#same with the rest of the kiddos I think if you put webber in the room with the two of them theyd both have a breakdown | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wizkiddx · 3 years

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the worst case scenario 2

i did decide to make this a little parter thing, but really want to be as sensitive as poss (honestly using this as a sort of therapy for what I see myself ah). So please do not read if anything in the warnings may trigger. I very much am not trying to ‘romanticise’ these sorts of situations in any way but also be aware medically this is NOT accurate.This part is short but I think there will be more.

warnings: hospital - ICU, respirators / mention of death , maternal mortality / talk of family dynamics and abandonment of a child

[previous part]

The sight Nikki walked into is something that as a parent you never want to see. Walking into this cold and otherwise empty ‘relatives room’ to see her son collapsed in a world of pain onto his best mates chest. Tom was too busy sobbing to even notice her entrance but her and Harrison instantly locked eyes . Not even able to muster up a greeting smile, Harrison just nodded her in, admitting her entrance to the most horrific situation.

It was about half an hour since she had been texting Haz, arranging when they’d be able to come and visit the newborn in hospital or whether it would be better to just wait till the new family got settled back at home, when Nikki had got a call from Tom’s number. With an excited grin she had instantly whipped her phone off the kitchen counter within one ring- a facial expression that didn’t last long at all.

Met with the distant sound of crying first, Harrison’s deeper voice then emitted itself from her phones speaker, alerting her to the fact everything was very not right. He’d asked her to come to the hospital, said it was Y/n, that the baby was fine and then hung up. Dom immediately agreed to come with her but right now he was still parking the car, having dropped Nikki off right at the front. It had sounded that bad.

Now, she knelt down infront of Haz and Tom, the latter who still was leaning over the arm rest and currently silently crying into his friends chest. Haz didn’t miss Nikki’s hands shaking as she reached out and rubbed up and down her sons back, the action prompting him to suddenly lean up to face her. He was broken. Totally and completely broken. Wordlessly, Nikki looked up for a second, communicating with Harrison so as if rehearsed he stood up and Nikki took his place in the chair - giving him a break from being Tom’s support. Beyond appreciative of how well Nikki could read a situation, Haz quietly but still in a hurried fashion made his way to the door.

Because he was about to crack too - Tom couldn’t see him like that, not right now at least. And so his legs, completely of their own volition, carried him down the hallways. He had absolutely no idea what time it was, all sense of time passing had completely been thrown off earlier in the morning. He was oblivious to a lot, very much in his own thoughts and only realised where he had ended up when a nurse he vaguely recognised managed to garner his attention.

“You’re here for baby Holland? She’s just round here.”

“I-“ He couldn’t respond but the nurse just nodded and then started off down the hallway, practically forcing the blonde to follow a couple of meters till they got to a perspex viewing window.

“She’s the little cutie in the far corner over there.” The brunette middle aged lady softly spoke as she pointed through the glass to the incubator in the corner. “ Don’t worry about all the equipment, the doctors already come round and cleared her. She’s good to go home when you guys are…are ready.” Her words had trailed off, Harrison guessed she didn’t know how to phrase the current ‘situation’ Tom and Y/n were in either. After a couple of moments, the nurse placed a gentle hand on Harrison’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “You want to have a cuddle? I know your not dad but…”

“Yeh-yeh…please.”

Harrison just felt awful. The little girl was barely hours into life and yet she wasn’t receiving nearly as much as love as she should be. Instead unnamed and alone in a cold and clinical setting. So he silently nodded away, taking in all the instructions the nurse gave as she sat him down in the arm chair next to the incubator.

Once she placed the little blanket wrapped bundle in his arms the nurse smiled gently up at Haz “You want to feed her? I’m sure she’d prefer it from you than me love?” Ah. Now Haz really was stuck between a rock and a hard place. She’d never been given a feed before - except presumably the midwifes.

“I-uh Y/n hasn’t even so I probably shouldn’t…”

“I can promise you Miss Y/l/n would probably want her baby to be cared for by someone that loves her and that Miss Y/l/n trusts herself.” Ooof. How were nurses so intuitive? She literally read his mind and broken down all the ill-founded ideas Harrison had built up.

“I’m not her Dad.”

“But you care.” Looking down once and briefly at the squished little face that wormed herself into Harrisons broad chest a little more, he then immediately nodded in agreement. Looking almost relieved, the nurse handed him a bottle and directed him as to how to hold it. After mere moments she gasped happily, leaning back whilst the blonde boy waited for her input.

“She’s latched on easy peasy. You’re doing great, I can leave you to it if you want - I’ll only be round the corner.”

“Can you check if there’s any news on Y/n?” The kind lady nodded, before promptly exiting the room - leaving the two actually alone for the first time ever.

He didn’t even think about it, whilst Haz cradled her in one arm and held the bottle up at the angle shown by the nurse, he quietly spoke to the little bundle.

“I’m sorry you were lonely… your mum and dad love you lots and lots… we all do.” Not realising he was crying, Harrison almost scared himself when a single strangled and repressed sob escaped from his chest. “ You’re mum…. She’s a pain in the arse right?” Haz laughed a little wetly “ She’s sarky as hell and she always has an answer… you’d probably think she’s a badass… she is. And-and…. Your dad is just scared… He loves you I promise, he just… he’s worried about you mum.” Now there was actual tears welling up and overflowing his lower lash line, not matter how much he tried to blink them away. “But whatever… whatever happens. You got all of us kiddo… you got me.”

Jolted out of his thoughts by the ladies knuckles rapping twice on the door, Harrison immediately shook himself out of it, wiping his face on his arm to hopefully remove all the evidence of the slight emotional breakdown.

“Mr Osterfield… the doctor wanted me to let you know he’s on his way to talk to Mr Holland.”

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Harrison managed to get back to Tom, Nikki and now Dom before Dr Webber returned, so with a greeting nod to Dom he too took a seat opposite Nikki and Tom. His best mate wasn’t crying anymore, which could be considered a positive were it not for the sinisterly empty look in his eye. He looked almost robotic, staring almost straight ahead at the light grey wall, sat straight and rigidly except for his one hand clasped in Nikki’s.

“You went to see the baby?” Nikki broke the silence, making Harrison smile sadly over at her with a nod. It didn’t even look as though Tpm heard his mum speak, even if he was sat right next to her. “She’s okay?”

“Yeh…I gave her a bottle. She-she’s very cute.” Harrison could see Nikki’s face morph into one of kindness before she looked left toward her son. Nikki was still yet to see to unnamed girl but just thinking about her made her heart flutter. And then stop when she thought about what that little girl was already going through, barely hours into existence.

“You hear that Tom? Maybe you could go down and see her soon? After we’ve spoken to the doctor?” Nikki was only trying to do the best thing, Harrison knew it and deep down Tom did know it too. But now really really wasn’t the time for some gently encouragement from his mother, it wasn’t just Tom being a little stubborn. This was his whole entire world falling apart around him. He didnt have the energy or focus to even shoot down his mother, instead Tom chose to stay completely still - engrossed in his own thoughts.

From the outset, when you take that leap and say to a person ‘I think we should try for kids now’ you are completely putting yourself at the mercy of the other. But when they agree? Then it’s a commitment. Not it the same way marriage is - because that’s a completely selfish gesture, you get married because YOU want to be married to each other. Rather, agreeing to have a kid is a promise, a promise of something more. Promising that you are bringing this life into the world - and half of that life is yours. You create it together and it becomes a joint responsibility. You can never, no matter what people think, ever stop being a parent. At the end of it all there will be another person that knows, scientifically, it is half you. Even if they never met you - they still ‘knew’ you. They would know you had to exist, they would see things in themselves that cannot be explained rather than the influence of their creator.

And sure, it didn’t always work out that way. A parent would up and leave, a child always with questions and a sense of betrayal. But that child… they know you. Because there is half of you in them.

So it was Y/n and Tom together that was slumbering blissfully on a ward downstairs. That was the scary thing. Tom was so sure he didn’t have it in him. He wouldn’t do this without her. He couldn’t be a dad to a baby without a mum. He couldn’t be a parent without Y/n.

Almost thankfully for the atmosphere in the room, a soft know had them all snatching their heads up the very same grey slightly potato like doctor waddled in, this time followed by 2 others; a tall, dark haired woman with a soft and empathetic smile; then another man but this one tall and slender, unlike the other two who were wearing professional clothes, he was donned in scrubs (with the scrub hate too).

“Mr Holland and uh… family” Dr Webber awkwardly greeted the new arrivals of Nikki and Dom, somehow apparently sensing they were Tom’s and not Y/n’s parents who were hours away. Oh fuck, Tom hadn’t even phoned them yet.

“This is Dr Alison Goodwell and then Dr Rohan Avinash, he is Y/n’s surgeon.” They filed in and took seats surrounding them, Dom and Harrison standing up to stand off to the side, not wanting to get in the way of the doctors. All Tom could do though was overanalyse everything. Why was the surgeon here? What was this other lady doing here? A pathologist? — no, he wasn’t going to think like that. Then the taller and most scary looking of the three inched forward, commanding the attention of the whole room.

“Mr Holland, I just wanted to go over what happened. Ms Y/l/n developed plactental accreta, which was the cause of the what we call here a post partum haemorrhage. When you raised the alarm she had already lost, at best guess, 3 pints of blood which is a lot, there’s no denying. Dr Webber and his team quickly brought her up to my team in surgery. We transfused her with blood but we couldn’t stabilise her and the bleeding didn’t show any signs of stopping so we had to perform emergency surgery….” Dr Avinash slowed down as he took in how close Tom looked to bursting out in tears once again, offering him the chance to have a moment to collect himself. Vehemently shaking his head in refusal, Tom crung his hands together furiously. He just needed to know. “Okay… Now the nature of the surgery, because we had to be so quick…it is quite invasive and is a lot of stress to put on anyones body. That and the amount of blood she had already lost makes the situation very dangerous. Sometimes when this happens a persons heart-“ Tom’s breath halted in his throat at the mention of her heart, Harrison sharing the bleak trigger which made him shift uncomfortable between his two feet. “-notices this, it goes into what we call hypovoloemic shock, this just basically means its not getting enough volume of blood to pump properly. So we have had to stimulate Ms Y/l/n’s heart with electricity to keep it pumping-“

“You shocked her?” He felt so numb and now adrenalin was coursing through his own veins, images like you see on TV shows of her body arching up not he table from the volts of electricity.

“I’m afraid we did have to but it meant we could keep her stable enough to fix the bleed. I am sorry to say this but we’ve had to remove her whole womb because it was so damaged.”

“But Y/n?” Again Harrison lost all willpower of control, though to be fair he wasn’t sure if he was being impatient or not - this doctor appeared to be delivering this news painfully slowly, as if to torture everyone as much as possible.

“Your fiancé lost a lot of blood and her body went through a lot” The towering doctor kept his focus on Tom the whole time, Harrison’s interjection seemingly falling on selectively deaf ears. “We’ve had to use a machine to control her breathing and for the moment she is still in a very dangerous place. Right now she is stable but I don’t want to make any promises to you. We are nowhere close to out of the woods yet.” Seemingly, feeling compelled to add in, the brunette doctor spoke for the first time since entering.

“But it’s still one hurdle she has got through… Now that the surgeons are finished with Ms Y/l/n me and the other intensive care doctors will be keeping a very close eye on her okay? We are all going to be working with you and your family 24/7, to keep Y/n as comfortable as possible.” Her soft smile managed to somehow break through to Tom, who jerkily nodded while Nikki squeezed his hand tight. There had been a lot of that going on today and even if Tom would say he wished nothing more that it was Y/n rather than his mums grip - he still appreciated it. The doctor continued, leaning forward so her elbows were resting on the tops of her thighs. “Right now she’s asleep and probably will be for quite a while. We first want to be sure she’s not in any pain, so she is sedated. Now assuming everything goes okay tonight and she stays stable we might want to think about possibly reducing that sedation, however for right now I hope you are all in agreement that we just want to make sure she’s comfortable?” The whole room nodded steadily in response which the doctor acknowledged with a satisfied smile.

“And we are all aware this is a lot to take in so if you have any questions or think of any please just let us know - it’s important that you guys are all fully in the know… How is your daughter?” Dr Webber started off so well, Tom was almost going to smile thankfully at him, until he mentioned it. Instantly, the cold and empty look reappeared behind Tom’s eyes as the room was held in silence for long enough to be uncomfortable. To be fair, the doctor wasn’t to know that recently Tom had taken to refusing to acknowledge he even had a child.

“I-she’s really good… the nurse there said she’s ready to leave whenever” Harrison had to show that at least someone was looking out for her, he couldn’t not.

“Okay” sharing a knowing look with Harrison, Dr Webber pitifully clasped his hands together, before looking back to Tom. “Would you like Dr Alison take you up to see her, sir?”

again pls let me know if anyone is very not okay with this, i can take it down and not write any more!

#tom holland #tom holland x reader #dad!tom #Tom Holland angst #angst

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kaaramel · 7 years

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a long and very disjointed list of webber HCs in no particular order

i don’t necessarily think this is all Untouchably True Game Canon but when i write about webber or play them in RP servers consider these.. my guidelines??? i don’t know it’s all pretty nebulous

wild spiders:

Eusocial - warriors and workers (the default black kind) are non-reproducing; queens develop from workers who are exposed to high concentrations of magic/nightmare fuel (provided in the wild by dark petals and primitive, instinctive ritual). I don't have a specific headcanon re: sexual reproduction namely Where the Males Are At - I could come up with something elaborate about much smaller males who never leave the dens or possibly do the anglerfish thing but if it's my call I'd like to take the path of least resistance and call it parthenogenesis

i made up the thing about nightmare fuel just now while i was writing but i'm into it - i say it because it follows from webber's triumphant appearance, assuming it’s the result of high exposure to nightmare energy, if we interpret the growing claws and the narrowed eyes as the beginnings of a queen-transformation (and i do)

all nests contain a primary queen at their base and center protected by swaths of webbing, laying eggs continually, & being defended by her children. a tier 2 nest contains a queen and one developing heir, who will take over the nest when the primary queen emerges, carrying the tier 3 nest's final and youngest queen on her back as she wanders looking for a place to establish a new colony.

the queen's use of dark magic allows her to grow to her full size and strength, & telepathically direct her colony; her strong insanity aura vs. players is partially a side effect of this magical nature

depth dwellers and cave spiders have queens too, but they confine themselves to the cave ceiling/underground respectively, so you'll never meet 'em

all castes are venomous but the venom has little to no effect on anything as big as a human, & doesn't linger. it has antibacterial effects when extracted and treated properly, hence the use as a base for healing salve

spiders have good night vision but are pretty miserable at color, & have an excellent sense of smell but hear mostly through vibration

their eyes faintly reflect ambient light like a cat's

spiders groom each other communally within the den and share food among the colony members

webber-specific anatomy:

after the resurrection event (character unlock - and by the by, should we establish who found and buried webber's skull in FFverse? did that happen?) their respective anatomies were reshuffled and merged into a single more-or-less coherent organism

one uninterrupted digestive tract; two hearts; one set of lungs; two brains but probably somehow interwoven nervous system. uhh, my house my rules, I'm gonna say the spiderbrain has ended up more as like.. a knot of ganglia running along the spine? (this is my retroactive justification for writing a fic where a blow to the head only knocked out the child and left the spider piloting the body solo)

their blood and muscle tissue is redder than a spider's and purple-er than a human's; the human skeleton is all present and anchoring standard-issue muscles and everything, but their outer skin is pretty tough and more or less exoskeletal..? we'll gloss right over how that one works for spiders i guess, magic kinda bones the square-cube law

the spider's nightvision is gone but colorvision has sharpened; they can tolerate bright sunlight where the spider couldn't before, and they see better in twilight than the human could, but are totally blind in the dark like any other player.. i think maybe spider vision would track strongly to movement, but not have clear focus on small things?

the spider-legs have very rudimentary digits at their tips and can hold things, although not as well or with as much strength as the main arms. webber can also get down and crawl on all eights but it's awkward for long distances. mostly in practice the extra limbs end up being used to gesture

raised and spread out wide: threat display. tucked close: fear/submission. up/down position corresponds roughly to mood and energy (held high when happy and sagging when unhappy). they use some recognizable human gestures as well: pointing, waving, covering their eyes, etc.

webber isn't very good at judging whether they've eaten the right amount, and will put basically anything in their mouth if it seems edible; they're pretty much constantly low-key hungry (standard for spiders - their next meal is wildly uncertain so they're fully prepared to scavenge at any moment) and simultaneously have a sensation of fullness without getting anything from it (the last lingering echo of "i, the spider, just ate a huge meal and it's not digesting properly at all," even though their internals have rearranged since)

their fur is stiff and bristly, & can stand on end or relax; lacking denmates they mostly groom themselves (combing claws through it) which means they are probably a bit grubby and matted in the hard-to-reach places

they have two tongues i swear to god you'll pry their use of "tongues" plural, in one shipwrecked line, out of my cold dead hands. this one’s real true canon that i could not possibly have made up and you’ll never take it away

they get pretty miserable in the heat, considering jet-black fur and all. mostly they have to resort to panting; the only sweat glands left to them are in places where the fur is thinner, mostly along the soles of their feet and palms of their hands

on the flipside of course, their fur isn't actually much insulation against the cold.. got them coming and going

they've tried before to file down the small, sharp claws on their fingertips against rocks, etc. and it never takes for longer than a single night; their blunted claws are back to how they were by the next morning. they've pretty much resigned themselves to having them and are able to be careful with fragile objects and hold hands and everything, it just takes some effort

they are able to communicate between themselves directly mind-to-mind but it was disorienting for a long time since one's mode of thought was very verbal and the other's very much based on images and emotions; it clarifies things to say them out loud and they do talk under their breath to each other, although not usually when other people are around unless their sanity's slipping

related: yes, the spider has learned to understand & use language, pretty competently. it likes playing with all the new sounds their mouth can make, and with rhyming words ("vroom vroom mushroom" and similar)

when their sanity drops it causes friction between the two halves, who are usually much more in sync - their perceptions of the world around them start diverging and it's a lot of strain to simultaneously see a shadow creature and not see it, or maybe see it a few feet to the left instead, etc etc

oh, also, one hideously specific thing: webber can see dark swords as, simultaneously, the sword and the simple stick of wood it's built around, and they find the double-vision sensation deeply unsettling

in general their sensitivity to magic is heightened beyond a normal human's - the spider is native to the islands and sensitized to these kinds of energies - but that mostly just means extra headaches and unpleasantness

uhh, they probably molt once in awhile, sure, my city - not often tho - their instinct is to go somewhere safe so they mostly go off on their own to do it, and the old exuvia crumbles into dust almost immediately. they're a little more soft and sensitive for a short period of time afterward and probably steal the opportunity to discreetly touch as many textures as they can before the new exoskeleton hardens up, because the rest of the time, all sensations are dreadfully dulled from what the human was once used to

they get mildly cramped and achy during the few days leading up to a molt, although a sense of being just a little too big for their rigid skin is never super far away

if they're jonesin' to feel textures at a time when they haven't recently molted, they lick things/put small objects in their mouth, ain't nothing wrong with the sensation coming from their tongue(s)

human family: i don't have a lot of original thoughts on this matter, tbh, i just have my interpretations of stuff hinted at in the script, but you can have 'em

his father kept goats

he remembers his mother cooking, sewing, & gardening; he probably helped around the house with at least basic tasks of that sort; he remembers some of her advice/sayings although some of it has gone kinda vague in his memory (same with grandpa: "you live in what you eat," are you Sure kiddo)

imo he seems like he was closer to his mom than his dad (mom is almost always "mum" and dad is always "Father," for one thing)

only child, no siblings

visited his grandfather reasonably often for fishing trips, chess lessons that he doesn't remember very well, bothering grandpa's cat Whiskers

imo: liked the outdoors but wasn't super athletic - he says he wasn't good at football. was probably always kinda short and scrawny even before growth was permanently stunted by being trapped inside a monster, but is at least a tough little nugget now

really liked superhero comics

i don't have a location more specific than "rural-ish england????" for where he comes from

mm.. i don’t know under what specific circumstances webber was brought to DSworld and again i hesitate to speculate, but if you make me pick a narrative i'll pick this one: just as people are occasionally drawn into Their world from the mundane world, things very rarely slip through going the other way, and a monstrous, magical spider from the islands managed to cross over. maybe a queen that wasn't fully/properly developed..? in order to be the correct size to swallow a lost/wandering child whole..

i figure webber's "indigestible" status is roughly analogous to how willow is impervious to fire, just, a way more specific and unpleasant circumstance, but nevertheless he survived in there much longer than he should've; the spider was pretty distressed over its inability to actually complete this weird meal and maybe the gradual establishment of a very rudimentary telepathic contact; maxwell offered carefully nonspecific help to the pair of them (somehow. broken-down radio in a junkyard?) and returned/brought the spider/child to the island dimension

behavior:

polite and respectful child. was probably always a pretty polite kid, and the spider understands hierarchy and respect from a rigidly eusocial organism's perspective, but it's also to a certain extent a really deliberate choice, namely "if we are meek and emphasize having human good manners then we are less likely to be feared or thrown out for being a monster"

yes, they are worried about this. they hear how enthusiastically the others rag on and murder mundane spiders

basically they consider themselves low in the hierarchy of this loosely-organized human den and aren't super great at refusing orders they’ll just ask what needs done and do it without complaint

particular respect for the authority/knowledge/power of women

intensely loyal to their friends

you are all their friends

even you WX

once they're sure that someone will tolerate it and not freak about.. Giant Spider, they like to be physically affectionate with friends.. they'll comb claws through people's hair, or just hug and cuddle

bad, bad dreams. could you possibly blame them in even the slightest

eating/being eaten and the lines blurring between those two states is a big one. being lost and trying to call for help but not being able to form the words. the child's parents not recognizing him. the dark

they are a staunch lil optimist and willing to believe the best of everyone

they like having something to do with their hands or fidget with or chew on

seeing the adults argue and fight among themselves is stressful and frightening

their response to stressful and frightening things is to run off solo for a little while and hang underground or with a spider nest until it sounds like things have cooled off

that’s all i can think of at the moment and if you read through all of that i’m in awe

#i'm gonna tag this as #famine's friends #cause thats who this is for #ds headcanons #it's like 60-70% talking about spiders and spider anatomy and spider physiology no prizes for guessing my priorities #some of these things i can give text citations for out of the script if pressed #spider psychology* is what i meant fuckin. fuck words

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