hooded sweatshirt cannot be worn in, nor can my cardigan. When we finally make it through the metal detector, we’re left to peruse the scenery outside the gendered shakedown rooms, then left again to our own devices until we realize we can walk into the visitation room on our own accord. The distance from the visitor’s entrance to the building to the door behind which we’ll spend the day with our friend is perhaps thirty feet, entirely indoors. This is emblematic of an entirely different, arguably even more nefarious affect of the Decatur facility.

The entry desk is opposite a giant set of plaques devoted to employees of the month and retirees, each of which is clearly hand-carved, burned, and painted as if we were in a backwoods hunting lodge such as one might find just a few miles away from town. There is one calligraphed sign for “Warden,” one for “Guard on Duty,” and a variety of smaller ones for the time clock and a key rack. There is a hand-etched lithograph commemorating a mother and children reunification program, to help reintegrate ex-offenders, which is distastefully hung next to a prison-staff lotto game of some variety where officers can put in their names for a monthly drawing for cash prizes. I’m uncertain which is the more disingenuous of the two. The guards interact with us in a generally saccharine tone (“It’s always more complicated the first time, sorry.”), wholly opposite the gruff, put-upon affect of the previous set. I detest them and their complicity in this system, and I do not want to muse on this being a better work environment than the previous facility, that they get on better with each other and perhaps even the inmates, I want them to feel the full gravity of the despicable institution in which they are cogs, and I want them in turn to be as miserable as possible as they help make this needless societal scourge for the women inside.

But this is not the place for any more of this particular screed. I am privileged to see and hug and laugh with and hold and update a friend who has gotten closer and closer, and I want to know she is as all right as is humanly possible in a place designed to rob her of her humanity at every turn.

We know each other a bit better now. Alisha knows which one of our troupe she’ll have wild parties with and learn about the tough edge of the anti-fascist struggle when she gets out, which one will take her to tiki bars and teach her about the subject position of being a queer femme and all its responsibilities and travails, and which one will laugh too hard in spite of himself at all her jokes and make sure she’s well-fed when she needs home cooking with her Chicago family (I’m the last one, if you were wondering). LeLe is her usual combination of vivacious hilarity and genuine interest in what we are up to on the outside. As has been the case throughout, some of our mail has gotten through (all her birthday cards) and some, infuriatingly and arbitrarily, has not (two of our members’ last letters), so there is some general updating to be done on our end. But we are, as anyone would be, curious about our friend’s move, and it is safe to say Alisha is at least a little wistful for the, shall we say, woolier world of Logan, a place better suited to her bawdy, mischievous, and social personality. In short: our girl is bored. But I am reminded more acutely in this visit also: our girl is easily but deeply funny. She tells us about the first set of clothes she got at the new facility, the crotch and thighs stained (“somebody had like a toxic vagina or something! Just burning through!”), and how she soon found that there was no fashion scene to keep up with here. We comment on how clean the clothes she has now look, and how she has clearly lost back some weight from the—marginally—better food and find that she’s wearing her “special occasion” polo, pristine and white, and her pair of shoes from Logan that “nobody else got.” At the old facility, she’d be altering clothes and getting the new garb whenever it came in or else risk ridicule, which would result in mouthing off, which consequently would result in something worse. We comment this sounds like high school all over again, and Alisha’s eyebrows go up as she busts up laughing: “It’s worse than high school! They’re criminals! You get your ass beat!” She tells us about the sort of pranks unique to a place where people are already on edge but used to certain routines which mark out the time. There is the regular practice of lining up to receive prescription medication, which LeLe naturally thought was worth crying wolf at, at least once: “MEDLINE!” The effected inmates, of which there were many, all piled out of their cells to line up for drugs, furious at the false alarm. When one of the older inmates got especially angry, Alisha responded with the natural question of the nonplussed prankster: “You mad? Are you big mad or little mad?” knowing full well this would be the end of the incident. In this “minimum security” place, loaded with contradictions, the restrictions regarding fighting and sexual relationships are vastly harsher than the previous: either will get you cited and likely put in solitary confinement, in the hole.

We ask her a few questions on behalf of a reporter friend who is doing a profile on Alisha, one of which we already have a sense of the sad answer to, but ask anyway and receive a classic LeLe answer.

“How are you passing the time at Decatur?”

(slight pause) “Dyking out!”

She goes on to explain that she is “talking to” three people, but there are ten more interested. We get into a discussion about how “everyone is gay” on the inside, because there’s nothing else to be. As mentioned before, she has been separated from the partnership she had begun to build at Logan, which we assume would be difficult, but as it turns out, not for the reasons we guessed. Suffice it to say, Alisha had her heart broken while she was still at the last facility, subjected to the same sort of amplified betrayals that anyone who offers up herself to another, who feels she has forged a connection through the harshest of obstacles, who takes a calculated risk knowing separation is immanent, would find themselves susceptible. The classic coping mechanism of “needing to spend some time alone” is drawn into brutalist relief in a place like this where one is at once in a uniquely profound solitude and at the same time never more than ten feet from another person or fifty. Alisha proclaims she is “manic depressive,” a diagnosis about which we are all concerned and interested in how it is made and treated in this environment. It turns out that a formal diagnosis has never been made, and Alisha explains how there is no intermediate state for her, she is either hyperactive and excited, sociable to the point where she kids with the guards in the dining hall and pushes buttons just to get some kind of reaction from the subdued and tamped-down inmates, or else utterly depressed. Not just sad about her lost girlfriend, the absent opportunities which were available to her at Logan, her missing family and friends, the wrongful nature of the system which reminds her daily it would have simpler if she had just died that night, but a purer, simpler low, resultant from the basic realities of being a giant spirit and personality cordoned off and hidden away from the society she would choose and which would, I am certain, choose her.

The time is more real now, she says it and I can see it, because this will be the final destination before release. She bargains with us for all the things she would give up to be able to step outside, or do anything positive for herself at all, and then we hit the crux of the matter. Alisha tells us she is not used to—and at this point, there’s no reason to think she’ll ever get used to, which is fine—having to ask for everything, and being powerless to help those she cares about. Among the myriad motivations for doing sex work, the at least potential command over one’s income, how often and what sort of work one wants to do, was clearly foremost for our girl. Her mother, brother, sister, and new nephew need her, not simply financially or even emotionally but—and I do not use this term lightly—spiritually. Anyone who meets Alisha and finds favor with her would comprehend this sort of need; she is magnanimous not because she is a saint but because it is clear that when she cares it is wholesale and not easily vacated. She will never become accustomed to be so dependent on, having to ask for things from, her mother, having to be shaken down to use the bathroom, finding nearly every step, of which there are only so many which can be taken anyway, requiring official and explicit sanction.

It does no real good for me to soften the situation in these reflections: our dauntless survivor is hurting, each next forced renegotiation of her dignity and creative power taxing the underground wellspring of strength from which she draws. The tiny gold cross she wears around her neck borders on satire; this is no cloister for the likes of Alisha Walker, and there’s no spiritual quest or fulfillment concealed within. Just the full, indifferent weight of the state’s corporal fetish borne down on a young woman full to bursting with creative potency. I, insignificant and impotent in the face of such forces, have two options, with only the first being at all viable. Either LeLe will emerge from this place, sooner than later, intact and excited to make good on all the plans we make every next visit, or I do not want to go on existing in the world which not just allows but applauds her forced sacrifice.

Alisha is disappointed that one of our members does not eat red meat, having raised cows in her youth and, accepting this reality, turns to me in mock-frustration:

“Aaron, please tell me you eat steak.”

I do, LeLe, I do, and I don’t know if it’s going to taste right again until you’re on the opposite side of the table from me for the first time.

-AH

#justiceforalisha #freelele #sexworkiswork #rightsnotrescue #survivedandpunished #alishawalker #prisonabolition #visitinglele

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