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five-rivers · 1 year

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Optimism Chapter 1

AO3

@warvikwrites

At heart, Vlad was an optimist. Genuinely. Really. Truly. He suspected that every ghost was. How else could they linger after the cruelest thing in life had occurred to them? How else could they survive after death? How else could they keep going when all hope had been stripped away?

Optimism. Pure and simple.

Vlad was optimistic about many things. His recovery from ecto-acne. His business prospects. His romance with Maddie. His plans to murder Jack.

The possibility of there being someone else out there who was like him.

If anyone else was privy to his thoughts, they might have called him delusional. Hah. Could a delusional man have built such an empire of theft and lies? Could a delusional man have risen from the ashes so majestically? No. But he was getting off track.

The point was, Vlad had set aside some of his prodigious fortune for a search.

Well, more of a listening station than a search. A network of listening stations, stretching across the globe, reporting their findings back to him.

Less metaphorically, Vlad funded a lot of hospitals. A lot of doctors. A lot of medical research. He made sure those funds bought some very grateful people who were more than happy to let him know when certain interesting cases crossed their paths. He also employed a number of ghosts via less monetary means.

It was a great expense. But Vlad thought - Vlad was optimistic that - if his search should bear fruit, that fruit would be priceless.

It also gave him a great reputation for charity, which was more broadly useful than optimism.

Still. It was a longshot if there ever was one. As he approached the date of his Gatsbean triumph, his defeat of Jack and his reclamation of Maddie, he was beginning to doubt that anything would ever come of it. Beginning, even, to start to neglect the reports his many listeners and watchers were sending him.

But he was optimistic. He hadn’t given up hope yet.

Which was why, as he lounged in his velvet dressing gown, sipping a glass of port, he scanned morosely through a stack of medical reports. The doctors were always very careful not to give him any personally identifiable information. Just… points of interest.

So he paused and stared when he saw the summary ‘Adolescent male admitted to Amity Park hospital with electrical and chemical burns. Chemical burns formed blisters filled with green, unidentified liquid within minutes of admission. Liquid could not be removed from blisters. Possible similarities to Study VM1984. Electrical scars also carry unusual green tint. Patient smells strongly of limes and peppers.’

Vlad read the summary half a dozen times, his heart beating faster with each readthrough. He’d gotten his hopes up before. He’d been led on before. But even that history couldn’t stop him from tearing open the file and devouring it.

And while the doctors had scruples, the ghosts did not, even if remembering human names were occasionally beyond them.

Amity Park. South Mercy Hospital. Room 724. That’s where he needed to go.

Danny was miserable, but he guessed that it was better to be miserable and alive than… dead.

He’d thought for a bit there that he was dead, on the floor of the lab, floating just above, well… Point was, though, that he wasn’t dead. Just miserable.

Just miserable.

He blinked slowly at the plastic sheeting around his bed and tried not to think too hard about why his skin felt like it was stuck to the sheets. He’d watched a documentary once about Chernobyl. It had been rated R, but his parents had thought that the educational value was greater than the risk of trauma or whatever. The quarantine room he’d been shut into shared a great deal of similarities with the set of the hospital where the firefighters were dying.

Then again, it also had similarities to sets in zombie movies, so what did he know?

Both of those things had a lot of death in them, though. A whole lot.

He should stop thinking about this.

It was just too bad that there wasn’t all that much else to think about. He was stuck in the bed, stuck in his head… and if he started to rhyme like that he’d definitely evolve into some kind of supervillain. Maybe radiation man. Evil ghost radiation man. Whatever.

The TV in the room was on the other side of the plastic sheeting. The screen was distorted, the volume too low to accurately hear, except for commercials, because it was set to one of those channels that shifted the volume of commercials up about a hundred percent from the volume of the actual show. They should be sued for that, actually. Danny would sue them, if he had the money for it. Maybe. Something like ‘deafening a nation with cheese ball ads is still deafening a nation.’

He didn’t have the remote. Didn't even know if there was a remote.

The problem with this was that even for the most exhausted human on Earth - a distinction Danny was surely at least in the running for - there were a limited number of hours a person could sleep a day. While in theory that number was twenty-four, in practice it was generally lower.

Danny knew he was feeling sorry for himself, but he thought he deserved to feel sorry for himself. He couldn't even roll over. On the last video call, his parents had said they’d had a friend in college who’d recovered from something ‘similar,’ and they were desperately trying to contact him to see how, but Danny had his doubts at this stage. No way something as serious as this had a name as dumb as ‘ecto-acne.’ ‘Green bubonic plague’ seemed more appropriate.

But it was better than the alternative. A shiver rolled through him, and suddenly he was so cold he’d almost swear he could see his breath. That split second where he was dying, dead, a ruined ghost in the mirror, the hallucination of falling through his friends hands…

Or, worse, the second before it, when, hearing Sam and Tucker scream, he thought he’d killed them, too. He really hoped they didn’t have any side effects from standing so close to the portal. He didn’t really remember what they looked like when he saw them, after.

Someone would have told him if they weren’t okay, right? Except that no one seemed to want to upset him. As if he could get more upset.

Okay. Actually, he’d give them that one.

He shifted his weight slightly, half intending to get up despite the way agony shot through him whenever his blisters brushed against anything. But even as he did so, grogginess swept through him, and the little weight he’d managed to lift sank back onto his pillows. His eyes drifted closed.

Vlad reset the dial on the morphine drip carefully. He might have given the young man, the boy, a little more than the doctors would have prescribed, but Vlad had been there. He knew what it was like, the feeling of your skin swelling, peeling, rotting, dying, the ectoplasm worming its way ever-deeper, and, more selfishly, he also wanted a chance to… observe. To see.

To determine if his first impression was at all correct.

He reached down, and gently lifted the boy’s hand from where it lay limply on the bed, the ectoplasm-pus-filled boils on it glowing weakly where they intersected with Vlad’s aura. If anyone looked in, it would look like the boy was raising his hand on his own, but Vlad doubted they would. He’d passed something of an argument on the way in.

The boy’s ecto-acne had spread all the way down his arm. It must be progressing much more rapidly than Vlad’s had. Or… no. It all looked like it was at about the same stage of development, although it was somewhat less severe than it was on his face. He must have gotten a massive dose, but perhaps he had been wearing some form of protective gear on his body and hands. Or simply clothing and gloves. Whatever he’d been wearing, it had protected him from neither the ectoplasm nor whatever had caused the Lichtenberg figures forking down along his arms and up his neck.

Had he been hit by lightning? On his chest or torso? Had he stepped on an electrical wire?

He put the boy’s hand down and circled the bed, observing further, taking in the distorted lines of the boy’s face, the fall of his hair, the soft, slow rise and fall of his chest, the muddled and, possibly, transitory ectosignature.

Vlad was optimistic that the ectosignature was not transitory. That it was permanent. That it would stabilize. That the boy would, after a fashion, live. Always optimistic. He brushed his fingers against the boy’s cheek. The boils here flared brighter than the ones on his hand.

Lovely, in some ways, disgusting in more. He withdrew.

As miraculous as all this was for Vlad, he couldn’t help but wonder how the boy had come to be so contaminated, and in such a way. All his attempts at making half-ghost animals or even plants had met with limited success. Had he been intersected by a natural portal? Struck with lightning while passing through one?

Briefly, Vlad entertained the idea that the boy might be from another time period. How fortunate that would be for him. Vlad, of course, would serve as his guardian as well as his mentor in that most ideal of situations.

There was always the outside chance that the boy had somehow managed to find himself in the same situation as Vlad, in the path of an artificial portal, but, surely, that possibility was beyond laughable. Even Jack wouldn’t let a child into a lab researching the nature of death, to say nothing of Maddie, and no one else had the knowledge.

The strange thing was, the boy almost seemed familiar in some ways… Incredible, verging on impossible, considering the swelling caused by the ecto-acne, but, still, there was something…

The door of the room burst open, and the devil himself walked in, wearing a biohazard suit.

A devil who went by the name of Jack Fenton.

Vlad threw himself out of the way. He could have gone intangible, yes, but he didn’t want his molecules to touch Jack’s at all, even intangibly, thank you very much.

Jack was followed by two others. A smaller figure, a teen, and…

… Maddie.

The love of his life. She was as radiant as ever, even through the plastic faceplate of a full hazmat suit.

But why was she here? Why were any of them here, in this room, with his boy?

Transfixed, Vlad watched the tableau. Jack, Maddie, and the teen in their biohazard suits, leaning over the boy, holding his hand, whispering to him, tears impacting the insides of their face plates.

Rage boiled within him when he saw Jack, the fool, the oaf, take his boy’s slender, delicate hand with no regard to how painful the ecto-acne on it must be. But that rage was equalled, if not exceeded by the confusion engendered by the presence of Maddie and the girl.

Surely, they couldn’t have been called in as experts. Vlad would have been contacted long before them, as the only survivor of this kind of poisoning and pioneer and patent holder for its treatment.

“Mister and Missus Fenton!” snapped a doctor wearing similar garb. “I don’t care if you’re ‘properly dressed,’ you cannot be here until we figure out what the contaminant is!

“This is our son!” said Jack. “We can’t not be here!”

“And we’re the experts in this ‘contamination!’ It’s ectoplasm.”

The doctor looked like he wanted to strangle them. Vlad sympathized, but he was still reeling from the revelation. His boy? Jack’s… son?

Maddie’s son. That was a much more comfortable thought.

“I thought you said we had permission,” hissed the… daughter? Yes, surely, that young lady must be Jack and Maddie’s daughter.

Wonderful, in some ways, disgusting in more.

“Why should we need permission to see Danny?”

“That question would make more sense if it wasn’t your fake ‘ghost portal’ that did this to him!”

“With the hazmat–”

“What if it’s not safe for him?”

That shut Jack up.

“Thank you,” said the doctor. “We will let you know when you can come back and visit properly. In the meantime, you need to leave. You can keep having video conversations like you have been.”

They left. Vlad dropped himself into a nearby visitor chair, just outside the plastic sheeting they had the boy surrounded by. Maddie’s son… And he had been changed by a portal.

Incredible. Beyond optimism.

On the counter beside him, there was a folder. Probably a copy of something that had been left behind accidentally. He picked it up and opened it.

At the very top of the first piece of paper, was the name Daniel Fenton.

Daniel.

Daniel was a lovely name. Maddie must have chosen it.

Daniel Fenton.

Daniel.

Soon enough, it would be Daniel Masters.

Vlad liked the ring of that.

Danny was nervous. His parents had gotten in touch with their friend who’d had ‘ecto-acne’ and he was coming to visit the hospital to do an assessment. His parents hadn’t mentioned before today that he was the patent holder for the only effective treatment of ecto-acne, and that the treatment was still classified as experimental, so he could withhold it, if he decided to. They hadn’t mentioned that he was the only expert in the disease, and that he’d virtually cured himself. They hadn’t mentioned that the treatment was extremely expensive and their insurance wouldn’t cut it. They hadn’t mentioned that their friend was Vlad Masters. Or that he payed most of the bills for this hospital.

Danny was realizing that his parents had a tendency to not mention really important things.

Like, hey, the stuff we sometimes store in the fridge can cause a debilitating and potentially fatal illness! Yeah. That would have been great to know forever ago.

… the CPS case that was taking up so much of their time recently might hold more water than Danny had originally thought.

One of the nurses, wearing a huge, bulky version of hazmat, had brought the video call computer up to his bed. She’d be assisting Mr. Masters with his assessment.

Mr. Masters. Danny was a bit confused that it wasn’t Dr. Masters, when he’d gone through most of the same schooling as Danny’s parents and then learned at least enough about medicine to be considered an expert in something like this, but apparently the man preferred it that way.

Danny didn’t get it.

But Danny had other things to worry about, like not annoying the man who could decide whether Danny could get better now or if he’d have to wait until his parents figured something out. Danny… was not particularly optimistic about his parents figuring anything out. At the same time, he could read between the lines. Mr. Masters had cut contact with his parents for nearly twenty years and then only responded to their frantic calls about Danny after days had gone by.

Danny didn’t think Mr. Masters liked his parents very much.

But he was seeing Danny, so… Maybe Danny could be optimistic. Less pessimistic. Whatever.

The loading circle on the screen vanished, replaced by a picture of his parents sitting side by side.

“Oh, Vladdie’s not here yet?” asked Jack, his voice tinny through the speaker.

“No, you’re the first ones on,” said the nurse.

“Hi, Danny,” said Maddie, giving him a little wave. “How do you feel today?”

“Tired,” said Danny. It was a real question, but he didn’t have the energy to describe the… everything. His skin was too hot, his insides too cold, every movement was pain, sometimes he’d randomly be freezing for no reason, and he wasn’t sure if he had started to have hallucinations, or if the awful green stuff had migrated to the inside of his eyes, because it looked like there were blobs of it everywhere.

She smiled halfway. “You just have to hold in for a little bit, Danny. I’m sure Vlad won’t be long. He’ll see the same things we do.”

Just as she finished her sentence, another loading circle popped up and was quickly replaced by the image of a silver-haired man in an expensive-looking suit. He sat in an opulent office, backed by shelves full of books and knick knacks.

“Hello, Maddie. Ah, you must be Daniel.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, he tried to smile, but the motion pulled at one of his blisters, and he stopped.

“Vladdie!” exclaimed Jack. “It’s been forever! It’s great to see you looking so, so–”

“I would say that it was nice to meet you, Daniel,” interrupted Mr. Masters, entirely ignoring Jack, “but under the circumstances… It probably doesn’t feel nearly as nice to you.” He looked down at something below the range of his camera. “Now, I have a few photographs here from your parents and your doctors, but I will need to get a better look at some things and ask some questions before I can really tell if your contaminant is ectoplasm based, and, if it is, whether or not your problem is the same as mine.”

“Vladdie? Does he not hear me? Is our microphone not on?”

“I can hear you just fine, Jack, but there are more important things at hand. Daniel, is it alright for me to examine you? I know this is all very irregular.” Mr. Masters looked up. “This would be so much easier if I could do this in person, but time is of the essence, unfortunately, and this is such a surprise.”

Danny understood. It was a surprise for him, too.

“Yeah… It’s okay.”

“Good. Then, if you’re ready, let’s begin with…”

The assessment was blessedly brief, mostly consisting of the nurse helping Danny move to show off different blisters.

“Well,” said Mr. Masters, “I have to agree with Maddie’s diagnosis of ecto-acne.” He shuffled together a sheaf of papers. “I had been optimistic that my sickness was a one-off, a fluke, but I’m glad I prepared for the worst. “Daniel will need–” Mr. Masters started to rattle off a list of… It was a list.

“Mr. Masters,” said the nurse, “I don’t think this hospital has all of that equipment.”

“I am aware. I will, of course, arrange for you to be moved to my private clinic, near my home, Daniel. It’s where I get treatments for my flare ups.”

“Oh, Vlad,” said Maddie, “I don’t know if we can afford–”“Nonsense, Maddie, dear,” said Mr. Masters, smiling. “I’ll pay for everything. Transportation, board, treatment… Even a place for you and your daughter to stay nearby. After all, I know exactly what Daniel is going through. I could never leave someone to suffer like I did.”

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic phight 2023

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yanderemommabean · 2 years

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This is more of a really long ramble than a request but I kinda want to share this (if just to get it off my mind) (also, I’ve never submitted an ask before so I don’t know if I’m doing it right.)

I have this yandere therapist character that I thought up as like a comfort. He acts perfect but doesn’t really care about his patients, sits through the session, does his job, ends exactly as the sessions hour is up and is overall bored with the work. (For some background this man did psychology and became a doctor purely because it made him come across as more trustworthy and so he could manipulate people better.)

He is a lot like lee but is much more psychological in his torture. Picks out a victim, anyone who he sees as deplorable, makes them trust him and then uses them to “expand his grasp on the human mind” through various tests.

He seems very understanding/ kind and is overall a great therapist but rarely actually feels empathy or sympathy to his patients (or anyone for that matter) and definitely feels superior to most of his coworkers. Virtually nothing is hard or challenging to him and he isn’t interested in anything but his experiments.

(Through some way or another) he gets a new patient. (I honestly base why they are there after me so heavy anxiety, depression adhd autism ect. but it can be whatever people relate most to)

After about a month and a half (4-6 sessions) he starts to get so intrigued by this patient that they are all he can think about-consuming every conscious and subconscious thought. he realises that during those sessions with them he never once got bored and actually felt like he cared for them.

Of course this patient ends up being his darling and he’s a yandere so his love is very intense. He goes above and beyond for this patient. And his excuse to keep it professional is basically “I care about all of my patients, please don’t worry about being a bother, these sessions are our your time.”

Darling is tired? - “Well I have some blankets somewhere here, if you wish you can sleep on the couch in here. I’d be happy to hold you if you wish my love , touch therapy is a very useful tool!”

The session runs over? - “ah, I suppose I should’ve make better note of the time. Hm? Oh please don’t apologise, my poor time management is not your fault whatsoever. Besides, it seemed like you needed a longer session today anyway” (This man has never struggled with poor time management, he knew the second the hour was up)

He’s basically thinks everyone else but them doesn’t matter at all. And whilst he acts kind to everyone his darling is practically the only one he’s not immediately annoyed by. Like he can go from thinking about how to mentally break one of his experiments in the worst way to “They looked so nice today in that outfit, I bet their skin is so soft. I can’t wait till they only depend on me.” Just completely subdued by this patient.

And of course he has the normal yandere traits, stalking them, going through private medical files, ect. But he has the added bonus of being someone trustworthy,as he is literally his darlings therapist.

Any chance he can get to be around them he takes. Ups their sessions from every two weeks to each week, saying that he thought they needed more support. He’s even a little more kind to his experiments after a session with them sometimes. That is unless they reveal or talk about something traumatic, at which point he’s much worse to the experiments- with the new motivation of ridding the world from degenerates to keep them safe.

And I love your writing so I can’t stop thinking about a student darling with this who takes some form of science and Dexter’s class and so constantly interacts with the therapist (I don’t really have a name yet,) Dexter and also has dr.lee on their medical team.

(I’ll probably put a part 2 in the ask box exploring that) You don’t have to respond to this I just wanted to write about it.

(PS I hope things start going better for you aswell and remember to take time for just yourself, when you can)

I really love this, the way you made the character, how he feels about himself versus others until he meets his darling (with a good time window for the feelings to deepen and begin!)

I love this, and would love if you felt comfortable to send more! I think it’s tasteful and very well thought out, better than mine for sure!

Feel free to send more bean!

-Mommabean

#anon asks #anon confessions are amazing #AMAZING #TF THIS IS SO GOOD #yandere scenarios #yandere therapist #YESSSSSS #YEEESSSS #Mommabean

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starsnheroes · 7 months

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which enterprise crewmate does he connect / feel a bond with first? (asked by @/nyhura when i was aking for headcanon prompts)

this question is great because I get to tag @thefleetsfinest and talk about what we've discussed so much of in our chats. (and yes that icon for clint is necessary)

First, let's talk that Clint is incredibly lucky (and who knows, maybe he bent the rules, rigged the game, fixed the cards / clint's not above that) that Peter got put onto the Enterprise outside of the typical timeline that would have happened. So he isn't going on alone, he has Peter and that's good enough for him. He hadn't many people after he drank his life to pieces and his brother essentially told him to get his shit together and than left him be; not after the John Walker situation in the Academy.

Now let's actually get onto this question, when Clint's board the Enterprise, that is the already the longest that he's been sober or without a drink; not drinking and trying to actively manage his life better. He wasn't kicked out of the Academy, he had something to be working towards, and he had a relationship he was investing time into.

Sobriety for Clint is such a constant, and active choice over the years; and he's proud of it as the years go and he's never really learnt how to take the bad days when the urges are there with stride; he may not drink but he's not something whose urges go away and he wishes that. I could go on, that is an effect of the fact even if he never had picked up a drink, he'd be para-alcoholic. NOW WHY BRING THIS UP?

Because the first member of the crew that he connects with on a deep and personal level? That is @thefleetsfinest , that's Leonard. That's Leonard "Bones" Mccoy, because Clint kind of doesn't take care of his body, and yeah he did just burn his hand on something really hot and he probably knew that, and he needs to go see the doc

and the funny thing is he hates hospitals, he hates med-bays; he has literally said that "nobody should be around that much suffering and death" which is how he sees places of haling, hates the smell places like that; and yet he tends to be there more than most.

Being an addict, an alcoholic, even when sober the effects of what the alcohol did to your body; tend to leave your immune system weaker, and so he gets sick more likely and than Clint's prone to getting hurt.

So he is there, and we all know Leonard's a good doctor. Clint's someone who becomes Leonard's migraine and headache, because Clint is an AWFUL patient, and well Leonard collects those (Jim and Spock). So over time of Doc visits, they start to just become friends; talk here and there, Leonard joins the list of people that Clint harasses when he is bored and will put up with some of that.

Friednship through annoyance, which goes the fact that Leonard and Clint would recognize The Alcoholic in each other and than that kinship between them is there. That leads to them genuine friendship, getting to know each other and leads to discussion about alcohol, about not drinking, about leonard's capable of one glass control for his sobriety where clint is not (no alcohol at all), and discussions of their recovery.

That leads to doing morning yoga with each other, because that is part of their on-going recovery work; which when you are recovery friends, sober buddies, that kind of thing leads to a very deep friendship; Clint has told Leonard things that no one else would know. Hell, he tells Leonard more about the John Walker stuff than Peter, and Peter was there for some of it. Leonard does the same.

They have a friendship with Secrets to Take to the Grave; and knowing the intricacies of alcoholism, and they keep each other accountable with that. After BEYOND, Clint relapses, and it is Leonard the friend he leans on when he can't rely on Peter. And literally, Leonard's pulling string to get Clint more emotional support; because when he relapses, after 6 years sober, that is hard climb back up. such a dog, cause clint's been borrowing luna too much.

And Clint would do the same with Leonard, he keeps his secrets and even doesn't tease him when he needs serious at the point of a few year into their friendship; they have lunch and talk ship business, and other things. Clint even exercises the HEY IM YOUR FRIEND and trying to shoulder some of Leonard's burdens too.

Clint's Leonard's eyes and ears on the Bridge now too. so that's how leonard probably knew about that.

@thefleetsfinest and I have talked so much about these two, and just it's Leonard who he really connects with too.

Beyond Leonard? The next crewman that Clint connect with would be Sulu and the other three helmsman, making the total amount of helmsman/pilots for the Enterprise being five, which would be for shuttles as well ass shift rotation. Along with that would be the Navigators, as helmsman and navigators go hand in hand.

He is tight with them, and he does actually try to be good guy to them; not push on their nerves too much. Talk with them and keep each other in the loop, pick up when the others need a shift swap, and there is a "brotherhood" between helmsman/navigators.

Clint'll grab lunch with them, or join them for rec sometimes, talk and keep a good working relationship.

#about; clint barton #all headcanons tag #verse; clint barton; to boldly go (ss; crisispider)#dynamics; thefleetsfinest; it ain't heavy when you got a friend (recovery buddies)#DO YOU EVER GET EMOTIONAL ABOUT RECOVERING ALCOHOLICS? BEING SUPPORTIVE FRIENDS?#or is that just me #i LOVE YOU MELLLLL

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annekewrites · 5 months

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"You're doing great! You're a real trooper!"

TMI medical/dental/etc. stuff and things that were traumatic for me adjacent to that beyond cut, jsyk.

Okay. So what you need to know for background sake is that I have not had ANY non-urgent/emergency medical anything done since...considerably before covid started, for Reasons that look like this, as I think of them:

Phone anxiety from hell - I can override it for work or in a real emergency but it's one of the worst mental spoon drains. Probably related to the days when phone calls not from family or my very closest friends were 90% bill collectors and 9% other stuff I really didn't want to deal with.

Fear of committing to an appointment, not being able to keep it for whatever reason, and then getting dropped by the practice - this happened to me once with the only endodontist who would take my insurance without, like, a six-month wait.

Multiple awful experiences taking kids to appointments and them not getting appropriate care, including but not limited to the time my son's former primary care doc wanted to prescribe estrogen-containing birth control pills to deal with menstrual dysphoria, the time we got kicked out of the ER with my daughter, and the time the other ER threatened to call CPS on us because we were supposedly letting our preteen kids drink hard liquor and watch porn (NO????????) instead of dealing with the reason we were there.

Multiple awful experiences my husband has had, including the time he had a hypertensive crisis but as soon as they heard he was on psych meds they assumed he was also using illegal drugs and possibly committing DV (no???), the time the "Wellness Management Clinic" told him to crash diet AND divorce me if I refused to crash diet with him, and the time the primary care doc's record office confused the Vicodin he got with his wisdom teeth extraction with an ongoing daily prescription.

The horrible unethical therapist I had 15ish years ago, yikes.

I'm a fat woman with adult-diagnosed ADHD, and my last primary care doc was all "you don't really need Strattera because your ADHD isn't that bad, you got to this appointment on time just fine!" (CLEARLY this woman had never heard of Appointment Mode. Sigh.)

Thanks to the above, I'm afraid of being seen as "doctor-shopping" or drug-seeking, as well as just getting yelled at for being fat and not having been to the doctor in way too long.

So yeah. I get my shots, I go to urgent care when something obvious needs urgent care (possible strep, the stress fractured foot earlier this year), but I haven't had regular anything done in way too long.

I figured the first step in dealing with this was to get back in therapy. So I found a practice that would book new patients online, and there I selected a therapist who is queer and a parent, because (as I said to them) "there's a whole lot I just won't have to explain!" And I wrote on my intake form that one of the big things I wanted to work on was my medical anxiety, because it is actively causing Problems.

Next, while bringing my son to get dental work done and noticing that he seemed very comfortable with that practice, I decided "since I'm in the waiting room anyway, let's get me in and get this party started, I know there is a mess in my mouth." And I've had the botched-root-canal tooth pulled, which was apparently a challenged, and half of my mouth has had the periodontal deep clean with the other half to be done in two weeks, plus a couple of fillings and prep and temp crowns for a bridge to fill in where a tooth was pulled before.

And the whole time I keep hearing that I'm doing great! And that's helping so so much tbh when I expect to just be yelled at and treated with scorn and that's...not what is happening. It makes me feel like maybe I can go to the actual doctor and have it not be awful, too?

I'm trying.

#medical trauma #in which i overshare #self care

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ashleysanatomy · 3 years

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no you know what i am actually very mad about the miranda disrespect that happens on this show and im going to need her to get her flowers. IMMEDIATELY! #ImWithHer

#shes at the top of her game w surgeries she probably has the lowest k1ll count unlike those other mfs who k1ll patients every other scene.#and shes also a sensational doctor in terms of her compassion for patients like she really has an excellent bedside manner w them and is #always going above and beyond to help for no reason other than she wants to. like she wasnt even thinkig about chief resident role but she #went and did it anyways and pulled it together. and also shes the only one in that damn hospital who knows how to act right and will call #out the other clowns on their foolishness. for real though im mad bc all of these plotlines end up w her getting shorthanded like when she #was doubting herself bc her name got erased from burkes surgeries .... H€LL TO PAY! and everyone ripping on her in the m&m for what that #absolute BUFFOON izzie did like it was miranda's fault ..... JAIL for all of them! and now miranda not getting chief resident listen like i #said i like callie a lot she is a great character and doctor but that should have gone to miranda ...... very sick and wrong #4.01

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xjoonchildx · 4 years

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greedy | myg x reader | chapter one: you like milkshakes?

summary: being a loner has never bothered yoongi until now. until you.

pairing: yoongi x reader

genre: mafia AU, pining, eventual smut

rating: 18+

word count: 4.3K

notes: confession, i am struggling these days with my insane attraction to min yoongi. this guy has it all. looks and talent and mystery and sweetness -- he’s the total package. so i really wanted to give him a story in this AU that i’ve come to love so much and i truly hope you guys enjoy it.

i also hope you guys know how much i appreciate every single one of you. i see your reblogs and comments and likes and i try to answer every one because it truly makes my day. you guys make my day.

i could not post this fic without shouting out the amazing @hobi-gif because honestly, if hope didn’t read it, did i even write it? and i’m sending major love to three people who are such a source of laughter and support for me, @ladyartemesia @ppersonna @taetaewonderland. you guys keep me in stitches.

this fic is a continuation of the Guarded Series but can be read as a standalone piece! Chapter 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05

*************************

Yoongi had fucked up.

He’d misread the massive man’s approach, tracking him in one direction when the guy was actually headed in another. That’s how the asshole managed to catch Yoongi off guard with one meaty fist to the face.

It didn’t matter that it was hundreds of pounds of fat -- not muscle -- behind that punch. It was wielding more than enough momentum to blow up the side of Yoongi’s face like a bomb.

That’s the night he landed in the ER at Songdo at nearly two in the morning, pressing gauze to his bleeding face.

That’s the night he found himself chuckling inside an empty exam room, reading triage paperwork that made him sound like some kind of war hero instead of just an idiot who got caught looking the wrong way.

That’s the night he met you.

“Rough evening, Mister Yun?”

Yoongi had looked up from the floor just as you’d breezed into the room, tablet in hand. That moment marked the second time he’d been caught off guard that night.

“That looks like it hurts,” you’d murmured sympathetically, eyes raking over the bloody mess on his face. Your gaze was clinical -- professional -- as you assessed his grossly swollen eye and the half dozen bleeding cuts that surrounded it.

But then you’d stopped looking at him -- and stepped back to really look at him.

Yoongi had taken one look at your enormous, dark eyes and your soft, sweet face and he was dumbstruck. He’d blinked back at you with the only eye that could still move.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Nope,” you’d replied casually, turning to reach for a pair of latex gloves. “I’m a janitor. But I’ve always wanted to give this medicine thing a try. You don’t mind, right?”

Your eyes had sparkled then, bright with humor -- and Yoongi couldn’t help but grin despite the pain pulsing from the left side of his face.

“Here’s the deal, Mister Yun,” you’d said, pulling on your gloves. “I’m a resident. And I’m more than qualified to handle the -- situation -- on your face, but if you feel more comfortable waiting for the attending, I’m happy to step back. Good luck seeing him before sunrise, though.”

“Nah,” Yoongi had chuckled. “I think I’ll take my chances with you.”

“Good call.”

You’d leaned in close after that, gloved fingers firm under his chin as you turned his face from side to side. You’d smelled fucking amazing. The light, fresh scent that lingered on your skin sure as hell beat the disinfectant odor in this place.

“What happened to you tonight, Mister Yun?”

“It’s a funny story, actually.”

“Oh, great,” you’d said dryly. “‘Cause it turns out, I love funny stories.”

Yoongi had flinched when you’d peeled the gauze back, exposing the angry wounds to the air. But he’d forced himself to sit dutifully still as you got to work cleaning the caked blood off his face and eye.

“Thing is, I work for the circus,” he’d started, hissing under his breath when you swiped across an open cut above his eye. “One of the elephants got rowdy while we were practicing a number tonight and just kicked me right in the face.”

You’d stopped dabbing at his eye then, one brow raised and a cynical slant to your mouth.

Yoongi liked that you knew he was full of shit right away.

He liked that you’d played along anyway.

“God, I hate when that happens,” you’d said with feigned outrage, cutting your eyes at him as you dropped a piece of bloody gauze on the tray at his side.

“I know, right?”

That’s when Yoongi had won a real smile from you, wide and genuine. That's when Yoongi made the mistake of looking at you for just a moment too long.

He knew it by the way your smile fell away as you cleared your throat and turned your focus back to his damaged face.

“Well, I have good news for you Mister Yun,” you’d said after a while, eyes scanning the freshly cleaned wounds. You’d run your gloved fingers gently over one particularly deep slash over his eye and Yoongi felt a shudder run up his back. “I’m pretty sure you’re going to live.”

“Well, that is good news.”

There was that smile again.

It seemed like no time at all before you had him all patched up -- cuts sanitized and sealed with skin adhesive; swollen eye cleaned and medicated. Yoongi had felt a strange kind of disappointment as he’d watched you gather your supplies, pull your gloves off and drop them in the trash can near the door.

“You’re all set, Mister Yun,” you’d murmured. “Watch out for those elephants, okay? I’d hate for them to ruin a perfectly nice face.”

Then you were gone.

***************************

Thing is -- Kim Namjoon is a rules guy.

It doesn’t matter that he runs a criminal organization -- or that the men in his employ are gangsters in custom ties and suits. He expects dirty work done clean because that’s what sets the Gajog apart.

Rotate hospitals. Use fake names. Pay in cash.

All of those protocols are in place to keep any one of the Gajog from drawing unwanted attention. Truthfully, Namjoon’s operations usually run so neatly his men rarely have to seek treatment for anything beyond the occasional black eye or broken bone. That’s why he’d rather trust his men to legitimate doctors in legitimate hospitals than hand them over to some back-alley hack.

Thing is -- shit has gotten a lot more heated of late.

An audit of the Gajog books has turned up millions in missing won, stolen over time by street-level guys all over the city. Yoongi and Hoseok are the ones on the front lines, tasked with confronting those men -- getting them to pay and getting them back in line.

Sometimes they play ball. Sometimes they don’t.

Tonight is one of those nights.

Yoongi knew the moment they arrived at the crumbling warehouse in the Nowon district that shit was probably going to get messy. Their contact was fucked up -- sloppy drunk -- and belligerent from the jump.

After that, everything was a blur.

At some point during the scuffle, Yoongi heard his hand crunch under the heavy weight of the man’s steel-toed boot. The pain was still flaring hot from his knuckles when Hoseok finally took the guy down.

Right now Yoongi should be at Asan or Gachon or any of the other half-dozen hospitals in the city. He should have dragged his tired ass and bloody hand across town because those are the rules.

But instead -- for the second time in a month -- he’s sitting under the sickly fluorescent lights in an empty exam room at Songdo at nearly three in the morning.

Hoping to see you.

*************************

Yoongi is gingerly flexing his aching fingers when a light knock sounds at the door.

It was a long shot that you’d be here tonight -- and an even longer shot that you’d be the one treating him. But when the door to the exam room opens, it’s you on the other side.

Yoongi’s pulse picks up in response.

“Sorry to keep you waiting tonight Mister -- ” you stop dead in your tracks, eyes wide on his before darting back down the tablet in your hand. You scan the screen slowly then look back up, gaze critical.

“ -- Mister Woo.”

“Yeah, sure,” Yoongi replies casually. “It’s no problem.”

You approach him slowly then, disbelief etched into your delicate features and Yoongi takes in every detail.

It’s like he’d forgotten how pretty you are since the last time he saw you.

You’re nothing like the flashy women who like to hang around the usual Gajog haunts. You’re the kind of pretty that doesn’t cost hundreds of thousands of won a month to maintain. The kind of pretty that doesn’t come off at the end of the night.

Yoongi swallows thickly as you eye him, lips parted like you’re about to fire off a hundred different questions. But you don’t.

You play along.

Again.

“Right. Let’s get to it then, Mister Woo,” you say carefully, slipping on your gloves. “What happened to your hand?”

“Well, you see, I’m a hot air balloon operator.”

His mouth quirks into a smile and your eyes flash in response.

“Wind was nuts today and the basket came down on my hand. I think I might have broken something.”

“Hmm,” you murmur. “Hot air balloon operator, huh?”

Yoongi winces when you take his hand between your gloved ones, gently applying pressure to each knuckle.

“Yeah.”

“That’s an interesting way to make a living, Mister Woo.”

Yoongi chokes down a groan when you press against one particularly sore spot. You back off the pressure, turning to make a note on your chart.

“Well, I’m an interesting guy,” he whispers.

You look up at him then, dark eyes focused and intense.

“That you are.”

You’re looking at Yoongi like you can see inside him and the scrutiny makes him squirm. He lowers his eyes to the floor and keeps quiet while you clean his hand and apply ointment to his cuts.

“Mister Woo, it looks like most of these are surface abrasions, but the knuckles concern me. I’m going to have to send you for an X-ray.”

“Yeah, okay. It hurts like hell.”

“I bet it does,” you say quietly, typing into your tablet. “Someone is going to come and take you back when they’re ready. I have to go check on some other patients, but I’ll be back when we have some images to go over.”

“Sure,” Yoongi breathes.

You take another long look at him before standing to leave and Yoongi wonders for a moment if he’s made a mistake. Maybe he’s misread you like he misread that brawler who caught him with the nasty punch all those weeks ago.

You could be off to flag a security guard. Or leaving to call the police.

He really should have just followed protocol.

Yoongi sits in the quiet of that exam room waiting -- ready -- for trouble that never comes. Because when a knock finally sounds at the door, it’s not the Korean National Police.

It’s the X-ray technician.

Maybe he didn’t misread you after all.

*********************

It takes hours for you to come back.

“Mixed news tonight, Mister Woo,” you say upon your return. “You have hairline fractures in three of your knuckles, which explains the pain. Unfortunately, that means I’m not going to be able to do much for you beyond wrapping your hand.”

Yoongi nods. “Got it.”

“And you should probably lay off the ballooning for a while,” you say under your breath as you lay out your bandages. “Just a suggestion.”

“Good idea,” Yoongi chuckles. “Safety first.”

You fix him with another one of those long, indecipherable looks before getting to work on his hand. But you don’t say anything and the longer the silence stretches on, the antsier Yoongi feels.

“So…” he exhales, clearing his throat, “... you like milkshakes?”

“Everyone likes milkshakes,” you return evenly. You don’t take your eyes off his hand or the flexible material you’re carefully wrapping around his sore knuckles.

“Lactose intolerant people don’t like milkshakes.”

“Lactose intolerant people like milkshakes as much as the rest of us,” you argue. “They just can’t tolerate them.”

“What are you, some kind of doctor?”

Your lips quirk with the threat of a laugh you manage to suppress but Yoongi catches the expression before it disappears. You seem to relax after that. He does, too.

“Dijeoteu has the best milkshakes in the city. Ever been there?”

“Can’t say that I have,” you admit, taping off a bandage.

“It’s not far from here. Open twenty-four hours. I hang out there sometimes.”

“So you’re a milkshake-drinking hot-air balloon enthusiast,” you murmur, inspecting your handiwork closely. “Anything else I should know about you, Mister Woo?’

Yoongi scratches the back of his neck with his free hand.

“Not really. That about covers it.”

You hum thoughtfully under your breath as you finish wrapping the bruised knuckles.

“All done. How does it feel?”

“Better,” Yoongi admits. “Thanks.”

You gaze at him then, thoughtful -- expression soft with something that looks almost like concern. Yoongi drops his gaze down to his bandaged hand.

This is the part where you’ve finished -- the part where you leave.

This is the part where he should say something to you but he has no idea what or how.

“I would say come back soon, but this is a hospital and that seems wildly inappropriate,” you announce, voice breaking clear through his stupor.

You turn back to him just as you’re walking towards the door, and for a moment Yoongi thinks you’re going to give in and ask him any one of the dozens of questions that must be swirling around your mind.

But you don’t.

“Try to take care of that hand, Mister Woo.”

Yoongi nods.

“Thanks, Doc.”

**********************

YOU

Doctor Lee is on his Houdini shit tonight, apparently.

The ER is packed -- waiting room crowded with crabby patients -- and you are, once again, running yourself ragged to get to every last one. Lee is, once again, nowhere to be found.

“Page him again,” you call out as you pass the charge nurse outside an exam room.

A quick scan of your tablet confirms the toddler behind this magic door has been vomiting all night. You shut your eyes and wish a slow, violent death on your absent attending. Vomit is the single worst phenomenon in medicine.

“I’ve paged him three times,” Nurse Ko calls back.

“Page him again,” you repeat, forcing a smile and pushing into the room.

Thirty minutes and one change of scrubs later you are checking charts on the next patient in line. You pat the pocket of your new scrubs and realize you’ve left a half-eaten energy bar around here somewhere.

No chance you’ll get that back.

Lee picks this moment to reappear, back from doing God knows what. He strolls down the hallway like a man with nothing on his to-do list.

“You paged for me?” he inquires casually.

“A few times, actually,” you mutter. “I’m getting killed out here.”

“Relax,” Lee purrs, condescension dripping from his tone. “We’ll get it done.”

You bite the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from firing back the half-dozen nasty responses that spring to mind. There is no we when it comes to Doctor Lee. He’s always been flighty and inconsistent, but these days he’s practically a missing person. You’re still not sure how hospital management hasn’t figured out that he’s making his resident run the overnight ER.

“There’s a guy down the hall who says he swallowed a magnet,” you say, waving a hand in that direction. “If you can pick him up I can get to this head trauma.”

Lee sighs like it’s a major inconvenience that you’ve asked him to do his job.

“Yeah, I’ll grab it.”

***********************

It’s nearly four in the morning by the time you have a chance to catch your breath.

You walk out to scan the waiting area and to your relief, there are only a handful of patients yet to be seen. Then your eyes land on one young man -- slumped into a chair in an oversized coat, hat pulled low over his eyes.

You freeze.

The man in the chair must feel your stare from across the room because he straightens, giving you a better look at the face hidden under the brim of his hat. You let go of a breath you don’t realize you’ve been holding.

It’s not him.

It’s not the mysterious man with the fake names and the bogus stories and the insanely handsome face. You shake your head as you look back down at your tablet, silently chastising yourself for even entertaining the thought.

You shouldn’t still be thinking about this guy and you know it.

But it’s driving you nuts that you can’t figure him out.

He’s never tried to play you for pills and that seems to be the only thing people lie about these days. But if his problem isn’t drugs it’s certainly something because no one lands in the hospital that many times, with that many phoney stories unless they’re up to no good.

So you ignore the nonsensical disappointment you feel when the guy in that chair is not the guy.

Because deep down you know he’s either in trouble -- or he is trouble.

***********************

Your pager goes off for a second time and you silence the alert, tossing it onto a nearby blanket.

It’s not like you’re hiding out in here -- not really.

It’s just that you’ve already had one patient cough up blood on your sneakers and another swing at you when you refused to give him narcotics, so this night is off to a spectacularly bad start.

Besides, Doctor Lee could use a taste of his own medicine.

This week has been the worst, by far. You’ve been seeing at least three patients to his every one and you’re exhausted. If there’s any justice, he’s walking into the exam room where the infant with explosive diarrhea is waiting to be seen -- you check your watch -- right about now.

The door to the linen closet cracks open and you groan, hiding your face in your hands.

“What, you thought I didn’t know about your little hiding place?” Nurse Ko asks with a grin. “I find everyone’s hiding place, eventually.”

“Haven’t found Lee’s yet,” you gripe.

“Yeah, well he’s sneakier,” she laughs. “Here, I brought you something.”

She tosses a granola bar at you and it lands in your lap.

“Thanks,” you sigh, ripping it open. You take a bite and Ko leans against the doorframe.

“I don’t page you for my health, you know.”

“I know,” you whine around a mouthful of dried oats. “I just needed five minutes.”

“Well, I’ve got a guy out here who says he’ll only see you. Doesn’t want Doctor Lee and says he’ll wait as long as it takes.”

A piece of the granola bar lodges in your throat and you cough around it, spluttering while Ko looks on, amused. She waits for you to collect yourself.

“Is he -- ”

“ -- hot? Yes. Very,” Ko smiles.

Your cheeks flame with embarrassment at both the observation and the fact that it’s coming from a woman in her sixties.

“I was going to say young,” you grumble, standing and dusting your hands off with a towel.

“That, too. Come to think of it, I know I’ve seen him here before. You have some kind of admirer, jagiya?”

You flush.

**************************

“Good evening, Mister Kim.”

You hope the air of nonchalance you affect when you enter the exam room is enough to mask your jitters.

Your mystery patient looks back at you with those dark eyes and a half-smirk that makes your heart trip in your chest. You take a steadying breath as you look down at your tablet.

Get it together, girl.

“What brings you in tonight?” you inquire lightly. “Sword-swallowing accident? Lose a fist fight with a bear?”

Your mysterious patient chuckles under his breath.

“Where would you get a couple of outlandish ideas like that, Doc?”

You look up at him just as the teasing smirk on his face becomes a full smile and heat blooms in your chest and face. You force yourself to tear your gaze away.

“I dislocated my shoulder. Did you know I work air traffic control at Incheon?”

You shake your head with amused weariness as you make notes on your tablet.

“Crazy night. One of the planes nearly slid off the runway and I threw my shoulder out trying to get it back on track.”

“Did you save it?”

“Saved it and all 227 people on board.”

“Bravo, Mister Kim.”

“Just doing my job,” he shrugs.

You set your tablet down on the exam table with a thump, eyeing him as you reach for a pair of gloves.

“The charge nurse says you asked for me.”

“I did,” he admits. “You never told me what your favorite kind of milkshake is.”

You cock your head to the side as you look at him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mister Kim,” you murmur, feigning ignorance. “According to my records this is the first time I’ve ever seen you.”

“Oh, yeah. Right,” he chuckles.

“You need some help getting undressed?”

“Yeah,” he admits, slipping one arm out of his leather jacket. You lean in to help him pull the other side off, compelling yourself to ignore the way he smells like soap and sweat and man when you’re this close.

“It’s strawberry.”

You blurt the words out, anxious to give your brain a task that doesn’t involve analyzing this man’s smell. Something about the mischievous twist to his mouth tells you he knows you’re flustered by his nearness.

“I would have guessed chocolate,” he muses, reaching one hand down to grab the hem of his shirt. He drags it up his abdomen and you will your eyes to stay on his face -- refusing to give him any indication that you have more than a clinical interest in what lies underneath.

“Everyone likes chocolate,” you argue, taking over when he can’t get the shirt up any higher. You push it over his head and carefully work it off his shoulder. “I don’t want to be like everyone else.”

“Mission accomplished, Doc.”

He gazes at you then -- chest bare and eyes sharp beneath those inky lashes -- and you feel a bolt of awareness run the length of your spine. You pray the heat you suddenly feel all over your body is not manifesting in damning spots of color on your face.

You remind yourself to get back to work.

He sucks a breath between his teeth when you press gently against the inflamed muscle and tissue.

“My shoulder’s been shit for years,” he confesses. “I screwed it up when I was a kid and it hasn’t been the same since.”

“So this happens to you from time to time?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then I’m going to have to refer you for an MRI,” you say, and he groans when you press into his shoulder again. “There could be a lot of scar tissue in here, but I won’t be able to know what’s going on until we get some clear scans.”

Your eyes flick back to his.

Every word that’s ever come out of this man’s mouth is a lie -- but there’s something that feels honest about the way he’s looking at you right now. Something that makes you feel seasick, unsteady.

“Turn to the side for me,” you say quietly, and the thin paper that lines the exam table rustles as he complies. The relief you feel when he pivots away from you with those eyes and that look is whole-bodied.

“For now, the best I can do is probably pop -- “

Your words trail off as your eyes lock on a wound that sits just a few inches from his spine, just above the line of his jeans. The edges are white and soft with age -- the area long-healed -- but the trauma is unmistakable.

Textbook.

The anger you feel as you stare at the wound doesn’t make any sense.

But you feel it anyway.

“Is it still inside of you, or did they pull it out?”

“What -- ”

“-- The bullet Mister Kim,” you interrupt sharply. “If it’s still in you, I promise it will come out the second they load you into an MRI machine. The hard way.”

The muscles of his back flex as he stiffens. Tension bleeds into the lines of his body and into his voice when he finally speaks.

“It’s out.”

Neither of you says another word.

The room feels hollow now, painfully quiet without talk of elephants or hot air balloons or milkshakes. The two of you work together silently to crack his abused shoulder back into place. Somehow he manages to endure that pain without making a sound.

In the end, it’s you that has to speak first.

“That should hold you for now,” you say tightly, standing to toss your gloves in the trash. You grab your tablet to make notes.

“You mad at me, Doc?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” you mutter, fingers flying over your screen. “I don’t even know you.”

“Then why does it feel like you’re mad at me?”

You tear your eyes away from the screen to find his.

There’s no teasing or humor there anymore. He looks boyish and unsure like this, peering back at you with somber eyes from beneath long black bangs that have fallen into his face.

“No more stories, no more bullshit. Tell me who you are.”

The words are out of your mouth before you can think better of them -- before you can consider how stupid it is to interrogate a complete stranger with a now confirmed history of violence. Before you can consider that you have no right to the anger that now streaks white-hot through your veins.

“I can’t,” he breathes quietly. “I’m sorry.”

You shake your head in disgust.

“Are you dangerous?”

Before he even speaks, you get your answer. You get it in the way color erupts across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. The way he looks away from you and down to his hands.

“I guess that depends on who you ask,” he whispers.

“I’m asking you,” you fire back.

He doesn’t answer.

You stand there for what feels like an eternity, waiting for him to say something in his defense. Waiting for him to pull another gag and tell just one more ridiculous story. But the seconds tick by and he says nothing.

“A nurse is going to come by with a sling. She’ll help you get dressed, too,” you say tightly, walking to the door.

You don’t know why your heart feels like it seizes in your chest when you turn to give him one more look.

“Take care of yourself, Mister Kim,” you say quietly. “And don’t come back.”

*****************************

Glossary:

Dijeoteu: dessert

Jagiya: sweetie, sweetheart

*****************************

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mosswillow · 3 years

Text

Iced Coffee - Dark!Stephen Strange x Reader.

Summary:

You met Stephen Strange your last year of medical school. He was godlike and you were infatuated. You liked him and in return he humiliated you. Years later you were over it; made a career for yourself.

He saw you again, remembered you, wanted you. He was going to show you that he had changed, win you over. You would be his and he would protect you forever, he just had to prove himself.

Series Warnings:

18+ adult content, Dark, Rape/noncon, obsessive behavior, stalking, doctor/medical themes, mild/moderate doctor kink, needles (chapter one, not sex related), violence, abuse, kidnapping, forced marriage, smut, escape attempt, dirty talk (my best attempt at least).

Potential warnings, a non-exhaustive list: Oral, praise kink, mild degradation (Will not include whore or slut)

You can join the tag list here.

A/N: Now that I’ve been writing for a few months I’m experimenting with different styles. If you’ve read my other stuff lmk what you think (ask, comment, message, whatever.)

Thank you to the unnamed requester and @couldntbedamned for this request. 🖤

By Clicking keep reading you confirm that you are over 18 and understand that this content is mature and potentially triggering.

CHAPTER 1

Stephen was the most brilliant man you had ever met. School was a joke to him, he easily outperformed everyone no matter the subject. He was confident, lived his life with this air of superiority, and you were obsessed. You couldn’t keep your eyes off of him, sat next to him in class, helped him when he asked. He was nice to you too, he was an asshole almost all the time but when he talked to you it was gentle, respectful.

It was October third when it happened, the date would forever be burned in your memory. He turned to you and asked you the date.

“It’s october third,” you smiled.

He thanked you and touched his hand to your arm and you felt a spark, you were sure he felt it too.

But he didn’t feel it, you were so very wrong.

You found out just how wrong you were that evening in the worst possible way. It was so unexpected, so hurtful. You walked into the small coffee shop you and your friends frequented and saw them all in the corner, socializing. A stab of pain struck you in the chest; nobody invited you. Maybe you should have backed away, recognized you weren’t wanted but you heard your name. You thought they had seen you, called you over.

They hadn’t seen you though, weren’t talking to you.

They were talking about you.

“Poor thing, thinks she has a chance with me,” you heard Stephen laugh.

You walked behind him, tears welling in your eyes and someone nudged him awkwardly. He looked up and made eye contact with you. A tear fell down your face as you backed away from the group. It was like a nightmare, like looking down and seeing you were naked, but this wasn’t a dream. It was horrifyingly real.

“Pathetic,” you heard him say to the laughing group of people you called friends.

It broke you.

You spent the remainder of your time in school avoiding him and every friend who had been there. You poured yourself into your studies and came out of it stronger than before, like a phoenix being reborn - You were brand new, beautiful, powerful.

You became a doctor and scientist and a damned good one at that. But Stephen was always better. Every conference, every medical magazine, he was there; always at the top. You could never escape him.

Until his accident.

He was suddenly gone, you couldn't believe it. Dr. Stephen Strange, the most accomplished neurosurgeon, lost his hands. The shock wiped through the medical community, a travesty they said. It wasn’t a travesty to you though, It was almost uncomfortable how happy you were at his downfall. It felt so freeing to see the great and mighty Doctor Strange fall so far, for your bully to lose the thing that was most precious to them. He became irrelevant, dropped from magazines and conferences and disappeared without a trace. You were truly content for the first time in your life. You were free.

Stephen flexed his fingers and smiled. It was a long road to recovery but he did it, he was a neurosurgeon again and even better now. He was godlike, able to perform surgeries that he could only dream of before. He wasn’t just going to get his life back, he would flourish, go above and beyond his already impressive list of accomplishments, he would dominate.

He walked into the conference full of confidence, an arrogant smile plastered on his face. The gasps and stares made him stand even straighter, walk with even more purpose. He always loved being the center of attention, it made him feel superior.

It was his addiction, to be special, better than everyone around him. The craving for greatness was a consequence of his birthright. He needed to be better because he was better. His brain was like a radiant flame, he shined brighter than everyone around him and he knew it.

“Stephen, good to see you,” a group of colleagues surrounded him, patting him on the back. He felt at home, this was where he belonged.

The auditorium started filling and he followed the group in, sitting in the back and opening his pamphlet. It wasn’t usually his type of lecture to listen to but he had time to kill before his next panel. The speaker, a specialist in infectious disease, worked at New York Hospital where he would start back on Monday. He closed his pamphlet and waited patiently for the presentation to start.

She walked onto the stage and his body tensed as he watched her prepare for her speech. Stephen’s brain was on fire, the attraction to this stranger like nothing he had ever felt. His thoughts turned less than appropriate as he stared at her ass. He saw no panty lines and couldn’t help but imagine what did or did not lie beneath the skirt's thin fabric. She wasn’t a conventionally attractive woman but that made her even more beautiful in his mind. She was perfect for him, a mix of everything he was physically attracted to in one person. Women had thrown themselves at him but he didn’t want any of them, he wanted her.

Then she started speaking and a new wave of attraction washed through him as her intelligence became apparent. Who was this woman? He rarely felt attraction like this, attraction that consumed onto his whole being. He needed to get to know her, needed to touch her, smell her hair, hold her hand. He was obsessed.

He didn’t even realize her presentation had ended until everyone started applauding. Stephen stood and clapped along. He watched her exit the stage and as he walked closer her face suddenly flashed into his memory. He knew her years ago in med school. She liked him, she followed him around like a puppy.

Excitement built as he approached her, but she gave him one look and her face fell into a grimace.

“Stephen Strange,” He held his hand out.

Her reply was cold, “We went to school together,” she spit, ignoring his outstretched hand.

“Yes, we did, didn’t we. I’m very interested in what you’re working on. Maybe we could get together, have dinner?”

“No,” she turned and walked away from him.

“Hey,” He yelled at her, but she kept walking, giving no acknowledgement of his obvious frustration.

It didn’t take him long to catch up, he reached out and grabbed her shoulder pulling her around to face him.

“What is this hostility about?” He asked.

Her body went rigid and she wrenched her shoulder out of his hand, “Poor thing, thinks she has a chance with me,” She said through gritted teeth.

He remembered in that moment what had happened, how he used her for short lived friendships.

“I’m not that person anymore, I’m sorry, let me show you,” be begged.

“You called me pathetic,” She snarled.

“It was so long ago, please.”

She stood up tall and leaned into him. “Pathetic,” she called him before walking away again.

He stood there dazed, never having been discarded so callously. He couldn't leave it like this, he would show her he had changed and she would forgive him. He was determined. He was the great Doctor Strange and he could do anything.

A sob took over your body as you read the little piece of paper. It was over, no more money for research. The conference was your last hope to find funding and you didn’t succeed. You looked at a little blue vial and picked it up. It was a bad idea, you knew it was, but this medicine could help so many people. If you didn’t try it right then you may have never known if it worked or not. You removed your jacket, swabbed your arm and filled a syringe. A tear fell down your cheek as you depressed the plunger.

It immediately started burning, beginning in your arm and flowing throughout your veins until you were screaming in pain. The room spun around and your vision started to blur. You stood and took a few shaky steps before falling to the ground and curling into a ball. Quiet whimpers escaped your lips as you struggled not to pass out from the pain.

A knock rang through your ears and you lifted your head slightly.

“Hey, it’s me,” called a voice from the other side of the door.

Stephen, of course he would show up at the worst moment possible. You were in so much pain and part of you wanted to ask for help but you couldn’t. If anyone found out you could lose your licence and Stephen was someone you were sure would turn you in.

“It’s not a good time,” you yelled.

“I just wanted to apologize for my behavior, I was an asshole but I’ve changed. I really have.”

“Go Away Stephen.”

The doorknob jiggled and you held your breath. You had locked it, you were sure you had.

“Hey, I’m getting worried, open the door,” he demanded.

“I’m sad, ok, lost funding for my research. I don’t want you to see me cry. Happy? If you’ve actually changed you’ll leave!” you put your hand over your mouth to cover a groan, the exhaustion of talking having caused intense pain in your lungs.

“Oh, um, sorry to bother you,” he murmured.

You sighed in relief as the sound of his footsteps disappeared and then hugged your aching body, shivering and crying softly as excruciating pain moved around. It suddenly felt like you had been thrown in a freezer. It Was so cold, why were you so cold?

You shivered and cried on the floor for hours until sleep finally took you, giving a slight respite from the worst day of your life.

Series master list ~ Next Chapter

#dark!stephen strange #stephen strange x you #Stephen strange x reader #dark!stephen strange x reader #dark fic #dark marvel #dark!mcu

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scapegrace74-blog · 3 years

Text

New Ways of Turning into Stone, Chapter 4

A/N Some strong reactions to the last chapter, which I admit caught me by surprise. Writing is a funny craft, where you spend a lot of time and effort trying to show your reader exactly the picture you have in your mind, but then also have to surrender to each reader’s interpretation of what you wrote. That said, some interpretations miss the mark entirely, and for that reason this chapter is entitled “False Assumptions”. Trigger warning for childhood disease.

Jamie’s weekly appointments continued through the grey slumber of late April and into the wakening month of May. Thursday became Claire’s favourite day of the week, for reasons she didn’t care to scrutinize too closely.

With regularity came a certain brand of predictability. Their appointments took one of two forms, she realized. Some days Jamie was full of life, witty and exasperating by turns. He would spin long yarns about some trivial aspect of his life, fascinating tales that turned out to be nothing more than surface reflections, revealing little of the murky depths beneath. He was also adept at using his considerable verbal charm to draw her into divulging more about herself than she ought. Those visits left her equally frustrated and challenged.

The rest of the time her patient arrived with a weary slump, the thousand watt bulb of his personality dimmed to an occasional flicker. Given his offhand comment about whisky and women, she tried not to ponder if he was hungover or suffering from the effects of an all-night hook-up. From a diagnostic point of view these days of low ebb were beneficial because Jamie was far more likely to offer some nugget of inner revelation, truth sneaking out through the cracks of his weakened defences.

“I was away on business, in Hong Kong, when my Da passed,” he said on one such afternoon, the skin below his eyes drawn tight and the copper in his hair somehow muted.

“Did it happen suddenly?”

“No’ really. Jen had been at me fer months tae come hame, sayin’ that Da was workin’ himself tae death.” Jamie looked out the window, eyes reflecting the overcast skies beyond. “I ignored her. Too wrapped up in my own grand self tae pay any heed. Twas Ian, my brother-in-law, who called tae say Da had dropped in the pasture. Massive coronary. I caught the first flight back, but he was gone before I landed.”

She watched Jamie’s face closely as he spoke, but beyond the understandable emotion of reliving the sudden loss of a parent, he remained inscrutable. The urge to draw him out overcame the deference she paid to Jamie’s well-defined boundaries.

“Do you think you’re to blame for his death?” she asked, half-expecting to be met with silence or a nimble deflection.

Jamie shook his head ruefully.

“Nah. I dinna think I’m tae blame. I ken it. I was the only surviving son, ye see? In the Highlands, tradition is everything, an’ a Fraser man had worked those lands fer generations. I was only meant tae complete my studies abroad, an’ then return tae Lallybroch and take o’er from Da. Instead, I left my sister an’ Ian tae watch o’er the farm while I played the business tycoon.”

“Is Lallybroch still in your family?” she wondered aloud, the name rolling about in her mouth like marbles.

“Jenny and Ian couldna keep it. I wasna well enough tae object, an’ they sold tae a developer. It’s some kind of corporate wellness retreat now,” he finished with a distasteful grimace.

For every disclosure Jamie made, two more questions arose in its wake, like hacking away at a many-headed Hydra. She wished she could delve further, but the chime from her computer announced the end of the session.

“Will I see you next week, Jamie?” she asked as he reluctantly rose to leave.

“Aye,” said with a sad smile. “I’ll be here.”

***

The following Tuesday, Claire took the afternoon off work to perform an errand she’d long been avoiding.

Her departure from the Royal Hospital for Children had been so precipitous, she hadn’t filed the necessary paperwork to close her employment file. The Human Resources department had been pestering her to complete the process for months. The threat of holding up the transfer of her accreditation finally forced her hand.

To her great relief, the personnel offices were nowhere near the actual wards. They lay at the end of a long white hallway broken by large windows looking into a series of meeting and activity rooms. Her plan was to get in, sign the damn forms, and leave without running into any former colleagues or patients.

The sun slanting into one of these sparsely furnished rooms glanced off the top of a bent head, causing it to glow like a freshly minted penny. She stopped and stared, trying to reconcile the image of James Fraser seated in a too-small plastic chair, surrounded by a group of hospital-gowned children.

He must have caught sight of her while she stood gaping. Running to the door before she could find the motor function to turn around, he called out joyfully from behind a blue hospital mask.

“Doctor Beauchamp! Fancy meeting ye here.”

She mumbled something incoherent, damning herself for the blush she felt enveloping her cheeks. Behind Jamie, a row of dewy eyes watched on. She recognized the paper-thin skin and missing hair of chemotherapy patients, and a salty knot rose in her throat.

“Can ye spare a few minutes? Ye’re jes the pair of steady hands we need.”

She longed to decline, to disappear, to come up with a plausible excuse why she couldn’t enter that room. Her heart thumped angrily in her chest, warning of its fragile state.

Seeing her conflict, Jamie extended a welcoming hand.

“Come, Sassenach. The lassies would love tae meet ye.”

The space smelled of sterile laundry and sawdust. With a habit borne of years of practice, Claire disinfected her hands in the small utility sink and donned a spare mask from the nearby dispenser, all while wondering what the hell she was doing.

The children were seated on colourful chairs arranged around a low table, its surface covered in pieces of pre-cut lumber, colourful pots of paint, a glue gun and all manner of cheap decorations such as you would find at a craft store. The little girls ranged in age from pre-school to young teen, but they all looked at Jamie as though he’d hung the moon as he addressed them.

“Ladies, I’d like ye tae meet Doctor Beauchamp. She’s a braw doctor but I bet she kens next tae nothing about woodwork. Ye’ll have tae show her how it’s done.”

A chorus of nervous giggles was the only response. Claire knew from experience that being a medical professional wasn’t going to endear her to children who spent much of their lives being essentially tortured in the name of science, hoping for some kind of miracle.

“Hello, everyone,” she waved meekly. “You can call me Miss Claire, if you like. Now, whatever are you doing with all this wood?”

It turned out that Jamie was supervising the construction of a half-dozen birdhouses. He had pre-cut the lumber for easy assembly, but was assisting each girl to create a custom masterpiece that would hang outside her hospital window. With the patience and steady manner of a primary school teacher, Jamie led the group through each step.

A waifish girl of perhaps six sat directly to Claire’s left, her bare scalp covered by a brightly coloured bandana, offset by a huge pair of peacock-blue eyes that glimmered above her mask. Eyes that were the mirror of the ones that visited her office every Thursday. Something heavy settled inside her ribs.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” she asked in a low voice as she pushed an open pot of sky blue paint away from the table’s edge. Small hands busied themselves pulling apart a package of cotton balls that looked suspiciously like the ones kept in the hospital’s supply cabinet.

“Margaret Murray, Doctor, errr, Miss Claire,” came the timid reply.

Not Fraser, then. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She snuck a glance across the table at Jamie, who was just then teasing the youngest girl by tickling her cheeks with a fake feather. Despite her heavy thoughts, she couldn’t help but smile. That smile faltered when she noticed that the inside of Jamie’s elbows bore a matching set of fresh bandages. A series of puzzle pieces tumbled into place.

Perhaps sensing the weight of her scrutiny, Jamie looked their way, whistling in admiration when he saw Maggie’s near-complete birdhouse.

“Tis a fine hame ye’ve built fer yer wee birds, Maggie. What is all yon white fluff for?”

“Tis clouds, Uncle Jamie,” Maggie replied with the certainty of childhood. “I dinna want the birdies tae miss the sky, even when they arenna flyin’.”

Claire watched the words hit him as surely as though they had been bullets. A frozen gasp, a shudder that travelled the length of his body and the crest of tears that he tried valiantly to blink away.

“Aye, ye’re right, a nighean. Any bird would be fair honoured tae sleep in yer skyhouse,” he managed to reply, voice bouldery with contained emotion.

When each birdhouse was complete and left along the window ledge to dry, Jamie set his small crew of helpers the task of clearing up the mess. Claire stood next to him as he loaded his tools back into a small carrying case.

“Thanks for inviting me to join you, Jamie. It was... well, it was unexpectedly wonderful,” she admitted.

“Ye’re most welcome, Doctor Beauchamp. We couldna have managed wi’out yer steady hand manning the glue gun,” he teased.

“You’re not my patient here, Jamie. You don’t need to use my title,” she said, a bit vexed by his formality.

“Aye, but it doesna feel right tae call ye by yer given name either. An’ Miss Claire is jes weird.”

She had to acknowledge that he had a point.

“What was it you called me earlier? Sassa-something?”

“Sassenach. My Da woulda skelped my hide if he heard me call a lady by that name,” he said ruefully.

“Why, does it mean something terribly offensive?” She was almost afraid to know, having enjoyed the delusion that Jamie felt as fondly towards her as she did towards him.

“Nah, tis jes an old-fashioned word for an English person in Scotland. Seemed tae suit ye, is all.” He shrugged, seemingly embarrassed by the explanation.

“Well then, Sassenach it is. When I’m not on the clock, that is.”

Jamie’s eyes danced above his mask the way they did when he smiled, and she imagined hers replied in much the same way. A long moment passed when nothing was said, neither of them looking away.

“You’re her platelet donor,” she said at last. “Maggie’s, I mean.”

“Aye. Every week while she’s in hospital for chemotherapy. Tis the least I can do.”

It was an explanation that fit all the facts, but one that she never would have guessed. Jamie had always worn long sleeves to his appointments, but she was certain the weeks when he was haggard and worn out coincided with the times he was donating the litres of blood necessary to distill into the platelet concentrate that would then be injected into Maggie’s body, helping her combat the poisonous effects of her chemotherapy.

“Whisky, women and song?” she prodded, relieved and yet frustrated that his offhand comment had kept her from seeing the truth. “Why didn’t you just tell me, Jamie?”

“I didna want yer pity, Sassenach. Fer once in my life, tis no’ about me, ye ken? I didna want ye lookin’ at me like I was some kind of hero.”

She held back her reaction that his was a textbook definition of heroism, and instead asked the next obvious question.

“Are you a compatible bone marrow donor as well?”

Jamie shook his head slowly. Although he was a close match, he explained, it wasn’t close enough. Maggie’s older brother, Wee Jamie, was a perfect match but the law prohibited him from becoming a donor until he was at least sixteen, in seven long years.

“We’re jes tryin’ tae buy her enough time,” he said sadly before stepping out of the room, explaining he’d be back momentarily.

Claire stood in a daze, running through everything she’d assumed about Jamie in light of these newest facts. A light tug on her hand drew her back into the moment. Maggie was looking up at her with wide, trusting eyes.

“Are ye the Sassenach lady Uncle Jamie and my Mam argue about?”

“I suppose I might be,” she replied, curious what had been said between the siblings that Maggie had overheard.

“Are ye a heart doctor?” Maggie continued.

“Well, no. Not exactly. I’m the kind of doctor who helps people who are sad, and I try to find a way for them to be happy again.” It sounded so easy when explaining it to a six year old.

“Sometimes Mam and Da talk about Uncle Jamie when they dinna ken I’m listenin’. I’m verra good at sneakin’,” Maggie confided, and Claire couldn’t help but smile. What a precious child. “I’m sure you are,” she replied warmly, a hand coming to rest gently on the tiny cloth-covered head.

“Mam says Uncle Jamie is more stubborn than a mule and that he canna see past his own big heid,” Maggie continued. Claire couldn’t say that she disagreed with that assessment.

“But Da says Uncle Jamie’s heart has been broken too many times, and thas’ why he’s given up on living. Can ye fix his heart, Miss Claire, so that it isna broken any more?”

She couldn’t have stopped her tears if she tried. She knelt on the floor and gathered Maggie’s thin, fragile body in her arms.

“Oh, Maggie. I’m certainly going to try.”

#my writing #outlander

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dreamescapeswriting · 3 years

Text

What If ~ JHS [Request]

WORD COUNT: 2.4K

GENRE: Fluffy, single mum, Non!Idol Au, friends to lovers, flashbacks

PAIRING: Jung Hoseok X Fem!Reader @poppinpeaches

The drive over to your apartment complex wasn't that long but as Hoseok drove there his mind wandered over everything you'd been through together and how close you were as friends. Together you and Hoseok had been friends since you could walk and talk, your mothers had been friends which automatically made you the best of friends. He'd had the biggest crush in you during high school but never did anything about it because you were with someone else. The "love of your life," which at the time he was. You and your ex-boyfriend were a couple of the year, every year. Always together, even when you were adults you'd stayed together. Everyone thought you would be together forever until that one day. That one day that turned your life upside down along with Hoseok.

All of the hospital walls looked the same to Hoseok, he had no idea which way he was supposed to be running in. All the nurse had told him was that it was down the hall and on the right and to listen out for the screams. The screams were coming from every direction so he had no idea what that even meant,

"I swear to God if you don't get this baby out of me I will personally punch you in the nose!" That you, he knew that voice anywhere so he began rushing down the hall and entering the hospital room.

"Sir, no visitors." The same blonde haired nurse said to Hoseok but you grabbed onto his hand tightly,

"D-Don't leave me, I need him here. The dad isn't here, I need Hoseok." It was nothing new for you to say that you needed Hoseok, it was something you would say a lot. He'd been there for you through everything in your life as well as every stage in this pregnancy.

"I'm right here," He whispered to you as you looked up at him, tears rolling down your cheeks as you kept begging him not to leave you here alone.

"You're not ready yet, a few more centimetres and you'll be ready to go down to the delivery ward," You watched as the blond nurse left the room, giving you a dirty look as she went. It was all she'd been doing from the moment you'd gone into the pregnancy ward. Giving you dirty looks because the father wasn't there and in your words, "wasn't going to come."

"Hobi I can't do this," You whispered weakly as you turned to look up at him. Sweat was dripping down your forehead as you whimpered at him, you felt so exhausted from the contracts you'd been having all night. You'd woken up at 3 am and your boyfriend was nowhere to be seen, you hadn't been able to get ahold of him so you rushed yourself to the hospital calling Hoseok on the way.

"You can do this, we both know you are far stronger than you give yourself credit." He whispered reassuringly, taking your hand in his as he looked at you. On his way here he'd been trying to get your boyfriend on the phone, calling all of his friends including his mother but there was no answer from any of them.

"We're going to do this together, I'll be right by your side okay?" As he questioned you, you just answered him with a scream. The contractions were getting closer and longer which meant you were going to give birth any second. You'd read all of the books and been to every single birth class there was, you knew what was coming but still, you didn't feel ready.

"I know this is scary, I can't imagine what you're going through but we're going to get through this together," He whispered to you, as the same nurse from before came to check in on you, she took one look at your face before nodding at you and calling for more nurses.

"It's time," She whispered to you, her demeanour changing form the cold one she'd expressed before to a calmer one as she began wheeling your head out of the room.

"Where is he?" You whimpered as you looked around the hospital room, you were passing in and out thanks to the medication that the doctors had you on.

"He's sleeping," Hoseok whispered once he heard you speaking, he hadn't left your side all morning. You glanced over at Hoseok who had a giant smile on his face,

"You did well," He chuckled getting up slowly from the chair to get you some water but you weren't interested in that right now. Your eyes landed on your sleeping son who was being wheeled into the room by a nurse,

"It's time for your feed," You'd done this already before that morning so she left you both alone to do it in privacy, Hoseok looked up at the ceiling as you uncovered your breast and got ready to feed your son.

"Has...Has he shown up yet?" You questioned Hoseok who was now looking at you again, he shook his head slowly. Your boyfriend was still nowhere to be seen. Hoseok had been the one there for everything, first feed, first nappy change, everything. Your old high school crush feelings were starting to come out but you pushed them away. You were in a happy relationship - as happy as you could be with a boyfriend who didn't bother to show up on the most important day of your lives.

"Y/n," As the voice of your boyfriend rang through the room you almost dropped your jaw as you saw him standing there, he didn't even look at the baby in your arms.

"Where have you been? I-I was in labour," Throughout him leaving you there to deal with all of this you still loved him, you were still willing to forgive him for being late if there was a valid reason but then your eyes caught sight of the bags behind him. A suitcase was there too,

"Are you going on a business trip?" Hoseok watched as you continued to feed your son throughout this, he tried to slip out of the room but your boyfriend was blocking the only exit.

"No. I'm-" It was as though your boyfriend couldn't make it through the sentence he was trying to say to you, but both you and Hoseok could sense where this was going and what he was about to say to you.

"I'm leaving you...I don't want this, I don't want a baby. It means getting tied down and I don't want that, I'm meant to be a free bird. Flying around the world and travelling-" Hoseok looked at you as you carefully handed him your son,

"B-Burp him Hobi," You whispered to him as you shakily got up from the bed and walked over to your ex who was now trying to back out of the room but he tripped over his back. Falling onto his back as you towered above him.

"I just had your baby...I just gave birth to your son and you're telling me you don't want to be apart of his life? What? At all?" The coward on the floor began shaking his head at you,

"I never wanted children." You scoffed at him before throwing his bag out of your room and into the hallway, by now nurses and other patients on the ward were all turning to look at you.

"You should have thought about that before fucking me without a condom." You slammed the door to your room as you didn't want to cry in front of him, you didn't want to come across as weak right now.

"Y/n...Are you-" Hoseok didn't finish his question as you walked back over to him and your son, taking your now sleeping baby from him.

"I'm fine Hobi..." He knew you were lying but he didn't want to say anything, he just watched as you carefully laid your son down to sleep in the crib the hospital had.

"Go and get uncle Hobi," You laughed softly when you looked out of the front door, Hoseok was sitting in the car daydreaming about something. Your three-year-old began running over to the car before banging on the door and yelling out,

"UNCLE HOBI!" You giggled as you watched Hoseok jump out of his skin, whatever it was that he was daydreaming about really took him in by surprise.

"Hey, kiddo!" He screamed back at your son as he slid out of the car, bending down to pick up your kid who was now yelling out in surprise.

"I have a surprise for you!" Hoseok laughed wildly as he placed your son onto his shoulders and began bouncing up and down. You watched in awe of them as Hoseok walked to the back of his car, reaching into it and pulling out a bag. He'd told you he'd gotten your son a couple of late Birthday presents but this seemed like a lot rather than a little.

"Hobi- You already got him so much for Christmas, it made up for a bunch of birthdays." You grumbled as the two of them came towards the house. Every time your son had a birthday or Christmas Hoseok went above and beyond with the gifts. Making sure to spoil him as if he was his own which made you feel guilty but Hoseok loved your son.

"I saw them and I had to." He whined at you as you began walking into the living room together, your son sliding off his back and began jumping around asking what it all was.

"Please let me open it Uncle Hobi," You nodded at Hoseok who was looking up at you for permission,

"I'll make a drink, you're on clean up duty." You laughed softly, going through to the kitchen where you could still see them through the hatch in the wall.

As the kettle boiled you watched them both interacting with one another, Hoseok was like a father to your son more than his real dad ever would have been. His real dad never bothered to stay in contact, didn't even bother to send a card at the holidays or birthdays. It always made you wonder what life would have been like if Hoseok was the father if Hoseok had been the one you stayed with during school.

"Hoseok would have been a great father," Although you thought you were saying this to yourself Hoseok smiled with his back to you. He'd heard caught you once, on the phone to a friend when he was looking after your son talking about how much you'd wished he was the father instead. It wasn't the first time he'd caught you talking about him either, he'd heard you express how much you liked him before and now but he never did anything about it. He was always scared it would ruin your friendship but as time went on and you both grew closer it was getting hard to hide his feelings for you as well.

Later that night you were cramped up in your home office, you were working from home a lot while your son grew up. Your boss didn't mind since most of the stuff could be done from home anyway and he understood your situation.

"Here," You jumped a little as Hoseok placed a mug of tea on the desk in front of you, you were huddled over a folder of work and you looked up to see Hoseok.

"Hi," You whispered breathlessly as you tried to calm your heart rate down,

"I just put him to bed, he didn't want to bother you while you were working," You whined out at the thought of your son not wanting to bother you. You'd been so busy with work you'd barely noticed the day passing away from you, Hoseok could sense something was bothering you so he began rubbing your shoulders.

"You know, he's young but he understands really well. You're doing great Y/n...Don't worry too much." You nodded at him and moaned out as he continued to rub your shoulders. Your eyes fluttered shut as you sat there enjoying the touches from Hoseok, but that was when you felt his breath on your ear.

"I'd be a great boyfriend too you know," That was when your whole body tensed, you felt your body heating up in embarrassment and he chuckled deeply.

"I've heard you mention it a couple of times...W-Why didn't you come to me about it?" He questioned as you turned your chair around to face him, he could read the expression on your face.

"I was worried you wouldn't feel the same...Back in school, I liked you a lot but-"

"Our friendship," He finished off for you as you nodding along to what he was saying,

"Then when I was in labour...I-I thought it was just the hormones but then the feelings wouldn't go away...Even now, whenever you're around I get timid which is stupid because you're one of my best friends and now I'm rambling because I'm so nervous you won't-" His lips on yours cut you off, you instantly relaxed against his touch. Your eyes fluttering shut as your body gave in to the feelings you had for him. Butterflies setting lose in your stomach as you made out with him, it felt completely natural. Not forced or awkward, fireworks were exploding around you as he pulled you up from the chair. Setting you down next to him on the small sofa in your home office as you made out, his hands working their way to your waist as yours tugged on the strands of his black hair.

"N-Not yet," He whispered as you tried to pull his shirt up,

"I want to take you out first, on a real date," He panted as you looked into his eyes, nodding as you smiled at him. Both of you felt so overcome with emotions as you stared into one another's eyes.

"We should find a babysitter, someone who will make sure Mr Mischief is in bed," He whispered as you both turned to see your son standing with his head poking through the door, as soon as he saw you both notice him he gasped and sprinted off to his bed.

"Storytime with him?" You questioned as you got up from the sofa and linked your hands with Hosoek who nodded at you,

"I have the perfect story in mind," He whispered to you, raising your hand to his lips and leaving a small kiss on top of it before walking towards our son's bedroom.

Tagline: @lyoongx @mitzwinchester @fan-ati--c @rjsmochii @kneel-begyourpardon @taestannie @bisexualmess007 @innersooya @sw33tnight @sweeneyblue1

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bxtchforstyles · 3 years

Text

The greatest headache ever

Harry Styles x Meredith Cooper

(part of the hey doctor series)

When Harry starts getting headaches bad enough to where he has to go to the emergency room, Meredith is there to help. This is the story of how they met.

Warning: mentions of hospitals, slight mentions of needles, just medical things.

Word count: 2.1k

gif not mine.

Whenever Meredith worked overtime at the hospital, those always seemed to be the same days that Harry didn’t have to go to the studio, or the days that Harry had something planned for the two of them.

Meredith was the definition of a workaholic, making it very difficult for her to often go home on time after her shift. Harry tried to get her to take more breaks as the years of dating her went on, but she never let up.

He would say, “baby, I’m only looking out for your health.”

To which she would respond with, “actually, I’m looking out for my patients health.”

She was at the hospital doing rounds, or maybe at the office seeing patients. She was always working.

So, maybe it was unbearable for Harry to never get to see his girlfriend, but when he really thinks about it, her working overtime at the hospital was the reason he met her.

FLASHBACK:

Grueling headaches were an often occurrence for Harry, so it never really occurred that he would end up in the emergency room from utter exhaustion.

“Good evening, Mr…” She looks down to find out what Harry’s name is on his chart, “Styles, correct?”

He nods, furrowing his eyebrows and wincing as another sharp pain echoed through his head.

“Okay, well I’m doctor Cooper. It says here that you’ve been having ongoing headaches for a while, so what made you want to come in?”

“Um…” He trailed off, scratching the back of his head, “I was at the studio, and I had been standing for a while and I sorta fainted.”

“Hm,” Meredith looked down, expecting any other injuries, “so, I’m guessing you cut your wrist on the way down?” There was a white bandage with blood showing through it wrapped tightly around his wrist.

“Yup.” He laughed as she began to unwrap the bandage, “Not to sound rude or anything, but you look a little young to be a doctor.”

“Unless you are suggesting that I am incapable because of my age, which I don’t think you are, then I take you saying I look young as a compliment.”

“Of course I meant it as a compliment.” Harry shakes his head with a small chuckle, making Meredith smile.

“Ouch.” She winced along with Harry once the bandage was all the way off of his wrist before she set it on the medical tray next to her. “Yeah, you’re definitely going to need stitches.”

Harry’s jaw dropped, “Are you being serious?”

“Do you really think I would joke about something like that? C’mon, I’m not that cruel.”

She was being honest, and Harry liked that about her. She wasn’t trying too hard to fit the entire doctor role that most of the arrogant doctors did.

She patted his shoulder as she stood up from the rolling stood she was sitting in, “I’m going to go grab a suture kit, I’ll be right back to fix you up.”

“I see you’re taking a liking to one of your patients over there.” Meredith jumped as she stood in the supply closet, turning to find Maggie, one of her friends (and colleagues) behind her.

“What?” She asked as she reached for the suture kit she had been looking for.

“Ya know,” Maggie snatched the kit for Mer’s grasp, “nurses are perfectly capable of a couple stitches, that’s their job after all.”

She rolled her eyes, grabbing the plastic container with all the tools necessary inside of it back, “I had some free time, he’s a pretty interesting guy, actually.”

“Guy? That’s it?” Meredith sees her friend's jaw drop, “Do you not know who that man is?”

Her eyebrows furrowed in response, “What do you mean? He’s a patient...”

“You’re about to suture the wrist of like the most famous popstar ever, Meredith!”

She whipped her head back around, “What? Who? Wait, what’s his name?’

Another one of the girls who works with the two of them walked up to where they were standing in the hall, appearing to have been eavesdropping. “Does she seriously not know who Harry fucking Styles is?”

The name definitely rang a bell, and Meredith had definitely heard it before, but she just could remember exactly where.

“What is he? A singer?” She looked towards Maggie, making her groan.

“Mer! You literally listen to his music!” Maggie smacked her friend in the back of the head, making her hiss from the sudden contact, “You know that one song that you were obsessed with over the summer, golden?”

Meredith nodded before her jaw dropped, “Oh my gosh! He wrote that song?”

Maggie copied her previous motion, nodding before turning her friend back towards where Harry sat, pushing her forwards. “Go get ‘em tiger!”

When Meredith walked back up to Harry, she stumbled a bit before setting all her supplies on the small, metal table that sat next to his bed. “Sorry that took so long, you are apparently the talk of the town all over the hospital.”

“Ah,” Harry only tucked his lips into his mouth, “really thought I was off the hook when you pretended to not know who I was, ya really had me sold.”

“Um…” the girl trailed off awkwardly, “I didn’t know who you were.”

"Oh, Im sorry, I shouldn't have assumed that you knew who I was.” He spoke, the shock in his voice was still quite apparent though. "I guess after a while of being recognized everywhere I go, I learned to act as if everyone knows who I am, and have the worst intentions. It's the best way for me to assure that my integrity is saved.”

Meredith nods, "I know I'm not famous or anything, but I somehow understand that.”

Harry's wrist was still obviously hurting, she could tell by the way he flinched every time she came close to touching.

"Okay, you may feel a small pinch when I insert the numbing agent, but after that, the stitches should be smooth sailing.” Meredith grabs his wrist, just above his injury, she had the syringe filled with lidocaine in her other hand, "ready?”

Harry nodded before she quickly inserted the syringe, beginning to numb the area. For a moment, it looked as if all of the color had completely drained from his face, his eyes falling closed.

"You doing alright?” Meredith light-heartedly asked, trying to ease the tension as she finished numbing Harry's wrist.

He looked quite dazed, as if he was in a trance, "I think I'm alright.” He sighed, leaning back in the chair, still having that void look in his eye.

Meredith stood up again, "Why don't I go get you a cool washcloth to put on your forehead while we wait for the numbing to fully kick in, you look a bit pale."

Harry smiled, "That would be great, thank you.”

When Meredith returned from the sink outside the procedure room, Harry was still slumped back in the large chair, his forehead glistening with sweat.

"Here ya go.” She smiled, placing the washcloth soaked with cold water on his forehead. He was surprised by the cool temperature at first, but he sighed in relief moments later.

"Okay, so I'm going to get started on the stitches now, if you're all settled.”

"Yeah, I'm okay, go ahead.” He held his injured wrist out to her.

It only took around thirty minutes for Meredith to finish the stitches, and once she was done she was already suggesting other treatments for Harry's headaches in question.

"I honestly think that you are getting these headaches from just pure exhaustion, the symptoms you are describing sound much like the type of migraines I had in med school, and with such a high stress level job, it would make sense why you wouldn't be getting enough sleep, correct?”

Harry bows his head, "It is true that I could probably use a little more sleep.”

Meredith begins to jot something down on the chart, "and some more water, since you also seem to be showing signs of moderate dehydration.”

"Whatever you say, doc.”

It was beginning to get harder and harder for Meredith to keep her level of professionalism, because all she could think to herself was is this super hot, famous, heartthrob flirting with me right now?

It was safe to say that she was beginning to understand why so many girls, including her own colleagues, found this man so enticing.

"Okay!" She quickly broke herself out of her daydream, "I think that's all I can really tell you, sleep more and drink some more water. But, if you start doing those things and you are still getting headaches, please don't hesitate to come back.”

"And as for the stitches?” He questioned, making her furrow her eyebrows.

¨What do you mean?” She countered immediately feeling stupid when he responded.

"I mean, won't I have to come back to get them removed?"

"Oh! Yes, I would say fourteen days." Meredith was mentally face palming at this point as her embarrassment took over.

She wasn’t even a huge fan of his, hell, she didn’t even know who he was a hour ago, so the reason she was stuttering like a blubbering idiot was beyond her.

“Can I just come back here?”

“Yup, I’ll be here.” She says with a bigger smile than she intended as she handed Harry the medical forms for him to fill out.

“Thank you so much.” He said gratefully as she said her goodbyes before walking out of the room and into the hall, where Maggie, and many other nurses stood, seemingly waiting.

An array of questions began to be shouted from many different people, some including:

‘How was he?’

‘Did you get his number?’

‘Is he coming back?’

Meredith was appalled by the amount of shouting going on, when everyone was well aware that the man they were desperate to know about, was only behind the very thin, wooden door.

“Are you guys fucking insane? Patient confidentiality!” She defended, adjusting her white coat before beginning to make her way back towards the nurses station at the end of the hall.

******

Meredith wasn’t expecting to ever see Harry again after he came in to get his stitches removed, which was a long, drawn out process because of Harry’s attempt to stall the doctor.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him again either, she would have been perfectly happy to. He was charming, and didn’t seem too arrogant, which was something she completely adored about him.

But it wasn’t until about three weeks after he had gotten his stitches removed that she felt someone approaching her on the cereal island that she stood in Whole Foods.

“Meredith?” She turned around, being met with a surprised look at Harry. “Sorry, can I call you that?”

She laughed at that, “I mean I wasn’t expecting you to call me doctor when I’m not even your doctor anymore. Can I call you Harry?” She countered his question.

He let out a sigh of relief, remembering how down to earth Meredith really was for being someone with such a high profession. “Well, I’m not your patient anymore, now am I?”

She looked back at the shelves, picking up her choses box of cereal, throwing it into the basket that was hanging around her wrist.

“I guess you do know who I am, don’t you?”

“I do now.” She responded, not really knowing what else to say.

Harry on the other hand, was debating whether or not it would be inappropriate to attempt to make a move on his doctor. Was she even technically his doctor anymore? He didn’t know.

He was always very straight forwards through, which was something he prided himself in. “Would it be weird if I were to ask you out on a date?”

Meredith liked the game that they were continuing to play, the one where he would ask her a question, and she would counter back with almost the exact same one. “Would it be weird if I were to say yes?”

“I guess that answers both of our questions.”

It was safe to say both of them left the grocery store blushing and smiling like idiots.

#harry styles #harry styles blog #harry styles blurb #harry styles imagine #harry styles x ofc #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x you #solo harry #harry styles masterlist #hey doctor series

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alienheartattack · 3 years

Text

To All Of Us, From 2000 Years Ago

I got so mad about 139 and the leaks that I banged out my own 3000+ word ending to the manga today. Please keep in mind that this is a non-shipping story. Although I’ve exclusively written Rivamika before, this is not a Rivamika story, and although there’s an Eren/Mikasa scene at the beginning. there is no relationship between them, only the implication of feelings that are not quite reciprocated. I also threw some Levi fan service in there because why the hell not?

CW: There are references to and non-detailed descriptions of rape in this story.

You can also read this on AO3!

"You know what you have to do," Eren says. Mikasa pretends not to hear him over the rush of the little creek they're sitting by so he says it again, louder.

"I know," she sighs. "Even now, knowing that you've done something so unforgivable, a part of me doesn't want to."

"You're a good person, Mikasa. You'll be even better without me."

She snorts a laugh. "I've killed people, too. Just not as many as you did."

"You always had the weirdest sense of humor." Eren puts an arm around her, presses a kiss to her cheek. "I'm going to miss it." That's what finally brings him to tears, the thought of not seeing Mikasa again. Or Armin. Or Connie, or Jean, or Captain Levi, even the rest of them. He's had plenty of time to accept that he'd die at nineteen, was always going to die at nineteen, but now that the moment has arrived he wants to hold on just a bit longer.

Mikasa doesn't cry, at least not the way he expects her to. Tears stream down her face but she doesn't sniffle, doesn't sob, doesn't rage or scream the way she’s done in the past. He sees them both, Mikasa the girl and Mikasa the soldier, perfectly coexisting in the inky blackness of her eyes. She has made her decision. She made it before she even stepped into the mouth of the Titan.

"Kiss me one last time," Eren weeps. "Please."

"Okay," she nods, cupping his face with one hand and leaning in close. "See you later, Eren."

When Mikasa pulls away from his lips, the deed is already done. His severed head feels sickeningly heavy in her blood-stained hands. His eyes gaze beyond her, beyond the veil of this world, clouded with the knowledge of the void. The Titan around her begins to disintegrate in plumes of white steam. Mikasa swears she can smell wildflowers.

"Mikasa Ackerman," a girl's voice echoes. Mikasa whips her head around, looking for the source of the sound. Someone seems to materialize from the steam, swirling eddies of smoke coalescing in the form of a small girl, scraggly blond hair falling into her eyes, barefoot in a dirty white dress. Her face is blank, her eyes downcast.

"Ymir," Mikasa says, the name forming in her mouth before she can think of it.

Ymir nods, then points to Eren's head. "You loved him. Why did you kill him?"

"I had to."

"Why?"

"Because some things are more important than my love." Ymir stares blankly, seemingly confused. "The millions of people who died are more important. The world is more important. Besides, what kind of person would I be to stand beside someone who could slaughter so many people so senselessly?"

"You… don't love him?" The little girl blinks quickly, white lids snapping over black eyes. Something about it seems inhuman, wrong somehow. Mikasa cannot help but think of insects.

A tear falls from her face and lands on Eren’s, snaking a trail down his cheek as though he'd shed it himself. "I can never forget what he did and I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive him for it, but I'll always love Eren."

"You wouldn't die for him?"

Mikasa answers without hesitation. "Never."

Ymir's gaze snaps up to Mikasa's, and she feels sick from what she sees in the girl's odd, dark eyes: a hunger, almost starvation, for the scraps of affection Karl Fritz would throw at her; a longing to be treated well, to be fussed over and doted on and adored. Ymir would close her eyes and dream of a shining, beautiful man when the king held her down and fucked her, made her recoil, made her bleed, beat her when she cried out or complained of the pain. She carved out a space in her mind for him where she sculpted him into her ideal. Sometime between that first bloody night and the day the assassin's spear pierced her chest she invented a Karl Fritz out of whole cloth, a man whose cold entreaties and brutal assaults were proof of his undying love.

Mikasa sees these things from Ymir’s eyes, feels the bruises forming on her back, the tearing and bleeding between her legs, the rotted wine breath of Karl Fritz in her mouth.

"I would never have jumped in front of that spear," she says, more confident than she’s ever felt. "I wouldn't even have considered it." Ymir frowns, cocks her head like she's trying to understand. "You thought you were doing the right thing, but you protected a man who never loved you. You laid down your life for a man who forced your daughters to consume your body. He didn't even mourn you."

A flash of anger contorts Ymir's face. Her eyes dart around wildly, turning Mikasa's words over in her mind. "But he loved me," she insists.

"Did he ever tell you he loved you? Or did he treat you like a slave?" Mikasa's voice wavers at the word slave, at the memory of Eren screaming at her across that restaurant table; the moment her wall of denial came crumbling down. No matter what his plan was, it became clear that day that he would step on any of them to achieve it. She had no idea how true that assessment would become, millions of bodies crushed into the contaminated earth beneath the feet of Eren’s Titans.

She wonders if things would have happened differently if he'd just admitted once that he loved her.

"You are free," she tells Ymir. "You choose your own destiny. I am free, and I chose mine."

Ymir says nothing, her eyes luminous with tears, and then dissipates into the smoke. Mikasa is vaguely aware of the wavering steam around her, of Levi flying on Falco's back and pulling her out of the Titan's mouth before everything turns hazy and white.

She can see the scene from two thousand years earlier as clear as though she were there, floating above it all: the crowd come to see King Fritz's speech, the hooded assassin's arm pulling back, the tip of the spear glinting in the daylight. The assassin lets the spear fly, its arc perfectly aimed at the heart of the tyrant. His wife Ymir, older and slimmer than the girl Mikasa met but still with those same sad, black insect eyes, watches in horror as the tip of the spear flies closer and closer; but she does not move, not even when it impales her husband through the chest and the light in his eyes is snuffed out.

In time-lapse, Mikasa sees it all: the accession of Queen Ymir, wise and fair, and the moderate reigns of her three daughters, and their daughters after them. The power of the Titans remains within the royal family, passed down from mother to daughter, a shameful, secret birthright. They create diplomatic ties with other countries, offering succor and counsel, avoiding the path of war so as not to reveal their ultimate power. There is no Great Titan War, no walls, no telepathic manipulation. The world moves forward in fits and starts as it always has, small skirmishes and occasional wars, but the Eldians remain steadfast and committed to peace. Satisfied with Ymir's choice, Mikasa finds herself closing her eyes, opening them for the first time again in the year 835, in her parents' house just outside Shiganshina, as a new doctor pulls her into the world. He is not Grisha Yeager, she notes, and then she forgets who Grisha Yeager is entirely.

In the year 845, there is no Wall Maria for the Colossal Titan to breach, and no Colossal Titan to breach it.

Inside one of the cities in what was once Wall Rose, a history teacher writes notes on a chalkboard before his first class arrives for the day. He draws a crown in the middle of the board and writes the subject of the day's class inside of it: QUEEN YMIR THE WISE. The teacher is startled by a noise behind him; he turns to find one of his students, a shy girl called Sarah, taking a seat at her desk.

"School hasn't started yet," he says. "You're supposed to be outside."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Smith," Sarah replies. "I was looking at a really interesting bug and the other girls started making fun of me."

The teacher nods. "All right, just this once. If you’d like, sometime I could teach you how to stand up to those girls."

Hundreds of miles away, the forests of Dauper ring with the whoops of an exuberant girl, triumphing at having killed her first deer with a bow and arrow she carved herself. She doesn't care that she's scaring the other game away with her commotion, or that she has no idea how she'll lug a hundred-pound carcass all the way back home.

In Trost, a young boy lingers over his breakfast; not because he wants to miss school, but because his mother's omelet is the most delicious thing he's ever eaten and probably ever will eat. His mother ruffles his hair and pinches his round cheek, then gently chides him to eat faster or he’ll be late.

A little boy in Ragako District, a few inches shorter than his friends, demands another explanation of the multiplication tables. He doesn't quite understand the concept, goes blank when his friends try to explain arrays of rows and columns, but he believes that he can pass today's test if he tries hard enough.

Across the sea in Marley, the prosperous Eldian District is strewn with streamers, celebrating the 2000th anniversary of the assassination of the cruel King Fritz. The children have the day off from school and are gathering in the streets, purchasing candy and ice cream from vendor stalls and exchanging them as gifts to celebrate the sweetness of life. A little blond girl receives an extra coin from her father, who tells her to get something special for herself.

A few blocks away, a doctor fills his medical bag and sets off to see his first patient of the day. As he walks through the crowd of happy children, many of whom he’s delivered himself, he hopes that his only son will change his mind and join the family business.

In Mitras, a shopkeeper opens his door for the first time, pausing for a moment in the early morning sunshine to admire the wooden shingle hanging by his doorway, gently swinging in the breeze. It depicts a hand wrapped around a mug of tea, wisps of steam rising into the air above it.

The door opens while he's adjusting the canisters on the shelf behind the counter, making sure their labels face perfectly forward. His heart leaps at the tinkle of the doorbell. He picked the most musical one, the one that made him happiest when he heard it, and he feels very good about his decision.

"Hello, welcome to Ackerman Tea— Mom!" His voice takes on an adolescent whine when he addresses his mother, which makes him feel like a child and impossibly old at the same time, despite his twenty-six years.

"Did you really think I wouldn't be your first customer?" she asks, beaming. "Of course I'm going to come support my sweet boy." Her gaze sweeps over the shop, its walls painted a deep forest green, the mahogany counter polished to a mirror shine. "I'm so proud of you, Levi. You've worked so hard and it shows." Her voice quavers, her eyes filling with tears.

"Moooom," he trills, softer this time, quietly moved. Her presence feels like an auspicious omen, a reminder from the universe that someone will catch him should he fall. "Is there a tea you’re interested in, or would you like me to help you choose? We have more than thirty varieties."

"You've been practicing," his mother notes with a nod.

Levi shrugs off her comment, feeling a bit bashful that she’s noticed his hard work. "I've never been great with people, and this job is nothing but people. At least until I can hire someone to cover the counter while I blend tea in the back."

"You'll get there soon," she says, pulling a few coins from her purse. "Get me something you'd think I'd like."

He thinks for a moment, his brow furrowing in concentration, before his face lights up and he grabs a step-stool to reach a canister of black tea flavored with strawberry and rose. "This one is sweet and floral, but it becomes so much more when you add a bit of milk. You don't even need any sugar."

"Perfect. You even thought about how I take my tea." She places a few coins on the counter, watching her son approvingly as he scoops the tea into a bag, folds it closed with surgical precision, and ties a blue ribbon around it. "You're going to be a success, my love. I know it."

"That makes one of us," he smirks, then scoops the coins into his palm and puts them in the cash register, enjoying the feel of the heavy keys under his fingers, the spring-loaded pressure of the drawer. He hopes he gets to use it many more times today.

"Will you be home for dinner?"

"I should be. I can't imagine people will want to buy tea at night."

"Good," his mother says. "Because now that you're in business, we should talk about finding you a wife."

"MOM!" he exclaims, a furious blush coloring his face.

Further south in Shiganshina, Mikasa sulks as her mother walks her into town, not wanting to leave the safety of her parents' cabin to learn and play with the other children. She is perfectly happy to do chores on the farm, to learn the simultaneously mundane and arcane secrets of coaxing a plant from seed, to throw feed to the chickens and pull weeds in the garden.

"Mikasa, you're ten years old. Your father and I can't teach you everything," her mother says.

"I can learn from books. I don't need to go to school."

"The fact that you're saying that means you need to go. There's more to the world than just our farm, my sweet. You might want to see the world someday."

The little girl huffs. "I doubt it." Her mother simply shakes her head and smiles, ruminating on her daughter’s impending teenage years, a possible hint of rebellion, but finds that hard to imagine. Mikasa is usually a calm, easygoing child, though perhaps a bit too inquisitive and stubborn for her own good.

Mikasa hugs her mother fiercely at the school gate, watching as she turns and walks back up the road that leads to their farm. She’s excited to make new friends and learn new things, but she misses her home more than she ever thought possible. She lets out a soft sigh, then turns to face the crowd of running, yelling children; her new classmates.

She trudges around the grassy schoolyard, dodging groups of kids chasing each other or playing impromptu games. Everyone seems to know each other already; even if she did feel comfortable enough to go up to someone and introduce herself, she has no idea who to approach first.

"Hey! Give that back!" someone screams behind her. Mikasa turns around to see a small blond boy jumping up and down, reaching for a book that a larger boy dangles just above his grasp. The larger boy just laughs at him, taunting him with the book, threatening to tear it from its spine.

Mikasa frowns, balling her fists at her sides, then approaches the boys. "He said to give his book back," she says to the bully. "Give it back."

The bully laughs. "You think you can tell me what to do?"

"I think you should give the book back if you know what's good for you," she snarls, putting her hands on her hips. The bully laughs again and shoves Mikasa out of the way with one hand, making her stumble backwards, tripping over her own feet until she lands on her behind in the dirt. She gets up, dusts herself off, and runs up to the bully, punching him square in the nose. He falls to the ground, dropping the book. Mikasa tosses it to the blond boy. The bully grabs his nose, tears welling in his eyes, and lets out a wail when he sees his hand smeared with blood.

"You leave him alone!" Mikasa threatens, looming over the bully, her dark eyes shining. He scrabbles to his feet and runs away and she lets out a relieved breath, her heart hammering in her chest.

"That was amazing!" the little boy says. When he approaches her, she finds that he's not actually that small, only a few inches shorter than her. "I've never seen you before. Are you new?"

"It's my first day," she replies. "I've lived here all my life but I haven't been to school yet."

"I'm Armin," the boy says. "What's your name?"

"Mikasa."

"That’s an interesting name. Are you from Hizuru?" Armin asks, his eyes wide with curiosity. He holds up his book, a thick, leather-bound tome, A Brief History of Hizuru and the Minor East Sea Islands written in gilt lettering. "My parents told me that the whole country is built around a volcano. A big mountain filled with liquid fire! Well, technically it’s molten rock."

"My mom's family is from Hizuru, but I’ve never been there and I don't know anything about any liquid fire mountains," she says tentatively.

"It's real!" he gushes. "I'm reading about it now. I could tell you about it more at recess if you want. I like to sit under that tree over there." He points off in the distance, at a huge pine tree that shades a corner of the yard. "They're going to ring the bell soon, otherwise I'd tell you now. Volcanoes are so cool. Sometimes they explode and shoot the liquid fire into the sky like a firework."

"Wow!" Mikasa marvels with a smile. "I can’t wait to hear about them."

#snk 139 #snk spoilers #snk leaks #snk fanfiction #alienheartattack writes

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lonelier-version-of-you · 3 years

Text

That... was pretty mediocre for an anniversary episode? Although 35th anniversaries aren’t usually very big anyway, so. I suppose that’s justified. It was better than last week’s ep (to be fair, that’s a VERY low bar, it would’ve been pretty much impossible for it to be worse than last week), but the show is still on shaky ground for me. I honestly don’t know if I’ll keep watching past this point. If I do keep watching, it’ll just be for Jade, ‘cause she’s brilliant.

Anyway.

I only tuned in tonight to see Noel one last time, and in that respect, I’m pretty satisfied. I know a lot of people were saying the same about Cal, but I’m not particularly familiar with Cal, I started watching a few months after his death and haven’t seen that many older episodes with him. It was nice to see him again, though. But my focus really was on Noel.

He actually got more screentime than I expected, and it was lovely, if also painful, to be reminded of what a great character he was. To see his compassion, the way he went above and beyond for the patients and relatives in the ED, even though he was only the receptionist. To see him laughing with Big Mac, showing off his friendliness and sense of humour.

And then there was the “grandpa Noel” line. OW. Casualty got me right through the heart with that one.

I miss Noel so much. But I’m glad his final scenes got to be here, rather than in the COVID episode, which pretended to be about him but was actually just about Connie and her feelings. (I love Connie. You know I do. But it did Noel a disservice, focusing his death episode on how Connie felt about it.) And he’ll forever live on in my heart. Noel, my beloved. <3

Indeed, the flashback scenes in general were probably the best part of the ep. They did a very good job making it really feel like 2016 Casualty - to the point my mom, while watching the episode with me, commented “This is just making me think ‘Oh, it was so much better in the old days!’. I don’t think that’s what they’re going for.” For once, my mom is right and she should say it, lol.

I particularly loved how Jade was tied into the flashback. I wasn’t expecting that at all, and I was very pleasantly surprised. If you all haven’t figured it out yet, I really love Jade. She’s one of the very best characters Casualty has at the moment, and she has to be one of my personal favourite fictional characters ever. The more screentime and storylines she gets, the more I enjoy an episode.

Poor, poor Ethan, eh? His life just really, really sucks. His brother was brutally murdered. He has a terminal illness that will eventually rob him of his ability to be a doctor. He’s lost both his biological and adoptive mothers. Now he’s lost the woman he loved, on the day they were supposed to get married. Now he’s been left as a single parent, knowing that, even in the most optimistic scenario, even if his condition can be managed for a long time, he’s still not going to live long enough to see his son become an adult and start a career and have kids. God, that poor man. No wonder he’s having a breakdown.

And now Stevie is about to cause more trouble for him. I like Stevie so far, and find her an interesting character. I am curious about how the storyline with her sister is going to play out. But oof, her arrival sucks for Ethan, given she blames him for what’s happened to Emma. And she’s definitely a very flawed character. (And please, fandom, stop hating on her this soon and let her be flawed. You’re allowed to dislike her, but you can’t deny she’d be getting a lot more interest and sympathy if she were a male character behaving in exactly the same ways. There are plenty of male characters on this show who aren’t very good people but we love them anyway.)

Anyway, speaking of Stevie, we’re all agreed that she’s definitely not straight or neurotypical, right? She just gives off strong sapphic vibes, she’s probably bi. And she hasn’t been around long enough and doesn’t have a defined enough personality yet for me to figure out quite what I think is going on in her brain, but she’s definitely some kind of neurodivergent. My first thought, being me, was autism - I’ve seen other people suggest ADHD or bipolar. I guess we’ll have to see how her character develops, in order to see what fits best.

And Stevie is also polyamorous!!! That one’s canon!!! Okay, the line about her going out with 3 different guys with the same name at once could mean she was cheating on all of them. But I’m taking it to mean she’s polyamorous! And no one can stop me! :D

Uhhh, what else is there to talk about... oh yeah, I like Theodore so far (even if he - and the other paramedic from the trailer - does look about 12, lol), I literally don’t care about Charlie or Robyn or Paul, we got some good Dylan content tonight, and last but not least I have no sympathy for Faith. Sorry not sorry, she treated Lev like shit. I don’t care about how she feels now that he’s dead.

#BBC Casualty #Casualty spoilers

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mimik-u · 3 years

Text

Flower Child, Ch. 18 (”Abyss”)

LINK

The door that led into Room 11812 was already partially cracked when Blue Diamond arrived in front of it the next morning. Lost, hesitant, adrift, perpetually undone, she simply stared at it for a long while, sized it up, reified it into yet another monolith she would have to confront.

For she was surrounded by monoliths.

All the time.

They towered over her.

Mocked her.

Grief and ghosts and all those other inlaid, ingrained fears, carved deep into the marrow of her bones, muscle memory now. She was scared of everything, really: the continuance of life, the permanence of death, the human capacity for endurance, the inhuman throes of her nightmares. And how these nightmares were sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, waking dreams nowadays, stalking her far beyond the confines of a bed that was much too big for her. She was afraid of forgetting Pink Diamond and replacing her, caring for Steven Universe and losing him. Telling Yellow Diamond that she loved her. Showing it. Proving that she did. Never doing it in the end precisely because she was so afraid. (Of what? She scarcely could articulate in the labyrinthine abyss of her mind, where everything was guttural and murky and raw.) Consigning their marriage to the same grave where their daughter laid, the memory of their once great love dressed in funeral shrouds…. She was afraid of empty halls and empty penthouse suites and empty rooms where dust laid thickly on furniture that would never be touched again. Ratty hoodies, diamond quilts, pink sticky notes reminding dead twenty-one year olds to study for upcoming tests. She was afraid of living and afraid of dying, afraid of happiness and afraid of pain. She feared mornings, and she feared nights. Doorbells, sleeping pills, good days, bad days, her very shadow, her own wasted reflection. (Because fundamentally, Blue Diamond was afraid of herself most of all.)

She wasn’t particularly afraid of doors—because most of the time, a door was just a door after all—but she was afraid of this particular door on the sixth floor of a hospital. More simply, she was afraid of what was behind it. Simpler still, she was afraid of who laid in that hospital bed. Afraid of all the unspoken things that had simmered quietly in the space between them for years upon distant, aching years...

So, she simply stood there.

Lost.

Hesitant.

Adrift.

Perpetually undone.

She made a monolith out of a door.

Voices seeped from behind the narrow gap, rising and falling together in a conversation that didn’t quite make sense, try though she did to piece the snippets into a context that she could understand. Blue braced both of her hands upon the head of her cane as she leaned forward to listen, a long strand of her silvery hair falling listlessly between her eyes, curling just over her nose.

How terribly her heart beat.

How loud.

Her fingers shivered; they simply ached.

“... ouch, dammit! Don’t poke me so hard,” Yellow Diamond snapped, her abrasive voice loud, clear, unmistakable, ringing.

(She was always so pleasant to be around in the morning.)

“Then you should quit squirming around so much, Mrs. Diamond,” a voice that she recognized as belonging to Dr. Reed replied, as amused as her patient was irate. “It’s just a needle.”

“Yes, well—it’s too early in the morning for me to be especially happy about being prodded like a cow.”

“Mm,” the doctor made a noncommittal noise at the back of her throat as she continued to work, noisily shifting invisible materials around.

“So, when will I get these results back?” Yellow asked, affecting a tone that was passably casual to anyone who didn’t know her, who was unaware that she clipped her consonants more shortly than usual when she was tense, scared, strained.

“A couple of hours if I had to wager. The lab’ll want to be thorough.”

“Naturally.”

“And once we get those results back—if they say what I think they will, of course—then we’ll have to run through the whole gamut of other procedures: urological assessments, medical histories, blood pressure tests, cancer screenings, chest x-rays, EKGs... it’ll be a long process.”

“Sounds like it,” Yellow returned in that same punctuated voice, and then the two women lapsed into silence as the ground revolted beneath Blue’s feet, simply eroded.

And she was suddenly falling at the same time that she was perfectly upright, a swaying pillar tethered only to the facticity of her cane. She clung to it all the more tightly, fingers whitening from the beds of her nails downwards; it was the only bulwark she had against total collapse.

Annihilation.

Ruin.

All these tests?

What were they for?

She furrowed her silvery brow and desperately thought back to her conversation with Dr. Reed just yesterday; nothing about it had suggested that something was seriously wrong with Yellow, except a few fractures and lacerations that would clear up with time and rest... so what reasonable line of logic led from a minor car accident to cancer screenings and chest x-rays? What had happened in the unaccounted for hours when Blue had been away?

She closed her eyes as nausea suddenly rushed up the cylinder of her throat, sickness invading all her delicate senses.

The answer seemed to loom darkly ahead—only a door push away.

“Alright, Mrs. Diamond,” the doctor sighed, “I’m going to get these to the lab. I’ll draw up your discharge papers soon, too...”

Yellow must have made some sort of nonverbal reply because Blue didn’t have time to recover her face as the cracked door suddenly flung open, breaking the final divide between everything she thought she understood and all the awful things that she apparently didn’t.

“Mrs. Diamond, oh, hello! Good mornin’!”

Her wiry eyebrows hoisted high above her thin glasses, Dr. Reed looked equally surprised to see Blue Diamond standing just outside the door. The medical tray she bore in her arms jumped a little as she did, shaking a few test tubes that were filled with dark crimson.

But Blue was impatient, eager, scared most of all. (She was always scared.) Her hooded eyes involuntarily slid from the harried doctor to the test tubes to the impressively cut figure just beyond Dr. Reed’s shoulder.

For Yellow Diamond, wearing her favorite pair of silken pajamas like royal regalia, sat upon the edge of her hospital bed, simply staring at Blue from widened eyes, her cracked lips parted slightly, every line etched across her face a livid, pulsing scar.

It was an expression of contradictions, of paradoxes, of dichotomies: tender at the same time that it was strained, vulnerable and equally forbidding.

Yellow averted her gaze first, a dull flush suffusing her sharply hewn cheeks. When she turned away, the sunlight pouring in from the window eclipsed her features behind the curtain of its flaxen reach.

“Good morning, Dr. Reed,” Blue murmured, painfully wrenching her attention back to the more immediate woman. “I see you have been… busy.”

She glanced questioningly at the tray of test tubes again, but just as the doctor opened her mouth to respond, Yellow got there first, cutting across her with cold precision.

“She was just leaving,” she said pointedly, still not looking their way. She brought her left arm up—the one enmeshed in a brace—to absentmindedly skim the right where her sleeve was meticulously rolled up at the elbow, where a long piece of gauze had been nearly wrapped around the joint. “Right, Doctor?”

It was a clear dismissal, blunt and unsubtle, a maneuver of clear avoidance, of keeping those strange, private words in the dark. Blue imagined it was a tactic that would have worked exceptionally well on Poppy or Livia or one of their various other employees besides whom Yellow had already intimidated into submission, but Dr. Reed didn’t seem to be especially frazzled by Yellow Diamond at all—unbothered by her elevated status, impervious to the harsh way with which spoke, as though every word was a finely calibrated weapon. She only resigned herself with a meaningful sigh that Blue couldn’t quite miss, her wire-rimmed glasses slipping incrementally upon the bridge of her nose.

“I suppose I was,” she smiled grimly, adjusting her tray more securely in her arms. Blue counted the scarlet tubes. There were four in all. “Be sure to eat that. cookie, Mrs. Diamond”—she called over her shoulder, as calculatingly sweet as Yellow was acerbic—“and it was nice to see you again, Mrs. Diamond.”

Blue stepped to the aside to allow the doctor passage. They exchanged a final nod, charged with unspoken significance, and then, just like that, Dr. Reed was gone.

And finally, they were alone.

Blue and Yellow Diamond.

Once upon a time, this had been one of their most treasured sensations in the world.

To be alone.

With one another.

In the confines of a room.

Oh, how Blue’s slender hands had once known Yellow as intimately as they had known her own body. The curvature of her sharp jawbone. The tender column of her pulsing neckline. The feeling of their hands together, gently intertwined. Spiny knuckles. Soft palms. Brushing thumbs.

And now, eight feet stood between them.

Seven once Blue timidly dared to step into the doorway.

Merely six once she made an awkward movement to close the door behind her.

And neither of them especially knew how to breach the space between them.

The distance.

The gulf.

Yellow seemed to have finally noticed that she was massaging the place where the doctor had drawn her blood because she suddenly stopped, self-conscious, wrenching her left hand away from the spot. But the gauze was still there, wrapped around her bony elbow tightly, advertising its unspoken secret like a flag at half-mast.

“You’re having tests done,” Blue stated.

It was as bold as it was quiet.

The loudest accusation in an otherwise silent room.

“They’re nothing,” Yellow replied immediately, trying for a nonchalance that didn’t quite land. “It’s nothing. Just routine stuff.”

The lie landed between them, too, with an odd, dull plunk, and Blue felt the beginnings of something other than fear coil in the pit of her stomach for the first time all morning. A burning sensation—stinging, raw.

She squeezed her cane again tightly and absently thought that it wouldn’t surprise her if her fingers came away with indents from where she gripped the metal.

“You were drunk… you were in an accident, Yellow,” she whispered, her words acquiring an icy edge. They lashed. They lunged. They hurt. They were intended to hurt. “Are you sure there’s something you’re not telling me?”

On the ropes, cornered—she hated being cornered—Yellow’s features suddenly hardened, her nose upturning, mouth calcifying into its trademark sneer. If Blue Diamond’s cane was her defense, then Yellow Diamond’s snarl was her weapon, sharp as any saber or sword.

“You’re being paranoid, Blue—even more so than usual,” she scoffed, fingertips digging into the sheets beneath her hands. “It wasn’t as though I caused the accident. I wasn’t even driving!”

“Then why has Dr. Reed ordered such an extensive battery of tests for you? Can you answer me that at least?” She insisted, now shrill, now angry, now hoarse, now unknotted, soon to be undone—her throat wrenched with its own rage. Tears burned the corners of her eyes, gathering like rushing rivers down the skeletal curves of her cheeks. “I’m your wife, Yellow Diamond, and you—”

“And I should what exactly?” Yellow interrupted, laughing so mirthlessly that the sound was feral, almost inhuman. “Give you yet another reason to fall apart for four years? You barely survived the last time. I barely survived watching you, Blue. I—“

But she stopped short.

She realized that she had said too much.

And six feet became six hundred feet as the two women stared at each other across the empty tiles, as the words that Yellow had growled registered to them both.

Neither of them had barely survived Blue’s total dissolution.

Both of them.

Together.

Alone.

They were both so utterly alone.

“I’m sorry,” Yellow exhaled, the fight in her voice punctured. Leaking. Drained. “I… I’m—“

But what exactly she was, even she didn’t seem to know. Prodigious marshal of words that she was, she was clearly at a loss for words, her mouth quavering with its own forced silence. Yellow abruptly looked away again, and the sunlight threw the stitches across her cheek in sharp relief, the redness of them, the rawness.

Painful to even look at.

How much more painful were they then to bear?

How many other wounds besides had her wife collected in all these awful, unspooling years? Not even simply the visible ones, but all the other sundry hurts, too. The lines beneath her hawklike eyes. Her perpetual coldness, wrapped like impenetrable armor around her skin. The very way that she spoke these days, as though each word was a marionette jerked by some strict taskmaster’s violent strings.

In the night, when she was alone in that master bed that had never been intended for just one, Blue didn’t have to look at these things, didn’t have to acknowledge that there was a reason that the door to the study was perpetually cracked open, didn’t have to wonder about how her utter contempt for life reflected on others because fundamentally, there was no one other than herself; it was her and her alone.

During the day, she didn’t have to care.

Time stretched ad infinitum all around her, slipping, always slipping away.

And she remained in the mire of her own head.

Stuck.

Broken.

Sinking.

Sunken.

Gone.

“So, please, Blue Diamond… please don’t look away, Steven Universe had whispered, indicting her, condemning her entire modus operandi with seven simple words as he laid in that hospital bed, dying for everyone to see.

She had looked away from Pink Diamond, and now Pink Diamond was dead.

She had almost looked away from Steven Universe.

Even still, even after all that they had ever been through together—and they had been through quite a lot—Blue Diamond was looking away from her wife even now.

Fool, masochist, coward.

She was, she was, she was—all of these things and very likely more.

Drowning.

Save me.

Spiraling.

Always.

Sinking, sunken, gone.

But the corrective, Steven Universe implied with every word and kind deed, wasn’t in the recognition of her problem; it wasn’t even in the actual acknowledgment that there needed to be a change.

It was in action and reaction.

It was in change itself.

A sickly boy could extend a flower to her in the cemetery, but she had to be the one to accept its grace.

She had to be the one to not look away.

Six feet, not six hundred feet.

Please, Blue Diamond… please don’t look away.

Swallowing thickly, Blue forced herself to gain perspective in that tiny hospital room, narrowing the world to just the two of them and the few strips of tile which stood between them.

Six feet.

So close and yet so far.

(Their daughter was six feet under the ground.)

“We apologize to each other all the time,” Blue murmured, her voice lilting softly in her accent, “and yet… not at all. How many times have we hurt each other, Yellow? How many times have we had to repent before doing it all over again?”

“So many times,” Yellow returned automatically, and her voice was quiet, laced only with the fading dregs of bitterness. Her knuckles were white where she continued to clench the sheets balled in her fists. “Because I am sorry—every damn time, Blue. I don’t mean to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. Hell, but I—”

As her voice rose, it was just as quickly stifled.

Choked.

A single tear glanced down the consummate businesswoman’s sharply angled face, and perhaps it was the most visible sign of her defeat that she didn’t immediately make a move to scrub it away, to pretend as though it had never existed.

And perhaps it was this gesture, or lack of a gesture, that finally did it for Blue Diamond above all.

That taught her what she needed to do.

She moved forward, one halting footstep over another, the hem of her long dress sweeping across the clinically white ground.

Clank.

Five feet.

Clank.

Four feet.

Clank.

Alerted by the telltale clangor of the cane, Yellow Diamond abruptly jerked her chin upwards, her lined eyes wide with horror and disbelief, with fear, with apprehension, with confusion, and something else, too—something almost indefinable because it had been a long time since Blue had recognized the expression in her wife’s chiseled face.

Had seen it.

Had noticed it.

Named it and reciprocated it.

Yearning, that irresistible rush of longing.

It shone painfully in her eyes, a drowning man’s golden flare shot into the dark.

Clank.

Three feet.

Clank.

Two.

“Blue, what are you—”

Clank.

One.

Scarcely twelve inches stood between them now, the air quiet, unnervingly, unnaturally still.

For everything was on a tightrope, the line just ready to snap.

Between them, individually, over twenty years of history were stored in the shared memories of their bodies, and for a moment, if only for a fleeting second, Blue felt as though if she could only reach out and touch Yellow in just the right place, that the world would just as suddenly right itself on its tilted axis, and everything would make sense once again and forevermore. They would be reconciled, reunited, restored, all of their damages undone, and they would know each other intimately, just by touch alone. They would be able to pick up where they last stopped, somewhere in the darkness, on a road that went by the wayside so long ago. Maybe, at long last, they would even join hands.

But, no.

That was simply naïveté.

Childlike belief.

A dream.

Touching Yellow Diamond would not change the fact that their daughter was dead and that four years of grief had nearly destroyed the both of them; touching Yellow Diamond was not an apology; it wouldn’t even be an adequate excuse. The touch, if such a thing were to exist, would only be a gesture, a microscopic movement towards what had heretofore been the impossible.

The beginnings of a bridge.

And one goddamn awful gulf.

But it was a start.

And that was what mattered, right?

Yes, Blue Diamond thought to herself.

Please.

Closing her eyes against the sudden vertigo—the fear, the terror, the rush—she slowly leaned over into the darkness and gently pressed her lips against Yellow Diamond’s forehead, exhaling softly as the stalwart general tensed beneath the touch, deathly still.

“I’m sorry, Blue.”

Her voice shook, a pillar cut off at its foundation, sunken to its knees.

Blue gingerly brought her hands up so that they were encircling her wife’s head, her tousled hair, the tips of her ears, her temples…

“I’m so sorry,” Yellow repeated simply; her voice cleaved itself in two; she was insisting on an apology, as though it was absolutely necessary for them to proceed.

And it was.

But so, too, was this.

“I know,” Blue whispered as Yellow’s shoulders began to silently shake. In response, in return, because she wanted to, because she desperately needed to, she began to absently skim her thumb through the woman’s hair.

“I’m sorry, too.”

Three words still hung—unspoken—in the sterile air.

Suspended.

On the tips of fearful tongues.

ii.

Priyanka brought them all back to the slaughterhouse again because there was nowhere else left to go. There were five of them in total, so they couldn’t very well have their daily harrowing conversation out in the hallway. They were adults, and Steven was a child, Steven was fourteen, so they couldn’t baldly discuss his mortality in his hospital room, where he laid in a bed, hooked up to so many whirring machines. Her office was cramped, and the chapel was somber. The cafeteria was too noisy, the hospital’s atrium just the same.

And so, that left only one option.

The conference room on the fourth floor.

The slaughterhouse.

They all took seats at that long, long table and did their best not to look at each other, at the griefs laid bare in all of their tired faces.

“I’m sorry,” Priyanka said abruptly, “for yesterday. I got your hopes up. I got my own up, and I... I should have been more circumspect.”

She stared at her lined hands, at how they were templed neatly upon the smooth surface of the table. Even sidled up next to each other, brushing, her palms felt bitingly cold.

“I knew better, and that—irrefutably—is on me.”

“Aw, come off it, Doc,” Amethyst shrugged dully from the other side of Greg. “You couldn’t have known.”

“You told us best yourself, Priyanka,” Pearl agreed, her voice an almost passable imitation of prim. She was sitting in the chair opposite to Amethyst, delicately massaging her temples with the tips of her long fingers. “That damage wouldn’t have shown up on the scans... we don’t fault you for that.”

“We won’t,” Garnet added pointedly, never moving her bicolored gaze away from the empty air just above Greg’s shoulder.

“We would never,” Greg finished kindly, and when Priyanka dared to look up at him—he was sitting to her immediate left—she was appalled to see a weak smile quivering on his bearded mouth. Of all the things she didn’t deserve, a smile was high on that list which seemed to grow longer with every passing day that Steven Universe was in her care.

“You’re all being far too nice to me,” she insisted in that same blunt tone, though she knew it was a losing battle, four against one, the weapons of their affection all drawn. “I made that child—I made all of you—a promise. And doctors don’t make promises.”

Take care of my baby for me... please.

You have my word.

“Not unless they’re arrogant,” she concluded coldly, glancing away. “Foolish.”

And she was a fool—assuredly. A jester in a white lab coat. All she needed was the hat. In the slaughterhouse, she half-demanded that the people around her admitted to it, that the victims of her fault had their chance to cleave her apart on the altar, too.

But because they were kind and good and everything that was compassionate in the world, not a single one of them did.

Garnet even reached over and briefly placed a warm hand on Priyanka’s arm.

“It’s a good thing you’re neither then.”

And of course, here was yet another thing she didn’t deserve—a consolatory touch—but the doctor did not have the heart to shake it off, not now—not when there were dark circles beneath Garnet’s eyes that spoke to yet another sleepless night in a long row of likely many.

“Yes, well, at any rate”—she hurried away from the subject, desperate to escape their kindness, goodness, their sympathetic gazes—“I’ve called you here to give a progress report… we potentially have another donor candidate… a live donor this time.”

Priyanka enunciated each word as though she was announcing the presence of a ticking time bomb, and it registered as much in the faces of her captive audience. Garnet withdrew her hand quickly, as though stung, and they all stared at the nephrologist, each and every one of them, with a naked disbelief that was a far cry from the unadulterated joy of yesterday’s declaration. They had been briefly happy, and then they’d been so quickly, so mercilessly burnt; it was no wonder then that they were skeptical.

It was painfully obvious that they were still licking their damn wounds.

“A patient at this very hospital,” she continued haltingly, precise in every word. She had to be careful here not to let something slip up, not to betray a word that would drive the blades sticking into these people’s chests in just one inch more. She wanted to be fastidious this time; she intended to be sure. “Their blood type is likely a match for Steven’s, but we’re checking again just to make sure… and even if that’s a certainty, there are so many other tests besides that we’ll have to do just to make sure their body is healthy enough to undergo a transplant… it could take weeks…”

She spoke into thick silence, excruciating to the last as each word was wrenched free from her teeth in some poor facsimile of her usual brusque fashion.

Pearl and Garnet exchanged a pregnant look across the table, but it was Amethyst who spoke the meaning aloud; she was always the one who seemed to be the best at translating what everyone was secretly thinking into words, what they were all too fearful to say.

“So we shouldn’t get our hopes up yet, huh?” She asked candidly. “That’s what you’re saying… isn’t it?”

“Something to that effect, yes,” Priyanka returned with a slow nod of her head. “I just don’t want to… I would rather not…”

But she struggled to find the right words, to strangle all her emotions into sentences that didn’t complicate the professionalism to which she was called.

Because she couldn’t break down.

She couldn’t flinch.

She was the doctor in the room for goodness’s sake, and that meant something.

But again, Amethyst stepped in so she didn’t have to—blunt, plain, merciful.

“… hurt him again,” she mumbled, her lavender hair forming a curtain around her lowered head. The young woman swiped her arm roughly across her face in a gesture that was lost on precisely no one. “Yeah, I guess that’s for the best…”

The ensuing silence was somehow worse than the last.

It seemed to chafe at them all, rubbing their skins raw.

Greg Universe shifted in his chair.

He looked less man than mountain, carved ruggedly against a bleak, gray sky—hunched in on himself, avalanched, collapsing all over.

(When she’d first met the man some fifteen years ago, he’d still had all of his hair.)

(A kid having a kid.)

“He hasn’t said more than a few words today, Dr. M,” the mountain whispered, his voice eroding in all the right places, crumbling. “He barely even looks at us.”

Priyanka didn’t know what to say.

She wasn’t naturally warm like Maisie Reed.

Wasn’t soft.

Wasn’t encouraging.

Being a doctor didn’t require any of those epithets, even though she knew cerebrally, intimately, that being a human did.

“It’s hard being sick,” she finally said.

It was the easiest way to utter an even harder truth.

(Sometimes, her patients found it unbearable.)

iii.

“And Archimicarus preened his feathers haughtily, all the while keeping one amber eye on Captain Bonham, whose apparent warmth wasn’t enough to stop the falcon from being wary of the witch’s eccentricities: the dual pistols she wore in the holsters on either side of her waist, the long knife handle jutting just above the ribs of her corset, and most ominously of all, the necklace she wore around her neck—a leather cord threaded through the skull of a baby bird,” Connie read aloud, adopting her most suspenseful voice for one of the most tense chapters in the book—Lisa and Archimicarus meeting Valentine Bonham, famed pirate witch of the jewel-bright seas, and her serpentine familiar Scyllane.

Of course, Valentine would prove to be one of Lisa’s most beloved companions by the end of the book, a swashbuckling mentor with a semi-tragic backstory, a kind of mother figure who had a penchant for committing petty theft and tax fraud against the despotic king.

But Steven didn’t know that yet.

“Skyllane,” Connie continued, “her silvery scales glimmering beneath the midday sun, hissed her amusement at Archimicarus’s obvious discomfort as she coiled herself sinuously around Valentine’s neck. Show off, the falcon thought savagely…”

Her mouth twitched into a reflexive smile at this part, nostalgic at Archimicarus’s occasional petty asides, and she looked up automatically, hoping to see the same amusement reflected in the face of her one-person audience… but Steven… Steven obviously wasn’t feeling it.

He didn’t seem like he was feeling much of anything, really.

When she’d come in with her mother that morning, he had tried to hide it, insisting that she open The Unfamiliar Familiar again, that they could pick up where they had last left off like everything was fine and good and normal and dandy.

But it wasn’t.

And perhaps pretending was only adding insult to injury, salt to an already agonizing wound.

Her mother’s famously steady hands had been shaking all day. They shook around around the leather of her steering wheel; they shook around the circumference of her coffee tumbler; they shook as she fumbled with her keys to lock the sedan’s door. She dropped them. Connie picked them up and didn’t comment on the incident, just as her mother didn’t comment on the event except to proffer a perfunctory thank you. And still, her mother’s hands continued to shake as she ushered Connie through the double doors that led into the Truman Ward, where only the nephrologist’s most dire patients were hospitalized.

On the ride to the hospital that morning, she had laid out the bare bones as best and well as she could to her daughter—Steven had been going to get kidneys, and then he just as suddenly wasn’t.

Steven’s life had miraculously stretched before him, and then the ribbon was abruptly, cruelly cut.

And his heart is tired, Connie, her mom had whispered—very quietly, with evident strain. As though she was scarcely able to comprehend it herself. So tired. And his lungs are doing their best to keep up…

Connie did not think it was necessary to ask what happened to tired hearts.

Staring at Steven, who wasn’t staring at her but rather at a fixed point upon the ceiling, she instinctively understood that there was only one thing tired hearts could do.

And that was shatter.

Break.

“Hey… Steven?” She asked tentatively, replacing the straw wrapper bookmark in the place where she had last left off. (She didn’t quite close the book—not yet. There was a finality in that action, mundane though it was, that suddenly scared her.) “Are you… okay?”

Seconds dripped before anything happened. Surrounded by a nest of tangled wires and tubes, Steven was deathly still in their embrace, less subject than object, less object than tangible ghost. From her vantage point—the chair next to his bed—she couldn’t see his face, the expression in it, perhaps even the lack of one. But she observed the way that his right hand laid feebly on top of his stomach, fingers lightly curled into a ball. And she saw the feeble rise and fall of his chest, how it stuttered every so often with each arrhythmic movement that found its companion in a staccato beat on his heart monitor.

And here was yet another thing that scared the twelve-year old.

She surmised that all these signs and symbols had something to do with finality, too.

Endings.

She hated those.

Sometimes, when she was reading a really good book, she would stop just before the last chapter to steel herself for what was to come.

“Yes,” came a mechanical reply. “Just tired…”

“I can imagine,” Connie said. (She couldn’t imagine it all. She could barely reconcile that this was the same boy she had laughed and laughed with only so many days ago on the first floor of this very hospital. He had smiled at her so kindly, eyes shining with their own paradoxical aliveness. And she’d thought to herself, even then, how miraculous he surely was, how extraordinary.) “We can stop right here for now if you want to take a nap or something…?”

“I don’t like naps,” Steven immediately said in that same colorless tone, and yet, there was a slight edge to his voice that wasn’t exactly anger, but rather defiance, argumentative, defensive, self-directed—as though it was aimed towards himself. His chubby fingers tensed on his stomach, crumpling the paisley-studded fabric there.

Connie did not think it was necessary to ask why he didn’t like naps.

Or, maybe, it was entirely necessary.

Maybe it was one of those very human statements that required an equally human reply: comfort, consolation, concern.

But she lapsed into silence rather than pursue it, the weight of her book pressing heavily upon her knees, the weight of the moment overwhelming her in all of her twelve-year-oldish-ness. She glanced emptily at the page where the spine was cracked open and realized that they hadn’t even reached the halfway point yet.

There were still so many pages to go.

Hundreds.

“… how does it end?”

But now, very suddenly, with all the air of a startled cat, she glanced up, and saw that Steven had painstakingly tilted his head in her direction. And he was simply watching her, the expression in his dark eyes impenetrable and distant, even though he was so close, quite close enough to reach out and actually touch.

Her literary mind worked ahead of her.

There was a metaphor in there somewhere.

“The chapter?” Connie asked, wondering if he was implicitly asking her to keep reading.

“No.” The line of Steven’s pale mouth barely moved. “The book.”

It registered with her immediately—he was asking for an entirely different thing besides.

Cold collapsed down her spine, settling somewhere in her stomach.

Icy.

Hard.

“Don’t be silly,” she returned numbly, as though it was just a game they were still playing. It was not in fact a game. It wasn’t even close to one. “You’ll have to wait for me to read the rest of the book to find out. We haven’t even reached Chapter Eight yet.”

There were twenty-one chapters total.

Epilogue included.

Steven was silent for a long time, but never entirely; the various machines invading him did all of the talking in his place: whirring, beeping, stuttering on.

“I guess we better keep going then.”

“Yeah…”

Connie removed her straw wrapper bookmark again and began to read.

She read very quickly now, as though something depended upon it.

iv.

A little before noon, Dr. Maheswaran briefly came in to disconnect Steven from the portable dialysis machine and send Connie downstairs to be picked up by her father for tennis practice. Garnet watched him as he seemingly watched nothing. He looked away when the nephrologist gently disconnected the machine’s tubing from the central line grafted into his neck. He closed his dark eyes when she replaced the oxygen mask over his mouth for one of those quick albuterol treatments. (Ever since his episode last night, his breathing had been a little too stilted for the doctor’s liking, a little too short.) He barely opened them again when Connie said her tentative goodbye, placing a hand on Steven’s arm as Dr. Maheswaran placed a consoling arm around her daughter’s shoulder.

Through his mask, he couldn’t say anything, so he only blinked slowly, the shadows turning beneath his eyes starkly pronounced. He coughed once. The feeble sound rattled across his chest.

It shivered his whole body.

It shivered the entire room.

When Connie withdrew her hand, fear flashed across her face.

(For she was shivering, too.)

The Maheswarans left, and Garnet and Steven were left alone in that tiny hospital room that was filled with golden sunlight. It leaned through the window with a light, mocking smile, teasing a warmth that the gym trainer couldn’t feel as she continued to watch Steven.

Vigilantly.

With no little obsession.

Afraid to miss something.

(Maybe even more afraid to stay.)

Hunched over in the uncomfortable chair next to his bed, she curled the fingers of her right hand over her clenched left fist, gingerly rubbing her knuckles, and she stared plainly at the punctuated rise and fall of his chest as albuterol vapor leaked beneath his mask, spiraling into the air like fading smoke. The machine hissed pneumatically, nearly overwhelming the sound of Steven’s beating heart, which was measured out in shrill noise, clangorous noise.

Beep…

Beep...

Beep…

Garnet hated this sound and she was simultaneously desperate to keep hearing it.

A nurse came in some ten minutes later to remove the mask and readjust the oxygenated cannulas in their former place, gently threading the tubes around Steven’s ears, maneuvering the tiny nubs into his nose. He kept his eyes closed, but Garnet was almost positive that he wasn’t sleeping.

It was subtle, but she knew the signs, having studied them night after night for almost nine months now—all those times she had curled up beside him in bed, resting her chin on top of his curly, black hair, keeping a vigilant eye out for all the demons she couldn’t exactly see.

The shadows that lurked around and about them never quite materialized into foes she could punch, kick, or destroy, so she memorized all the telltale signs of his aliveness instead, committing each trait to memory as though her own sanity depended on it.

The slight furrow in his dark brow.

The twitch in his nose.

The grim press of his lips.

(When he was truly asleep, he had the tendency to snore, mouth lazily lolled open in unguarded torpor.)

But the nurse didn’t know him, so they only said poor kiddo before leaving too, and the room suddenly felt so much more vacant without the hiss of the albuterol to fill all the empty crevices—the silence, the all-consuming nothingness, the barefaced, omnipresent pain.

Beep…

Steven slowly opened his eyes as the nurse’s footsteps died away from the room.

And Garnet watched him as he seemingly watched nothing, as he stared, very quietly, at the ceiling, without so much as moving a limb. She drank every micro-gesture in, as though every micro-gesture meant something in the wide cosmos of the universe. Every breath became consequential in this barebones theology, a butterfly’s wings rippling through space and time to matter in ways both big and small.

It mattered—fundamentally—that Steven continued to breathe.

Beep…

“Garnet?” He asked quietly. His voice was small, weak—the mewling rasp of an injured animal. She thought fleetingly of Cat Steven, of how they had found that tiny, defenseless kitten shivering in the pouring rain. If only Garnet could scoop his namesake into her strong arms just the same and keep him safe, holding him very quietly, very gently, against her chest.

“… yes, Steven?”

“Was my mom… was she ever scared, too?”

The question was simple enough, and it simply unmoored her.

Skewered her through.

Because they didn’t really talk about Rose.

Not really.

They referenced her obliquely, in passing mention, if they absolutely had to; her portrait loomed above the door leading into the beach house; every year, on her birthday, they laid flowers upon her grave and tried not to think about young she would have been had she never died.

And yet, here Steven was, trespassing that unspoken rule and doubling down upon it.

As little as they ever discussed Rose Quartz, they touched upon her illness even less.

So many memories.

Too painful.

Too raw.

Never healed, buried deep within their skins, buried six feet under the ground.

“…I think she might have been,” Garnet answered slowly, “but I can’t say for sure. She was good at pushing down her feelings for us… for our sakes.”

Which in turn made her an excellent leader.

(And an inscrutable friend.)

Steven seemed to silently grapple with this for a few moments, his expression complex, as though there were cloud shadows roaming across his eyes and mouth, threatening rain but never delivering.

“I dreamt of her last night,” Steven said, an explanatory note in his voice. Justificatory. He wasn’t bringing up his mother for just any random reason. “My mom.”

Garnet’s heart shriveled somewhere inside her throat.

“Mm.” She attempted to be calm anyway. “Tell me about it.”

“We… we were in a pink room full of swirling clouds,” the child whispered. “We played football together. And video games. And she told me that she was proud of me… that she loved me…”

What Steven knew of Rose came from stories and anecdotes, from picture albums and yellowed newspaper clippings, from the few videotapes she had left behind—from the one video she had explicitly recorded for Steven scarcely a month before she had delivered him.

It wasn’t a lot, but still, maybe it was just enough.

Because that sounded like Rose.

Her kindness.

Her warmth.

Her fun.

For she had loved, more than anything, to play.

“And then what happened?” She asked, her voice almost even.

“… I woke up.”

And Garnet watched, helpless, as a single tear wriggled itself loose from the corner of Steven’s eye, slipping gracelessly down his cheek and away.

He was silent after that.

She was almost positive, though, that he wasn’t asleep.

“C’mon, Ste-man,” Amethyst wheedled, wafting the milkshake temptingly just below his nose. She’d walked nearly a block away from the hospital just to get the damn thing—a specialty of Stacey’s, the little retro milkshake bar on the corner of Pin Avenue and 32nd. The staff dressed up like they were from The Jetsons and everything. When Steven hadn’t been… when things hadn’t been so bad… they’d sometimes shlepped over there after his dialysis treatments to slam burgers and milkshakes as the jukebox played the Heaven Beetles’ greatest hits. One time, all five of them went together and sung shitty karaoke ’til Pearl was laughing so hard that strawberry milkshake shot out of her nose. “It’s got Reece’s Pieces in it—your faaaavorite…”

“I’m not thirsty, Amethyst,” he returned dully, turning his face away from her. “Sorry.”

His pale neck exposed to her in the gesture, Amethyst could now clearly see the livid bruises that crept vine-like out of the collar of his hospital gown, blooming blue and purple near the place where his central line was inserted just next to his collarbone.

If she could have, if it would have made sense, Amethyst would have crushed that stupid styrofoam cup between her fingers right then and there and enjoyed the feeling of milkshake pouring all over her shaking fingers.

She would have reveled in the destruction of the act.

The cathartic release.

Very probably, she would have begun to cry.

But Steven didn’t need that.

He didn’t need to see her lose her shit.

So, she only collapsed backwards on her feet and into the chair pulled up next to Steven’s bed. She was ginger, notably careful, as she placed the milkshake on the nearby tray, where it’d melt into itself between the hours and the blazing sun.

For the sun burned today, like golden fire, through the square window.

It scorched.

“You… you haven’t eaten in, like, days, my dude,” Amethyst stated plainly, as if he didn’t know that better than anyone else who cared to know. “Dr. M’s worried ‘bout you. If ya don’t get enough nutrients…”

But Steven cut across her bluntly then, still not looking at her. “… then they’ll have to put a feeding tube in me… I know. I heard Dr. Maheswaran and Pearl talking about it the other day.”

She supposed it should have surprised her that he already knew; maybe if she’d been Pearl, she would have jumped to try to sugarcoat the blow with something soft, something comforting, something consolatory.

But the truth of the matter was that there was nothing soft nor comforting nor consolatory about the ugly reality that reared its head above them, ten feet tall and ready to fucking strike.

He was fourteen, not ten.

He’d long stopped believing in magic.

“Doesn’t that scare you?” She asked him, frustration edging the rims of her scratchy voice, and she knew, even as she spoke, that she was being hella unfair. The poor kid couldn’t help the fact that he was puking his guts up left and right, but he was just laying there, lifeless, like he’d already accepted the inevitability of the stars that had spelled out his fate.

And it maddened Amethyst.

Sickened her.

She really want to pummel that goddamn milkshake cup into smithereens; she clenched her fists tightly on top of her knees to try and stop them from shaking.

She reminded herself—painfully—that it was only yesterday that happiness had been given to the kid before it was so brutally ripped away.

She told herself that even grown ass adults had trouble with that.

The volatility, the utter unpredictability of life.

“Of course it scares me, Amethyst,” Steven replied, his broken voice barely a whisper as he finally turned to look at her, his brown eyes drowning in the black bags which encased them. Grooved them. Hollowed them. “I don’t wanna have another surgery… but what do I… how can I do anything? I… I don’t know if I… I can’t stop this. I can’t.”

He seemed to struggle for the words, each one wrenched from him with a punishing drag of air.

And it struck Amethyst then and precisely there, with all the sharpness of a knife, that she took it for granted.

How easy it was for her to simply breathe.

“Catch your breath,” she implored him wildly, leaning forward in her chair. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, Steven.”

“B-but it’s not okay,” he insisted fiercely, sniffing. A single tear slanted out of the corners of one of his eyes and down the hollow of his face, slipping beneath the oxygenated cannulas, following the gentle curve of his beaten, world-weary face. “Don’t say that it’s okay. Please. I can’t take that anymore.”

“Okay, fine!” The awful words exploded out from her, tumbled and rushed and spilled from her mouth headlong on their hands and knees. Amethyst would say anything to make him calm down, and because she had no filter, because she’d never known how to mince the truth, she would mean every damn syllable. “Everything isn’t okay. Everything isn’t fine. Is that better? Are you happy now?”

But to her utter horror, to her staggering discontent, the answer was apparently—

“Yeah,” Steven sighed, closing his eyes in visible relief. “Yes.”

He laid there quietly for a handful of seconds to take in deep gulps of air.

It looked painful.

Excruciating.

“… I just wanna be on the same page,” he eventually finished, his voice a barely distinguishable mumble, distant and muffled.

Amethyst’s entire chest seized with fear unlike that she’d ever felt in a lifetime full of fear; it gripped her, and it wrestled with her.

Put its hands ‘round her throat and squeezed.

“And what page would that be, buddy?” She tried to keep her voice even anyway, though. Steven had yet to reopen his eyes. “Enlighten me.”

But there was no forthcoming reply.

His outburst had exhausted him, and sleep was merciless.

It stole him away.

vi.

They worked together in tentative silence, Greg and Pearl, taking damp washcloths and running them along the parts of Steven’s body that they could reach beneath all the medical apparatus: the column of his neck, his pale face, his arms, his leaden legs. He was too weak to take a shower in the bathroom attached to his hospital room, and they wouldn’t have been able to get a few of his lines wet anyway for the fear of clogging them up.

So a nurse provided them with a basin of soapy water, and they each picked up a rag, gliding the rough fabric as gently as possible across his skin as he laid beneath them like a doll, limp and lifeless.

Staring up at them from dark, button eyes.

Greg pulled his own cloth around Steven’s left ear, now rubbing the tip of it, now gently scraping behind, and tried not to think about how he’d done the very same when the kid was just a baby, so tiny in his arms, so helpless. He’d been afraid then, desperately so, to make just one wrong move. What if he accidentally hurt the little tyke? Rubbed his head a little too hard? Accidentally got soap in his eyes? What if he fucked up? (He was so good at fucking up.)

He’d miss Rose the most then, in those far too common moments, when he was at his lowest.

He’d miss the way she used to wrap her warm arms around his shoulders and show him, without so much as saying a word, what he looked like in her eyes.

Like he was someone worth loving in spite of everything.

In the face of it all.

Fourteen-years later, Steven was tiny beneath his arms.

Helpless.

And Greg missed Rose.

(He would always miss Rose.)

Pearl’s hands trembled as she gingerly lifted Steven’s left arm, weaving her cloth through the gaps between each of his fingers, swiping its breadth across his sweat-stickied palm. Greg followed his hooded gaze to where it settled somewhere on Pearl’s face, where there were faint circles cradling the spaces beneath her eyes, where there was a recent gauntness in the pointed architecture of her cheeks.

She must have noticed, too, because she blinked quickly, self-consciously, pausing her ministrations.

“Are you okay, Steven? I-I’m not hurting you, am I?”

Because that was the most important thing after all—neither of them wanted to hurt him anymore than he was already irrevocably damaged.

Couldn’t bear to even leave so much as a bruise.

“No,” came his simple reply.

It was the monosyllabism that was somehow the most dreadful above all.

Pearl also caught onto this, swiftly folding her slender fingers over Steven’s knuckles, her rag dangling like a white-sheeted ghost from her fingertips.

“Are you sure? You… you haven’t been yourself all day.”

He was silent at this, and Greg was pretty sure it was because the answer was obvious, painfully so.

(He hadn’t been himself in eight months now.)

The man swallowed thickly and turned away, dipping his rag in the basin on the nearby tray; the lukewarm water slushed around his wrists. He made a meal out of squeezing the cloth out, hoping that when he faced Steven and Pearl again, the moment would have passed, the unspoken things remaining unspoken.

But it was the very absence of a reply that seemed to gall Pearl, spiral her, and Greg could see, when he turned back to them, that she was utterly ruined.

She couldn’t hide it; it shone in the over-bright lights of her eyes.

“A-a kidney is bound to turn up,” she said, speaking in that rapid way she always did when she was upset (and trying not to let people see). “Dr. Maheswaran is looking for one even now, and… and… she thinks she might be able to secure a live donor kidney this time because, y-you know, the numbers and everything. Your numbers. Not that they’re abysmal. I mean, they’re bad, but—”

Greg tried to step in, tried to rescue her, before she got in too deep.

“I know it’s hard, Shtu-ball… but chin up,” he said gently as he maneuvered his washcloth beneath the kid’s neck. He skated around the bruises when he could. (There were so many new bruises, erupting like angry supernovas all across his tender skin.)

“Pearl’s right”—she shot him a grateful glance—“Dr. M’s not gonna give up, and neither are we.”

The silence stretched again.

It absolutely groaned.

And Steven finally moved his gaze away from Pearl and back to the bare ceiling.

Apparently, he’d been staring at the ceiling a lot today, divining something in it that no one else could see.

“Were you guys this scared… when Mom… when she was…”

But before he had ever gotten the words out, before he could finish another word let alone the whole sentence, Pearl abruptly extricated herself from Steven, gently setting his hand back on the bed, gently throwing her white cloth of a flag down.

“Excuse me,” she muttered feverishly. “I’ve got to… I can’t—restroom.”

But rather than flee into the door that led to the ensuite bathroom, she swung through the adjacent door, the one that led out into the hall, and Steven watched the place where her lithe form disappeared with cavernous eyes.

Sunken eyes.

Dull.

His mouth still partially open where he was still forming the words.

“I… I was so scared, buddy,” Greg said quietly, his throat constricting with all the surging memories. Her big, brown eyes. The tubes running through her skin. How he held her hand at the end, when Dr. Howard unplugged the machines, so she didn’t have to be alone.

Pearl, of course, held the other.

And there they were, the three of them.

And then, just the two of them.

Alone.

Steven’s eyes, so much like his mother’s own, turned to capture him now, penetrating his father somewhere deep in the muck and mire of his soul.

“… are you scared now?”

He choked back a sob.

“Yeah, buddy. I am.”

vii.

They sat together on Yellow’s hospital bed for a long time, not exactly talking, but communicating in other ways—in the brush of their nearly touching shoulders, in the painful glances they would occasionally shift each other from the corners of their eyes, in the way that Yellow’s pinky finger rested on top of Blue’s wrist where their hands were placed on top of the sheets in the microscopic space between them.

Now once more armored in a button-down shirt and a pair of slacks, Yellow Diamond almost looked herself—brilliant and impressive, striking to the last.

And then she would look to the side again, revealing the raw cuts now laced into her sculpted cheeks.

And Blue would fantasize about gently touching one, running her fingers across one of those tentatively scabbed lines, capturing the measure of her wife’s face, relearning it all over again.

But in the end, she didn’t dare.

Because for right now, this was simply enough.

To be sitting next to Yellow Diamond.

To simply be.

Together.

For once, not entirely alone, even though so many unvoiced things still remained.

Three words.

Mountains of griefs.

And something else now, too.

I don’t want to commit to claiming anything about these tests, Yellow had explained earlier, her usually gruff voice working itself into something gentle, a little more kind. Not until I know something for sure…

You don’t believe I can take it? Blue’s tone was as gentle as it was accusatory in that devastatingly contradictory way of hers.

Frankly, her wife returned quietly, no.

And somehow, it was the truthfulness in the other’s expression which made Blue stop short of pressing for more, for she could see, in the lines beneath Yellow Diamond’s golden eyes, just what these past four years had done to her.

You barely survived the last time. I barely survived watching you, Blue.

It was a miracle that they were even sitting here.

Barely touching, barely talking, but still… it was a start.

It was something simply to be breathing the same air.

Around three, Dr. Reed finally dropped by with Yellow’s discharge papers and another doctor whose name Blue didn’t quite catch; she was a tired-looking lady, though, with a fiercely drawn face. Salt-and-pepper hair. Hands shoved in the pockets of her lab coat. They asked if Yellow would come with them. It’d maybe take an hour or so.

The businesswoman made to get up, but Blue stopped her with a withered hand on her arm.

“Wait,” she murmured. “Your collar is crooked.”

She reached upwards to adjust the crumpled white band, straightening the crease between her delicate fingers.

And Yellow stared at her silently—with open tenderness and rawness and aching disbelief.

And when she swallowed, Blue could see every cord convulse in the smooth column of her throat.

“Would you wait for me, Blue?”

But she must have realized how vulnerable that sounded because she quickly tried to amend herself, always aware of her audience, that there were people watching. She stood up abruptly and a little awkwardly; it was clear that one of her legs was killing her.

“In the town car, I mean?”

“Yes,” Blue returned softly. “Of course.”

Yes.

A complicated expression quivered across Yellow Diamond’s plump lips then; it was hesitant and rich, stiff and almost unbearably visceral in its reluctant vulnerability.

It wasn’t necessarily a smile, but it was something.

It was a start.

viii.

Pearl would have done something, anything, to escape her own body, but it clung to her stubbornly as she half-ran through the hospital’s halls—down Truman Ward and down the glass-encased skywalk, down the elevator, down some forsaken hallway and then another, the turns she took arbitrary and varied.

Anywhere but Room 11037.

Horror clawed its way up her throat—shame and awfulness and terrible, maddening grief—until she could hardly breathe for its presence in her mouth. The nausea was overwhelming. The memories she usually kept carefully tucked away surged forth, frothing like foam on the waves that skimmed the shore near their home.

Just the mention of Rose.

That alone was enough to undo her on any regular day.

But context mattered, too.

Steven had brought up his mother so readily, as though they and their situations were one in the same.

Like they were both—

But she couldn’t complete the thought, even to herself, because fundamentally, Pearl couldn’t accept the inevitable—not when Rose Quartz had once taught her what it was to touch the stars.

Blindly, haphazardly, unintentionally, she found herself in one of the larger hallways in the hospital, and she immediately knew, from experience, that she had made her way down to the first floor. This particular corridor emptied out into the larger atrium and housed many of the administrative offices and various waiting rooms.

It was fairly empty. A few people in olive colored scrubs walked by and paid the woman no attention, her total disintegration invisible to them.

Unseen.

And somehow, the fact of this was soothing to Pearl.

Comforting.

So she swiped a delicate hand across her face and moved forward until a sight towards the end of the hall stopped her short, like a blow to the stomach without being half as neat—so uncomplicated and yet so devastatingly simple.

A silver-haired woman wearing a dark blue dress.

Hands poised on a metallic cane.

Staring inscrutably at a pair of nondescript double doors.

Her heavy braid fell thickly across her shoulder.

ix.

Blue Diamond had been on her way out to the car when she noticed a half-open door in a dyad of two on the first floor of the hospital. Golden light spilled from the room upon the bare, white tiles, submerging them in a brightness, a warmth.

The brass label on the adjacent wall gleamed at her invitingly.

The chapel.

Because naturally, hospitals possessed chapels—sanctified spaces where people could pray to their gods and hope they would intercede on the behalves of their loved ones. There was something psychologically comforting in the gesture, she supposed—to do something in a situation where it felt like nothing else could be done, to speak to the Divine and take comfort in the fact that they were not alone because the Divine was omnipresent, and the Divine was all-encompassing, and the Divine loved them powerfully.

She stood in front of those doors for what seemed like an eternity and remembered painfully when she had once loved God.

She’d grown up with a Rosary woven between her fingers, singing Alleluia every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday at Mass until her daughter was murdered, and every theological comfort she had ever held dear scattered to the floor like beads.

She supposed it was only nostalgia then, which drove her to lightly press on that already half-opened door.

But as to what made her go in, the former headmistress could hardly articulate.

Her fingers wrapped themselves tightly around the head of her cane.

Clank, she proceeded forward.

Clank.

Above all, Pearl didn’t know what made her do it—it was almost as though a sense of daring reckless gripped her and propelled her forward, step over unthinking step. She approached the spot where Blue Diamond had only recently disappeared, her pale eyes flicking upwards to the label which named the room for what it was, and then back to the double doors again, which hadn’t been completely shuttered to a close since the entrance of its last visitor.

It was a small chapel from what Pearl could tell at a cursory glance, only offering the essential trifecta of artifacts—a couple of pews, a tiny altar, and what appeared to be the portrait of a dove, spreading its elegant wings across the back wall.

And there, sitting in the middle of the front row, was Blue Diamond, her head defiantly lifted.

As though determinedly not in prayer.

Her concentrated gaze seemed to be trained upwards, directed at the beautifully painted mural, upon which the gentle lighting threw its warm, amber glow, casting the bird in molten gold.

That same feeling of daring propitiated her again, and it was with her arms tucked neatly over her chest that Pearl impulsively drew closer, stepping across the boundary of the threshold with tender steps, ballerina movements. Her footfalls were light by nature, and in the thin carpet, they were hushed to the point that the older woman didn’t seem to be aware that she had company at all.

Her cane stood, temporarily abandoned, on the side of the row.

Though her head was high, her shoulders were hunched in on themselves.

Caved.

When Pearl reached the pew directly behind her, she skimmed her knuckles against the grains of the wooden armrest, producing a low, plaintive note as a means of attracting her attention without entirely startling her.

And it was with painful slowness, a certain gracefulness, too, that Blue Diamond finally turned her head to look Pearl’s way, her shadowed eyes wide with surprise and melancholy, with curiosity and well-practiced temperance.

Pearl’s thin brow furrowed.

She bit her lower lip.

xi.

“May I sit?” The Crystal Gem asked, and there was a brusqueness in her otherwise smooth voice that reminded Blue Diamond of yet another encounter with one of Steven’s motley guardians—the one who had stood in front of the door, the muscled woman with bicolored eyes.

She had warned her against hurting Steven.

She, too, had looked at Blue with quiet disdain.

Perhaps loathing was the more fitting word.

“Be my guest…?” Blue returned, allowing a pause by which the woman could introduce herself.

“Pearl,” she curtly supplied as she lowered herself to the end of the pew and sat rather primly, with one ankle crossed daintily over the other.

“Pearl,” Blue echoed gently, trying the name on her tongue. It was a lyrical number, assonant and delicate, much like the person to which it belonged.

For she was slight—as willowy as the other Crystal Gem had been powerfully built. Simply put, she looked as though one puff of wind would blow her over, bending her back like the breeze did stalks of long reeds, rending her, bifurcating her, snapping her in two. And just as Yellow and Blue’s physiognomies told the stories of their griefs, so, too, did the lines beneath Pearl’s eyes announce her own.

There was a boy in the hospital bed.

There was a wasting disease.

“May I assume,” she continued tentatively, “by the expression in your face, that you already know who I am?”

“Yes,” Pearl replied certainly, but then just as immediately said, “No. I don’t know.”

She closed her pale eyes against some inner turmoil as the ambient lighting gently kissed her beaten face, caressing her cheeks in honeyed gold.

“I know your name, and I know what your family’s company has done,” she continued, “but I suppose that isn’t the same thing as knowing you, is it? Understanding why my… why he… why Steven loves you.”

There was it again—that same oblique indictment that the other Crystal Gem had leveled at Diamond Electric, silently condemning her for all sorts of untold flaws, and Blue Diamond frowned, sucking a little on her lip as the charge did what it was intended to do—level a finger directly at her chest, pressing neatly upon her sternum.

Perhaps these activists were not as inconsequential as she had wanted them to be after all.

Perhaps they had something important to say.

Perhaps here was yet another instant in which Blue had looked away, painstakingly ignoring all of the uncouth things in order to more capably realize the vision of her perfect, invulnerable, tableau of an ugly, imperfect, sheltered life.

She accused Yellow of shoving Pink Diamond in a drawer, but perhaps Blue had always made sure to be in another room when all the shoving was being done.

“Because he loves you,” Pearl finished quietly, “and I’m trying to… I can’t quite figure it out.”

She turned to Blue directly then, appealing to her simply with her over-bright eyes and her slightly parted mouth, with the shadows all over her face.

So many premature lines.

And Blue Diamond returned the gaze as steadily as she could.

Perhaps she even mirrored it.

Lines and shadows and lines.

xii.

“I don’t think… I don’t imagine that I’ve been good at love in a very long time,” Blue began, each word slow and precise, maneuvered carefully on her lilting tongue like a hand-rolled cigarette wheeled between expert fingertips. “Giving, receiving it… showing it… even with my daughter… even before she—”

But the woman could not complete the sentence.

And Pearl found that she didn’t want her to.

The unspoken conclusion sat in the space between them—a little girl Pearl imagined her to be, arranged in a pretty pink dress, dangling her Mary-Jane enclosed feet from the crimson pew.

“But Steven Universe,” she continued, and even at his very name, the mere mention of him, the older woman’s expression seemed to subtly transform, the heaviness in it unfurling.

Incrementally lightening.

Surely.

“He extended a flower and smile to me that day in the cemetery. He noticed that I was sad. And that taught me a lesson I had never thought to learn in all of these many staggering years…”

Pearl couldn’t help herself then; a breathless question fell impatiently from her lips.

“And what would that be?”

Blue Diamond arched a dark brow at her that would have been haughty were it not for the tears glistening in her eyes, threatening to exceed their sunken edges.

“That there is such kindness, such… such love, in your troubles being seen, identified, and acted upon. He saw my sadness, and he named it. He gave me that tiny hibiscus and showed me, wordlessly, that I was not alone.”

She glided a skeletal hand across the side of her face, her palm capturing the beginnings of those now falling tears.

“I was being seen, Pearl, for the first time in I cannot tell you when… and it made me realize that this is what I wanted most of all, that perhaps, this is what all humans really want in the end.”

“To be seen,” Pearl repeated, her voice constricted, so many emotions thick.

“Yes,” Blue Diamond whispered with a gracious nod of her head, disturbing the heaviness of her silvery braid, “and to be loved by another.”

“Is that what he wants?” She pressed insistently, but deep down, the answer was already known to her, spelled out to her in the rush of so many memories. How many times alone in the past couple of days had he told them as much, both with words and without them? How many times had he asked them all not to look away? Amethyst opened a window for him so he could hear the words they’d all been too cowardly to utter in his presence. In a hospital room, in the dead of night, he told her to rip the bandaid off, to confirm that which everyone already knew and tiptoed around instead of saying.

You’re very sick, sweetheart.

I know.

And even still, even after all these horrible and unsubtle signs, she’d already done the damn thing and run away from him again anyway.

He asked if she’d been scared when Rose had been in the same place, laying in a hospital bed.

Sick.

Dying.

And yes, the answer so clearly, so blatantly was.

“Yes,” Blue Diamond murmured, her quiet voice tender.

And almost, if not entirely, kind.

“I think that is what he has desired all along.”

Pearl had no other recourse then, no semblance of a facade left by which to cling to, to desperately hold onto in a chapel where two entirely different women sat side by side, utterly undone by the same boy.

She brought both of her hands up to her mouth then and began to weep.

xiii.

Blue allowed the woman her moment of private grief, turning her head away from the sight, even though the sounds weren’t as easily escapable.

The sobs.

The keening.

The primality of it all.

Tears gathered in her own eyes, but she refused to let them fall, she swept them all away—because she understood intimately, viscerally, somehow without really knowing it—that this wasn’t her moment, her child, her bone deep, unbearable, unlivable grief.

Though it had once had been.

And it still was.

But not for this child.

Not for Steven Universe.

She’d lost a child; she wasn’t currently losing one.

And there was a fundamental difference in the fact.

There was primacy.

Five minutes passed, maybe ten, and Pearl gathered herself, collected all her tiny, fragmented pieces into a frame that wasn’t entirely shaking with its own reckoning anymore. And Blue finally looked over to see that the woman was leaned forward on the edge of her pew, the heels of her hands pressed against her eyes.

“He’s not doing well,” she said faintly.

If Blue hadn’t been staring at the movement of her thin mouth, she wouldn’t have known where the words had come from.

Perhaps she wouldn’t have even believed them.

They struck cleanly, like a slap to the face.

“Yesterday’s… disappointment”—disappointment was not the correct word—“hurt him badly, and he’s shutting down. Closing off.”

Each word was painful, razor sharp in clarity, dragged from Pearl’s teeth against her will. She dragged her fingers in lines down her wet face, now reaching the point of her chin, now cupping them into fists on either side of her jaw.

“We can’t get through to him,” she finished quietly. “We’ve all tried.”

And tried and tried and tried—Blue could see every failed attempt scrawled in the lines all over the woman’s tired face. The devastation bruised her black and blue.

“I’m sorry,” she offered simply. “I’m so… sorry.”

But Pearl, with all suddenness, with an aspect of barely repressible contempt, leveled her an incredulous look as though to say, What good will sorry do?

She had an excellent point.

“You should talk to him sometime,” she went on to say, turning away from Blue now. A series of conflicted emotions seemed to be playing out in real time across her pale, sky-colored eyes—disdain warring with grief warring with loathing warring with grudging respect.

It wasn’t quite endearment, though.

And Blue Diamond had a sneaking suspicion that it never would be.

“Maybe not today… he’s tired… hurt… but some day… you should visit him. He would like that.”

It was Blue’s turn to stare at the other woman incredulously now, her mouth slightly open as she awaited a punchline that never quite came. Pearl obstinately refused to meet her gaze, fingertips templed just next to her trembling lips.

“I… I have nothing to offer him,” she whispered, a trembling note in her voice as she tried to convey exactly just how serious she was being. “I’m hardly… I mean, he was the one who saved me. I don’t know what I could ever give him in equal return.”

But somehow, without really knowing why, how, or all the sundry explanatory variables in-between, she knew that this was perfectly untrue.

And Pearl seemed to know it, too, for the corner of her lip slightly lifted in the sliver of a sardonic smile.

“Start with a flower and a smile, perhaps.”

#bellow diamond #blue diamond #yellow diamond #steven universe #pearl #garnet #amethyst #priyanka maheswaran #greg universe #connie maheswaran #rose quartz #pink diamond #flower child #mimiku #oh my god #this chapter is a monster

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