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iceeckos12 · 4 years ago

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time travel snippet

little time travel au oneshot. season 5 jon travels back in time to season 1. from the perspectives of tim, martin, and sasha. 3.5k.

i dont think i need to tag anything, but please let me know otherwise.

Tim wakes up that morning, and it’s just like any other day.

Well—no, okay, that’s a bit misleading. Today is his first day working as an archival assistant, so he’s one part nervous, one part that breathless, exhilarated feeling you only get when you’re about to do something unfamiliar that may or may not redefine your life for the foreseeable future. When he says “it’s just like any other day”, he means that he wakes up, and he’s a normal person doing normal people things like eating a healthy breakfast and going to work.

(So, no. In short, he doesn’t realize that today is the day when It happens, that big, life-changing event that you think will Never Happen To You.)

He gets out of bed, stumbles into the bathroom. Washes his face of whatever residue that’d built up during the night, tries to scrape away the evidence of his nightmares, smiles big and bright at the mirror to see how successful his efforts were. He’s betrayed by the traitorous bags beneath his eyes, but that’s okay. Sasha taught him how to wield concealer as a shield whenever his past wore down his armor.

He shoots twin finger guns into his reflection, making soft pew, pew! noises that are almost too-loud in the hush of the bathroom. Then he turns on his heel and walks away, sauntering and humming along with the chorus of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5.

He gets to the Institute twenty minutes before he’s supposed to—not because he’s trying to impress his boss or whatever (he and Jon have known each other long enough that there’s no point). It’s just, Jon will probably want to make some sort of game-plan before the actual workday starts.

The poor man had been relieved to an almost comical degree when Tim had said yes, I’ll come with you to the Archives. It’s painfully obvious how out-of-his-depth Jon is with the whole “Head Archivist” thing. Tim’s honestly baffled as to why Elias had singled him out for the position in the first place, considering his lack of qualifications.

But, whatever. It’s fine! Tim and Sasha will be there to help him—although the third assistant is a bit of a problem, considering that they know absolutely nothing about him. There’s no guarantee that this Martin Blackwood won’t report inadequacies or mistakes back to Elias. If that’s the case, Tim and Sasha will have to be Jon’s safety net, which is partially why Tim is hoping to talk to Jon before anyone else gets there.

He also wants to talk to Jon because he just knows the man is probably working himself up over all of this. Maybe reassurances won’t do away with the source of anxiety entirely, but at least it’ll remind Jon that he’s not alone, and that he can count on Tim and Sasha.

As expected, when Tim gets there he can see a sliver of light pouring out from the cracked door of the Head Archivist’s office. He selects a desk and sets his bag on top of it, noting a set of strange gouges in the fake wood with a raised eyebrow, and then an internal shrug. The Institute issued laptop is near the far edge of his desk, and his collection of pictures are strategically placed so that he can see them all clearly.

His eyes linger over the image of him, his mother, and his brother. Their smiles are almost perfect replicas of each other, like someone took a mold of one of their faces and recreated it twice over.

Briefly, he closes his eyes. Then he shakes himself, releases a slow, steadying breath, and goes to check on Jon.

Tim’s not sure what he’s expecting to see when he goes into Jon’s office.

(That’s misleading too, though. He’s not sure if Jon will be visibly calm or upset, if he’ll be on his laptop, if he’ll be picking at the skin around his fingernails, as he so often does when he’s stressed. He is expecting Jon as he is and always has been—a twenty-some year old going on sixty, who wraps his gruff, grumpy demeanor about himself to protect the soft, vulnerable core he likes to pretend doesn’t exist.)

He comes up to the door, and the soft rectangle of light that emanates from beneath the door paints the tips of his shoes gold. “Jon?” he calls softly, rapping his knuckles against the frame. There’s a soft rustling noise—papers maybe? but no audible response, so he shrugs and pushes the door open. “I’m coming in.”

Tim steps inside, a quip instinctively readying itself on his tongue—but then his gaze lands on Jon, and he freezes dead in his tracks.

Even years later, he still vividly, viscerally remembers the moment he saw Danny standing on the stage underneath the Royal Opera House, the way he’d looked...not quite right. The wrongness had been subtle, so much so that it had been unnoticeable upon first glance, upon second glance. The longer Tim had looked though, the more obvious it had become, exposing all the little faults in that almost-perfect recreation of his brother.

Looking at Jon now, it’s the first and only thing he can think of. Because—yes, there’s the long, silver-streaked black hair, there’s the rich brown eyes, there’s the pair of spectacles that make him look far older than he actually is. But that’s where the similarities between the Jon he knows and this Jon end.

Jon’s always been a small man, but his feigned haughtiness makes him seem much bigger than he actually is. Except—except this Jon looks smaller somehow, his shoulders curved protectively inward, like he’s trying to present less of a target. And there’s something about his face, too—his expression is too sharp, too much—

But the worst of it is his eyes. There’s something very wrong with his eyes.

Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with Jon? He doesn’t say it out loud though, just keeps staring at Jon, a heady mix of terror and horror making any sort of reaction impossible.

After a moment Jon’s lips thin, contorted by some distant cousin of displeasure, and he rises to his feet. Tim stumbles instinctively backward, his breath escaping him in a sharp gasp that’s immediately swallowed up by the apathetic stacks of books and papers surrounding them. He’s struck by the fact that if he dies here, it’s unlikely anyone will notice; he’ll become just another set of marks gouged into the desk, willed away with an uneasy shrug.

Jon freezes, lips parting subtly, as though he were about to speak. Tim feels his breath catch in his chest, unable to shake himself out of the clouded stupor his mind has fallen into.

In the end, Jon says nothing. Just releases a long, slow breath of air and sits back down, pushing his chair close to his desk. The motion looks heavy, tired, as though it takes far more energy than it should.

“You—you should go,” Jon rasps, and there’s something off about his voice too, though Tim can’t put his finger on why. He can’t cobble together enough of a train of thought to make sense of any of this, all he can think of is that clown ripping Danny apart—

He stumbles out of Jon’s office, sits down at his desk. Stares down at the cheap, fake wood, at the gouges that have marred the otherwise pristine surface. Puts his head in his hands, and tries to will his heart to stop pounding in his chest.

-0-

Martin’s heard things about Jonathan Sims.

He’s not usually the type to pay attention or encourage gossip, as the vivid memories of his classmates tittering cruelly whenever he walked by still leaves a sour taste in his mouth.The problem with the Institute is that the employees get bored pretty easily. Though most would consider academic research into the esoteric and the paranormal to be fairly interesting, it’s still academic research. And the subject content can get to be a bit...repetitive. There’s only so many gruesome statements you can read without thinking, oh great, more meat.

So the employees gossip a lot, and while Martin usually tries to keep his head down and avoid it, it’s difficult not to overhear some things. And from what little he’s heard, he’s...a bit concerned. Rude and unsociable has frequently been mentioned, as have arrogant and unnecessarily finicky, and worst of all, a bit of a stuck-up know-it-all.

Normally he tries not to put too much stock in office gossip—he’s well aware that the grapevine tends to exaggerate one’s most undesirable traits—but if any of it is true, then he might just be in trouble. It was hard enough being a library employee when his boss wasn’t even paying attention most of the time. If Jon is as exacting as they say, it might be enough to expose the fact that Martin has no idea what the fuck he’s doing. And if that happens, then he might get fired, and he can’t get fired, he needs this job, he can barely keep up with his mum’s medical bills as it is—

Calm down, Martin tells himself firmly, pressing his hand against his sternum, as though that will be enough to quell the rising panic. It’s only your first day. Maybe he’s nice, and we’ll actually be good friends.

(With his luck? Yeah, right.)

The Institute looms in the distance, growing closer with every terrified, grudging footstep. A shiver runs up his spine at the sight of its imposing presence, a dark, ugly blot of a building against the backdrop of the iron grey clouds.

If there’s one thing he’s good at though, it’s keeping his head down and muddling through until he’s able to figure out what is actually expected of him. He can twist and fold himself into whatever role they need him to fill, as he has done so many times in the past. Not easily perhaps, but he has always managed. The alternative is untenable, after all.

So he takes a deep breath, and shoves his panic down as deep as possible. Lifts his head and forces a smile onto his face, like a good attitude will be enough to protect him from his boss’s wrath.

He could really do with a cup of tea.

Martin trudges down the stairs, giving the blank walls, the old-fashioned carpet, a dubious look as he does. The Archives themselves are as he remembers it—he’s been down here a couple of times when Gertrude made a request for something specific, but—

He pauses when he notices a man sitting at one of the desks, his face buried in his hands. His shoulders aren’t shaking and his breathing is even, so Martin doesn’t think that he’s crying? He’s just….sitting there, his stillness so perfect it’s almost inhuman.

“Hello?” Martin calls softly, cautiously, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet.

The man looks up, revealing a very handsome face and brown eyes so dark they may as well be black. His cheeks are dry but his eyes are bright and a little wild, and his mouth is pressed into a small, tight line. He doesn’t speak, just keeps watching, blinking dazedly in Martin’s direction. Martin gets the feeling that this person isn’t entirely there at the moment, like a house in which every room is lit, but there are no people inside.

He swallows and shifts nervously back and forth, trying to decide whether or not to call for some backup. Eventually he sets his bag on the floor and shuffles a bit closer. “Um—are you—is everything okay?”

The man blinks rapidly, some semblance of awareness creeping back into his gaze. He shakes his head slowly, pushes his short, gelled hair back from his head. His hands are trembling. “I’m...yeah, I’m fine. It’s—everything’s, it’s…”

But then his gaze lands on something over Martin’s shoulder, and all the color drains out of his face, his mouth shutting with a painful sounding click. Martin quickly spins around, searching for whatever could’ve scared him so much—

There’s someone standing in the doorway of Gertrude’s office.

There are so many things that one normally takes in upon first meeting another person: their hair, their skin color, all the little wrinkles and marks that give you the briefest insight into their life. Martin looks at posture first, tends to check if a person is intentionally looming, or if they’re making themself smaller.

But all Martin can see are the eyes.

There’s—two of them he thinks, but two is such an arbitrary number when the thing you’re applying it to doesn’t ascribe to human values (he’s not sure how he knows that—how does he know that—?). That horrible, terrible gaze is an unerring arrow, all-encompassing, all-consuming, piercing the deepest corners of his mind. It hurts in some distant, nebulous way he’s not even sure he comprehends—

Then he blinks, and the sheer terror, that feeling of the horrible, violating exposure of everything that he is, abruptly snuffs out. What’s left is just a person, wispy and small, his slight frame fairly drowning in a chunky, cable-knit jumper. He’s leaning against his doorframe, his eyes—two big brown ones, rich and unfathomably sad and more than that, human—drinking Martin in, his lips parted in a soundless gasp.

“Um—” Martin glances over his shoulder, and almost leaps out of his skin when a land falls heavily on his shoulder. The man who’d been sitting in the chair is standing just behind him, a strained but polite smile on his face.

“Hi Jon,” the man says, an undercurrent of a warning in his voice.

Martin glances between the two, his confusion growing with every passing moment. This is not what he was expecting when he first came into work today, and the uncertainty makes him feel strange and off-kilter.

The person in the door swallows once, twice, then straightens, one hand still gripping the doorframe like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. When he speaks, his voice is soft, tentative, a little ragged around the edges. “Tim. It’s, um...it’s good to see you.”

“Martin Blackwood, was it?” Tim continues, injecting a bit of cheer into his voice. It takes Martin a moment to realize that he’s being addressed, and he shoots Jon—this is Jonathan Sims?—an uncertain look before nodding slowly. “We’re happy to have you on the team.”

“O-Oh?” Martin squeaks, then grits his teeth and bodily forces his voice back into its normal range. “I’m—um, I’m happy to be here?”

“Good,” Tim says through a grin that looks more like a grimace, giving Martin’s shoulder a friendly pat. The look he shoots Jon is a dark, mistrustful thing. The look Jon gives him back is fragile, vulnerable, that winds the tension in Tim’s shoulders so tight it has to be painful.

Jon’s gaze flickers to Martin, just for a second—and then he disappears into his office, leaving the door cracked behind him.

Tim and Martin stand there for a second, staring at the door. Tim’s still tense as a bowstring, and his grip on Martin’s shoulder is almost uncomfortable. The air in the Archives feels stuffy and too warm, and there’s a strange prickling sensation on the back of Martin’s neck, like he’s being subjected to close scrutiny.

Then Tim sighs and lets go of Martin’s shoulder, a little of the tension bleeding out of him, and without it he looks small, deflated. He goes back to his desk and sits down, booting up his laptop without a word of explanation to Martin.

Martin stares at the back of Tim’s head for a moment, a number of questions clamoring around in his brain—what the fuck was that? What’s wrong with Jon? Why are you so obviously suspicious of him?—but the words won’t come. Breaking the silence feels...sacrilegious, somehow. Every breath of air sticks against the back of his throat.

In the end, he doesn’t say anything either, just sits at his desk and takes out his Institute-issued laptop. Stares blankly at the screen as the machine slowly, laboriously, comes to life.

-0-

Sasha’s not entirely sure how to interpret the tense atmosphere that has descended over the Archives.

The first day she’d arrived a couple of minutes before she was supposed to, prepared to follow Jon’s direction and help him adjust as best she could. (Her feelings about Jon’s promotion...didn’t matter. She didn’t like it, but it wasn’t his fault that Elias was an old-fashioned misogynist.)

But when she’d come down the stairs, Tim and the assistant she didn’t know, Martin, had been seated quietly at their desks. They’d both had the same distant, shell-shocked look on their faces, like they’d received some shattering, horrible news. Sasha had sent Tim a confused look, but he either hadn’t noticed it, or hadn’t wanted to explain.

She hadn’t even seen Jon that first day, just received a polite email asking her to start organizing the statements according to the system which he’d devised.

It’s been almost three days, and nothing has changed. Oh sure, they’ve all started organizing the statements as directed. Tim cracks jokes, Martin tiptoes around them and makes copious amounts of tea. That strange tension that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up, like the world is holding its breath in anticipation, hasn’t faded though. And while she doesn’t know Martin all that well, she knows that something’s still up with Tim. He seems more subdued than usual, keeps sending uncomfortable looks in the direction of Jon’s office—

—which hasn’t been open since that first day. She hasn’t seen Jon at all either, no matter how early she arrives or how late she stays. The only proof she has that he’s still alive is the polite email she periodically receives, detailing some specific task that he wants for them to do.

Even then, his emails are...odd. She’s not sure how she can tell, but they feel...awkward? Stilted? Like he’s only half-aware of what he’s typing, or like he’s only asking them to do things because he feels like he should, not because he has any actual goal in mind.

Normally she’d be frustrated by this, would complain bitterly to Tim about Elias passing over her for someone who obviously doesn’t properly appreciate the position they’ve been given—except that she knows Jon. He’d made a point to explain the situation to her himself, an apologetic twist tucked into the corner of his mouth. More than that, he’d asked her to follow him to the archives, saying that he wanted the two people he trusted most, her and Tim, to come with him.

He respects her too much not to take this job seriously.

The strangeness of the archives is only emphasized by Jon’s complete and utter lack of presence within it, but she doesn’t—she doesn’t buy that. She doesn’t believe that he’d just suddenly decide not to do the job he’d been so anxious to excel at.

More damning than anything is Tim’s complete, utter silence regarding Jon’s strange behavior, but whatever he knows about it, he isn’t saying anything. Martin is willing to talk, but he seems to be as lost as she is.

“I—that first day, Jon…” Martin shrugs, shooting a nervous glance toward the door leading to the archives. He’s been spending a lot of time hovering in the break room making tea, not that she can blame him. “He—I mean obviously I don’t know him very well, but he seemed...upset?”

“Upset,” Sasha repeats dubiously.

Martin lets out an exhausted sigh and turns away, waving a dismissive hand. “Look, I’m not entirely sure how to explain it. He just—okay, so, bear with me for a second, but he reminded me of this guy who used to live in my neighborhood.”

Sasha backs off, folding her arms and leaning against the counter. “Okay?”

“There was this little old couple that used to live in my neighborhood. They were—they were really sweet! The husband used to give candy to us younger kids. But um—sometimes you’d see him sitting in the rocking chair on his porch, and it was like...he wasn’t entirely there? Like, he’d just sit there for hours, rocking and staring at nothing. That’s—that’s what Jon’s expression reminded me of.”

Martin gets more animated the more he talks, Sasha notes; his hands move in broad, sweeping gestures, his expression twisting into an expression of extreme concentration. The moment he finishes he deflates again, tucking his hands into his armpits self-consciously, a hedgehog curling protectively in on itself.

“So, yeah,” he finishes eloquently.

“Huh,” Sasha says thoughtfully.

She gets back to her desk. Looks over at Tim, who’s studiously working through a box of statements, his mouth set in a neutral, concentrated frown. Takes a deep breath, letting the taste of dust and old papers sit heavy on her tongue.

Then she opens her laptop and starts looking through the catalog of cursed items that are currently being held in Artifact Storage.

(She doesn’t think that she’ll find anything, but—but just in case.)

-0-

They all get the call the next Monday morning: Elias Bouchard was found dead in his office.

#tma #iceeckos12 writes #my writing #just a little time travel au #probably wont continue this but i thought it was kinda fun

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anntoldst0ries · 4 years ago

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shinrin-yoku (Ethan x MC)

Book: Open Heart Pairing: Dr Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Dr Noelle Valentine) Word Count/Rating: ~1.7k, PG Summary: When life's difficulties hit, Noelle navigates her way through them by turning to the nature. Category: Hurt & Comfort Warnings: mentions of trauma

A/N: May is a Mental Health Awareness month and here in the UK the theme is nature. My MC, just like me, runs to the woods when things get tough. It helps her clear her head and reconnect with inner strength.

I struggle with mental health myself and it’s important for me to speak up and address the subject. There is nothing worse than shaming or discrediting someone’s difficult feelings. It’s fine not to be fine.

If you struggle alone, please don’t. My inbox will welcome you with open arms. Two heads are better than one, even if we just complain, at least we can complain together 💜

For @choicesmaychallenge2021 Day 13 - Mental Health

SHINRIN-YOKU - A Japanese term for ‘forest bathing’ or the sense of well-being you experience while in nature.

It all starts with a seed. This tiny element which, without aid, is sentenced to certain death. But give it the right soil. Give it water, sun. And it can grow. Into something big. Powerful. Scary.

She is five years old.

They live in a townhouse, a classy Victorian era building. Undistinguished, one of many merging into the background of a typical London street. The colors are also very standard, dirty white married to ivory beige, bar for the deep green door - their rebel child.

For the random passerby, it’s nothing special. But for her, the walls of a storey house encapsulate the whole world.

The garden behind the house is neat and clean, visibly well taken care of. She doesn’t remember exact details anymore, but she remembers begging her parents to go camping in the garden with her brother. The ticklish feeling of long and slim blades of grass on her tiny feet. Looking at the stars with pure awe and delight, that only the unspoiled mind of a child is capable of.

The plot of land that the house has been built on borders a beautiful forest. A wooden fence separates the two.

To her, it’s a passage to a magical world.

A world without any particular order, living its own life, unconstricted by rules. Not in the slightest does it resemble the garden on her side of the fence, where things grow according to the rules laid out by the adults.

There is a feeling inside her that she’s too young to name, to throw it in lingual context. It’s not until years later that she realized what it had been. Freedom. To grow however you please. To be what you want to be.

Robust, effuse trees tower over her, making her feel so small. As if she hasn’t already been feeling small enough, living in a world full of giants.

But they mean something else too. They bring a secret and a promise. Promise of a bigger world out there, far from the confines of the place she calls home.

The forest draws her, singing a melody that only her heart can understand. One day, she will be a part of it.

She lives the teenage dream life.

That’s what everyone says.

She doesn’t have any real problems. She’s lucky not having to worry about money. She’s got friends. Her family is great. She just needs to stop whining. Her life is perfect.

Their words, not hers.

None of them know what happens behind closed doors.

The childhood forest is a cloudy memory. Her home is now thousands of miles away, in a city with a giant red bridge, which for some bizarre reason has ‘golden’ in its name.

But the call from nature doesn’t care about distance. It can find you about anywhere. It’s different and yet the same.

Because nature beats in one rhythm and speaks in the same language, everywhere.

The morning is chilly and humid. She’s wearing a wooly coat, carelessly threw on a pair of PJs hiding underneath.

Her steps are brisk, breathing short and heartbeat elevated. Something’s bothering her blanched face.

The voice, again.

When it first appeared, she thought it had her best interest at heart. Used to give her advice and like a good friend, ream her out when she did something bad.

Over time, things took a turn for the worse.

Snarky comments. Casually mentioned wrongdoings. Feedback on what she could have done better, differently.

Noelle hoped the voice would go away on its own.

It hasn’t.

Not only did the voice not go away, but it was actually growing stronger with each passing day. Became more vocal. Judgmental. Openly hostile.

It fed on her fears.

It’s your fault - it told her - that your parents are getting divorced.

You are not good enough.

Even a lie, repeated enough times, will finally become the truth. And so it did for her, to the point where she couldn’t distinguish her own voice from the voice of the tormentor. Sounds faded into one.

Whoever said words can cut like a knife was right. But those who knew thoughts could leave scars that are much deeper, were truly wise.

The young, beautiful girl who never hurt a soul, became a hostage. A prisoner locked in the jail of her own head.

A giant tear rolled down her face. Made of all the words her heart couldn’t say.

She hugged the tree tightly and inhaled the woodsy aroma, the scent filling her lungs fully.

It’s sensuous.

Just like that, she is small again.

She’s got all that she ever wanted.

Degree from one of the best medical schools. Graduating with honors and glowing recommendations from even the strictest professors, who kept assuring her that her future in medicine is so bright it’s actually blinding. Then, a dreamy residency in one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country.

Pretty impressive, right? Even a fool could see that. But the only fool whose opinion she cared about, couldn’t. All these things were clearly not good enough for Ethan Ramsey to stay.

She wasn’t good enough for him to stay.

Not longer than a year ago he was just a concept, an ideal without a face, body and voice. To her, he was a celebrity, a hero, someone whom mortals don’t have access to.

It was preposterous to consider for even a second Dr Ramsey could actually see something in an intern.

Standing among the moss-covered trees, every fiber of her being was filled with the thought of him.

Did the Amazonian forest remind him of her, just like every forest around reminded her of him?

Just when she won the battle for her career, she lost another. Because life had to be a zero-sum game.

As painful as that would have been, she wished she had something to hold onto. A scene she could replay in her mind. An image of him walking away. Or saying goodbye.

But he left without a word.

That was the pattern. That was history repeating itself.

She took her shoes off and stepped on the soil frosted with morning dew. It’s cold and wet. It’s refreshing. She is grounding. Reconnecting with Earth.

Tunes in with the rivers of grass, towers of trees, fences of bushes.

If the trees could speak, they’d tell stories not many people would believe in.

Tales of heartbreaks. Parables of spirits.

They are all nature’s poems.

Hauntingly beautiful. Riveting. Written without a single word.

Because nature speaks its very own language that only the soul, not the mind, can understand.

Pain is ripping her apart. But it reminds her that she’s alive. And this, in itself, is a miracle.

She doesn’t know who she is anymore.

Some people call her a survivor. But it doesn’t feel like the right word. So many things in her died. So much was lost.

The attack took a lot from her. Danny. Bobby. Sense of security. Identity. Direction.

Right and wrong, good and bad, righteous and vicious. These are all just words. Someone needs to come and teach her the meaning of them anew. Draw lines, mark out frontiers. Save her from herself.

The ground is soaked. Torrential rain turned the soil into soft mud, warm and easily slipping through her fingers. She falls on her knees, praying for the ground to consume her.

Fill every part of her. Silence the internal cacophony. To sink into oblivion.

Not many people knew about the panic attacks and recurring nightmares. They’re always the same.

She’s standing in the middle of a swamp. Danny and Bobby are drowning, their arms reaching out for her. She knows she can only save one of them. She runs out of time trying to figure out how to save both. As a result, they both die. Time stands still and yet everything is spinning, moving, racing. The reality is a riot of overbright colours.

Suddenly, a ring breaks the silence. A polyphonic intruder. She looks at the screen through hooded eyes and notices the caller’s name. It’s him. He’s petrified. Worried to death. Asks her to stay where she is.

Some time later, maybe 10 minutes, maybe an hour - who knows? - he emerges from the gathering of stocky oaks.

The moment he catches the sight of her, he starts running. She notices a lab coat underneath the jacket. He’s soaking wet.

Even though he is so close, he doesn’t slow down. Crashing into her, he scoops her in his arms. Catches her in the tightest of embraces.

Asks her if she’s fine. No. Not that question again. She’s tired of people fussing over her and gets angry.

Had it not been for the attack, would he even be here? The voice asks mockingly. It doesn’t matter to her. He’s there now.

Deep baritone is gentle and full of concern. It’s not like that. It’s not his intention to fuss. He’s simply worried. Because she is the most important thing to him in the whole world. Yes, he wasted so much time. That’s why he refuses to lose even one more second.

A dam breaks within her. Eliciting a quiet sob. She clutches his shirt, holds onto him for dear life. Moments later, she’s screaming at the top of her lungs. Singing her poignant birdsong.

How is she supposed to cope? Will things ever go back to normal? What is normal anyway?

In the confines of the infamous patient room she never felt more scared in her life. But here, out in the open, she feels so safe. As if she’s had a silent agreement with nature, which vouched to protect her at all costs.

And this time, nature had an ally. Because Ethan will protect her, even if it’s the last thing he does. Holding onto each other, they stand in the nothingness.

It keeps them grounded. Connected to their roots. Turning over new leaves. Bending before they break. Growing.

They get lost. Mother Nature has a reward for those who do. They have a chance to find themselves. Over and over again.

~~~

If you made it this far - thank you & you're awesome 🥰

Tag list: @genevievemd @gryffindordaughterofathena @terrm9@starrystarrytrouble @the-pale-goddess @jamespotterthefirst @lisha1valecha @writer-ish @maurine07 @drakewalkerfantasy@iemcpbchoices @liaromancewriter @lem-20 @lucy-268 @oldminniemcg @queencarb @qrkowna @mercury84choices @lsvdw-blog @utterlyinevitable @stygianflood @udishaman @romewritingshop @romereadingshop @alina-yol-ramsey @stateofgracious @xxsugarplumfluffsxx @binny1985 @tsrookie @fayeswiftie @archxxronrookie @tinkertailorsoldierspy @schnitzelbutterfingers @wingedhairstylemusicweasel @theinvisibledreamergirl @custaroonie @irisofpurple @chasingrobbie @ethandaddyramseyx @quixoticdreamer16 @coffeeheartaddict @takemyopenheart @aworldoffandoms @potionsprefect @choicesficwriterscreations @openheartfanfics

#open heart #Ethan Ramsey x mc #choices fic writers creations #fics of the week #mental health awareness

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dekalko-mania · 4 years ago

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Things That Lurk in the Dark (Pt. 2)

Amity changed the day the portal opened, in more ways than one.

(Read part one here)

....

Vlad had resigned himself to an evening of prep work, monotonous planning and continuous meetings with Amity officials aware of their...dilemma. What he had not expected, or rather, what he had been hoping to avoid, was an interruption in the form of a teenage brat with a flair for heroics.

In the middle of what was surely an important conversation with the APPD chief of police (he was honestly only lending his partial attention), he found himself sighing at the crash of a piece of priceless furniture. Honestly, that boy had to work on his landings.

“Was that your cat, Mayor Masters?” Chief Bryans raised a brow at the stomps that followed the commotion.

Vlad huffed, internally affronted. His Maddie was much more well-mannered than that. “I’m afraid it’s a rather unwelcome visitor.”

Sure enough, his common room doors were soon slammed against the wall, revealing a fuming Phantom. Completely ignoring the other’s presence, he flew the rest of the way over to Vlad, fists trembling with barely-contained rage.

“You.”

“Wouldn’t it have been easier to go through the door? Not forgetting your powers again, are you?”

“Shut up,” Danny snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me? This whole time I thought I was losing my shit, but I was right!”

“I’m sorry, I thought you said Phantom declined to help?” Chief Bryans cut in through the middle of their stand off, eyes flickering between the two of them.

“You said what!”

Vlad scowled, eyes flashing over to the policeman. What a nuisance, he had completely forgotten he was still there. With only a subtle narrowing of the eyes, he summoned a duplicate to appear behind him, commanding the other to overshadow the man’s body and place him in a trance.

Once finished, he focused his attention back on his rival, words laced with irritation. “This is bigger than you, Daniel. Had you known, you would’ve gone in there yourself like the fool you are.”

Choosing to not say anything about his distaste of overshadowing for now, Danny scoffed. “So, what? You planned to send in innocent people when you knew the one most qualified to handle this situation was me?”

“Oh please, don’t flatter yourself so much.” Vlad stood, reaching over to a worryingly packed folder and shoving it into Danny’s arms. “Look at this, dozens of victims and you really think you couldn’t have been one of them? What would Maddie think, hm? Finding her son among the list?”

“Stop it, I know what you’re doing and I’m not buying it!” Danny dropped the folder back onto the table, already knowing its contents by heart, blaming himself for having not done anything sooner. “You manipulate people, it’s what you do. You act like you care, when all you want is credit for solving the problem without me."

Vlad scoffed, "I understand there's been a history of pranks among us, Daniel, and maybe that gave you the impression that I'm one for playground antics." He pointed over to Chief Bryan. "But something they don't know, something your own parents don't know, is that Phantom is not as free of fault as he thinks he is."

"What?" Danny's eyes flashed. "You're saying I'm involved somehow?"

"Oh no," Vlad grinned, sitting back down, an air of arrogance mixing with his anger. "I'm saying you're the cause of it. Your ectosignature reeks throughout the reserve. Whatever is inside, it's calling for you. But shame on me for wanting to keep you from entering an obvious trap."

“But I didn’t...” Danny paused, running a shaking hand through his hair. “I didn’t do anything. And none of my enemies has this much power, unless-”

“Unless it’s someone new,” Vlad interrupted. “That’s what I believe as well. And you’re mistaken to think you haven’t done anything. Think about it, when did this all begin, hm? What prompted such a drastic change to the city?”

Danny took a moment to wonder, going over the strange occurrences he had seen, when they first began. What could possibly have caused such a radical shift? When was the first time he doubted himself and his perception of reality? It was probably around his freshmen year when he noticed it, the sky having momentarily seemed to glitch one day on his way home. It could only have been for half a second, happening around the time when he had still not gotten fully accustomed to his powers. He had been gazing out the school bus window by coincidence, right around the time when...

“The portal.” He realized, breath catching in his throat. “It was the portal.”

“Exactly,” Vlad grinned. “I mean, what did you think? That ripping a hole into another dimension wouldn’t have its consequences?”

“I didn’t exactly think about that, it was an accident.” It was true. Danny never planned to open the portal himself, not at that moment. He had only wanted to explore it, to see if maybe he could point his parents in the right direction. He never thought that an experiment in his basement would cause so much grief.

“Of course you didn’t think, you’re a child. And children shouldn’t be involved in things they know nothing about.” Vlad’s tone was nothing short of condescending. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t let your nosey little self anywhere near the reserve.

You had no idea what you were doing back in college either, Danny wanted to snap back. Instead, he took his victory for what it was, knowing it was over from the minute he discovered the truth.

“Which means you know you have no choice but to let me go.”

“Unfortunately,” Vlad sighed, summoning his clone back, and waiting as Chief Bryans blinked himself back into awareness.

The officer glanced around the room, eyes falling onto Danny’s much more relaxed form. “I’m sorry, I think I zoned out for a bit. What were we talking about?”

“It seems there was a misunderstanding,” Vlad drawled. “Phantom’s hero complex is as strong as ever. He’ll be joining our raid tonight.”

....

To say that his parents were not pleased to see him was an understatement. He had arrived with Vlad and Chief Bryans, having taken the rest of the day to catch up on the plan. According to the chief, they had decided to first send his parents and smaller ghost hunters into the area, accompanied by a squad of officers armed with ectoweapons.

There was a rough map of the reserve, littered with marks detailing emergency evacuations and possible things that may go wrong. From what Danny could gather, it had been a shoot first and ask questions later approach, his least favorite tactic. Vlad himself seemed opposed to it as well, knowing from his past conniving ways that matters were made better in one’s favor with patience.

It took a bit of convincing, but Danny had managed to alter it so that he made the first attempt. If he went in and failed to resolve the problem, he would begrudgingly step back and allow them to take over. It had added pressure, but made him all the more determined to end the issue once and for all.

What he had not counted on was the opposition of anyone outside Chief Bryans, a dumb assumption now that he thought back on it. As he sat still, letting an officer fit him with a set of Fenton phones and various gadgets, he couldn’t help but to notice the scathing glares being sent his way by his mom.

Out of both Fentons, she was the most angered by his presence, refusing to place the set on him herself. “Unless it’s to study it, I’m not getting closer than I have to be.”

He had to convince himself that he was used to it, ignoring the sting he’d felt at her words.

Officer Perkins stepped back, nodding when he saw the gear was a good fit. “Alright, we weren’t counting on someone going in alone, so we’re going to need you to narrate what you see when you’re inside. That alright?”

Danny nodded, taking the opportunity to avoid his parents’ gaze. Perkins was a much more comforting presence to him, resembling how he imagined Tucker would look like when older, minus the sometimes cocky attitude.

“Are the, um, the families going to arrive? To listen in.”

“The families of the victims you mean?” At Danny’s nod, Perkins frowned. “I guess they didn’t tell you, no one remembers that they’re missing.They did, at first, that’s how we got the news. But once they’ve alerted us it’s like they forget.”

“But wouldn’t they notice if they never came home?” Danny frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. There had to have been an Amber Alert or something to remind them.”

Danny recalled that some of the victims were kids. Surely their parents would’ve noticed their disappearance, or at least been reminded of it when the officers went to update them.

“We’ve tried sending them out, hell, we’ve even tried to put up signs and post it on social media. Somehow the texts never send, or the flyers disappear. Shit’s weird.” He sighed. “They think their kid is at a sleepover, or that their wife is out visiting her mom. For some reason they forget, but we remember.”

Danny bit his lip, stewing over what Vlad had said earlier in the day.

“What would Maddie think, hm? Finding her son among the list?”

If he went in and never came out, would his family forget his disappearance too? Would Sam, Tucker, and Valerie not even realize that he was gone?

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that if I were you,” Maddie cut in, momentarily catching him off guard. “I’m sure there’s no one out here that would’ve noticed you gone anyway.”

Danny’s expression must’ve showed how painful the statement was to hear, because Officer Perkins immediately rounded on the couple.

“Is this how you talk to someone who’s trying to help?”

“Excuse me? Help?” Maddie frowned. “Ghosts don’t help because they care about people, it’s self-interest. He definitely has an ulterior motive.”

Before Perkins could intervene any further, Danny smirked, shoving aside his feelings for an undeterred facade.

“Don’t bother with them, they’re in their own world.” He met his parent’s gaze head on. “Probably wouldn’t even notice if their own kids disappeared in there.”

He knew he went too far when both Fentons had their guns pointed at him, so quick that Officer Perkins stepped back in shock. Still, he refused to budge, knowing that anything they said would hurt him more than a few shots. Somehow, that angered them even further, his dad’s glare intensifying as he stared him down.

“Listen, spook, you don’t know us as parents. So either you shut up or I’ll-”

“Geez, getting a little defensive aren’t you.” Danny released a humorless laugh. “Guess I hit a nerve.”

He leaned forward, placing his head mere inches away from their weapons.

“Tell me, did you even bother checking if they were home before coming?”

He could see the moment it dawned them that they hadn’t, his mom’s gun dropping by an inch. A sense of guilty satisfaction filled him, knowing that despite them being the threat in the situation, he had the upper hand. He would regret it later, he knew it, but somewhere along the way of becoming Phantom, it grew more difficult for him to compartmentalize his interactions with his parents.

Hard to be a good son when one second he was being held in a containment device, and the next found himself pressed tight against his mother’s side.

The tension was cut through with a loud sigh, Vlad and Chief Bryans suddenly standing at the entrance of their tent. “Officer Perkins, I left you here to control the situation, not stand there gawking.”

Embarrassment marring his features, Perkins placed himself in between the two parties. “Chief Bryans is right, we can settle this later. The truth of the matter is, Phantom’s here to help, same as you. So let’s focus on the raid for now, I’m sure your children are fine. You can call them if that’ll help.”

Danny saw the uncertainty in his parents’ eyes, worrying for a second that they would do exactly that, before seeing determination settle in his dad's gaze.

“No, it’s fine. It’s too late for them to be out anyway.” He grunted.

Danny scoffed, knowing they just didn’t want him to think he’s correct. Figures they would put their pride first. Without anything more to say, he stood, floating over to the two men.

“If that’s settled, are we ready to go?"

Vlad grinned, doing very little to hide his amusement with Danny's predicament. "We've finished the final preparations, yes. All we need is your approval and we’ll get into position.”

Danny nodded, looking over to the Fentons. “You ready?”

His parents’ scowls eased into quiet discontent, guns placed back into their holsters.

“Well then,” Vlad said, holding open the tent flap. “Lead the way.”

....

Danny had only gotten about a five minute walk into the reserve when he noticed the increase in supernatural activity. While Amity had bore many hints of it, the incidents were ones that left him second guessing himself, occurring so abruptly that they could be attributed to an overactive imagination. In there, following along the path of the main river, he struggled to find anything that wasn't out of place.

The first thing he'd noticed was the faint green glow surrounding the place, catching it even in the bits of sky he saw beyond the tree branches. It was as if someone had placed a filter over the entire area, having it resemble a darker version of Skulker's lair.

To his left and across the river, he swore he could see the occasional silhouette, figures peering at him from a safe distance. He wasn't yet sure if they were afraid or curious, but he hadn't gotten close enough to find out. Whoever they were, they weren't the missing people he was searching for. Even without the handheld radar he'd been given, his ghost sense was strong enough to tell that they were supernatural.

“Do you see anything?” Chief Bryan’s voice asked over the Fenton Phones.

Danny imagined them as they were when he’d left, squads assembled on the outskirts of the forest, while the main group of leaders were hunched over a desk of equipment in their tent. They were unable to get footage, but the verbal descriptions and data sent back from his gear was enough to maintain their attention.

He perused his environment, eyeing the various blob ghosts and unnatural bugs floating in his vicinity. “Nothing new, same as before. You?”

“Our readings are the same,” his dad’s voice responded. “Higher ectoplasmic levels than usual, but not too alarming. Can you describe the area again?”

Danny sighed, raising a finger and providing a perch for a small blob. “Other than my little ghost friend here, it’s mostly the same. There’s more trees, I guess. They’ve got these weird jags on their surface, like someone ran their nails down them. “ He shivered at the thought, looking over to the river. “The water here’s frozen over, but the temperature inside is low so it makes sense. And along the side there’s...”

Danny froze, sentence left unfinished.

“Phantom?”

He placed the small ghost on a nearby log, slowly approaching the river edge. “There’s a crack in the ice. I think it’s coming towards me.”

Sure enough, the jagged line ended directly in front of him. He debated whether he should step back, but decided not to move when he saw the fractures branching off into multiple ones. The quiet was replaced with sharp noises and the thumping of something in the water. Danny leaned down, fists raising in case he needed to blast an attacker.

The glow from his fists provided just enough light to see the appearance of a webbed hand pressing against the ice. Slowly, he moved closer, flinching when he saw a face just behind it. As if pleased that they’d been noticed, the creature pushed themselves into an area they’d be more visible, rapping their knuckles lightly on the film above them.

“There’s a girl here,” he realized. “She wants me to get her out.”

“Is it one of the victims?” Maddie asked.

“No, she looks like some kind of mermaid.” Danny placed his hand on the shadow of hers, noting a trail of bubbles escaping her lips as she giggled.

“Leave it then. We need to find the victims, get out of there.”

Ignoring her, Danny put his other hand onto the surface as well, summoning the powers from his cold core so that he could spread the fissures further. When he felt it was enough, he pushed down gently against the ice, breaking it apart so that there was a large open space available.

Slowly, a head of midnight blue hair broke through the surface, cyan face peering at him from beneath soaked bangs. She opened her mouth, once, twice, seemingly unable to utter a word, and then gave up in favor of reaching out to poke his face.

Danny remained still, confused as the girl gaped at him in awe. Once she seemed to regain her bearings, he felt her grab each of his arms, mischievous smile being his only warning before he was yanked into the river.

He struggled, shutting his mouth tightly on instinct as he was surrounded by what to anyone else would be dangerously cold levels of freezing water. Despite his attempts at breaking free, the girl’s grip was strong, and something about her kept him from going intangible. Try as he might, this was her territory, and he was weak to do anything but be dragged further down.

Be still. Trust.

Knowing he had no choice, he let himself go limp, thankful that his ghost form didn’t need to breathe. By now, he could feel the pressure that the deep water bore onto him, shoulders feeling heavy as he was forced further down. He knew it was just uncomfortable, that he would be fine, but the dark water underneath him killed any enthusiasm to go deeper.

Too much, He thought. I’m gonna be crushed.

As abruptly as he was pulled in, he felt himself skidding to a halt, a wave of apology sent in his direction.

Forgive. Mistake. Wait here.

Releasing her grip, the girl gave Danny one final meaningful squeeze on the shoulder. Deciding he wouldn’t leave, she swam down past where the glow from the forest above could illuminate, disappearing completely out of sight.

As he floated there, left completely to his own devices, Danny scoped his surroundings, thinking it strange how a river could bare such a resemblance to the bottom of the sea. From just beyond him, he could see jagged rocks lining its sides, some looking as if they had engravings made along their surface. Had he not been told to stay where he was, he would’ve loved to trace his hands along them.

What caught his attention the most though, now that he’d gained his bearings enough to notice it, were the glowing dots interspersed throughout the water. If he was on dry land, he would’ve thought they were fireflies, an abnormal amount for the season. He was so entranced, it took him a second to notice that the girl was swimming her way back up, accompanied by an older woman.

Taking in her appearance, he saw that she was much older and wore a long gown that went past the length of her legs. On her head, she had a dainty crown, circular and bearing engravings similar to those on the walls. With an expression matching the awed one the girl had worn previously, she placed her hands on either side of his face and smiled.

Halfa. He said you would come.

Someone expected me?

So it was true, there was a ghost within the reserve that wanted him there.

Yes. You will see soon. The woman reached over to the girl, pulling her forward. My daughter, I told her to wait. You arrived. She brought you to me.

Hands practically shaking with anticipation, the girl pulled a tiny stone box from within her robes and handed it to Danny. Sensing that the gesture had importance, he took it from her politely, sending a thank you in her direction. Their demeanors remained encouraging, inviting him to look inside.

When he did, he saw that there was a ring made of black obsidian to match the woman’s crown. On it was carved an image detailing symbols that resembled the shape of water and a moon. Though it wasn’t flashy as ghostly artifacts tended to be, he could feel power pulsating from within it, fingers tingling where it touched him.

For you. Our king. Our people. With you.

Unsure what to say, Danny sent them another thank you, promising to take care of it. The choice of words struck him as odd, but he figured that it was similar to how Frostbite called him Great One. It didn’t mean anything, it was simply a show of gratitude. For what, he wasn’t sure.

My daughter, can accompany you to surface.

Suddenly remembering what he had followed her for in the first place, Danny shook his head. The reserve was huge, and it would take him much longer to find the lost citizens. If anyone knew where everything was, it would be those who inhabited it.

Actually, have you seen other humans come in here recently? They never came back out.

The woman and girl exchanged a meaningful look.

They sleep. On surface, I take.

Squeezing her daughter’s shoulder, the queen bowed at Danny and made her leave. He sent her one of his own, surprised when he turned to see the girl already waiting ahead of him.

Sensing his shock, she smirked.

Catch up, King.

With all the speed he could muster underwater, Danny swam, just barely maintaining his speed beside her. As they swam, he took note of his environment, in case anything of value appeared for him to report. Thankfully, the Fenton Phones were waterproof, but they were still too low for the signal to reach.

He wasn’t looking forward to the ear full he would get when it returned.

My name, Kara.

Danny felt shame rising within him at realizing that he hadn’t even thought to ask the girl her name before. Grinning sheepishly, he let her know he liked to be called Danny.

Danny? Strange for King. King Phantom, okay?

Figuring it wouldn’t make a difference, he shrugged, again feeling put off by the royal title. Before he could ask, Kara took a sudden sharp turn upward, heading towards a patch of light in the distance. His legs would be burning after this, that he knew.

Once he broke through, just a few seconds behind, Danny blanked. “What is this?”

Ahead of him stood a giant structure resembling a Greek temple, though it was black instead of white. Along its steps were stoic skeletal guards, donning armored uniforms and staring straight at them with glowing red eyes. The white light that they’d followed came from the gardens leading up to the structure, vanishing when it got too close, as if swallowed by the building.

People inside. He waits.

As if sensing that her explanation was not comforting enough, Kara bumped gently against his shoulder.

They live. Avoid attack. Go in.

Releasing a heavy sigh, Danny pulled himself out from the water, eyeing the temple one more time, before turning to give his goodbye.

“Thank you, really. And for the gift too.”

Bowing her head, Kara smiled. Nothing to thank. Meet again.

Seeing her vanish below the surface, Danny steeled himself, floating closer as he pressed a hand to the phones. “Hello, anybody hear me?”

When he was met with static, he decided communication could wait. He had made it clear that no move would be made until he had made his attempt. And besides, something told him that this was a part of the journey he had to take alone.

Making sure that he wouldn’t be affected by deadly plants, he kept his distance from either side of him, staying directly in the middle of the path. Strangely, most of the vegetation consisted of large pomegranate trees, an unnaturally red kind that seemed to pulsate in temptation.

From past experience with Undergrowth, he’d learned to remain cautious, and kept that attitude as he approached the steps. Out of all the reactions he’d expected from the guards, having them kneel before him in unison was not one of them.

“Um, you really don’t have to do that,” He tried. “A ‘come inside’ would’ve been enough.”

Realizing it wouldn’t make any difference, he decided to float by, wary for any signs of malice. They didn’t move an inch, seeming to view him with some level of respect. The whole situation was weird, nothing going the way he prepared for. It wasn’t a level of welcome he was accustomed to with the supernatural, making him all the more apprehensive for who exactly was waiting for him.

His worry rose as he arrived at the entrance, both guards on either side opening the set of giant wooden doors for him, before taking the same position as their comrades.

“What’s going on...”

He had only a moment to calm his racing heart, doors crashing shut behind him. The room was easily shrouded in darkness, torches along the walls providing very little visibility with their misty green appearance. He couldn’t stop the shiver racing up his spine as the shadows melded into nearly physical shapes, unable to focus on any one image with the amount of anxiety that replaced his determination.

The point of no return, he thought. This is what this feels like.

His fear escalated as he quickly realized that his powers were not cooperating, light refusing to appear on the palms of his hands. Even his glow was dampened, nothing appearing to relieve him of the absolute darkness.

With nothing to help him, he couldn’t stop his breaths from coming in rapidly, his Phantom form doing little to quell his rising panic. This was a mistake, coming to this place while aware that many couldn’t escape, it was wrong.

“Shit,” he whispered, trembling fingers yanking at his hair. The pain only barely kept him cognizant, all other thoughts melding into mush. “C-calm down. You’ve faced worse. Calm down, calm down...”

“My presence tends to make humans uneasy. Though, I would expect a future king to display his fear more honorably.”

Danny’s head shot up, latching onto the voice for something to focus on. Vision still not its best, he could only make out the silhouette of a bare throne, large and gnarled in design. Everything else was a washed out black, glints of stone shining at odd intervals.

“Good, it seems purpose grounds you. Come forward.”

Clenching his hands, Danny approached the misshapen figure ahead of him, stopping just before it. Most beings he knew were protective of their possessions, to a deadly point. He was not keen on testing whichever presence was in the room.

“Sit.”

He followed the voice’s command, holding back a groan at the sheer intensity of pressure crushing his core. Here, the dread was at its highest point, despair absolutely consuming him, darkness seeming to seep into him from his very pores. He closed his eyes, knowing that the dimness of his eyelids would be nothing in comparison to what surrounded him.

He was met with a sight he had not anticipated, confusion flooding him when he found himself inside the unopened portal in his lab. Ahead were him, Tucker and Sam, frozen as they stared off inside the gaping void. Inspecting the other version of himself, he saw familiar black gloves over a white jumpsuit.

“I’m...back in time?”

“Not quite.” The deep voice echoed, detached from any particular location. “We are in a memory. Events from the day we met have been suppressed in your mind.”

“So you want me to, recreate it?”

The sound of cracking of bones and crackling electricity played in Danny’s ear, a reminder of just how painful dying could be. He remembered the soreness in his throat that lingered for days after, made due to the force of his screams. From there, that was all he remembered, skipping forward to when he woke up in his friends’ arms.

“As I said, it’s only a memory. Yours is tainted, so I decided to show you through mine. Now, close your eyes and listen. I will tell you when to open them.”

Understanding dawning on him, Danny did just that, grateful that the man was not so cruel as to force him to watch his own body seizing in midair. The feeling had been awful enough, but to see it front row would have been even worse.

“I’ve always wanted to go in here.” His own voice said, continuing off where the scene began. “Who knows what awesome, super cool things are on the other side of that portal?”

The quiet padding of feet got closer, every sound amplified within the tunnel, before getting cut off by a scuffle and a yelp. There was a click and a whirring began building, increasing and soon joined by an excruciating scream. It was the same one he heard when doing his signature wail, haunting him even after he’d survived.

Even through shut lids, he could see the green blaze, stopping only when the howl was replaced with the sound of running water and the shriek of crows. He felt a nudge on his side, a signal that he could look.

The area confirmed that the man was telling the truth, a sense of familiarity greeting him when he saw his slightly younger self standing beside an elder and a small, beat up boat. He could only tell he was older because of his hunch and wrinkled hands clutching onto a paddle. The rest of him was covered by a black cloak. From the looks of it, he was engaged in a heated discussion with past Danny.

“I feel...empty.” Danny stared at the figure with a forlorn expression, as if desperately hoping he could fix the torn up, hollow sensation in his chest.

“Of course you feel empty!” He waved in Danny’s direction, distaste tinging his voice. “My purpose is to lead the dead across this river, and your soul has not even properly moved on!”

“I don’t...” He clutched tighter onto his suit, still fuming from the accident.

“Is that Death?” Danny could not help but ask.

An amused chuckle negated his question. “No, Death was only with you at the moment of your passing. This is Charon, she brought you to him.”

“Look child, I don’t have time for explanations. I have other actually dead souls to cross.” He reached out a hand, motion more gentle than his gruff tone. “Get in, I’ll take you to the boss.”

Danny slid his hand into Charon’s, scene switching the moment he made contact.

They were standing in a throne room, this one putting the one back in Amity to shame. It resembled a darker version of Olympus, akin to the old paintings depicting it that he’d seen in class. The skeletal guards were inside this one as well, hidden along the walls in the spaces between gigantic corinthian columns.

At the very end sat a huge man, face obscured by darkness and black robes shifting as if trapping lost souls. Beneath his throne stood Danny, arms wrapped tight around his midsection, while Charon finished explaining the situation next to him.

Once done, the large man finally spoke. “You were right to bring him. He does not belong here.”

“Wait, is that you? Does that mean you’re-”

“You humans have decided to call me Hades, yes, ruler of the underworld and what not. We have met before, once, in this memory. You do not recall it, but I remember very well.” His aura communicated amusement to Danny. “How could I ever forget, a child challenging me to a fight for his life. You were lucky that half your soul was still anchored to the earth.”

“Still, I have yet to decide how to handle this situation,” Hades commented. “This is the second time this has occurred. We can’t keep sending them back.”

As if waking from a dream, Danny’s eyes suddenly filled with anger, shoulders straightening despite still being obviously disoriented. “Obviously you let me go back to Amity. You said it yourself, and I can feel it. I’m not whole, I’m stuck there!”

“And who do you think you are? Telling me what to do?” A gust of wind shoved Danny to the floor. “I should dump you in Tartarus for daring to challenge me.”

“Challenge you?” Danny forced himself back up, glare stubbornly fixed on his face. “If you want a real challenge, then I’ll-I’ll fight you!”

Danny cringed, feeling worse than when his mom sent Sam home with a mug of himself as a baby. “I really said that?”

“Yes you were quite upset at me. Reckless thing you were, but I let you return. According to the rules governing the dead, you still had half a life to live.”

In their moments of brief conversation, several events had transpired, mainly Danny’s appeal as to why he would not allow himself to die. In the end, Hades deemed it a situation too bothersome to dwell on, deciding that the child technically did not meet the criteria to be there.

“I will send you home.” Sensing Danny’s relief, he held up a hand. “But I warn you, you will be considered a halfa, an abomination to both mankind and the spirits of the dead. Abominations do not typically have happy endings.”

“What do you mean a halfa? Is something going to happen to me?”

“Not now, but just know that when you truly pass, you will never be able to come back. Either you stay and pass on as half a soul, or you become one again, and be doomed to forever wandering the earth alone.”

Their setting reverted back to Danny’s basement, the moment where he was first reborn as Phantom.

“As you can see, your choice was obvious.”

If Danny had a physical form to view this in, he would have been shaking. He’d been living his life completely unaware of his fate, worrying over the ghosts, the pressure, his home and school life without knowing that the torment would continue even after he passed.

“So this is why you brought me here?” His voice wavered. “To remind me that I’ll never find any peace?”

“Actually, I had planned to keep that fact hidden until your day arrived. I’m not as cruel as my brothers or you humans seem to believe.” His voice lowered, edging on a whisper. “There was a turn of events I had not foreseen. A change of fate perhaps only Clockwork knew of.”

Their vision began clouding with bursts of color, a tugging sensation dragging Danny’s consciousness through time and space. It was like space mountain, the ride he had forced himself to go on in his childhood, only it came to a much more sudden halt.

Clad in his father’s energy draining invention, Danny pressed against the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep. He feared he wouldn’t last, that the fight would have been in vain, were in not for a hand appearing and suddenly locking the coffin closed. When he knew it was safe enough to drop his guard, he turned to see all his enemies standing behind him in solidarity.

They had stopped Pariah Dark’s vicious reign for good.

“Although the other ghosts allied with you, you were the one that ultimately defeated Pariah Dark. You had secured your spot as next in line to be King of Ghosts. The realm between the living and the afterlife has experienced chaos for far too long, and it has finally come to an end with you.”

“Wait,” Danny balked. “So Kara and the queen...they were being serious when they called me that? But I’m just a kid! I wasn’t even given a choice!”

“You have a choice, don’t be haste. As for being a child, well...”

Scenes of Danny’s many fights played in a quick sequence, from his very early fumbles with the lunch lady, to his most recent and much cleaner fights with Freakshow and Undergrowth. He played through sleepless nights, and days where he felt like giving up, trapped in lockers by bullies, or looked at in disappointment by his parents.

It was disconcerting to know his life was under constant watch.

“I would say you’ve dealt with what’s been thrown your way pretty well for your age. The underwater kingdom has already pledged their allegiance to you, have even begun calling you king when you are still but a prince. Countless others wait to do the same.”

“You said I can choose not to be one though.” Danny returned to his previous concern. “What happens then?”

“To your life, nothing really. You live your days the same as you were,” Hades responded. “But know that as a prince you are granted a luxury you had not had before. You may choose your court. If they agree, they can spend their afterlife with you ruling the zone.”

“I won’t be stuck here alone?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“If those you decide on agree, then indeed. They will be granted a place in your keep. I must say, being King of Ghosts is a much more fulfilling endeavor than wandering on your own.”

Danny bit his lip, eyeing the scenes still going on around him. “Do I have to decide this now?”

“What a convenient question, it brings us to our next topic of importance.”

Amity Park, in its days of small town glory, grew around them. To their left was a farmers market, people dressed in attire from the 80s flitting in between each stand. Behind a stall of oranges was a couple kissing, leaning against a black motorcycle.

“I want be your girl forever, you know that Johnny?” A whisper spilled between kisses.

“Only if I can be your guy,” the boy smiled, cupping his partner’s face. “Until the end of time.”

“Is that...” Danny choked. “I didn’t know they weren’t that old. They would’ve been my teacher’s age.”

“This is the same day they passed, a motorcycle accident. You would think they would’ve been limited to one place, or completely trapped in the zone, but your home is strange.” A breeze blew across the image. “Watch.”

“Ember said this is the last chance we have to come here, grab one thing and let’s go!”

“Wait, I think I see my old guitar up there, lemme just-” Johnny’s ghostly form flew up towards a shelf, grasping onto a leather case. “I missed this thing.”

“Johnny!” Kitty tapped her foot impatiently, glancing nervously over at a whirlpool of green in the corner of the dusty attic.

“Alright, alright” He dusted himself off. “I’m comin’.”

Back in his own body, Danny gasped, sensation of being dumped in cold water shocking him awake. He was back in the reserve, sitting atop a throne in an eerie chamber. He didn’t know what to make of the final vision, except for confusion at the fact that natural portals existed in Amity long before the Fentons had interfered.

“So Amity hasn’t been normal this entire time?”

“As much as hundreds of years. The supernatural has been attracted to this area, and it has grown over the ages. It’s been a gradual process, with the boundary separating the zone and Amity growing smaller.” A pause. “But ever since that portal was built, it’s been sped up. There’s only a handful of years left until it spills over completely.”

“So this really is my fault?” Again, Vlad’s words blared mockingly in his head.

“The opposite really. Had the portal been opened without anything to stabilize it, reality would have collapsed in on itself. As it is, it had a host.” A chuckle. “You were quite the conductor.”

Danny couldn’t help the nervous laugh that escaped him at the odd interjection of a dark joke. He had to hand it to the man, he knew how to meet Danny’s humor halfway.

“To answer your final question,” He continued. “You have until the Ghost Zone melds with Amity to decide whether you shall be king. If you decide you are not the one, the crown will choose the next candidate. The King of Ghosts shall work closely with me to ensure a smooth transition of dimensions. Choose wisely, prince.”

Without a further explanation, the lights in the hallway flashed, building melting around him to reveal what the reserve must have looked like prior to Hades’ arrival. The greenery that had once been there was back to being regular oak trees, with the occasional large shrub. In the distance, he could see shapes interspersed beneath a wooden canopy, moving slowly to sit up.

As he approached, Danny realized that they were the people who had gotten lost in the reserve, looking unharmed and rather sleepy. The nearest to him gasped when she saw him standing on the very edge of their group.

“Phantom?” She wiped at a red stain on the corner of her lip, shoving another young boy next to her. “Ross, get up, it’s Phantom!”

Danny knelt down, bracing a hand on the boy’s back so that he could straighten himself out. “Hey, are you alright? Do you remember anything?”

Apparently in too much awe to speak, Ross simply stared at him, muttering a quiet “cool” under his breath. Taking the lead, the girl rolled her eyes and answered instead.

“Sorry about that, he’s a huge superhero fan. My name is Jenny by the way.” She waved at herself and then Ross. “Me and my friend snuck out here last night ‘cause we heard this place was haunted. It was pretty spooky, but all I really remember was grabbing a pomegranate from a nearby tree and knocking out.”

“Why’re you here? I mean, not like it’s a bad thing!” Ross said, panicked. “It’s just, is this like part of your lair or something?”

“Stupid, lairs are in the ghost zone,” Jenny cut in.

Unsure how to best phrase it, Danny pointed over to the other people, some of which were eyeing him warily. Raising his voice, he decided to be blunt. “I’m here because you’ve been trapped here for days. There’s a whole rescue team waiting outside for you.”

“Days?” A middle aged woman in the crowd screamed. “But I don’t even remember knocking out!”

“I do,” answered a young man. “I would wake up every once in a while, but I wouldn’t be able to touch anything. It’s like I was stuck in between something.”

Leaving them to talk among themselves for a moment, Danny reached up and tapped at the Fenton Phones. “Hello? Can anybody hear me?”

A quiet sizzle of static filled his ears, before switching to the looming voice of Officer Bryans. “Phantom, what’s going on? We were just about to go in.”

“No need,” Danny replied, eyes flickering over to the group in relief. “They’re safe, we’ll be right out.”

...

The next day, Danny sat at the table pretending that the run down his parents gave him was new information. It was all stuff he knew, from Phantom showing up at the raid unprompted to how he’d come out with the group of missing persons fifteen minutes later. It had felt much longer to him, but he supposed that time ran differently when around Hades’ influence.

At his father’s insistence that the ghost was not to be trusted, Jazz sent him a worried look. Shrugging it off, he let his father rant, knowing that his explanation of the events had sounded sketchy to both his parents.

“He said that some spook got lost and mistook the Amity Reserve as his domain,” Jack huffed, stabbing at his pile of pancakes. “I can’t believe the other officers fell for it. This whole town is going nuts over that ghost!”

“I know, honey” Maddie rubbed his back comfortingly. “But he did manage to get those people out safe so at least he did something useful. Anyway, I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you sooner kids.”

“It’s alright,” Danny smiled, glancing over at Jazz so that she knew he was really okay. “I get it, top secret. We’ve kept our fair share too.”

“Still, I like there to be trust between us,” there was a momentary furrow between her brow, quickly exchanged for a more cheerful expression. “But forget about that for now, how have you two been? I know we’ve been pretty distant.”

“I got into the summer internship I applied for!” Jazz supplied.

As he listened to his sister go into detail about her future endeavors in psychology, Danny thought back to how starkly different the previous night had been. He’d expected a battle with fists, but was met with the offer of a new path he could take altogether.

He was aware that he was the best person to deal with the chaos Amity would face during the merge. He knew the town like he knew the constellations in the sky, and with the help of his friend’s and family, he had managed to keep it out of harm’s way. Whether he was alone or not, he knew he would keep doing so as a ghost when he passed.

He leaned back, a painful tension welling in his chest as he considered a future in eternal isolation. He imagined fighting ghosts, only to return to an empty lair, and then stopped as he entertained the other option.

Danny thought of settling truces, rather than fighting. Of being in a palace surrounded by those closest to him that had decided their fate was also tied to guiding the spirits of the dead. He could picture Jazz walking struggling ghosts through their pain and helping them move on, or Sam and Tucker trekking with him to undiscovered dimensions.

As he inspected his parents’ enthusiastic responses, he could even hope that one day they would use their passion for the sciences to help unite ghosts and humans, rather than divide him.

He closed his eyes, thinking back to the visitor that decided to appear in his dream last night. A sense of calm washed over him, knowing that although he was stripped of one option, he was left with many others.

Maybe he couldn’t be an astronaut, but being King of Ghosts didn’t sound too bad either.

....

He dreamt of a farewell feast in a dark temple, ripe fruits and fresh meats placed before him on a rounded table. By his side was a broad, bearded man, extending a platter of cheeses to him with a grin. He reminded him of Clockwork, only with a much stranger mix of strictness and sly character.

“Are you still afraid of what lurks in the dark, my prince?”

“It reminds me of dying,” Danny answered, passing it along to a woman sitting on his other side. “That was what it was like, right?”

“What you experienced was only a small fraction of it. Had Charon taken you to your true destination, you would have seen. It could’ve been to see your God, or to be reborn. Maybe it would have been to an eternal nothing. Who's to say?”

“I’m guessing you know then?”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t tell me?”

“You will see one day. Why spoil the surprise? Just remember, whatever they are, your beliefs hold value. Death is a personal experience, I would know.” He winked, raising a goblet up to the other occupants. “Now, let’s celebrate to a peaceful reign.”

#Danny Phantom #danny phantom fanfiction #things that lurk in the dark #my fics #it took me a hot minute but the final part is heree

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infinitelytheheartexpands · 4 years ago

Text

Responses from the Opera Screencaps Captioning Quiz

Hello, everyone, and thank you for taking my quiz! I had SO MUCH fun reading your captions-- there were several times I literally started crying from laughing so hard at the amazingness of your work! With that in mind, the captions (which I will continue to add onto as more people take it):

(also, thank you to @dichterfuerstin for translating the German captions I got)

originally taken from: the Wiener Staatsoper’s 2020 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, featuring Regula Mühlemann (center) as Blonde, Michael Laurenz (right) as Pedrillo, and an unnamed extra (left) as the Grim Reaper

Responses:

(Backstage warm-up) “ok so someone dropped the pulse”

me and my friends watching the fire burn after doing arson

Introducing the polycule to the parents

*boom* ... did...you guys hear that too?

Ma Signor !

Knight in whinging armour gone wrong, look at how he holds the egg. Polyamory with weird knight and death.

the father, son and the holy ghost are very gay

the gays meeting for brunch, 2021, colorized

chicken lady forces death and a very flamboyantly homosexual anthropomorphized pink bird to be parents of her egg (they dont want to be)

That’s just me and my friends on our night out (before covid rip)-- closest

A Good Friday night

good omens (2019)

["the pocket guide to boy/girl/mischief" meme] who's the boy and who's the mischief though????

Papageno and Papagena take their first-born egg trick-or-treating

Angry Birds - The Musical. A pig stole an egg and the bird unites with death to take revenge.

I love my bird wife

Someone got murdered during the funky chicken dance

throuple murders child and steals sibling of said child

When you and your friends have widely different tastes in literature

angel leading twink to his rightful place (hell)

draco malfoy from a very potter musical and a death eater are very much in the wrong show

What have I gotten myself into

Mlm/wlw solidarity but I’m not telling who is who

A woman stands with a pink dipshit with an egg and a reaper.

A bird-couple makes a pact with Death, sacrificing their first-born bird-child in order to bring good luck upon their unborn bird-baby

There are three types of people on Halloween:

Uh oh, I don’t think the mother hen is very happy about this...

oh god, they’ve invented seussical. It’s too early!

gay brunch

Three little maids from school are we

guys maybe if we dress gay enough we can distract everyone from the dead flapper bee in the back

those three killed a duck for her egg and are facing the conswquences.

Duck has egg with human, shocked and upset due to biological impossibility

When you bout to make a banging omelet so you invite your fellow queers

"No mortal man could pass that egg, but heaven shall repair your rectum."

originally taken from: the Salzburg Festival’s 2007 production of Hector Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini, featuring Maija Kovalevska (left) as Teresa Balducci, Laurent Naouri (center, in chimney) as Fieramosca, and Burkhard Fritz (right) as Benvenuto Cellini

Responses:

“In this same interlude it doth befall That I, one Snout by name, present a wall; And such a wall, as I would have you think, That had in it a crannied hole or chink, Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisby, Did whisper often very secretly. This loam, this rough-cast and this stone doth show That I am that same wall; the truth is so: And this the cranny is, right and sinister, Through which the fearful lovers are to whisper.” - a midsummer night’s dream, act v scene 1

"ah yes a prime specimen. see here, right in this box is our one of a kind hob goblin that can be all yours for the low low price of your soul"

what, YOU don't have a special eavesdropping chimney window?

Hänsel und Gretel plotting against the witch

man takes a wrong turn and ends up in a chimney, catches his girlfriend cheating-- closest

when you end up third wheeling the straight couple

lady cheats on her leather jacket wearing scummy boyfriend and when he unexpectedly comes home she hides the lover in the chimney

A straight girl and her gay best friend gossip about stuff idk

Idk Shakespeare?

experimental couples therapy feat. the chimney mf from mary poppins

Area Couple Inadvertently Traps Santa-in-Training in Chimney as they Attempt Rooftop Flirting

Landlords laugh over student renter's misfortune

I never asked for this

Ay yo lil mama lemme whisper in your ear

voyeurist listens to sandy and Danny from grease

Psssst! Did you hear about Susan? You won’t believe it!

lady and the tramp meets beauty and the beast?

human trafficking

And for just $30 you too could have your own tiny brick cage!

Psst I’m wearing assless chaps under this dress

A couple tortures a man in a box.

It's all fun and games being stuck in a chimney until your greasy uncle steals your crush from right above you-- okay ngl this could actually be a great Don Pasquale concept

Taking eavesdropping to the next level

Will you two stop being lovey dovey and let me out? SUMMER LOVIN, HAPPENED SO FAST—

overhearing how people talk about you when they think they're alone puts you in the shithouse

Does he know we can see him?

dear god, i am so fucking hungry, yall please just do whatever heterosexuals do so i can go eat a popsicle

the human version of the trash man from sesame street is realizing that those two are going to fuck on his trash can

Tmw you capture an angry short dude and start trashtalking him where he can hear

Omg what if we kissed but we actually kissed the lil goblin man under us

"Remember, don't feed him after midnight"

originally taken from: the Théâtre de Capitole du Toulouse’s 2017 staging of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, featuring Leonardo Estevez (right, on fake horse) as Le Comte d’Oberthal

Responses:

“When I said we needed to drain the swamp I didn’t think there were people actually living there”

horse? what horse? no sir i dont know what horse youre referring to.

definitely don't have a napoleon complex going on

King stole La Scala‘s Lohengrin set

king breaks all his horses, has to use statue dragged by servants as transportation because he’s too kingly too walk

Emperor Söder and his subjects on a carnival procession

man on horse makes a big deal out of being on a horse

That’s not Zeffirelli because the horse is not alive

Who the fuck put a horse on the stage

isn't this that picture of napoleon on the horse

Area Count Thinks Citizens will be Intimidated by his Extremely Fake-looking Horse Statue-- closest

Everyone wants their turn on the giant plaster horse. Police are there to make sure everyone waits their turn.

Night out with the lads

Local royalty horrified at the state of his own damn kingdom

gay army fights different gay aesthetics-- hi author how does it feel to be the funniest fucking person on this quiz

Well at least I LOOK badass

ceasar if he hadn't gotten stabbed (colourised)

some soldiers jumped out of my kindergarten fairytale collection book to burn the don carlos flemish deputies at the stake

It’s just a model

Is that how you feel pulling up in your Honda Civic, Madge?

Someone rides a horse statue in public.

Just a normal party with the bros.

what is this, some kind of crossover episode?

Terribly sorry for all the fuss, it’s just, that is, my horse is afraid of neck ruffles. I’ve tried to talk to him about it, but he’s—whoaaa there—he said he was a french courtier in a past life and he’s allergic to English fashion

Horse seller, listen to me! I am riding into battle. I need your strongest horse. - We have horses at home. - The horses at home:

All hail Incitatus the king

we are not ripping off shakespeare’s henry viii. what the fuck. this is about lenny xi you uncultured swine, go drown in a pit of your own farts

oh god is that hamilton

Guy Removed From Art Museum For Sitting On Statue, more at eleven

Gay <3

Officer: This horse... is a virgin! Crowd: *cheers*

originally taken from: the Parma Verdi Festival’s 2017 staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Stiffelio, featuring Maria Katzarava (left) as Lina and Luciano Ganci (right) as Stiffelio

Responses:

That One kid in class

its a mEntAL BreAkDowN *final countdown but kazoo*

*record scratch* yeah, that's me. you're probably wondering how I got here-- closest

Dad keeps monologuing, teenager is done

left: all of my concerned friends, right: my emo ass having a very public mental breakdown

the demons in the corner of my room when im just trying to sleep

lady gets mansplained to (do i need to say more, we've all been there)

It’s probably an area baritone telling off an area soprano-- sorry; it’s a tenor. soprano is right though.

That was a fake horse in the last photo right?

child comes out as gay to father at a particularly bad time

dissociation solves everything

I can't believe it's not butter

Honey we talked about this

My sleep paralysis demon is Crowley from supernatural

child has nightmare of boring job

When you start dating a singer but he won’t stop practicing at night

just an average day in a hetero marriage

what do i do my wife's having period cramps again

Stop having an existential crisis. It’s time to sing!

“No son of mine will kin Gomez Addams under MY roof”

Crowley stares into space while a teen has post nut clarity.

When he wont stop reciting jordan peterson monologues!!

Do you realize how effed you are?

Ugh, not this lecture again! Dad’s Practicing For His Experimental Indie Band Again

asking your parents for help with your own personal situation and them just ranting off about what they went through instead of helping in any way

Will he shut up already!

no one tell him he’s yelling in the wrong direction, no one tell him plnsbdjddhdj

this kid is tired of his dad listening to rush limbaugh (a man who claimed to be pro life but died anyway)

Me internally vs externally

Daddy issues

originally taken from: the Grand Théâtre de Genève’s 2020 staging of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, featuring several chorus members

Responses:

It’s the deadly eye Of Poogley-pie. Look away, look away, As you walk by, ‘Cause whoever looks right at it Surely will die. It’s a good thing you didn’t … You did? … Good-bye. - shel Silverstein

why the fuckith? my good sir, i beg of you to put your pants back on

I hate this itchy hat

Titanic Extras hear that they have to do extra hours

people waiting to board the titanic watch someone fall off the plank

pov: you’re a time traveler

guy in the flatcap is embarrassed by patriotism and pathos

No idea. For some reason Le Marseillaise comes to mind

Is this from Harry Potter?

disneyland main street usa workers on strike

local tries to hide behind Newsies cap to avoid unpleasant but inevitable conversations. meanwhile, some very fashionable ladies look on.

"Thank fuck, 2020 was just a dream after all"

“We gather here today because this bitch got exactly what she deserved” “heaven!” “Stfu Stephanie she’s going to hell and we all know it”-- not quite but this basically happens later on in the opera (and act) so yeah (except the person in question very much Did Not Deserve It)

dc movie filter on bridgerton

america?

looks like my history teacher paused the prohibition documentary again

Who still wears page boy hats bro?

Coming out to a room of people who Already Knew That

Bitches are relieved at some party.

Several drunk people exiting getting off the subway attempting to seem sober and rational but realizing they have somehow lost all of their possessions

How tf do I act natural in this situation-- closest

“do you think any of them noticed that I don’t know the pledge of allegiance”

It's too fucking hot outside for this outfit

when hyyh yoonkook ending just hits different

pedestrians watch in horror as the triangle shirtwaist factory burns and the workers throw themselves out of the windows from a dozen stories up

Starting the pledge of allegiance be like

He's having a heart attack oh no oh god oh fuck

originally taken from: if I remember correctly, the Semperoper Dresden’s 2018 semi-staging of Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus, with Jonas Kaufmann as Gabriel von Eisenstein

Responses:

“William Shakespeare wrote: "To thine own self be true And it must follow, as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man" I believe this wise statement best applies to a woman A blonde woman Over the past three years she taught me And showed us all That being true to yourself never goes out of style Ladies and gentlemen Our valedictorian: Elle Woods!” - legally blonde the musical

eat ass, suck a dick, and sell drugs

woooooorrrrd

Finally Jonas has graduated! It’s about time, considering he’s an international star.

what my professors think they look like

Prof. Dr. Dr. When someone tells him there are more than two genders

'and since you've now graduated high school, you'll be entering college etc. blablabla' .........meanwhile, there's a whole row of graduates daring each other to chug the cheap vodka one of them has brought in gallons (yes that happened at my graduation, lol)

Jonas darling baby <3-- can’t argue with that

I just realized I have no idea what the actual fuck happens in an opera

ok this one is just what jonas kaufmann always wears you can't fool me.

"as valedictorian i will share with you the importance of loving the floor"

"Yes, mother, my art degree will make me money!"

Graduation speakers are out, singers are in

Senior year takes a new meaninbg

mansplainer professor explains the concept of feminism to women

Your Prof when you finally turn in that missing assignment be like

younger boris johnson (derogatory)

jonas kaufmann retires from opera and takes up motivational speaking

What a fine graduation evening we’re having today

-70 points for slytherin you all have no swag

A man with a college hat sings.

An obviously greying actor trying to play a university student in a low-budget porn parody

How it feels to graduate high school after being held back for years

East High is a place where teachers encouraged us to break the status quo and define ourselves as we choose. Where a jock can cook up a mean crème brûlée, and a brainiac can break it down on the dance floor-

I may not have been "cool" in high school, but in ten years you will all be working for me!

I finally got my GED!

that one guy in ur intro to cultural anthropology class who mansplains to the professor somehow fucking graduated

he;s just graduating and taking his speech too serously idk

Graduation speeches with that one dude who got held back 3 times

Smrt

originally taken from: the Metropolitan Opera’s 2011 staging of Gioachino Rossini’s Le Comte Ory with Joyce DiDonato (left) as Isolier, Diana Damrau (center) as Countess Adèle, and Juan Diego Florez (right) as Le Comte Ory (disguised as a hermit)

Responses:

There is something very [disturbing grunts] About polyamorous couples - polyamorous, Chris Fleming

jinkies

femme fatale (including to herself)

I’ll have a threesome soon !

Hot guy walks by, everyone swoons.

thirdwheeling friend does not realize the other two are having sex

When your girlfriend had „just two beers“ again

jesus is exasperated about having to drag the two ladies towards doing what he needs them to do instead of purple dramatically declaring suicidal intent over the smallest trivial matters and red being equally dramatic about declaring that it's not the way! stay alive! i love you!!

The throuple is thriving

Get off the milf

orgy

my last three braincells because im a horny slut

countess receives too much love and is confused on how to react

Rasputin's lesser known romp with a much older czarina of russia

Woman's soul leaves body

Jesus and co. are worried after another woman gets pregnant without having sex

bisexual looks at photos of celebrity couples

When you go to the party to socialize with new people but your weirdo friend group starts getting clingy

Jesus cumming

one of those weird church christmas pageants but everybody's drunk

What have I done

Hozier??????????

Jesus assfucks some purple lady being hugged.

This time, the chick IS the magnet

An affair/threesome gone awry (2019 colorized)

What do you mean they canceled GLOW?

“I TOLD you it was cashmere!”

Are you wearing the - - The Gucci dress? Yes I am.

It's not what it looks like!

jesus is fucking that one cheerleader who grew up to be a suburban mom with one (1) super cool dress she stole from her kid who is desperately hugging her middle begging for it back because the spring fling is coming up and jason might actually make eye contact with her for more than three seconds.

jesus and mary magdaline and some other bitch

I’m at a bar and these drunk girls are flirting with me, do I lOOK GAY?!

Shrek 5, jesus's return

c. 2025 First attempt of an Officer and his Wife with a Handmaiden (colourized)

just about all of these are close lol

originally taken from: the Bolshoi Theater’s 1993 staging of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orléans, featuring Nina Rautio (left) as Joan of Arc and Vyacheslav Pochapsky (right) as Thibaut d’Arc

Responses:

Don’t look, I’m still pooping

yall, the audacity of this man. he fuckin talked to me

*i can't even tell you how wrong you are* *it would be insulting to ME*-- closest

Cospeto!

„No I’m not talking to you, you keep cracking bad jokes!“ - „But I got another!“

when you’re mad at him but he says he’ll buy you food if you cheer up

When I’m wallowing in self-pity but my friends won’t comfort me

right: wanna fuck ;) left: yeah, fuck OFF lmao

Her face is screaming “don’t tell me what to do”

Yeah I got nothing

gay man tries to hit on a lesbian bc he thinks she's a twink. she's not amused but she's watching this happen anyway

me tired of MET's bullshit and them organising a Netrebko, known blackface apologist, a recital during Black History Month. (sorry im still fucking salty lol)

"stop smiling at me like that I'm trying to pout over here"

"I got fleas, you got fleas... wanna fuck?"

I have the best idea!

Haha nooooo don’t hit me with that bat you’re so sexxyy

lesbian is bothered by dilf

Me trying to flirt

if call me by your name was hetero and set in america

how many more dad jokes can i take before i explode

So. You’ve gotten yourself in a little pickle again.

What if we fought in the Russian revolution together ✨???????... unless??

Two people flirt in a poor place of town/

"If you ask me what I've got under this dirty, shapeless tunic one more time I swear to god I will kick your rotting teeth in"

You look like ur gonna kill me but ok

Really? You again?

Okay, I’ve been sitting here for 20 minutes, do you think it’s safe to—oh god, he’s still there.

Have you seen Godot?

she is tired of everyone’s shit. she has done so many derivatives it physically pains her to see a variable. dont test her. ur icarus rn.

idk pick better pictures-- I HAVE DIED THE SHEER AUDACITY AND HUBRIS I LOVE THIS

200% done with your crap

Homeless man has fucking legs of steel n is gonna show off his Russian dance moves

originally taken from: the Théâtre de Capitole du Toulouse’s 2019 staging of Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-bleue, featuring Sophie Koch (right) as Ariane and I don’t remember who the person on the left is rip me

Responses:

The knight who wore this into battle sure was swaggy

dear god its hiddeous

Capitalism

Knight in shining armour gone even more wrong.

ghost contemplates the safety of spiky motorcycle helmet

„Stop! He feels bullied!“

'this is my newest take for jesus's crucifixion crown ...... what do you mean they already put him up'

That’s probably a really expensive magic helmet idk. IDK-- closest

Omg I love the adventure zone!

minesweeper (windows xp)

"Okay whatever you do don't touch the shiny spiky ball" "It's so shiny I wanna touch it"

Taking down the trash way too late

IT'S NOT A PHASE MOM

Darth Vader got stuck in the freezer.... again. Leia isn’t happy

Star Wars 2030

“And here is the very latest in motorcycle helmet trends” “Look, I only came to the mall for a pair of socks “

futuristic kkk

long-suffering jewelry store attendant really wants to retire

Put it down put it down put it down

“Hmm no you should see a doctor about that”

A weird ass crown is presented

The creation of sars-cov-2: an experimental Eurotrance nightclub art piece gone horribly wrong

How it feels to want something that u cant have

AND WE WILL CALL IT—SPIKE MAN actually do you think that’s too obvious?? Because of the—yeah, because of the spikes?? See, that’s what I’m worried about. I want it to be SCARY

I know it's risky but... lube me up

use the force luke.

that is a weird fleshlight

When you get an ugly gift and need to find a way to get rid of it, so your family member/friend offers to smash it

Touch the orb

originally taken from: the Opera Vlaanderen’s 2019 staging of Fromental Halévy’s La Juive, with Nicole Chevalier (left, with bottle) as Princess Eudoxie, Enea Scala (center, under table) as Prince Léopold, and Roy Cornelius Smith (right) as Éléazar

Responses:

When no one comes to your birthday party :(

fantastic, day 487 of mischief and they have yet to find my masterful hiding spot

i really wonder who he thinks he's playing footsie with

Marriage crisis. Reason sits under the table-- closest but not in the way you think (after all, the man under the table IS a tenor).

the last supper afterparty after jesus left

When you order the last supper on wish

espionage at the Politischer Rosenmontag

Probably the wrong opera but is that Leporello under the table

Now THIS is a Good Friday night

this was every birthday party i went to between the ages of 5 and 11

that awkward moment when you drop your fork under the table but when you re-emerge everyone else has left except one drunk lady and the guy trying to deal with her

After the last supper

Tfw you arrive to the dinner party too early and have to hide until a more fashionable hour

When the cishets aren’t home

waiter hides from customers

Nobody: My dog every time I’m eating:

what's left of the homies Jesus had dinner with

university chem lab experiment gone terribly wrong

I’ve been under the table FOR 30 MINUTES

Set your friends up by tossing them off under the table, they’ll think it’s each other n fall in luv

Someone hids under a table

"You're about to see an surreptitious-under-the-table-dick-sucking master at work"

5 yr old me trying to eat the desert under the table without my parents finding out be like:

They never invite me to their parties!

Just another girl’s night in

Oops! Didn’t notice you the table.

dionysus - bts (2019, colorized)

just a normal episode of eric andre (eric is the one under the table)

Just a normal day with the boys

Thievery

originally taken from: the Théâtre de Capitole du Toulouse’s 2017 staging of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Le prophète, featuring Kate Aldrich (left, surrounded by women in white) as Fidès and John Osborn (center, looking like a Jesus doppelganger) as Jean de Leyde

Responses:

Hold up, is that Eggman above Jesus?

holy disco

Looks like Tannhäuser. Our lord and saviour Richard Wagner. Now I need to be saved from that.

catholicism

me defending pineapple on pizza (THANK YOU)

jesus but hes about to be abducted by the alien ufo above him

Emmmmmmm Heaven? Idk

Lord of the rings?

ewww christianity gross

"behold, I am Important"

"Seriously?? It's not ACTUALLY pyjama day? Fuck you guys!"

Jesus at the Disco

Jesus Finds The Molerat People Who Live Under Bethlehem

disco is heaven

Want to join my new religion?

the kkk

church christmas pageant where everyone's sober but it's based on the director's fever dream

Am I the only one who sees the giant demon? Just me? Okay...

“Oh god I think I’m starting my period”

A party is held with a priest in the middle

"Let's get this secret Vatican sex party rolling!"

The new avengers endgame set is looking great!!

You know, guys, I try not to be a bother but...I can’t help but feel like I missed a dress code memo for this wedding??? It’s cocktail, right??”

Jesus visits Hogwarts

I must really stink if no one will even come close to me

the extra ass funeral i DESERVE

star wars life day

A cult at it’s best-- closest

Shrek 5, Jesus is still there I guess

originally taken from: the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden’s 2013 staging of Giuseppe Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes, featuring Bryan Hymel (left, standing) as Henri, Lianna Haroutounian (center, kneeling in the black gown) as Duchess Hélène, and Erwin Schrott (kneeling to her right) as Jean Procida

Responses:

When the director’s like “great rehearsal guys, just a few notes before I let you go” but it’s already 9:13 and your mom’s waiting in the parking lot

loyalist of subjects

bow before your queen

They forgot to take down the stage boxes after the Vienna opera ball but the show must go on.

somebody forgot to book chairs for this funeral

Me sharing God’s (Hayley koyoko) word on the discord server

mass execution bc the oboe solo sucked ass-- closest

That’s too many black suits I can’t see shit

I can’t even tell what’s going on here

8th grade school assembly about how it's uncool to shit on the walls at school

let's all get fancy so we can go to the opera and sit on the stage (idk this one's hard lol)

"Yes i am a time traveller, now don't freak out"

Tfw you forget to pay your lighting bills

White guys make decisions that will benefit them and screw someone that’s not a white guy over-- OUCH but that is too real (although not really in context here)

dead man gives speech at his own funeral

brotus and the boys ??? last meeting before the stabbing

high society social function ends in mass murder-- right opera, wrong scene

Someone walks into the talent show stage with a dog

Black-dressed bitches worship a man.

Worst school assembly of all time

POV:You're the window in the classroom and someone said "its snowing"

When the conductor shows up fashionably late to the orchestra concert

That's what you get for choosing the cheapest ticket option, get back in the mud where you belong

theyre just trying to jump into a grave at a funeral leabe them alone this is normal

oh my god he really whipped his dick out in front of everyone, this is just like in 1776 guys, except some women are actually in the room this time,

A funeral, stop wearing so much black

I want to slap their bald heads like rice

originally taken from: the Teatro Real Madrid’s 2018 staging of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, featuring Roberto Tagliavini (right) as Raimondo

Responses:

Crowd “haha!! Looks like someone missed the all-black memo!! Now it’s laugh-in-your-face time! / Guy on the floor (whispering to guy against wall): go, save yourself! I’ll hold them off...”

if i leave now i wont be a witness and can tell the police i had no idea

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Guy in the back pretends to help but is to far away to even know what’s going on.

priest walks in on beginning of an orgy, contemplated joining but is too scared-

when someone brings up capitalism but you’re just trying to play minecraft

lol lets trample this guy while the judge isnt looking

Again. Too many black costumes

Loved this Dostoevsky novel

i would know if opera directors were more creative with clothing choices ngl

me on parties lol

"imma just sneak out of here while everyone else is distracted"

"Where did he get this flooring!? Amazing!"

Everyone act normal!

The tell tale heart but they got REALLY drunk

man tposes to ward off vampires after being caught undercover

boys ???? night

the priest really shouldn't have visited the insane asylum-- closest

He’s FINE everyone’s been hit by a car before

Something happens in a room.

Perks of being a wallflower

There's always that one person in the fight whos trying not to get involved when they really wanna

Oh good, they’re all posing for a Rembrandt painting, I can just sneeeeaaak out the back here...

The gamer livestreaming Resident Evil + everyone watching the stream ? waiting for him to open the door just knowing it will trigger a chase scene

Quick!

the guy t posing in the back is regretting his every decision.-- also accurate

the us senate jumps ted cruz, some other wack ass gop senator is trying to sneak away

...I spoke too soon, however this is a James Bond mission

Queers help fellow queer do math but it's a struggle

#opera #opera tag #results #screencaps #captions #caption #caption this #caption contest #this seems to have gone over well and I am Pleased

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datawyrms · 5 years ago

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Dannymay2020 Day 31: Free Day (ghost sword fight lets go)

It was for science, a good cause. His life would be so much better if he didn’t have to hear his parents gleefully discuss ripping apart some mindless ectoplasmic scum molecule by molecule. Right now though, he was remembering the other reason he flinched in horror when having to take his parents anywhere. Complete embarrassment. One extra downside to ghost powers: knowing you actually can just have the ground swallow you up in shame, but knowing you really, really shouldn’t. When your dad is sitting with sodas strapped to his head and waving a foam finger with your friend’s name on it, it got very tempting.

He’d almost prefer dealing with an ecto gun. “Dad, you’re actually going to pay attention, right?”

“Course I will Danny-boy! That goth friend of yours will kick that ghost right back to its own dimension, and I’ll be watching.”

The half ghost groaned, crossing his arms. “Dad.”

“And totally see if it’s actually a fight with rules. I did listen, son! It’s just good to see young people taking up ghost hunting!”

“This isn’t ghost hunting!”

“Right. Your friend is just going to clobber a ghost with a sword. For Science!”

Well he wasn’t wrong exactly, but it wasn’t helping him not regret every second of this stupid plan. “It’s more Sam’s doing the ghost a favour, and Sam’s doing me a favour by letting us watch. Sooo don’t go calling the ghost scum or anything. Please.”

“Hmmhm. I did read your notes son. You think I’d come with no weapons if I thought your observations were shoddy?” he clapped the boy on the back, who had to struggle to not fall over. “Still gotta root for your friend kiddo!”

Yes. Yes he did, actually. Yet asking his dad to maybe be a little less enthusiastic was like asking the sun to maybe be a little less bright. Pointless, and possibly amusing to anyone overhearing you. “She manages without a cheering section most of the time,” he felt the need to point out before heading down the hill to check in with Sam.

“I don’t know what I expected. Not that, that’s for sure.”

“Tell me about it. I didn’t think he’d do anything but scowl from the hill because he’s worried about a dastardly ghost. Sorry.” he rubbed the back of his neck, eyes flicking between his friend and the bright orange blight on the hillside.

“Nah. Arlas will probably get a kick out of it anyway, she likes having an audience,” Sam shrugged, fiddling with the lightweight wooden sword. “I have a few new tricks. Who knew Star of all people would like fencing?”

“Did she swear you to secrecy?”

“Bought my silence by being a pretty good practice partner,” her grin faded somewhat “Guess I’ve been buying into their ‘popular’ shtick too. She’s not that bad.”

“Then I’ll pretend you didn’t tell me. You don’t think she’ll try and talk to Dad, right? That could get ugly real quick.”

“She might. She knows to keep the whole met in the ghost zone thing quiet, but I can’t promise much else,”

“Well I can’t promise he won’t call her putrid protoplasm so we’re totally doomed.”

“Maybe we can make it sound like good natured ribbing?”

“With what ribs?” Danny smirked in spite of himself

“Oh shut up you. Go worry about not turning invisible trying to hide from your dad or something. I’ve got this.”

He nodded, backing off to head back to his expected spot. He wasn’t meant to know the ghost well, after all. He did notice the ghost showing up before anyone else, but forced himself to act oblivious.

“Oh, there’s the spook! You mentioned the heavy leg armor, these ones can’t do the leg shapeshifting thing, right?”

Danny blinked. He’d actually read and paid attention to all of it? “Yeah, that’s right. It can be pretty heavy since they don’t have to walk much with the whole flying thing, apparently.” his eyes flicked to his Dad’s face, trying to figure out how the man felt about Sam and this ghost greeting one another in friendly terms. He didn’t look angry, so maybe it was a good sign?

“First to three hits is what you said, right?”

Man this felt weird. Answering things about ghosts without constantly worrying he’d be called a ghost for it. “Sam’s pretty sure five would take too long. Either because she gets tired out, or a ghost hunter barging in.” Something he had almost done three times, but he couldn’t mention that bit.

Jack kept his eyes fixed on the two, leaning forward even as he slurped from the ridiculous soda contraption. “That’s how she wins, right son?” he pointed as Sam blocked a swing and danced backwards, forcing the knight to give chase. “She outruns em and can go for smaller openings.”

“How did yo-yeah. That’s usually how, since she can’t just fly after her…” How could he pick up on that and not his son literally falling through things for a month?

Arlas looked as if she might have caught on to Sam’s usual plan as well, backing off instead of pursuing after another failed clash. He honestly had zero idea what to do in that situation that wasn’t ‘shoot ecto blast’, but his friend seemed to have a decent idea, feigning a left swing before jabbing forward at a much greater speed.

“Ha! Lookit that, already winning!”

“You’ll distract her if you cheer louder.”

“Nah, your little friends are tough!”

He did seem to be right, the boisterous cheering when Sam had the upper hand not earning as much as a glance from the fight. Sam did shoot Danny a look at the boo his Dad made when Arlas managed to turn a block into a strike Sam couldn’t defend against in time, and he could only shrug. Hopefully the knight wasn’t too annoyed at the blatant favoritism. Or maybe she expected it, being a visitor and all.

Still, making it through the combat without having to stop his Dad from trying to capture or hurt the ghost was pretty good. Even if it was still really weird to have him just watch. He personally didn’t even need to watch the fight, watching Jack was more than enough indication on how things were going. Okay, maybe he was a bit paranoid, watching just in case he had to do some split second overshadowing. Moreso now that the ghost apparently wanted to say hello to the watching human, to his complete dismay.

“Oh, so it is a family thing! What interesting armor.” Arlas said, looking at the bright orange jumpsuit.

Jack did seem a little surprised at the possible complement, hiding it with a nod. “Always need to be prepared!”

Danny manared to peek out from behind his fingers. Dad hadn’t threatened her. That was progress. That was good! Him possibly wondering why she thought jumpsuits were a family thing was not good! Sam’s advice of remembering not to turn invisible suddenly seemed very useful.

“Still I hope it was a good show. Sir Manson is still a bit too fast for me, but I’ll figure out a way around that soon, you’ll see.”

“You could just lose the armor, you’re way better at planning than I am.” Sam pointed out, earning a laugh from the ghost.

“If I plan to work in it, I must be able to beat you in it! The extra preparation can only be a good thing. That, and I can use the same trick on the others if they get overconfident.”

“So you consider being a knight as a job? You could do something else if you got bored of the sword swinging gig?” Jack asked, hand on his chin as he watched the floating knight.

“Of course! There are plenty of things to do back home, but who wouldn’t want to help protect the Queen? It’s not like I cannot retire when I no longer wish to do it.” she paused, looking up at the sky as if searching for an example. “I suppose you do not really have proper communities of ghosts over here, just the stronger sorts or the occasional animal?”

“Nope. We just get the town attacking beasties”

“Ah, well who doesn’t? Troublemakers will be troublemakers.” she shrugged easily, apparently not considering herself a ‘beastie’.

Jack considered the answer, the loud slurping sound rather at odds with the pensive look on his face. Surely he didn’t think this ghost would make up an entire fake backstory, or be perfectly fine with losing to a human in a fair fight while being ‘mindless’. “So the Fentons are known over in your world then?”

“Well I wouldn’t say unknown. The outfits are pretty memorable! Yours more than your son’s. He is your son, I think. That’s the right term?”

Of course she had to bring up his jumpsuit. That he never wore. Because it was on his ghost form. Sam’s wince in sympathy did not help.

“See Danno, even the ghosts think you need more colour! Even Jazz’s is blue, maybe we should get you an orange one.”

“Maybe. Mine’s fine, thanks.” he managed to speak, hoping he didn’t sound too much like he’d been internally choking.

Sam took up damage control before her friend managed to be more suspicious than a wolf in a sheep pen. “Well, I’ve got stuff to do, and Arlas does too. See ya Mr. Fenton.”

The ghost did seem a little put out to not continue to chat, but took Sam’s lead, turning invisible before making her way back home.

“Not even going to try and scare anyone while she’s here huh? Interesting.” Jack commented. “Certainly a lot to think about kiddo! Our little researcher,” he ruffled Danny’s hair, earning a grunt from his son. “You think you might be able to arrange talking to some of these other ‘non-violent’ ghosts?”

“Oh. Yeah. Probably? Not right away, but sure.”

“Great! I want to see for myself if the stories line up. If they do, then we’ll need to figure out why only the blobs and animals showed up before the portal.” he got to his feet, apparently wanting to go write things down in the lab right away.

“Because they were the only ones dumb enough to leave the ghost zone without a portal to go home with.” Danny muttered “The smart ones wouldn’t risk it,”

“Right, you scrawled that on the back of your folder. Which ghost told you that again?”

In truth? Frostbite. Yet he didn’t have a way to explain that. “Phantom.”

“Well you can’t use yourself as a primary source son, that’d be considered speculation.”

Danny could only stare. Whoops.

#dannymay2020 #Danny Phantom #Jack Fenton #sam manson #my stuff #i think the burnout got me #today was hard #even tho i kinda knew what i wanted to do #so the fight is lameee #oh well #I DID IT 31 DAYS WOO #...now what am i gonna do :v

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muldertxf · 8 years ago

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Dark Fear, Chapter 1

A case file fic. Mulder and Scully investigate a couple's unique encounter with a spooky black-eyed being in Nevada. Set during season 5.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Bright pink neon bounced excitedly off the face of Dan Lemmings. Propped by one arm against the metal support beam of the rest stop sign, he stood at a slight angle, admiring his surroundings in pure glee. Any other night, he’d have donned a cap out of embarrassment to mask his balding cranium, but tonight was different. The stars were out. A warm, playful breeze dusted the bare ground. He and his wife had just been on a wonderful vacation. An aura of bliss was spread on the air like a lovely thick butter. He basked in it.

“Cheryl, you out yet?” His gaze floated to the bright restrooms, that sat canopied against the neon by a cluster of palm trees. The doors had male and female aliens painted on them coinciding with the sex of the restroom. Nevada crickets chirped merrily against the peaceful backdrop. “Damn,” he mumbled, smiling. If he had to wait out here for another twenty minutes, he wouldn’t be too opposed.

Dan Lemmings’ mind floated to that of baseball. His favorite player was Chuck Finley. Dan visualized himself in the place of Finley. The pale metal support beam he leaned on was a giant baseball bat. The copious trilling that the crickets swarmed him with at that very moment was rapturous applause. The pink flash of neon was a camera’s bulb. He chuckled.

“Danny?” A woman meekly beckoned, emerging from the little aliens’ room. She clacked over to Dan, her purple pumps echoing eagerly off the cooled pavement. She gazed down briefly, straightening out her leather skirt, then smiled at Dan. “Decor never gets old, eh?” She joked, gesturing over to the restroom doors.

After living in Reno, Nevada for nearly 15 years together, one can grow accustomed to the extraterrestrial aesthetic that store owners cling to for tourist money. Dan looked up, his baseball bat falling to the wayside, and the neon sign returning to its normal, non-camera bulb state. The crickets grew less excited.

The woman’s cold, manicured grasp extended out to Dan, and stroked his right cheek. Her eyesight was trained on his forest green parka. A bent, tiny yellow tag stuck out from a bulky sleeve on his parka. “You never pulled the tag off, dear?” She said, batting a lock of bleached blonde hair out of her face. Her heel enhanced height left her at a disadvantaged, and she lobbed them off to her right. The dense plastic clicked against cement. She knelt down a bit, examining the tag. “We can pull that off right here,” The woman said, the r in “right” rolling off her tongue like a mischievous rattlesnake.

The crickets silenced.

Dan gritted his teeth. “Look at me.” The woman ignored him, continuing to fiddle with the tag. He cleared his throat. “I said, look at me.” The choleric tone in his voice ripped voraciously through the bubble of silence like a greedy child. The woman slowly raised her head to meet his. Her eyes were pure black. “Y-you-you’re not. Cheryl. You are not Cheryl!”

Dan Lemmings stumbled backward, further into the small garden he had been standing in that held the sign. Adrenaline strangled him. He gasped sharply against the dry dirt as he collapsed into it, unable to look away from the pool of black that recided in the being’s eye sockets. The thing stood stagnant, flecks of happy pink reflecting in its dark eyeballs. Fear loomed over Dan with an axe at its side, a vengeful grip on the handle. A numbness torpedoed down his spine. With one final vehement sigh, he head dropped with an empty thud to the dirt. He drew his last breath.

The black-eyed being eyed Dan blankly. The man lay motionless among the pushed up daisies that surrounded his body. The small daisies bent around his form in concern, like a team of surgeons quarreling beneath hospital light. Meanwhile, crickets were still shocked into silence.

The being’s gaze finally relinquished the man. With an abrupt flick of the wrist and waist bend, it quickly collected the purple heels. Not-Cheryl dashed with a slight skip outside of the familiar glow of the rest stop, and into the opaque inkiness of the desert. The stars didn’t dare to touch it.

Billboards raced with wispy streaks of clouds, as power lines hopped and leaped cheerily under the overbearing sun. Scully droped her head tiredly with a thump against the rental car’s headrest. She thought back to the Flukeman case that they’d encountered four years ago. She’d take that one in a heartbeat right now, she thought, tapping her manicured digits on the dashboard. Her stomach flip-flopped as they hit a pothole, and her rhythmic tapping snaps Mulder out of his steely squint to see the road.

“We’re in Reno, Nevada, Scully.”

She doesn’t look at him, instead choosing to scratch her damp scalp. Her glance drifts over to the horribly disfigured bumper of the vehicle adjacent to theirs. She wouldn’t be surprised if the disfigurement had happened as a result of the simmering temperature, and not a collision. Her head turned to him, finally. “I can see that, Mulder. I can feel it, too,” She grumbled, a smile hinted at her lips. “You know, just admit it. We’re only out here because of the proximity to Area 51. You could have taken any of the other cases A.D. Skinner recommended to us. But you chose this one.”

Mulder turned back to the bright strip of grey that stretched to the horizon. It was beginning to look almost white to him. “Hey, can I have my sunglasses?”

Scully shuddered internally, because she knew the exact ones he was referring to. The gigantic, obnoxious lensed pair that had a thin navy wire to hold it all together. She rifled through his duffel bag that sat between them, on the dusty floor. Sure enough, between a pair of black dress pants and atop a baby blue t-shirt, lay the wretched pair. He had told her that he thought they oozed a “mysterious appeal.” Scully knew that was Mulder-talk for “I think they make me look like a cool alien.”

Scully let out an exasperated sigh, and tapped the pair to the narrow steering wheel to get his attention. He quickly looked over, then threw them on in relief. “Mysterious?”

“Foolish,” Scully said, unsuccessfully stifling a grin. “Anyway...the case,” She said, now gripping the file that had been carelessly thrown to the floor an hour ago, “A man claims he saw a black eyed being masquerading as his wife while she was in the restroom. The man described a horrible dread washing over him along with a strong sense of fear that he has, quote, ‘never felt before’ un-quote, in his life. He dies on the scene, only to miraculously come to life a day later. His wife never saw a thing.” She looked up from the casefile, and back at her partner once more. “Well, what do you make of this?” Mulder stared ahead at the grey stretch, wordless. “Mulder…”

“In short? I think this casefile is promising for extraterrestrial meat.” Mulder said, popping a sunflower seed into his mouth with his left hand. “The police officer that filed the report also said he was at the scene and saw a bizarre object in the sky, hovering just approximately 50 feet off the ground. This is the stuff of Project Blue Book.”

Scully smiled into her own reflection in the passenger side window. “Please don’t ever utter the words ‘extraterrestrial meat’ in my presence ever again.”

Mulder looked at her again, turning the car into a side street. “What do you think of the man dying of fright, then coming back to life, though? Pretty uncommon, almost supernatural. Like the rising of Jesus. That must interest you from a medical stand-point.”

Buildings and dwellings began to crop up like weeds. The generic desert backdrop began to fade, and in its place, a town began to take form. It was a nice respite from the drab desert scenery, that was for sure.

“Uncommon, yes, supernatural, no.” She side-eyed him, raising an eyebrow. “The massive rush of adrenaline that Dan Lemmings experienced in his fright temporarily stunned his cardiac heart muscle into inaction. Lemmings is also of age 57, and overweight, thus putting him even moreso at risk for this sort of unfortunate occurance. Any highly emotional event whether positive or negative can set this kind of thing off. The human body is amazingly resilient, sometimes it can bounce back even aft--”

“But we don’t know what ‘highly emotional event’ did this to this man,” Mulder interrupted, easing the car into a big, bright neighborhood.

“And you think it’s aliens.”

The tall agent simply offered a shrug. With their trek over, he yanked the keys out of the ignition, threw his long limbs out of the car with a loud sigh of relief, and shot straight up. It felt good to be out of that hot box. He looked back at his partner. The poor-red head drenched in sweat. Her normally tidy, copper locks were now frizzy and damp, and he looked down at the hot pavement, guilty.

She flung open the car door in defeat.

“Well, we should question them now, shouldn’t we?”

#txf fanfic #the x files fanfic #x files fanfic #idk how to tag lol

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darling-i-fancy-you · 8 years ago

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Fire - Jughead X Reader

[A/N: Okay so this was inspired by a fic I received just this afternoon and it’s also inspired heavily by my first panic attack when I actually thought I was going to die and that I was suffering a heart attack. I’m not sure but I hope I articulated well-enough how it kind of feels? I mean for me it’s pretty accurate but I understand that for everyone it can be totally different.

Also, I didn’t intend for this to be as long as it is, I was aiming for a quick 600/700 words but ya got over 1000. Also not really romantic and more of a Jughead X Reader friendship thing cause that’s just they way this took me.

I hope the anon that requested this likes it, but it might not be exactly what they were looking for and also I feel like I did maybe romanticise a little with my metaphorical language, I’m not sure.]

It started with a pain in your chest, just underneath your ribs; as though someone had come along, taken hold of your lung and ripped it from its cavity. You took in a sharp breath which only made things worse, tightly you hugged your arms around your body. The sharp breath that you had taken struggled to find its way back to the surface, drowning in your lungs. Your eyes widened in panic as you took more sharp and quick breaths, each simply joining their friend in the black abyss of your chest.

‘What the hell is happening?’ You thought to yourself.

Physically your fingers began to tremble, the oxygen that you were trying to consume seemed to disappear before it could reach your desperate lungs. Were you suffocating or drowning? You couldn’t decide. You wanted to call or shout out for help but your usually articulate vocabulary was hidden behind a series of laboured breaths. You tried to tame your shaking hands by balling them up into tight fists, desperately they tried to uncurl themselves, your body fighting against you at every turn.

You were going to die right now, of that you were sure. Any minute now your rapidly beating heart would either explode or stop dead right inside your chest, was that what this was – a premature heart attack at the tender age of sixteen?

People in the hallway continued to move around you, couldn’t they see that you were dying right now? You tried to catch the attention of any of your fellow classmates, tears pricked at your eyes as they waltzed past you, oblivious to your internal war.

‘Y/N?’ Came the familiar voice from behind you.

‘Thank God!’ You thought as you whipped your head around to face the raven haired boy.

‘Y/N?’ He asked again, his voice filled with frantic concern.

Tears were freely slipping down your face, you pulled your shaking hand to your neck, hoping that he would understand what you trying to say.

‘I can’t breathe. I think I’m dying. Please help me.’

‘You can’t breathe?’ He asked as calmly as he could.

You shook your head frantically from side to side.

‘Okay, okay.’ He took hold of your shoulders, attempting to ease the trembling that had now consumed your whole body. ‘Can you speak?’

Your mouth opened and closed, choked breaths were the only thing to escape your lips. You shook your head again in defeat. Jughead nodded slowly and stared supportively into your eyes.

‘It’s okay Y/N, it’s going to be okay.’ He smiled softly and began to move to your side. ‘I know it might feel right now like you’re dying-’

You nodded at this, the light flow of tears had stopped but your breathing was still harsh and your limbs shook violently.

‘-but you aren’t.’ He finished.

He picked up your backpack that lay at the foot of your locker and swung it over his shoulder, with his other arm he linked yours and slowly began walking with you.

‘Let’s go to the Blue and Gold, it’ll be empty right now and we’ll work through this together.’

You watched him curiously, confusion mixed with fear was evident in your eyes. He sighed softly and rubbed the upper half of your arm.

‘I think you’re having a panic attack, Y/N.’ He looked away from you and continued to navigate you both through the stream of busy students. ‘My mom used to get them a lot when she was still in town. She said it felt like she was dying; like her body was betraying her.’

You continued to take heavy breaths through your mouth, desperate for any kind of relief, your lungs felt like they were on fire and the oxygen only fuelled it.

Jughead gently guided you into the dim room, he pulled out a chair and led you to sit on it. He crouched down in front of you, his cold and calm hands enclosed your trembling ones and he stared up at you.

‘Okay, so first things first, take a deep breathe in through your nose and count to three in your head, on the count of three let it out through your mouth.’

You did as he said.

One, two, three.

‘Okay now keep doing that.’

You continued to breath in and out, Jughead’s thumb lightly traced circles on the back of your hands. Cold air slowly began to fill your lungs, the burning pain was somewhat subsiding but you felt like at any minute you would be consumed by the flames once more.

‘Did I ever tell you about the time my mom thought I’d ran away?’ He smiled softly.

You thought back to all the many tales Jughead had told you about his childhood before you arrived in Riverdale. You vaguely remembered the one he was talking about, you nodded your head.

‘Do you want me to tell you again?’

You smiled as you took in another breath through your nose and nodded again lightly. He proceeded to tell you a long winded story about the best day he and Archie Andrews had ever had, it was the middle of summer and the boys had been out since the break of dawn exploring the entirety of Riverdale. They had been to the Sweetwater River, trekked through the deep Eversgreen Forest, ate dinner at Pop’s Chok-Lit-Shoppe, went back to the forest, then back to Pop’s for a replenishing snack and then ended the night by sneaking into the Twilight Drive-In. They were halfway through watching the latest Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when suddenly the floodlights of the drive-in were all switched on and the police were running around shining torches in everyone’s faces.

‘We hadn’t been seen all day apart from by Pop but the idiots never thought to go there.’ He laughed. ‘They found me and Archie sat on the roof of the projector room, not a care in the world.’

You each shared a smile, slowly he pulled his hands back from yours, no longer were they shaking.

‘I bet you were grounded for months.’ Your voice had finally managed to find its way through the smoke and the flames.

‘Three.’ He confirmed with a nod. ‘Do you feel-‘

‘Better.’ You smiled softly, embarrassment setting in.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Jughead asked sincerely, he was stood up now and leaning against the table opposite to you.

‘I don’t really know what happened.’ You replied honestly, you felt exhausted and your chest still felt heavy. ‘I was okay and then suddenly I couldn’t breathe.’ Thinking about it made your lungs constrict again.

Jughead pushed himself up from the table and gently brushed your arm. Your bones felt heavy and your skin felt clammy underneath his touch. All you wanted right now was the comfort of your bed, you fought against the temptation to close your eyelids and instead looked at your friend, his face troubled with concern.

‘Try not to think about it too much.’ He looked down and sighed. ‘I can’t pretend to know much about how you feel or what caused it, I just know that my mom used to get them when she was anxious or nervous, usually about my dad.’

‘I guess I’ve been feeling a lot of pressure lately,’ you fessed up, ‘what with my grades dropping, and my parents nagging at me to get a weekend job, and I suppose the whole murderer running around Riverdale thing hasn’t helped either.’ You added, trying to lighten the mood with some sarcastic undertone.

‘Well, Y/N, you know if you ever want to talk about any of that we’re all here for you. We’re all here for each other.’ His words were just as much for himself as they were for you.

All of you needed to support each other right now, you, Betty, Archie, Ronnie, Kevin and Jughead. You all had your own struggles and you couldn’t face them by yourselves, that’s what friends were for right.

‘Thanks Jug,’ you smiled and hesitantly wrapped your arms around his middle, ‘for everything.’

His usually tense body relaxed into yours, he rubbed his bony hands along your back and unexpectedly placed a light kiss to the crown of your head.

‘You’d do the same for me.’

And you would.

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#Jughead Jones #Jughead Jones X Reader #Jughead X Reader #Riverdale Fic #Riverdale #Archie Andrews #Betty Cooper #Veronica Lodge #Kevin Keller #Fic

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