#part 1 of finale post

[review-anon]

Thoughts on the TDP finale?

//Alright its time.

//I have watched the bits I missed and with enough time to think about this; plus TA being my push notification to get this done, its time to talk about TDP's Deadly Life, the final class trial, the ending of Tetro Pink, the buildup to Tetro Blue and my overall thoughts.

//This is gonna be a BIG one, in fact its gonna be so big I'm actually gonna divide it into various parts so you don't get overwhelmed by it.

//As always thoughts are below the cut.

Part 1: Chapter 5's Deadly Life + Class Trial

//So just as a recap, to say the BDA was a sign things were going to shit was the understatement of the century. Not only was Mai, the one person keeping everyone together and making sure they had a cool head, is the victim here, but we have Ken and Yanagi locked in medbay, the investigation time is cut in half due to Tamba's stupidity, nobody has the stomach to investigate, and on top of that, whoever killed Mai was like Okazaki; they planned her death for a very long time.

//We don't get any noise about Mai's solo vote which means that her death must have rendered it null and void, or if it has been transferred to someone, the Masterminds aren't telling who it is gone to, wouldn't be the first time they didn't tell shit. But we don't have time for that as we got a investigation to do and we need to speedrun it. Tamba and Wada are on Team A and Hiroaki and Ojima are on Team B.

//Right off the bat, the investigation is off to a great start since Hirokai's first priority was to go to the arsenal and see if anything has been stolen from there and the answer is yes, since the entire arsenal has been completely emptyed. That is not a good sign since who would require the entire fucking arsenal to kill Mai? Yes she's a tough girl but she's also a lot weaker then normal due to taking all those punishments, if there was any good time to kill her, it was now. Hiroaki's first thoughts is to check all the rooms big enough to hold an arsenal and this runs into the first major problem;

//Yep a good chunk of the rooms are rigged with door traps that upon opening go boom. Naturally Ojima is like we can't investigate as we could die, but Hiroaki having grown wise to when Okazaki did it, said that with all the rigged rooms, the explosives cannot be non-lethal as if they tried to kill everyone, Monomoko would step in. Not that everyone is harm free since Wada gets a head injury from a door trap, which on top of his malnurnation is not a good sign indeed. Whoever we are dealing with; they are a dastly mastermind indeed.

//As for Tamba and Wada they are the autospy people and after Tamba gets Mai's body out of the pool and they examine her, the two notable things is that Mai has a massive stomach wound akin to Nagito in Goodbye Despair that goes right through her, the nature of it implies that a sword was used but who would get a sword? There's also cuts in her hands, which implies Mai was still alive when she got implied and tried to free herself, but failed. No surprising that Mai fought back, since she wouldn't go down easily.

//Sorry but as soon as I heard that Mai got stabbed all the way through my mind went to this.

//The other notable thing we find in Tamba and Wada's investigation is Wada unveils what his reward was. Again, if you require a recap, during Loyality Game students were given a choice to take a personal reward in return for a punishment that affected the entire group; 3 rewards were taken, one which is unknown who took it, resulted in nobody being allowed in their dorms, the second which Tamba took halved investigation time, and the third which Wada took resulted in everyone getting a cut, the most notable being Ken losing a eye. Its here we see what Wada's reward was; he was given excluvise access to the sercuity feed of the school. That...at first glance sounds like an OP rewards. Aside from Wada doing his best FNAF roleplay, it means that Wada would know who EVERYONE's moments were during the events of last night, which means all he needs to do is see the killer do their business and case closed, right? Well as you can tell it didn't work like that.

//For starters these cameras work a lot like the cameras in Among Us where not everything is recorded so there's blindspots, blindspots that the killer took advantage of. The second is that due to the fire from last chapter a lot of the cameras got destroyed during it so a lot of rooms don't have footage in them and lastly the camera in the pool AKA the most important one, was outright destroyed by the culprit as they knew if it caught the moment Mai died, that would be a open-and-shut case. But a few things were confrimed. Firstly Hiroaki's and Ojima's alibis are solid since the camera catches them together the whole time so neither of them could have done it. Secondly, Mai's last moments was shortly after she left Tamba and Wada to check on something as the cameras catch her going to the resource room but she never exits it. And lastly Wada himself was caught going into the arsneal and comes out...which looks mighty shady. Still its useful information.

//Poor Yanagi and Ken don't get out of the medbay during the entire investigation as the fact while Monomoko unlocks all doors during it and medbay remained shut, means that the culpirt must have locked Ken and Yanagi in there, hence why they can't get out. Ken suggests to Wada and Tamba when they come looking for them to go and get some alchoal to burn through the super glue and get them out, before though Yanagi asks the pair who has died, and when Wada apologises deeply, he knew right then and there...that Mai was the victim of the case, and Yanagi completely shuts down during the rest of the investigation, as proven when Hirokai and Ojima came to check on them as its Ken who spoke to them, not Yanagi. Kinda feel bad for him as he confessed his love to Mai and she never got a chance to answer back.

//And that's all they found which is a big pile of nothing. So to recap how fucked the cast are; they lost the most component person within the group, the smartest person was locked in medbay with the guy who was the closest to the victim, the investigation time has been halved, Tamba has a broken leg, Wada is moments from passing out, Ojima is trying really hard to prevent himself from zoning out and Hiroaki was about to go high before Ojima stopped him. On top of that, there is little to no evidence to prove who killed Mai and its VERY clear that Mai's murder was premediated as fuck. Truely these have to be THE lowest odds any cast has had going into a Class Trial. And it gets even better when just before the Class Trial starts, Wada just passes out due to malnuration and stress.

//The opening is just as great since we have Wada passed out, Ken and Yanagi who have zero clue what's going on since they were locked in medbay all the time and couldn't investigate, and naturally Tamba and Hiroaki pick this to be the best time to contuine their chapter wide bitchfest against each other. Naturally neither Ojima nor Yanagi are happy about this and tell them to stfu and keep the unneccessary arguing to a mimium. So once everything has got back the the first topic is the arsneal and where the hell it could have gone, especially with all the door traps. Its quickly figured out that the door traps were made from bombs from the arsenal and the culpirt set them up to deteer investigating and then Wada tried to bring up the cameras and this was too much for Yanagi and Ken since neither of them know what's going on so he wants them to focus on topic at a time.

//I find it hillairous the two people who did jackshit during the investigation are the ones guiding the discussion since they have their heads in gear; for Yanagi its so he wants to avenge Mai and for Ken its due to his general IQ, once Mai's body was discussed its said she was bleeding a lot but her body was clean but then again, she was discovered in the pool so the water probably washed the blood out. Also Wada's ill health is confirmed to be because he hasn't eaten since Watari died so about a week ago, which naturally causes panic. This is proof not that its needed that Wada has a severe eating disorder and if he hasn't hoarded food, he will not eat. Yanagi WAS gonna keep an eye on his but with him having a concussion, he probably has forgotten about all of it.

//Questions arise who took Wada's food stash but the problem is not only does nobody have any clue, but the dorms weren't checked then again they were locked since Decision Game so much like the Arsneal the food stash has seeemly vanished into thin air. Plus the only people that Wada has let into his room has been Ojima and Ken, which is interesting to consider....

//We have another Tamba vs Hiroaki argument which gets shot down but its here we finally find out what Tamba's reward was, which was appernately worth shaving the investigation time; and that was she got a skeleton key that would allow to access every room in the school, including the ones which were locked at night. And remember, the pool room door was unlocked when Wada and Ojima went there even though the morning announcement hasn't occurred, so things don't look good at all for Tamba especially when she claims she slept in the Laundry room all night since it was safe and locked.

//Wada also gets suspected since the cameras caught him going to the arsenal which looked suspecious but he explains the reason he went there was to grab a gun for self-defence, after all if Chiba could use a gun so could he. But this also confirms the arsenal didn't vanish during that time so it must have gone missing shortly after Wada took his Neutral Special.

//Of course the big question becomes how did Mai go from Resource Centre to the Pool. Well there's a simple solution in that since the floors are so unstable, she could have just gone through one of the holes to another room. After all, as I can testify from personal experience if the floor is rotted away enough you won't cut or break your leg.

//With such little evidence everyone need to recount their timeline of events to point out any inconsistancies, which paints a timeframe that after Tamba and Hirokai had their pissing match, Hirokai ran off and Wada and Ojima went to look for him, Ken and Yanagi went to medbay where they got locked, Mai was with Tamba for a bit but she left to go somewhere. Wada and Ojima split up since Ojima figured Hiroaki was in the baloney, Wada went back to Tamba and went to go and get some stuff to make a cast for her, which was good enough to allow her to walk. Ojima and Hirokai talked and eventutally they fell asleep. Wada and Tamba went to find Mai, they split up, Wada grabbed a gun from the arsenal, then he and Tamba fell asleep. Wada found Ojima and started looking for people and well...found the body.

//At this point the class has hit a dead end before an epithany is reached; whoever stole Wada's food stash, was the same person who has been fucking with the cast all week, and also the one who killed Mai, with that the entire cast starts to recount all the strange events and how they could happen. With Hiroaki's reward, Okazaki more or less said she stole it so anyone could have gone into her room, get it and bring to Hiroaki, with his allegics with it being confirmed he's allergic to soy milk, it would be super easy to swap the soy and normal milk bottles around content wise so Hiroaki would be pouring soy milk into his coffee, but a dead end is reached since not only does that not narrow it done, but its done so generically that anyone could do it, heck Tamba was the one who suggested the milk swap. So it all backs to her note and the big issue is that its typed...yet the only printer in the school was destroyed by the fire last chapter but then when asked about the other notes Mai has gotten, its confimed they were handwritten and were on her person so they could get destroyed in the pool. Its then a horrid truth realises it, the culprit hasn't been planning for just a week; they have been planning for a lot longer then that, as their schemes started in Chapter 4 its just Watari's suicide beat them to the punch there, thus explaining how the note was made, it was made before the printer got destroyed.

//Some more talking reveals that there's a good chance what the 3rd reward was, we know Tamba's was a skeleton key to access all rooms, Wada's was access to the sercuirty cameras but the 3rd reward, the one which banned people going to their dorms, it was proposed that the reward was a blueprint of the entire school building, which includes where all the secret passways the staff have used where. Suddenly why the Arsenal and Wada's food stash couldn't be found makes more sense, they were in a secret passageway. It also explains how Mai could have died and got to the pool, the culprit used the secret passageways. But even with this knowledge, Hiroaki knows someone is lying, can't be him or Ojima since they have airtight alibis. Can't be Ken or Yanagi since they were locked in medbay all this time; so it boils down to Wada or Tamba and since Wada was caught on camera going into the arsenal to get a gun, which had he have the secret passageways he wouldn't have done, means he's okay since that more or less clears him, which means the only person it could have been...is Tamba.

//Now I knew Tamba was not the culprit ignoring the IQ for a moment, there was just too many unanswered questions on how Tamba could have killed Mai, but I have to applaud the culprit as this was SUCH a convincing fakeout, to the point that had something not happened, Tetro Pink would have joined SDRA2 as the second Fangan to have a wrong verdict. And even Hiroaki's own logic has holes since his whole "Tamba Culprit" theory relies on her being able to open doors with the skelton key but according to him, she lied about her reward and actually had the blueprints. Tamba also had TWO despair sprites as not only she breaks down but also as Hiroaki's logic manages to convince the entire class this was right, but since my culprit guess was Ken, I was watching his behaviour, and he wasn't saying anything, which was very sus indeed. Ngl this part of the stream became a mess for me since TA went into her reguarly scheduled breakdown since well...prior to this stream I expressed my concerns that we were due a Blackened victory and naturally she said no and I needed to stop being such doom and gloom, but I think those words I said to her ate away and caused such a meltdown, even with Bubbles saying there was a massive runtime left, and she kept sobbing as much as Tamba and we got to the voting but then Monomoko said this;

//"Are you absolutely sure you want to vote?"

//That...gave Hiroaki pause as he noted to Ojima that Monomoko has NEVER said that before which means...he was wrong...Tamba is not the culprit and had they voted Tamba, they would have died. Monomoko saving the cast was a natural conclusion since throughout Tetro Pink, she's shown she's more then just a mascot as she's a thinking being with thoughts and empathy, and has often gone behind the Mastermind's backs to aid the students which means for one last time, Monomoko has managed to save them, and while this would piss off the Masterminds, we don't care they suck, and TA made such a loud cheer when this fake out was revealed to be a fake out. Also props to Hiroaki, he might have been wrong but as soon as he realised something didn't add up, he immeidately tossed aside his own theory and owned up to his mistakes. So now Tamba HAS to be innocent but then we go back to the same problem as before; nobody could do it. So the gaze is shifted to Yanagi and Ken as the question became how they got locked in medbay and turns out a gurney was used to block the entrance which due to all the lights being off, there was no way for them to check, and if there was a secret passageway as soon as one of them went asleep the other could go out and kill Mai, but between Yanagi and Ken...who?

//I think this one is obvious there is no way Yanagi is gonna kill the very woman he did a love confession to, plus while Yanagi does have the smarts to fuck with people, and it explained why Tamba and Mai didn't get physically harmed, it would also mean the culpirt has to fake their own injuries and Yanagi was vomiting which is something you cannot fake. Ken on the otherhand was high and all we have is Mai saying "Yep he's high" with no evidence where the drugs that made Ken trip balls, come from. Plus he didn't even describe his symptoms, meaning he could fake being high. And as soon as realisation kicked in literally everyone pounced on Yanagi to stop him from literally beating Ken to death for what he did, and well Ken confessed, he did it because he lost all hope after Kamimura died, the one person he cared about and who cared about him was gone. And as far as he knew nobody else cared about Kamimura. This of course wasn't true, both Tamba and Mai had fond memories of Kamimura and missed him deeply too and Watari before she went off the deep end herself, tried to reach out to Ken as she knew how tough it must be when Kamimura died, but when depression hits it clouds your judgement. Plus he lost his medication, he was getting sick of everyone around him and finally, he learnt they were being watched and people were enjoying their suffering, this all meant he tried to take everyone down.

//He messed with everyone to make it so they couldn't solve the class trial, he went for Mai since she was the easiest to get when thoughts of escape hit her, and he also made Ojima not zone by claiming he hurt him while zoned out, which he never did it was fake. Plus he explioted the zoned out state to make Ojima drunk which is such a violation that no wonder he felt disgusted. Literally everyone was disgusted with Ken for what he did but I will say this first and forthmost;

//Ken might be the single smartest culpirt ever in the history of Danganronpa.

//And that IS a compliment as Ken planned for EVERYTHING, he had every possible variable under control, he weakened everyone so they couldn't fight back, he got the victim running off on her own, he killed her in a way that couldn't be traced back to him, he also had a alibi waiting, and he explioted realtionships so a wrong verdict could be drawn. The ONLY reason Ken failed was because the mascot stepped in and that wasn't something he could have predicted. This is much better then Kanade's "Oh Sora had a hunch and she dropped some antibiotics." In fact I have this to explain how awesome this was.

//And even his dying moments was awesome since when Ken was about to be executed, rather then do a tearful goodbye, or say a final fuck you to the cast, he did a fuck you to the Masterminds by leaking the Tetro Blue Roster. HOW Ken found this out, is unknown but the point is he knew it and he started listing names and this caused Head Scientist to freak out so much that she ordered Monomoko to start the execution.

//Ken's execution is...kinda similar to Nagito's execution in all fairness which makes sense since both were killed in Chapter 5 and I bet while it was going on, Ken was happy since he was gonna be with his lover soon.

//And that was the Class Trial and yeah HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT as this was SO close to a Blackened win due to the lack of evidence, the stressed out mindsets of everyone, and a convincing fallgirl since Tamba killing Mai made more sense then Iroha killing Setsuka. And really the only reason they failed was due to the mascot stepping in which was something that was foreshadowed for some time now.

//I am also pleased I have a perfect streak on culprits since I guess Ken killed Mai and did it to fuck with the Killing Game and I was right! Okay so I didn't get the fact he was hating everyone since the 3rd chapter, but in terms of Culprits I'm 5/5 which I NEVER get really, normally I get one or two wrong. Here's hoping this streak contuines into Tetro Blue!

//In terms of Trials this is a 9/10 for me since the emotion, the tension and the twists were all so good and such a fitting finale to a amazing fangan.

//And that's the first part which is the entire Chapter 5 Deadly Life and Class Trial! Next part will be the Tetro Pink Finale and my final thoughts so see ya then.

[scootkiddo]

it’s so much worse. the way ellie tells joel to get up and he tries. the way abby seeps the pointed end of the club into his neck. the way the wlf members don’t even bother knocking ellie out because she is already so emotionally paralyzed by grief she can’t even so much as stand.

but more than anything else it’s crawling to him. all she can muster is crawling with nothing but her arms and cuddling into joel with her whole person. her face buried into the man’s which will forever be the last memory of him. it’s like watching a child seeking the safety of a parent who can’t protect them anymore. this isn’t just the death of a protector. it’s the death of home. joel, to ellie, is safety. safety that she spent the last five years resenting until it was too late. he’s been the one constant in a shattered world. so when he’s dying — or dead — she reverts, not in age but in emotional rawness. she becomes a daughter clinging to a father figure who can’t shield her anymore. and it’s not just fear. it’s complete unmooring. there’s no one left to hold the world up for her. it’s the kind of need that children have when everything feels too big, too loud, too dangerous. she needs to be held. but there’s no one to hold her, so she becomes the one doing the holding, even if he can’t respond. and he’ll never respond.

in one of ellie’s most harrowing moments in life joel was there to cling on to her. in yet another, she clings to him. but he’ll never cling back again.

[chrliekclly]

charden echolalia

[thelonelyshore-if]

DEMO

Update Wordcount: 107,512 words Total Wordcount: 333,798 words

Hello, everyone! Chapter 3 part 1 is finally here c: Hoping to follow this one up with part 2 in the next few weeks. This was a long time coming and there's so much in here that I can't wait to share. Thank you everyone for your patience, and I hope you enjoy!

In this update you can:

Walk back into town!

Hang out at a gas station! Get to know the owner!

Find a new place to stay! (optional)

Meet Croft! (finally)

Learn about Easthaven from a new, totally unbiased source!

Look into local real estate!

HUGE thanks to my beta readers; they actually and for real saved my life. For this update I went in and made a character builder, so you can skip straight to the new content if you'd like c: Additionally, content warnings have been updated; those can be found here. And the code is now visible!

If you have any feedback, or notice any bugs, feel free to send it to my inbox or post on the game's forum thread.

[mimimar]

finally completed my comic based on the song ivy by taylor swift!✿ please zoom in to read the text and see the details~

✿.✿.✿

you can get the digital zine pdf here! it includes extras like character profiles, costume design, more art of willow and ivy, zine-exclusive sketches and an illustrated guide to the symbolism of all the flowers in this comic.

you can also get prints of individual pages here!

✿.✿.✿

[human-rocket]

Guiding Light | 1.0 | [next]

Also available to read on Ko-fi

**Please do not repost**

((Scene inspired by Full Moon O Sagashite vol. 3 by Arina Tanemura))

[rizzanon]

me when tumblr apparently has a 1000 text block limit per post so i have to post part 2 of chapter 7 into two parts as well so that it looks aesthetically nicer

so i guess part 2 and 3 will be dropping after i break my fast tonight 🫣🥲 (time to think of a chapter name for part 3–i hate my life 💀)

[1000sunnygo]

One Piece Academy Chapter 58: Delinquent Leader (Part 2) Translation

part 1 | index

[skaters-art-blog]

I like to call this sketchdump: The dynamic between the player and Kris is a lot more complicated than everyone gave it credit for (but now people have seen the light)

anyway most of these are inspired by my own emotions when i was playing through the chapter

full page under the cut!

not enough people draw mini kris horrified during that scene because i was just as scared as kris. well maybe not just as scared. but i was pretty scared and felt awful

god i could ramble about kris foreverrrrrrrrr <3 my nb monarch who hates me (not really)

[pastafossa]

Haunted (Matt Murdock x TRT!Reader, Fic, SFW)🌧️

Right, so close to 3 years ago, I had an ask in my box: 'what would happen if TRT!Reader/Jane Hind lost her memory just before returning to Matt after her three months away', aka: just before point where they both confessed their love and got together in mainline TRT. So I wrote up a fairly angsty, no happy ending sort of fic about it, which you can find here. But there just felt like there was more to the story, and the idea of a sequel wouldn't leave me alone, so I've worked on it in little bits and pieces over the past few years and I'm finally ready to unleash that into the world now that it's been edited to my satisfaction.

This will have a happy ending and hurt/comfort, once we swim through a lot of Matt Suffering. <3 Ship: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Chapter Summary:

Leaving him like that shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did. You didn’t know him. This man should have been nothing more than a stranger on the street, one you wouldn’t glance twice at, much less feel some ridiculous sense of attachment or obligation to. Yet the memory of walking out of his apartment still left you shaken whenever you allowed yourself to think too long on it.  He… shouldn’t have been alone. That was wrong, somehow.  There was no memory attached to the thought, no blinking sign you could point to that would justify your growing unease. You just knew it. You knew it in the way you knew how to breathe, how to blink, knowledge etched into your very bones over and over by an unfamiliar hand. And no matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were unable to escape the feeling that… that you’d made a terrible mistake, broken something good, tilted the world on its axis until the whole of the city, the earth, the very sky hung just a little crooked like an off-center painting.  Matt was alone.  You’d left him alone.  It was the right choice, one you’d made dozens if not hundreds of times before. Hell, it should have been even easier this time since there were no memories to hold you back. So… why did you feel so very sick?

Wordcount: 11, 805 words so, hilariously, about 3 times the length of Part 1

Warnings for this chapter: angst, alcohol, matt spiraling fairly badly, he throws some things, LOTS of TRT references and spoilers so I wouldn't do this one unless you've finished the Miami arc in TRT.

Sad Matt gif as a reminder that the angst is pretty heavy here because I'm really going to emotionally beat on this poor man for a bit.

At Ciro’s insistence, you gave yourself one month in Hell’s Kitchen. 

A month wasn’t much time, granted, but it would hopefully be enough to see if there was a chance of bringing back the memories you’d lost: memories of friends, of your life here, and of… of whatever it was that you’d had with Matt Murdock. Based on his grief over the loss of Jane Hind—not you, but her surely, the role, the mask you’d worn while here—his attachment to her had been deep and fervent, and those feelings appeared to have been at least partly reciprocated. The dangerously intimate photo you’d found in your memory box was all the proof you needed of that. 

Your past self had already been accustomed to his touch when the photo was taken, based on the way she’d allowed him to press his head tenderly to her temple, his dark eyes warm and fond as he'd smiled in her direction even if he couldn't see her, his arm draped over her shoulders. She should have been put off by the proximity, by such a blatant show of physical intimacy, but instead of looking distressed, she’d been relaxed and comfortable where she’d confidently tucked herself up against his side. Try as you might, you hadn’t been able to find any hint of discomfort, any clue that signaled the obvious affection she’d felt was an act, her shoulder angled in a way that made you think she’d wrapped her arm comfortably around his waist, her grin bright and so very real.

This couldn’t be you.

When was the last time you'd looked that happy?

When was the last time you’d let someone hold you close? 

And when was the last time someone had looked at you like… like they might… 

“Did I… love him, Ciro?”

“I believe that… you might have, yes. Him, and this city. That is why I encourage you to stay, for a time at least. See if the memories return to you. Even should you leave, it would be wise to know of the life you led here.”

Ciro had sent a check to your office, booking you for the month and clearing your schedule. Just like that, you were free to focus on looking for something that might trigger the return of your memories. Though what that something might be, you weren’t really sure. A more thorough examination of the apartment had been your first step. Unfortunately, there’d been nothing there that seemed familiar beyond the same cheap decor and calculated set pieces you’d always used. You’d quickly ruled those out. They were meaningless distractions meant to reinforce the lie of whatever pre-planned identity you’d taken on. In this case, that identity was Jane Hind—practical, professional, detached, likes sailboat paintings and the color grey. Based on the fine layer of dust you'd found coating everything but the kitchen counter and a neat stack of mail, no one else had spent much time here during your months away. That, at least, fit your pattern. You weren’t in the habit of making friends or putting down roots. There was no point in doing so when you’d just wind up cutting them loose and running again. 

What had unsettled you far more were the hints of connection you’d found quietly tucked away:

A fleecy stuffed bear holding a plush crystal ball, the threads connecting the two uneven as if hand-stitched. That kind of time and effort wouldn’t have been spent on anyone but a friend, and the bear’s prominent position on the counter lent it far more importance than any of the other decorations.

A tacky ‘Handsome Devil’ coffee mug, the curling red script and clichéd devil horns design bizarrely out of place amongst the rest of the plain white mugs in the cupboard. An identity like Jane Hind wouldn’t have been caught dead drinking from it, which meant someone else was here with enough regularity to have a mug of their own. Further digging revealed a second decorated mug, this one adorned with the name of the law firm co-run by Matt. You could have written off one mug, but two? Two was a pattern.

An entire drawer in the dresser devoted solely to a pile of dangerously soft shirts that clearly didn’t belong to Jane Hind, the fabric threadbare and worn. They looked about the right size to be Matt’s, though, the faint traces of scent a match for him. The fact that they took up an entire drawer indicated he’d visited often enough to need a space for his clothes. 

You’d… made space for him in your false life. That wasn’t something you did.

Or had you been the one wearing them? 

Maybe…?

You’d spent a long moment holding one of the shirts in your hand, rubbing at the fabric in hopes of stirring something. When that hadn’t worked, you’d even brought it up to your nose to inhale slowly, just in case the traces of scent brought some memory back. 

Clean soap. Salt. Copper. Faint cinnamon. 

All it had done was remind you of holding a grieving Matt in his kitchen after he’d realized your memories weren’t coming back. It was a gloomy enough memory, but ultimately unhelpful.

You'd tossed the old shirt on top of the dresser and moved on. 

While you didn’t know who exactly you’d been here in New York, the longer you searched, the more it became clear what had happened. You’d started to slip, your years of isolation forming a crack in your layers of armor. That fracture had allowed an attachment to form, an insidious connection worming its way in through the open gap like poisonous roots through crumbling pavement. You’d grown weak, and careless. There was no other explanation for why you’d broken so many of your rules, dominoes tipping one by one until it cascaded into a waterfall of mistakes. You’d slipped before, of course—loneliness was natural and expected, which was why you had so many contingencies—but you’d never let yourself get in this deep. Not until now. 

What you didn’t know was… 

Why?

Why here? 

Why these people? 

And why the fuck hadn’t you followed your rules and run? 

If there was an answer to be found in Jane Hind’s apartment, you couldn’t seem to find it, no matter how hard you look, no matter how many of her belongings you dug through. Even your memory box had failed you, the photo of you and Matt at the back of your stack of pictures an outlier you couldn’t explain, this fruit of an as-yet unidentified poisonous tree. You had no real leads, no faint ringing of memory to guide you beyond a vague sense that, somehow, this started with Matt. You didn’t even know where to begin. 

At least, not until some shaggy-haired guy named Foggy—what the fuck kind of nickname was that?—showed up entirely and rudely unannounced at your front door, dressed in a cheap suit and wearing a bizarrely determined look. Despite your doubts, you reluctantly allowed him in. He made it pretty clear he knew you, and if you were lucky he could tell you more about your life here.

“So I know you usually skedaddle when things get uncomfortable, which I imagine they are at the moment. How long are you trying to stay?” 

“One month.” You shrugged casually, a cover for just how warily you were watching him as he paced in your—in Jane Hind’s living area. He knew far more about you than you knew about him, a reversal you were uncomfortably aware of. That vulnerability was almost enough to trigger a retreat beneath that cold, brittle shell you’d used long ago, though you quickly caught hold of that instinct and buried it back down deep where it belonged. Still, you couldn’t quite hide the cool clip to your voice, your walls firmly in place. “Leaving after that. Don’t see the point in staying if the memories are gone. Truthfully I’m not sure why I stayed in the first place, especially once it was clear I was getting attached. No offense.” 

“None taken, my hopefully-still-friend-when-your-memories-come-back.” He abruptly swiveled on his feet to face you, squinting at you thoughtfully. “How badly do you want your memories back?” 

You thought of out-of-place mugs and hand-stitched psychic teddy bears; of faint cinnamon and a worn photo frame; of the way you’d held a broken Matt in his kitchen until he’d carefully pushed you away and asked you to leave, his face closed off and distant despite the tears on his cheeks and yours. 

You’d… been someone here. Someone cared for. Someone whose loss was mourned.  

Even if you left, you needed to know just who that someone had been, if only so you could make sure this never happened again. Not until you reached your island in the sun. 

“Badly enough to stay for the month,” you said quietly. 

“Then put some shoes on. We’re going on a memory hunt.”

Over the next few weeks, Foggy took you all over Hell’s Kitchen. 

You visited Jane Hind’s office, abandoned warehouses, and empty rooftops covered in thick blankets of snow. He reintroduced you to Karen, to your upstairs neighbors, and to a bartender who didn’t seem all that inclined to be introduced to anyone. You drank crappy beer and slightly less crappy vodka, played pool, and went to the zoo to stare for far too long at penguins, which Foggy refused to explain no matter how much you pressed. He had you focus on sights, on smells, on sounds that might trigger a memory. He joked with you in between, and he was just funny enough, friendly and clever enough, that for the first week or so, you were consistently cracking a smile. Hell, you even laughed now and then, much to your surprise. He really did know you, enough so that you gradually began to relax around him, just a little. He was likely hoping the addition of a friend’s voice would bring back what you’d lost, especially when paired with all the other sensations. 

But no matter how much you both tried, your memories remained lost. 

God, you hadn’t thought this would… would hurt as much as it did. Yet with every day that you failed to find your way back to who you’d been, the more that fierce ache, that old longing inside you grew. Your smiles became brittle, your laughter fading, until both finally dried up like withered, crumbling leaves beneath a bitter frost. You couldn't help pulling away really, not when your soul curling up in the dark might protect you from the agony of knowing that maybe, just maybe, you’d finally found what you'd always wanted. How fitting that it had been ripped away from your bloodied, desperate hands like so many times before, one more square for the filthy patchwork quilt of shredded lives and possibilities you’d been forced to leave behind. What was worse: even your memories of that seeming joy had been stolen, too, leaving you with nothing left to carry but the tattered scraps of a ghost and the photograph of a stranger wearing your skin.

It shouldn’t have been possible to miss what you couldn’t remember. Yet here you were missing it all the same. 

It didn’t help that Matt was avoiding you in every way that mattered. You’d thought about calling him if only to ask him questions about your life here, but you could never quite work up the courage to do it. He must have felt the same since he hadn’t reached out to you, either. And why would he? He knew as well as you did that your memories likely weren’t coming back. It made sense to cut that connection, tear it away like a weed before the roots could do more damage—something you should have done sooner, for both your sakes. What you hadn’t expected was just how good he was at dodging you, somehow absent no matter how many places Foggy took you to, places he swore Matt frequented with you when you’d lived here, as if Matt’s mere presence might be enough to trigger some memory in you. Had he been that important? Either way, it didn’t matter. You hadn’t seen Matt once since you’d walked out, doing your best to ignore his hitched breath as you’d opened the door. You’d forced yourself to ignore, too, the broken, agonized sound of grief that he’d let out as you quietly shut the door behind you, leaving him alone. 

Leaving him like that shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did. You didn’t know him. This man should have been nothing more than a stranger on the street, one you wouldn’t glance twice at, much less feel some ridiculous sense of attachment or obligation to. Yet the memory of walking out of his apartment still left you shaken whenever you allowed yourself to think too long on it. 

He… shouldn’t have been alone. That was wrong, somehow. 

There was no memory attached to the thought, no blinking sign you could point to that would justify your growing unease. You just knew it. You knew it in the way you knew how to breathe, how to blink, knowledge etched into your very bones over and over by an unfamiliar hand. And no matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were unable to escape the feeling that… that you’d made a terrible mistake, broken something good, tilted the world on its axis until the whole of the city, the earth, the very sky hung just a little crooked like an off-center painting. 

Matt was alone. 

You’d left him alone. 

It was the right choice, one you’d made dozens if not hundreds of times before. Hell, it should have been even easier this time since there were no memories to hold you back.

So… why did you feel so very sick? 

Sympathy. 

That was all you were feeling. Matt was grieving a woman he’d cared about, one who’d died and left a cold stranger in her place. It was normal to feel for someone in that much pain, and no one should be alone while grieving. Maybe this was for the best. The sooner you were fully out of his life, the sooner all his friends and family could step in, and the sooner he could move on. He wouldn’t be alone, then. And even if he was, his loneliness wasn’t your goddamn problem. You had more than enough troubles of your own.

Protect yourself. 

Protect what you might one day have. 

All else was irrelevant.

You just… hoped he was doing alright. 

He did his best to avoid you, but that only grew more difficult once your ghost began to haunt his every step.

Even Josie’s quickly became off-limits—something he discovered one night when he stepped through the front door where he was promptly met with the familiar, comforting scent of you floating like a haze beneath the smell of cheap beer and sour sweat. His body went rigid the moment he recognized it, your presence across the room a sharpened knife that only widened the wound carved into him by your death. And if the scent of you was a knife, then your bark of laughter was a cruel twist of the blade, one that left him gutted and shaking there in the doorway. He drank in his apartment after that, waiting for that blessed moment when he would feel nothing, waiting for the very second the glorious shroud of night fell. Only then could he finally escape to the streets and drown himself in a far better kind of pain, taking his rage and his grief out on whatever piece of shit had the misfortune of falling into the Devil’s path. 

But Foggy seemed determined to shove the specter of you directly into his face. 

“You need to talk to her!” Foggy snapped, his voice only just shy of a shout. Matt ignored him as he headed for his office, desperate to retreat from your scent lingering on Foggy’s clothes. Foggy had taken you to a coffee shop that morning, one you’d frequented when you’d lived here, and now each inhalation was a vicious torment. It felt like breathing in shards of glass, the sharp pain of it throbbing with every stuttered, choked breath he drew in. If Foggy noticed, he didn’t seem to care. “Christ, Matt! You love her and we both know it. If you talk to her, it might trigger something—”

“Stop,” Matt grit out, reaching up to scrub his hand angrily over his face. He stalked his way over to his desk, still desperate to escape somehow, even if it was into his work. “Just stop, Foggy. I did talk to her, and you know what happened? Nothing. She didn’t remember anything at all. She’s gone, and you dragging this out is just making everything worse for all of us.” 

“So what, you’re just gonna roll over?” Foggy scoffed, crossing his arms as he planted his feet in Matt’s doorway. “Are you sure you actually loved her? Because I’m pretty sure she loved y—”

Matt slammed his fist down on his desk, the furious crack of it echoing through the office like a gunshot as he shouted, “Don’t you fucking dare!” 

Tension hung thick in the air as Matt’s chest heaved, his teeth bared, blood and adrenaline running hot in his veins as if Foggy were some sort of-of threat. Everything in him shook with rage, or maybe unshed grief, the burden of them both impossibly twisted and tangled beneath the sea of his guilt and his self-loathing until he couldn’t tell which was which. He just couldn’t—how was he supposed to force it all down when Foggy had just come so close, so dangerously close to shattering what few pieces remained of Matt’s crumbling armor?

It was bad enough loving you the way he did only for you to slip through his bloodied, desperate grasp like whispering grains of sand. What was worse, this entire disaster was one of his own making, a series of mistakes whose snarled, winding paths led inevitably back to him just like they had so many times before in his life. This loss of someone who’d truly understood him, accepted him, cared for him had already broken something inside him he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to repair. But that fracturing inside him would surely rise up to consume him if Foggy were right, if you’d truly cared for him that deeply before your memories were taken, so deeply that you might even have…

I miss you, sweetheart.

…loved him the way he loved you. 

Abruptly Matt’s surge of rage drained away and his head fell, leaving him feeling all the more empty and broken. He braced his arms weakly against his desk, drawing in a shaky breath as he forced himself to confess, his voice gone hoarse and ragged with grief. “I loved her, Foggy.” He lifted one shaking hand to his face. “God, I loved her so, so much. I can’t… I don’t know what to do without her now that she’s gone.” “I know, Matt,” Foggy said gently. “I know.” “I loved how she always smelled a little like coffee, and the way she always managed to wind up climbing into the oddest places for a case. She had one of the foulest mouths I’ve ever heard, but I swear she could use it to talk her way out of almost anything or to bring someone up out of whatever dark hole they were trapped in. She was… far kinder than she’d ever admit.” His lips quirked, but there was no humor in it, the expression miserable and gutted. You’d have likely argued with him about how kind you were if you’d been here. But there was no chance of that now, no matter how much the scent of you on the air told him otherwise. “Some days it felt like she was the only thing holding me together, like the only time I could breathe was when she held me in her arms. She was always there when I fell apart, or when it all… when it all started to hurt too much. And I tried to give her whatever pieces of me the Kitchen hadn’t already taken, to be there for her like she was for me, to keep her safe. We were finally going to make our relationship official when she came back, her and me, even if there’d… already been something there for a while now if I’m honest.” 

And it had, it had been there, this soft, tender thing that had developed slowly but surely between the two of you, a tangling that came by degrees rather than all at once. It had sprouted, grown, and blossomed so gradually that even now he struggled to point to any one moment where it had truly begun—the night he found you in the warehouse, maybe, or that first game of Devil Hunt, or when you’d both almost taken the leap before he’d realized you were drunk. But the question of where it began didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it was there, something nameless yet still so good and warm and perfect, a connection nurtured in the low light and the blood-soaked soil of the Kitchen. You’d felt it just like he had, and you’d been willing to take that chance with him despite the baggage he carried behind him like an anchor destined to drag him down. You never would have agreed to kiss him when you came back otherwise. Now that chance was gone. 

“How much did she know before she left?” Foggy asked quietly, leaning against the doorframe. 

”She knew that I-that I wanted to be with her, but I never told her that I loved her.” Matt blew out a slow, heavy breath. “I was too scared of chasing her away, I guess. I thought maybe when she came back, if she still wanted me, I would… I decided that I would tell her. But I waited too long. Now she’s gone and I’ll never be able to tell her. All because of me.” 

He finally lifted his head, tipping it at Foggy. Neither of them dared mention the wetness on Matt’s cheeks. Even speaking about this—about how much he’d loved you only for him to ruin it—was almost more than he could bear, the edges of the wound still fresh and raw. Then again, maybe he deserved that pain after how miserably he’d failed you, just like everyone else in his life. “I miss her. And what’s worse is even when she’s right there in front of me, she’s not. She’s not, Foggy. Because I-I fucked up. I’m the reason the woman I knew, the woman I loved, died. I’m the reason she’ll never remember what we had, why I’ll never hold her again, and why she’ll leave New York at the end of the month like she does whenever she’s afraid of forming a connection.” He let out a bitter laugh, waving towards the windows, towards the place you’d once held dear. “I couldn’t even keep her here before. She almost ran last summer and the only thing that stopped her was being kidnapped. That was what slowed her down long enough for our thread to turn red, not me. She won’t let that happen a second time, not now that she’s seen what happens to people I care about. Do you understand?” 

The door to Nelson and Murdock creaked open, Karen’s voice making its way in first. Her voice was followed only a moment later by another’s, one still so familiar. 

“—I mean, winding up in a pool while chasing a kid sounds about right for me, so even if I don’t remember, I won’t argue—”

“I had to keep you here somehow.” Foggy’s voice remained quiet, but there was no disguising the ferocity in it now, the fervent belief. “Get out of your own head and talk to her, Matt. Fight for her. She would want you to.” 

No. 

No, no, no.

Your body may have been here, whole and real, but the woman who’d known him wasn’t. The song of your voice, your sweet scent, the flames of heat and stirred air currents around you flaring into a familiar shape: all of it was nothing but a lie, a snare for his senses, a ghost of his own making, and he wasn’t about to be caught by it again. 

He darted back around his desk, shoving his way past Foggy on the way toward the front door, his heart racing. If he was quick, if he just put up enough of a front, he could get out before they trapped you here with him like they’d planned. He wouldn’t relive this grief again, he couldn’t, not without falling apart. The moment he’d had with you in his apartment had been enough agony for one lifetime. 

“Hey, Matt.” You cleared your throat, shifting awkwardly on your feet where you’d stopped by the front door. Your stance was cautious and guarded, almost wary of him. It was just one more reminder of how uncomfortable he made you now. “Are you—”

“Heading out,” he said stiffly, only belatedly remembering to trace one hand along the wall as if his heightened senses hadn’t given him a clear map of the room the moment his adrenaline spiked. That spike was a curse all its own. It made the scent of you so much stronger, the lie of it fresh and present as it twined around him. His chest hitched just once before he forced himself to breathe his mouth. But that route of escape had been cut off, too. All it did was shift his focus to the taste of you on the air, and the taste of familiar fabric once so tenderly given. 

You were wearing one of his shirts. 

He fumbled for his cane, his hands starting to shake before he finally found it where he’d left it against the wall. He couldn’t let you see him like this. It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t remember him, nor was it your fault that he’d lost you. He’d done enough damage without adding a layer of guilt to what you were dealing with, too. But despite his attempts to hide what he was feeling, his face a hard mask, your fingers still brushed gently against his arm a moment later. It was an offer of help, or maybe an attempt to reach out, to slow him down, to connect. It was a kindness, a sympathy he didn’t deserve. Even now, you read him far too well, this touch the same as it had been that first night he’d met you when you’d gently brushed your hand against his arm. “Hey, do you need… I could walk you home.”

He shied away from your touch, finally managing to roughly unsnap his cane before going for the door. “I’m fine. I just—I have things to take care of. Excuse me.”  

He went straight home and showered, but no matter how many times he scrubbed, he couldn’t seem to wash the ghost of your scent away.

You slowly wandered around Matt’s office, taking it in. This was another place you’d supposedly frequented, a place that should have been familiar, and one you'd avoided until now.

Even though Foggy had assured you it was alright, it felt… almost wrong to explore a stranger’s space like this without them present. But you couldn’t help but brush your fingers across the battered desk and the small labels in braille you couldn’t read, run your hands along the chair for clients that you might have sat in once, and trace curiously the small seashell next to Matt’s laptop. The base scents of Matt were stronger here where he spent so much time, only partly erased by the smell of coffee and paper. The room was clean, cared for, and well-organized despite how rundown the office was. Important to him. You could tell that much, even if the scents and sights had failed to spark any memories.

Maybe… knowing his space wasn’t enough. 

This was about more than just figuring out who you were, now. For some reason, you needed to know who Matt was, too: this man Jane Hind had cared so much about and who’d cared so much about her. You told yourself it was practical. Matt was your best bet when it came to remembering who you’d been. But some part of you deep down recognized the lie. No, there was something in you inescapably drawn to him, a pull you couldn’t quite explain. Maybe that strange, unnatural gravity was what had started this whole mess in the first place. What was it about him that was so different, that had driven you to break every last rule you’d lived your life by for over a decade? 

And why… did you spend so long wondering if he’d ever climbed out his office window?

It had been twenty-nine days, and not a single memory had returned. 

Oh, there were beats now and then when you thought that maybe, just maybe something was coming back, but those moments were painfully few and far between. Even in those moments, you couldn’t say remembered anything, exactly. It was more a frustrating sense of deja vu, a fleeting little itch at the back of your mind like you’d forgotten something important, flashing road markers to warn you of the dark, empty gaps in your memory. That sense was probably driven at least in part by Foggy’s growing desperation as he frantically hunted for something that might trigger a return of your memories. 

But the rest of that feeling… the rest was all you. 

There was no denying a traitorous part of you wanted to remember no matter how ill-advised it might be. You wanted to remember this bizarre little family you’d stumbled into and then lost, just like in Los Angeles. You wanted to remember the love you’d had for this place, this city, this taste of mutual affection that had grown up around you after going so long without. After endless ages and ages of drought, of starvation, you hungered for even these bare crumbs of connection, something to tide you over until you found safe haven on the distant horizon. What a tempting thought it was to slither back into the life of this woman who’d been so cruelly murdered and replaced by a stranger wearing her skin.

Was this what a demon felt like when it took over a body? To walk around with someone else’s face, to speak with the unnatural voice of the dead, tormenting the loved ones that remained? 

That, ultimately, was why it didn’t matter what you wanted. Your presence in this city only spread rot and suffering. It would be better for everyone involved if you left like you should have long before now. Then they could all grieve without you tainting the very soil around them. 

Especially Matt. 

You’d seen him once or twice in passing as your time in New York wound down. Even at a distance, you’d marked the growing circles under his eyes, dark enough to be visible despite the glasses he always wore. The rest of him wasn’t doing much better. It seemed like every time he crossed your path, there was another bruise, another cut across his face or knuckles, a shifting canvas of pain painted across skin grown pale and drawn. He didn’t just look tired—that wasn’t what this was. This was something far worse, a haggard exhaustion, a weariness that couldn’t be solved with sleep, if he slept at all. This was someone being haunted. 

Probably because the ghost of Jane Hind kept crossing his path. But that would be solved soon enough. 

You’d already packed up your things, not that you had much to take. Just your bag and your memory box. You’d be leaving the next day. Foggy was still convinced he had a few more days, but you had other plans. You couldn’t give Matt back the woman he’d lost, nor could you give him a body to bury, a grave to lay flowers across, but you could give him what Jane Hind had carried with her until her dying breath. 

“I thought you might… want these before I left tomorrow,” you said quietly. “I… sorry, it’s… it’s a bag with my—with her things.” 

Matt took it carefully from you, the motion mechanical and stiff. He hadn’t really invited you the rest of the way into his apartment, the two of you now stalled out in the hallway just beyond the closed front door. He hadn’t taken his glasses off, either. It made it harder to read him, his face closed off and impassive, a wall of red glass placed firmly between you. Come to think of it, you hadn’t seen his eyes even once since that day you’d first come back, and you didn’t blame him. You didn’t like feeling vulnerable, either, though that was just a guess when it came to what he might be feeling. 

“It’s the shirts from her apartment, which I think are yours. And the stuffed bear.” You bit your lip and released it slowly, shifting uncomfortably on your feet. “And the… the mug, which Nelson said was yours, too. The one you used at her place. I also put the hoodie in there, the one she had with her while she was traveling. And…” You reached into your pocket, fumbling for a moment. God, you were bad at this, unsure of just how to do this without hurting him any more than was absolutely necessary. It wasn’t a concern you usually dealt with since your goal was almost always the exact opposite, a precaution meant to destroy any threads of connection they held with you. Unfortunately, he wasn’t giving you much to work with, though you didn’t miss his subtle flinch when you drew the key from your pocket. “I thought you might want this, too.”

You cautiously edged forward, daring to breach the ring of radiant heat that surrounded him, the closest you’d come to him in almost a month. He went stiff as you approached, his jaw growing tight as the gap between you both closed. Another step, and his head cocked as if he were listening to your footsteps, or maybe… maybe he was just waiting to find out what you had to give him. But he wasn’t telling you to fuck off or just set your gift aside, which was a good sign. So you hesitantly reached out and brushed your fingers lightly against his bicep, a signal so he knew you were about to pass him something. 

A breath.

He remained absolutely still amidst the sudden, crackling tension in the air as your fingertips skated gently down and around his forearm, stirring all the little hairs, his skin shockingly warm. All you’d intended to do to take his arm and guide it up so you could place the key in his hand, but you quickly found yourself distracted by a ragged scar along the back of his forearm, one your fingers seemingly made their way to on instinct. It was a deep scar, the original cut likely made by some sort of blade, the edges of it rough and uneven from messy stitching. Your curiosity got the better of you, so much so that you missed the way Matt had begun to hold his breath.

“Who fucked up the sutures on that?” You furrowed your brow, your thumb smoothly marking out the jagged line of it. “They did a terrible job. No offense.” 

Matt’s face fell and you only realized too late just who it was that must have patched him up. 

Before you could blink, he’d yanked his arm out of your grip as if your touch had burned him. “Don’t,” he grit out, his chest heaving as he put a few steps distance between you both. “You can—just put your key on the bench.” 

“How did you know—” “Because there’s only one thing left it could be.” 

You nodded weakly, taking a few steps back towards the little bench beside the door. That unfamiliar ache, that sense of wrongness was back, the weight of it settling uneasily in your chest like a stone until you almost wanted to retch. It didn’t help that Matt was just barely holding himself together while you were here. 

Best to say what you’d come to say and leave him be. 

You gently set the key down, and the quiet click of the brass against the wood seemed to echo in the hallway, a graveyard bell tolling with a looming sense of finality. What you were about to tell him would hurt, you knew it would, but maybe one day he’d find comfort in it. This—a sign of what she’d felt—was the real gift you’d truly come to give, the only true token of her you could offer. Your words, when you spoke, were almost as hoarse as his. “I thought you should know I… she wore it. The key. I asked them. She wore your key and she never took it off. Not once. Whatever you both had, she treasured it, and all she wanted was to get back to you. She didn’t leave you by choice, Matt. I hope that… that helps.” 

Of all the things you’d said and done, it was this that finally seemed to break him. His face twisted in a sudden wave of grief, and regret hit you all at once. You quickly took a step towards him, one hand out, though you weren’t sure what you’d do if he reached back—it wasn’t like you knew how to comfort him, and you sure as hell didn’t know if he’d tolerate you holding him again, nor whether he was someone that needed some sort of touch when he was hurting. But before you could take another step he’d flinched away from you, retreating quickly back into the darkness of his apartment, his voice ragged. “Just go. Get out.” 

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, backing away towards the door. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”  

It shouldn’t have hurt as you closed that door one last time. But you cried all the same. 

Somewhere within the apartment came the sound of splintering furniture and a hoarse scream wracked with grief.

“Look, Nelson.” You tiredly adjusted the strap of your duffle bag over your shoulder, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of your nose as if it would stem your growing headache. “I know it’s a day early. But another twenty-four hours isn’t going to make a fucking difference.” 

“I don’t need another day!” he pleaded, his arms spread wide where he’d blocked your front door, ensuring you couldn’t leave your apartment until you’d heard him out. You’d had no idea he even had a key until today and, not for the first time, you cursed Jane Hind’s apparent lack of common sense. You did not give out keys, or at least, you hadn’t before coming here to this ridiculous fucking city. “Just five minutes. That’s all. I’ve got one last thing to try.”

“Maybe I don’t want to try one more thing!” you snapped bitterly, dropping your hand. That anger was a good cover for the way something sharp and prickly had begun to catch in your throat, the incident with Matt still fresh in your mind. “I’ve tried for a month, and it’s gotten me nothing. Fucking-fucking bars and random rooftops and a shitty little duck, goddamn penguins and keys, and none of it did shit! Jane’s gone, ok? She’s dead. And I’m sorry, I know you all cared about her, but I’m done—”

“Have you climbed inside a thread?” 

“...What?” you asked in sudden bewilderment, your rage abruptly faltering in the face of pure confusion. “What the fuck does that even me—”

He let out a whoop, practically dancing on his feet. “Yes! I knew it! I can’t believe no one told you!” 

“Told me what?!” You chucked your bag back onto your couch in sudden exasperation. If this was thread-related, at the very least you could stay long enough to listen. “There’s nothing to climb!”

“Ok, so stick with me.” He rubbed his palms together eagerly, a bright light in his eyes. “Because I’m about to get really metaphysical.”

It took you what felt like hours to climb inside the shimmering honey-colored thread that lay between you and Matt—a thread that sang with his sorrow and your reluctant sympathy. 

It wasn’t right having your soul constricted like this, all of who you were narrowing down into something so small as you squirmed through a barrier that tasted and felt like dirt and earth, chasing after the sound of trickling water. There wasn’t supposed to be anything on the other side. It was an emotional connection, nothing more.

And yet here you were, standing in a place that had no reason to exist.

“Holy shit,” you whispered in amazement, spinning on your heels to examine your surroundings. “Holy shit, he was right.”

Despite the late hour, the air was full of a muted light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, tinting the world a hazy, eerie green. High up above you roiled thick, sullen black storm clouds, silent flashes of red lightning carving their way between swirls of charred smoke. It wasn’t much light, but it was enough to see by.

And what you saw was heartbreaking. 

You stood in a dry, stony riverbed. The ground beneath you was cracked and brittle where the water had receded, leaving behind nothing but dust and broken branches. The river itself remained though just barely, the thin trickle of flowing water down the center of the riverbed a far cry from whatever immense force had carved its way through the landscape until the banks were a good ten paces from one side to the other. The terrain beyond the river didn’t look much better, wilted, drooping cattails dotted up the bank before giving way to endless forest that stretched farther than your eye could see. Like the cattails and scrub, the pine and fir trees stood withered and brown, casting their empty branches up toward the sky. 

If it had been beautiful here once, whatever had happened to you had destroyed that beauty. 

“Jesus,” you whispered. 

“Can you hear me?” Foggy’s voice sounded distant and far away, tinny like he was talking through a long tunnel. 

“Yeah. Can you hear me?”

“...Ok, if you’re trying to respond, I can’t hear you. But according to Matt, whenever you were here, it felt like memories. So poke around, see what you can find.”

You sighed and started down the riverbed. “Not super helpful, but ok. Let’s give it a shot.” 

The water was the most obvious place to start, and you made your way over to the thin stream that ran raggedly across the parched soil. Much to your fascination, you quickly discovered that what you’d thought was one current was actually two, one layered over the top of the other, each flowing in the opposite direction. The first of those currents hiding on the bottom was fairly calm, steady if a little restless, swirls of pale color that almost felt like curiosity, though how you understood that translation was a mystery. The second current seemed far rougher where it roiled atop the first, its section of the stream cloudy and thick with swirls of black and the red of an open wound. You hovered over the second current for a long moment, working up your courage, before you finally knelt and hesitantly brushed against it with one finger. It was just water. How bad could it be? 

The moment your skin made contact, your chest seized on a sudden swell of agony. Your mouth filled with the taste of grief, with the sound of an empty home, the lack of some familiar scent that meant affection and warmth and softness and safety, the ache of an old wound reopened just when it had started to heal. Alone, always alone, I deserve it, so many gone, he was right, when will I learn? There was no hope for comfort from that pain, no escape from the darkness into tender arms that could hold you just right when it all hurt. All you had to look forward to was more— 

You threw yourself backward, scrambling away from that terrible current as if what you’d felt might rise up and chase after you, snapping its teeth the whole way. You didn’t stop retreating until your back slammed against the dry soil of the riverbank. Only then did you stop, panting, your eyes wide in shock as you cradled your hand against your heaving chest. 

Emotion. It’s emotion.

That was what the water was. Matt’s emotion. Which meant the other current—one now shifting back to yellow despite a momentary surge of twisting, roiling black—was… yours. 

Right. So you could rule the water out. But if that was emotion, where was memory? 

Examining the rest of the river was the most obvious next step now that you’d ruled out the water. Based on what you could see, the original riverbed had been a mix of silt and stones of varying sizes, a firm foundation beneath a once-powerful river. Now, though, the grey, dried-out silt was covered in a strange sea of divots and dips, as if something—a lot of somethings—had been plucked up and removed. You traced one of the indents in the soil curiously, lifting your hand back up to consider the grit as you rubbed it between your fingers. Another glance around revealed the answer. 

The stones. 

There were still plenty of stones remaining in the riverbed, but the divots in the dry silt told you there’d once been far more. If that was what you’d lost, then maybe…  

You rocked up eagerly to your feet, pacing around breathlessly as you searched for a promising stone to start with. Eventually you made your pick, plucking up a stone just small enough to fit in your palm, flat and smooth save for a little groove in it as if someone had run their fingers over it endlessly. Strangely, it smelled like honey and herbs, the surface oddly warm against your hand like the brush of a thumb against your mouth. You waited for a long, impatient moment, and when nothing else happened, you tapped it a few times. 

Still nothing. 

And something inside you… cracked. 

“Fuck!” you screamed, hurling the stone back down the river in a sudden rage. The pain and the loneliness you’d been suppressing for the last month, the last year, the horrible, endless eternity since leaving your family in Los Angeles began to claw its way up your throat, the clouds churning wildly above you in response. A wild rain came next, each droplet sharp and cold and edged like the blade of a knife, bitter and biting as it beat against your skin. You grabbed another stone, one that tasted like shitty beer—Josie’s beer. You threw that rock, too, then another and another, throwing stones that smelled and tasted and felt like your shriek of laughter as he grinned and caught you against his chest, like torn flesh and a needle held by tender hands, like your face nuzzling fearlessly against Matt’s throat as he whispered comfort into your hair and held you close, like synced breathing and hearts and dances between binary stars as you both fell into sleep, fell into safety, fell into one another, phantom sensations that only made the fierce ache in you grow stronger because with every stone you snatched up it became clear that… 

You’d been loved. 

Not your identity.

Not the image you showed to the world. 

Not the walls you’d put up in front of him before he’d found some way past them. 

You. 

And he’d loved you with every part of him. 

You weren’t sure when you started crying, a violent, vicious stream of tears that was just as much a product of rage as grief. Here was someone who’d loved you fully, loved you despite every asterisk and bit of baggage and sharpened edge that came with being a broken hound, with being a former experiment still on the run. But you barely noticed your tears, spitting up at the unforgiving clouds and the howling wind, because you could howl, too, just as violent, just as much a threat as any storm in this place. “I want my fucking life back! I want him back!” 

You hadn’t wanted it before, or maybe you had and you’d just been too afraid to ask for it. But now? Oh, oh, now you were furious, furious and hurting and screaming, because you’d denied yourself connection all these years only to find it in the last place you’d expected. That was what this had been—home, family, love. That had to be why you’d stayed in New York, why you’d risked everything for these people, for Matt. You weren’t an idiot. You’d have run the numbers and the math, made your calculations.

You couldn’t bear to lose this. Not… not again. 

You threw stone after stone, hunting frantically as your fingers bled dry, desperate fury into the air, reddened drops disappearing before they ever hit the ground. The trickle of water in the center of the riverbed had churned itself into a frenzy, but you ignored it. There had to be something here that would trigger a memory, something that would let you remember being loved again, something big enough, important enough, so you grabbed and you grabbed and grabbed and grabbed and grabbed until at last, you found a stone the size of your fist. You snatched it up with a ragged sob, cradling it greedily against your chest as if doing so might let you carry it out of here, because you wanted it, you wanted him, wanted to remember more than anything in the world. 

“Let me have it!” you snarled, snapping your teeth at the howling winds of the storm as if you might catch this place between your jaws and tear it open until you at last found what belonged to you. “Give it back!” 

And with a blink—

He tore one of his bloodied gloves off, his hand shaking as he reached out to you.

You stilled the moment his fingertips brushed tenderly against your cheek, so very gentle, affection layered over blood and earth and hurt. And god, your skin was so terribly dry and cold, the beat of your heart uneven as it struggled to pump blood through your body, but he could feel you react to him, the barest parting of your lips as you dragged in a startled breath. He didn’t want to startle you further or risk you fighting him, so he let his voice drop into a whisper, soft as the brush of a feather.

“It’s me. I’m here.”

‘I heard you,’ he tried to say. ‘I heard you. I’m here.’

And your weakened heart… skipped.

He wasn’t sure if he reached for you or if you reached for him. All he knew was it was the sign he’d been looking for. In a heartbeat, he scooped you up off the floor, stealing you back from that dry, filthy cement and crusted blood that had tried to take you from him. He cradled your cold body against his chest, then, held you there where it was warm and where you were safe. You made the softest little noise, the sound choked and dry, but there was no disguising the heartbreaking relief in it. He pulled you in further, pulled you up until you were curled up in his lap, not an ounce of air left between your bodies, your head laying against his shoulder.

He would never let you touch the floor of this place again.

“D…” you mumbled, not one hint of fear in you despite what he’d just done, the blood on his hands and the burning heat of violence that still lingered in his bones. You wearily slid your head over, inch by inch, until you’d buried your face against the sweat-slick line of his throat, nuzzling in against him with a hoarse sigh that only made him hold you tighter. You inhaled slowly then, heedless of the blood and dirt and sweat that coated his skin, your fingers coming up to hook weakly in the collar of his shirt. “You came.”

And you… smiled.

He buried his face against your hair and let out a shaky breath. As he did, he dug down past blood and dust and dirt, dug and dug until he found the sweet, familiar scent of you, a scent he never wanted to leave him again.

The stone fell from your limp hands, a ringing in your ears you could barely hear beneath the sound of the water nearby, frothing and wild. 

The increased sensory feedback had been bizarre, and there was… there was no reason he should have been covered in so much blood, his body burning as if he’d been fighting before coming to you. But…  

“Hey, you in there?” Foggy called. 

“D.” The letter felt strange, and yet… natural, as you cradled it on your tongue. “D?”

And you knew what came after that letter, shaping the word again in your mind. 

You knew. 

You… remembered. 

“Always,” he’d said. 

“Always,” you whispered, casting your eyes up the riverbed towards another large stone. “Always, D.”

He didn’t know what you were doing or why you’d climbed inside the thread. 

“Always, D.”

All he knew was that it hurt. 

“You’re stuck with me, unfortunately for you.”

He’d thought catching your scent, hearing your laugh, being forced to take back the key he’d given to you had been the worst of it. But no. It was far, far worse having to relive these memories of your time with him over and over and over without pause, his senses filled with you: with your touch, with your scent, with the taste of you on the air. He heard you whisper, laugh, and sigh; felt the brush of your fingers in his hair and your body shaking with laughter when he snatched you up during a game of Devil Hunt and the safety of you as you’d held him so tenderly after his fight with Foggy. All of it was a reminder of what he’d lost, what he’d never get back. 

“Don’t you give up on me, Matt. Ok?”

He was in agony. There was no blocking you out like this, no escaping your memory no matter how much he tried to push back or retreat, until he wound up trapped and spiraling in his kitchen. 

“Kiss me when you come back.”

On and on it went, memories snapping at his heels until all he had left to hide behind was rage. He swept his arm across the counter, glass shattering as he screamed himself hoarse. Eventually he found himself backed up against the wall, sinking down as he hitched out something like an agonized groan, his hands over his ears, his eyes shut tight. “Don’t do this to me, sweetheart, please—”

“Adoringly yours, because I do adore you, you ridiculous man...”

“Leave me alone,” he whispered. “Just leave me alone.”

“...Remember that. if nothing else.” 

In hindsight, it was a really bad idea to give back your key.

“Matt!” you shouted, pounding frantically on his front door. “Matt, let me in! It’s me, I swear, I can-I can—”

Silence. 

And you weren’t willing to wait any longer. This wasn’t something you could explain through the door, out here in the hall where the neighbors could hear. You needed to get inside. You knew he was in there somewhere. 

Red threads never lied.  

You wiped the blood away from your nose and took off for the stairs. It was only one flight up to the roof, and sometimes he left the rooftop door unlocked. Even if it wasn’t unlocked, you’d use the key under the mat. You didn’t remember everything. But you remembered that. And if the key wasn’t there? You’d break that fucking door down.

He sat unmoving in his meditation pose on the floor, the sound of your attempts to get into the apartment distant and far away. Meditation had been the only thing left he could think of that would allow him to escape the pain and the memories of you that had flooded his thoughts. Like this, with his mind and his focus withdrawn until it lay deep within himself, he’d hoped he’d be far enough away from the world that the ghost of you couldn’t reach. 

Yet even deep in meditation, his instincts were set off by the crack! of his rooftop door slamming open.

He was on his feet in a heartbeat, his heart racing as he bared his teeth, his body prepared to face whatever threat had just broken in. The sensations of you, at the very least, had quieted during his meditation, which should have left him enough space for some small margin of peace as he threw himself into a fight. But that peace was nowhere to be found, because you were here again. 

He recoiled from that thought the second it crossed his mind. This wasn’t you, that much had become painfully clear. You’d passed away somewhere far beyond his reach, away from the home, the life you’d lived here. The woman that stood on his landing now was nothing but a ghost, a fading memory and a terrible reminder of what he’d had and lost, what he’d earned by daring to reach for something good. There was no undoing it, no washing away the blood on his hands. If anything, how he felt for you had doomed any hopes of you staying long enough for him to reform that connection with you. He knew how you operated—hell, you’d tried to run on that hot summer night so many months ago after seeing just how much he’d cared, even if you’d ultimately changed your mind. At the time, he’d thought it was Destiny, the hand of God ensuring you remained in the Kitchen where Matt could keep you safe from the Man in the White Coat, here in this place where you both might… might shape something good out of all the broken pieces you’d both been left with. He knew better, now. Even the hand of God couldn’t break the curse Matt placed on those he loved. You would leave, leave like all the others, and he deserved it. 

The only question that remained was why you seemed so, so fucking determined to make him suffer. 

“Matt.” Your voice cracked as you stumbled down the stairs. “Matt, I—”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone, sweetheart?” he grit out, reaching up to fist his hands tightly in his hair. He’d never known you to be unnecessarily cruel, but there was no other explanation. “God, I-I can’t—you can’t keep doing this to me.”

“Matt, just let me—”

“Do you even care how much you’re hurting me?” He hitched out a broken laugh, something bitter and tormented, the sound absent all humor as you made it down the stairs. “All those months, all I wanted was for you to come back. I begged. I prayed to God, over and over again, that he would bring you back to me. And now that you’re gone, you just won’t leave. I can’t get away from you no matter what I do. Do you know what that’s like? To lose someone you love only for their ghost to haunt you every time you turn around?”

A soft intake of breath. 

There it was. Now that he’d said it, you’d leave. There would be nothing more frightening to the You he’d first known than a word like love. 

“I just…” His breath hitched again, something thick building in his throat. It was just another sign of his weakness, the same weakness that had gotten you killed. 

‘I warned you, kid,’ came Stick’s voice, so smug that Matt bared his teeth. ‘I fuckin’ warned you the night I opened up her eye. But you didn’t listen.’

He started to pace wildly, ignoring your voice as he hunted for some opening through which he could escape, flee from Stick’s voice hiding in the corners of his thoughts, from your ghost. With every step his movements grew more frantic, more furious as his rage built like a rising wave: rage at himself, at God, at the monster who’d taken your memories and the possibility of a life for you here with Matt, and at you, too, because you just didn’t get it. “I just want to grieve, and God can’t even give me that much, can he? Is that what this is? Punishment? Revenge? Congratulations. Job well done. You can go.” 

You tilted your head as you watched him pace, the same cock of your head you got when considering your potential routes forward. As far as he was concerned, the only route he’d give was a route out the door.  

“I don’t know why you came back, and at this point, I don’t fucking care,” he told you hotly, nothing but burning smoke and thick venom in each word. “We don’t have a red thread anymore. There’s nothing to keep you here. Leave. Now. I’m not asking.”

Your soft response was a single letter, one that struck directly at the open wound inside his chest. 

“...D.” 

He snatched up an empty beer bottle from the kitchen counter in a sudden rage, turned, and hurled it past you. 

You didn’t so much as flinch as the bottle came within inches of your head. Nor did you react to the distant shattering of glass, the sound of it barely audible over his anguished roar. 

“Leave me alone!”  

And then he froze in sudden horror at what he’d done, his heartbeat almost drowning out the soft sound of your steps. All he’d wanted to do was scare you away, frighten you away so he could break where you couldn’t see, because it had hurt, it had hurt to hear you call him—

Wait. 

You’d… you’d called him…

“My Devil Man, my Saint Matthew,” you whispered, the touch of your hands cool and endlessly gentle as you cupped his face. His skin was wet, damp beneath your thumbs as you swiped them across his cheeks, when had he started crying? You brought his head down until you could lay your forehead against his, the taste of salt hanging in the air. Your voice grew achingly tender, so longed for that he swayed helplessly on his feet, wanting nothing more than to be held like you’d held him so often before when he was hurting. “I’m so sorry, D. I’m so sorry I left you alone, sweetheart.” 

He closed his eyes tight, his breath growing shaky. You couldn’t know that he was two steps away from crumbling in your arms, fractures widening with every breath. He had no energy left to fight your touch, your misplaced mercy, but giving into the lie was another thing entirely. He couldn’t bear to hope again, not when it would crush him if he were wrong. “Foggy told you to… he told you to call me that, didn’t he? To see if you’d remember. But I can’t—you’re going to leave me, you’ll—” “Do you remember what I said before I left? Because I do.” You swiped your thumb gently against his cheek, your uneven breathing skipping and falling into rhythm with his as his hands shakily rose. They hovered hesitantly a few inches away from your face, terrified that you might vanish beneath his hands like a ghost. “I don’t leave my box behind, and I won’t leave you behind, either. I told you that you were stuck with me after Nobu. I meant it. It’s really me. I know you’re tired and hurting, sweetheart, but listen to my heart. What does it say? Truth or lie?”

…Steady. 

Truth.

Could it really be you?  

He held his breath as he dared at last to touch your cheek, stirring the fine hairs as he stroked his way along the familiar shape of your face, one he’d traced so often in his dreams. Your skin was damp with tears just like his, another sliding down to bump against his thumb as your lips quirked up into a brilliant smile. And the moment his trembling fingers passed your lips, you kissed the tip of each with a warm fondness, a mirror of that night you’d held his broken, torn body and he’d kissed your fingers and palm. 

“How much do you… do you remember?” There was a ringing in his ears as the world beneath him seemed to roll beneath him. “Everything?” “Not everything. Some pieces are still missing, with Foggy and Karen and my job, but I-I remember enough. I remember you, and what I had with you.” Your voice grew fierce and fervent then as you drew in a sharp breath, preparing yourself. “I remember you, D. And I remember that I love you. I love you, Matt Murdock, all of you, so, so much. And I will never leave you alone again.” You loved him. 

You loved him. 

The weight of it—being forced to let you leave the city, the ensuing months alone, the agony of the past few weeks thinking he’d lost you entirely, and now this, this, knowing you loved him like he loved you—hit him all at once, and with a sudden groan he started to drop. You caught him in your arms, the two of you sinking to your knees as you held him tight and he wound desperately around you in return. Only then did he start to fall apart in your arms, shaking in your hold, his grief, his hurt, his relief spilling out in choked gasps where you’d tucked his head down against your neck. He fisted his hands in your shirt as you both rocked, and a ragged moan tore free from him, spilling against your skin when you lifted your hands to trail your fingers lovingly through his hair. You knew, you remembered just how to hold him when he was hurting, a balm across every last wound. His shivering, touch-starved body remembered your touch, too, drowning beneath the sudden surge of good, warm, safe, soft after months of nothing but pain, so much so he couldn’t help but gasp out your name. 

“I’ve got you now, D,” you whispered, burying your face against his shoulder until he could feel the heat of your tears against his shirt, too. “I’m here, now. You’re not alone. I’ve got you, Matt.” 

“I thought you were gone.” There was no way for him to truly sync his breathing with yours, not with the way you were both crying, but still his body tried on instinct, tried and failed over and over again. He closed his eyes tighter, burying his face deeper against your throat as he pulled you in even closer, until there wasn’t an inch of space between your body and his, where he could feel every beat of your heart against his skin, as if to make up for the way he’d almost… almost chased you away. “I thought you’d left me and I was alone. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder, and that I didn’t-I didn’t go with you, but I couldn’t—I’m so, so—” 

“Hey, hey, it’s ok.” You kissed shakily at his hair, his shoulder, and whatever other parts of him you could reach, your breath, your tears, your absolution washing over him like rain. “It’s not your fault, D. It’s not your fault sweetheart. None of this was your fault.” 

“But—” “Hey. Listen to me, before you get any further down in that hole.” You lifted his head from your shoulder, cupping his tear-stained face in your hands again. For a moment you both simply breathed with one another, your forehead to his, soaking in the contact, the affection that you’d both dearly missed and needed. “What happened to me outside New York, my memory loss… all of that is not your fault. It never was, D. There are-there are a lot of things we’ll have to deal with in the future, things I need to tell you. Consequences of what we’ve done, and—but this isn’t one of them. Never this. You’re what helped bring me back.” “How? I didn’t…” He let out a breathless, watery little laugh. “I didn’t do anything but try to chase you away.” “Some part of me couldn’t help but be drawn to you. I remembered, deep down, I think.” You gave an amused little huff. “And once Foggy showed me how to get into our thread, all your memories are what brought me back, helped me remember, because I could feel it, how you loved me. That was the key. Speaking of which…” You leaned in to nuzzle up against his cheek, your voice lowering to a whisper. “I think I made you a promise, you ridiculous man. And it’s one I intend to keep.” 

And with one small tip of your head, and a single slow breath… 

“Kiss me when you come back.” 

…your lips brushed against his for the very first time, tender and achingly soft, and so full of love that it would have stolen his breath away if he’d had any left at all. 

It wasn’t the first kiss he’d envisioned months ago just before you left, something triumphant and wild. Nor was it anything like the first kisses he’d imagined before that, the first kiss he’d thought this journey with you might lead to. And God only knew he’d considered kissing you for the first time more than was healthy.

Your first kiss with him was, instead, shaky and gentle, tasting of salt and tears and the fading shades of grief retreating like streamers of night before a welcome sunrise. Slowly, and then more surely, his lips began to move against yours, finally allowing himself to truly taste you for the first time, his eyes slowly falling closed as your fingers ran fondly through his hair, you, it was really you, you remembered. With a quiet moan, he breathed you in deep, calling your grace, your love deep into him until it settled there against his heart, knowing that, no matter what else might come, he would never lose it again, one of his hands rising to tenderly wind around your throat, his other hand finding yours so he could lace his battered fingers tightly with yours.

It wasn’t the first kiss he’d expected, but it felt perfect all the same. 

Because all that was left was him… 

And you. 

[wyvernity]

wip posting just to get something out there, and it's def a mixed bag!! the only thing more inconsistent than my posting schedule is my art style RIP

[getosleftarm]

A Business Proposition Sneak Peek

Pairing: Kook! Gn! Reader x JJ Maybank Summary: You're back in Kildare for the summer and your parents are pushing you to date Rafe. You've gotta get out of this somehow. JJ has taken the fall for Pope for sinking Topper’s boat. He’s gotta pay the restitution somehow. And you’re willing to help him out, for something in return. (fake dating au) Set around Season 1’s events. Midsummer will occur in this fic, but JJ already owes 30k restitution. So the events take place after s1xe4. Word Count: 1.5k Warnings: slight mentions of abuse from JJ’s dad/mentions of Luke Maybank’s “reputation.” Fast and loose with the timeline~ sarah and john b are together, everyone knows and is at least semi-okay with it.  There are some allusions and microaggressions against pogues just because they’re poor. It aligns with the themes in the show, and is NOT condoned by me (just to be clear).  But other than that, this is a (dialogue heavy) sfw fic~  dividers by: @bernardsbendystraws

Summer holidays, Easter, your birthday. You only come back to Kildare for holidays. It’s clockwork how distant Kook royalty graces Figure 8 with their presence. A holiday house in the hills collecting dust until one week before you return and the cleaners rush to prepare the estate. 

You grew up around Keira and Sarah when you were kids, but stuck by kooks when they had their falling out in 10th grade. Staying around Figure 8 was easier. It was clean, safe, and there was no reason to venture to the cut… Sure, you’re friendly with Kie still and occasionally you see her at the boneyard with other pogues, but only coming to Kildare on holidays already strained your relationship. But Kie and Sarah somewhat mended their relationship, and maybe, this summer you will befriend Kie again. 

You came back for summer vacation like always, but this time things are different. Almost 3 months in paradise ruined by one sentence. “You need a date for midsummers.” Both the Cameron’s and your parents have been constantly pushing for you and Rafe to date. With your family’s foot in the real luxury estate business and Ward Cameron’s construction company, both your family’s are primed for a strategic alliance. 

But Rafe Cameron? Rafe. The same guy that’s Sarah’s brother, and therefore like a second brother to you. The same Rafe that bullied you and Sarah since age 6, pulling on your pony tail on the way to the beach, purposefully drawing crude pictures with sunscreen on your back so you burned and tanned in odd shapes. The same Rafe that would point and laugh when you tripped, that claimed you lied whenever you got hurt… The same Rafe… 

Yet, your parents dont see that. And if they do, they turn heads in favour of joining Kook empires. 

That's how you ended up here. Sitting on a large piece of driftwood at the boneyard, you picked at the flaking wood and avoided eye contact with Kie. The other pogues setting up kegs and music. You sit on the large wood piece to stare at the ocean. Kildare feels like a dream, so far away from responsibilities and the real world. You bring your knees to your chest, tucking your chin in. Kildare is becoming a nightmare as pressures from your parents mount to give Rafe a chance. 

The sky is cloudy, overcast. The sun is setting, painting the sky in orange impressionistic splotches. The sky and the ocean contrasting and drawing your eyesight to the horizon. 

“You wanna run away already?” A voice pulls you out of your deep thoughts. Jumping to see JJ Maybank. 

You have known JJ for years, with him growing up on the island and you coming back every year like clockwork. We have known each other forever but not well, just passing glances on the beach, in the waves or at keggers on the boneyard. 

A couple drinks in and you're babbling your mouth off. He’s so easy to talk to, and laughs at anything. You sigh (a little dramatically) about how your summer is ruined because Rafe will be escorting you to all your events. None of your friends will want to be near you if Rafe is scaring them off :((

A couple more drinks in and JJ is suddenly divulging private information about his probation and the reparations he has to pay back to, for all intents and purposes, a total stranger.

“30k…”

“Oh fuck…”

“Yeah”

“Will you be okay? I know that your dad—” you bite your lip to shut yourself up.

JJ raises his eyebrows, “so gossip about my family has even reached the kooks that are only here for a tenth of the year?”

“Jayj… I didn't mean it like that. I don’t… I dunno…”

He shrugs and takes another swig. 

You and JJ spent the rest of the night in silence, other than the sound of his blick lighter zipping as he tries to get the last out of its lighter fluid. Zip, zip. Light the joint. Swish his beer. Finish the joint. Zip zip. Light another joint. Offer a puff. Finish the joint. The cycle kept going the whole night. 

At a luxury boutique on the mainland, your mother picks through dress options with little concern for the items’ prices, nor the mess she leaves behind her. “Honey, what do you think of this?” Your mom held up a puffy dress. A little unflattering but her heart is in the right place.

“Uh what for?”

“Your midsummer dress! Rose and I want to coordinate your dress with Rafe’s tie,” she responds as if it’s obvious.

You unconsciously pull a face, but your mom doesn't notice. She’s too preoccupied throwing dresses to the shop assistants. “Well good luck even getting Rafe to wear a tie, let alone a suit”

“Just let us handle that hon’ now the dress?” She hoists it higher as if to convince me.

“Umm. Yeah, it looks cool… maybe better on someone else though?”

She nods and puts it in the rack before trolling through the rest of the store as you trail behind her, thinking about how to bring up your concerns… You look at her from the other side of the rack. Your voice is small, conflicted on how to bring up the situation, “Hey mom?”

“Hmm?” She hums half heartedly.

“I-… I don’t wanna go to midsummar with Rafe”

She barely hesitates. “I know”

“What? Then why? Why are you making me go with him?” you plead.

She sighs and continues looking, “You’re not even giving him a chance…” 

“Bullshit!” She glares at me, concerned about the public ruckus I would be making and the impact it has on our family’s image (as if she wasn’t disregarding the store’s workers) “You know that I don’t want to be with him. Or even around him! Coming back here is meant to be fun! It’s been…” 

Your mom ignores you. Moving to another rack. You follow right behind her, now standing besides her.

Silence

“Mom please! You were the one who always made Kildare a prize for me. Getting good grades, achieving first in any competition, you would bring me here! It has always been a symbol of fun! A-a- a” I stutter “a reward for myself! Rafe ALWAYS made the reward sour! Please mom!”

She snaps, suddenly not caring about if the service workers who were (definitely) listening in. “Fine! Who do you want to go with then? Hmm?” This time, it’s your turn to be silent

“That’s what I thou-“

I cut her off. “JJ”

“Who?”

“JJ Maybank.”

It’s like we take time to stare at each other in shocked silence. 

“Are you dating him?” She passive-aggressively places hangers on the rack. 

Silence

“… yes.”

Silence

“Still no. You are not taking that pogue. It’s beneath you”

“Sarah is bringing John B!”

“He’s not Luke Maybank's son. Big John Routleage, John B’s dad, was a researcher. An accomplished one at that! Luke Maybank is a drunk and a nuisance. His son won’t be much different”

I feel my fists squeezing together for some reason. I barely know JJ. Maybe it’s the idea of anyone being like Luke Maybank.

“Let us prove you wrong”

Clanking the clothes hanger on the railing. your mom sighs, her head hung low and gripping the top of the rack. “Fine. I can’t stop you. I just… Why didn’t you tell me you were dating Luke Maybank’s son? How are your father and I meant to protect you from the… activities those types do?”

“Mom…” there’s a warning in your voice and a furrow in your brow.

“Don’t embarrass us.” For some reason, that… That felt like a threat.

~~~

Going straight to John b's place, you knock on the door wildly. You knock on the doors and windows, waiting for someone, anyone, to open up. You look through the windows and sigh, about to leave when the front door creaks open. JJ stands at the door. His blonde hair is tousled and wet, probably from being on the HMS Pogue. 

“Jeez” he sighs your name, “I thought you were square groupers” 

You rush back to the door, relieved he's here, ignoring his comment. “Date me”

~~~

You settle on the couch at the chateau while JJ paces around you. “Think about it! My mom’s been on my ass about a date to midsummers, and you need cash right? Thirty thousand?” he stops pacing for a moment before sitting next to you on the couch, a little closer than necessary. But it’s JJ - no concept of personal space JJ.

“Look, I’m sorry I just told her we were dating. You were just the first single person I could think of…” You pause. Your voice gets softer as you look down at your lap and pick at your manicured nails.

“I have some savings, and with my allowance… Flat fee, $500 a week, with chances to earn more if you take me out on a date, financed by me of course, I could pay you more”

“I'm not pimping myself out to you”

“It's not like that… It's more of a business proposition. You need money and I need a boyfriend. Not even a boyfriend… a distraction to keep my parents off my back.” You turn your body to him, tucking an ankle under the other leg.

“Please? I’m desperate... and!” JJ looks up at you. At your next words, he grins, “you could really piss rafe off~”

[drawingoddessy]

Part one of a six part comic based on @lightbrush-major Headcanons!

[kagihirapotato]

the steel ball run is real !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[itz-pandora]

It's awesome when Sonic games subtly build off each other

[lurking-loaf]

Oh wow! Look! It’s really Sun!