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ffangirlingsince2001 · 4 years

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Nothing Alike: VIII

Description: Geralt of Rivia has been tasked with taking out a fellow Witcher who has decided to settle down in a town. She has no intention of leaving and Geralt is forced to take matters into his own hands.

Geralt x Reader

Warnings: violence, language, angst

MASTERLIST

The king’s men caught up with them three days later.

There horse was surrounded before either of them knew what was happening, and the crown prince was in their ranks, sword drawn, the point directed at Y/N as she sat behind Geralt.

“You were supposed to kill this one,” he drawled, sharp noise just as harsh as it pointed at Geralt. “And yet, she breathes.”

“Wish I wasn’t as bad as you smell,” she cut in, jumping from the steed, brandishing her sword. The men who surrounded them drew their swords in turn, but that arrogant smile didn’t leave her for a moment. “Twelve against one, I like my odds.”

“Does this Witcher not fight for you?”

“No one fights for me, especially not the Witcher.”

“Then we will have no problem taking you. Guards.” They climbed down from their horses and she readied herself, sword poised to take them all. She slashed at one with deadly speed, but with professional grace she only brushed one’s fingers enough to cut his knuckles. He dropped his sword in surprise. She took another step forward and pressed the tip of his sword to the man’s throat.

Geralt was sure she could have fought to the final breath, maybe even killed most of them on her way down, but Geralt couldn’t bear to watch her kill. Not after he had heard the screams of the auctioneer.

As she brandished her sword for the second strike, he brought down his own sword, clanging iron against iron to halt what would have become an onslaught of carnage.

She whirled around, and as he had done the first time, he met her, smacked her head with the butt of his sword. She crumpled to the ground and Geralt glared at the guards who dared to advance.

“I believe criminals are given trials in your kingdom.” The prince glared at him, clearly itching to return with nothing more than her head. He studied the Geralt and his sword, clearly considering him a far greater adversary than Y/N. Angrily, he nodded in defeat.

“Bind her. We ride until sundown and then camp for the night.” The guards advanced again but Geralt directed his sword at them once more.

“I will keep her.”

“As you kept her before, letting her ravage the county side while you watch idly?”

“She is not a dog to be tamed.”

“No, she’s a rabid bitch.”

“Then I would not want you to catch fleas, Your Royal Highness.”

“I see you have already caught whatever disease she has to offer,” the prince said with a smirk but did nothing to stop Geralt from gathering her onto his horse, binding her wrists around his waist as he sat atop his horse. “If you run, we’ll kill you both, honor be damned.”

“I would expect nothing less.” In terms of smugness, this prince could give Y/N a run for her money. He urged Roach to follow the great peacocker and his bodyguards.

They took the easy trails, which were subsequently the longer. It was going to take them three days at least to reach the palace at the rate they were going. Geralt couldn’t believe he had subjected himself to this without a fight.

Not only was he being forced to parade after a prince, but it was also agonizingly slow. The king’s men stopped to hunt game that would only make the ride longer. They were acting like this was a vacation, not the hunt of a mass murderer who had singlehandedly overturned the economy. Maybe that’s why they were behaving this way because they were convinced, they had won. They were sure that they had caught the dreaded beast, and that thought made Geralt chuckled to himself. She wasn’t caught until she was dead.

But he wasn’t going to tell them that, not when he had grown a twisted fondness for his study.

It was no surprise that she gained consciousness before they had gone a mere twenty miles. He felt her shifting against his back, and he waited for the unforgiving tug against his midsection as she struggled to get away, but it never came. She merely sighed and gently bumped her head against his spine.

“That’s the second time you’ve done that to me,” she grumbled, and he laughed again, doing his best to keep quiet lest he alert the prince.

“When you come up with a counterattack let me know,” he whispered. He could practically feel her rolling her eyes.

“Very funny.” She settled back into silence after that, and he thought she might be sleeping until he felt the faintest tug of his belt. He glanced down to find small, nimble fingers removing a knife from his belt. He caught her hand and she let out a sardonic sigh.

“Nice try.”

“Not nice enough.”

“I can’t make it too easy, can I?”

“I wouldn’t complain.”

“I’m sure Prince Peacock would.”

“Oh, we care about his feelings now?”

“Do you want your face all over wanted posters?”

“Depends on how good they get the portrait.” It was Geralt’s turn to role his eyes. “So, how do you think everything’s going to go down with the good king?”

“How apologetic are you feeling?”

“I have no reason to apologize.”

“Then you should write your will now.” She laughed, this time loud enough to capture the attention of the prince. He slowed his horse and rode along side the two witchers, that smug smirk never leaving his face. He never said a word, just stared with hungry eyes. It was clear he didn’t think she was as much of a dog as he had stated before. Geralt knew she was staring back with fierce indignation, golden eyes sparkling in the sunlight.

After a few moments, he quickened his pace and whispered orders to the guards. They all nodded and, and five of the twelve charged forward. Geralt watched and noted the sky, assuming that they were going to set up camp for the spoiled prince.

About an hour later, Geralt’s assumptions were proved true as they stepped into the most luxurious looking camp he had ever seen. He remained on his horse as the rest of the men dismounted, not sure how he was going to climb down with Y/N tied to his waist.

“Come on Witcher, don’t run now,” the prince called as he walked towards an ornate purple and orange tent. “Wilhelm, cut down the girl and bring her to my tent, I have some things I would like to discuss with her before dinner.”

As a guard cut her down, dragging her towards the tent, Geralt wanted to be annoyed, but he couldn’t. Not when he understood. Frankly, he was just annoyed that the peacock was acting like that wasn’t his goal. She let herself be dragged away, tossed inside the tent. Geralt rolled his eyes as he dismounted, leading Roach to a tree before settling himself against its trunk.

It was only ten minutes before the yelling began. It seemed she had tolerated him five minutes longer than Geralt had anticipated. The prince came out roaring, his hand knotted in her hair as he dragged her forward. He stepped into the firelight and the reason for the yelling became clear. Three long claw marks had made an appearance on his cheek, rivers of blood leaking from each.

“Tie a noose, we’re going to string her up,” he screamed into the darkness. Heavy feet scrambled to follow orders while Geralt merely watched. She didn’t struggle in his grasp; he was sure she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. The requested knot was presented and slipped around her neck. They tossed the rope over a tree and then as she screamed profanities, they pulled it taught.

Her fingers went straight to the loop as pulled it away from her windpipe. The tips of her toes brushed the ground as she howled and spit like a feral cat.

“This’ll teach you to disrespect me, cunt,” the prince laughed, creeping closer, putting his hands on her hips, sliding them up towards the swell of her chest. In one sacrificial sweep of her leg she kicked the man between his legs and cut off her own air supply. As she struggled to regain her footing, Geralt was on his feet, sword in his hand. “Hoist her up,” the peacock screamed, still doubled over in pain, and as instructed she was off the ground, coughing and gasping for air.

“Put her down,” Geralt growled to the guard who was holding her. The guard glanced at his sword and instantly obeyed, but the prince wasn’t having it.

“Do you take orders from monsters now?” he screamed, a violent temper tantrum brewing as he drew his own sword. “I said, hoist her up. Let’s see how long it takes a bitch to beg.”

“And I said, put her down before I gut you.” Her feet hit the floor and another royal scream filled their ears.

“I’m in charge here.” The prince marched forward, shoving the guard out of the way and giving the rope a brutal yank of his own. She was hanging again, lips turning blue. With a flash of his sword, the rope severed, and she hit the ground, gasping for air as she struggled to stand. “You fucking mutant, I’ll have you both killed,” he screamed like a madman, swinging his sword around with no regard for those who stepped a bit too close. He swung at Geralt, who lazily blocked the strike and sent the sword flying from his hands.

“If you wish for cooperation, you will do nothing further to harm my keep. She is granted a trial, and you will not steal that right because she would not have your cock.” The prince spat at him, seething beneath the purple of his cheeks. “Harm her again, and you will not have a cock, are we understood?” A moment passed before the prince seemed to compose himself.

“Wilhelm, find the collar, and make sure she stays out of my sight.” With that, he marched back into his tent with a huff. Wilhelm had the requested collar within a moment, and he clasped it around her bruised throat without a struggle. He dragged her stumbling towards the tree where Geralt had laid moments before. A stake holding the chain was driven into the ground and she was left in the dark, just a touch too far from the fire to feel its warmth.

He wandered to her side and settled against the truck, watching silently as she struggled to get comfortable.

“You should have let them kill me,” she snapped, but her voice was to ragged to sound at all threatening.

“You haven’t finished you will yet,” he said, and she let out a raspy laugh. When she said nothing more, he was worried she had passed out, but her eyes still glowed in the moonlight. “Where does the gold go?”

“What?”

“You know, when you win bets or fights you win gold, but where does it all go?”

“Why are you still hung up on that?”

“Consider it morbid curiosity.” A beat of silence passed before she answered.

“I leave it in people’s homes. Those with pregnant women.” That is not what he had expected, so he remained silent, waiting for her to explain further. “That way if any of their husbands promise the law of surprise, the gold will be the surprise.” Suddenly it all made sense. Everything from fighting to drinking to tagging along with him was to prevent the creation of more child surprises. To stop more people from ending up like her.

He suddenly felt guilty for letting them take her. He glanced back to her and found that she was sleeping, worn out from the day he had put her through. He was tired too, but the thought of what the peacock might to do to her if someone wasn’t watching scared him too much for sleep to overtake him. So, he remained awake, pondering gold and the woman sleeping beside him.

Taglist: @stuckupstucky @aurora-sweet @holyhumorliteraturelight @dreams-of-sunlight-and-starfire @auds24

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midnightactual · 3 years

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Yoruichi’s Soul

What if I told you that perhaps Yoruichi has a unique soul?

With the release of the latest chapter, we learn some interesting things about Shinigami. My intention isn’t really to write about Hell and its implications, but it’s pertinent to the point I want to make, so it’s a fine place to begin and I’ll address some asides along the way. Here is what Shunsui says in a fanlation:

There is a word, “reii” (spiritual authority). It’s a unit of measurement that used to be utilized by the nobles, and is said to represent the concentration of reiatsu that resides in reishi. The average division member has a reii of grade 20. Vice-Captains vary between grade 5 and grade 4. And Captains consist of grade 3 and higher. A Soul Reaper’s body is made up of reishi, and when they die their body turns into reishi and returns to the earth of Soul Society. But people classified as grade 3 and higher can't do that because their reiatsu concentration is too high. What allows them to return is this ritual, “Soul Funeral Festival”. This is what’s taught at the Soul Reaper Academy.

What I am about to say is the “superstition”. “Actually, reishi of grade 3 and higher cannot return to the earth of Soul Society no matter what.” So what should we do? We can’t allow reishi that’s too powerful to remain in Soul Society. The Soul Funeral Festival’s real purpose is something else. With this ritual, the deceased Captains are—[Sent down to Hell!]

And here is the translation by Shueisha themselves:

There is something called... spirit class. In the past, it was a scale used among aristocrats. It indicated the density of the spiritual pressure within reishi. A normal company member has 20th-class reishi. An Assistant Captain has fifth or fourth class. And those greater than third class are Captains. A Soul Reaper's body is composed of reishi. When they pass on, their body turns into reishi and is reclaimed by the soil of the Soul Society. But anyone above third class has spiritual pressure too dense to be reabsorbed without intervention. The Konso Reisai is a ceremony to allow that reishi to be returned. That is as much as we learned at the Shinoreijutsuin.

This next part is the old wives’ tale. In actuality... reishi that is third-class and above can never return to the soil of soul society. So what are we to do? It’s not as though we could allow overly powerful reishi to linger loose in Soul Society indefinitely. And therein lies the other reason behind Konso Reisai. With the ceremony, the deceased Captains are... [... Cast into Hell!]

I think you’ll find these both strongly agree in content, despite some slightly different word choices. To recap:

reii is a graded measurement of (the ratio of) reiatsu per unit of reishi

reishi with reii above grade 3 / third class (i.e., that of Taichō) does not decompose and retains its reiatsu indefinitely

this is a problem that must be dealt with

the solution is to cast such reishi into Hell

There’s a lot of discussion floating around regarding what all this means. Does this mean that all Taichō-class individuals go to Hell? Well... yes, actually. What Shunsui says here is unambiguous: any Taichō-class individual presents a problem. This means that say, Gin, Kaname, Kiganjō, and Kuruyashiki were issues that had to be dealt with. Now, it does seem like maybe Jūshirō, Retsu, and Yamamoto have been turned into wardens of Hell rather than merely incarcerated there, given what we see of Jūshirō’s zanpakutō. So perhaps it’s the case that loyal Taichō become wardens (truly, one never retires from the Gotei 13, even in death) and disloyal ones become incarcerated. (After all, why put traitors in charge of security?) But it’s unambiguous that all Taichō-class individuals must be dealt with this way—and indeed, so must any entity with sufficient reii.

(An example: this means Ulquiorra is merely dead, not gone. He should be essentially haunting Las Noches.)

I’ve always wondered what Ganju meant in chapter 83 when he said that Kaien’s powers were “sixth class” and now we know; Kaien, as a former Fukutaichō, is likely not in Hell, as his reii grade was initially sixth class and probably had not risen higher than fifth or fourth by the time of his death.

(There is probably also something to be said about Retsu’s remarks to Ichigo in the Dangai on the way to Fake Karakura regarding the possible “inherent crudeness” of his reiatsu, which suggests there is some kind of reiatsu quality.)

Okay, cool, but what does any of this have to do with Yoruichi? Well, I’m getting there.

Take note that the Konso Reisai / Soul Funeral Festival is happening 12 years after TYBW (in 2015) and is apparently reconstituting individuals in Hell with their personalities and memories at least partially intact (as Jūshirō still has his zanpakutō). This tells us that reiatsu represents a kind of spin on the concept of genetic memory... you might call it energetic memory. Everything that an individual is in Bleach is seemingly encoded within their reiatsu, and they can seemingly be reconstituted from it. (I am also told that Spirits Are Forever With You makes this explicitly true.)

Here’s the rub: this isn’t actually the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing.

It’s become evident that various tie-in media to Bleach have become quasi-canonical to the manga. The movie Bleach: Memories of Nobody was made quasi-canonical by Ichigo saying in TYBW that he’d been to the Valley of Screams once before, along with panels depicting its appearance in that movie and a note at the end of the chapter to see it for more information. The Zanpakutō Rebellion arc was made quasi-canonical through the novel Can’t Fear Your Own World. This latest chapter appears to make quasi-canonical some elements of Hell from the movie Bleach: Hell Verse.

Well, what happens in this chapter with reiatsu persisting and functioning as a record of a Shinigami’s essence, to include their personality and memories... is exactly how Kagerōza created the mod-souls he used to run his reigai army in the Gotei 13 Invading Army arc.

Everyone of Fukutaichō rank and above, except for Yamamoto, Sasakibe, and Yachiru, was copied as a mod-soul and put in reigai, to include Kisuke. We also know that this done by using traces of the reiatsu of the originals. Ichigo and Yoruichi were not subject to this.

Kagerōza eventually “reveals he is unable to make a reigai of Ichigo because he is not a pure Shinigami.” We can assume that because Yachiru is a zanpakutō herself, she can’t be copied. Yamamoto and Sasakibe present an interesting case, probably to do with some kind of warding. Another odd exception exists with Kagerōza’s refusal to copy Aizen, Gin, and Kaname; presumably he thought that once a traitor, always a traitor.

But what about Yoruichi?

Did she perhaps kill her reigai copy off-screen? In Episode 319 of that arc, she “fought three Shinigami captains and four lieutenant-level and above opponents at the same time with Hakuda without receiving any notable damage.” I’ve noted this before as an example of her martial prowess, but think about it tactically from Kagerōza’s perspective. Yoruichi is able to easily resist his forces, and he can make multiple reigai copies of an individual as he demonstrates with Momo. If Yoruichi was such a pain for his reigai to deal with, and he’d already copied her, why wouldn’t he just make another? Or several more?

The simplest answer is that he couldn’t. In say, the Zanpakutō Rebellion arc, the easiest (metatextual) answer as to why Yoruichi’s zanpakutō didn’t rebel wasn’t that she had some unusual mastery over it, but rather that there was no desire to come up with her zanpakutō. However, there was no reason for a reigai copy of her not to appear if it was at all possible... meaning it was likely impossible.

The fact that her zanpakutō didn’t rebel in that other arc (and that metatextual reasons do not make sense in-universe) does put her in yet another very small club, even if its membership is different (to include Kisuke this time). The only other really consistent member of the clubs she finds herself in is Ichigo; this suggests that Yoruichi’s soul is unique like Ichigo’s, if not in the same fashion or to the same extent.

Why might that be? Well, here are some possible options:

it’s all a coincidence, and there is nothing more significant to it

Yoruichi’s cat form makes her soul novel (A. perhaps her cat form is an expression of her zanpakutō and she’s permanently bonded with it; or B. perhaps her cat form is hereditary, as she seems to share phenotypic expression with Yūshirō and it is unlikely to be merely her heritage alone)

Yoruichi’s status as Tenshiheisōban makes her soul novel somehow, if one subscribes to the theory that the Shihōin are themselves the actual Tenshiheisō

Here, for this roleplay blog, I subscribe to a combination of (2b) and (3). Yoruichi has a unique heritage (which also accounts for the strange phenotypical expression) and her family (the Shihōin) have a sort of unusual “contract” with... well, the fundamental nature of reality itself. Regardless of whether one agrees with those choices in general, I think two things are clear:

the expansion of reiatsu put forward in this chapter was both presaged in the early manga and accords well enough with the previously anime-only Gotei 13 Invading Army arc that said arc may be considered pseudo-canonical as others have become

if that arc is taken as pseudo-canonical and complexed with other pseudo-canonical material, it suggests that there is something strange about Yoruichi.

#Out Of Character #Bleach #Meta #Headcanons #[ I'm sure it's easy ]#[ to go 'DUCKY IS HYPING YORU AGAIN' ]#[ but look ]#[ she has ]#[ observationally ]#[ consistently ]#[ the most weird stuff surrounding her ]#[ besides Ichigo ]#[ so like ]#[ take it up with Kubo / Shueisha / SP ]

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fortune-fool02 · 4 years

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College Life

Diego Brando x female reader

Requested by: @juliannasposts

“Hello, again sweetheart! How are you doing? I really hope you're doing fine! I'd like to request another diego x reader, where both of them are in the college studying together and sometimes diego comes to the reader's house to help soothe her? Simply a fluff au one-shot with diego since I love this guy the most( ∩˃ ᵕ ˂∩ )♡. Thank you very much!”

Modern AU

Thank you for this request and I am doing fine! Please enjoy.

The mentor threw a final look at the clock before dismissing the lesson for the day, the students wasted no time in gathering their notes and equipment and rushing out the doors, enjoying the freedom of the weekend. That was not really the case for [Name].

[Name] had some of the highest grades in the course she was taking, and she wished to maintain that. She enjoyed the subject and the lessons though the other students seemed more interested in their parties and days out rather than the up-coming exams. The mentor had stated multiple times that these exams will not be easy and require all the topics they have covered since the beginning of the first term.

Though she may seem composed about these exams, it was not the case. Her nerves coiled more and more each passing day that the exams crept closer and closer. Before her thoughts could be too consumed by that, a tap on her shoulder pulled her from her thoughts.

Diego stood there, bag on his back, seeming to be waiting for her. “Come on, let’s go.” He huffed, his expression painted with irritation of waiting but that was just what Diego was like. He always had this air of annoyance and often kept his distance with people but he did let [Name] get close. She nodded and quickly gathered her things before standing up, leaving campus with the blonde man.

This was a common occurrence for her. Whenever they could leave campus together, Diego would go around to her house and they would revise together. During these sessions, their friendship developed and grew so much so it became a routine for them both. Neither of them would discuss it and rarely missed it. [Name] actually enjoyed Diego’s company, despite his bold and somewhat arrogant attitude, he was always calmer around her which she took as his way of being nice.

Once they got to [Name]’s house, she set her stuff down and got her notes out as Diego did. “Alright, so we will go over the biology topic first of the animals and then move onto today’s lesson. Does that sound good to you?” The blonde spoke, looking at the revision list they had been given on what could be on the exams. [Name] nodded and went off to make them both some coffee. As she waited for the kettle to boil, her mind wandered. These exams did have quite a lot of topics for them to revise and that plucked at her nerves.

There was a lot to revise, and [Name] was revising each and every night both with and without Diego to ensure her chances of doing good in them, but there was always this gnawing voice in the back of her head. She would fail. She would miss something and lower her score. She would disappoint everyone around her. She would fail the course. The more these thoughts spilled into her head, the more that cold dread coiled tighter in her chest, pulling at her nerves and making her body shake. She couldn’t do this.

Tears pricked her [Eye colour] eyes, her hand pressing against her mouth to try and muffle any sounds she was making as the world around her just faded. Her lungs felt tight, unable to hold a single breath and burned within her chest. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t pass the course, she couldn’t pass the exams. She couldn’t do it. Heat flushed through her body with shame and embarrassment, clashing against the coldness in her gut and her blood.

Diego heard the kettle click from the living room and continued looking at the notes when he heard another sound. Confused, he stood up and walked towards the kitchen to investigate. His cyan blue eyes widened a little when he saw the source of the odd sound. [Name] stood against the counter, her entire posture ridged and seeming to be struggling to hold herself up against the counter. One had latched against her mouth, tears spilling down her [Eye colour] eyes as she tried to muffle her sobs. Her body shaking like a leaf in a storm.

He approached her slowly and carefully wrapped his arms around her. One hand petting her [Hair colour] locks and the other holding her close,

“[Name], it’s alright. Just breathe, it’s alright.” he whispered to her. Not many would believe he, of all people, could comfort someone but he knew what to do. He knew these exams were wearing away at [Name] and it was only a matter of time before she broke down like this. She might have had others fooled but he knew her, he knew the little signs she expressed when she was stressed.

[Name] latched onto Diego like a lifeline, and he let her, continuing to soothe her the best he could, whispering encouragement and comfort in her ear. Her body shook against his but he ignored that, softly petting her hair. It took a few minutes of this before he felt her body starting to calm down as her sobs died down. The blonde man pulled away and wiped the tears away,

“S-Sorry, Diego.” [Name] sniffled, trying to take more steady breaths to calm herself. She must look like an idiot now. Diego rose a brow at her,

“For what?” He asked, confusion stitched into his words at her apology. She looked up at him, wiping her eyes a little.

“For being a mess. I didn’t mean to-” She was cut off by Diego grabbing her shoulder and looking at her.

“Don’t apologise for something so silly, [Name]. I know you’re worried about the exams and it’s nothing to be ashamed about.” he told her, his voice soothing and calm, brushing away the gnawing worry that plagued her. “I, honestly, think you will do great in these exams.”

He...He did? Diego Brando, one of the most successful students at college, believed that she would do great in these exams? For some reason, that made a soft warmth bloom inside of her, flowing through her body like a steady, calming stream, washing away the worry. He believed in her. Diego Brando believed in her.

He gave her a smile and patted her shoulder, “How about we revise later? I think we did well enough in lesson for a deserved break.” She mirrored his smile and turned back to making the coffee, handing Diego his in the Jurassic Park cup he always used. Something that she thought was fitting as he mainly focused on the study of reptiles.

She followed him back into the living room with a smile. Perhaps she could pass the exams after all? The fact that he believed in her seemed to make her feel more determined to.

#diego brando #jojo bizarre adventure #diego brando x reader #jojo bizzare adventure x reader #jojo #jojo x reader #diego brando jojo #steel ball run x reader #diego steel ball run #steel ball run #jojo part 7 #jjba #sbr

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one-boring-person · 3 years

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A Game Of Numbers. (Part Five)

Marion "Cobra" Cobretti x reader

Warnings: swearing (in German and English), mention of death, mention of injury, mention of homophobia, gun use

Context: When a string of seemingly connected murders and kidnappings break out in LA, Cobretti is called in to figure out what is going on. He is, however, not alone in his investigation. Lieutenant "Hawk" (Y/l/n) is deployed to help him, though it quickly becomes clear that the crimes taking place are not as random as they first thought, but rather a little more personal than either of them would hope.

A/n: somehow, I'm starting to think this is gonna fail massively

Masterlist

Once again, Hawk jerks awake, body covered in a thin layer of sweat, each breath rattling painfully out of her chest, her eyes wide as they instinctively scan the interior of her bedroom, looking for the danger her body is expecting. Upon finding nothing out of place, she sighs, slumping over from her upright position, cupping her face in her hand to steady herself, trying to regain control of her racing thoughts. A dull light filters in through the thin blinds, casting the room in a cold light that throws harsh shadows against the walls.

Trembling a little, Hawk glances over at her bedside clock, glad to see the time is near enough her usual get-up. Rubbing her eyes briefly, she pulls back the tangled sheets as swings her legs out of the bed, placing her hands on her knees to gain some form of stability as her head reels, flashes of her plaguing past coming unbidden to her head, each memory vivid thanks to the disturbing nightmares hounding her sleep. Shaking them away, she climbs to her feet, stretching out her back until it cracks, before she shuffles into the hallway, to the bathroom, where she quickly gets changed.

Having splashed cold water on her face, she feels a little better, the brisk temperature helping to clear any remaining haze from her mind, allowing her to think more clearly. Staring at herself in the mirror, she steels herself against her memories, knowing that what has happened is in the past, and shouldn't be dwelt on for too long.

Leaving the bathroom, Hawk gets dressed, donning her usual long coat as she grabs an apple, taking it for her breakfast before she drops an orange into her pocket for later. Taking her keys, the lieutenant goes to exit the apartment, having made sure everything she needs for the day is present, until her eyes land on a dresser, a little way away. She swallows as she catches sight of the photograph pinned to the stained wood, the case file tucked in between the books behind it instilling a sense of dread in her she's come to recognise in the past few days. Everything she does seems to come back to the battered grey folder, though she has not touched it since she was given it, a year or so ago.

Sighing, she leaves the apartment, locking it firmly behind her.

Moving swiftly down the corridor, she turns the corner, only to feel an odd chill go up her spine, making her stop in her tracks. Slowly, she looks round, back the way she came, eyes narrowed in unease. There is nothing there, and nothing ahead of her as she turns back, though the sensation doesn't leave her, her skin prickling uncomfortably as she hurriedly goes to leave, her survival instinct screaming at her to do so as quickly as possible.

The feeling doesn't leave even as she steps out onto the street, her eyes flicking around the deserted space nervously, her hand staying to her waist, ready to creep round and take hold of her handgun, should the need for it arise. Tucked into her belt, the weapon's familiar weight is almost comforting, though it does little to soothe her nerves as she edges along the street, body tense. Around this time of the day, there is little traffic, both road or sidewalk, meaning the stretch is left feeling eerie and strangely empty - usually, it doesn't feel so odd, but this morning it instills a cool sensation into her chest. In the distance, she can hear some cars driving past, the lieutenant hoping that one of them is her partner come to pick her up, the presence of the rough cop somehow having proved itself a measure of safety for her, after some time of feeling outcast and at risk.

Over the last week since the last body had been found, Cobretti and Hawk had grown a little closer, settling into a routine as they worked to solve the murders and locate the next two victims, utilising each other's different interrogation tactics and contacts efficiently. Very little progress has been made, with the killer's movements totally unpredictable and painstakingly difficult to track, and with none of the information gathered from interviews actually helping at all. There had been one lead, which they intend to follow up on in the coming days, hoping it will actually take them somewhere, given its promising nature; an apparent witness had come forward, requesting to speak with Cobra and Hawk in person, seemingly willing to give up any knowledge they have. Despite all this, however, Hawk still feels unsettled by the last murder, that one sprig of heather not sitting right with her, stirring up memories she'd rather forget.

Startled from her thoughts by the sudden sound of a door slamming, Hawk instinctively spins on her heel, hand grabbing for the grip of the handgun, though she doesn't pull it out yet, eyes wide. A brief shot of adrenaline goes through her, her gaze instantly landing on a figure at the end of the street, the silhouette average in height but somehow incredibly intimidating in build, despite the slender set to them.

They appear to be staring at her, face obscured by the distance, hands resting loosely in their pockets, head tilted to the side curiously. Frowning, Hawk faces them properly, waiting for a reaction, glancing around her in case there's someone else there, noticing no one at all. Tense, she gazes at the man, I'm moving but alert, until he suddenly looks round to the end of the road closest to him, where a familiar car has pulled in.

As usual, Cobra does not take the road at a slower pace, going relatively quickly towards Hawk as the figure at the end of the street ducks out of sight, leaving her tense and uncomfortable. She stays stock still, waiting for Cobretti to reach her; hand still on her pistol, eyes fixed on the spot where the figure was.

He pulls the car up alongside her, turning to look at her out the window as she waits a few more seconds, before slowly moving to the vehicle. Quietly, she climbs in, closing the door softly behind her. They are silent for a moment, Cobra watching Hawk closely as she composes herself again.

"Morgen." She says, good-naturedly, reverting back to her own language momentarily, a habit Cobretti has noticed she does quite often.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He replies jokingly, knowing full well what she means.

Rolling her eyes playfully, she gives him a look as he pulls out from the kerb, heading towards the station, where the witness is set to meet them. He chuckles, but can't help noticing the tense set to her face, her unease still evident in her body.

"What happened back there? You had your hand on your gun." He probes, turning onto a busier road.

Hawk glances at him for a second, before turning back to the window.

"I think someone was following me." She says evenly, sounding sure of herself, "I got a bad feeling when I left my apartment, and then I saw the guy at the end of the road just now."

"Guy? What guy?"

"There was a guy standing at the end of the road. You must've seen him, you drove right past him!" Hawk clarifies, lifting an eyebrow.

Cobra only shrugs, rolling the matchstick between his lips.

Hawk remains quiet, rubbing her eyes tiredly, stifling a yawn as she leans back in the seat, hoping she won't fall asleep right there.

"Tired?" Cobretti asks, trying to fill the silence.

Startled, Hawk sits straighter, trying to sort herself out, only to realise he's already noticed and won't let it go no matter what she does.

"A bit, yeah." She admits, embarrassment flushing her face as she looks down, drawing a hand through her hair.

"Why?"

She shrugs, hesitant to answer, though she feels he should know, given that he's her partner for now.

"Haven't been sleeping well." She responds eventually, looking over at him.

"Yeah, I noticed." Cobretti confesses, shooting her an apologetic look, "You don't look so good."

"That bad? Scheiße." She curses, kicking herself for not realising that her lack of sleep has become apparent.

"What the hell does that mean?" He asks, changing the subject, clearly noticing how it's making her a little uncomfortable.

"Scheiße? Means shit." Hawk states, watching out the window as Cobra pulls up outside the police station.

"Ah. Good to know." He tries to fight back a smirk - her little words and phrases had grown on him, their meanings generally lost on him but still amusing.

Laughing, Hawk waits for him to pull into a parking space before she climbs out, standing to the side as he follows suit.

"So when are we talking to this witness?" She asks him, pulling her apple from her pocket, as well as the pocket knife she always has on her. Deftly, she uses the knife to slice pieces of the fruit off, eating them off the blade as she walks.

"At eight." Cobra replies after shooting her his usual exasperated glance.

"That's an hour off, which gives us some time to reconvene, I guess."

"Yeah. Might go to the firing range."

"The firing range? Wirklich? It's seven in the morning, isn't that too early for you?" Hawk questions, lifting an eyebrow.

"Nah. Got nothing better to do." He shrugs, leading the way into the building, heading for their shared office for the moment.

"Apart from solving the case?" His partner grins, following him in.

"Oh, yeah, of course. I'll be thinking about it whilst I shoot." He explains, dropping off his coat as he heads over the corridor to the shooting range, leaving Hawk alone in the office.

Shaking her head, she settles down at the large table, taking the case files in front of her and opening them, laying out all the necessary sheets of paper, before she finds her eyes wandering upwards. They swiftly find the lean figure of Cobra standing at the end of a range, his arms outstretched, Colt held in hand, face set in concentration. With each shot, his muscles tense and contract, the movements fluid and holding her attention, sweat beading on his bare arms from the heat in the building. Even from this distance, however, with or without the distraction of his well-built physique, it's obvious that his thoughts are elsewhere, his brow furrowed slightly as he thinks over the case notes in his head.

Keeping that in mind, Hawk starts to toil over the words in front of her, frowning at the information she's read over and over again, still unable to find a connection between the two victims, apart from their relationship with each other. They'd been through all the possible explanations: homophobia (the newest victims aren't openly homosexual, so the theory doesn't hold up), preference over women (one of the newest victims is male), ease of abduction (none of the victim's have been seen together with the suspect that's been described), with many other reasons appearing. None of them fit.

The hour goes by slowly, by which time Cobra has rejoined Hawk, sitting back in his seat as he thinks through possible motives, patterns and killers. Once it is time to go to the interview room, the two are relieved to leave the office, having made no progress at all.

Walking on to the interview room, neither of them say much, not expecting too much from this lead except a hopeful civilian looking to get involved in something "interesting". Upon reaching the door, they stop, waiting for their interviewee to be brought to them. It doesn't take long, a younger officer leading a confident woman along the corridor towards them, his face saying it all as she struts along behind him. Hawk has to suppress a sigh, knowing this won't be easy.

"Lieutenants, this is Hailey Lloyd. Ms Lloyd, this is lieutenant Cobretti and Lieutenant (Y/l/n). They will be taking the interview." The officer informs the witness, sounding tired.

"Nice to meet you." Hawk forces a smile, putting out a hand to shake, though Ms Lloyd already has her eyes fixed on Cobra.

"And you, and you." She replies, tone sharp as she ignores the outstretched hand in favour of shaking Cobretti's.

"Shall we go in?" He says, keeping his voice flat as he gestures to the room.

"Yes, yes, let's do that." Ms Lloyd nods, moving to go into the room as Cobra opens the door for her.

Over her shoulder, the two lieutenants exchange a glance.

Part Six

#cobra #cobra 1986 #marion cobretti #Marion cobretti x reader #sylvester stallone #sly stallone

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diariesofthehermit · 3 years

Text

Panpsychism and the Combination Problem

I just finished the book "Galileo's Error" by Phillip Goff (a Panpsychist) and, having discovered an entirely new way of thinking about reality, my mind is now aflame with thoughts that I want to share and discussions that I want to have. I am not really creating this thread to discuss the merits of Panpsychism as a whole. For the time being, I am satisfied with it being a coherent theory of reality and that is enough for my present purposes. I am quite willing to accept that consciousness is the intrinsic aspect of matter; I find this both plausible and coherent. What I want to discuss is the problem of complex minds, or how the incredibly simple forms of conscious experience exhibited by fundamental particles collectively form the rich, complex forms of conscious experience within human minds/nervous systems.

There are two possibilities that I will discuss here: IIT (Information Integration Theory) and Constitutive Panpsychism. IIT posits that consciousness naturally rises to the highest level of complexity, or of integrated information. Basically, a fundamental particle represents a fundamental, rudimentary form of experience. It is its own entity. If it becomes a part of a single celled organism, however, then that particle ceases to be conscious in its own right and becomes subsumed into the greater network of integrated information, or consciousness, of the organism. If that single celled organism, say a neuron, is incorporated into a larger network of single celled organisms (for example, a nervous system), then those individual cells cease to be conscious in their own right and become subsumed into the consciousness of the whole multicellular entity. Basically, a + b = c. Two parts come together and cease to be what they were, instead forming something entirely new.

Constitutive Panpsychism, on the other hand, seems to posit that the fundamental particles do not lose their individuality while at the same time combining to form new levels of conscious experience. Constitutive Panpsychism (if I understand it correctly) holds that each neuron is its own loci of subjective experience, and that they combine to form a new loci and a, more complex, form of experience without giving up their individual “minds”. Basically, a + b = ab.

In my view, IIT appears to be the more logical choice, as it seeks to solve the problem of complex consciousness through a fundamental law of nature that requires no further explanation. The simpler solution is generally the better solution. However, in my opinion IIT falls apart when we try to understand what separates one system of information from another, among other things.

Are organisms fundamentally separate from their environment? Organisms survive by engaging in an almost constant exchange of information with their surroundings. I am equating matter with information because, according to Panpsychism, they are essentially identical (if we understand that any conscious experience involves both a knower [the subject] and the known [the object/information]). Organisms take in information in the form of oxygen, food and water and emit information in the form of waste and heat. Just as a nucleus cannot exist without the cellular whole, an organism cannot exist without its ecosystem. Where does the flow of information end? I do not believe that you will find any sort of “closed” information network in all of nature.

Therefore the highest level of integrated information should theoretically be the universe itself. According to IIT, we should not be conscious beings ourselves at all, it is only the cosmos that should possess awareness! This, however, is obviously not the case. Therefore IIT cannot by itself be a coherent explanation for the existence of complex minds.

I think that part of the issue is that we see the mind as a unified entity (c) and not as a combination of various knowledges/experiences (ab). If we look at fundamental particles as units of information/experience, we could compare them to pixels on a screen. The fact that they can combine to form a cohesive and coherent image does not then negate their individual existences. When we look at an image on a monitor, we are not immediately aware of the individual existences of the pixels. As a matter of fact, we may not even be capable of seeing the individual pixels and the whole image at once. Yet both exist. I will touch more on this later.

Another issue, I believe, is that we have not yet fully appreciated what it means to say that consciousness is the intrinsic nature of matter. What’s so exciting to me about this is that this implies that physical properties are not different from mental properties. Emergent physical properties, like the emergent properties of water, must therefore be emergent mental properties as well. Water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. Taken as a whole, a water molecule has physical properties (such as cohesion and adhesion) that the individual atoms do not. If Panpsychism is true, then that means water molecules possess aspects of conscious experience not held by the individual atoms. This wouldn’t make any sense unless water molecules possess a consciousness apart from the individual atoms, which would seem to be in line with IIT. However, the individual atoms within a water molecule still exist. The emergent properties of a water molecule do not “cancel out” the properties of hydrogen or oxygen, and so we cannot really say that either hydrogen or oxygen ceases to exist in a water molecule.

Physically speaking, a water molecule is neither one nor three, but both at the same time. This seems like a contradiction, which would be logically and philosophically impossible, but it is not. It is simply a limitation of ordinary human language. However, if a water molecule is both a single physical entity (one molecule) and three entities (two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom), then in the light of Panpsychism we must also be able to say that it is both one mind (the molecular mind) and also three minds (the atomic minds) at once. Any statement that is true for physical matter must also be true for consciousness, since they are fundamentally identical.

Looking at the universe as being composed of units of information (each fundamental particle being composed of both the knower, or the subject, and the known, or the object/information), we see that complex knowledges are formed on the basis of simpler knowledges that never actually cease to exist. Take the equation 1 + 1 = 2. This is complex knowledge. 1 + 1 = 2 has an emergent meaning that does not exist in any single numeral or symbol within the equation. However, each numeral and symbol within the equation retains its essential, distinct nature apart from that emergent meaning.

Further, if the physical universe is identical to consciousness, then we may take our cue on the origins of complex forms of consciousness from the origins of complex forms of matter, and this would support combination theory. A river is not identical to a water molecule and a water molecule is not identical to the individual atoms that compose it- but none of these things “cancels out” any of the others. If we can speak of “emergent” forms of matter which do not cancel out their constituents, why can we not do the same for forms of consciousness given the mutual identity of mind and matter?

The biggest stumbling block to the acceptance of Constitutive Panpsychism, as far as I can tell, is our understanding of our own consciousness, which seems to be unified and not composed of separate parts. Yet we need not see our consciousness in such a way. Buddhism, for example, has long maintained that what we feel is a unified “soul” or “self” is actually a process of interaction between various components (or skandhas) such as forms, sensations, perceptions, mental formations and self-consciousness. Each of these components can be broken down into further components, and in the end we find that the human personality is just a dynamic system of interactions without a unified self. Other cultures, such as the ancient Egyptians, believed in multiple distinct components to the soul (the Ba, the Ka, the Akh etc. for example) that coexisted within a single individual. Medieval European authors often characterized the mind as containing competing psychic forces at odds with one another (such as love and hate, to name an obvious pair).

If we were to study our own minds, we would find that any moment of experience is really a manifold set of experiences that are both integrated and distinct. I see my keyboard and hear the sound of myself typing in the same single instant, but I do not confuse my sense of sight with my sense of sound. Our experience is emergent and holistic while at the same time containing discrete aspects that do not lose their distinct identities. This is no different from the physical properties of a water molecule or the information contained in the equation 1 +1 = 2.

In “Galileo’s Error”, the combination problem is stated as such (not verbatim): if five people are in a room and each thought of a single world, no one individual among them would be aware of the whole sentence. That is not strictly true, however. They would be aware of a single sentence as soon as they spoke to one another, or shared information. This is exactly what happens between the neurons in our brains. If enough people get together and form a new system of integrated information, through intimate and regular communication, is a new “overmind” formed? It is possible we would never know, because our consciousnesses would remain our own even as they became aspects of an even larger mind. This is precisely how ancient animists thought, however, when they spoke of the genii of a city or a town.

What about the system of integrated information that subsumes all other systems within it: the cosmos? Could that be a form of even more complex consciousness? Entirely possible, though once again, we would not inherently be privy to such information as even in a conscious cosmos our own individual minds would remain intact.

All in all, I do not think we need to resort to IIT to understand complex minds, and I do not think IIT is the simplest solution for the origin of complex minds. Complex minds form when simpler minds interact and share information. Where are those simpler minds? Available and ready for observation in any given moment of our own subjective experiences, if we can analyze the “pixels” which make up our own images of reality.

#panpsychism #philosophy #phillip goff #galileo's error #IIT #information integration theory #constitutive panpsychism #combination problem #spirituality #mind #consciousness

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thebeethathums · 5 years

Text

Observers - 48

Pairing: Sherlock Holmes x Reader

A/N: Annnnddd Sherly ruins the moment unintentionally... because he's Sherly.

The bed seemed terribly empty when Sherlock woke up and you were missing, for a while by the coolness of the bedding next to him. He rolled out of it to find all his clothes except for his shirt neatly folded on the bedside table and pulled them on before wandering out to the living room. He couldn’t help but grin when he saw you in front of your easel fully dressed in the clothes from the night before, your hair pulled back, and a fat brush in hand. He watched you work on your new painting, sitting down in your chair since you didn’t seem aware of the fact that he was awake. It was the same canvas from the night before but you had incorporated both his and your handprints from his experiment into it, making it more abstract than it had been originally. From the amount of work you’d done at this level of concentration, you had to have been up at least a few hours if not longer, meaning his experiment was a success. You reached for a tube of paint absentmindedly, having used all that you’d set out of that color, and sighed when you found it empty. You scrunched up your face as you turned with the intent to see if you had another tube stashed away somewhere and startled when you saw Sherlock in your chair, offering him a small nervous smile, “I’m sorry, Sherlock, I didn’t notice you were up… about your shirt… I don’t think I’ll be able to get the paint out. I’ll replace it, but you should probably go put on another before John gets home.” He could tell something was off but not what, so he simply stated, “You’re painting again.” You didn’t even bother to scold him for pointing out the obvious, turning to look at your painting with a tiny smile, “Yes. I just woke up and felt like doing so… That hasn’t happened in a while.”

Sherlock got the smuggest of smug looks on his face, “My experiment was a success. The minds of average people are so easily distracted by the physical.” You froze in your examination of your painting, an unsettling chill running through you, “What?” Overly proud of himself and cocky as all hell, he missed the slight hint of unease in your voice, “I hypothesized that reassociating the act of painting with something of a positive nature that overloaded the senses would override the negative effects of your past experiences. From your success this morning, the intense physical contact of an affirming nature overruled the issues plaguing you before- in effect resetting your simplistic mind to allow you to paint again. I suppose there are benefits to having a normal brain.” “So this was all part of your experiment?” you queried, your voice dangerously quiet. “Of course.” Your face fell for a moment before you composed yourself and then announced, “You should go. John will be back from Amy’s soon.”

It was more evident that something was wrong now given the demanding edge to your voice but, as usual, that was as far as he got- if you didn’t want him to know your thoughts then he wouldn’t know them. It bothered him that he could only ascertain that you were upset but not why and since it obviously wasn’t over being able to paint again, as that was a good thing, he decided it must be about your friend. Of course, he was wrong but what can you do? He got up to leave because you were right- John would be home soon- and he still didn’t do the whole comforting thing, especially not when you wanted him out. You moved back to your painting, distracting yourself by working on one of the more detailed corners as you mumbled, “Don’t forget your violin.” Once he'd gone, you stopped, your jaw clenching in thought, and decided to try and clear your head by taking a shower to get rid of the paint on your skin reminding you of the night before. When you’d woken up that morning you weren’t sure how to act, you felt guilty about his ruined shirt, and then you began to question the whole thing. You’d distracted yourself by painting since that was what had woken you up in the first place but when he’d got up and said what he said- all the doubts came rushing back. You scolded yourself as the water ran down your skin, you knew he was just curious and that it wouldn’t be anything more. He’d been using you to figure out another aspect of human behavior, it was your fault for getting caught up in it since you’d know that from the start. You could hardly be mad at him for suddenly catching more feelings than either of your intended. You hadn’t even wanted a relationship… when had that changed? When did you start wanting more? You considered it for a moment, it wasn’t as though he didn’t care… he had helped you with your painting even if the how hadn’t been exactly what you’d expected. But then again, it may have been just so that he didn’t have to go through the tedious task of getting you out of work every time he wanted something from you. Maybe John had been right- you weren’t an experiment and letting him treat you as such was messing you up. Clean and dressed, you looked over your apartment, entirely conflicted, and debated what you should do next. You could lie on the floor and think but that didn’t sound appealing at all- your thoughts were too jumbled. You could let the need to be destructive that was creeping into your chest take over but that was hardly productive or helpful- not to mention you’d have to clean up later. There was only one other option and out of the three it seemed the best- you could paint and lose yourself in it... might as well put the results of Sherlock’s ‘experiment’ to good use. You cranked up some music on your stereo system to a ‘don’t disturb me’ level, a painting playlist of random unrelated songs that you liked, set up a new palette after washing your brushes and getting new water, and then set aside the painting you’d been working on in favor of a blank white canvas. Best not to think about how that one was made, you reasoned as you mixed a starting color. You let yourself get lost in the action, spreading bold strokes of reds and yellows over the surface as you let out all the emotions you’d been holding inside for so long. John broke into a wide grin when he came home and heard your odd choice in music, knowing it meant you were painting again as he climbed the stairs to his flat. Sherlock was spread out on the couch as usual, deep in thought, and John rolled his eyes as he went into the kitchen. Your music shut off just before noon, when your alarm went off the remind you that you had to go to work, and John came down to see how you were doing just as you were locking the door to your flat, “How’s the painting going, Squeak?” You sighed, “Good I suppose. Certainly better then it has been.” He stopped you when you went to leave, pushing the hair escaping your bun behind your ear, “What’s the matter, (F/n)? That’s a good thing, isn’t it? You should be happy.” You forced a small grin, “I am, Johnny. I’ve just got a lot on my mind is all.” “Like what?” You chuckled, removing yourself from his grasp, “Like work. I’ve gotta go.” He frowned as you left, you should have been ecstatic about being able to paint again...what was so pressing in your mind that it had stolen the wind from your sails? Climbing the stairs again, he went to see if Sherlock knew anything, reaching for the half-full mug of coffee next to him to get his attention. Sherlock’s eyes snapped open to glare at him for trying to touch his mug, effectively halting John's advance, “What?” “Do you have any idea what’s got (F/n) looking so troubled?” “Not in the slightest.” John huffed, unconvinced but unwilling to press, and plopped down in his chair as Sherlock went back to thinking. He’d enjoyed the night before, snippets of it kept replaying in his mind, and he’d never slept better but, for some reason, he couldn’t shake what had happened when he’d woken up. Social conventions and his study of human behavior on the subject told him that the thoughtless masses determined the morning after to be a complex moment. He didn’t understand why. It seemed to him that it could go one of two ways: your partner could slip away before it was light and never call or they could remain and continue the relationship. He’d stayed. Simple. So why had you been so nervous? He supposed it had something to do with your past as you were displaying signs of distress over something as unimportant as the state of his shirt but then you’d also told him to leave- a complete turn around from the night before when you suggested he shower with you. He’d done everything right and yet something was wrong. He was missing something… it had to be some odd facet of human behavior that he hadn’t considered. The only question was which one…

Tags <3:

@team-free-sherlock @multifandom-ramblings @madshelily @severusminerva @yes-but-theyre-my-dorks @smitemewiththysherlock @not-fandom-addicted @unknownwonder @deducingdevil @aviien @mrsfrankensteinsworld @lolamurphy @bakerstreethound @musical-doll-x @protectteamfreewill @delightful-pirate @lilcutekittykat @broke-and-overwhelmed @adri1ii @turtle-at-the-disco @fanfictionsilove @chasedbyhowlingwolves @thorkyrie-rights

#sherlock x reader #Sherlock Holmes x Reader #BBC Sherlock #reader insert #Watson!Reader #sherlock holmes #Sherlock #John Watson #reader #sibling!reader #artist reader #slow burn #sherlock is a bit dense #x reader #fanfic #fan ficton #thebeethathums #Observers

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real-fakedoors · 5 years

Link

star-crossed just hit 1,000 kudos!

(klance / cinderella AU / fantasy & medieval elements)

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR AMAZING LOVE AND SUPPORT.

like, just, wow.

I never thought this story would amass such a loving audience and im humbled everyday when i log into AO3 and see the steady uptick in kudos, comments, bookmarks all of it. I check the stats on this fic religiously and I promise if you’ve even VIEWED the fic I’ve noticed, I watch it that closely. thank you, from the very bottom of my heart; there aren’t adequate words to express my gratitude.

I wanted to at least share something to mark this milestone, so here is the working introduction to the second installment. I’m so excited to get some of my other projects finished so I can dive back into this. :)

Lance had heard his fair share of folk tales from his Mamá, about people who rise above the station of their birth, about triumphing against bitter odds, about falling in love and living happily ever after. He remembered a lot of awfully convenient montages, glossing over the finer details of consequences. What happened to the villains? Did they get thrown in jail? Executed? Or what about the hero’s best friend, ex-lover, family—do they miss the hero once they go on to live their big, exciting lives, or is it always a happily ever after?

Maybe those are just the stories people like to tell. The stories people like to remember, where everyone is happy and the bad things only happen to bad people.

Most of the tales Lance knew didn’t tell him what happened when people are stuck living in the poverty they were born into, no matter how hard they try to get out of it; or what happens when the odds are not in the hero’s favor; or how love is so painfully unconditional, and impossible to explain, and that it could kill you much faster than any magical weapon or poisoned apple if you let it.

He was staring at the pages of an old tome, thick but well-maintained, the pages all in decent shape. It had been pulled from the archives by Sir Coran before he and the others returned to Altea, and Lance had found himself zoning out on the image of a pretty blonde human in the arms of her pretty human Prince Charming.

A weird thought occurred to him: would stories be written about Keith, like this one? It was easy to forget that Keith was indeed a figure of legends, would be memorialized like all the Princes and Queens and rulers that came before him.

Would people make up harrowing things to say about them?

Lance almost laughed out loud before turning the page. “Pfft. No.”

Because, first of all, Prince Charming? Out of the long list of words Lance would use to describe his fiancé, charming was not really one of them. Irritable, thoughtful, and just mullet, to name a few.

and, a few other small things to share in celebration, I’ve included two scenes beneath the cut

deleted scene from epilogue pt. 2 untitled dream sequence from the second installment

deleted scene from epilogue, pt. 2 conversation between paladins, Allura and Coran keith POV

[Allura continued.] “I want to give you the best answer available, I need to have all the information surrounding this whole mess first. For that to happen…” she sighed, a sound of abrupt sadness slipping through a clearly, if not expertly, worn façade. “I need to ask you all a favor, but once again, unfairly, much of the burden for this falls to Lance. It is of paramount importance that you tell me exactly what transpired between you and Lotor, starting from the first night he approached you.”

The tan-skinned teenager blinked a few times, and Keith thought he looked paler than when he and Shiro first arrived. Gently, he gave Lance’s hand a little squeeze. “Oh. Umm. I mean, I can, I just -- what do you need to know?”

Fingers steepled in front of her nose, the Princess sighed. “As much as you feel you’re comfortable sharing, I suppose, but I would say the more the better. I just don’t know enough of what the Galra have planned, or if this is connected to Zarkon, Lotor, the witch -- none of them, all of them?” she sounded unusually frustrated, a fist coming down on the table. The mouses scurried towards different paladins, leaving the two Alteans to stare at each other. Keith didn’t mind the mouse, but he did glower at Allura -- she didn’t mean anything by it, he knew, but perhaps the nonverbal warning would be enough to have her compose herself. No need to project her anger towards Keith’s fiancé.

“I — I mean, I can try, some of the stuff Lotor said was really…” he paused to bite his lip, and Keith felt a strange twist in his stomach when Lance’s eyes darted anxiously towards him. “It was sort of… personal. I was kind of trying to forget about it, to be honest. Thinking about it makes me… I don’t know, I can tell you if you think it’s important, but it might...make you mad?”

By the end, Lance wasn’t talking to Allura anymore, and Keith’s hand was moving before he could really think about it.

“Hey, stop that,” the Prince said, brushing his thumb over the abused skin of Lance’s bottom lip so he might stop with the self-harming habit. “Don’t bottle things up for my benefit. If you have something you want to say, say it. I can’t promise I won’t get mad, but I can promise I’ll get over it.”

Shiro barely concealed his snort with a cough. “Wow, Keith, that might be the most mature thing you’ve ever said.”

Keith attempted to kick Shiro under the table. “Fuck you, old man.”

That made Lance laugh, and while Pidge made a point to do a loud gagging demonstration, it did little to distract from the simple pleasure Keith felt at being responsible for eliciting such a pretty sound from his fiancé.

Lance’s shoulders were still visibly tense, but he didn’t look quite as uneasy about the subject when he met Allura’s steely, blue-soulfire gaze. “Okay. I guess, what, start from the third night of the ball? That’s when I really interacted with Lotor. A little on the second night, but he was mostly just being a dick.”

Nodding, the Princess gestured for Coran to take a seat beside her. A writing utensil and fresh piece of parchment seemed to materialize in the advisors’ hand.

“Queen Krolia has managed to supply some basic information on what happened when you and Lotor spoke privately in the infirmary, but due to the nature of your healing, the resources expended on gathering testimony, and all the other din of these past few quintant, it doesn’t appear you’ve given any sort of statement about what you and Lotor talked about -- the night of the peace summit, and then explicitly what was discussed that night in the infirmary. I know this is asking a lot, but it’s important that we’re all on the same page if we’re to try to fight whatever this is.”

“I — well — I guess I just hadn’t thought about, like, talking to anyone about it, like in a reporting-way.” He looked thoughtful for a moment before choosing a place to begin. “The night of the peace accord thing, he said I had to dance with him, or he was going to tell the realm that I was in a relationship with Keith. In retrospect, it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but he had… framed it… in a sort of shitty way.”

“Meaning?”

Lance swallowed, his hold on Keith’s hand slipping away as his complexion took on a rosy tint. “Uhh… well, he said, um… like, it was insulting to me to, ya know, sleep with Keith. He said I could do a lot better… and obviously implied that he was the better option. Like, it would have been a big scandal or something for both Keith and you, since, like, both of you were still supposed to be getting married at the time? That’s about when Coran showed up. Oh, and er, he also saiiiiiid…” his voice turned sing-songy, face even redder. “That I was special, and uh, that he would find a way to ‘make me his,’ basically no matter what. He said ‘Keith is your price’, which like, I don’t know if I’m super okay with the idea of talking about myself in those terms, but… I didn’t really have a good comeback that wouldn’t put both your reputations in jeopardy, so I just didn’t answer.”

From the side of the table, Hunk looked like he wanted to reach over and scoop Lance up like a baby. “Buddy...”

Lance cleared his throat, staring at Coran’s hand as it flew over the page, not meeting anyone’s eye. “I’m fine, Hunk. The next time I saw him was after everything, I was in that private room Sir Adam let me use. I woke up, and I was just like, bam, on the ground. It was sort of dizzying and I hadn’t been sleeping super well so I guess, I just didn’t know how to react at first. He told me back talk wasn’t —” A pause, and Lance pursed his lips. “He told me not to talk and to just listen. So, ya know, I wasn’t in a position to fight him, so I did as he said. I mean, my back was exposed and he basically was standing on me so I didn’t have a choice.”

Lance sat up, back arching a bit as he ran his hands through his hair. Keith noticed his fingers were shaking when he pulled them back down and into his lap again. Silently, the Prince was simmering beneath the surface, his blood hot and roaring in his ears. The edge of his vision had tinted red.

“And then there was a lot of the same stuff again. He was super fixated on the fact that I was with Keith. I don’t know, I feel like he jumped around a lot, because after that there was this big monologue about how the realm was about to go to war. And that no matter what happened, as long as... I was alive, there would be a war… unless I became one of his ‘consorts.’ I know, it was really fucked up.” Lance added the last sentence quickly, arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Um. He went through this whole list, pretty much. He said Daibaazal would absorb Olkarion, and then Altea would be next or something. And that his dad is on some super fucked up power trip, feeling like he’s not important anymore with Marmora and Altea around. And that the guy who had the bomb, he asked me if I saw him -- I did. He looked… Olkari, but Lotor seemed like he expected that? Like, he said it was probably an Altean shape-shifted as an Olkari. Um… what else… oh, yeah. Um. He gave me an ultimatum, and said if I didn’t go along with him, my choices were:” Lance began ticking them off on his fingers, one by one. “Let Zarkon kill me, like, I think he said make an example or maybe a martyr of me or something; make a statement that I was the one who set off the bomb so I might not get literally murdered by his Dad, instead, I would, hah --” he let out a humorless chuckle -- “I could just fucking hang for it instead. How messed up is that? Or I could let the realm go to war if I stayed in Marmora. Or, lastly, I could agree to be his -- his personal bitch, basically. I don’t know what goes into being a consort but I have an idea, and I -- yeah. I didn’t have much of a choice, though I told him to fuck off and that I’d rather let Zarkon kill me with his bare hands than spend another second with him.”

Keith had never in his life tried so hard to control the devastatingly violent impulse of his Galra heritage, but his gums tingled with the insistent pressure of fangs pushing against his mouth. Even the skin of his fingers felt strange, like he could so easily just let go of his control and the tips could sharpen into claws in seconds if he let them.

Breaking Lotor’s wrist now felt pathetically underwhelming. He should have just killed him. The realm would have been better for it.

“Anyway... Lotor wasn’t super happy about that, I know, shocker. And he basically said he would buy my family, you know, since we’re all fucking slaves or whatever, if I didn’t do what he said. I didn’t -- I didn’t know what to do. I want to say I would never agree to that but just, f-fuck, I’m sorry.” Lance’s voice cracked at the end, the sound of tears edging into his tone. His arms, already folded over his chest, tightened. “So, yeah. That’s when the Queen showed up.”

“Stars above, I’m so… sorry. I had no idea it was that severe.” Allura sounded disturbed, and both Hunk and Pidge were exchanging nervous glances with each other. Keith couldn’t see Shiro, seeing as he was turned to face Lance, who was staring down at the box on the table in front of him with a clenched jaw and dry eyes.

“I’m okay,” Lance said for the second time, and some of the immediate emotion had drained from his voice. “Keith’s mom showed up before I had to agree to anything. That’s all that happened with Lotor, though. The only other thing was the vision-dream thing I had with Blue… I told you guys about that while Keith was getting his stitches, right?”

Various people nodded, and Keith vaguely remembered hearing Lance’s voice, too-loud to be speaking to people nearby but that was just how Lance was, somewhere off to his side. He made a mental note to ask him to re-explain the details to that later.

“...So, yeah. That’s all I can really remember. I don’t remember Lotor mentioning anything about Oriande or any of this stuff.”

“Yes, well,” the Princess laid out both her hands on the table, and as if a silent call, all four mice returned to her in a sudden rush of paws and squeaks. “I’m not sure of anything at this point, but I am near certain that this is the witch’s doing at minimum. Whether it is Zarkon or Lotor who she is aiding, we will still have to consider all of this information. The fact that Lotor seemed to find it unacceptable that you die, so much so that he was willing to blackmail you, leads me to believe he might be more invested in this than I had previously thought. It could have been his pathetic attempt at courtship, but I’m not sure. Whatever it is, the reality is the same: something is happening to the realm, and if more corruption like that we saw earlier from that Beast spread, I fear the whole realm may be in danger. For now, we will have to continue to gather information, try to understand what exactly they’re planning.”

unpublished from part 2:

untitled dream sequence

lance POV

His legs weren’t working properly.

Lance felt them buckling, like his torso and arms and head and heart were weighed down by the entire universe. Why? Why couldn’t he use his legs? He wasn’t even standing, so the fact that his dumb legs weren’t working seemed especially frustrating to him. Laying on his stomach, Lance pushed himself up to a sit-up, the bottom half of his body utterly useless at the moment. Ugh.

Someone was calling his name, but the voice was warbled and hard to place, like he’d been trapped beneath the ice of a lake and there was someone pounding on the other side, trying to find him.

Craning his neck, it was with a small start that he realized he knew this place, dark and infinite and magnificent in every direction, but he couldn’t move. What was it called? Why couldn’t he remember? Blue told him about it...

“Blue? Blue, are you here?” He turned, annoyed by his lack of motion, but blinked in surprise at the sight of something much, much bigger than the little kitten he was expecting.

Lance’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.

It was the single most beautiful, overwhelming things he’d ever seen.

About fifteen paces away, a massive tree sprouted from the ground, crowded by iridescent leaves. There was no breeze that he could feel on his face or brushing through his hair, but the leaves danced and shimmered anyway. A million colors, reds and blues and greens and whites and yellows -- and every color in between, peach and cream and mahogany and turquoise and blush and lavender -- colors that he didn’t even have names for, was pretty sure weren’t even on the real spectrum of light, all glittering crystal-bright in the dark expanse of the empty space around him. In every direction, the ground was the black surface of an endless ocean, rippling when Lance moved but otherwise flawlessly reflective. It sent back an inversion of the same sight, an overwhelming sense of purity, of flawlessness, of flowing sublimity with the roots at the center.

Lance couldn’t breathe, awestruck.

What was it? Why was it here?

Oh, gods. Lance used to believe people had always been dramatic when they heard a song or saw a painting so beautiful that they were brought to tears, but this was his comeuppance for that attitude, evidently. His cheeks were wet, and the corners of his eyes were pulsing light blue.

This was definitely some sort of… something otherworldly. Magical.

Shit. Shit, shit, uhhh, fuck, this was probably important, wasn’t it? Was this some sort of dream-vision thing? In his stream of consciousness, dream-Lance tried to will himself to summon a dream-roll-of-parchment and a dream-inkpot, but all that amounted to was making him strangely dizzy.

After attempting to summon things, and dealing with the subsequent disappointment, Lance hauled himself up as best as he could with his hands, sort of like a mix between a push-up and an army crawl.

Chewing his lip, Lance eyed the immaculate branches, overlapping but never touching, a faultless flow of leaves brushing back in forth, almost lazily. It was a sort of breathtaking, heart-stopping, gun-wrenching sort of beauty.

Blinding, almost.

#klance #klance fanfic #star-crossed #AO3 fanfic #keith x lance #keith kogane #lance mcclain #vld fanfic

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7deadlycinderellas · 5 years

Text

if the summer of our lives could just come again, ch1

AO3 link

Ned

There were little things of course.

Maybe the first sign should have been Arya. Arya had always been a willful child, expressing her opinions loudly on what was expected of her. One day, suddenly, she became almost biddable.

Not that she did what was told of her, but she nodded and was silent, before not doing it.

It concerned Ned greatly, and after this business with the King was finished, he made a vow to sit down with his youngest daughter and try and find out what must have made her suddenly so withdrawn.

For that matter, his normally pleasant and gentle elder daughter had changed too.

It was morning, after the night where they had entertained the King and his caravan where Sansa had been starry-eyed over the idea of marrying the prince, when Ned noticed the change. Unlike Arya, it had not been subtle.

Varyn Poole’s daughter had been happily chatting with Sansa. Though the girl had seemed a bit preoccupied, nonetheless, she seemed herself. Right now she seemed to be listening, though her hands keep slipping below the table to sneak Lady scraps.

Then Jeyne finally broached the subject, that all ended.

“I just can’t believe you’re going to get to marry the prince!”

The look that Sansa had on her face was not one Ned had ever seen her wear. It was nearly withering.

“I would rather kiss a toadstool.”

That was going to be a complication, Ned thought. Sansa’s complete easy acceptance of Robert’s plan to merge their houses had made it easier to accept the idea of marrying off his thirteen year old daughter to a boy he had barely met.

Arya had exploded with laughter at Sansa’s outburst, managing to spew milk from her nose. That was enough to break the awkwardness her admission had caused, and Ned moved on.

Any concerns were put off with great suddenness that afternoon when Bran had plunged from the wall of the Broken Tower. One of the serving girls had found him, and the afternoon had become a flurry of activity.

Luwin had given him milk of the poppy, even though he was still unconscious. He had said that the pain would be too intense if he were to wake right now. After saying that, he knelt over Bran’s body, and slowly rotated and fit his leg back into his hip socket with an unnerving pop.

Ned stared down at the prone form of his second youngest son. It was so strange to see him like this. The wrist break had been clean, and it was already splinted. Luwin was still working on his plastering his leg, which had been battered into resembling ground meat, the bone splintered and stuck through the skin.

Luwin had informed Ned that Bran’s injuries were great.

“It may take months before he can even stand again, much less walk or run, and he may have lingering pain and damage even long after. I fear when he wakes, it may be discovered that he suffered some head trauma as well, considering the fall and how he was found.”

Catelyn has completely despondent. She hadn’t left Bran’s side since. She had always doted on him a bit more than the others. Ned understood her reaction.

His daughters, on the other hand, were more inscrutable.

They were present, to be sure. Both girls, though they had spent their childhoods sharing time only when forced, sat by their brother’s bedside whenever allowed.

But somehow, they did not seem to be frightened for him, merely curious.

That night, Ned takes his wife aside and speaks to her.

“I’m going to refuse Robert’s offer, at least for the time.”

“Ned, you can’t, he’s the king.”

Ned knows this, but he cannot change what he plans to do. These days have all been too strange, too unreal, for him to fight his urge to discover the truth.

“He’s also a father,” Ned replies fiercely, though admittedly Robert had shown little regard for his own children, “and so he should understand my children should come first. I’ll send him a raven when Bran’s beginning to recover, see if he still wants me as his hand. I can do what I can to investigate your sister’s letter from here.”

It’s at first light the next morning when he tells Robert.

“I hope you can understand.”

Robert is confused, as though he hadn’t even considered this possibility. Ge is upset, but Ned stands his ground. Even when he sounds like he will yell, he doesn’t budge.

“The problems of the realm will come after the problems of my own home. I will write you when things here have calmed.

When he returns to Bran’s chambers, he lingers outside, lurking, realizing that Arya and Sansa are still within. The two are talking quietly, but he cannot make out their words. He can see Summer sitting quietly at the end of the bed.

Then, he hears a stirring.

Arya leaps to her feet and runs to the door,

“Father! Bran’s waking!”

Luwin had said the poppy should begin to wear off during the next few hours, and that someone should be with Bran during the time, because he would be confused. Confused and in pain and frightened.

Taking the spot nearest the bed, Ned takes his son’s hand. His left hand has been strapped down, in case he woke unattended and attempted to use it, making his injury worse.

Initially, Bran’s first mutterings don’t make much sense.

“Shh, son. You took a great fall, don’t try to move, you might make it worse.”

He turns to his daughters,

“One of you, fetch Maester Luwin, tell him Bran’s awake. And find your mother too.”

Sansa does as she is told, though not without looking back. Arya stands perfectly still, still entranced.

His son shakes his head back and forth. He looks so small. He already was, being the second youngest, but the plaster and splints and the bandages on his many scrapes and bruises. He moves as though unsure of his skin.

Then he pulls himself further against his pillow with his hands, wincing and pulling away when he puts pressure on his left one. He opens his eyes slowly, gazing down at the lower half of his body.

Ned feels his voice catch in his throat, suddenly broken hearted for what this will do to Bran’s spirit. Any injury would be hard to adjust to for a child, much less such an active one as he.

Bran blinks a few times, and begins to shake again, but not the way he had been before. His chest twitches, and his good hand reaches up to brace itself against it.

And then he begins to laugh. Arya They hadn’t been sure, of any of it. But hearing Bran begin to laugh, to laugh as he had as a child, lit the fire within her.

When Sansa returns with Mother, the two of them slip away.

As soon as they’re out of earshot, Arya erupts with giggles.

“I still can’t believe any of this.”

Sansa smiles in return.

“It was enough to wake up in my bed thirteen years old again, to remember all those horrible things, but then a day later, you too.”

“If Bran remembers too-”

“He must, he was out for a month before, we had all left before he woke up, he must have managed to change something.”

Sansa suddenly has a memory and tugs Arya’s arm.

“Follow me.”

“What?”

“I remembered something Tyrion told me once before.”

Following Sansa’s lead, the two walk outside in the early morning light. They’re outside the kennels, and Sansa hoists her skirts and leads her to climb up on a pair of boxes just behind a column, which would conceal them while they peeked past it.

Arya’s minds, both her eleven year old self and the grown woman beyond it, were deeply confused.

“I can’t say we exactly became extra close even with the Long Night and the chaos after and all,” Arya starts, “But at what point exactly did you become me?”

Sansa shushes her. The two crouch quietly, and watch, as the space in front of the kennel is soon approached by Joffrey and the Hound, and Tyrion wakes from within, out of his drunken stupor. They can’t quite make out what they’re saying, but when Tyrion’s hand reaches out and slaps Joffrey across the face they have a perfect view.

Arya stuffs her fingers in her mouth to stifle the squeal that attempts to leave her mouth. Sansa, ever the more composed of the two, is merely grinning like a loon.

And then it happens twice more, and by the time the group finally moves out of the area, Arya and Sansa finally allow their laughs to burst out and collapse onto each other.

“Gods, Joffrey was such a cunt. Maybe I should let them betroth us, I could go to King’s Landing and spend all my time making him as miserable as possible.”

Arya is suddenly serious.

“No,” she says forcefully, “we will not be doing that, not this time. “

She reaches out and puts both of her hands on Sansa’s shoulders. Even at ten and three, Sansa was still so much taller than her.

“None of that, none of that game means anything will the long night is coming.”

Sansa nods, and the two are quiet for a time.

Arya could still feel the mark the Night King had left on her neck, even as she knew her skin was now unmarked. She could still remember the elation when she had managed to kill him. The joy that had followed, and the creeping dread, as they had realized it had not been enough. The terror as the dead across Westeros continued to rise. It had been slow, unlike the first onslaught, and it occurred in broad daylight. But people continued to die anyway, and rise again, thralled.

Their mirth suddenly stolen, the girls proceed to breakfast. After shoveling down their eggs and fried bread, Sansa volunteers to bring Bran his food, and after she leaves, Arya silently slips out behind her.

They reunite in the hallway, and manage to only pass Theon, who eyes them oddly.

Sansa looks back after he passes, an odd, wistful look on her face.

“He’s probably just confused seeing us together so much,” Arya comments.

Sansa’s gaze continues to linger.

“Everyone else, Father, Mother, Robb...we got them all back. Theon’s the only one who coming back here it feels like we’ve lost him, the man he had become.”

Arya makes a face. While she had always been cordial to Theon after coming home, part of her had never been able to forgive him. Sansa had been with him longer though, and had always defended him, had had his side.

Bran is, while still bedbound, somehow moving constantly. He taps his good foot while shoveling down his breakfast. Summer has climbed up on the bed, his snout pressed into Bran’s side.

“When did it happen to you?” Arya asks him. Their furtive whispers had revealed that Arya and Sansa had both woken up in their beds.

Bran chews and swallows his bite and sets the tray aside.

“About thirty seconds before Jamie pushed me.”

Oh. Maybe the two of them had been blessed to wake up quietly.

“And you-”

Bran glances down at his shattered leg.

“I tried to roll. I guess I landed on one side.”

He then winces, at his leg, but at a sudden memory too.

“Which meant I got an eyeful of him fucking Cersei again. That was somehow worse than the first time.”

The crudeness is a touch shocking coming from their younger brother. It’s also a surprise of another form.

Arya reaches out and pokes him once on the cheek.

“So I take it it was actually Brandon Stark who came through that anomaly, not the creepy-eyed crow?”

Bran wears a look far too melancholy for his young face.

“No, it’s just me in here.”

Sansa suddenly feels her cheeks become wet. She’s pushed down so hard on her feelings for so long. The loss of her parents and her brother were easy to do this for. The state that Bran had returned to them in had been harder to mourn, and harder to hide the mourning for.

“Well good,” Arya insists, “I don’t think you realize just how creepy you had become.”

Bran’s face is far away.

“It was like looking at your actions through a window. Like I could see what I was doing, but I was so distanced from it none of what I did felt like it was me. All my actions were just like when I was seeing the past through the visions.”

Sansa asks, “Do you still have any of your powers?”

Bran shakes his head slowly.

“If I saw it then, I can remember it, but I don’t think I can still see through the weirwoods. I haven’t had a vision since I woke either. Though-”

He suddenly looks thoughtful.

“I think I should still be able to warg, I could do that even before we went past the wall. I should try tonight, check on everyone who came through the anomaly with us.”

“How many of us are there?” Arya asks. It feels like she should remember, but all of her memories towards the very end have begun to blur.

Sansa’s got it all. Unlike her sister, her memories leading up to it are picture perfect, almost too detailed.

“Howland and Meera, they were the ones in front steering the boat. Then the three of us, Arya was in front, that must have been why she woke first. And Gendry and Davos were in back.”

Arya’s pulled her knees up to her chest, feeling very small.

“We really should tell someone.”

Sansa shakes her head and Bran nods softly in agreement.

“We may end up having to, but right now-” Bran starts.

“How would we even be able to convince anyone? Our story is patently ridiculous,” Sansa adds.

“Jon, “ Arya says suddenly.

“That is true,” Bran says, thoughtful. “No one else but Howland Reed knows what happened at the Tower of Joy. That could be our salvation, especially if he remembers too.”

Bran’s eyes are downcast, and Arya suspects he’s bearing the weight of having carried the Raven in him. Arya’s still feeling powerless.

“Jon should be with us.”

Sansa shakes her head. She agrees, but she knows that it’s not a point worth fighting.

“He said someone had to remain in Winterfell.”

Tears are falling down Arya’s face. She knows this, she remembers the frenzied conversations that had happened. When the dead continued to rise, when the anomaly appeared in the Neck, when the three-eyed-Raven began to lead them to it. They hadn’t even known what it was. She had begged Jon to come with them, but he didn’t want to leave their people alone to face the dead again. She should have begged harder.

And now he was going to be leaving them again, for the Night’s Watch, none the wiser of what could be coming for him.

“We don’t even know if there’s anything we can do to change anything,” Sansa says, sounding like she’s trying to stave off their inevitable defeat.

“There clearly is,” Bran tells her roughly, gesturing at his legs, “whether or not there are any kind of rules or if there are some things that are going to happen regardless, we can clearly do some things differently.”

“I’m sort of surprised you haven’t suggested cutting some things short by just sneaking off and executing Littlefinger,” Sansa adds.

Arya is quiet at first. True, she had considered it, but there were too many logistical problems. Plus…

“I don’t think I could. We have to remember that our bodies are young again too. I stuck my hand up my skirt last night-”

“ARYA!” Sansa yells, red and scandalized. Bran’s managed to clamp his hands over his ears, with only a small yelp due to his injured wrist.

Arya rolls her eyes. She doesn’t let them on how lonely she had felt. How her heart had yearned even if her body knew no different. She had never understood what would come of becoming used to sharing someone’s bed in the most practical of senses.

“Point is, even if our minds remember, our bodies don’t necessarily. My sword arm and reflexes are probably shot. I won’t say I definitely couldn’t cut Littlefinger’s throat again, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.”

She reaches out and scratches Summer’s head.

“We’re going to have to try and plan things. But we’re acting strangely, I think Father’s going to catch on. We’ll have to try and act more normal.”

And so, the three make to leave Bran’s chambers and continue upon their day.

When Sansa pushes the door shut behind them, she finds Lady sitting neatly on the floor outside.

She’s so small, Sansa can still pick her up and carry her in her arms. She won’t be able to for much longer. Lady hadn’t even been the size of a full sized hound before.

“I think the wolves might remember too,” Arya tells her, gently stroking Lady’s ears, “When I woke this morning Nymeria was staring at me, before I told her she could go. She’s been out in the wood since. I don’t know when she’ll come back.”

“It’s strange,” Sansa admits, “All these important things we’ve been talking about. Everything that’s supposed to happen to us. And all I want to do is run with her in the wood and throw her sticks.”

“She’s a direwolf, Sansa, not some common hound,” Arya criticizes, but she follows her out the door anyway. “Where are we supposed to be right now?”

“Embroidery lesson.”

Arya wrinkles her nose,

“Well you already know all that and I’m hopeless no matter what they do, so let’s just say we were overcome and forgot.”

Left to his own devices for what may be the only time in days to come, Bran shuts his eyes and lets his mind take leave.

The common sparrow is an easy steed. Gentle, light, and it knows it’s home. Bran sets back and lets it meander until it finds Greywater Watch.

He perches on the edge of the crannog, watching. Howland Reed has more gray in his hair than he did in flashbacks, but still has something of the flush of youth under his skin. Meera is younger than he remembers when meeting her before, smaller even. Far too young for her face to look so old. Jojen stands between his father and sister, looking, in a truly strange state for the greenseer, genuinely confused. They’re carrying packs and others are sending them off.

Meera at one point turns her head towards him, and though she really shouldn’t be able to know, Bran feels her gaze, and his chest aches, in a way that it hasn’t in a long long time.

A week or two then, up the Kingsroad for them.

The pigeons are heavy in King’s Landing, There are so many smells here, familiar and un, that it’s like navigating a storm.

Gendry sleeps on a cot in back of the forge, under a ragged blanket. He’s slept late today, and will have to skip breakfast to begin work.

When he finally stirs, Bran watches as he reaches out for someone, and just keeps reaching. Opening his eyes, he begins to glance around, and suddenly looks nearly hopeless.

Wanting to ease his goodbrother’s pain, Bran flies through the window, into the cramped-dark-hot space and lands on his shoulder.

Though he jumps a bit, eventually Bran sees a flicker of recognition appear in Gendry’s eyes, and he reaches to ruffle his feathers.

It’s not like he can just leave King’s Landing, not if he wants to get anywhere safely. Gendry is now as much a child in the eyes of the world as they.

In the space of a second, the pigeon is again a pigeon, and Gendry is left to shoo it out the window.

The seagull glides on the sea breezes above Cape Wrath. Davos is easy to find, preparing the crew of the Black Bertha. He is the furthest south who will remember, but he has the most means to find them again. His wife is there, though Bran never got to meet her, he hopes he will now. There are seven boys with them, from little boys to a young man newly married. Within a few days, the Black Bertha will set sail.

Bran reawakens, in his own bed. Mother has come to his side again, fussing.

“I’m going to be fine Mother,” he tries to reassure her.

As soon as she leaves again, Bran lets himself slip, however briefly, into Lady.

He runs the wolfswood in her little cub feet. He smells the late summer on the air, and listens to his sister’s laughter. And he relishes that soon he may be able to join them.

#game of thrones #A Song of Ice and Fire #time-travel fix it #gendrya #breera

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mcnamaracarr81 · 1 year

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The fundamental Of Wedding Cakes

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lwyrsdghtr-a · 5 years

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SOMETHING THAT NO ONE REALLY ASKED FOR BUT YOU’RE GETTING ANYWAYS: A KINDA OF COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE AND INTRODUCTION TO MARIE’S BREAKING BAD OCS ( PART 1 ). disclaimer: some of the things talked about below the cut are triggering subjects such as abuse, drug use and addiction, overdose and death. if you are sensitive to those subjects, maybe this post isn’t for you. while many of these things aren’t things that i’ve gone through or experienced personally i respect and support anyone who has and acknowledge the fact that these things are not to be taken lightly, nor do they only exist to make interesting subject matter for a character.

JADE MALDONADO birthday: september 21st, 1984. you already know her, she was the first oc i made for breaking bad and she’s definetly my favorite and most fleshed out. most important information can be found in her about page and in her head canon tag, although there’s one thing i don’t touch on much when i write her here. in her early twenties when she started using drugs more, she met sigmund, another addict. they had a relationship that lasted awhile, and it was quite toxic as well as on and off. ultimately they drove each other to using and kept each other from getting sober, and the only reason that jade ever tried to stop using in the first place was because of her overdose. he was the one who found her, it had been a few days since their last breakup and he had come back to where she was staying at the time to reconcile, though he was still acting very aggressively. he pretty much knocked the door down, to find her alone choking on her own vomit. he called the ambulance and they took her away, and they barely ever saw each other again. the relationship isn’t jade something talks about much or even acknowledges very often, i’ve never had an interaction here where she talks about it since she’d have to be she’s extremely comfortable with in order for that part of her backstory to be unlocked. it affected her and her views on relationships greatly, but was so bad that it was one of jade’s main motivators when getting sober.

GEANNA GREY birthday: april 1992 geanna falls in second place when it comes to the characters on this list who have been given the most thought. she’s daughter to ava and thomas seen below, and the younger sister of sigmund by eight years. she was born in san burnadino calfifornia, and moved to the land of enchantment at the age of ten, for reasons unknown to her until later in her life. at the beginning of the series geanna is essentially the quirky artsy high school girl who listens to indie bands and the smiths, she’s near constantly got a pair of headphones attached to her head with a book in her hand and probably thinks she has better taste than you. she’s got a big heart though. that’s best exhibited in her friendship with eli, she’s not overly outgoing, so she doesn’t have a very large social circle, but her and elliot are so close she figures she doesn’t need much more than that. they had the kind of friendship that started on the playground and lasted throughout the years. she tells him almost everything, since geanna doesn’t have anybody else to go to. which meant at a certain point he learned about the abusive relationship geanna had with her father. after seeing one too many bruises show up on her he got to asking, and she wasn’t very good at keeping secrets from him, or anyone. part of the reason she wasn’t jumping at the chance to make new friends was because she was afraid they’d notice just as eli had. the two kids were a stronghold for each other at difficult points in their lives, and they both had a lot of those, especially as teenagers. geanna’s main problem was her father for a long time, and then, on a certain day when two planes crashed over albuquerque, he wasn’t anymore. but he didn’t die. no, that was mom. she was the only person inside of the house when a decent sized piece of the place landed in their living room where she was sitting. geanna was practically right there when it happened, she’d just come home from her work at the ( hi-lo ) market. her dad came home not too long after, and the first thing she felt after the numbness that seeing that piece of debris fall onto the house brought on was pure unbridled rage. she saw red all over, and she took years of frustration out on her father on that sunny afternoon in their driveway. needless to say, cops were called after not only seeing a piece of a 737 fall onto a house, but a young girl and an older man fighting right outside just moments after. geanna doesn’t remember that afternoon very well, there are only certain facts she’s sure of, they found her mothers body and took what was left of it away, they seperated her from her dad, she went with the police and she finally told them what he’d done. it was hard after that, but things steadily got better. she had no family left accept for her brother and an uncle her father had forbidden the family from seeing. her brother had been MIA for months. geanna only ever knew where he was because he’d send her post cards every once in a while. the uncle was nowhere to be found, so if she couldn’t find anywhere to stay it was into the system she went. geanna got lucky then, she was only supposed to stay at hank and marie’s for a few days, but after a fair amount of guilt tripping from eli hank and marie let her stay for as long as she needed. it was awhile, up until hank got shot. her uncle then came forward took custody of her, and he wasn’t so bad, they got a house, it was like starting over. geanna matures a lot over seasons 4 and 5, starting to express interest in going into law enforcement and the DEA. she had a very small hand in helping hank investigate while he was bedridden and started getting up and around. at the end of the series, she’s devastated. she learns about who Heisenberg is not too long after hank does, and has to keep the secret from walter junior for weeks. originally i did ship her with junior, but their relationship has evolved more into a wholesome friendship that’s troubled after she keeps that secret from him. in the end, she does go into law enforcement, trying make sure that there’s never another heisenberg again.

ELLIOT SCHRADER birthday: may 27th, 1992 elliot schrader was born in albuquerque new mexico to hank and marie schrader in late may, making him a gemini. he was an obedient kid, at least around his parents. eli was always good at keeping his mischief a secret. he also just so happened to be a momma’s boy, him and his mom both had the same favorite color. they shared a taste is the same things, which his dad found a little odd at times. eli liked his dad, sure, but there was almost always an odd distance between the two of them. eli thinks maybe it was because his parents weren’t sure they wanted kids when he was born, they weren’t ready. his mom stepped up to the task, but it seemed like his dad was playing catch up a lot of the time. he figured it’d get better as he got older. it didn’t exactly help that hank had been so close with elliot’s cousin, walt. eli never exactly held any resentment against him, walt had his fair share of problems, a lot of them with his own parents. they were pretty close throughout their lives, up until eli had to keep the heisenberg secret too. his development through the series is about maturity too. he becomes more honest and understanding as the series goes on, especially when coming to terms with his own sexuality which he had a lot of problems with. probably the most challenging time for him was season 3, his dad getting shot made him look at things differently, although it made things around their house so hard, and hank became very detached, eli realized that he needed to make things better with that relationship, and a lot of the problems it had came from eli himself and his unwillingness to compromise with hank. as hank gets better they try and build a better relationship. he wants to be honest with his parents too, eli’s sexuality was coming into full bloom, and he wanted to tell his parents about it, but it somehow never felt like the right time. hank never knew, he told his mom after everything had happened. he stayed closed to marie throughout his life, he tried to take care of her but really it was always her that kept him grounded.

SIGMUND GREY birthday: november 1st, 1984 his parents met in california at a young age, they were twenty, and set on going out for their dreams. little did they know a kid was going to come into the picture and change things up. sigmund came into a rocky picture, but at the beginning of his life things increasingly got better. here’s another momma’s boy, solely because of the fact that his dad was out becoming a therapist, so his mother was the one who stayed home with him. sigmund views his childhood as the best period in his life, before things went bad for him, before he became bad. eventually he had a little sister, his mother was starting to get back into her dream of composing music. things were good with the grey family for a long time, but as sigmund got older his problems manifested more and more. he cared about his family but he somehow always felt very emotionally detached from most people, he found it hard to make new connections or even look people in the eye at times — and then started the ungodly mood swings he sometimes got. there were times when he thought he was on top of the world, and times when he thought he was in the very pit of it. things all got worse when he was eighteen and his dad lost his job, cashing starting drinking again, and subsequently become more abusive. sig was eighteen, he figured he was a legal adult, he didn’t think he should have to deal with it so he ran away from their new home in new mexico and never looked back. sig refused to go home but he didn’t do great on his own, he roamed around a lot, going back to cali at a certain point and moving on from there. he found money wherever he could, he sold drugs, he did them himself, there were other odd jobs too but it became all about the drugs by the time he was in his twenties. then he met jade, after a life of feeling disconnected, waiting for the next high to level his mood out — here came someone he felt he could trust. jade was is caring person, someone kind and patient, who just so happened to be an addict too. they started off fine, but they made each other worse, she made him angrier, the mood swings got worse, he took away her sense of caring for a long time. after her overdose he tried to continue the relationship for a long time, but it didn’t work, so he moves on from abq and doesn’t look back. the thing about sigmund is he’s good and letting go and shutting down his emotions so he doesn’t have to think about the people he’s hurt or abandoned. he heard about his mother’s death later than everyone else, but he didn’t go back to albuquerque. he swore he wouldn’t, and he wasn’t ready to face any of what was there. not his dad, not his dead mother, not the sister he left alone, not the girl he loved and hurt. he didn’t come back to abq until he was much older, and sober. eventually he settled down. he reconciled with geanna the best he could. eventually, he became a sponsor for a lot of other people trying to get sober after working out his own issues and owned a motorcycle shop.

#◜ ✼ out of office | ooc | ✼ ◞#idk what to tag this but here it is!!#im low key hella nervous to post this but....#i’d appreciate it if you read it and told me what u thought :)#also sorry for any typos

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artificialqueens · 5 years

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Flowers in Bloom, Part 1 - Daisy (Shinkx) - Albatross

AN: The sequel to ‘The Language of Flowers’ - This will feature the Shinkx and Trixya dates that follow immediately where their last chapters left off.

So this didn’t end up being as long as I thought it was going to be at first but that’s alright. I’m trying to learn not set imaginary pressures or deadlines on myself and just enjoy the process of writing. Not sure when the Trixya date will be posted, I haven’t started it yet but I’ve got a lot planned. The next piece to be posted is very likely to be Biadore (because that seemed to be the overwhelming want from the little mini poll on AQ) and then Trixya. I’m also torn between starting on the magical girl AU right away or jumping into Rajalaskam. Might just start both and see which one is finished first. Quick little side note for the chapter names - the flower that I pick as the title is going to be how I feel best describes the date. In this case the Daisy represents innocence and simplicity.

In a matter of seconds, Sharon had followed Jinkx beyond the shop’s door and stepped onto the sidewalk beside her. In the short amount of time it took her to lock up the building for the night, Jinkx found herself suddenly slapped with the reality that she was about to go on a date with her boss. Her heart began racing in her chest as an overwhelming smile threatened to break out across her lips. She just couldn’t believe this was really about to happen!

In a strange way she was glad it was all decided so suddenly; if there had been any lapse of time between her subtle confession and the date itself she was sure she would have gone into a full-blown panic mode. As for right now the immense joy coupled with a heavy dose of shock was the perfect thing to keep her from freaking out entirely. The only thing she hoped for right now was that her expression didn’t betray just how nervous she actually was beneath her relatively composed exterior. However, the smile Sharon shot towards her once she was finished securing the shop threatened to override that thought completely.

As they walked down the moderately busy street, Jinkx found herself toying with the hem of her sleeves. It offered a small bit of distraction but she longed to be able to clasp onto Sharon’s hand. She probably would have tried had the blonde not already shoved them into her pockets. To anyone else she probably would have looked like the picture of perfect composure but Jinkx noticed all of the little tics that betrayed her true feelings; the slightly higher pitch of her voice, the twiddling of her fingers with the items in her pockets, and of course her struggle to maintain eye contact between the frequent breaks to watch where they were going.

Their conversation remained idle but natural as Sharon led the way to the restaurant she had in mind. To both women’s surprise neither fell into the old classic of discussing work as a safety net. Although shortly after arriving at the cafe that was intended for their date, they were reminded all too quickly of the night’s earlier activities. Jinkx hadn’t noticed the issue at first, she was more concerned with trying to dodge the miscellaneous clusters of patrons loitering outside the cafe’s entrance, but Sharon’s less than quiet call of “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” soon caught her attention.

Following the blonde’s line of sight, Jinkx quickly spotted the problem; it seemed that Katya and Trixie had also decided to take their impromptu date here as well. They had been seated at a raised table out in the enclosed patio section and were eagerly chatting away about some random topic Jinkx couldn’t quite make out.

Sharon’s face as she took in the scene was a study of indecisiveness. She didn’t want to risk being exposed to Katya’s unique talent of effortlessly annoying her, especially in front of Jinkx when she could easily lose her cool…but even more so, she didn’t want to delay her date with the redhead any longer. She’d spent so much time simply pining after her from afar, she just couldn’t handle pushing it off for another night now that it was finally within her reach!

Bracing herself, Sharon began to push herself towards the hostess’s stand to request a table but Jinkx catching her arm stopped her dead in her tracks. Sharon’s heart stalled for a moment until she saw the reassuring smile resting upon Jinkx’s lips.

“I know another place we can go,” she offered politely, “If you don’t mind walking a little further.”

Very much relieved, Sharon replied that it wasn’t a problem in the slightest all while making a mental note to herself that’d she probably walk the length of the city just to keep her date with Jinkx tonight. Thankfully the substitute cafe Jinkx had in mind was only an extra ten minutes away. It was a bit more quiet than the bustling restaurant they had just left but there was still a moderate flow of foot traffic coming into the shop. Given that the weather outside was still pleasantly warm, it seems the majority of the customers decided to take their orders to go or at the very least enjoy them at the open air tables and benches. This particular cafe seemed to specialize with coffee and smoothies rather than prepared food, which probably helped to account for the transient stream of customers.

Once inside the first thing Sharon noticed was that it was rather homey instead of strictly a place for business. There was a relaxed atmosphere that seemed to contradict just how busy the shop actually was. The decor was a bit odd to her mind; a lot of the space had been filled with various knickknacks that anywhere else would have probably been very out of place. Before Sharon could truly take in the sights around her, Jinkx was already guiding them towards the small line at the counter. A number of the people waiting for their drinks seemed to be part of one group in particular and as soon as their orders were filled they took their leave and the majority of the shop’s background noise as well. Sharon had just begun to let out a sigh of relief at the newfound peace when she heard a delighted squeal emanating from behind the register.

“Jinkx!” the brunette exclaimed in excitement. “I haven’t seen you all week! Where have you been?”

“Sorry, we got really busy at the shop. We…kinda messed something up and spent the last couple of days fixing everything,” Jinkx admitted with a sheepish grin and quick glance towards the blonde.

Amused, the brunette inquired, “Oh? And just what have you been getting up to? Not starting any trouble at your new job, were you?”

Placing a comforting hand in the small of the redhead’s back, Sharon replied with a proud smile, “No, she’s been an amazing worker and she’s definitely learned her lesson with all that went on this week.”

The barista cocked her head to the side as she sized up the blonde in vague confusion. The realization that they hadn’t yet met dawned on Jinkx and with a polite interruption she introduced the pair to one another, “Sharon, this is Dela, my old coworker and Dela, this is Sharon…my new boss.”

Scanning her eyes around the shop with a new appreciation for the atmosphere, Sharon mused, “So this is where you used to work? I’ve driven by a few times but never stopped in. If I knew this was where I’d find you I’d have wandered in here sooner.”

At the statement made by the older blonde, Dela’s lips curled into something of a teasing smirk and immediately she began nosily asking, “You’re the one Jinkx asked me to order those coffee beans for? Glad to see you’ve got good taste…”

Darting her eyes back to Jinkx, she threw a quick wink and added in, “Both of you.”

Almost immediately Jinkx felt herself taking a heavy swallow in a pointless attempt to will away the growing blush on her cheeks. To her utter relief, Dela didn’t feel the need to make any further comments on the subject and fell back into her usual customer service mode to brightly ask the redhead, “Your usual?”

“Please,” Jinkx replied with a grateful smile.

Turning towards the blonde, she inquired, “And for you?”

Sharon’s eyes raked over the menu hung up behind the counter before ultimately settling on a large cup of the house brew. Dela gave an approving nod of her head and turned to make the drinks but was quickly stopped by both of the women. Each wanted to pay for the order but the brunette assured them, “It’s on me…”

Jinkx was in the midst of a very appreciative word of thanks to her friend until she heard Dela add in, “So long as Jinkx tells every little detail of how your date goes!”

Eyes narrowing at the proposal, the redhead quickly shot back, “I’d rather pay for the drinks then!”

Smiling away, Dela refused any form of payment and informed her huffy friend, “No choice, I already closed the sale in the register. You’ll have to tell me everything later!”

Shaking her head in disbelief, Jinkx muttered, “I hate you so much.”

A final proud grin was shot her way before Dela spun around to continue her work. Jinkx honestly couldn’t believe just how persistent Dela was being…It’s not like she wouldn’t have told her a quick version of it afterwards…She probably just wants something extra to talk about when she compares notes with Ivy….Jinkx really wouldn’t put it past her not to provide real-time updates to their mutual friend anyway. Oh, well. She can’t stop it so she might as well just resign herself to the fact that Ivy was likely to know the majority of her date before Jinkx gets a chance to tell her on her own…

In a matter of minutes, Sharon and Jinkx’s drinks handed back to them in cute little To-Go cups with their names scribbled along the sides in some of Dela’s best handwriting. Jinkx for one couldn’t wait to take the first sip. She hadn’t had a chance to stop in for her regular pick-me-up since Sunday thanks in large part to the fiasco with Katya and Trixie. Her overly sweetened latte would be a welcomed treat after successfully cleaning up the mess that she and the other assistants helped to create.

Almost as if she were walking on air, she led Sharon towards her favorite table in the back of the shop and sat down to enjoy the first very satisfying taste of her drink. Dela was one of the few employees here that she trusted make her coffee exactly right. Try as she might, Jinkx couldn’t hold back the soft sigh of pleasure that escaped from her lips after the nearly too hot drink finished washing across her tongue. Very much intrigued, Sharon asked, “Mind if I try some?”

Jinkx faltered for a moment before sliding her cup across what little empty space remained between them. With a noticeable amount of hesitation in her voice, she warned, “You can but I don’t think you’ll-”

The face Sharon made as soon as the drink passed her lips was truly a sight. Her eyes went wide with disbelief and something akin to fear that someone would willingly drink something as sugary as what she had just tasted. If she hadn’t seen Dela preparing it herself, she would have sworn that no coffee at all had been used while making that drink. Quickly pushing the cup back in front of Jinkx and washing away the after-taste with her own coffee, Sharon commented shakily, “That was very…sweet.”

Jinkx gave her an apologetic grin and took a long sip of her latte in order not to have to say anything more for the time being. Swallowing away the lingering taste of caramel and sugar, Sharon further questioned her, “I’m a bit surprised though…I thought you always took it black?”

The redhead felt a light blush returning to her cheeks and finally admitted in a sheepish voice, “Actually, I only started doing that because of you…I’ve never seen you add anything to yours so I didn’t either as long as you were around…”

Sharon’s eyes widened and just vaguely it looked like a hint of pink was rising to her face. Deciding it was now or never, Jinkx continued on as she toyed with a lock of stray hair, “I just kinda wanted to impress you, I guess. You always made it look so cool and sophisticated…adding my usual amount of sugar and creamer just felt…childish sometimes.”

With the final confession, Sharon’s shocked expression immediately softened and her hand came to rest on Jinkx’s drawn in shoulder. Scooting their chairs closer until their legs were almost touching, the blonde assured her, “Jinkx, never worry about impressing me. You’ve done that already…you still do actually.”

The pair shared a fond smile before the intimacy of the situation became too much and each broke away with an embarrassed smile. They drank in further silence for another minute or so before a new topic was cautiously proposed by the older woman. It felt like the hours slipped by unnoticed as countless customers came and left the shop while the two remained close and cozy in their hidden corner. Around half an hour before the cafe was due to close, Jinkx asked with more than a fair amount of trepidation, “So this…us, I mean. What do we do at the shop?”

Her gaze was curious but also concerned and fearful. She didn’t want this to be a one time thing but it was also a bit of unfamiliar territory to be potentially dating her boss. She didn’t want anything to mess up her personal or business life but if she would have to pick now, she wasn’t sure which she would chose to pursue. Luckily, Sharon had no intention of forcing her to make that choice. Enclosing her hand around one of Jinkx’s fiddling ones, she consoled her employee in a simple but gentle voice, “We’ll do the same thing we’ve been doing; we remain professional with each other while at work.”

“And then after work?” Jinkx questioned in a meek yet hopeful tone.

Smirking just a tad, the blonde gave a comforting squeeze of her hand and stated confidently, “After work…we’ll be anything but.”

Jinkx felt a smile of previously unknown size growing across her lips as she beamed up at her boss. Her heart felt like it would soon flutter out of her chest but she could hardly care about that. Everything felt like a dream at this point and no part of her wanted to wake up any time soon.

She was almost finished with her drink when Sharon placed her empty cup next Jinkx’s. Leaving their hands resting on the table, Sharon worked her phone out her pocket and opened the camera app. She jutted her head towards the pair of cups with a silent request for permission to take a picture yet left the option open for Jinkx to refuse. Vaguely wondering who she’d send the image to before ultimately deciding that she didn’t care, Jinkx nodded her head with a gleeful grin settled on her lips. She found that she wanted everyone to know; both at the shop and the rest of the world.

Crossing the last few inches of space that remained between their bodies, Jinkx let her head fall onto Sharon’s shoulder as the blonde snapped a quick picture. Just at the very edge of the image, Jinkx could see their interlocking fingers making a small cameo while the cups with their names scrawled up the side took up the majority of the screen. With one click, Sharon forwarded the picture off to probably every employee at the shop.

Following the subtle announcement of their relationship to their coworkers, the pair quickly drank what little remained in their cups and bid Dela a short ‘Goodbye’ and word of thanks as they exited the cafe. The walk back to the flower shop was quiet and peaceful, yet over all too quickly to both of the women’s displeasure. Pausing outside the door to Sharon’s apartment, Jinkx stood on her tip toes to press a soft kiss to Sharon’s cheek as she whispered sincerely, “I had a really good time tonight.”

Before the redhead even had a chance to try and disentangle her hand from Sharon’s, the older woman carefully pulled her in closer and offered up hopefully, “Well the night’s not over yet…want to come inside for another cup?…I still have have those coffee beans you gave me…”

Jinkx’s face lit up and without a second thought, she dare to place a brief peck to Sharon’s lips and replied, “I’d love to.”

#rpdr fanfiction #albatross #shinkx #trixya #flowershop au #fluff #first date #jinkx monsoon #sharon needles #trixie mattel #katya zamolodchikova #ivy winters #submission #lesbian au #flowers in bloom

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raendown · 6 years

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@kaiyaru The contract has been signed and the goods have been delivered.

Pairing: MadaraTobirama Rating: T+ Word count: 5393 Summary: He knows what he has done. He's known that they would come for him.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

For Want Of Reason And Mercy

The gloves didn’t help. Several thousand dollars had gone in to the research and development of a single measly pair of gloves and they didn’t even work as they were meant to. Tobirama clenched his fists in his hair to smother the urge to drag his arms across the table and send all of his carefully organized work crashing to the floor. None of it had helped.

After everything he had given, everything he had sacrificed, all the hurts that he had weathered with nary a complaint, he’d thought by now the universe would see fit to let him catch a break. Even the smallest of mercies would be welcome by now but instead the condition only seemed to be worsening.

His nose wrinkled when he realized what he’d just done, using that word in the silence of his own thoughts. It was the government’s word, ‘condition’, and it seemed that the line between his truest desires and the agencies he had long sold his soul to were finally blurring if he’d started to use it himself. But what did it matter, he wondered, if were to finally become what others had accused him of being for so long now when all of his efforts came to nothing in the end?

When the government first began its campaign against those with ‘the condition’, it caused a great stir among the people who had once considered him one of their own when Tobirama gave himself willingly in to the clutches of the very people seeking to destroy them. There were stipulations to it, of course. In pursuit of something greater he had given up his freedom, his rights, and everyone he loved. His body had been subjected to unending tests both invasive and painful and he had suffered all of it without complaint because he truly believed in his heart that he would find the perfect solution, the missing piece of the puzzle that would lead him to happiness.

Now here he was with gloves that failed to contain the ice which formed from his fingertips and no other avenues left to follow in his biological research. The project, it seemed, was a dead end. Despite millions of dollars and hundreds of the Elemental Nations’ most brilliant minds all working together, it appeared that there simply was no cure for the condition of being blessed with heroic powers.

Tobirama first discovered his abilities, as all supers do, when he hit puberty. It was his first and only crush which revealed to him the ice running in his veins. And of course it hadn’t taken very long before the people closest to him began a running joke about cold-blooded Senju and frozen hearts, jokes which became mournful refrains when he willingly devoted his mind to helping the factions seeking to destroy people like them. He knew very well what they thought of him. ‘Traitor’ was the least of the names he had been called.

If they knew his true reasons for why he did what he did would they sing a different tune?

Probably not but it mattered little anyway. They might never know now, not when his only way home seemed an impossibility. If he could not stop his own powers then he could not return home and if he could not find a cure for himself then he stood a good chance of being put down by the people he had worked under for five long years now. Life, he thought blandly, was just unfair.

He was watching the crystals form on his fingertips with despondent emptiness, completely unmotivated to do anything but sit and wallow in his misery, when the noises began. Muffled explosions sounded in the distance while the very earth groaned around him. Sirens went off only moments later but Tobirama couldn’t bring himself to move. Clearly the facility was under attack – a successful attack by the sounds of it – and he couldn’t find it within himself to care, let alone worry. Let them come. Whoever it was knocking at the door, it felt poetic that he might meet his death at last at the hands of those he had betrayed for nothing.

Outside in the hallways he could hear footsteps thundering passed, guards and soldiers rushing to the fight and probably to their deaths, but Tobirama continued to sit still. Evacuation messages rang harshly through the loudspeakers and still he remained. This laboratory was his choice, the doom he had given himself, and the idea of dying here gave his battered soul an odd sort of ironic peace.

As he listened to the sounds of battle drawing closer he tried to imagine who would come through the door. It was hard to tell without the war cries and shouting that used to accompanies such displays of power, a habit he himself had pointed out as dangerous because it made them bigger targets and distracted them from defending themselves. He was still mentally cycling through all of the supers he knew of with explosive or ground related powers when the entire room was rocked by a massive blast just outside, the metal door rocketing inwards with an unholy metallic shriek. Two imposing figures strode in to the room with their hands raised and their heads swiveling to case the room.

Both of them stopped when they saw him there in front of his table, small and quiet, diminished. He didn’t have to look up to see the shock on their faces.

“Tobirama?” one of the called out softly and he barely contained a wince. How he had missed that voice.

“Brother,” he greeted in return. “If I may call you that still.”

“Traitor,” the other man growled. Tobirama’s heart clenched in his chest.

“Hello Madara.” He waited but the silence only continued to stretch and none of them said anything further. Somewhere in the building the fighting raged on, other supers exacting their revenge against one of the facilities researching a way to ‘fix’ them. Finally, when it became obvious that his mere presence was enough to shock these two in to indecision, he spoke. “Do it. I will not try to stop you.”

One of them gasped – Hashirama, probably – and one of them slammed their fist against something.

“You could come with us, you know. You could make this right,” Hashirama begged. It was a tempting offer, to be honest, but Tobirama hung his head and stared down at the ice forming and cracking around the fingers of his gloves.

“I made my bed. I am prepared to lie in it.”

“Why, Tobi? Please. You never told us why. How could you–” Hashirama cut himself off, overwhelmed, but Madara had always had enough words when others had none.

“How could you betray us!?” he thundered. “How could you betray your people, your family, yourself?

“There is no point in explaining it to you. My reasons are…well. There is no point now. Go ahead and kill me; I’m sure you’ve been wanting to do so for quite some time now. As I said, I won’t stop you.”

Enraged snarls sounded from behind him but what surprised him were the fingers that brushed against the top of his head, sliding in to his hair and gently petting him in the same way his nightmares had been soothed away as a little boy. Tobirama caught his bottom lips between his teeth and fought to compose himself before looking up in to his brother’s eyes. It had been so long since they’d seen each other. He noticed that Hashirama’s hair was even more ridiculously long than it had been before and that he’d made several updates to his super uniform.

He barely held in a protest when the fingers in his hair pulled away and he was relieved that they didn’t go far, tracing the three tattoos on his face which he’d designed to both hide and highlight his greatest shame.

“Could you kill me?” Hashirama asked him. Tobirama gave him a helpless look.

“Never.”

“Then how could you ask me to do the same to you?”

Light flared when Madara huffed impatiently, the flames licking up and down his body growing in his irritation. “Don’t treat him so softly. He betrayed us, he doesn’t deserve it!”

“He’s my brother!”

“No, he’s a traitor to his own kind!”

Pausing to breathe deeply, Tobirama dared to look in to Madara’s face for the first time since they had arrived, the first time in five years. As soon as he saw the older man’s expression he wanted to hide away again and erase that image from his mind. Behind the anger and the hatred was a very deep pain and knowing he had caused that made Tobirama hate himself just that little bit more than he already did.

Something deep down inside fluttered at the notion that Madara might still care enough to be hurt, that the hatred hadn’t entirely smothered the tenuous bond which had once existed between them, but Tobirama mercilessly bore down on that feeling and denied it. There was no going back from what he had done, he knew that very well. Whatever potential there had been between them was gone now with no hope of ever reviving it. Tobirama forced himself to look Madara in the eye and accept the consequences of the actions he had chosen to take.

“You then?” he asked. “Will you be the one to kill me?”

“Hn. You would deserve it.”

“I know.” His words seemed to startle both men, though Madara recovered faster. Anger shadowed his face once more as he stepped back and fell in to a stance Tobirama recognized easily.

“We’re not murderers like your new friends are, we don’t kill people who won’t fight back. So come on, then. Get up and fight me! Come on!”

Hashirama make a bit of effort to calm his friend down but Tobirama only sighed in resignation. When he hauled his body up out of his chair he felt a thousand pounds heavier, a hundred years older, and tired enough to lie down in his grave with no help. But if it was a fight that Madara wanted, if it would give him closure…

“Very well,” he murmured. “Brother, if you would kindly give us a bit of space.”

“Trying to protect him? It’s a little late for that,” Madara spat at him, clenching his fist as the fires running along his limbs flared again. His emotions had always been so easy to read in those flames.

Knowing that any answer he chose to give would only incite the other further, Tobirama opted for silence as the ice crystals on his fingertips slowly encased the rest of his hand and crept up his arm. It had been a while since he really let loose. He could feel the power inside him stirring, chilling the air immediately around his body even without trying, and shuddered for what he was about to do. He knew that there was little point in trying to negotiate his way out of this fight. Once Madara got an idea in to his head it was nearly impossible to talk him out of it.

Still, Tobirama refused to throw the first punch, as it were. He took his stance as was expected of him and pinched his brows together when he felt the way his fingers were already growing stiff with ice.

“I didn’t want it to be this way,” he murmured. “But I had…no control.” It was the closest he could give them to an explanation.

Madara did not take his words calmly. Incensed, the older man came forward in a whirlwind of flame and smoke. Tobirama closed his ears to his brother’s cries for them both to stop as he dodged, half-heartedly throwing up a wall of ice to block the fire reaching for his face. Some part of him wondered if it wouldn’t be easier to just allow his ice to slip, to let the fire consume him and end things in the way he felt they should.

The thought was a stupid one, he knew that even as he considered it. Madara would never be the type to find closure in an easy win. If they were going to have it out once and for all he was going to have to put some effort in to this and allow Madara the victory he deserved, a hard won triumph, a proper display of skill from them both.

It was the last thing Tobirama wanted and the only thing he had left to give.

A burning projectile roared passed his ears. Tobirama spun and retaliated with a beam which cut through the flames heading straight for his face, extinguishing them before they ever had a chance to reach the temperature Madara was clearly going for. Incensed, his opponent removed something from his belt and lit them aflame before hurling them across the room. Tobirama caught them in frozen spires called up from the ground then raised those same spires up and threw them back as deadly spears.

Back and forth they traded blows, neither making any true headway nor landing any real hits, and Tobirama could think only of how tired he was, wading through memories with every step and dodge and twist. Despite the years gone by Madara’s fighting style was as familiar to him as though they hadn’t spent a day apart; coming up against it now was like stepping back through time to a place where he’d still had that shining hope in his eyes, still looked towards a better future. Those dreams had died inch by inch in the time since.

Watching the table he had spent hours and days and weeks hunched over go up in flames was like watching the lighting of his own funeral pyre. Tobirama bit down on his lip, dodging behind a metal buttress and giving himself a moment to close his eyes, to breathe.

“Get back here Tobirama! Answer for what you’ve done! Fight me you coward!”

His eyes opened again, slowly, reluctantly.

“There are many things that I am,” he said quietly, knowing the other two men would be straining for any sound of him. “I am a traitor and a monster, I am cold and I am wrong and I am not the man that others once dreamed I could be. But one thing that I am not is a fucking coward.” Stepping out from behind the buttress, Tobirama strode purposefully towards the epicenter of the flames engulfing the room.

“Found you,” Madara growled, rolling his shoulders. Tobirama peeled back his lips.

“You cannot know what I have faced. And for what? Nothing. I have seen darknesses and lows that you won’t see in your worst nightmares, never flinching from the path I chose, and for what!?”

Madara sneered, flames rising from his shoulder unbidden in his anger. “You tell me!”

“For nothing. It was all for nothing. You want me to fight? Fine, let’s fight! Call me a fucking coward, huh?”

They met in the center of the room, clashing and rebounding only to come together over and over. Hashirama’s helpless cried were drowned out by the hissing of the steam that filled the room the longer they stayed so close but he dared not try to interfere. Flames rose and fell, ice formed and shattered, and in the eye of the storm Madara and Tobirama clashed with the same furious passion that had always existed between them.

He could see the inevitable end when it came. Tobirama had, of course, known it was coming even as he desperately prayed that Madara would see it too, would have prepared for it, but his hopes were unfounded. The trouble with pitting fire against ice was that most people tended to assume that the flame would win out, melting the ice for an easy victory. What they failed to take in to account was that Madara’s body could only grow so hot before he would burn himself up like a miniature supernova; Tobirama could grow as cold as he wanted with no more adverse effects than the thickening ice that crept up his limbs by the minute.

If only the damn gloves had worked.

Had they worked he would not have caught Madara in the chest with a blast of his natural element. Nor would he have had to listen to the cry of pain and dismay as Madara doubled over and fell to his knees. Tobirama’s knees hit the concrete as well and he caught the other man before he could topple over, laying him down gently and ignoring the weak protests to get away. His entire body trembled with the effort to draw breath past the pain of what he’d just done.

“From the moment I met you, I knew I’d hurt you eventually.” His fingers found Madara’s hair while the older man shivered uncontrollably, his body striving to raise his internal temperatures. “I just…I had no control. I still have no control. Five years of research and experiments and I still – look…I’m killing you. With nothing but a touch.”

Hashirama rushed forward to pull Madara from his arms and Tobirama scuttled backward until he ran up against something, pressed back in a fruitless effort to disappear in to the walls around him. When he raised his hands to look at them, the ice was so thick his fingers were nearly fused together.

“I tried to make it go away,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, I failed. I failed myself, you, everyone.”

“What do you mean you tried to make it stop?” Hashirama asked cautiously.

“This.”

He held out his hands, his heart shriveling just that little bit more when he saw Madara flinch away. Tobirama dropped his eyes to the floor and wondered, if he simply kept still for long enough, would the ice creep over him thicker and thicker until he’d grown his own tomb?

“You – you were trying to find a way to take away your powers…because you…oh. Oh Tobi.” Hashirama’s voice was indescribably sad. Tobirama could not look at him. Still propped in his friend’s lap, Madara coughed until his throat was clear and added his voice to the conversation with a worrisome wheezing sound.

“What? Don’t just say ‘oh’. What the fuck is he talking about?”

Tears gathering in his eyes, Hashirama took a shuddering breath. “He came here for you, to ‘cure’ himself so that he could never hurt you. That’s it isn’t it? That’s why you left, why you came to this awful place. You – oh Tobi. Please. Please come home.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Tobirama said to the floor. “I can’t. I have no more control now than I did then. The ice builds and I can shake it off but I can’t stop it from forming! I’ve tried everything!”

“E-everything?” If there were anyone who know to be wary of where Tobirama’s imagination could take his experiments, it was Hashirama. And in this case he was more than justified in his worries – he was right.

“Serums, injections, DNA modification, gene splicing, radiation, herbal medications, and now…now even my experiments in to technology have failed me. I can’t stop this no matter what I try. Every horrible thing that I’ve done since I left, it was all for nothing.”

“I don’t understand,” Madara admitted quietly. He struggled to sit up and Hashirama hurried to help him. Tobirama dared to flicker his eyes over in their direction and was relieved to see a bit of healthy color returning to the other man’s cheeks. Absently, he lifted a hand to brush at his own, tracing the one of the three marks which Madara himself had burnt in to his skin during the confrontation when he left home.

Every day for the past five years he had looked in the mirror and told himself that they would be worth it someday. They were all that had kept him going through the darkest nights, the thought that he might be able to go home and make his confessions, beg for a chance to score Madara in to his heart the way he’d been scored beneath the skin.

“He loves you.” For having spoken so quietly, Hashirama’s voice sounded deafening in Tobirama’s ears. “You don’t remember when we were kids? Before we all developed our powers and Tobi used to fight with me so that he could sit next to you while we all watched TV?”

“That’s – no. No he – impossible. Tobirama, tell him he’s wrong!”

Unable to meet Madara’s eyes now that the truth had been bared, Tobirama kept his silence and stared at his frozen fingers.

“Tobi?” Hashirama ventured. “You keep looking at those gloves you’re wearing. Will you…tell me about them?”

“You always hated listening to me blather on about science.”

“I didn’t hate it. I just never understood it. Will you tell me about it please?”

“What’s the point? They don’t work.”

Even without looking up he knew that Hashirama would be giving him those patented puppy eyes of his. “Please?” came the plaintive whine and Tobirama knew he would answer. What else could he do? He owed them so much and had no other way to make it up to them.

Sighing, he shook out one hand until the ice cracked and shattered then ran his fingers through his hair, tugging viciously on the strands.

“They’re a special nano-interactive material that I designed. They were supposed to identify the super genome and neutralize it so that whenever I wear them they cancel out my powers and I can interact with the rest of the world without risking frostbite or worse. But they don’t. The technology to alter the genome in any way simply doesn’t exist yet and this was the last project of mine that they were going to fund. Without funding I don’t stand a chance of exploring that avenue.” Finally he found the strength to look up, if only to meet Hashirama’s eyes with an expression of utter emptiness. “I don’t have any other options. I’ll never be fixed.”

“You’re not broken,” Hashirama reminded him in a stern voice.

“Brother, don’t…”

“No, you listen to me. You were the loudest voice protesting when people started calling the supers freaks and the government started trying to outlaw us all. And then you got your own powers and I never understood how you could change your mind against yourself. But I do now. So let’s talk about it okay?”

Tobirama groaned and dropped his head back in to whatever he was leaning against, still pulling on his hair. “Talking won’t help.”

“You don’t know that. I know you, you always have a hundred contingency plans.”

“I’ve used them all,” he pointed out dryly.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Madara spoke up gruffly, “So make another.”

Raising his free hand up above his tilted face, Tobirama looked hard at the way it was still gathering its thick shell of ice. The fingers were all completely fused together now. It was going to take a solid blow to crack it all back off.

“Yeah! Come on Tobi! You always used to say ‘start at the beginning’ so do that! What else did you try?”

“Ev-er-y-thing. What do you not understand about that?” His words came out a frustrated snarl but Hashirama was far from deterred.

“You tried turning off the, uh, the…genome! The genome as a whole. What about when you just tried to turn off what you can do? Like, the cold I mean, when you tried to just block the cold.”

Tobirama turned his head slowly, his eyes wide and the shriveled heart inside his chest skipping several painful beats. “I never tried to do that,” he whispered. Silence followed his admission, broken only by the now fading sounds of the dwindling battle in other parts of the compound. Both of the other men were staring back at him as though he’d gone mad all over again and he honestly couldn’t blame them.

It was so simple. How could he not have thought of something so simple?

“Just turn off the cold,” he mumbled, only half aware of the hot tears spilling down his cheeks. “I see. Not the entire gene but the isolated signals which tell my body to produce cold. It wouldn’t have to be gloves. It could be anything. A shirt, a pair of socks, a necklace.”

“You’re as dumb as you are smart,” Madara growled. Tiny little flames were licking up the sides of his arms again and Tobirama stared at them, mesmerized, while his brother leaned forward eagerly.

“But that’s good news! You figured it out! Why are you crying, Tobi?”

“I already told you, they cut my funding. I have a solution that I cannot achieve now. Everything I’ve worked for is right there at my fingertips and I am still unable to reach it.” His fingers were icing together again where they were still buried in his hair, freezing the strands to his skin so that every shift of his body came with a slight tug from the top of his head.

When the other two men fell silent he assumed they agreed, had seen the same depressing conclusion that he had come to. He was startled enough to clench his fingers stiffly and crack the ice when he heard one of them snort derisively, looking up to find Madara with his face pinched in irritation.

As a super Madara had chosen the name Soulfire for the flames he produced and the way they flared in times of strong emotion as they had been doing since he walked in to the room. They were there again now, rippling up the sides of his arms and in small patches on the tops of his feet in a visual display of his loss of control. Tobirama had seen those flames rise from the man’s skin every time they argued back before he left; somehow it was comforting to watch Madara’s temper boil over, like no time had passed and he hadn’t thrown away half a decade of his life for naught.

It was also a relief to see his flames returning after nearly having them permanently extinguished.

“You fucking idiot,” Madara snarled. “So you’ve got no money here, big fucking deal. You know who else can raise money for research? Us, the people you abandoned. You don’t think your brother would shift hell and earth to find whatever you ask for just to get you to come home?”

“I don’t think you understand how much money research and development of these projects costs–”

“Where the fuck do you think all of our equipment comes from? Our outfits? Do you know how long it took that Namikaze kid to figure out a way to fully fireproof my clothes?”

“Oh. I hadn’t–”

“You hadn’t thought of that, yeah. Clearly!”

Tobirama snapped back out of sheer habit, “Would you stop cutting me off!?”

“Ha! There! There he is!” Madara sneered at him in a smug, triumphant sort of way. “Meek and demure just doesn’t suit you, snowflake.”

“It’s Freezeout and you know that!”

“Well you look like a snowflake!”

“Fuck you!”

“I wish you could!”

Both Tobirama and Hashirama jerked in surprise but Madara did nothing more than huff irritably, not taking his words back. Thin tendrils of smoke drifted up out of his wild hair, nearly thick enough in its own right to act as a second cape, and some distant thought in the back of Tobirama’s mind marveled at the fact that they hadn’t set off the fire alert systems in here yet.

With his cheeks flushed red Madara stiffened his spine and thrust a finger in Tobirama’s direction.

“Don’t look at me like that. You know damn well how often I looked at you before you disappeared. Maybe if one of us hadn’t been a spineless coward and just said something then maybe this whole mess could have been prevented but that’s neither here nor there; no use blubbering over what-ifs. Just get your stupid frozen ass off the floor, have some pride for fuck’s sake – apologize to your brother maybe for breaking his goddamn heart – and get your ass home. You’ve got a problem. We have the means to help you try to fix it.”

“Wow Madara…” Hashirama gave a low whistle, clearly a little impressed with his friend’s speech.

“F-fine.” Swallowing thickly to clear his throat for a handful of shuddering breaths, Tobirama nodded once. “Fine. Yeah. I…that’s okay? I know what I did…that the others might not want me to…”

Lunging across the space between them, Hashirama tackled his younger brother in a tearful hug. “Of course it’s okay! We’ve all missed you so much and I know the others will listen when we tell them why you left. They will! I promise! And I’ll shave all their hair off if they don’t!” Tobirama grunted but allowed the affection, trying not to give in to the urge to sink down in his brother’s embrace and never come out to face the world again.

“That’s no threat, you’ll just grow it back out for them,” he murmured. Hashirama laughed and hauled him up on to his feet. Once he was standing he staggered under the weight of another hug, this one nearly lifting him off the ground.

“You’re really coming home?”

“I never wanted to leave, you know.”

Madara snorted. “Then you shouldn’t have.” Despite his pointed words he looked much less angry than a few moments ago; it seemed he had released it all with his impassioned speech. Tobirama freed himself of his brother’s clutches and then he stood facing the other man, the one he had left home just to find a way back to. Madara looked back at him with one eyebrow raised expectantly.

“I’m sorry,” Tobirama choked out.

“Hmph, you better be.”

Without saying anything else he stormed across the distance between them and took hold of the fur around Tobirama’s shoulders, hauling him in for a bone-crushing embrace that lasted barely a handful of seconds before they were forced to part again, Tobirama’s ice creeping between them and making Madara hiss with pain.

“Fuck, sorry, I – I can’t help it.”

“Yeah, I know. But you’ll fix that. You fix everything, right?”

“Not everything. I never got around to fixing your ego.” His words weren’t nearly as pointed as they should be, rough edges smoothed away by lingering hesitance, but Madara barked a laugh anyway.

“Good luck trying,” was all he said and Tobirama dared to smile ever so slightly.

Hashirama was beaming at them both so widely his face looked like it might split in half but they both ignored him, all three of them making their way towards the exit. Several of the ceiling tiles had fallen in all the excitement and lay blocking the door when they got there. It took only a single crook of Hashirama’s finger for the door to grow outwards and press the tiles away so that the trio could pass.

As they watched their enthusiastic companion bound off to throw himself back in to the fray, Tobirama paused just inside the laboratory when he felt something brush against his knuckles, his head darting around to see what it was. Madara wasn’t looking at him but he was shaking out his hand in a deliberately casual manner, steam rising from his gloves.

“You’ll find an answer,” Madara said quietly. “I believe that.”

“I won’t stop until I do,” Tobirama promised him.

Madara nodded then strode forward with the same confident step that had first caught his eye so long ago. Shifting his weight and clenching his fists, ice scattering to the floor like shards of glass, Tobirama followed after him with a smile still tugging at the corners of his mouth, hope winding through his ribs like a long forgotten friend come home to rest. His eyes fell once more to the fingers that had brushed his own, that he longed to hold, and his smile widened just that small bit more.

The future was his own to shape from here on out, as it always had been. This time he would make the right choices.

#rae writes #madatobi #madara #tobirama #hashirama #superhero au #fanfiction #naruto shippuden

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jackalopingintothevoid · 6 years

Text

AKTJD? Part 3

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 TBA

Sampoorna had been alerted by Tenzin that their guest was awake and, despite Alouette’s fretting, had poured out a nice, big bowl of soup and put together a few sandwiches (he was a big, big man, he’d need a lot to eat!) and headed over. The door was open, and the stranger’s eyes snapped to her form as he jerked up from where he’d been propped against the pillows.

“No, no, it’s okay!” Mochou’s voice was gentle but she looked exasperated, and Sampo realised she’d probably been trying to get the poor man to relax for the past twenty minutes. “John, this is Sampoorna, like I told you? She’s got soup-- ooh, and sandwiches!”

Indeed, John’s eyes had fixed on the food almost immediately before going back to her face. She smiled her most reassuring smile.

“Hello, John. It is nice to meet you. I hope you are feeling better now you are warm and have slept. I have made much soup, so eat as much as you like, and there is medicine for your cold.” Sampo approached, and he watched her but didn’t respond. Slowly, so he could protest if he so desired, she placed the tray in his lap before activating the antigrav and stabilisers.

(She’d learned recently that when trays were first invented hundreds of years ago, people just put them on their laps and kept them balanced by themselves. It seemed a logical progression of development, but it still sent her reeling to think about how difficult and dangerous things were back then. A conscious balancing act would always be subject to human error; one wrong move and you’d covered yourself in hot food or drink. Not safe at all!)

“Now,” she carefully took his hand, slowly moving to take his pulse, “how are you feeling? Blocked sinuses?” His sinuses certainly sounded blocked, but his pulse was strong and steady. He winced slightly as she tested the lymph glands in his neck-- swollen, as expected-- and she grimaced apologetically. Alouette didn’t like hands at her neck either. “Do you have a headache at all?”

John seemed conflicted. He’d been calm so far, but he noticeably hesitated at her questions. That hesitation was telling; he didn’t feign indifference or puff up in pride. He seemed nervous, almost shy, like he didn’t want to be a bother or feared getting in trouble. Taking a calculated risk, Sampoorna took his hand loosely in hers, gently rubbing her thumb over the odd surgical scars on the back. “We just want to help you. You do not need to suffer.”

There was movement out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to see Mochou sweetly squeezing his other hand, smiling that earnest smile of hers. John had looked to her as well, and when he turned back to the Indian woman his eyes were wide and overwhelmed.

The poor thing. She dreaded to think what he had been running from.

He didn’t know why this was affecting him so drastically. Sampoorna’s cursory medical checks had been unexpected, but he was familiar with them even if he had no memory of it. It was the gentleness of it that struck him dumb, the soft concern rather than the brusque and businesslike bedside manner of... whoever had given him medical checks before, he supposed. It was even more difficult, somehow, to face this nebulous knowledge lacking in anything resembling useful context when these two civilians-- these two people were being so-- so kind to him.

You do not need to suffer.

That sentence had landed like a gut punch and John had to bite back the reflex to dispute it. Yes, he had a pounding headache, and what felt like every muscle in his body ached as well, but that was fine. None of his limbs were hanging off, his organs were all still inside him; he could endure this pain. And after a second, that confused him too. Why would he think he did need to suffer? Where did that immediate, thoughtless rejection come from? Why did hearing it make his insides squirm uncomfortably?

On the subject of his insides, he was starving, and there was food literally right under his nose, but both of his hands were being held. He could pull away effortlessly, but their skin on his was an incredible sensation. Since waking up here John had found that every time the gentle touches ceased, it left a greed in his skin that clamoured impatiently for the contact to return. It was a selfish feeling and he didn’t like it, but he couldn’t deny that their hands seemed to (mercifully) quiet his thoughts and soothe something in his chest.

On his left, Mochou’s hand moved to his upper arm, squeezing his bicep (oh, that was nice) and he took the opportunity to start in on the soup.

“John?” Mochou again. She waited until he glanced at her in question. “Do you need painkillers?”

That sealed it. John shook his head; he didn’t need them.

“Just the cold medicine then.” Sampoorna was already preparing it for him. Most of him felt certain he didn’t have a choice in the matter and was resigned to that fact, but a small, niggling part of him said if you tell her no, she’ll stop. That was a thought both frightening and comforting. John elected not to think about it.

He swallowed the drugs without comment and kept eating. It was good, really good, and again he was struck with the strange sense that he shouldn’t be having it. This was too much, it tasted too good. He was hungry enough that he didn’t debate it much but it left him unsettled all the same.

He finished off the soup quickly (it would be selfish to ask for more) and started ploughing through the sandwiches. He honestly had no idea what was in them, but he liked it.

He’d just about demolished those when Sampoorna spoke again, having finished whatever silent conversation the pair had been having with their eyes.

“Now, John, I know this may be a difficult question for you right now, but... can you tell us how you ended up on the street?”

His chewing slowed. It was fair of her to-- correctly-- assume that it was a recent development, as evidenced by her not asking when, since he’d been clearly ill-equipped. But he loathed the question all the same, simply because he’d have to admit that he couldn’t answer it. Even after he swallowed his mouthful, he didn’t answer immediately. Mochou squeezed his arm again (he didn’t notice himself listing slightly towards her) and made further meaningful eye-contact with Sampoorna.

Eventually, he composed himself. “I don’t know. I don’t... remember.”

“You don’t remember?” The thick Chinese accent seemed thicker in her incredulity. Sampoorna shot her a Look but she didn’t see it in her periphery. A fundamental flaw in spectacles. Why didn’t she just get her eyes fixed? “What about before you were on the street? And what’s your family name? En, your last name?”

John struggled for a moment, then shook his head. Not even a last name. There was just-- nothing. He had to fight to keep his voice even. “... I don’t remember that either. Or anything else.”

There were several seconds of dead silence. He could feel their eyes on him, but he stared at the empty soup bowl instead of Mochou’s rounded face or Sampoorna’s angular features.

“I am sorry to hear that, John.” Sampoorna’s voice said more than her slightly stiff words did, but he didn’t know how to respond or even accept her compassion.

The bed dipped and arms just about wrapped around his shoulders. He froze, alarmed, but he managed to restrain himself from reacting more than that. Mochou had become the only remotely familiar thing over the past half hour or so and she continued to be very small and soft.

She muttered something in Mandarin, which he couldn’t decipher, and then said, “We will help you, John.”

She didn’t let go, uncaring of his nakedness, and he was embarrassed to realise he was starting to melt a little bit into her embrace. Sampoorna had started kneading his knuckles in a way that was easing the tension in his hand (which wasn’t helping) and he sighed softly, selfishly hoping she wouldn’t stop.

“Why not get some more sleep for now?” The soft Indian lilt gently pressed through the haze of sensation. “We will help you piece things together when you are ready.”

Warm and full with the congestion and headache easing, John was sorely tempted to surrender to his body’s demands for rest. Even the unexpected physical contact seemed to be dragging him closer to relaxation now, and Mochou squeezed him firmly in a most pleasing way. Of course, Sampoorna picked that moment to really start work on his extensor tendons, and the combination forced a tiny sound from his throat.

The arms around him squeezed again, more firmly and for longer, and another sigh slipped out. He found himself being guided back to the pillow, while his hand was turned over and warm, small thumbs started smoothing the tension from his interdigital pads.

Sampoorna spoke again, softly, “It is alright, John. You are safe here. You are among friends. You can sleep without fear.” She kept talking, her voice low and soothing, and the weight pressed against him seemed to cause him to sink down further into the (too comfortable) bed.

His eyes had closed. He briefly thought to open them, then idly wondered why. His thoughts drifted, slow and inconsequential.

Everything was soft

and

warm

and

safe

and

#halo #anyone know this john doe?#john 117 #master chief

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crisontumblr · 6 years

Text

UtVG: “As You Know...”

Related Reading: Under the Van Gogh Masterpost | Original Fiction Masterpost

Tagging @abackwaterprincess, @catch-the-ghost, and @staticcatfish, because they’ve been some of my biggest/longtime supporters and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t hear the end of it if they found out I posted something UtVG-relevant without alerting them. XD This is a portion of that excerpt I was talking about posting yesterday. It’s typed mostly verbatim from the journal it was written in, with the sort of tweaks here and there that get made as one transcribes, but otherwise...

I am...actually really nervous to share this with you guys? But, in this case, I think that’s a good thing. It’s way past time for you guys to meet some of my old friends.

“What do you know of the Dead and our world, based on the things you were told and the events you’ve already experienced?”

Finally, someone who just gets right to the point! I show Saint Essex my little red Molskine, and he looks…surprised? Confused? Both? I’m not sure.

“I like telling stories and, as of this semester, I have officially accepted my destiny and become an English major. Having paper and pens just comes naturally with the territory, so I just…y’know, I do what comes naturally. I make notes. I write it all down.”

“I see that.” He returns it to me unopened. “That doesn’t entirely answer my question. Based on the information you’ve gathered from what you’ve been told and what you’ve experienced—”

“Oh, like—you want, like, an inference or maybe a direct exposition of everything I’ve—okay.” Where do I even begin? “Well, first of all, there’s…existence after death. There are two realms. Planes. Worlds? Anyway, they’re joined by the literal Mortal Coil, which is like this giant glass staircase in the space between worlds that can sense whether or not you’re dead and demonstrate how much it frowns upon the Living walking on it by shattering under your feet—”

“Yes, that reminds me.” My guest begins to search the pockets on his uniform before reaching for his canvas bag. “Saint Viticus made mention of the incident that transpired on your journey down and asked me check further.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

With a penlight, apparently. Saint Essex goes into physician mode almost the moment he clicks it on. As he shines it in my eyes, he directs me to point my gaze first one way, then another, and still yet to another point in the room; even if he’s made himself visible, and even if there aren’t that many people in this part of the student center, it still probably has to look weird.

Actually, I’m certain it looks weird, since he’s still wearing that vintage-looking uniform instead of actual regular clothes.

“Hm.”

“Hm?” I try to blink away the afterimage of his light. “What’s the diagnosis?”

The sound Saint Essex makes suggests he has heard a version of this question before, if not far too often. “You know the proper term.”

“You’re not my first doctor.”

“Fair enough.” He slips the penlight back into bag’s front pocket. “Your eyes appear normal, which I will attest means a considerably different thing for you than for most.”

“Obviously.”

“Fortunately,” he continues, “I am pleased to assure you that it falls well within your range of normal—a fact I am certain will also put Saint Viticus at ease, given his insistence on the subject.”

“He’s a good guy… But what do you mean, it falls within my range of normal? I mean, I’m glad to hear my sight’s not getting any worse, but I don’t recall you ever giving me a full physical—and I’m pretty sure I’d remember a British guy in World War II greens giving me a thorough once-over.”

There’s something kind of…off about his expression. I don’t know how to explain it, exactly, but it’s certainly hard to tell what he’s thinking.

“Shall we get back to the topic at hand?” Saint Essex picks up his cup of tea, his third since he politely arrived and reintroduced himself (after which Present rather noticeably made an exit with his cigarettes).

“Not before you tell me why everyone is so concerned with my eyesight. What exactly is that light in the Coil? Why is it so dangerous? Is it even actually light?”

“Miss—”

“Call me ‘Cris,’” I tell him. “I’ve been meaning to tell you that since we started. Having someone address me by my last name, it feels kind of weird. Too formal. A little bit medical.”

He sighs through his nose, and I—

“If you insist. To be honest, no one really knows what the light is or what composes it. We do know, however, that most who’ve come into direct contact with it are…altered, in some way.”

That sounds bad.

“Altered?”

“Irrevocably.”

Yeah, that definitely sounds bad.

“Oh. Hm.”

“Of course, there’s a very large chance you fall into the minority who experience nothing at all.” Saint Essex shrugs before taking a sip from his tea. “It’s happened before. Besides, the changes in those who were affected were immediate and markedly severe.”

Okay, so maybe it’s not so bad. “Maybe you should tell me what those changes were, just in case?”

He frowns, but it… How do I explain this? It’s almost like he doesn’t know how to use his face to make expressions properly. He frowns, but it’s less a gesture of his mouth and more of his brows.

“I assure you, Miss—” My guest catches himself. “Cris, I have been doing this a long time. If I was concerned for your safety, you would know. Now, may we return to the topic?”

“What’s the point of regurgitating what you seem to already know? The dead exist in a separate world from our own, but they can travel back here and exist among us if they choose. For whatever reason, I can see them. There’s, like, a hierarchy or a royal court of people who’re called Saints and they have attendants who aren’t dead, but they serve you guys in some capacity or whatever—

“Oh, and then there are the Ghosts, who are dead, but they help the Living? And Hell is a real place, but it’s not called Hell anymore—if it ever was—and like…it’s actually more of a city-state or something? And then one of the other Saints has like…Fisher King powers or whatever, and Viticus looks after people who commit suicide even though he was murdered—but it’s apparently rude to ask about being murdered? I think?

“Also, Death is a redhead who likes sweets—a-at least, that’s according to Present, who’s my…er…like…assigned Ghost—and she pays them a stipend that I can only imagine Present blows entirely on coffee and cigarettes because he’s almost always broke or borrowing money from Past…”

Once again, it’s hard to tell what Saint Essex is thinking just from looking at him and his eerily neutral expression.

“How am I doing so far?”

Saint Essex draws in a breath. “It’s a bit…scattered, but it proves you’ve paid attention, at least. There are, indeed, five of us, each assigned with different tasks and each of us overseeing different walks of life. I, for instance, show favor towards the military—”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“—those in medicine—”

“Also figured.”

“—and farmers.”

Wait, what?

“Farmers? Why farmers?”

“I am also given the task of helping to maintain order, alongside Saints Sorrows and Orpheia.” It’s as if I didn’t say anything at all. “We manage the delicate balance between the Living and the Dead, and we have done so for quite a long time.”

“What about Viticus and the, uh, the other guy? The fifth one?” I know I wrote his name down in my book, but it’s lost in all my notes.

“Edward manages his own affairs. The City of Dis always has.” Again, he frowns in that odd way. “One might suggest it would run more efficiently if he did not.”

Right, so no field trips there, then. Dante can keep that honor all to himself!

“How do you guys maintain balance? I mean, people are always…y’know, coming and going, and you’re three guys—”

“Three, yes, but we’re not without our assistants nor our own abilities.” Saint Essex pauses. “How much have you seen, in terms of displays of power?”

“Do you want a full list? It’s quite a list, even though it hasn’t been that long. Voice changes, items appearing out of nowhere, portals to other planes of reality, translocation—”

“Point made, although I must admit, you seem rather…well-adjusted to all of this.”

It’s an effort not to laugh. “I’ve been enough to learn just to roll with it. And I mean, at least it’s not proof I’m cracking under the pressure of university study!”

“I…suppose.”

“Plus, my family’s always been open to the supernatural—which… Is that actually okay to say or what? Viticus made it seem like it’s frowned upon.”

My guest merely nods a little, adjusting his wireframe glasses. “Social etiquette, particularly among the higher class of the Gray City, has given certain words and phrases the air of impropriety, but that isn’t a matter with which you need concern yourself. It’s not as though you’ll be making regular trips, after all.”

Probably not. Then again, the way Viticus spoke… I’m not going to tell Saint Essex this; pretty sure he’s the kind of guy who’d greatly disapprove.

#original fiction #fiction #writing #my writing #my prose #prose fiction #Under the Van Gogh #UtVG #Saint Essex #Character: Saint Essex

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

Text

Life Story Part 53

I had been looking forward to the new Willy Wonka all summer long. I knew Johnny Depp was going to be in it, and I loved him, and I also loved the old movie with Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Sarah and I bought ourselves tickets after school one day to discover that it was quite disappointing.. It wasn't really Johnny Depp's fault entirely, though many people didn't like his performance as Willy Wonka and I didn't much care for it either – truth be told. I honestly didn't like the way it was filmed or the campy cutesy way they portrayed the children and their parents, and this has a lot to do with the fact that Tim Burton seems to have more or less lost his touch (at least in my opinion). The score was terrible and continuous. Most movie music, particularly the kind used in family films is actually kind of terrible and will kill a movie for me in the end. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the original one, and the book itself were actually quite dark in a way that the new remake failed to be. The first movie seemed symbolic of society to me, whereas the second was trying to be quirky. It wasn't that they altered the story. I understand that a new direction is creatively interesting and inevitable to any remake, but the movie itself seemed very empty. You didn't get the bleak metaphors in the second remake. You didn't get anything that compared to the colored lights playing on Gene Wilder's face as they went through the chocolate tunnel and he sang his little song.

I was also disappointed that Marilyn Manson didn't get the role of Willy Wonka. He had wanted it, but ultimately, the movie makers were too worried about making it too frightening for most viewers. Marilyn Manson would have been perfect I think. It was a movie I think that he had personally loved too much himself to mess up. And I always had loved the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as a child as well, which might have been why I cared so much and was so disappointed by the end product. Whenever I find myself sad or disappointed or lonely in life, I sometimes laugh at myself and and sing Cheer Up Charlie in my head in order to mock myself.

Dare I say, I was obsessed with Marilyn Manson. I think I have mentioned this before, however he was definitely my new number one by the time I was sixteen years old. At the time, I guess I found myself drawn to him, less for his appearance, but by how misunderstood he was and how he seemed to have mastered his message and the collected and methodically he spoke and presented his ideas to people who hated him and all the hype that came with that. I read his biography – which was really more of an autobiography – only he had mostly narrated his life I think through tape recorded conversation and had someone else write it – so technically it was a biography and that inspired me a lot. It probably influenced the language, subject matter, and the way I try to tell stories to a certain extent. While it is true, there are some times in that book more towards the end where he really went too far for me, I rather appreciated the dark honesty and combination of dark comedy and intimacy about the book altogether. He spoke honestly, and that makes most people uncomfortable. I really like uncomfortable subject matter.

There were opinions that he held about creating a world of chaos and drug abuse as some kind of lash back to the postmodern world that has made many people – such as myself if I am to be honest, that I no longer agree with at all (Honestly, he probably doesn't either – the book came out in 1998). The story was very focused on him, and his own selfishness. It wasn't a cruel form of selfishness, but a very self aware one. This is something that people don't like to see in themselves, but Marilyn Manson was all about that. He was very into being driven and moving forward – which I also admired. Some of the selfish stuff he wanted to do led him to pushing himself into some creepy situations – and those are places I honestly would never go, probably because drugs were involved. The notion that you can fix society by breaking down all rules and social structure was lame – and I even thought so in my teenage wannabe-just-like-my-idols larva stage. Also, when the singer for Jack off Jill said that his guitarist Twiggy raped her, I do believe it. Marilyn Manson didn't have anything to do with that, but when you read that book, there was a very strong sense of them breaking down social rules. And there was very little place for women – because of course there generally isn't in the music business. And now, I can honestly say, I don't like Marilyn Manson's music very much. It's okay – but not great like I once thought. I still feel like he had tapped into something very real. And the book was ultimately hilarious – with his choice of phrases and words. I think it really influenced me and it might be a small part of why I am writing my own life story as I am today. And he really showed the strange looking, average people lost in a world of consumerism and shallow beauty standard, how you could transcend that. You don't have to fit a mold. You can create their own form of beauty and become a work of art, rather than accept mediocrity. This idea really revolutionized the way I looked in the mirror everyday.

Most of the time, on the drive to and fro from Kendrick to Moscow and back again in the evening, we would listen to Mudhoney a lot. The reason we liked Mudhoney so much was because we were poor. Sarah and I never had money for decent albums, and when we bought an album, we would listen to it to death. For whatever reason, Hastings had plentiful stacks of Mudhoney cds, often for only three or four dollars a piece. Had we had more money, we would have experimented, but that wasn't there for us. Buying an album was taking a chance. Neither one of us had a job, and we were at the mercy of rare handouts from our parents. So if we spent fifteen dollars on an album that sucked, it was very disappointing. But there was a certain kind of delight in listening to Mudhoney out in the farm roads of the Pallouse Hills. The members of Mudhoney themselves were very apart of the rural north west themselves. They're music seemed relevant and very close to home.

Aside from the general music we had been listening to, the mixes that I made from Danny's computer on the weekends, Marilyn Manson and Mudhoney, I discovered Bob Dylan. Sarah's mother owned the album of Blood on the Tracks. I think lyrically, it was the best thing I had ever heard. It kind of surprised me, since it was a lot more mature than what I generally wanted to listen to. Bob Dylan's unique narration of thoughts and ideas brought my own thinking to a much higher state. Over the course of that year, even though I was fond of a lot of music, Bob Dylan rose and rose in my mind. It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) to me was like a tearing apart of everything in society and expressing it for what it was, and even though I felt this dread about my life and my own future, the growing awareness of death that waits for us behind everything we see, think, do and say, about human beings as the collective and what we have been building since we came into existence, there was this serene sense of everything would be okay. That song really built a foundation for me. There were many dark nights driving home that late fall and throughout the winters, where both Sarah and I would listen to that song in the dark winding roads in rural farm fields well off the highway. Something about the way we would listen to that, and the fact that even though we were a ways out from Moscow, you could still see the light's of the city miles away playing on the dark clouds that loomed above us. Bob Dylan introduced me to the abyss.

Sarah was still very much apart of the CKY internet forum, but she seemed to have left the business of commenting on the forum and arguing with the pointless trolls on there, since it was mostly composed of obnoxious abusive assholes who just hated women, and she had singled out a few friends over the internet that she liked to correspond with online. One of these friends was a fellow who lived over in Georgia. His name was Alex, he was two years older than Sarah and I, and he seemed rather intelligent. He played in a hardcore punk band. Even though he knew a lot of people who considered him a friend, he didn't consider many other people his friend. Sarah was maybe the first real friend he seemed to have. Tough he played in this punk band, he preferring more melodic and organized sounding classic rock/pop music like The Beatles or Paul Simon, and mostly just played in the band he was in for the experience and because his friends were into it. There were parts of the concerts where Alex would rap. He enjoyed writing, and he was far far better at expressing himself that either Sarah or I were. He had skills as an orator.

He also had a substance abuse problem with cough syrup. He took other drugs, and I think over the course of that year he ended up getting into some legal trouble. He was given a counselor, and the counselor betrayed his trust and told his parents what he had done. So there was a lot of that. And then at some point that year, even though he had straight A's and could graduate, he ended up punching one of his friends while they were doing some school project and he got kicked off and went for a GED instead. I never spoke to him. But Sarah talked to him all the time, and she would tell me these things – so by extension, I felt we were friends in an odd way.

It was Alex who got Sarah into Queens of the Stone Age and into Mark Lanegan. Half the time, I was wanting to listen to Hole, Marilyn Manson, mixed cds, and Bob Dylan, Sarah wanted to listen to Queens of the Stone Age and Mark Lanegan. Mark Lanegan, though not a household name, is a well respected singer and songwriter. He initially was in a band called Screaming Trees in the early nineties, had been a friend to Kurt Cobain, and eventually went solo, got clean off of heroin, and his music drastically became far more folk inspired. His voice is distinctly low and raspy. He's compared to Tom Waits a little bit – though they are still quite different. He is a very tall, very serious looking. I mention these details about Mark Lanegan because when Sarah found Mark Lanegan, she became crazy obsessed with him.

Queens of the Stone Age gave our trips to school and particularly back from school, this very particular sound. The album Songs For the Deaf made me feel like we were hundreds of miles away from humanity. Outside the small 1979 Honda Civic, the world was a dark place and we might have been the only two people who existed, Sarah and I – since it was usually night time by the time we got out of school later on as the fall played into the winter. Sarah would also listen to Mark Lanegan's new album at the time, Bubblegum and it's EP cousin Here Comes That Weird Chill. It's a really great record, the both of them, very blues inspired but also very indirectly – dark, bassy and minimalist and lyrically strong. Sarah was madly in love with Mark Lanegan. And we used to laugh about this -as Mark Lanegan was in his forties, and Sarah a sixteen year old girl. He became such an ingrained part of her identity that it's still very much a part of who she is.

Aside from these nights driving home, and the time we put in at school, or the time at home where we would sometimes still have fights that ended in us both crying and falling asleep, we would once a month afford to eat lunch at the China Buffet in the mall. We had so little money, and our parents didn't have much to give for us to eat out. Sarah often was the one who bought us lunch. I don't know if my father or mother can truly appreciate just how often Sarah had to use her chore money to feed the both of us. Today, I kind of look suspiciously at the China Buffet's food – excluding the added fact that I don't consume animal products anymore. It's far far far too cheap and that makes me suspicious since I know they are still churning a profit most of the time. Most of it isn't truly or strictly Chinese – more loosely Americanized Chinese inspired foods and if you want better quality Chinese/Thai/Korean/Japanese food it's better to just look up the reviews online and go to a real restaurant. In any case, it was six dollars a piece for us to eat there, and neither one of us ever even had that much to pay for food – which is kind of hard for me to believe now. Six dollars to me then is like sixty to me now.

I remember there was a weekend when Samantha, who I had not seen much since leaving Kendrick, who was still dating Adam, invited Sarah and I to do to the movies with her, a silly romantic comedy called Failure to Launch with Matthew Mcconaughey. For some reason, I didn't think I needed to pay my own way. Samantha was annoyed with me, and angrily paid for my ticket. I felt badly, in predictable fashion. In the end, I more or less remember Samantha most as someone who was always annoyed with me for my personal failings at being adultlike. After the movie was over, we were driving home, and Samantha and Adam were just ridiculous. They were fighting about nothing essentially. It's something couples do often, and I've never fully understood it. Samantha was being kind of quiet, and Adam was going 'what's wrong Sam??', and Samantha would huff and say 'Nothing....'. He would implore that something must be wrong, because she's 'being all weird'. I didn't see the weirdness personally, but whatever. She seemed to be playing like she was upset, but was hiding something from him, and he was vying to find out what that something was, trying to drive and get some strong eye contact in there. Meanwhile, Sarah and I are sheepishly in the back seat watching all this go down as the dark silhouettes of Samantha and Adam continued on and on this way.

It was like they were fake fighting. Samantha was talking in a high pitched voice. Nobody was saying anything. And then at some point one of them would accuse the other one of not loving them anymore, but of course it was said not like it was a real problem, but like a way to manipulate the other. Then they would sort of weepily banter back and forth. In the end, Adam would put on Styx's Lady in the car stereo, and they would begin making out like it had never happened. I came to the conclusion that neither one of them knew the other at all. For them, like many many people, being in a relationship and being in love is more pushing one another's buttons looking for reactions. There is a lot of power stuff going back and forth. I can't say I am one of those people or not. I never feel like I am looking to press buttons, but I probably am – I may be the worst.

On the weekends, we were at Danny's very small one bedroom house. It was very small – I cannot express that enough. My mom and Danny slept in the bedroom. David was set up in this small hallway TV room to play Danny's bad video games – like American Choppers and other biker related games that nobody really liked but Danny. Allison slept on the floor or a very small loveseat. And I slept in a recliner in the living room, but I would generally be on the computer until three or four in the morning trying to find decent songs to burn. The house was small, and it was also very muggy. Most of the time, my mother and Danny were gone. Nobody was in a good mood, but none of us fought either. I remember awkwardly asking Danny if he wanted to use his computer when he would get off after work, and he would say no, but would sort of mean yes.

What confused me, was that it was clear that we were taking up his space. We took up the televisions, we took up the computer. We probably took up the bathroom and the refrigerator. He wasn't really rude to us about it, but he didn't seem to enjoy it either. And yet, when my mother had found her own place, and was making good money as a bartender, he had demanded that she move in with him and quit her job. He didn't want her working at the bar anymore, because he didn't want her being ogled at by drunk men. So she took a job at a boy's home. It was this place that they sent mentally ill boys between the ages of fourteen and twenty two. You had to have done something criminal to be in there. It wasn't quite an insane asylum, nor was it quite juvy. It was a little bit of both. A few times while my mother was working there, she got knocked down by the boy's who were stronger than her, and beaten up a bit. It was a very rough job and the pay wasn't good, though she did seem to like it a lot.

But, as I mentioned earlier. Almost all my time was devoted to school work. By November, I was just beginning to get the hang of this school thing. I was finally becoming somewhat receptive to Mike teaching me, and I felt rather special. Most people would have thought that an alternative school education would be deluded and easier than the main public schools. Actually, the alternative school was much more challenging, and even more rewarding. Mike didn't like testing at all. He never used it except in the rare occasion where the state demanded it. Personally, he didn't like grades, though he understood that they gave an indication of how you were doing. All he really wanted you to do is learn how to think critically about ideas. And I was starting to trust Mike and Jenni a lot. I trusted them more than I had ever trusted most adults. Mike and Jenni at home had a son and a daughter. I remember their daughter's name was Sunshine. Both of them had bright smiling faces, their parents actually seemed to want a little more than to keep them fed and clothed. In fact, they didn't exist solely for their parent's benefits at all. The point of their existences was for them to become capable strong adults. They actually cared how their kids were getting on in life and how they coped with things. Mike and Jenni would pool up the money they made every school year, and they would take that money, get visas for the whole family and visit places in Europe and South America every summer. They seemed incredibly happy – living somehow in a world that I could never truly belong in. And yet, Mike obviously at the same time was able to take on a lot of philosophical issues and to face very harsh realities of humankind, and we were always there to remind him of that.

I could not help but feel a little bit jealous of their family. Not that I was crazy envious about it, but I really was beginning to care a lot about Mike and Jenni and what they thought of my own future. Dare I say it, the little rebellious satanist that I was secretly wanted their approval quite a bit. I wanted them to see great potential in me and to care about me like I was one of their own smiling happy kids. But I obviously wasn't. No matter how many books I read or how much I wrote, I was still very much a member of my own clan. Internally, I felt like a sick little creature that lingered on the outskirts of their happy home. Metaphorically, I, as the sickly thing, on a cold winter night would stare into the the household of their happy family and long to be one of them as they ate dinner or sat around a Christmas Tree (the image that comes to mind). But of course, that could never be.

Understandably of course, Mike had this wall towards his students becoming too close. And it seemed painfully unfair to me, even though it was the only way that this school could function. He broke layers and walls up in his students, but they could never really get to know him. He didn't lie to anyone exactly, just pushed students away subtly at any hint that they were getting to be that way. It was a mindfuck and it could hurt your feelings if you were vulnerable. He knew that he had a very strong affect on his students and he was afraid he would meet an especially vulnerable student one day who would either kill themselves, and break his heart a bit, or get confused about the nature of their teacher-student relationship. He also wanted us to be self sufficient. It was contradictory, but in order to try to help us to helping ourselves, he had to get inside of our minds. He knew what he was doing. Jenni and him had met in high school. They went to college together and eventually got married. They were incredibly close, and I venture to guess that while Jenni was taking psychology courses, Mike learned second hand from her and was using it on his students to retrain us. He was obsessively curious about that kind of stuff.

What I did always find strange, and what I eventually found out was that Mike and Jenni were extremely religious. Mike was very decent about not mixing his Christianity with his teaching. He taught about human truths that went to the core of the human spirit so to speak, but he did so in a way that an atheist could understand as easily as a religious person could. I respected Mike enough not to challenge him on religious grounds, but it bothered me. Mike was very much dedicated to real true debate and expressing your ideas. He wanted his students to know how to debate like pros. So I found it strange that he had decided to believe in the bible so heavily. He questioned none of it. Or at least, I really imagined that he didn't. I found out offhandedly from Jenni that both of them believed the first testament when it said that there was a time when men grew to be a thousand years old, and the world was only about six thousand years old at that. It was preposterous. Mike even played guitar in the church band.

I am quite certain that Mike converted to Christianity because of Jenni. I am not saying he didn't believe it. I think he did. But it was much more of a struggle for him than it was for her – not for reasons of wanting to sin or anything like that, but because he had to at some point shut his mind off and have faith in something without question. I knew that, because Mike tended to challenge concepts a lot. And as I was still in my first year atheist stage, I really wanted to question him. But I promised myself I wouldn't.

All the same, I learned a lot about Christianity indirectly in a way that created greater complexity for me and my schemas about what it meant to be Christian. For one thing, we often think about fundamentalist Christians as being the Pro-Trump types. They tend to vote right wing, have a mistrust for education, they tend to be either stingy and rich, or hopelessly poor. We see them in the political arena often, holding their signs against abortion, gay marriage. Mike – though I think it was a contradiction, was not against gay people. Jenni might have been, but Mike was not. If he had a problem with it, it didn't seem to create any sort of riff in his mind. I never asked him in specific detail about what he thought, but it was clear that this was a nonissue for him. He was much more privately adamant about evolution not being how we came to be what we are than he was about God hating gay people.

I once asked him about abortion. I didn't ask him because I wanted to fight, and at first I had to assure him this was not the case. What I really wanted was to ask someone who would be obviously caught in the middle – having strong ties to the liberal education system and the church. His answer was that he personally only in his own conception of the world could not imagine not wanting to have the baby. He just saw life as a blessing and human beings as being primarily good – so only good could come from a new baby in the world. But he let me know that this was just him. He was not about to say that he was the ultimate authority of what should and should not happen in the world. He felt it was a woman's place to make the decision and it was between them and their own truths. He could not possibly comprehend what everyone's situation or reality is like. And I really respected that answer. Obviously, the benefits to being in his shoes probably would have made having children not such a bad thing and he was fully willing to admit that he had a personal bias for himself that he and Jenni both agreed with. But he wasn't getting in anyone else's business.

Another interesting thing I learned from him came from the time I asked him about what he felt about the division of church and state. I knew vaguely that there were a lot of politicians who wanted to combine Christianity with government policies, and most hardcore Christians were all for it. When I asked him about it, he explained something to me that I hadn't really thought of before. Mike really didn't want religion and government to combine at all. He didn't feel like any of it had to do with being close to god or being enlightened by Jesus. And aside from opposing it on the grounds of religion having a way of corrupting our civil liberties, he actually felt that government made religion worse too. It was intrusive to his spiritual life. He didn't want government in his religion. He respected those boundaries because he felt the idea of government being mixed with his personal faith actually tampered with his relationship with god and brought it down to earthly places. I keep these conversations in mind, because even though I am not a Christian at all, I felt that his answers were well thought out and what I wish more Christians were like.

Mike also taught us about Islam and Judaism in an incredibly fair way. We spent two weeks studying Islam, reading texts – in a secular way. We watched several documentaries on the history of Islam. Mike had no problem with Muslims, and in fact had many Muslim friends who he respected. This isn't to say that Mike gave us the whole truth about Islam, but he basically gave us a much clearer view of the religion as a whole. All in all, it's equally as violent as the bible is. To a degree however, when I compared the two religions, I actually found myself gravitating towards Islam the most. I wasn't by any means dropping my atheistic views. But I could see certain elements of Islam that resonated more deeply with me. Their idea of God felt more in depth than the Christian god. I admired how they represented their idea of God through architecture. Not that I don't love a good rosary or catholic cathedral – I do. But when you are trying to conceive of something as profound as the creator of all beings alive or dead, some all knowing consciousness that lays beyond time and space itself, than the design and math that is used in Islamic architecture fits better with my idea of how one should go about thinking of it. With Christian architecture, it often feels like you are looking less to the heavens than you are to yourself.

Anyway, I am very happy that I was introduced to religion in this way. It didn't so much change my views about God, but gave me a greater appreciation for the fables and stories that resonate with people. I felt for the first time in my life, connected to people who lived thousands of years before me, and I think it grounded me in the history of my own existence, what it really means to be alive, to pursue truth for truth's sake, to actually want to make the world a better place for more than just myself, and to harness beauty. It put in motion a need to find meaning behind everything.

After the first quarter there was supposed to be a parent-teacher conference. Even though it had only been a few months, and even though I still occasionally saw my father for a rare three or four hours a week – I wanted him to come to this conference. I wanted him to see how much better I was doing in school. Given what a academic failure I had grown into being over the previous seven years, I wanted him to sort of acknowledge that I was flipping things around. He promised he would show up. But of course, he forgot. My father was desperately trying to find a way to hide the pain of Patty's death. He was online dating again, more as a distraction I suppose than a genuine need to be close to anyone. After Patty, there was a string of forty or so women he would talk to for a time. Most of these relationships never went past the telephone, and I cannot even remember them all. You could pick up a phone book and just start naming off women, and many of those names would come to mind as the name of someone my father online dated for a time.

And when he wasn't doing that, he was buying speakers and musical equipment on the internet. Rooms of our house were beginning to fill up with speakers. He became so emphatic about certain products that he would spend hours on the phone, till he eventually was talking to CEO's of these companies. And even stranger still, my bald conservative father who had accused me of being high for a few years at this point, who loved listening to conservative talk radio for five hours straight most days, decided that it was fine for he himself to hang out with the druggy crowd of teenage boys in town. It was a strange sight for me, and I didn't know what to think about it. I was mostly too busy learning in school, but I observed it from a distance and had to scratch my head.

Sarah's mother did showed up to the school for the conference that day, so I got a ride home with her and Sarah – thankfully. Carol and Sarah might have felt a little bad for me. There is something incredibly disappointing about being forgotten or stood up. I remember we went out to a Mexican restaurant afterwards that made very tasty salsa and homemade chips, and I cheered up somewhat after that.

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