#“I fight for others rights to live however they like and everyone should be respected….

[skyloftian-nutcase]

Live footage of me when the Holy Spirit reminds me that I’m supposed to love everyone even though people are getting on my nerves

(via @/linkeduniverse)

[skzdarlings]

bodyguard: the first guard | part six | chan/reader

masterlist.

(part one of the previous story.)

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five | part six | tba

( read on AO3 )

A sequel to the Bodyguard. Miroh’s daughter is assigned a bodyguard of her own. The past is confronted when old friendships and new enemies are pushed to the brink.

pairing: bang chan/reader content info: the usual general content guide warnings for this stories including violence and abuse. explicit sexual content in this chapter: dom!chan, sub!reader, kinky play-fighting in a sexual scenario, hitting, smacking, chasing, pinned down, choking, taunting dirty talk, very rough play overall. content warnings: this chapter is very, very INTENSE on the violence front. graphic depictions of drowning, both voluntary and forced. explicit description of torture both physical and psychological, violence, fighting, drowning, choking, explosions.

chapter word count: 20,500 words.

enjoy <3

-

B E F O R E

Everything goes wrong. 

Felix should have known better than to rely on the enemy.  He is dependable in no regard except self preservation and even that only extends insofar as the most cowardly course of action. 

It was supposed to be a fight.  Felix did everything the way he was supposed to, everything according to plan, the way a proper soldier does.   Felix always follows through.  Felix always completes his mission. 

He played both sides.  He worked Miroh into a frenzy, suspicious of betrayals transpiring right under his nose in his own house.  He made the enemy think he stood a chance attacking Miroh, that he could knock him right off the playing board and claim all his assets in one fell swoop. 

Felix forgot the enemy was such a coward.  He was supposed to storm in here with an army, the way that Miroh does.  They were supposed to find Miroh’s regiment in chaos, everyone turned against each other thanks to his subterfuge and instigation. 

Miroh and his daughter are at each other’s throats.  The other soldiers take sides.  What should be a unified front in a run-of-the-mill acquisition mission turns into a self-sabotage as Miroh’s own team starts fighting each other. 

Miroh fights his daughter.  Felix knows, despite everything, there is a part of her that still loves, fears, or respects her father.  She doesn’t fight like she should.

Chris, however, does.  When Miroh knocks his daughter down, Chris attacks him.  Felix doesn’t worry because he knows Chris can win the fight and, besides, they are going to be rescued soon.  At that moment, everything is going according to plan.  Whether Miroh lives or dies is irrelevant.  Whether Felix lives or dies is irrelevant.  This is about Chris.  And Miroh doesn’t stand a chance against Chris, not with the full force of his fury unleashed like this.

 Miroh’s daughter just watches, stunned by how fast everything happened. 

She looks around like she expects to find answers in this dilapidated warehouse.   Her eyes land on Felix who has been standing to the side since the fight began.  Her eyes narrow as she looks at him, really looks at him, seeing what no one else sees. 

He swallows and braces his body for a fight.  She is a mirror of him as she stands, taking the exact same fighting stance.

“You told him I botched the operation,” she says.  ��Why, Felix?”

“Because you did,” he answers simply. 

“I thought you were friends with Chan,” she says.  “Why would you compromise us like this?”

“Because I’m friends with Chan,” he answers with that same even steadiness, a calm that he absolutely does not feel inside.  But he is good with faces, blinking with innocence.  He tries to compel her to look away, to forget about him, that he is too young or too stupid or too innocent to really comprehend what’s happening.

She doesn’t fall for it.  She sees right through the mask and glares at him. 

He anticipates her swing, catching her punch when she hurls it at him.  They scrape back and forth but they are perfectly, frustratingly, evenly matched. 

“Why are you doing this?” she asks.  “Felix, it didn’t have to be this way.  I could’ve helped you.  I’m on your side.” 

“I can’t afford sides,” he says, shaking his head rapidly.  “I need to get out of here.  Chris needs to get out of here.  If you care about him—”

“You don’t know the first thing about that,” she snaps. 

She comes at him with even more fury.  Felix fights but his attention splits, glancing back at Miroh and Chris.  Miroh is calling for back-up on one of his devices, but he never stops fighting.  Miroh is a soldier, first and foremost.  Whatever else Felix thinks of him, that much is true and always has been.  Miroh is not scared of fight.  Miroh will jump right into the fray. Miroh will get his hands dirty. 

The enemy is not like that. 

It was supposed to be a fight.  He was supposed to storm in here with a contingency and fight the only broken house of Miroh.  In the chaos of that confrontation, Felix was going to escape with Chris.

But the enemy never shows his face.  He plants a bomb.  He detonates it at a distance. 

The warehouse is blown to pieces.  Half those fighting soldiers die on the spot and Felix is blasted backwards.  It renders him unconsciousness, though he doesn’t know how long he’s out.  Not long, he thinks, when he wakes to sunlight pouring in through a gap, ripped in the warehouse wall.  It was almost dawn when the fight began.  A new day is starting. 

He pushes himself upright.  He is covered in dust and gravel.  He coughs and sputters, getting on his hands and knees and crawling through debris and rubble.  He moves towards the light.  When he does, he sees Miroh’s daughter.  She is not far away, but she is trapped underneath something.  Pieces of the wall blew forward and there is a concrete block laying across her body.  She is alive somehow, tucked into a divot in the floorboards, but she is trapped. 

Felix, panicked, frantic, guilty, looks around for Chan as he stumbles towards her. 

He never reaches her.  Someone grabs him by the shoulder and yanks him backwards.  He sprawls onto his back.  A shadow blocks the sunlight.  It’s one of the enemy’s bodyguards. 

“The boss says you did a good job,” the man says.  More of the enemy’s men are infiltrating the place.  They don’t fight or pay any attention to the bodies.  They go right for the promised merchandise. 

Felix still can’t see Chris.  Miroh’s daughter is still trapped.  Everyone else is dead. 

“I – I—” Felix starts, but dust is cloying in his throat and he just ends up coughing.  He is dizzy, his ears ringing horribly.  The world shifts in a kaleidoscope of vomit-inducing colours as someone drags him to his feet. 

“Come on,” the man says.  “The boss wants to see you.  He says he has a job.” 

It is the last thing Felix hears before the sunlight is on his face, overwhelming him, and he passes out in the heat. 

-

P R E S E N T   D A Y

“Don’t kill him.” 

Those are your first words to Chan.  You know him by the way  his body braces itself after the shock has worn off.   Chan may not be the inhuman soldier you mistakenly believed, but he might be something even more dangerous.  Where his raw emotions meet his long-engrained instincts and deadly capabilities, fatality will ensue.  

You cannot afford that reaction.  You are here to save Changbin.  Changbin was taken because he defected, because he moved against Miroh, because he decided that you were more important than maintaining structure and keeping orders.  Changbin turning, you changing, Miroh falling: it all started the night the enemy died.  It all started because of something that began even longer ago. 

This all started with Felix. 

“I thought he was already dead,” Chan says.  His voice sounds steady but you see the tension in his form.  He is wracked with adrenaline.

“Me too,” you say. 

“Oh, you’re talking?” Felix says, looking at you. 

You suppose he saw the reports of your death. He must have been just as surprised to see you behind the mask.  Lack of expectation made him blind to recognition.

This is likely why he has not recognized Chan yet.  The fact Chan is still wearing the mask does not help, his face mostly covered, disguise foolproof to an unsuspecting witness - even despite the heated slash of his unmistakable eyes boring into Felix. 

But It has been many years.   And Felix thinks Chan is dead. 

With that thought, you say, “I guess we’re both ghosts.” 

Felix looks at Chan only briefly, seeing nothing but a soldier in a familiar uniform.  He gives your regulation combat gear a similar once-over.    His brow furrows as he scrutinizes you. 

You almost forgot this kid had such a sweet face.  Freckled and wide-eyed, you can see why so many people underestimated him time and time again.

Lee Felix is everything Miroh wanted to achieve with his program.  Maybe it is not surprising that the collapse of two major antagonists circle back to him. 

“What are you doing here?” you ask. 

He meets your gaze. 

“The same as you, I think.”  He hesitates, then continues, “I’ve been following reports.  When I saw what was happening, I looked for the closest base and just…  I decided to help things along.” 

Despite how innocently he explains himself, you do not question his capabilities.  You will not make the same mistake as so many others and underestimate him.   You know what Felix is capable of doing.  His only flaw is too much time away from Miroh’s operation, thus a lack of understanding for its inner workings.  He cannot do what you and Chan can do, but it is the closest anyone could come.   

That is not your question. 

“Why would you care?” you ask.  Somehow, Felix escaped from everything.  He might as well be a real ghost for all that his reappearance in this fight is incomprehensible. 

“Because.”  His defensiveness softens just a little as his mind goes somewhere else, far away from the violent chrome prison of Miroh.   “Because,” he says, gentler, “I want to find a place to… to rest.  To be home.  And I can’t do that, knowing what’s still out there.  I need to help fix it.”  He looks you over again, but it is different than his earlier judgemental regard.  Still scrutinizing, but thoughtful, as he tilts his head and really considers you.  “What I helped make,” he says.  “I don’t think I can go really home until I do something about it.” 

In the space of a breath, Chan draws a handgun.  He is so fast that you don’t even see where it was holstered. 

“Why do you think you should have any of that?” Chan says, punctuating with a threatening downward push of the gun.  “Give me one reason not to shoot you.  Seriously.  Just one.”  By his venomous tone, it is obvious no reason will be good enough.

You put a hand on his shoulder.   He tries to shrug it off but you hold firm. 

“Hold your fire,” you say, maintaining your cool outwardly despite the panic inside.

During the exchange between you and Chan, Felix gets one hand free.  He bites the tip of his glove and yanks it off with his teeth. 

Chan is quick to react, seizing him by the wrist like he expects Felix to attack him with one hand.  Chan is fixated with such a single-minded determination that he does not see what you see, what Felix was actually trying to show you.

A ring around his marriage finger, simple and unadorned.  

After a suspended beat of silence, Chan looks down.  He sees the ring too.  Most of his face is covered but you see the flicker of pain in his eyes, something like a slash across his brow.  He reels back as if a bomb detonated.  Instinct puts the gun back into his palm, the barrel at his adversary, but it shakes just short of imperceptibly.  You are not sure if the uncharacteristic tremor is inner conflict or pure rage.    

“This is my one reason,” Felix says calmly.  “This is my reason for everything.”

Even though you still don’t have all the answers, seeing that ring turns the world right-side up.  Of course Felix turned on the enemy, not out of ambition or cruelty, but love.  The thread of it runs through every action committed in the last few months, something you could not see despite its prevalence beneath the surface of your life.  None of this is happening because of the rivalry of two greedy monsters and the chaos they sowed.  It’s happening because of everything that somehow thrived in spite of it. 

So much makes sense now, looking at him, at that ring.  You think of the security footage being scrubbed after everyone died.  Felix was always good with computers and he probably worked well with the enemy’s high tech systems – certainly well enough to wipe them entirely.   It gave him time to run off with the other half of that wedding band.  You suspect the enemy’s daughter wears the other ring. 

Chan is staring at that ring like he wants to burn it, like he wants to cut the whole hand right off. 

Tentative, testing, you ask, “Did you kill them?”  

Felix ignores Chan.  He looks at you, his brow furrowing with confusion. 

“Who? Miroh’s agents?” he asks.  “Most of them are already running off and—”

“Not them, not here, not tonight,” you say.  “The enemy.  His men.  His daughter.  Did you kill them to get away to do – whatever it is you’re doing?”

He swallows.  Your suspicions are confirmed when you see the flicker of anxiety in his eyes.  It is obvious to you that he is lying when he says, “Yes, I killed them.  The enemy.  His family.  His men.  They’re all dead.”

“Not all of them,” Chan says.   His frustration returns and he digs the gun at Felix.    “I’m looking at one.”   

“Stop it,” you say sharply.  “I need him to answer me.”   

Felix is understandably stressed with an unknown hostile threatening him.  He overlaps with you, snapping, “Seriously, mate, I’m co-operating, what more do you want?” 

“I want to kill him,” Chan says with an exhale.  Though he is looking at Felix, you feel like he is seeing so much more than the moment as it unfolds.  The amount of emotion in his voice is uncharacteristic for him on a job.  He is  compromised by years of pent-up feelings, bursting inside him.  “I want to blow his fucking brains across this warehouse,” Chan says, putting the barrel right in Felix’s face.

He is so fast and deliberate.  You are worried he will act before you can even think to prevent it. Panicked instinct makes you blurt, “Chan! Stop it!”   

At the same time, Felix grabs the gun and uses the element of surprise to overpower Chan, just enough to safely yank the gun to the side.

Either the shouting or the grabbing triggers Chan’s finger because the gun goes off.  It fires directly at the ground and kicks back so violently that it skitters across the floor like an animal.  

The piercing howl of the gun leaves a ringing silence in the aftermath. 

The reverberation of Chan’s name seems deliver the fatal blow, landing with far more violence. 

Felix is breathing hard, adrenaline coursing from the attempted shot.  He stares at nothing particular, just catching his breath – chasing and catching, then stalling, stopping.  He holds it.    

He slowly turns his gaze onto Chan.  He looks at him like he is seeing him for the first time, eyes meeting the dark line of anger that stare above the mask. 

Felix’s entire face smooths out, softens, with recognition. 

“Chris,” he says, not much louder than a breath, somehow as piercing as the gunshot. 

Chan responds by choking him, a big gloved hand snapping out and seizing his neck, so fast and powerful it is a wonder he does not snap it on impact. 

“Don’t say my name,” Chan says, “you backstabbing—”

You drop onto your knees, grabbing Chan by the arm.   He doesn’t relent even a little.  You know you can’t budge him with anything but words, so you say, “Chan.  Stop.  I’m serious.  Please.” 

With an exhale, Chan loosens his grip, just enough for Felix to cough.  

Felix’s eyes are watery, his voice strained when he says, “Changbin told me you were dead.  I thought the enemy—”

“The enemy?” Chan asks.  “You mean your employer?  Your ally?  What enemy?  Aren’t we your enemy, Felix?” 

“No,” you answer firmly, interrupting a dazed Felix.  “Miroh was his enemy,” you say.  “Just like Miroh was our enemy.  Now let him go.” 

Chan clearly does not want to obey.  Release comes in increments, just a slack of the hand before he finally huffs and withdraws.  He swings back and stands.  He does not look down again, staring forward like a soldier in formation.

Felix rolls onto his side in a wheezing fit.  Chan must have hit him at a sensitive juncture – likely on purpose – because it takes him several gasping attempts to breathe again. 

When his shoulders stop heaving, you grab him, not violently like Chan but nonetheless aggressive.  It is enough to get his attention, his watery eyes turning up to you.   

He looks so young.  You and Chan are only a few years older.  Do you look that young?  You certainly don’t feel it, burdened with lifetimes, known and unknown. 

Then again, his eyes seem to show a similar burden within.  The band on his finger tells a story beyond what you know of the runaway soldier. 

“You have questions,” you say.  “So do I.  Maybe together we can both finally get some answers.” 

Felix looks over his shoulder.  Chan does not look down to meet his eye.  After a moment of staring without reciprocation, Felix nods curtly and looks at you. 

Felix holds out his hand to shake.  He winces in pain as he digs out his voice. 

“Agreed.” 

-

You need to get away from the facility.  It has been undermined but not shutdown.  You would not have targeted such a big base and you’re the true key to bringing down most of these operations.   Your classification was high so you can navigate with ease despite the removal of your logins and security clearance.  Chan’s classification was just as high if not higher, though very different.  Together, there are results.

Your attacks are carefully and meticulously planned breakdowns, accounting for every bone in the finger of the hand throwing a punch.  Felix’s attack was more like throwing an emotional swing at an adversary when their head is turned.  It is something that seems like a good idea until the head swings back around. 

You retreat.  

The tension between Felix and Chan is palpable.  You ran many jobs against the enemy and, even a distance, you knew Felix to retain a professional demeanour.  Around Chan, he becomes a little kid again.  You almost see your own reflection in Felix as you also become someone else around Chan. 

That includes a streak of newfound empathy.  You would usually disregard feelings, especially on a job, but that is not so easy anymore. 

You stop Chan outside the car, gripping his bicep while Felix climbs in the backseat. 

“You need to relax,” you say.

Chan has not removed the mask yet.  You can only imagine the intensity of his expression without it. Even with half his face hidden, his expression is burning.  That heat touches you, a twining flicker of a flame.  It is brief but it scorches somewhere deep as he looks at you with all that fire. 

The heat is doused with his ice cold voice. “Felix is the reason this happened,” he says.   

You come back to yourself, blinking to clarity.  You furrow your brow.

“What do you mean?” you ask. 

“This.  All of this,” he hisses.  You can hear his heavy breathing muffled in the mask.  “He sold you out to Miroh. He’s the reason—” 

His voice cracks.  A memory of him flickers through your mind, cast over him like a projection, those desperate eyes and that muted cry.  You glance back at Felix who is waiting patiently in the car.  His face is downturned, dark hair falling over his eyes.  He twists the ring around and around his finger.  When he looks up, that projection flickers over him too, an image of him in his teenage years, with round cheeks and shaggy hair, staring with the intensity of someone who has already seen too much.  He does not look apologetic and he does not look happy; he is just there. 

You blink back to the present, looking down at the dirt beneath your feet, feeling the nighttime breeze on your face. 

Truthfully, this revelation does not come as a shock.  Your deduction was made in the rolling tension, looking between them, recalling the timeline of events.  Even if Felix was not outright responsible, you suspected he was implicated on some level.  It is the only way to explain Chan’s strong feelings for his betrayal.    

Maybe it should fill you with a similarly righteous fury, but it does not. Maybe it’s because you don’t know what you lost. Maybe it’s because you can only picture an indifference in Felix.   Maybe it’s because of that ring on his finger, of everything that has happened recently.  You are not suffering the same visceral hatred as Chan, lost in his past. 

Now, Felix is alive, having escaped the clutches of the enemy, a man like Miroh, doing it for someone he cares about.  Now, he has willingly returned to right his wrongs, whatever he perceives them to be. 

Now, you cannot find it in your heart to hate him.  So much of that is because of the complicated man in front of you.  Chan has worked his way past your barriers in a few short days that feel like lifetimes.  It has given you a heart to follow.   

You wish things were easier, but wishing will not manifest another reality.  You can only touch him like a person, one to one, heart to heart, hold his angry gaze until it softens just a bit, and say, “I know.”

He exhales.  A lot of that anger tangles up with his grief.

“We were kids,” you continue before he can interject.  “We all made difficult decisions in impossible circumstances that not even a reasonable adult could navigate.   He wouldn’t have traded one enemy for another if it was truly self-serving.”    

This still does not register with any significance to Chan.  His eyes are slitted and angry. 

 “I don’t blame him for what happened,” you say in a firmer voice.  “And I don’t blame you.”

That hits him and it hits him hard.  His body braces and his eyes widen, jolting like he was electrocuted.    

“If you can’t trust him,” you say, tone gentler, “then trust me.”

Chan does not answer, only exhales again, dramatically with a droop of his shoulders.  He opens the passenger door and gets in.  Felix stares at him but Chan stares ahead.  The mask stays on. 

You take a breath to steady yourself then take the driver’s seat.  You set your destination further out of town, tucked away in some farmland you passed on your travels. 

When you leave the district, Felix gets alert.  His eyes are big in your rearview mirror as the highway lights flash golden over him.  You recall last seeing him at a distance, his hair a golden blonde, returned now to a natural darkness.  You think about how much you have changed in days and wonder how much he changed in years.  It makes you sympathetic to those wide eyes and the anxious twisting of his ring. 

“I don’t want to leave too far from town,” he says, meeting your gaze in the rearview mirror. 

“You’ll go wherever we take you,” Chan says. 

“I have to get home,” Felix replies. 

“It’s dangerous to be running missions on your own,” you say before a fight begins.  “Don’t you think?”

“I knew I could handle myself,” Felix says.  “And they were just… they were right there.  I couldn’t do nothing.  Not when—”  He looks at Chan and his voice drops even lower, like it hurts to speak.  “You blame me,” Felix says.  He sounds resigned already, like he expected this all along, that even as a ghost Chan would despise him.  “I’m the reason they captured you,” Felix says.  “Because I failed.  All these years, I tried – I waited – I –“

“Don’t talk to me,” Chan says.  “If it was up to me, you’d be dead.” 

Felix just nods. 

“So you’ve gone civilian for real?” you ask, steering the conversation.  “You think that’s where you belong?”

It’s not an empty question.  You do not have time to consider what will happen after you rescue Changbin and take down the operation, but a civilian life has not crossed your mind.  Fighting back-to-back with Chan makes you feel like your life’s purpose is realized, especially now that it is in the employ of your own heart and not Miroh’s greed.  You cannot fathom the life course that Felix, of all people, has chosen. 

“I know exactly where I belong,” he says.  “I belong with her.” 

Chan turns his head, just a bit, clearly listening.  It makes Felix speak even more earnestly, incapable of lying under that attention. 

“When I – when I was kid,” Felix says.  “I – I guess I sorta idolized anyone I could.  I was – broken.  I needed something whole to hold.” 

Chan turns away and Felix looks down, down at his ring like it is telling a story to him. 

“It wasn’t like that with her,” Felix says.  “She, uh, she actually hated me.”  He laughs, the sound of genuine humour piercing through the tension in the car like a lightning bolt.   “She was, uh, she was – she was broken too, I guess.  We were different, but… we were the same.   I never made her an idol like that.  She was – she was just a girl.”  He looks out the dark window.  His voice is a little lower.  “It became love anyway,” he says.  “I – I never wanted that before.”  He looks towards Chan again, a more frantic edge returned to his voice as he says, “If I knew then, what I know now, about everything, about – about how to be a person, I – I would have done things differently.” 

There is a long moment of silence.  The car hums and the highway lights roll over and over. 

Chan finally says, “It’s too late for that now.”  

It is undoubtedly not the reply that Felix wants to hear, but it is a reply, and that is enough to make Felix release a held breath. 

When you reach your destination, tucked away from the chaotic world, Chan promptly leaves.  Felix steps out of the car but doesn’t follow, taking the hint as Chan stalks towards a distant treeline and melts into the darkness with a practiced ease. 

Felix turns as you approach.

“What happened after I left?”  he asks.  He looks over his shoulder but Chan is either gone or impossible to see.  “From the outside I couldn’t – I didn’t know – all I could do was – wait and—”

You let him stutter for a minute, to see what words will he find.  You are surprised when he looks between you and the trees and makes a gesture.

“Are you and him…?” he asks. 

Internally, you are surprised and it makes your heart skip.  Externally, you maintain a stoic demeanour. 

Blinking, you ask, “Why?”

That seems to answer the question without answering.  Felix nods, a repeated bobbing of the head.  He swallows before speaking again. 

“I – I want to know that he’s okay,” he says. 

That might fracture your stoic regard.

“Was it for him?” you ask.

“I thought I could save him,” he says, and laughs without humour.  “I was stupid about it.” 

“It’s not stupid to want to save a friend,” you say, that stoicism undoubtedly splintered.  You sigh. “You just have to understand that Chan has been through something that we can’t really understand.  I know Changbin told you he was dead.  That wasn’t entirely wrong.” 

“It was that bad?” Felix asks.  He doesn’t wait for an answer, shaking his head.  He runs his fingers through his hair, movements jittery and anxious.  “Of course it was.”  He is then struck with a flicker of awareness.  He looks at you very directly, tilts his head at a questioning, curious angle.  “Where is Changbin?” he asks, looking upset in a different way, marked with anger. 

You recall the mission with Changbin and the enemy’s daughter.  At the time, everything was an attempt to draw the enemy away from a rare offensive strike as he tried to move in on Miroh’s territory.  You were behind the scenes of it, sending Changbin after the daughter, luring away the enemy and also luring Felix back to Miroh.  It might have worked if Felix was not determined to rescue the girl.  He slipped through Miroh’s fingers a second time. 

At the time, you were confused like everyone else.  Felix’s motivations were befuddling at the very best.  No one knew why he left.  Now you know he left for Chan, no doubt striking a dangerous deal with the enemy to rescue him, a foolish bargain that would have seen like a life preserver to a drowning little boy.   You are certain that after a time, Felix would have been smart enough to realize it.  So the only thing more perplexing than why he left, is why he stayed. 

The ring on his finger answers that question.

“Does she know you’re out here?” you ask.

The question captures his full attention, forgetting his previous query.  He stares back at you.  He looks like a predatory creature with his hackles raised, bristled and stiff and alert. 

“Yes,” he finally says.  “She didn’t like it.  But yes.”

“Smart girl,” you say.  “Makes sense… considering who her father was.”  

As fast as Chan pulled that gun, Felix is in your space, every inch on guard. 

“Leave her alone,” he says, all that boyishness gone in a flash.   Though you do not doubt his honesty in some ways, you know Felix is good with faces.  Under his mask is a soldier, bodyguard, and now it seems lover, and you are not which will be more dangerous. 

You raise your hand in surrender.   

“You want to know what happened to Chris,” you say, placating.  “Miroh took him.  That man—” You also look towards the treeline, seeing nothing in the pitch.  “That man is someone different now.”

Felix looks there too.  You think the sadness in his face is genuine. 

“What happened to the enemy?” you ask.  The events of that night have haunted you.  It is the reason you are here today.  “Did you take him out on your own?”

“No,” Felix says, slowly facing you again.  “No.  It was no one important to the enemy.”

You stare at him with obvious disapproval for such a vague answer. 

“It wasn’t an enemy,” he clarifies.  “It was a friend.  Her friend.  He came back for her as soon as he could and he helped us get away.  He was just a civilian.  Not a soldier, not an enemy.  He just did it for a friend.” 

You fall silent as you recall the dream where a weight is lifted off your chest, where you can breathe after so long caged, of Changbin peering down at you with all that concern. 

“Why’d you turn against your father?” Felix asks. 

Heart thumping, you say,  “For a friend.”   

Some of the tension leaves him, his stiff posture slackening.  His face is flush with recognition. 

“You don’t know where Changbin is, do you?” he asks.  “That’s why you’re out here.” 

The heaviness of his tone makes you pause.  You let yourself linger in a momentary what-if, if you learned all this sooner and did something to help all of you, but that thought leads nowhere helpful.  It has happened.  Like Felix, you cannot change the choices you made when you did not know better, when you were surviving in impossible circumstances.  You are doing something now.  

You let your honest emotion show when you say, “I think he was waiting.”

“For what?”  

For me, you think.  “For things to change,” you say.  “And now they have.”

“Now they have,” Felix echoes. 

You think you understand him.  Not like Chan, not like Changbin.  You look at Felix and see someone still struggling with himself, lost and grappling for answers.  He is quiet under the immensity of the night sky, the range of feelings inside him just as vast.

“I’m looking for him,” you say.  “All this – it’s because of him.  He gave himself up to save me.  I’m going to get him back.  I’m going to bring an end to all of this.  It will never happen to anyone again.” 

Felix straightens, once more on guard, but he is not antagonistic.  He is on your side of the fight and you believe he finally sees that. 

“Do you know anything about him?  Anything at all?” you ask.  Felix got a better look at the military base before it went to ground.  Maybe his perspective will offer some insight beyond what you gleaned from the research facilities.  “I don’t know where my father put him,” you say.  “But I know he’s out there.  I know he’s still in Miroh’s web.”

“What makes you think he’s still alive?” Felix asks, brow furrowed. 

“What made you think Chan was alive?” you retort. 

“Okay,” Felix says, chastened. “I did release some prisoners at the base, but Changbin wasn’t there.  I would’ve recognized him this time.”  His earlier anger towards Changbin seems to dissipate.  He regards you with eyes that look more than a little guilty.  “I thought he died with the others, you know,” Felix says.  “I didn’t – I thought this whole time—”

“Trust me,” you say, with a humourless laugh. “You don’t need to tell me about the past confusing you.” 

Felix takes the empathy at face value, nodding.  He idly adjusts a hip holster while talking, gaze elsewhere, moving through his recollection. 

“I only really talked to one of the prisoners, yeah,” Felix says.  “They were all in bad shape but he wasn’t thinking clearly.  When I got them out, he thought I was there for him.  He thought he was being sent back somewhere ‘worse.’”  

“Worse?” you say, with a drop in your gut.  You have firsthand knowledge of the kind of torture that Miroh is willing to enact on its allies, never mind its enemies, so you can only begin to imagine.  It may lead you to Changbin after all, now that he is classified as a turned asset and enemy to Miroh.  “Worse how?” 

“I don’t really know,” Felix says.  “He just said he didn’t wanna go back to the white room.  It didn’t mean anything to me.  Does it to you?”

It shouldn’t mean anything.  White room is a vague description that could describe any plain interior at any site.  It sounds like the empty ramblings of a traumatized prisoner, disjointed thoughts that could describe any facility on any base. 

And yet –

When Felix says those words, in that context, that way, with all that uncertainty and pain in his eyes – you see a flash in the back of your mind.  You let yourself drift towards it.  It is not screaming cold like other memories, memories that send you hurtling through the dark.  It’s quiet.  Empty.  You see an impossibly bright white room.  There are no windows or doors, at least none that you can perceive.  It’s the opposite of the Cell, of those tunnels, of that well.  It’s not endless black.  It’s a shock of white. 

It’s nothing.  How can nothing feel like something?

“Do you know it?” Felix asks.

You shake your head, the brightness dimming as the real world and the dark night settle around you. 

“No,” you say.  The little twinge behind your eyes starts to pound.  “Maybe.” 

There is a beat of silence between you, enough confessions made to the dark to satisfy for now.  It has been a long night. 

Felix sighs, his long exhale feathering the hair over his forehead.  He turns to the trees, looks across the farmland, then up at the too big sky. 

“He doesn’t want to see me,” Felix says. 

There is a bone deep sadness to Felix, all in his eyes and the slump of his shoulders.  And that is just what he is letting you see.

“It’s complicated,” you say in lieu of anything more comforting. 

You understand that Chan blames Felix for what happened in the past.  At the same time, you don’t think that is where Chan’s problem truly lies.  You remember his words at the motel; not wishing you were someone else, but wishing he was.   He can accept you have changed, but he cannot accept that he has too.  Whether it was against his will, to survive, to keep you alive, he had to become someone else.  It must make him as alien to himself as your elusive past is to you presently. 

You have all made mistakes in desperation.  And now Felix is here, the past gone, a ring on his finger and a future ahead.  Chan does not have that.  He wants to be the boy who did no wrong and protected everyone.  But through his mistakes, your mistakes, Felix’s mistakes, he can’t be anymore.  He hasn’t been for a long time. 

Felix gets to go home because it’s ahead.  Chan can’t do that because it’s behind him.  Maybe he does hate Felix for the part he played, but you know he hates himself and his own circumstances more.  

“Can you – can you –”  Felix stammers.  “Can you just – tell him please – that I’m sorry for how it went down.”

“He knows, Felix,” you say, believing it honestly.   You have come to know Chan.  You believe that beneath all the pain and resentment, he knows it all comes down to Miroh. 

Felix nods.  He lingers in that thought for a moment, casting his eyes towards the sky.   His shoulders fall. 

“This isn’t over yet, is it,” he says, more an observation than question. 

“Not quite,” you say. 

“If you—”  Felix looks at you again, dark eyes earnest.  “If you need help...  Find me.  Seriously.  I want this to be over for good.”

You accept his proffered hand and shake.  When you try to withdraw, he holds on. 

“I’m sorry to you too,” he says.  “I don’t know what happened after I left, but…” 

You wish it was as easy as blaming Felix.  If this was about one foolish boy and one childish mistake, then everything would be so easy to fix.  But you know better.  You squeeze his hand and nod, reflecting his emotions like a mirror. 

“I know who my enemies are,” you say. 

He nods and finally drops your hand.  Another moment passes, the night breeze blowing between you, then Felix says it is time for him to go. 

“I know where we are,” he says, looking across the deserted farmland.  His eyes settle on some distant fields, sloping into a distant wood.  He looks at you again and nods.  “I think it’s for the best I get myself back.  Good luck.”

He has only taken a few steps when you ask, “How will I find you again?”

He looks at you.  For a second, there is a flicker of a friendly soul, life in his eyes as they crinkle with a smile. 

“Hmm, if you are who I think you are,” he says, “you’ll figure it out.” 

You take that as a confirmation of trust if nothing else, that he turns his back and walks away without fear you will pursue him with any reactive violence.   When he has crossed over the border of the property, disappearing down a path, you turn the opposite way to where Chan vanished.  With a sigh, you seek him out. 

Of course the impossible man chose the absolute creepiest part of the property to sequester himself.  It is difficult to see, even for you, as you pick up your feet to avoid tripping over spindly roots.  You realize the overgrown trees are a former orchard, though the fruit is long since rotted, the thick branches bare. 

“Chan,” you say, an edge to your voice.  “Chan, he’s gone.”   

Something cracks behind you.  You turn, mouth open with a remark that flitters into breath because he isn’t there.  Not even a moonlit silhouette interrupts the darkness. 

You turn back around and almost jump right out of your skin.  Chan is standing there, stanced like he has been waiting for hours.  You thump him on the shoulder, cursing. 

“Sorry,” he says, more automatic than sincere.   

He is still wearing the mask, still braced with so much tension.  You are standing close, close enough that if you were a target he would already have a hand around your neck.  You think of the number of people over the years, subject to that exact moment; the number of times he would have stood there, just like this, appearing out of the shadows and striking.

You think of how he got there.  You think of why he stayed. 

“Are we going?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow.  That exact expression was the first one he really gave you, the first hint he was more than Miroh’s soldier. 

Maybe you have a heart now, or something like it, but it is still woefully inadequate when it comes to function.  You do not know how to express the mess of feelings inside you.  There is no instant healing for the years suffered between you, but you wish you could make him understand that you are not afraid, that you mean it when you say you choose this Bang Chan, not in spite of everything but because of it. 

“He wanted to save you,” you say.  Before he can form a retort, you continue, “I know you didn’t ask him to save you. You didn’t ask him to make any bargains.  But he wanted to do it, not unlike what you did for me.” 

“That’s different,” he says quickly.  It sounds almost like a huff, like a punch in the gut. 

“I know how it feels, to be both you and Felix,” you say.  “To not like or understand yourself.  Do you think I don’t understand?  Do you think I’m scared of you in the mask?”

His shoulders lower and he looks at you, lifetimes of emotion in his eyes. 

“I don’t think you’re scared of anything,” he says.  “You never have been.  That’s what terrifies me.” 

“Chan—”

“I can’t lose you again,” he says, walking right up to you, an inch from your face, yet so propelled by adrenaline that he seems unaware of his own proximity and desperation.  “I can’t,” he says.  “Seeing Felix, it – it freaked me out, okay?  It put me back there again. For years, I –  I felt like if I could – if I could get back at him – for betraying my friendship – it would somehow undo it – it would be like it didn’t happen – I don’t—” 

He seems to remember his mask all at once, abruptly reaching up to rip it off.  His arm swings down to his side, mask loose in his fingers.  The sudden reveal of his whole face makes your breath catch, as if you haven’t been staring at him for days, as if he hasn’t engrained himself in your consciousness like he never left. 

You stare at each other, hardly any space between you.  His voice is heavy, his shoulders slumped, like gravity is pulling him straight down past the earth, like it’s a fight just to stand there. 

“I don’t want those things to have happened to us,” he finally says. 

“I know,” you whisper back.    

“I’m so scared of fucking this up,” he says, with a hiccup of a laugh, arms hanging limp in a helpless slouch.  “So fucking scared something is going to happen.  If not Felix, then – then anything – then—”

You place a hand on his chest, palm above his racing heart.  His breath catches, adrenaline still coursing. 

“Well.”  You smirk and it feels more natural than a smile.  It helps you dig your honest feelings out of your chest, buried so deep, sifting through your fingers like sand until you seize your beating heart and feel it come to life.  “We might be a couple of disasters,” you say, “but we’re here, together, in spite of it all.  We’ll figure it out eventually.” 

You trail your hand down his chest, past his side, fingers loosely tracing the top of the mask.  You hold his gaze the entire time. 

“You found me once, didn’t you?” you say.   “I trust you to do it again.”

“I didn’t,” he says, laughter walking the edge of a cry.  “I should have.  But you were the one who spoke to me in that van.  You were the one who asked for help. You were the one that found me. I didn’t do anything but follow.”    

“Is it too much to ask you to continue to do that?” you ask.  “At least a little longer?”

He leans towards you, almost like he is falling, that gravitational pull leading straight to you. 

“Always,” he says.  “I go wherever you go, remember?” 

He said that before, that first night when he comforted you.  He says it now with a laugh, though it comes up like it pains him, an ache in his chest.   

You think he might have sworn that promise a long time ago.   

“I want you,” you say firmly.  “Not the little boy you were, not just Miroh’s creation, but all of this, all of you.  I want your anger and I want your fear. I want the only guard who could fight me in that ring.  I want the only agent who was able to chase me down.”  You hold his gaze even when the intensity makes you sweat, uncharacteristically nervous with a twist in your gut that is so much more than lust or camaraderie.  “I need the only person I could have ever asked for help.” 

He exhales through his nose, then smiles a weak smile. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, shakes his head, laughs dryly.  His exhale is shaky.  “Because… honestly, baby…”  The pet name rolls thoughtlessly off his tongue, natural in his honesty.  He looks at you without any masks, eyes soft where they meet yours, jaw clenched with some baser instinct.  “Because I – I’m really fucking angry.”

“Good,” you say.  “So am I.”

You don’t think anyone has ever looked at you the way Chan does.  Your father saw a soldier, your subordinates saw a commander, Felix saw a complicated ally, and Changbin saw a lost friend.  When Chan looks at you, it feels like he sees all of you at once, every layer down to the bone, and that should be terrifying.  That much exposure should make a soldier run for cover, layer on every piece of armour you can get your shaking hands on. 

For some reason, he looks at you, and you just want to strip that armour off, piece by careful piece, and see what you will find in the reflection of his gaze. 

You think he feels the same.  It’s all you want, and it’s all so much, and you let yourself feel every tingling reverberation of that passion before you step away. 

“Come on,” you say.  “This fight is far from over.” 

You anticipate his next move but your breath catches anyway. 

Chan pulls you back, straight into his arms.  The mask hits the ground with a clatter as he grabs you by the neck, a gloved hand cupped carefully around your jaw.   He drags you into him and kisses you even more deeply than that last teasing kiss.  This kiss does not merely say, I don’t want to be your friend.  It does not merely say, I want to be more.  

It says, I want to be everything. 

And he hands everything over, and you take it, and you give everything back with your hand buried in his hair and your mouth open against his.

With a thousand more questions to ask and a mission to complete, but with information and honesty and hope – the fight ahead does not seem so daunting. 

-

You look at Chan in the passenger seat.  He is sprawled out, stripped down to a compression shirt that is far less bulky than the protective combat layers.  It should make him appear smaller, but his presence continues to fill every space he occupies.    Even where he does not literally touch, you feel him. 

He idly turns the mask over in his hands.  His eyes are ahead, over the dashboard, focussed on some distant point.  He has sweat through some of his hair product so his dark hair falls to frame his face a little more.   He pushes some of it back and you have to remind yourself to look at the road and not his hands, the corded veins when he flexes and moves his fingers, or his lips when he takes in a breath, or his thighs when he slouches and lets his knee fall against the console. 

Failing your mission because of a car accident would be a little preposterous, so you clear your throat and look ahead.  You feel him glance at you, but you refrain from looking back. 

“Can I ask you something?” you ask, using the excuse of concentration to avoid eye contact. 

“Yeah?”

“Promise to tell the truth?”

“You know I will,” he replies.  

He knows the question will not be too serious.  You agreed to discuss the mission parameters when settled at the new hotel.  You explained that Felix gave you information but it needs dissection.

So he must expect the halfway teasing lilt when you ask, “Is there a part of you – even a small part –that feels, hmm, a little shallow satisfaction that you wound up with Miroh’s daughter on your side despite everything he tried?” 

Your phrasing is a little convoluted but he sees right through it, brow quirking up. 

“Uh-huh…  Is that what you’re really asking me?” He looks dramatically contemplative as he throws your teasing back at you. “Or did you mean – Do I feel like I got back at the bad guy by fucking his little girl?” 

“I’m not little,” is your flustered retort. 

His laugh is a breathy snort.  You feel him look at you again.  When he does not elaborate, you surrender to your desire and glance his way. 

His tongue is poking into his cheek, his eyes narrowed but not with frustration, just a combination of scrutiny and amusement at whatever he finds. 

“What?” you ask.

“Nothing.”  He sits back again, leans his head on the headrest, smirking to himself.  “It’s just… that’s not the first you’ve asked me that question.  Why are you asking me now?”

“Why did I ask you then?” you blurt.  You are asking him now because you are trying to goad him into opening up on some of those darker or angrier feelings.  Was it for a similar reason you asked before?  It gives you a sudden tether to that past version of you, still a stranger, but maybe not so different. 

“Then,” he says.  He loses some of that jovial edge, looking a little more serious as he falls into recollection.  He rubs the back of his neck. 

“You can tell me,” you say when he lingers on his thought, words so clearly perched on the tip of his tongue.  “Really.” 

You are expecting any number of dramatics.  You are not expecting him to giggle. 

“You fell for me first,” he says. 

“No, I didn’t,” you reply automatically.  You have no idea if it is true or not, but you instinctively balk at the suggestion.  Even though your intimacy with Chan feels so unique, no doubt propelled by that complicated history, you still only know yourself as someone pragmatic and distant.  You cannot picture yourself at any age stumbling head-over-heels for some boy, even one with dimples like that. 

“Ohh no, you definitely did,” he says.  “Sorry, but you were allll over me—”

You thump him on the chest.  It’s a good solid thwack in the middle of his giggles. 

“Hey, hey!” he says.  “You asked.”

“You’re lying.”

“Now, now, come on.  I wouldn’t do that.”

 “I regret asking.” 

“It can’t be that hard to believe,” he says, tapping his chin with exaggerated pensiveness.  “I thiiiink… and correct me if I’m wrong… but I’m preeetty sure it was you who came onto me this time around too…” 

“That – I –” You laugh at your own stammer, so startled that you can’t help but break. 

He giggles some more, a tittering heeheehee that seems very incongruous in his black uniform with a combat mask on his knee.

When the laughter softens, he sighs a little.  He looks at that mask, absently runs his thumb along the frame. 

“It was a fair question, at the time,” he says.  “I think you knew how I felt.  How at first it wasn’t – it wasn’t really serious for me.  Not like that.  I was a bit distracted with, you know, life sucking.” 

“Fair enough,” you say, snorting in amusement at describing the child soldiership special-ops program as simply life sucking.  Diluting the power and dramatics is oddly cathartic, the laughter leaving a pleasant warmth in your chest.   It makes you brave enough to ask, “What changed?”

He looks at you, maybe gauging your wellbeing.  You both know the reconfiguration reports warn that too much sudden recollection can trigger a breakdown.  But there is a separation here, the girl in your past just a story on his tongue, even if you do like the way he says her name. 

“Uh, actually, it was seeing you with Changbin,” he finally says.  His posture gets defensive with his vulnerability, an arm slung across his chest. He idly scratches his shoulder while he talks.  “You were friends.  Really friends.  I didn’t – I didn’t really know how you managed to be friends, to be honest.   I never – I mean.” 

He huffs like he is frustrated with his own inarticulateness.  You wait, eyes on the road, taking some of the pressure off.  He eventually sighs. 

“The first program,” he says.  “All those kids – I only knew them for a bit, then they were all gone.  It was just me.  Then they brought in the next group.  I think a part of me was always waiting for the day something would happen to them too.  How can you really learn to care about people if you know everyone is just gonna be taken away from you?” 

He picks up the mask again.  He looks at it while speaking. 

“The other part of me wanted to care,” he says.  “Really fucking badly.  I don’t know what it was, though.  The trauma, my reputation, something about me, but I—”  He puts the mask down, looks out over the dashboard.  “Even before I put this on, before I made that deal with Miroh – I didn’t really belong.  People respected me, kinda, I guess, or were scared of me.  Yeah, lots of people have been scared of me.  And maybe it was actually easy to become that guy, maybe it was in me all the time.  Because even back then, it was like I always separate from everyone else.  I still am.  It’s like – it’s like there’s just this glass wall around me.  Sometimes there’d be moments, people, like with Felix for a while, where they’d look at me and I’d look right through it and forget it was there.  Then the light would hit the glass and I’d remember I was different.  Separate.  Alone.” 

He pauses but it doesn’t feel like he is waiting for an interjection.  Truthfully, you don’t know what to say. 

“You and Changbin,” he says, punctuating by smacking the mask against his thigh.  “You guys were different, yeah.  Didn’t matter what they tried to do you.  You stuck together.  You – you had it just as bad as me because you were Miroh’s daughter but you never let it – never let him – never let any of them tell you who you are.  And I just remember one day, I was looking at you.  Really looking.  You were with Changbin and you were patching him up after a fight.  You were both beat to hell and back but you were laughing together and I – I just thought—”

His voice gets softer, like the words are too fragile to speak. 

“I thought,” he says, “I would give anything to have you look at me like that too.” 

His words leave a stunned silence in their wake.  He eventually tries to deflect the tension with a laugh, smiling  at you, but with a smile that does not reach his eyes. 

After the words have washed over you and after the jumbled mess of confusion that is your consciousness sifting through it, you say, “Glass coffin.”

“Excuse me?” he asks. 

“Sorry.”  You shake your head.  “Just – that’s how I’ve felt.  Buried alive in a glass coffin.  Not myself, not who I was a month ago, not the girl I can’t remember.  What you said made me think of it.  I – I understand you.  I’ve been—”  Your breath catches unexpectedly.  “I’ve been very alone for a long time.  I – I don’t think I noticed, somehow.  Not until Changbin was gone. Not until you were here.” 

The car gets a little darker as you leave the highway, streams of endless light replaced with the occasional streetlamp.  The darkness makes the honesty flow a little easier.

“Is that weird?” you ask, your own voice soft and unfamiliar to your ears.  “For it to hurt more after it already happened?”

“I don’t think it’s weird,” he says.  “Then again, I’m just as insane as you are.”

You almost choke on your laughter, so abrupt in the midst of seriousness.  He laughs too. 

“That’s true,” you tease.  “Why the hell am I asking you?” 

“Because you’re insane, remember?”  He makes a tsk sound, shaking his head, all playful.  “Wow, now she’s forgetting things that happened just a minute ago.” 

“You’re awful,” you say, but laugh nonetheless. 

“Seriously, though,” he says.  “I get it.  I get you.”   

There is a beat of silence as the conversation settles around you.  You breathe a little lighter.

Then Chan says, “Also, yeah, it is kinda hot to bang the boss’s daughter.”

“Bang Chan.”   You smack his chest again, a little harder, but he just giggles like a naughty schoolboy and swats your hand away.   “Seriously?”  Your voice breaks as you try and fail to restrain laughter.  “That comment?  After all that?” 

“Hey, don’t ask questions you don’t want answered, ya know?” 

“Bang the boss’s daughter,” you grumble with faux-irritation.  “You and Felix have that in common, you know.”

“Fucking you?!  Jesus, what the hell did I miss when I walked away?”  He looks at his bare wrist as if checking a watch.  “You weren’t there long.  He’s a bit quick off the mark, eh?”

You thump his stupid chest again while he chokes on his maniacal laughter. 

“Going after the boss’s daughter,” you clarify.

That breaks some of his giggles, face twisting up with his surprise.  His mouth opens and closes as he looks for words, mind going a mile a minute while he computes this revelation.  He finally says, “Wait… what?” 

“The ring on his finger?”

“Yeah but – the enemy’s daughter?  Felix?  And after giving me a hard time for going after you and oh my god, serves him fucking right, I really am going to kill that little—”

His threats sound a little more light-hearted, at least you think.  It is tinged with some truthfulness, but at least it’s all out in the open this time. 

“I’m trying to imagine that story,” you say, steering the conversation to the side.  “I can’t imagine us in that scenario.  I don’t think I would’ve been waltzing around with a mopey bodyguard in any world.”

“I wouldn’t be mopey.”  He amends, “I wouldn’t be that mopey.”  Then he thinks about it a moment longer, eyes on the road but mind farther away.  “Yeah, you’re too much of a fighter,” he says.  “I would’ve had my hands full trying to keep you on the sidelines.” 

“You wouldn’t have stood a chance.” 

You are teasing him but he does not retaliate.  He nods with utmost seriousness.    

“You’re right,” he says.  “I mean, look at everything they did to you, and you still chose to be you.  I think no matter what world we were in, you would find your way back into the fight, and I would follow you.” 

You know he fully believes every word or he would not say it.  You can’t find a decent answer.  You doubt there is one. 

“It kinda freaks me out,” you say.  You strum your fingers because your hands are getting clammy on the wheel. 

“Freaks you out?” Chan asks, looking at your hands then your face. 

“I’ve always been very… restrained.  At least as far as I can remember.  I don’t let people in.  With you—”  You look at each other across the car.  “It’s like I don’t have to try to let you in.  You’re already there.”  You look back at the road, releasing a shuddering breath.  “It makes it easy to feel things I usually wouldn’t, or to do things I usually wouldn’t do.” 

You think about that first clumsy kiss, how badly the need consumed you when you never cared about kissing before.  You think about everything you are feeling right now, looking at him, sprawled in the passenger seat. 

“I’m not used to trusting people this way,” you say. 

He puts a hand on your knee.  It is a comforting touch.

“It’s not quite a joke that I’m a little insane,” you continue.  “I’m in pieces up there.  I know that.  I also know that when we’re together, it feels—”

You cut yourself off.  There is no word to describe it. 

“Yeah,” he says anyway.  “It does.  I know.” 

The conversation reaches its soft conclusion just in time.  You have reached your destination. 

This city is a veritable concrete jungle.  You can only go so far off the beaten path, so this place is more of a hotel than a motel.  The building is configured in a towering horseshoe, wrapping around the small parking lot where you and Chan sit in a quiet car.   You stare up at the building, most windows dark with the late hour.  You have some time before dawn. 

“Are you tired?” you ask. 

His hand is still on your leg.  You sit very straight when it moves, gliding inward, curving around your inner thigh.  His gaze rests there until you look at him, then his eyes flick up to yours.  He holds the eye contact as his pinky brushes the fly of your uniform pants. 

“No,” he says.  “I’m not tired.  The opposite, really.” 

“Still feel like a fight?” you ask, voice a little breathier. 

“Maybe,” he says, dimple appearing with his smile.  “What did you have in mind?” 

-

You slam Chan onto his back in the middle of the training mat.  

The hotel has a small gym, though it is closed after hours.  The building has minimal security and no one on patrol.  It is easy enough to rework the security camera so it plays a loop of a previous ten-minute interval, making the room look empty to anyone who deigns to double-check.  It is on the underground level, below all the rooms, so it won’t wake anyone up.

Daylight is hours away.  You have plenty of time to tire out that relentless adrenaline.   

“Not bad,” Chan says, letting his head drop back.  He laughs which is not the usual response from an opponent on their back.  Of course, he is not a usual opponent and he never has been.

He pushes himself up on his elbows, grinning at you with far too much cheek.  Teasingly patronizing, he says, “Ya get in a little more practice, buddy, and you’ll almost be as good as me.” 

You shove him down again.  He goes without a fight, just a little oof, giggling as he lands on his back again.  You move from straddling his legs to hovering above his abdomen, knees planted on either side of him. 

“You’re holding back,” you say. 

“Yeah, ‘course I am,” he answers simply. 

There is a little tussle between your hands as he tries to grab your waist and you shoo at him.  He gets past in the end, gripping your hips and moving you like you are weightless.  Even your clenching muscles do little to stop him, a startled breath spilling out of your lips as he moves you a little lower.  Now his hips are between your thighs and it is easy for him to bring your body down while he rolls up. 

You are in your compression shirts and bulky combat pants.  It means his hands feel hot on your waist, the touch immediate through the thin material, but there is a substantial layer between your lower halves. 

You still feel him, half-hard since you dragged him out of the car with a sparkle in your eye.  You both know where this is heading, speaking in that silent conversation you mastered in just a few short days.  He just needs to smile a particular smile and something inside you sparks. 

You lean forward, planting your palms on the floor.   It puts a slope in your spine, his hands feeling the curve of your hips as his playful gaze darkens, shadowed in the concentration of his brow.  You bring yourself down just enough to touch, the material of your pants crinkling where you press together, but nonetheless feeling him against you as you slowly drag your body along his. 

“What if…” you say, your gazes locked, “I don’t hold back?”  

His eyes roam your face.  He puts his tongue in his cheek, looking thoughtful with the quirk of his eyebrow.   After a thoroughly studious moment, he meets your gaze again. 

“You’d be at a disadvantage,” he says.  “I’ve seen you fight without holding back.  I know all your tricks.” 

“What?  In the ring?” you ask.  “I wasn’t at full strength then.” 

“No,” he says, voice a little lower.  “Before that.  We’ve fought before.  I promise, you came at me with everything.” 

You can tell from his face that the memory is not so pleasant.   No, not at all.  Yet he is very preoccupied with the pleasure around him right now, the tantalizing taste of it, your body in his hands, your face so close to his.  You keep looking at his mouth and he keeps looking at yours. 

“Everything,” you say.  “I see.”  Your brush your nose against his and it is so sickeningly sweet that it shocks him more than a smack.  His eyes get wide and you get the upper hand, grabbing his wrists and pinning them beside his head.   “And did I win that fight?” you ask. 

His hips rear up.  With a sharp buck, he moves you, gets his hands free.  In a spin too fast to compute, and a flail of muscles you can’t hope to overpower, you end up on your back. 

Chan pins you down, hips still between your thighs, both your wrists clasped in one of his hands.   He pushes them above your head and holds them there, then he swoops down so his mouth floats just above yours. 

“What do you think?” he asks. 

“I think,” you say, remarkably coherent considering the proximity of his mouth, “that last time we truly fought, we probably didn’t have a choice.”  You wrap your legs around his waist and he lets go of your wrists.  You put your hands on his shoulders.  “This time, we do.  And this time—”  You snap up, knocking heads, startling him.  “I’m asking you not to hold back.” 

In his surprised distraction, you roll out from under him then spring to your feet. 

“This time, you have a choice,” you finish. 

He turns onto his back, sitting with one knee curled up to his chest, the other leg stretched in front of him.  It is a casual pose, looking to all the world like a normal young man for just a second as he sits and lounges and considers you. 

Then he stands.  He holds your gaze captive in his own, his eyes a slash of heated determination. 

“You sure that’s what you want?” he asks. 

“You know it is,” you say without hesitation.  “How many times do I have to tell you?” 

“All right,” he says, lip quirking into a half-smirk before he wipes his face to a stern neutrality.  “Let’s fight.”  

You circle each other, measuring, walking the perimeter of the square mat. 

“Don’t underestimate me,” you taunt.  “Believe me, bigger men have tried.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, shrugging one shoulder in a casual stretch.  “I watched you shoot your daddy off a roof.  It would be stupid to think like him, no?” 

You are not expecting him to take the bait so unflinchingly.  It makes your heart skip beats, adrenaline already spiking before the fight has even begun.   

Chan still looks nonchalant, like he is waiting for a conversation rather than an altercation. 

He is like you.  A part of him is always braced for a fight.  It’s never really over.  You can’t control it.

You can control this.   You can hand yourself over, willingly, safely, and for the first time he can let this scene play out the way he wants. 

He strikes first, anticipating you are too smart to make the first move.  His primary feints are predictable, the initial throws little more than empty threats.  He is not holding back on defense, effortlessly dodging your retaliation, but his offense is still restrained. 

You get him behind the knee.  Your arms lock and you swing around, footwork frantic in its quick shuffle across the mat.  You manage to get your hands around his neck as you sweep a leg out from under him.  He barely stops his descent, twisted at an awkward angle. 

“I told you,” you say, panting, your breath fluttering through his hair.  “I’m not scared of you.” 

“You should be,” he says. 

He pulls himself out of the vulnerable position with a degree of strength that only the First Guard could possess.  He turns you with a single-handed yank, then his whole arm is around your neck and your back is trapped against his front.   He drops onto his knees and takes you with him, letting you struggle to no avail in his one-armed hold.  His other hand comes up to your face with an almost tenderness, fingers brushing your forehead, knuckles sweeping your cheek. 

“But I know you’re not,” he says.  “You’re as crazy as me, right?”

He pushes forward, lays down with you pinned under him.  His arm is still around your neck, bicep at your throat, his hips rocking into yours with blatant suggestion.

His lips brush your ear.  It makes every part of you get tight with anticipation, even your eyes squeezing closed, your throat cloying, breath catching.

“You’re not like most people anymore,” he asks.  “Daddy’s girl prefers a monster, doesn’t she?”

His free hand works its way between your body and the mat, tugging at your pants with more dexterity than his brute strength would suggest.   He gets the waistband low on your hips, gets the zipper all the way down, and fits his hand inside.  

Your hips buck instinctively, at first away, then giving into his palm when he grinds it against you through your underthings. 

“Hmmph,” he says, a bit of a laugh, finding you wet through the fabric.  “That was easy, huh?” 

You do have a strategy, despite what he thinks, hoping to lure him into letting his guard down when he shifts focus. 

Unfortunately, that is easier said than done.  You are used to disregarding your body’s cries, but that is when it screams in pain.  As it turns out, pleasure is harder to ignore.  

When he touches you, even with a barrier in the way, it is like something primal speaks to something raw and needy inside you.  You see stars, either from his grip, the tightly pinned position, or the way it doesn’t even matter there is fabric between you and his fingers because it is so wet that it feels like he is touching you directly – and it feels so good that you want to bury your face in the mat and forget about everything else. 

“You’re not seriously trying to make me come,” you say, voice rough if not still taunting.  “How is that a plan?” 

“That’s not the plan,” he says, but he doesn’t stop rubbing torturous circles, doesn’t do anything when you shudder under him.  “The plan is to fuck you, right here, right now.”  He presses his hips into yours, makes sure you can feel the weight of his promise. “And I’m not stopping until all these little noises turn into you finally begging for my mercy.” 

“Oh,” you gasp, thoughtlessly, not thinking straight on the cusp of an orgasm. “Fuck.” 

“Say that one more time?”  he says.  “What do you want me to do?”

He kisses the back of your neck.  It’s worth a thousand words. 

“Fuck,” you say, though it comes out like a squeak.  All that pleasure crests with his kiss, chaste and short as it is.  You throb against his fingers, that aching desire lingering even after he takes his hand back. 

You just barely seize control of your faculties when he lets go, leaving you sprawled facedown so he can kneel behind you.  He has your pants worked partway down your backside when you manage to throw an elbow back.  True to your words, you don’t hold back, winding him long enough to work yourself free. 

You don’t get far.  You are back on your feet for only seconds before he is on you.  He lets you get a few jabs in, then his hand is around your throat and he is walking you backwards into the wall. 

Even so, he holds up a hand, cupping your head so it doesn’t hit the wall with any force. 

“You wanted to fight,” he says, keeping that grip on your throat as he turns you around, your palms and cheeks to the wall.  He drops his other hand, working your pants the rest of the way down your thighs.  “You lost,” he says.  “Now be a good girl, bend over and take it.  I know you can.” 

It is hard to think when he starts fucking you.  Your mind often drifted during sex, even good sex, thinking about the next act or even what you would be doing later.  Despite your life being even more complicated now, you can’t think about anything else when he is inside you. 

You can’t do anything about your mind, but your body is a different story, as it seems to open for him in a way you did not know was possible.  You don’t think anyone else ever held your throat so right, ever kept such a secure hold, ever felt so good draped over you while finding somewhere inside you that made your whole body sing. 

“Chan,” you whisper, voice already shot. 

“Mm,” is his grunt of a reply. 

His pants are unzipped, slung slow, but not as low as yours so the material is rough against your bare skin.  You feel hot.  I is a relief when his hands start to gather your tight shirt and lift. 

You let him, though it means he pulls out for a second, getting his balance as you adjust. 

You take the opportunity and get away, even though you are more than half-naked with your upper layers removed and your pants partially down.  You yank them back up, panting as you cross the room.

He laughs, tugging up his own pants again.  His tongue is basically hanging out of his mouth, but he is not short of breath.  He runs his hands through his hair as he crosses the mat, every inch of him confident and determined. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks. 

His swings are taunting, you realize, faking when he is going to grab you, making it impossible to tell when he will. 

“You think you can get away that easy?” he asks.

It breaks the scene a little, or maybe makes it better, but you smile just a bit.  It is genuine, but it doesn’t distract him for long.   You get one good punch before he is dragging you both to the ground again.  He puts you on your back with a breathless shove, straddles your waist and grips both your hands in one of his. 

“Ah-uh-uh,” he says, grabbing your jaw with the other hand.  It stops your squirming, his thumb circling your lips.  He taps your cheek with the suggestion of a slap, just enough your heart kicks faster even while everything else gets softer.  “That’s better,” he says.  “Very good.  I got you.  Who needs a daddy like that when you got me?”

“Jesus,” you say, with a small helpless laugh.  “I don’t think we have time to unpack all that.” 

He laughs too.  He halts himself by jabbing his tongue into his cheek while he shakes his head at you. 

“Oh, I’m just getting started,” he says.  It feels like his hands are everywhere, waking every nerve as he skims your waist and front.  He cups the curve of your chest, tormenting you, far too swiftly pushing all your most sensitive buttons.

You are squirming again, bucking under him while he moves his mouth over you, lips and teeth and tongue, marking his path.  He goes lower, then flips you in a quick manoeuvre, your clothes just as quickly lowered.  His mouth is on you from behind, then his fingers, so much of his hand, up on knee behind you with his arm flexing in each downward thrust. 

“You’re not even trying,” he says.  “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

You make a sound, halfway between a grunt and a moan.  Resisting him is not easy but it has nothing to do with his strength and everything to do with your resolve.  You want his hands and mouth and everything else, want to lay there like that while he takes you apart and puts you back together again.  You want to remove all your armour. 

He gets you off with his hand, works you open so thoroughly that when he lets go, you are left clenching and trembling with need for more.   He gets the rest of your clothes off, takes a second to remove his shirt.  In that second, you get on shaking legs. 

You already know you won’t get far.  Even when you throw your head back, knocking into his, you expect him to recalibrate faster.  He is behind you, shirtless and hot and hungry, his pants low, every muscle throbbing and aching with the same exertion as yours. 

“Not so fast,” he says.

He turns you to face him and picks you up like it’s nothing.  He lines you up with the precision of an unfaltering marksman and gets back inside you by bringing your body down onto his cock.  The swiftness and ungiving strength is a surprise in itself, a yelp squeaking its way past your lips as he fucks you in his arms, in the air, using nothing else for support.  

With no other leverage, you can only cling to him, just him, filling the space of this room with everything he is, filling all those empty places inside you and making you feel fully satisfied for the first time that you can remember. 

He gets on his knees after a bit, not so much from tired muscles as sheer desire, wanting you in a better position so he can really fuck you.  On your back then side then front, his arm across your shoulder blades as he holds you down and drives into you with all those pent-up feelings. 

His hand is on the nape of your neck when he comes, not pressing or squeezing, just holding you there.  He doesn’t hold back in the pursuit of pleasure, lets himself feel it all, makes a sound you want to always remember as he drapes himself over your back. 

The world is quiet in the comedown, just the sound of heavy breathing.  A little laughter when he kisses your neck.

You are not sure if your aches and pains are from the earlier confrontation or from that exchange, and that makes everything hurt less, subsumed in the memory of something better, those bad feelings strangled by the good. 

You get back to the room and shower.   You keep your hands off each other long enough to get clean, but no longer than that.  When you are back in the bed, supposedly to sleep, he is back on top of you and you are pulling him into you.  It’s different than downstairs, but also the same, you and him, whatever that means or will mean.   He says your name while he fucks you, slower and so deliberate with every breath and bite and kiss. 

He lets you roll him over, put him on his back, lets you sit on top of him and take control for precious moments.  He doesn’t last long like that, staring up at you, bare face screwed up with pleasure and desire.  His lips form the shape of your name even when he can’t find his voice anymore. 

“Please,” he finally speaks again.  You’re not sure what he’s really begging for, but you give him what you have and it must be enough for now.  

He sits upright before he comes, wraps his arms all the way around you and holds you tight while rocking up into you. 

“Please,” he says again, eyes closed, leaning his face into your hands when you run your fingers through his hair.  He is already sweating again, his face hot under your hands. You hold the back of his neck, keep him pressed against you, his face against your shoulder. 

“It’s okay,” you say on an exhale.  “I got you.”

A shiver moves down his spine.  He rears up hard, digs his fingers into you with a possessive need, and comes with your name on his lips. 

-

It is tempting to sleep through the day, but every second of every minute is imperative.  As each day passes, there are less hours until Changbin is potentially relocated or put through experimental testing far more grueling than what has so far been described.   An overslept morning could be the difference between finding your friend or not.

Despite a lingering soreness – not all of it strictly unpleasant – you climb out of bed to dress for the day.  Chan stirs when you do, like always, though he allows himself a moment of uncharacteristic lethargy.  He groans when you open the curtains and the sunlight slashes across his sleepy, squinting eyes. 

“Rise and shine,” you say.  “We have a lot of reading to do.”

The heavy research element of strategizing is hardly ever glamourized the way a good right cross can be.  That is probably fair.  It is far less exciting to sit around a table for hours, a pot of coffee between you, skimming line after line.  

“I want to go back over everything from before,” you say, to a bleary-eyed Chan who has only had a few sips of coffee and still looks like he has one foot in slumber.  He really looks so different when scrubbed clean, face so soft and open.  His curly hair is a bit of a mop, a messy tendril falling over his forehead as he leans down to look at some text.  His flannel is buttoned askew and you have to resist reaching out and fixing it. 

“Are we looking for something in particular?” he asks.  “You said Felix mentioned a prisoner.”

“Mm,” you say, already diving into research.  Some of it is physical paperwork that you pilfered but most of it is stored on your stolen tablets.   You rifle through papers and scroll at the same time. 

“And what is that?” he prompts.  He shoves a coffee cup at you for good measure. 

You sit straighter to take a sip. 

“Right,” you say.  “I just have this feeling in my gut.  I’ve had it since last night.  Really unsettled and uneasy.  It doesn’t feel like general anxiety or anticipation, not like bracing for a fight.  It feels like – it feels like it does when I remember things, small things, in confusing fragments.” 

He straightens at that.  You have not told him much about the dreams.  He knows that you have nightmares, obviously, as he is the one tending to you when you inevitably wake from them.  You have not spoken the details aloud, though.  Some of those images are horrendous.  Speaking them makes it tangible in a whole new horrifying way.  To compound it, articulating the jumbled fragments conjured by your subconscious is a trying endeavour, to say the very fucking least. 

“Just…”  You take a breath, shake your head.  “Just look for any mentions of a white room.”

“A white room?” he repeats.  “That might be a little vague, don’t you think?  Lots of labs and rooms are white and kinda sterile?”

You are not entirely sure if the picture in your head is a true memory or a fabrication, perhaps one exacerbated by some similar but buried recollection.  You just know that picture is vivid, terrifyingly evocative.  You can see it so clearly.  That room is beyond sterile; it is washed completely white.  It is a bone scraped clean.  Not a scrap of humanity clings to the surface. 

Your perspective revolves around the room.  You are in the middle of it.  No windows, no visible doors.  No way in or out.  It feels like absolutely nothing came before it, and nothing more could come after it.  It is the opposite the Cell which was a pitch black torture room.  Confined, endless in its depth.  This is huge and blinding white brightness.  It makes the dark feel like a comfort.   

You slip so far into that white expanse, you forget where you are.  For a second, you are there, like you never left.  It’s all you see.

“Whoa, whoa—” Chan’s voice yanks you firmly back to reality. 

You realize only then that you are tearing up, one lone tear escaping down your cheek.  You have no idea why you would be crying.  The pain does not come from somewhere you can pinpoint.  It’s a hollow ache, like an echo of someone else’s pain. 

Chan is poised to stand, tense where he sits across the table.  He looks at you with justified concern.

You wipe your tear quickly, shake your head and take command of your body again.  You sit straighter, shuffle some papers and clear your throat.

“The white room,” you say.  “Or any white room that stands out as peculiar.  Felix said a prisoner was there, presumably semi-recently because he was still shaken from it.  He described it as worse – worse than the holding cell at the military base.  It makes me think it could be something worth looking into.  If it’s worse than the usual holding cells, and if it required so much clearance that neither of us have heard of it, then it might be somewhere that Miroh held higher risk enemy prisoners.  Changbin fits that description.” 

Chan releases a breath of his own. 

“It’s a good enough lead for me,” he says.  “Better than the big fat nothing otherwise.” 

Though his words are confident, he still looks at you warily.  You don’t completely blame him.  You would be equally startled if he began crying for no seeming reason. 

“It’s fine,” you say, as reassuringly as possible. 

“You were crying,” he says, tone a bit dry.  

“I just…”  You shake your head.  “I just don’t want to make this about me right this second.  This is about Changbin.  It has to be about him.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, putting his hands up in surrender.  “White room.  Research.  Changbin.  Got it.” 

You get to work with minimal interruption after that, stopping only to get some food then continue. 

Before, you were looking for descriptions that fit Seo Changbin specifically.  Prisoner transport, asset delivery, any movement between bases and facilities.  Now you are just looking for a room, anything that matches the description.  From there, you analyze its recent activity to see if it fits the timeline. 

One mention seems to fit the bill.  The description of the white room is vague but the closest match so far.  The recent incident also matches the story that Felix gave you. It describes a prisoner who was recently held, some low level gangster who ran jobs for Miroh but tried to sell information to some competitors and was subsequently brought to heel.  Records show he was recently relocated.  He was removed from the white room because a higher priority asset needed storing.

The timeline works.  Changbin would be a priority above anything or anyone else, a unique soldier and the biggest danger to the operation.  It makes sense he would be a held in a bunker so secret that not even two top clearance agents like you and Chan would know about it. 

This went all the way up to Miroh. 

 “Definitely the best lead we’ve had in a while,” Chan says, scanning the document in front of him.  “Explains why there’s no trace of him at the places that would usually make sense.” 

“Yeah,” you say, an edge of frustration to your tone.  “The only problem is where the fuck is this place.” 

You can picture it in your mind, but it is just a blank room.  It could be in any building in any city. 

Even though you have tracked and traced every mention of this elusive room, its precise location has not been disclosed or even hinted in any document.  Its vague existence is referenced here and there, and even then only in the most classified briefings.  Wherever the intel is hiding, it’s even higher classification.  The kind of thing that Miroh would have overseen personally, like the First Guard’s operations. 

“This secret could’ve died with my father,” you say.   You picture his broken body in a heap at the base of a building with his name on it.  You picture Changbin in a similar heap and it makes your stomach turn. 

“There’s people keeping these logs,” Chan reasons.  “They’re clearly still working.  If we can figure out who they are, then maybe—”

“And how long is that gonna take without my father’s clearance?” you ask, letting that frustration burst out of you.  It feels like he is back, like he never really left, your father lurking around every corner and putting obstacles in your path.  Every step forward, he yanks you back.

You thought you ran off his map but maybe you have been confined in a single room this entire time. 

“We’re back to square one,” you say.  “He is the only one who had all the answers.” 

“It’s still a good start,” Chan says, trying to sound more comforting than argumentative. 

“What if we don’t get the information in time?” you ask.  “Or spend all this time chasing it and it isn’t even the right place?  Or it is the right place but he isn’t in it at all.  And then he gets moved anyway and—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Chan says for the second time today.   

It has grown marginally easier to temper your most volatile emotions, corralling them like you would an animal.  It is still uncomfortable, this out of control feeling, watching that animal ran rampant with no clue how to truly tame it for good.  It is unpredictable at the best of times. 

“All right,” Chan says.

He goes to the sink at the little kitchenette while you prop your aching head in your hand.  He pours some water into a glass and brings it to you.  He kneels down, pats your knee consolingly while handing you the water. 

You take the glass, cool in your palm.  Your waking thoughts and half-reminiscences float in a swirling vision in the blaring expanse of your mind. 

You put the drink down. 

You have been skirting the edges of one report.  Since learning the reconfiguration was about you and not Chan, you have not really touched the files.  In some ways, you hardly need to revise them, as the evocative images are still so clear.  Some of that might be your own memories, peeling off the walls of your mind in broken scraps. 

You have not returned to the file.  Not until now.

You do what you should done when the instinct first struck.   There is a connection between you and this room and there is no use denying it.  Maybe you can use it for something good instead of just more hurt.

Chan looks at you with continued concern, still on one knee in front of you.  You skim the reconfiguration report, looking for the description of a white room, ignoring everything else. 

Unsurprisingly, you find it.  It is such an innocuous description, noted in the footnotes.  You would have skipped right past it when reading the first time.  It is the kind of thing anyone would skip over if they were not looking for it. 

It appears you were brought to the white room – which they call the downtime room – after the major reconfiguration tactics were administered.  It was used as a resting place, or a holding cell, or something.  Somewhere quiet and empty where you were left to rot, consciousness no doubt seeping out of your ears. 

You would have already been out of your mind.  The transport route would not have registered to you.

So you would be willing to bet they did not try to obfuscate or hide it from you.  Not in that state. 

“Maybe we do know someone,” you say, “who knows where the room is.” 

You look down at Chan, his eyes still full of concern.  It is shadowed with the crease of his brow, obvious confusion taking over his face. 

“Who?” he asks. 

Your heart is racing, and maybe breaking, because you don’t want to see that face filled with pain again.

“Me,” you say. 

It takes a second to land.  He blinks at you then shakes his head, smiles like he is laughing at himself for misunderstanding.  He looks up at you, hopefully.

“What do you mean?” he asks.  “You think you know where it is?” 

“In a way,” you say.  You glance at the text, finding it hard to hold his gaze.  “They brought me there when it was over.  According to the reconfiguration notes, I’ve been there a few times over the years, during the sessions where they, uh, fixed me again.” 

You try to laugh but nothing is funny anymore.  Chan slowly stands and your gaze lifts to him.  He doesn’t look away from you for a second. 

“I don’t really follow,” he says, but you think he does. 

“I think it’s in my buried memories,” you clarify, once and for all.  “If I can access them, maybe I can find out for sure.  Maybe we can find the room.  Maybe we can find Changbin.” 

“Okaaay…”  He finally turns away.  He paces a little, crosses the kitchenette.  He rakes his fingers through his messy hair.  “Okay,” he says again, does a little jump and shakes out his limbs like he is warming himself up for something intense.  He looks at you, finally.  “Um, look, not that I don’t want you to get your memories back, I mean – sure.  Great.  You know?  But, uh, how exactly do you intend to do that?” 

That is the crux of it.  That is why your stomach is turning over itself, your heart splitting.  That is why Chan is looking at you like that, braced for the absolute worst even though you haven’t said any of it out loud. 

“The report says that too much recollection at once can trigger a breakdown,” you start.

“Okay,” he interrupts.  “Breakdowns are not good, though.  You know that, right?  Like, I don’t have to explain how you having a massive breakdown would be a very bad thing?”

“Maybe,” you say.  “Maybe not.”

“M-maybe not?” he repeats, eyes wide.  He comes back to the table and sits down.  He grabs your hand that is loosely resting over the report.  “Baby,” he says.  “I told you before, hurting yourself won’t save him.”

“This is not the same thing,” you say, shaking your head.  You let him squeeze your hand again, a silent pleading in that mute conversation you exchange with your eyes. 

 You try to smile.  It still doesn’t come easily.  You wonder if it ever really did. 

“In my dreams, there’s a lot of cold water,” you say.  “I feel like I’m lost in a current, getting thrown every which way.  I see flashes of memories.  They don’t feel like me anymore, but I’m in the middle of them, like if I just reach out my hand I can grab them and put them back inside me.” 

You look at that cold glass of water.  You extract your hand from Chan’s grip and gently wrap your fingers around the glass.   

“I get them sometimes even when I’m not sleeping,” you continue.  “I know it’s all in there.  And I know it all started because of Changbin.  He smashed through that glass, Chan, and now it’s all pouring out and taking me with it.  I can’t just swim back and seal myself inside again.  Maybe the way out is through.” 

“What exactly do you want to do?” he asks. 

“I want to put my mind back there,” you say.  “I want to feel everything I have been running from.  All the bad.  All the anger.  All the fear.  I don’t know if it will work.  Maybe nothing will happen and I won’t remember a thing.  Maybe it will get worse and I’ll forget even more.”  He winces at that, his shoulders dropping.  You let go of the glass and touch him.  “But there’s a difference this time,” you say.  “I’m doing this by choice.  I’m doing this with you.   I trust you with everything that I am.”

“And what exactly,” he says even slower, “do you want me to do?”

“I can’t exactly drown myself,” you say. 

He gets quickly to his feet and turns away, rubbing his face.  You stand as well, your chair scraping across the hotel room floor. 

“Drown,” Chan says, seemingly talking to the air because he doesn’t look at you.  “Drown,” he repeats.  “You want me to – you want me to drown you.  Drown you?”

He spins around to face you, expression contorted with horror, hurt, and anger. 

“How can you—” he says.  “How can I—”

You step around the table and approach him slowly.  He doesn’t balk or push you away, though he is breathing heavily.  His skin is warm, even through his flannel when you lay a hand on his chest.  You guide him a little closer. 

“Like last night,” you say.  “It’s different, Chan.  It’s you.  It’s me.” 

“This is insane,” he says.  “What if it doesn’t work, like you said?  What if you get worse?  What if—”

“I’m not leaving him behind,” you say.  You picture Changbin on that roof, clasping your hand.  That scarred palm is resting on Chan now.  You turn it over and look at it, his eyes straying there too.  “I don’t know what happened before,” you say.  “I don’t know what will happen in the future.  But right now, my friend is sitting somewhere and he thinks he’s alone.  But he’s not.  I’m not.  You’re not.”  Your voice gets shaky.  Those tears come back, pouring from somewhere buried inside you, cold and rough as it comes out of you.  “This is my choice,” you say.  “I want to do this.  I’m not scared.” 

“I know,” he says.  He releases a breath and drops forward.  He wraps his arms around you and presses his forehead to yours.  “That’s why you terrify me.” 

You laugh through your tears, wrapping your arms around him too. 

“I’m insane,” you say.  “Might as well use it to our advantage.” 

“You’re lucky I’m insane too,” he says. 

He speaks with a lighter voice.  When you withdraw, his face screws up with sadness and he pulls you back. 

“Just – a little longer,” he says, cupping the back of your head and putting it on his shoulder.  You can’t see his face like that and you think that’s the point, knowing he’s crying just by the way his chest rises and falls.  “Just – just a second,” he says.  “Please.”

Oh, maybe that was his pleading last night.  Just a little longer. 

“Okay,” you say.  You hug him tightly.  The back of his stolen shirt crinkles in your hands.  You have nothing to your name, but you have each other, and you hold on tight for as long as you possibly can.    

-

You get ice from the hotel machine, bucket after bucket dumped in the bathtub.  Chan starts running cold water while you strip down to your underclothes and a t-shirt.  You sit on the bed, listening to the water in the other room, closing your eyes and fighting to recall all those fragments.  They are all sharp to the touch, jagged edges, truly like shattered glass.  If you touch the memory at the wrong angle, it makes you bleed with an agonizing pain. 

Your hands are already shaking.  You put them between your knees, trying to steady to them.  You look at the sunlight coming through the window.  You remind yourself this is not like those dank, dark rooms.  This is not Miroh.  Everything has changed. 

The water stops running.  Chan appears in the main room again.  He looks as wan and sick as you feel, but he nods resolutely, sharp as a salute. 

“Ready when you are,” he says. 

You stand and follow him into the bathroom.  The tub is filled to the brim with ice cold water.   It looks nothing like that dark and dirty well in the facility, but a chill moves down your spine nonetheless.  You see that well, remember peering down in the darkness.  It looked like it never ended.  You can see the bottom of the tub through the ice. 

Just like last night, you told Chan, reminding him of every chase and fight between you.  You put yourself very literally in his hands, just like you are doing now.  It was a recreation of real danger, just like now.  But it was safe, and you were fine, just like now, just like you will be. 

He drags the footstool from the chair in the main room, places it beside the tub.  He sits there, one hand swirling around in the water to get used to it.  You can see him shiver. 

You stand over him, looking down at the water, at his hand moving around and around.  He looks up at you. 

“You don’t have to do this,” he says. 

“I know,” you say.  You reach down and touch the water too.  It is so cold that it burns.  You are built to withstand extremities, so this will not have the same lasting damage that it would on a regular person, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt the same way. 

You straighten.  Your fingers tingle, dripping cold. 

“I’m going to try and fight you,” you remind him.  “It’s just instinct.  You have to keep me down there, take me right to the edge, as far as you possibly can, then bring me back up.   You have the timer ready?” 

He is going to push you to the limit, again and again, replicating the drowning torture in a hope it will tap into the part of your brain that correlates those memories with that feeling.  He is to do it within a certain timeframe or until you pass out, whichever happens first.  After that, you will take a few hours to recuperate.  If it doesn’t work, you will try one more time later tonight.  After that, you have to consider it a failure because he isn’t doing it a third time.  You agreed.    

He nods a bit too emphatically now, clearly wracked with nerves.  He stripped down to a sleeveless shirt so you wouldn’t be grabbing the flannel sleeve when you inevitably start to fight back.  It will be the body’s response to attempted drowning.  It’s why you can’t do this to yourself.  It’s why no one else could possibly do it to you, because you would overpower them. 

Besides, there is no one you trust like Chan.  You put a hand on his shoulder and remind him of that fact. 

“I trust you,” you say.  “Whatever happens—”

“Don’t say goodbye to me,” he says, his eyes lowered, gaze far away. 

He doesn’t raise his voice.  He doesn’t have to.  You are utterly rapt, looking down at him, at where he wanders deep into his thoughts.  He pulls himself out eventually and lifts his head, gazes up at you. 

“You said goodbye once before,” he says.  “You’re not doing it again.  You’re going to come back to me, okay?  In – in any condition.”  He sucks in several jagged breaths as he visibly tears up, words escaping on a gasping stutter.  “I – I – I don’t care if you never get better, yeah?” he says.  “I don’t care if we’re messy and dealing with this for the rest of our lives.  Just come back to me, okay?  Just – just promise you’ll come back.”  

You pull him against you, let him bury his face against your middle while he breathes hard.  He holds you for another long moment then composes himself, surfacing with a deep, heaving breath.   He shakes his head then nods towards the tub. 

“All right,” he says.  “I got you.  Always.” 

“I know,” you say.  You touch his face, tilt it up to look at you.  “Thank you, Chan.  Chris.  Everyone you are.  For everything you’ve done.” 

“You know, you’re actually the only one who refused to call me Chris,” he says, laughing through his tears.  “I think you just did it to annoy me.”

“I am pretty annoying,” you say, gesturing the tub. 

“Definitely not the time for jokes,” he says, but laughs a little anyway. 

You pat his cheek, give him one last watery smile, then you step into the tub. 

Even that first descent is a mind-numbing shock.  Inch by inch you submerse yourself, feeling like you are sinking into a tub filled with all those sharp, jagged edges of glass.   You look down, panicking for half a second because the water is swirling red and pink.  It makes no sense but you must be literally bleeding.

Then the image splinters and you realize you are not bleeding, not now.  You are remembering a different motel tub – your blood swirling in a pool at your feet moments before Chan walked in and scooped you up, carrying you to safety.

He is still here now.  He says your name.  He says, “Easy.  You’re okay.  You’re safe, all right?” 

You nod, closing your eyes.  You listen to his voice.  Maybe it is the sound, or maybe the physical pain, but a rush of tears are already rising to your eyes.  They stab as ferociously, pouring down your face.  It feels so hot compared to the water of the tub, almost like a stream of blood. 

“It’s okay,” Chan is saying.  “I’m going to grab you now, okay?” 

You nod, eyes still screwed shut.  His hand comes around your neck, just a gentle grip at first, letting you get used to it.  You have felt that touch a few times now.  It sends a familiar spark of heat shooting through you.  You remember your name on his gasping lips, remember his mouth open on yours.  You remember that dream of a kiss, warmer, hotter, more loving than anything you had ever encountered before.  Your first real kiss.  You see it for a moment, see him, younger, looking at you with hopeful anticipation as your eyes flutter open. 

“Chan,” you say. 

“It’s me,” he says, tightening his grip on your neck.  “I got you.  I’m right here.  I’ll count you in, then it’s up to you.  But I have you, all right?  You’re safe.” 

Your eyes are closed, but you still see him, young and smiling softly.  His hand is on your face, warm where your tears fall. 

“Three,” he says.  “Two.  One.” 

-

It crashes over your head, a torrent of freezing water.  You scream in the darkness, flailing desperately, but the well is narrow and you only succeed in bruising yourself when you try to splay your limbs out. 

The darkness is not a void, not pure pitch, but cast with a pearly, luminescent sheen.  It starts to swirl into a dizzying mess the longer you are down there.  Then it starts to fade, true darkness creeping in at the corners. 

You are yanked out abruptly.  There is light, hot and sickly yellow, burning on your ice cold skin. 

“Stop,” Chan is saying, crying, a blubbering mess that makes him sounds ten years younger.  He is already young.  He’s barely past eighteen.  “Please,” he says.  “This is my fault, don’t—”

You open your eyes to look at him.  It feels like peeling skin off iced metal, your eyelids fighting every inch of the way.  But you manage, barely, looking at him through the water dripping off your forehead.  

He is prostrate on the floor, completely horizontal, a short chain around his neck clipped to a hook on the ground.  He can’t even turn his head.  He can only stare ahead at you, staring back at him.   

There is something around your neck too.  It keeps you in a strangled state even though you are out of the water.  The vice tightens when you aren’t floating, so you don’t really get a proper breath of air.  In fact, you’re not sure if it’s worse in or out of the water.   

You don’t have much time to think about it, because you are plunged back in, the sound of his shouting disappearing in the blurring whirl of bubbling water. 

You are yanked back out, and you are grown, in a hotel bathtub, gasping and clawing at the feeling around your neck.  You get a breath, only just, then you are back underwater. 

You see Chan again, grown, in that hotel gym last night.  You feel him, hot and heavy, holding you tight against his body.  You roll out from under him, jump to your feet.  He laughs and smiles, you smile back, and you run at each other.  You raise your fist to throw a punch you know he can deflect—

Except he doesn’t.  The punch lands and it lands hard.  He falls onto his back and there is no training mat to soften the impact.  He smashes down onto a concrete floor and you just watch.  There is a sickening crack, and it objectively grosses you out, watching him cry out in pain.  But you don’t feel anything, do you?  No.  You just know you have to fight him.  You just know he is everything that is causing you pain.  You hate him, you hate him, you hate him.  He’s the reason you’re here.  He’s the reason everything feels like ice. 

“Stop,” he says, pushing himself up despite the blood slipping down his face.  It isn’t the first hit.  You’ve already broken his nose.  You’re not sure if his face is red because of you or because he won’t stop crying, as if this isn’t all his fault.  “You don’t want to do this,” he says.  “You don’t want to hurt me.  You don’t, you can’t—”

You run at him again and he finally defends himself.  He doesn’t attack, but he blocks shot after shot, letting you move around the fighting space.  It looks like a cage, or a prison.  Someone is watching on the other side.

“With a daddy like that—” Chan teases, and you laugh on the hotel mat.

You don’t land on a mat.  You land on the floor when Chan sweeps too hard and knocks you down.  He panics, immediately drops down beside you to check that you are all right.  You slam your fist between his eyes. 

“She’ll kill you if I ask,” your father says, circling the iron bars, watching Chan as he backs up like he is watching a wild animal.  You might as well be, running on pure instinct, watching with predatory eyes as he backs right up to the bars. 

Your father stands behind him. 

“You will, won’t you?” Miroh asks you.  “If I put you on a mission right now.  You’d do exactly what I say.  You’d even hurt him.” 

“This isn’t you,” Chan says, ignoring him, looking at you, though nothing is gazing back.  He says your name and it might as well be a made-up word for all that it is meaningless. 

You’re Miroh’s daughter.  Nothing else matters. 

“I’d fight back if I were you,” Miroh says, patting Chan on the head before simply striding away.  Over his shoulder, he says, “It’s you or her.  The choice is yours.” 

You run straight at Chan.  His eyes get wide and he throws his hand out to stop you. 

It catches you around the neck and you are drawn out of the water.  Hot yellow lights, hotel gold, then back under again. 

You are swinging back, throwing a punch, but you’re not fighting Chan.  It’s someone in a mask, his face fully covered.  You push and kick and punch, going around and around in circles, a perfect match like you were built exactly the same way by exactly the same person. 

Felix takes off the mask and disappears over the balcony railing.  You chase him and he swings back up, kicking off your mask.  It clatters across the metal walkway.  You tackle him and you both fall off the balcony edge. 

You land on your back.  Felix is on top of you, reeling back his arm.  You dodge the punch, rolling out from under him.  You are both younger, both in the black uniform of Miroh. 

“Why are you doing this?” you ask.  “Felix, it didn’t have to be this way.  I could’ve helped you.  I’m on your side.” 

“I can’t afford sides,” he says, shaking his head rapidly.  “I need to get out of here.  Chris needs to get out of here.  If you care about him—”

“You don’t know the first thing about that,” you snap. 

Your emotions make you clumsy.  Felix easily catches your flying fist and twists it around.  Your whole body follows, then the ground is rushing up to meet you. 

There is blackness all around you, whether your eyes are opened or closed.  You jump when a hand reaches through the dark.  You reach out too, trace your fingers over a familiar brow, down a cheek, his jaw, his neck.

“Chan?” you say. 

“I’m here,” he says, wiping your tears, comforting you.  “I’m always here.  I’ve got you.  It’s okay.” 

Then his hand is gone.  His face disappears.  You swing your hand through the shadows and scream his name but he isn’t there anymore. 

You’re completely alone in the darkness.

An earth-shattering eruption shudders all around you, blowing through the black with a burst of grey fog.  When it settles, you are in a warehouse, the wooden ceiling partially obliterated from the explosion.  You are trapped under rubble, only alive because you managed to fall in a slight dip so the concrete block across your body is not fully crushing you.

It will, though.  You can’t breathe.  Your chest is being compressed and you are dizzy, your ears ringing, and you can’t hope to budge the concrete block at this vantage.  Even though you are stronger than other normal eighteen year olds, you are not fully superhuman.  Maybe Chan could move it, but Chan is gone.  Your father’s men grabbed him.  That was the last thing you saw before the explosion. 

Maybe he’s getting away, you think.  Maybe they’re all getting away. 

Even while dreaming it, you know it isn’t true.  It was stupid to think you could take on your father.  The inevitable reckoning found you.  It’s all over.  You didn’t save anyone.  Not even yourself.  You’re going to die like you lived, trapped under the rubble of your father’s fortune, all alone in quiet pain. 

“Hey!”

You hear a voice at a distance.  It only just barely pierces the ringing in your ears so you aren’t sure how close it really is. 

“It’s me,” the voice says.  “I’m coming!”   

You can’t keep your eyes open.  You can’t breathe like this and your body is getting colder and colder.  You feel a presence even though you can’t see who it is, your eyes too heavy, the block on your chest heavier and heavier still.

“Wake up,” says the voice.  “Hey, wake up.  Please.  Please wake up.”

It feels almost impossible, like pushing that weight off your chest, but you peel your eyes open slowly.  There is dust in your eyes and in the air, the grey smoke of the explosion still puffing around you.  Your eyes water to clear the worst of it. 

Through the dust, smoke, and tears, you see Changbin, all his sharp, young features, swallowed up in his black uniform.  The blast must have shot some debris his way because he’s bleeding, a thin streak of blood on his forehead, a line of red spilling down his cheek. 

He ignores it completely, leaning down, tapping your cheek some more. 

“It’s me,” he says.  “Hold on.  Keep your eyes open.  Don’t go.  I promise I’ll get you out.” 

“Changbin,” you croak.  You watch as he sits back, frantically measuring the concrete block with his darting eyes.  When he grabs a corner, you rapidly shake your head.  “Stop,” you say.  “Stop, you can’t move it.” 

“I can,” he says.  He tries to laugh, somehow manages to joke at a time like this and says, “I’m the strongest and best looking one here, princess.  Don’t insult me.” 

“Changbin, it’s too heavy,” you say.  The force of it is bearing down on you more and more, all your father’s greedy hopes shoving you further and further into the ground. 

It’s going to kill you.  It was always going to kill you. 

But it doesn’t have to kill him.

“Changbin, go,” you say.

He is leaning against the block, lining up like he intends to shove the whole thing with his shoulder.  His head whips down to look at you, his face twisted up with disgust.

“No,” he says firmly. 

“Changbin,” you say just as firmly, because the block doesn’t budge.  It was never going to budge.  “Changbin, look.”  You nod towards a light where the explosion ripped through the wall, where the enemy’s men came pouring in and ran right past you.  “You can go,” you say.  “For good.  It’s a way out.  They’ll just think you’re dead.  They’ll leave you behind, that’s the rule, that’s what they do.  You can get away.  Just leave me.  It’s fine.  This is your only chance. Go.  Go now.”

He pauses for a second.  He looks over his shoulder at where Miroh’s men are still scrambling, then he looks towards that light.  He knows you’re right.  He knows that if he gets up now and runs, they won’t catch him.  They’ll leave him for dead.  He can get away once and for all.

He stares towards that light for a long moment.  Then he looks down at you.  He changes position, wraps an arm over the block and puts his weight against the side. 

“No,” he says again.  “I’m not leaving here without you.” 

He pushes the block.  It scrapes the ground, pushes you a little deeper.  For a second, it hurts so much worse, then he gets his shoulder under it and takes the brunt of the weight.  With another grunting heave, he straightens out and shoves it off you completely.  It makes a horrible screeching sound as it moves across the floor, but you’re free. 

You can breathe all at once, sucking in a huge lungful of air.  Changbin leans over you, gathers you up into his arms and pulls you into a sitting position. 

“You’re so stupid,” you say, choking on a sob.  “I hate you.”   

“I know,” he says, wiping the tears and dust off your face.  “Love you too.” 

“Stand back, soldier,” one of your father’s men appears, stepping out of the smoke like a monster.   He multiplies, more of your father’s back-up arriving one by one.  They circle you and Changbin. 

You nod at your friend.  There is no winning this fight.  Not today.  Not like this. 

Relenting, Changbin steps back.  One of the men grab him and push him to the side, redirecting him away.  He is promptly forgotten in his supposed insignificance. The rest of them keep a circle around you.

Your father crosses through that circle.  He looks down at you.  You remember seeing emotion in his eyes, once, enough that he could be furious, enough that he could be hateful.  Now there is nothing.  He looks at you like he would look at a pebble in his shoe.  Disappointing but mostly inconvenient. 

“Take her,” he says. 

Someone grabs you by the neck.  You are pulled to your feet, faster, higher.  You get a glimpse of Chan behind your father, face beaten bloody, limp body held up by another guard. 

“Chan!”  You try and move towards him but the grip on your neck tightens. 

You can’t scream in the circle of that vice.   Whatever sound you want to make disappears in the ice as you are plunged back under water.  You open your eyes in the cold, look through the darkness until there is light, until everything is whiteness all around you.  No windows, no doors.  Beyond sterile.  Cold.  Empty.  Nothing before or after.    

Then you are pulled back up.  You realize the white walls were the sides of the hotel bathtub.  You suck in a desperate, shuddering gasp of a breath.  It goes right down to the depth of your lungs, pulls you up from the inside out. 

Chan says your name. 

You open your eyes and see hotel bathtub faucet.  Chan’s hands are on your arms rather than your neck as he hoists you out of the water.  Like that first night, he bundles you in a towel.  He says your name again, touches the side of your cold and clammy face. 

It takes you a minute to find his face, his real face, living and warm and right now.   

He stares down at you with his familiar dark eyes, breathing hard like he was the one exerting himself. 

“You were right,” you say in a hoarse voice.  Despite everything, a laugh bursts out of you.  It hurts, it hurts like burning ice, but then it feels so much better. 

“About what?” he asks. 

“I did always call you Chan,” you say. 

Then you collapse in his arms, your eyes closing.  A torrent of memories come flooding back. 

[bluecollarmcandtf]

My Son Came Home just the Other Day...

...and I just had to tell him how proud I was! My boy had become a strong young man! I'd been bragging to everyone I knew that my son, Private Joel Bishop, had made it through basic training and was on the way home to see his good old dad! I never knew being a father would bring me such joy, but here I am.

I slapped Joel on the back approvingly and discreetly wiped my eye. Things were getting too 'touchy-feely' for my taste, and we still had a whole night of celebration ahead of us.

"That means a lot, dad," he grinned as I pulled away, "but you deserve the credit. Should I grab some cold ones so we can catch up?"

I smiled, enjoying the humility and respect I had instilled in my son's character. He more than deserved the reward I had planned: dinner an expensive steakhouse and a box of premium cigars. I threw a hand on his shoulder and opened my mouth to reveal the surprise!

Instead, the words, "Son I need to introduce you to our new neighbor," came out of my mouth: definitely not what I intended.

That seemed strange. I surely hadn't meant to say that; however, when I thought about it, I did seem to remember something the neighbor had mentioned yesterday. Maybe I had promised to introduce my son to him. It must have been a good idea, if I was suggesting it. I would have to hurry though because our reservation was soon, and I couldn't wait to see the look on Joel's face when he found out what I had planned!

"Uh, sure," Joel answered, waiting for an explanation, "Who is it?"

"He's a great man!" I instantly shouted, feeling overwhelmingly defensive about the newcomer. I wasn't sure why I felt that way because I could barely even remember the guy.

Joel flinched at my sudden outburst, but I brushed it off and led him out the back door. My son followed me through the gate and into the backyard of our next door neighbor. Somehow, I knew I was only supposed to enter from the back door. My hand dug into a nearby planting pot and found a spare key. I'm not exactly sure how I knew that was there, but I shrugged it off and unlocked the door.

Joel didn't question me, but he seemed mildly annoyed. I'm glad he didn't ask what I was doing because I had no clue! My body marched on autopilot down a short hallway and parked in the middle of a living room. Our neighbor seemed to be busy napping on his couch. My cheeks flushed when I realized I had just walked in on the man sleeping.

"Excuse me sir," my voice suddenly rang out loudly, "My son Joel is back from the army."

Joel glared at me in confusion, "Dad what-"

"Shut it, kid," the man on the couch snapped awake and stretched, "Come stand quietly in front of me so I can get a good look at you."

Joel's mouth shut tight at the man's request. He marched up to our neighbor and stood at attention. There was something strangely automatic about his movements, like they were choreographed ahead of time. I suppose this is just how they learn to act in the army.

"Hmm, yes," the neighbor purred from the couch, "You're sexier than your dad described."

My jaw clenched and my fists tightened! Why the hell was this guy making those kinds of comments about my son! I had never spoken with this weirdo, and I had certainly never described my son in that way!

If this guy wasn't careful, he was going to get a fight! I would of course stand and wait like a dumb bitch until I was dismissed, but once I was, I'd let him know! For now, I'll just try and contain myself.

"Why so red-faced," he turned a haughty look to me, "You remember our conversation yesterday, right Mr. Bitch?"

Suddenly, my memory flooded back. Of course I remembered! I'd popped by our new neighbor's house to introduce myself. He had invited me in and we'd gotten talking. I had bragged about how my parenting had yielded the perfect son. Our neighbor had then launched into a long and boring lecture.

My neighbor pointed out that I'd been pronouncing my surname wrong all these years! I'm a total idiot! It's 'Bitch' not 'Bishop!' He'd also changed my plans on how to celebrate my son's homecoming.

"Of, course I remember," I gasped dumbly as it all flooded back, "Sorry, sir. As you know, I can be a bit of a dumb bitch."

"Everyone knows that, old man. Do you even remember what you have to do whenever you enter my house?" he raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, sir," I replied as the instructions came back to me, "I am to go to the bathroom, stick my head in the toilet, and flush it seven times."

"That's it! And don't forget to keep your mouth open when it flushes, you old fart" he cracked up and laughed at me.

I nodded and left my son with our new neighbor, reporting to the bathroom like I was supposed to. Sticking my face in his skid marked toilet was the worst part about coming over. How could I have forgotten something like that? Without hesitating, I dropped to the floor and dipped below the toilet water, keeping my jaw locked open like he had suggested. I blindly found the handle and flushed the first wave over my head.

"All done, sir!" I called loudly, feeling compelled to announce my achievement.

Everything above my neck has been thoroughly soaked by the swirly, and it was quickly dripping down my clothes. My favorite shirt was now drenched! I wanted badly to dry off with the towel nearby, but I somehow knew that I was supposed to leave the toilet water on me instead.

Trudging back into the living room, I tried to prevent puddles by soaking the dripping water into my clothes, but it didn't work very well.

"Joel? What are you doing, son?" I blurted when I found him on his hands and knees.

Joel gazed up at me with a bizarre look on his face. It was as if he didn't even understand what he was doing down on the floor. His eyes seemed unfocused, like they weren't really seeing what was going on around him.

Nevertheless, he glanced over his shoulder at our new neighbor. It was like he was looking for guidance. My eyes followed his and we both found ourselves looking to the stranger for what to do next.

"Go on, boy," our neighbor chided, "Tell Mr. Bitch how you feel."

"Please," I straightened up, "Just call me Bitch. We're all friends here." I didn't care if a puddle was pooling at my feet. My son clearly had something important to say to me.

"Ok, Daddy," Joel blankly answered the guy on the couch. Then he turned an empty gaze to me, "Bitch, I'm moving out of your house. I want to live with our new neighbor. I want to be his slave boy and serve him any way I can."

I felt compelled to agree. I almost told him I was happy for him, but something felt off. Something had been gnawing at the back of my head ever since my son had gotten home. This wasn't how our night was supposed to go. My son and I were supposed to be enjoying steaks and cigars right now!

I shook my head a little. Beads of water flew from my hair, and I couldn't shake how wrong I had been acting. Why had I just given myself a swirly? And why was my son making such delusional statements?

"Woah, there big guy," our creepy next door neighbor hushed, "You're thinking too hard. You remember what you like to do when you think too hard right, Bitch?"

I breathed a sigh of relief out of my chest my chest when I remembered, "Yes, sir. I like to shove your leftovers down my pants when I'm thinking to hard."

Without another thought, I strolled into the kitchen and yanked the fridge open with a numb arm. A euphoric sense of relaxation washed over me when I saw a container of leftover spaghetti. Before I knew what I was doing, my hands had popped the lid off and fished the noodles and red sauce down the inside of my dress slacks. Once the container was empty, I zipped up my pants like nothing had happened and returned to the living room.

"Feeling better, Bitch?" my neighbor asked.

My glassy eyes noticed my son crouched by the feet of our neighbor. Joel was busy cleaning the guy's shoes, and I couldn't be more happy. So what if this is what he wanted to do with his life? He could become our neighbor's sex slave for all I cared. It's not like I cared about the kid. If he really had a chance to serve a man as great as our neighbor, then who cares about serving our country!

"Yeaah..." I moaned lightly.

"You like my homemade spaghetti?" the neighbor chuckled meanly.

"Yeeaaah..." my voice came out drawn, "It feels really cold..."

"Man, you are a gross bitch, but I programmed you to fall deeper every time you humiliate yourself for me. Do you what I'm going to have you do next?"

"Nooo..."

"You're going to make your reservation at that restaurant," he looked me up and down, "And you'll go in those clothes you've soiled. Get drunk off your ass, alright Bitch? I want you to make a complete fool out of yourself."

I'd already turned to follow his orders when he turned back to my son, "I'm gonna play with little soldier boy here. Maybe I'll pass him around to my buddies so they can give him a try..."

I didn't hear what else was in store for Joel. I wasn't too bothered by my son. I'm sure he'd be able to make our neighbor happy. I was just excited to go to the steak house and start humiliating myself...

[chu-diaries]

100 days of mental healthcare: day 100/100

Well, it's over! I genuinely can't believe it's been 100 days since I started this challenge (even more than 100, since I skipped a day or two when I couldn't post).

For those who just arrived, I started this challenge in April, the day after my birthday, when I was really in bad health. I had severe panic attacks about 4 times a day, which made me unable to do anything. I dealt with constant suicidal thoughts, I barely slept anymore and I was spending everything I had on doctors, self-knowledge courses and therapies. I found myself with two options: the first was to invest in medications that would make me dependent and drugged, but that would fix my brain. However, there was a risk that I wouldn't get the dose or medication right in time and my situation would get worse. The second option was longer and more difficult: studying how my body, my brain and my limits worked, and then adjusting day after day what wasn't going well. You know that I chose this option and that I created the 100-day mental healthcare challenge to track my progress on this.

In these 100 days I learned a lot that I want to share here. As we are all unique and different human beings, you may not agree with what I applied in my life, but I ask for respect and empathy, because all of this saved me. Also, some points have a scientific basis in research I did and books I read.

1. mental health and nutrition

This was one of the first things I learned. I realized that when I was hungry, my body didn't give me clear signals. Probably due to my autism and ADHD, I was always disconnected from my body's needs and didn't know how to identify hunger (which I expected to be something like a growling in my stomach, but it never was that way). What actually happened was that, instead of hunger, I had a critical increase in my intrusive and suicidal thoughts, which made mealtimes much worse than they should have been. Our mind is more vulnerable when the body is not properly fed and hydrated, and many of us neurodivergent people will not feel hunger like neurotypicals do. Our body wants us to move to find food, so it sends us successive stimuli through our brains to fight for our lives and, well, eat. Some of these stimuli can be very negative and, instead of propelling us forward, they drain our energy and make us even more depressed, which also doesn't happen to the same extent with neurotypicals, who deal with this type of thing much better. To avoid this, I started eating every 3 hours, and not because a doctor told me to, but because I realized that my crises happened with this frequency. By eating regularly and preventively, my body stopped depending on this resource to nourish itself and I became more mentally stable.

2. mental healthcare and intestinal system

The gut is not our second brain for nothing. The health of our mind is completely connected to the health of our gut. You have certainly heard the phrase “you are what you eat” and it is true. What surprised me most in my studies was discovering that neurotypical and completely mentally healthy people develop mental disorders if their gut microbiota is altered. In other words, we must nourish our gut to maintain our mental health. The more diverse our microbiota is, the better our mental health will be. This means eating various foods per week, as colorful and natural as possible, because food industrialization is also partially responsible for the number of mental disorders that exist today.

3. mental healthcare and eating meat

This is a difficult topic, since I was a vegetarian for many years, but I want to share what I learned with you. The incidence of mental disorders is directly associated with the levels of omega 3, taurine and tryptophan. Omega 3 is a good fat and essential not only for maintaining memory, but for all of our cognitive functioning and, although it can be supplemented in a vegan way, it is not as accessible to everyone in the appropriate dosage as fish. Similarly, meat has high levels of taurine and tryptophan, which regulate anxiety and depression and improve sleep. For many years I did not eat meat, supplementing protein with vegetables and whey, and for all those years I suffered from anxiety and depression. I never imagined that my blood type would also suffer more from this lack of protein: blood type O struggles more to maintain mental health and ideal mood levels with vegetable proteins. It is a blood type that needs animal protein. Going back to eating meat was not an easy decision, but I decided to test it out: even though I ate a small amount of animal protein per day, my cognitive function improved a lot in these past 100 days. I became more mentally stable and stronger, my mood improved, my gut responded positively and suddenly the things that haunted me were no longer so big. I never thought that mental health and animal protein had any connection, but I was very surprised to discover that eating meat (or not) influences our mind.

4. mental healthcare and intrusive thoughts

Well, I studied psychology, but it was a theory that didn't deal with intrusive thoughts. In these 100 days I discovered this term and delved deep enough to understand that we all have intrusive thoughts. Neurotypicals deal with them better, while neurodivergents deal with them much worse. Unfortunately, I suffered a lot with these thoughts and suffered even more trying to understand why this was happening in my head. If you suffer from intrusive thoughts, start by understanding that they are not real and that they do not come from you consciously. An intrusive thought is something that crosses your mind and is similar to a scary radio station that you accidentally connected to. It does not belong to you. I learned to think (and I like this theory) that this is a way for the brain to prepare itself for various possibilities, even the most absurd and impossible ones. We are animals and our body wants to survive, so I understand that the brain explores various probabilities to always be prepared, no matter what happens. Of course, for anxious and depressed people this has the opposite effect and makes us want to die. Over time, you learn that you can’t control when these thoughts appear, but you can control how much power you give them. I deal with obsessive intrusive thoughts every day, but each day I’m becoming more and more able to not get emotionally involved with them. “It’s just a glitch in my brain,” I think, taking a deep breath.

5. mental healthcare and joy (which is worth more than solving problems)

I've always had a very fast-paced mind, cluttered with things and addicted to solving problems. In recent years I thought I should focus more on relaxing and opening up spaces in my mind, but I discovered that an empty mind can be treacherous for neurodivergent people. Our mind is, in fact, addicted to solving problems. That's how our species evolved and prospered. Our mind has an organizational structure that seeks, through connections and associations, to process past and future events, resolve pending issues and find solutions for what was left behind. We do this with everything, even with things that are not in our control. I spent a lot of my life trying to solve what was going on in my head and I was unsuccessful because I wasn't the one who created this situation. Although solving problems is a pattern of the mind, it is a sweet illusion. Many things are not actually solved, we only think they are. I discovered that the time I invested trying to solve mental problems that I did not create could be used to create happier foundations to strengthen myself. I learned that it is actually joy that heals, not obsessively thinking about the problem until it is solved. Every time I focused my energy on doing something good, laughing or contemplating nature, I became a little stronger and remembered who I am. I won't deny that I felt guilty - the cognitive rigidity of autism screamed at me that I was ignoring my problems and that I was creating a silly fantasy world. Even so, I fought to break out of this pattern. It is still difficult. But today I believe that I’m meant to be happy and that cultivating moments of joy makes life worthwhile.

6. mental healthcare and feeling useful

Feeling useful is essential for mental health. We all want to be part of something and be recognized as necessary. In these 100 days, I decided to resume some volunteer work within my community and I also opened a new company, with handmade products, so that I would also have the opportunity to produce something that was not only in the intellectual field (handicrafts are very good for those who suffer from anxiety). Having a dynamic routine in which you have an important role is great for mental health and your sense of self-authority. Also, getting in touch with other people's personal stories helps to decentralize our gaze from ourselves, which is very useful if you suffer from OCD. As tiring as it may be, the more diverse activities we do, the better our cognitive function becomes.

7. mental healthcare and moving the body

It's interesting that to take care of your mind, you need to get out of your head and move your body. Many of the tensions accumulated in our minds can be released by running, walking or playing some sport. It doesn't matter what it is, but move your body. We were not designed to stay still, but to do various strength, balance and endurance exercises. Our ancestors walked for days in search of shelter and food, and that's how our bodies evolved. Especially for those who suffer from anxiety, high-impact exercises not only help regulate your mood and release neurotransmitters, but also generate a stress spike that will do your body good for the rest of the day. When we trigger these spikes, our body answer quickly and creates new pathways to respond to stress, which helps us better deal with anxiety, depression, instructive thoughts, etc. Our sleep also improves, as we use our stored energy and tend to think less before going to sleep.

8. mental healthcare and sleep hygiene

I have always tried to force myself to be silent. I forced myself to meditate for many years, without much success, but after the panic attacks returned, meditating and being silent were torture. It was as if I made room for all my inner demons to dance in my mind and I always felt worse. I recently discovered that neurodivergent people struggle more with silence and that it does them a lot of good to distract their minds with sounds, images and other stimuli that allow them to emotionally engage with something real and outside of themselves. I see that it is a controversial topic, but I no longer believe in sleep hygiene without screens and complex content. My best nights of sleep were those in which I distracted myself with something until I fell asleep or listened to someone talking until I fell asleep. So if you want to test what works best for you, know your limits and do not blindly obey the orders that someone has set. Maybe you work better at dawn, maybe you only need 6 hours of sleep, maybe you are different from the average. Your life's work is to discover yourself and be true to it.

9. mental healthcare and developing self-authority

This was very important to me. I have always had low self-esteem and I have always believed in others more than in myself. I sought answers and cures for what I suffered from various doctors and therapists, but all of this only made my situation worse. I became dependent on diagnoses, consultations and sessions that never really helped me. At a certain point I decided that I would educate myself on the subjects that bothered me. I studied, and studied a lot, about psychology, neurology, neuroscience, nutrition and about the functioning of the body as a whole. Today I no longer accept any diagnosis about myself because I have developed my own authority. I am the authority when it comes to myself, you know? I don't need others to tell me what I am feeling because now I know what it is and where it comes from. I also know, fortunately, how to solve it. When I go to a doctor or have an exam, I know what I am investigating and what I need to achieve. It is very sad that today medicine is just a search for money and that you only get good care if you pay a lot for it, so it is important to get educated about yourself so you won’t fall into standardized speeches that will lead you to the ever-increasing consumption of pharmaceuticals and drugs without, in fact, looking at the cause of the problem.

10. mental healthcare and time

There are things that only time can heal. There is nothing like letting time pass. A few months ago, all I could think about was how I wanted to end my life and it was tormenting to think about living for even one more day. Waiting for time to pass was difficult, but I was rewarded. Time has a way of overcoming some things if you allow yourself to create new memories, new connections and new laughs. If you are suffering a lot, wait a few more hours. Live one more day. Let time pass and life bring you better things.

See you guys again on my next challenge (maybe a productivity one?). Thanks to everyone who liked and reblogged my previous posts! 💕

[kataraslove]

how do you feel about people saying Katara post the show was just a “house wife” and a “baby maker”? I personally think it’s super stupid and fucked up…while I do understand the criticisms for the comics ESPECIALLY the promise. TLOK criticisms for her character are pretty damn dumb to me…honestly the only thing I can get is the critical for her not being at Jinoras ceremony.

something that the original show does really well is present the dichotomy of katara; she's hot-headed, stubborn, determined, argumentative, protective, a fighter and a warrior. at the same time, however, she's presented as compassionate, kind, caring, nurturing, a healer. atla does an incredible job to avoid caging katara into one facet, unlike other media that tend to restrict their female characters who present feminine personalities into the group's resident healer/mother teresa figure. fighting and healing are core tenets of her identity. she uses both of these aspects of her identity to win the war, to save the lives of her friends and family, and most importantly, connect to and honour her decimated culture.

i don't think tlok makes an attempt to capture the fighter aspect of her identify, hence where the argument that "she was reduced to a healer" comes from. yes, she's incredibly old. yes, she deserves to rest after a lifetime of fighting. however, you could make the argument that toph and zuko are still in active combat mode during their old years. it's an all or nothing scenario; either everyone in the remaining gaang deserves a fight scene or no one gets one. so i can see where that criticism stems from. however, much of the criticism also stems from the fandom's refusal to correlate power with healing; to see how being a healer is an honour in it's own right, especially in the atla world where it's the equivalent to being a doctor (and katara would be the most renowned doctor there is).

katara does not deserve a shoe-horned fight scene where she's going to be tossed down in the snow five seconds later (like zuko) or where she's going to complain about her back problems (like toph). i can go on and on about how toph’s depiction in tlok is another form of sexist writing, but i think this post highlights it perfectly well and captures everything that i wanted to say.

if it were up to me to write tlok katara, i would:

have spent more time exploring her role in the white lotus. how much input did she have on korra’s training during the south, because i doubt caging her up until she’s 17 and delaying her spiritual journey is something that katara necessarily would have agreed with. i imagine that she would have (should have, at least) a lot of sway in the decisions surrounding korra as a world leader and legendary hero [per avatar legends]. if not that, even as korra’s waterbending master, the companion and spouse of the previous avatar, and the mother of the only airbending master in the world, would be enough to earn her decision-making title.

actually have her take part in the council of elders, especially during the civil war in book 2. no bryan konientzko, a tumblr post explaining that you can see her on the council of elders while your show is airing isn’t enough. we should have gotten katara’s perspective on the independence war currently happening with her tribe. particularly, it would have been an excellent opportunity showcasing her leadership abilities that we saw in imprisoned and the painted lady, encouraging her tribe to fight for their justice and independence.

expand upon her relationships with her children and grandchildren. yes, the legend of korra isn’t about katara or any of the former gaang members. but jinora, tenzin, kya, and bumi are all important characters that should be defined by their respective relationships with katara, much like how they’re defined by their relationships with aang. bryan and mike shy away from featuring former members of the gaang to avoid nostalgia bait, but there comes a point when deliberately avoiding the presence that your original characters play on their successors ends up hindering the success of your show. i think katara should be a critical character in the subplot between her and aang’s children, providing her perspectives on her husband’s parenting and relationships with their children.

have her actually leave the southern water tribe. if toph can leave the swamp to stop kuvira, and zuko can leave the fire nation to stop the red lotus, then why was katara constantly portrayed in the southern water tribe? there was an excellent opportunity to have her attend her granddaughter’s air mastering ceremony. i actually disagree with claims that the writers were avoiding having katara and zuko in the same scene specifically because of zutara; i think they didn’t want any of the former gaang in the same place. hence why we don’t ever have zuko and toph meet, or katara and toph (i know toph mentions katara by name, but i truly believe that that was a throwaway line serving as a substitute to appease the audience’s thirst for old gaang interaction. kind of like a, “here you go!! toph mentions her. now shut the fuck up.”)

give her a statue representing her bravery, courage, and determination. this one’s self-explanatory.

she didn’t need to be present at the bloodbending trial if the focus was for the avatar to take away yakone’s bending (and her being a bloodbender, i mean.. there’s NO WAY for anyone else to suspend yakone if she’s there). but i do believe the show should have mentioned something about katara not being able to there last-minute, due to tensions in the south or whatever, and how they cannot delay yakone’s trial even by one week.

i disagree with criticisms that katara became a “baby-making machine” for the air nomads. there’s no substantial support that katara and aang had children solely to repopulate the air nomads. there’s contrary evidence, in fact:

tenzin was the only airbender. if katara’s purpose was to serve simply as a baby maker, aang would have tried to have more children. from a writing standpoint, i think the narrative would have gone out of its way to portray kataang’s family as only having airbenders, or having more airbenders than non-benders or waterbenders.

we would have seen a lot more children in a relatively short time period. bumi, kya, and tenzin have sporadic age gaps, indicating that their conception wasn’t really at an urgent pace, but something that katara and aang took their time with, due to life events and circumstances.

as for whether the show turned katara into a “baby-maker,” by highlighting her family relations over her career prospects, i disagree. i don’t think we’re shown anything about katara in the legend of korra; i think we’re presented with limited information about her on all aspects. from a family perspective, all we know is that she had three children with aang. the narrative goes one step further to even separate her from the family conflict, such that the cloudbabies do not pull her into their grievances with their father and childhoods. kya and bumi’s overall arcs are about embracing their father’s legacy, while tenzin’s arc is about moving away from his shadow. from a career perspective, we know that katara at some point banned bloodbending, became one of the best waterbenders and the greatest healer in the world, then trained korra. in fact, katara’s relationship that is given the most narrative weight is her relationship with korra. i can understand if people’s criticisms are her being reduced to korra’s mentor and a healer, but i will not be able to understand the baby-maker or housewife claims simply because there is no proof.

if we’re examining tlok katara, i think there are many criticisms to be held, many missed opportunities and abandoned threads, but i do not agree with fandom extremes that she was ever presented as a “baby-making housewife turned healer.” i disagree with claims that tlok emphasized katara’s legacy as only having children (particularly her one airbender child). especially because tlok goes out of its way to separate her role in her children’s life, instead emphasizing her role in korra’s life. narratively, we get more exploration of toph’s storyline with her children than we get with katara.

as for the shitty gene yang comics that mischaracterizes just about every member, even momo and appa, i’ve got much to say on that. i think the only comic worth exploring is north and south, and katara’s portrayal in that. rather, there’s a particular criticism of katara’s portrayal in north and south that i want to rebut.

[epiphainie]

i think a very tasty flavor of bucktommy angst would be a situation where there's a big emergency, maybe their apartment building is on fire or the hotel they're staying in is about to explode and it needs to be evacuated immediately. the two of them - immediately in lifesaver mode - quickly get everyone off the premises and barely make it out alive themselves.

then they realize someone is missing (an elderly neighbor who got stuck? a child they met during vacation whom buck bonded with?) and buck being buck wants to run back in and save them but the chances of him making it in and back again is extremely extremely slim and tommy sees this. so he doesn't let him.

like he physically holds buck back as buck tries to move in and buck immediately starts trying to fight him off and tommy does not let him go and they both begin screaming and shouting in each other's faces. it only lasts mere seconds, though, because during their struggle, the building actually goes boom. a loud bang, then the silence of the aftermath sets in.

this, of course, puts a strain on their relationship.

no, worse. this ruins their relationship.

because for months after this - months - they live in this perpetual feeling of grief and malaise and it turns their world upside its own head.

they're talking but not really. nothing more than mumbles of "how was your shift?" and "can you pass me the salt?"

they're touching but not really, a handjob here and there then lights off and their backs to each other.

they're tiptoeing around each other; they never ever tiptoe around each other.

it all is so foreign to them, so alien.

buck, of course, is wracked with guilt. how could he not be? he was right there when someone in danger needed his help, and he couldn't. he was right. there. he feels upset, no, he feels tormented. he's so angry with himself because it's his fault, isn't it, for missing the child the first time? children get stuck in the most unexpected places, after all, so why did he not check the room again? why did he not do a head count?

anger with himself, however, is familiar. guilt? he's experienced plenty of that too. no, the worst is the bitterness he feels. he feels oh so bitter, with resentment set deep in his chest, because how could tommy not let him do his job? how could tommy - who's always been respectful of buck's wishes and who knows just how desperately that child needed saving - dare hold him back and take this choice from him?

tommy, of course, does not regret it. he tells himself that every day because how could he regret keeping buck safe? it wasn't even a choice of buck's life over a kid's, tommy knows this, because there was no choice, not really. there was no way for buck to get the kid and get back to tommy safe and sound. he'd die, within seconds, in his reckless impossible attempt, and tommy knows this, and he. does. not. regret. it.

but it starts to fall on his own deaf ears as days pass and he sees his evan become even more withdrawn, torturing himself over someone who couldn't be saved. and the distance between them becomes wider, the cold snap even more sharper, and they're walking on eggshells around each other as it feels like one wrong move could bring everything down.

turns out, they need to break the eggshells to finally crack the ice. they realize this on a random, particularly cold night. neither can stand it anymore and at one point that icy pressure turns into screams of "why did you have to stop me?!" "you couldn't have helped him!" "you should have still let me do my job!" "it wasn't your job! and i wasn't gonna let you get yourself killed on our damn honeymoon!"

again, a loud bang. then the silence sets in.

then, for the first time in months, they find themselves actually in each other's space, reaching for the other. their chests rise and fall against each other as their arms find a hold on the other's back, shoulders, neck in desperation and they actually cry and talk and apologize and cry some more. it gets better.

[adelheidvonschicksal]

Sorry its me again from the matter manipulation request I forgot to add their personality.Their personality is more like Quiet,calm I wouldn't call them a villian but they are also afraid of their own ability and they can't control lets say that they're a 2nd grade because they struggle with manipulating matter even tho it's like POWERFUL but they just struggle with it.

(Their power is like atom eve but they can control humans aswell since they can control atoms and molecules like changing ppl,their dna and stuff)

Gojo

Back in high school, he’d find ways to annoy you the most, not because he didn’t like you but because for a long time he thought you were shy and needed to get out of your shell.

He also was curious about your powers: always asking if you could make something smaller or bigger for him, make regular tea into boba tea, if you could shrink all of them and possibly start a war with the giant ant hill in the courtyard. Mostly it was just to tease you and get you to talk to him even if it was you constantly denying his requests.

He finds your low confidence in your gift a huge waste of potential, and it’s a bit frustrating for him to watch. He thinks you should have more confidence in yourself.

Even still, he knows you well enough by now that he has all your little worries and habits pegged whether it’s itching, nail biting, tapping, he can see all your nervousness, and also make it disappear with a single inappropriate joke.

You’re a calm and quiet person, which he says makes it much more special when he’s finally able to crack a smile from you or get you worked up over some dumb scheme he’s concocted.

Well into young adulthood, he continues to bug you about doing silly little things with your powers for him. He doesn’t think you picked up on the fact that he asks for these little things to help you practice your skills and new abilities without you noticing.

Geto

Geto is really fond of you. He has been ever since you notice him making a disgusted scrunch after choking down curses on a mission, and how you used your powers to literally make them an easier pill to swallow by shrinking them.

He finds you to be a soothing presence like Shoko, another calm compared to Satoru’s storm with Geto himself somewhere in the middle. It makes a good dynamic.

He spends a lot of time trying to help you come to terms with your power. He always defends you when Satoru would use your fear of your power against you in petty fights.

Suguru is always trying to make sure you’re comfortable with everything going on around them. He tries to make sure you don’t get teased too much, and he always has a calm way of talking to you that convinces you to join in with the others more. You’re observant of everyone else so he wants to return the favor and look out for you too.

He swears you have nothing to worry about when it comes to using your powers. If things go wrong, he’ll help you figure it out. Although, he does enjoy how happy you get when you get something right, likes to pat your head.

After he defects from Jujutsu High, he gives you the offer to come with him. You wouldn’t have to feel pressured to use your powers anymore if you did. He wants all sorcerers to live a free life especially you. 

Nanami

Your personality makes you more favorable to him than other people. He knows your potential is strong and respects you for understanding, accepting, and trying to manage yourself to avoid hurting others. It’s the slow and steady method. However, this still causes him to underestimate you at times and overly worry about your mental wellbeing.

He does his best to protect you and give you direction, taking the lead even when your technique is realistically better for most situations.

You have to study a lot to learn all the different things you can do with your technique and so you both can bond over being readers and take each other’s suggestions on books or television programs.

However, there’s not really any other times where the two of you can be around each other a lot due to your grade difference and you’re both not the type to seek others out unless you need something so the relationship remains at a respectable level to friendship.

Megumi

The two of you get along fairly well since you’re both quiet people. However, that means that when you spend time together, there isn’t much talking as there is enjoying the company of someone else, which causes the two of you to get teased a bit as a quiet duo.

You’re both the second grades in your group, and you both got mental hangups about your powers. When Megumi notices this in you as well, he tries to help out, repeating what Gojo says about being greedier, but he gets a little embarrassed and says to ignore his rambling when you still seem confused by it.

He enjoys working with you, your powers open up endless possibilities to use in battle, and he wants to be able to think of more creative ways to use his powers in the way that you can so he finds your technique pretty/interesting to watch.

Megumi is a little more self-conscious around you. You’re very quiet and calm, maybe serious, he isn’t entirely sure because you don’t speak your mind a lot. He doesn’t judge you for it because he can be the same way.

He doesn’t feel the need to pressure you into speaking more than what’s comfortable. When you become better friends, he realizes he likes having your company without the pressure to entertain you.

He thinks you’re the best one in the school who can understand all of his worries. Itadori and Kugisaki understand him well, but he thinks maybe with you it’s more mutual), or at least he hopes he’s the same for you. 

Extra: You’d probably be able to learn from Yuki Tsukino as well. She doesn’t exactly have matter manipulation, but her mass manipulation technique could probably inspire some ideas. It would also lead you to being like teammates with the ever-boisterous Aoi Todo.

[veterantrainerray]

Word of advice for a lot of Bug types and a number of crustacean Pokemon too:

They don’t “build muscle” the way you ‘n I do. Exoskeletal movement is fundamentally different from how we do things, with muscles anchored to an internal skeleton.

For the most part, the way their “muscles” move fall into two categories: Either they have smaller muscle structures that are optimal for fast, sudden movements or something like hydraulics to power their limbs, literally using what you might equate to blood pressure to drive their movements.

These differences are what make their movements “creepy” to some. It’s pretty alien to how we function and that shows. That doesn’t mean bug Pokemon or critters like Krabby or Corphish can’t be good pets and companions. There’s even an argument to be made that relationships built on understanding such differences is richer than some others, but that’s an opinion and I ain’t makin’ this post to spout opinions.

Bug types have a stigma in battle contexts. Unfortunately, they are weak to several common offensive types. That doesn’t make them as wholly hopeless as some will try to convince ya, though. Volcarona, Scizor, Lokix. All powerhouses that demand respect with their presence in battle, even with those weaknesses. If ya don’t, and try to do something like boldly set up stat boosts in their face, you run the risk of a walloping.

Outside of the powerhouses, Bug types find themselves more suited to utilizing status conditions and maintaining an upper hand to get their way in battles. They generally ain’t gonna boast the instant force that a lot of competitive folks go for. They do, however, have an advantage that often gets overlooked:

Bug resists both Ground and Fighting.

To say those two types of attack are highly valued in a competitive context is a bit of an understatement, and if you’re smart with it, the presence of the right Bug in the face of a normally oppressive threat could change the situation. Perhaps a Stun Spore, a Confuse Ray. Resisting that type and having a status move go off in the opening can swing the situation in your favor.

When commanding a bug type, keep in mind they tend to be better suited to precise, speedy short-range motions than big and sweeping ones. Keep that in mind and you’ll find your partner avoiding close-range attacks at speeds other types may struggle to, despite not being “fast” by traditional metrics. They excel at reactionary tactics, keeping the opponent at arm’s length and keeping the battle in their control.

Outside of battles, Bug types are often among the easiest Pokemon to care for. Aside from the spider pokemon they don’t often tend to make a huge mess, and as long as you fully understand a Bug type’s needs and wants it won’t tend to act out unless threatened. Caterpie is commonly kept and cared for by children in Kanto, as their dietary needs are minimal and they’re friendly with humans. Wurmples are sometimes raised for silk in Hoenn as well. Here in Galar, Orbeetles are often kept as partners by meteorologists and news stations. Most regions have at least one common Bug type that can be found happily living with humans.

HOWEVER.

There are a handful of HIGHLY aggressive Bug types that you should never leave unsupervised around others, especially children. The entire Weedle line is the top of that list. Beedrill will attack anyone they don’t want in their space repeatedly and without warning, and with poison stingers. Be mindful of letting children play in areas where such territorial Pokemon can be found.

So all in all, Bug types are largely for folks who are inclined to put in extra time and research. They can be solid companions and battle partners, but only if you’ve got the research done ahead of time and the foresight to make it work. They ain’t for everyone, and certainly have their detractors, but that shouldn’t keep folks from looking at them as a valid option.

[thats-alittle-gay]

As we approach Pride Month, I just want to take a moment and let everyone know that you are entitled to your beliefs and you are allowed to follow whatever religion you want.

HOWEVER being Christian or anything else does not give you the right to verbal or physically attack other people. You do not get to use your god(s) as an excuse to be an a-hole to others. If you're worried about their souls, do it quietly because honestly, no one cares about your opinion on how others should live.

I am an atheist. I tried going to church and reading the bible but it just wasn't for me. I don't believe in higher deities, but I don't go pick fights with people who do and tell them they're wrong. If that's really what your god wants you to do, then I wouldn't want to follow him anyways because I believe that we should be kind and open to others. If you don't like the way someone painted their house you're not gonna go bully them or endanger their life because of it.

Gay and trans people aren't hurting anyone just by existing. We've always been here and we're never leaving. Don't spend so much of your time hating on us. You have limited time on Earth and you want to waste it being bitter and hateful? If heaven and hell are real, then people will go where they belong. Based on what I do know, I don't think you'll get into heaven when you've spent your time attacking people you've probably have never and will never meet. People who are just opening their hearts out to love and you're attacking them for being honest about who they are.

You have no idea how many amazing people you're missing out on because of your hatred. One of my best friends has openly expressed how she was raised not to approve of it but she didn't let that stop her from being my friend and she's such an amazing woman. Ideally, there wouldn't be an "I don't approve" mindset, but at this point in time, it's fine if you don't agree, but keep that to yourself and treat others with respect and kindness because nothing is going to change just because you don't like something that has NO effect on you. If you're annoyed that we get a whole month, then you're part of the problem and the reason we get a whole month.

Quit trying to make others feel bad for something that makes them happy. Quit trying to erase an entire group of people that have been on this planet since the beginning of time. Unless they are actually hurting you, what they do is none of your business and you have no say over it. Hate less, love more.

[speedofsoundsketches]

I noticed that you have made it clear that you are not one for the first Sonic the Hedgehog film. And I must make it clear that I respect your opinion on it; it is not for everyone, even all Sonic fans.

However, I get a feeling that you are antipathetic to the future installment(s)- you mentioned some time ago you have not seen the second film. But even if you were underwhelmed by the first film, do you believe that they cannot improve?

in the wake of the trailers of the Super Mario Bros movie, I have seen things like "I used to like the Sonic movies, but since the *trailers!* of the Mario movie came out, the Sonic movies suck now!". Do you believe that is really a "correct" way of thinking? Like, regardless of what one thinks of the movies, should people just dismiss all the hard work that people like Fowler and Tyson Hesse put into the films just because they aren't animated like the Mario movie? Or that they don't use much of the game music, like the Mario movie? is this truly shaping up to be a "1:1 or nothing" thing, leaving no room for deviation?

I ask this because I feel that rational StH fans are as rare as hens teeth, especially these days; consider yourself a hens tooth

The biggest issue I have with these movies is the foundation it laid for itself.

Cue TL;DR rant mode

Let's be absolutely frank and honest with ourselves. The first movie was only saved purely because the controversy of Sonic's design led to him being revamped entirely and Eggman's portrayal was solid. That's really it. I'm not against human characters showing up at all, on the contrary. But this set up is "Take the most superficially basic concept of Sonic then make a bunch of convoluted revisions to the lore of the original series to justify isekai-ing him into San Francisco so we can save money on animated scenes". Like, it's the same problem most children's media being adapted into "live action" suffers from. It's a cheap, lazy adaptation that broke absolutely zero ground and I've held this opinion of it literally since the day it was first revealed and announced with those leaked posters of Chris Pratt and Sonic's initial design.

And just because it didn't end up being as "bad" as it first looked and they brought on actual, talented fans of the series onto the creative team, doesn't suddenly detract from this most basic, fundamental problem. Sonic's movies suffer from what happens when you let Hollywood just go to town on your IP and barely give it proper boundaries to stay in.

Even if they manage to get SOME things right like, Knuckles actually being cool again and the Giant Robot fight at the end of the second film, the reality is they'll still be tied down by the flimsy foundation they started on, like dragging on a wedding scene or putting waaaay more focus and attention on the human characters than the.....main characters we came to watch???

Now compare that with the Mario movie. From the start, Nintendo I understand had a MUCH bigger involvement on the production. It's not like the lame adaptation I mentioned above. They went full on "Angry Birds" level of staying on brand. The entire world feels like the natural, fleshed out idea of "How do we make this feel as warm, inviting, and fantastical as the games but still make it work as a movie?" It's actually BRILLIANT just from first impressions.

I'm sure it's going to suffer from other typical kids movie problems like "Peach's a STRONG WOMAN NOW because she wears PANTS and DON'T NEED NO RESCUER", dumb movie writing or Mario, Luigi and Peach's flat voice acting. But you cannot look at that movie, how it just unabashedly looks, feels and is completely imprinted in Mario and say that Sonic had anywhere NEAR the same level of enthusiastic production on it. I mean, even the cute commercial of their plumbing business in New York is entirely animated and ALSO feels like it fits. They went to the absolute nines with making this feel like a WAY better adaptation in spirit, story and visuals.

Of course I appreciate the hard work the team put into saving the Sonic films from becoming absolute jokes but WHY did it even have to be so compromised in the first place when Mario shows up looking EXACTLY like how I've dreamed Sonic's movies would've been treated?

I'm not wooed over by the small glimpses of Sonic's world or the tiny references they managed to squeeze in there. I'd appreciate those way more if it were ACTUALLY set in it. And I cannot stand this prevailing narrative that "Sonic's world is separate from Earth" in most of these adaptations because it's not! It IS Earth! He's always lived in the same planet as humans, their animal kind is just reclusive and live on islands. That's the actual lore of the games!

This movie made the mistake of doing what Sonic X did. They think it'd be "too weird" for someone like Sonic to have been from Earth as if the intense popularity of it in the first place isn't enough to show how wrong that is? No kid questioned Sonic showing up in City Escape around humans any more than dinosaurs or other crazy entities existing in Dragonball's version of Earth. It's still Earth, just fantastical.

Mario works with that because him iseaki-ing into Mushroom Kingdom is that original lore of the games too I believe. But in Sonic's case it's not and it's so JARRING because they think Sonic himself can't carry a story as the main character. No, kids need a human or avatar to help them navigate the weird, unexplained parts of the series. I'd rather they'd just do that with Sonic himself without needing to be forcibly tied to a regular human. (I'm so annoyed that he couldn't have just run to San Francisco if he wanted because he "needed directions". What a pitiful excuse. And these movies are FULL of them like that.)

Hollywood is a joke and they cannot for the life of them, understand how to effectively adapt most Japanese properties by themselves. Especially anything even remotely inspired by anime like Sonic.

I know this might make me look like "the most offended Sonic fan in the world" right now but in all honesty, I don't really think about those movies much. They function as effective promotional materials for the games and kids like them so whatever. Like, it's just one big Shrug really.

*sigh*

[bellaaldamas]

Thinking about Baldur again. I feel like almost everyone forgot that he's also part Vanir. Ever thought about that maybe Freya taught baby!Baldur some Vanir magic before? I HC that she also taught him how to tame animals as his friends. Idk how he was able to tame Dagsetr (his pet dragon) but I feel like this is a case that he learnt it from his mother (in his own style of course. I feel like he likes the ones who are aggressive/brutal).

It's even more sad if Baldur stopped using his Vanir heritage altogether because it reminds him too much of his mother after he disowned her. 🥺

This is the most interesting, as well as the most tragic, aspect of Baldur's character. I'll even go as far as admitting I identify with said aspect because - not to delve into personal matters (which I am trying my absolute best to never do when analyzing media because it leads to projection and inevitable bias) - I had been alienated from my own Greek heritage for a long while because of the actions of my Greek father towards my mother's side of the family. Down to not being allowed to listen to Greek music in my apartment. I only gained that opportunity when I was left entirely alone in the world.

With Baldur, it is notable that he, in many respects, parallels as well as anti-parallels Thrud.

Both are the product of their environment and upbringing and both were subjected to stereotypes and misinformation about the other part of their heritage (Vanir in Baldur's case and Giant in Thrud's case). Both conformed to the distorted view of the situation and conflict between Aesir against Vanir and Giants and to Odin's narrative(s) in particular.

Except the difference is that while Baldur's actions cannot be excused he, unlike Thrud, actually had valid reasons to feel and react the way he did. The methods he chose to go about it are toxic and, ultimately, more immoral than Freya's one - however terrible - act of suppressing his feelings committed out of good reasons and in order to protect him. Which furthered a self fulfilling prophesy and Baldur's unhealthy determination to please and gain approval from his father, Odin - as noted by Freya herself in GowR (when she mentioned to Kratos that her son, much like Atreus, aspired to do everything and anything to make his dad proud; that's another reason why she wanted to do right by Atreus after failing her own son). By removing Baldur's agency Freya turned herself into the ultimate antagonist in Baldur's story and, in Baldur's view, validated all the propaganda Odin had been spreading about her.

On the other hand, Thrud had a similar experience with being a product of her environment and Odin's propaganda, except she was a pampered child living her best life. By the point she was a teenager (current GowR timeline) her mother Sif had already taken steps to ensure she won't become another victim of Odin's manipulation (the way Sif's step-sons Magni and Modi did - and it must have taken a lot of strength and wisdom for Sif to feel so strongly about their demise when she was not their biological mother but still considered them "her boys"; she could have easily dismissed their deaths the same way Thrud did - "we're better off without him [Modi], Loki" - but she took it personally and recognized Odin for the manipulator he was).

Sif did not want Thrud to be the Valkyrie for virtually the same reasons Freya removed Baldur's ability to feel. Except Sif still gave Thrud the degree of freedom Baldur never had and ultimately agreed that Thrud should pursue her own goals and make her own choices, without Odin. It was only when Thrud DID get what she wanted, when Sif literally, directly gave her a blessing to become a Valkyrie but without Odin in the equation, did Thrud show interest in learning up on her and her late father's Giant heritage.

Thrud, unlike Baldur, never had to fight for her agency - it was done for her, by Atreus, Kratos and, ultimately Sif herself.

Thrud never reconsidered Odin's toxic mindset when she got what she wanted - an approval from her mother - and never recognized why her statements about Freya being Odin's "treacherous ex wife" were completely misplaced. The only reason Lunda mentioned Thrud looking up to Freya was because of what Freya could have done for Thud - namely, help the latter with her Valkyrie training.

Thrud started out being self centered and, in GowR, remained self centered from start to finish. That's exactly why she should get more development in the upcoming installments and have her distorted view be challenged. Unlike Baldur, she adhered to those view not out of hopelessness (or because she literally had no other way) but because it was convenient - it was conformism, not desperation. The development is possible and can be executed well, provided that the writers acknowledge those issues.

Baldur, on the other hand, let despair consume him completely, to the point where there was nothing else left. That's precisely why, of all the characters who met their demise in the series, Baldur is the only one who would have a real potential if brought back.

He would get to rebuild his life completely on his own, now that Odin is gone and Freya has acknowledged her mistakes. There is no injustice he has to fight anymore - only the aftereffects of it. And this would prompt him to realize he is now completely by himself and has emotional freedom he has been deprived of entirely in his life. What he does with said freedom would determine his fate and direction of his life.

This is exactly why, if Gow(R) series goes a psychology centered route, Baldur is the one who should come back. It would not be so much about the conflict between him vs Freya, Kratos, Atreus and the rest of the characters as it would be about him learning - for the first time - to be his own person.

If Baldur chooses to get reacquainted with his Vanir heritage it should be his choice and his alone. It would make a way for an excellent development for both him and Freya.

[decolonize-the-everything]

I haven't found the original post about whiteness yet. However about "void where culture should be" I can sum up what's there trying and failing the fill the void.

Primarily, religion, specifically Western Evangelical Christianity. Purity culture, heaven and hell, the idea of sin, the idea of God.

Family is family and we must be true to that first and foremost. Following from this it's also marriage and the CisHet norms and as an extension of that having kids. (Which ties back to 1. in many ways.)

Being morally superior in every way we can. Totally not because white people are better, but we're the good normal CisHet Christians and we set the standards. (Sarcasm there.)

Exploitation of natural resources, especially those of non American countries. Vacations and Cruises. Going out into nature verg disrespectfully. Having the biggest life possible and having as much excess as possible. So, so many educational field trips where colonization was evident looking back. Never visiting pr disturbing a settler graveyard, but native burial mounds were fair game and not even in a respectful manner.

Nationalism. Military and Cops being the best thing ever. Just everything associated with American nationalism.

Food, the only not terrible thing on this list. Even that though is really a mix of so many cultures and honestly there's probably something fucked up if I looked into it deeper.

TLDR: Christian Nationalism. Which I am working to reject now. I definitely ain't perfect but I'm gonna work on it til I die.

Unfortunately though, that does leave me with very little culture. There's nothing to even try to fill that void anymore. I have to try and create it for myself. Just like I have to create family for myself. Sorry for the rambling I just had some thoughts.

I agree and think some other things should be there but yes.

And I mean as long as you're growing, that's all I care about ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ we love to see it 💖🌿

•°•°•

And maybe it's very rainbows and unicorns of me but we should be creating an American identity we can all share. Reject the current reliance on race all together.

Because there Should be more than christian ideology, white supremacy fascism, and capitalism.

Russel Means said it best when he said "Caucasians have a more positive vision to offer humanity than European culture. I believe this. But in order to attain this vision it is necessary for Caucasians to step outside European culture—alongside the rest of humanity—to see Europe for what it is and what it does."

Yes you have to create your own but it can be shared too. Community is crucial to any culture and people at all. Because there is so much more than what you've been given, you can create too just like your long ago ancestors before you.

And on a real note that needs to be the first step like yesterday (provided you want my opinion lol):

If white people ever want to belong here and feel like they're a part of everyone else; like we all share an identity then you have to start being more active allies to all the communities here.

You need to act like it, you know? Start actively being a part of dismantling the systems that the many diverse communities here have been critiquing for decades and centuries. Enough conditional support.

Show that you're Truly with us, thick or thin. That you wont fall back to supporting state violence because you think we misstepped in our fight for human rights and more human treatment.

Show us that you think our futures are worth fighting for. That they're a priority and the bigger picture is worth a few property damages that can/will be repaired anyway.

That you stand with us first, not the police or buildings or your political leanings. With us. With the human people that are your neighbors and bakers and bus drivers and business owners. That our human lives matter more than your politics or ideologies. That you stand for the rights of your neighbors and community like we have stood for each other.

We'd be way more of a melting pot if white ppl collectively stopped constantly looking for people to pick out of the pot. Because idk about other people, but that's how I feel as a native when liberals are trying to pick apart Landback or abolishing police or protesters causing damages for pride and ending police brutality but won't question a white imperialist for president because it's a "lesser evil" than the progressive who'd help me.

Way more of a community if other white people collectively stepped up came and stopped those kind of people from spreading their nonsense. Collectively don't take that bullshit.

Consider it your first community value. Solidarity with Everyone, not the whiteness that protects/benefits you.

And I don't mean you personally, but on a grander scale you know? Y'all should be doing whatever you can in that regard. Prove you mean it. That you want that future of belonging here and feeling safe and having an identity as much as we do.

Cuz we've Always been the first to fight, you know? With slow and conditional support...if any. But white people have the power of privilege that people in power pay attention to. More than ours. They try to suppress and repress ours systematically like we're seeing in Florida and across the country with book bans, banning CRT, and passing don't say gay bills.

We need support and it needs to be loud and visible and everywhere all the time. It can be.

The rest of us know what white people as a collective are capable of and what solidarity with one another can do.

The people in charge need to know the time for racism and fascism and individualism is behind us. That it's no longer a value that Us-Americans put up with. That you stand with us, not them.

I think we have a long way to go before the trauma of our shared history can be completely forgiven but I think unconditional allyship and support in the name of human rights and ending war crimes against marginalized communities would be a good first step at attempting to repair trust.

If you want unity we need to know you wont keep aligning with our oppressors first and foremost, you know?

[burningtheroots]

Hey, I'm a cis lesbian and I used to be a radfem. I was sexually harassed by a man during my middle school years and it made me so angry at the world, and thus I started hating all men and thinking they were evil and they should die. Despite the fact I had male relatives and friends who were nothing but kind and supportive and loving to me.

After some therapy and reflection, I realized that I was just taking the easy way out. It's easier to turn your trauma and fear into hatred and anger towards a scapegoat group instead of actually doing the hard work of self reflecting.

Are there evil men? Of course. Is the patriarchy a problem? Definitely. Are there transgender people who are only trans to pray upon others? Inevitable.

But just as there are bad people in every group of people, that doesn't define them. Most trans people I've met know genitalia preference is a thing and respect that. The ones who don't are just full of themselves. Most of them just want to live their life the way they want to live it. In such a short amount of time on this earth, why waste it being hateful to others?

Continue to fight for female-sex rights, that is important. Fight for gay rights, fight for women rights. But all of these can be achieved without fearing or hating all men and transgender people. If anything, that just gets in the way of achieving real change.

Sorry for sending such a long ask. I'm not trying to be rude or mean. It's just, I worry sometimes about the young people in this community because I see myself in it, and how scared and unhappy and angry I was all the time because I refused to actually work through my trauma....and of course, like I said, this is not me saying there aren't things wrong with the world. There are. But not everyone is out to get you, this world is beautiful.

I'm not trying to invalidate in feelings you may have. As women we are dealt the short end of the stick from birth, and it is important we keep fighting. But fight against the real enemies; the lawmakers, the corporations, societal expectations. But "men" and "transgender" as a group as a whole are not your enemies...and using intentionally proactive language like that, it harms your chance of people wanting to listen since you're insulting people based on something as fundamental as their gender or sex. I think all of you could achieve great stuff for women if hating the "other side" wasn't in the equation.

Anyway, sorry again for the length. You might think I'm being ridiculous and this may never change your mind. And that's fine. I just felt sharing my perspective as an ex-radfem may be interesting or helpful, or something.

Hey! I‘m sorry for the late response, I wanted to have enough time to reply throughoutly & was quite busy this week.

First of all, I‘m sorry that this happened to you and I‘m glad that you had support from your family and friends.

However, I think the assumption that radfems, and me in particular, blindly turn their trauma into hatred is incorrect and doesn’t take into account that radical feminism is a feminist theory which analyzes, exposes & fights systemic oppression.

It‘s a fact that every man is complicit in & benefits from misogyny and patriarchy to a certain degree, which doesn’t mean that we think every man is an evil predator. As for me, my standard is that a man has to be 0% misogynistic — which is the minimum, I expect further allyship — to be "good". Somehow women are looked down upon when they have such "high" expectations when it comes to members of their oppressor class, and I‘m aware that it‘s nearly impossible to find a man like that in our current world, but does that mean I should tolerate even 0.00001 of misogyny from a man? No. It means I‘m perfectly justified to center women & particularly like-minded women in my life.

As for transgender people, I don’t hate any dysphoric (!) person for being dysphoric and trying to live their life. I actually care a lot about the well-being of dysphoric people, but I‘m also well-aware that the TRA ideology (which doesn’t equal individuals with actual dysphoria) blatantly attacks women‘s rights & protections, and while many trans-identified people respect sexualities as they are, my criticism of the movement is still valid.

And I understand & respect where you‘re coming from, though I think that radical (=root) feminism is often falsely mistaken for extremism, which it is not. Since discovering radical feminism and other radfems, I actually feel much more understood and safe.

Women‘s rights & liberation don’t have to be palatable to men, and everything I share and say on my blog is backed up by facts. I don‘t "hate men", I hate misogynistic men — and it‘s on them not to be one of those.

Anyways, thanks for sharing your experience and being friendly. It‘s quite refreshing. xx

[reunionatdawn]

My Analysis of the Best Paired Endings in 3H (Part 11: Flayn/Seteth)

Flayn: Even if it cannot last, I want to live among my peers as one of them—as an ordinary person. Similar to how you and Mother coexisted with your own comrades back then, fighting side by side. Seteth: Quite right. I know you must leave the nest someday. No matter how many ages our lives may span, I know that's the way of it.

The Crest of Cethleann is associated with The Lovers arcana. Flayn was Seteth's entire reason for living. But she wanted to grow up and gain more independence after living in isolation for so long. She was interested in boys and didn't want her father constantly interfering.

Manuela: Say, Seteth. Have you ever considered remarrying? You know, just so you're not alone? Seteth: It is not a thought that has ever crossed my mind. I have been too preoccupied with fatherhood. Manuela: It's been a long time since your wife passed, right? You should start thinking about it. There could be someone who finds you handsome. Someone close by. Maybe even right in front of you. Seteth: Whatever you said just now, I didn't quite hear. But to remarry—I'd never even considered it an option until you brought it up just now.

While finding Seteth a wife might seem like a good solution, he only considered remarrying when Manuela suggested it. And he only considered it because Flayn would not be by his side forever.

Seteth: It reminds me how deeply I appreciate those years… and how I wish I could return to them. Flayn: We cannot turn back the clock, Father. We must live our lives fully, in the present moment. Seteth: You're right. That is what she always said, isn't it? Dwell too much on the past, and you may be unable to move forward.

While I do think he needed to give Flayn more independence, I think it is better that he takes more time to move on from his wife's death instead of rushing into a relationship just to not be alone. I don't think he was ready to remarry anyone for a long time yet.

Byleth & Seteth Byleth took on the role of archbishop of the Church of Seiros, and Seteth continued in his position of adviser. As they set about the grand task of restoring Fódlan and the church, Seteth's strictness combined with the archbishop's magnanimity won the faithful over easily. Their personalities complemented one another perfectly in keeping church operations smooth. When Fódlan returned to stability, they finally announced their marriage, to the shock and delight of the people. The faithful considered themselves truly blessed to be guided by such a pair.

In most of Seteth's paired endings, he will dedicate himself to the restoration of the church and its authority. His paired ending with Byleth even mentions his strictness in his leadership position.

Seteth (Solo) Seteth remained at the monastery and worked to restore the authority of the Church of Seiros. Doing away with his old strictness, he adopted a tolerant stance toward all. His encouragement of believers to respect those of other faiths helped the people of Fódlan to find common ground with others.

However, his solo ending describes him as doing away with his old strictness and adopting a tolerant stance towards all and encouraging his followers to respect other faiths.

Flayn: Father, I have been wondering something. Is it truly so difficult for the people of Fódlan to live in peace? The world would be a much happier place if everyone could live in harmony with each other... Seteth: I know. I feel the same. But so do the majority of those risking their lives in this war. That is why I believe a peaceful future awaits us, beyond this dreadful conflict. That is the reason I fight. And so you do not have to. Flayn: Father… Seteth: If I lose you, I would lose the very meaning of my life. And so, we will always be together. Flayn: Come now, Father… Please try to understand that I cannot stay with you forever. I will grow up eventually. Though I do promise to refrain from any unnecessary recklessness. And until that day comes, I will always be with you. Besides which, I am certain Mother would be cross with me if I left you all alone. Seteth: I understand. Thank you…Flayn.

From the very beginning, Seteth's purpose was to create a peaceful world, particularly for his daughter. In their paired ending, Flayn leaves the monastery, and he stays behind at first to finish his work before eventually leaving to join her. So even if he isn't ready for her to leave his side for good, he has at least decided to give her more independence. Which shows the growth of their relationship, as well as significant character development on his part.

Hubert: Those with power must use it wisely. Is that not a teaching of the Church of Seiros? It's absurd to preach to others what you cannot practice yourself. Byleth: You're absolutely right. Hubert: Yes. It is our humanity that pushes us to step up and take the lead should the need arise. That is not the case for inhuman creatures with lifespans well beyond our own. We must fight to preserve what makes us human.

I do agree with Edelgard and Hubert that it was better for Rhea and Seteth to step down from a position of authority. They did not always use their power wisely. But I disagree that it was because Rhea, Seteth, and Flayn lacked "humanity".

A recurring theme in 3H was that humanity is based on behavior, not species. Byleth's arc was about regaining their humanity. They used to cut people down without emotion until they spent time with the students. They did not lose their humanity when they merged with Sothis. Dimitri's arc was about reclaiming his humanity by becoming a person who can reach out his hand rather than kill. And Claude's arc was about how people often dehumanize those of other races.

Seteth: If something were to happen to you, it would utterly destroy me. You are my reason for breathing. Do you understand? Flayn: I…I understand. If something were to happen to you, it would break my heart. I could not go on either.

Despite their long lifespans, the Nabateans were just as capable of empathy and grieving loss as any human.

I am sorry, Rhea. I fear we must return to a life in hiding. I detest that person with all my heart. However, Flayn's life is more important to me than all else. I pray that you will one day be free from the burden of your work…

It was Seteth's humanity—his fear of losing his daughter—that led him to step down and begrudgingly leave Fódlan in Byleth's hands.

Scholar: It's normal for history to be revised in favor of those who hold the power. The documents in this library are no exception. It's perfectly possible for someone to have made edits to them. But it's my belief that no one has the power to blot out the truth entirely. I like to read the same texts over and over again. That way, I can spot some of the truths hidden between the lines…

I've seen many fans claim that every route in FE3H leads to a golden age. But I'm not so sure that's actually true. There is a certain scholar who appears in the library and only says the above quote in CF. He points out how history is revised by those who hold power, and you have to look for the truth hidden between the lines.

Narrator: Embracing her newfound power, Edelgard could at last set about destroying Fodlan's entrenched system of nobility and rebuild a world free from the tyranny of Crests and status.

I'm not so sure that CF's ending text was something the player was supposed to simply take at face value. Especially when you consider the authoritarian imagery that accompanies the narration, the fact that nobility still exists in the other endings, as well as the director's interview stressing how "history is at the end of the day the victor's privilege and nothing else".

Mila: Edelgard, your strength and resolve will surely bear you fruit in a world reborn by your hand. But I can't help but wonder what kind of world will grow from the ruin of what came before. I only hope you do not regret your world once you've built it...

Because Seteth and Flayn are banished/killed in CF, I couldn't get their paired ending and had no way of knowing whether Edelgard really brought lasting peace or if she just used her power as supreme ruler to alter history in her favor.

Seteth & Flayn Flayn disappeared shortly after the war, but Seteth remained at the monastery as the Archbishop's assistant, working towards restoring the authority of the Church. The former strictness gave way to a more lenient approach in all matters, as the management policy shifted. Seteth relentlessly pursued reforms in doctrine that were in line with the times, ensuring clarity for the faithful before leaving the monastery. Centuries later, in a completely transformed Fódlan, a couple dressed in old-fashioned attire appeared. The woman asked the man beside her, "In this era, is it acceptable to address you as 'father'?" The man replied, "Wouldn't 'brother and sister' be more natural after all?"

Seteth's ending with Flayn is similar to his solo ending, but it goes a step further. It says he left the monastery when he was satisfied his message of tolerance had been received. And unlike in CF, he chooses to leave of his own free will. That's why it's the best ending for his character arc. He no longer feels the need to stay in a position of authority over humanity. He has completed his purpose and created a safe world for his daughter.

This ending might be the best ending in the whole game for Fódlan. It is the ONLY ending that states that it is a drastically different place several centuries in the future. It is significant that the Flayn/Seteth ending is not written from a historian's perspective, like most endings. Because they apparently went into hiding once again, their ending is from the perspective of living eyewitnesses.

[deusvervewrites]

Thinking about it, the post-apocalyptic part explains a lot about MHA.

All Might's larger-than-life status and eternal number one spot: he ENDED the apocalypse.

Endeavour's entitlement about the number one spot and horrid personality: he fought in the apocalypse and played a large part, enough he feels he should be more respected than the smiling giant who showed up right as HIS efforts were doing a difference and stole the credit (because All for One HAD to be a rumor, right? There's no way someone is stealing Quirks and manipulating everything from behind the scenes) and got a massive PTSD from it.

HPSC dictature: back during All for One's heyday, their draconian measures were likely what held Japan together and kept him somewhat at bay long enough for All Might to appear, and when their measures weren't necessary they still kept them out of the paranoia of the old guard and the new guard's "appreciation" for their near-absolute power. They likely think they're the real heroes.

Quirkless discrimination: the apocalypse started when the Quirkless were the majority and tried to suppress the "freaks", but now almost everyone's Quirked and the discrimination has inverted with a side dish of blaming the current Quirkless for what the old ones started.

We've known that All Might ended the apocalypse for a while, considering how the Era of Peace was described early-on, the fact that shit really was that bad simply hasn't been directly shown before.

However, All Might predated Endeavor by some time. He did not fight in the Era of Chaos, though he's probably more intimately familiar with it. This also raises some interesting questions about his father's motive for trying to save someone in the incident that got him killed, because he would have lived through that

I don't know if they knew about AFO--they probably did considering that he was stated to have taken over Japan at one point--but AFO alone was not the cause of the apocalypse. With how badly everything went to shit, with people who could level whole cities without warning, their draconian policies start to make sense.

This here is where I'd disagree. The fact that MHA is a post-apocalypse is touched on so rarely in the present day because of how well All Might resolved that. I think Quirkless Discrimination is the same as all real-life discrimination: hating the Other because they are different.

[tem60]

"fragile"

Jotaro x gender neutral reader

hii! it's my first oneshot I've written on tumblr. I hope it turned out ok. anyway, have a good day and enjoy the story from Jotaro's pov! he's a softie inside and we all know it

also I miiight be opening requests soon, I'll let y'all know when I'm ready<<

word count: 1981

warnings: there's that one swear word.. at the very beginning

Each day we're getting closer to ending it all. Each day welcomes us with difficulties such as stand user or other cases. And each day I can't help but notice how different they seem. They're anxious, but they smile at me, or other crusaders. They're being nice to everyone, even though they're also having it rough to fight and survive this hell of a time. Their stand heals our every wound even if it takes a lot of energy to do so. How can they stay so positive about everything like this? And why do I envy them at some point?

I'm scared of what tomorrow could bring, although I know I must stay strong for the others. It's getting harder and harder each fucking way to do so. And yet they stay happy, or at least it seems like that. As far as I know they were good at keeping secrets, especially about themselves and their abilities. After all, I saw their stand only a week ago, and we're on our journey for about a month now. After that fight with Anubis, the stand that used swordsmanship and his own strength at best he could to crush our lives, they did manifest it that day. That fight wasn't as successful as I wanted it to be but I've never been this tired in my life to even think about it. Or at least never been while on this trip. They showed their stand on impulse, as if they didn't mean it to and yet they'd done it. They healed me. I was tired and thought that another stand was after us, I got scared because how was I supposed to protect Polnareff, them or even myself at that point? However everything was alright, at least that's what they'd told me.

My mom.. what if we fail? I wouldn't be able to hear her caring voice, would I? I'm trying to be strong but it seems as if it's never enough. I'm getting tired, each day I don't think we're going to make it, but I always throw away these kind of thoughts to stay strong. After all they all rely on me, don't they? I rely on myself. I should be able to do it so.. why am I here, now?

I've never been worried this much in my life, not when I matured enough to be responsible for my actions. Why has it come to this? Me, not being able to sleep because of them, crying. It can't be real right? When have I become this soft for anyone? Weren't I afraid of being rejected before? And why do their voice rings in my head and I recall every moment they helped me get through something, even if I didn't ask for it.

I'm sick of it. I'm sick of them being all nice to me. I've had enough of seeing their face they make when I make an attempt on making a joke. I hate it when they laugh at it even though it wasn't that funny. Their eyes, God how much I hate them. Behind those eyes hides no pity, only indulgence and patience. I'm sick of liking the sound of their voice, the way their eyes focus on me to make sure I'm okay. Their touch. Gentle touches, I thought only my mother could give them. Their touches aren't needy or curious, they seek my consent before doing anything. They respect me a little bit too much, I hate it so much. Especially now.

I've just woken up from that.. dream I've had. It was bizarre, that's all I know. I heard some noises next to me, that's why I woke up in the first place, right? But I couldn't just turn around and see what was behind me that was making all this noises. I knew exactly what it was, I just couldn't do it. As if I was frozen, I couldn't move nor breathe, I just listend to the way they cried behind me on their own bed that was next to mine. I begged to move, to do something, and yet I couldn't. It was frustrating, I started to panic slowly. I've never thought that comforting someone would be this hard on it's own.

Hearing them cry broke my heart. I've never seen them sad, nor with a frown on their face. Always smiling, wishing best for everyone and hoping to keep them safe. And yet here they are. They must have snapped, what other could've happened that made them cry like this? They were crying quietly, as if afraid of waking me up even though I'm already awake, yet they don't know that. They don't know I can hear every breath they take, or the way they try to quiet down their hiccups just to not let anyone hear them.

We all have a hard time being here, in Egypt. I should've let them cry, right? That should help them more than my simple words, I probably won't make a whole sentence even if I tried. Then why bother? I'll just try and go back to sleep, why should I care about that?

Yet here I found myself slowly turning to face them. It's dark, the only light that is emitting their shaking frame is the moon itself, as if it was showing me the way. It made me move on my own, as if I was hypnotised. By what exactly? I'm not sure. My chest started to hurt really badly, I had to do something. But shouldn't I not care and let them be? Wouldn't it be best to let them do it themselves? In fact, I'm not sure myself. Automatically I stood up from my bed and walked towards them, their back was facing me so they shouldn't have noticed me. Unless they heard me stand up and walk up go them? They must have really kept the watch out for me. Why are they like this? What happened to them?

They turned to me as if scared that I would hurt them. But they weren't scared of me, no. They must have been afraid of me eavesdropping on their little cries, that's what made them catch their breath in their chest and look at me while all I did was look at them back. Stunned as I was, all I could do was cough awkwardly and look everywhere else but their eyes.

"You uh.. you alright?" I said while feeling the nervousness build up in my stomach and a certain pain in my chest as I said those words. Their tears were shining under the moonlight that came through the small window we had in this flat. Yet they seemed to just be shocked by my presence, especially since I was standing above them.

They hadn't said anything. All they did was catch my bigger hand in theirs and bring me down to sit next to them. So I did, with a little hesitation in my movements.

They couldn't look at me, I saw the way they tried to look everywhere else but me, I've done that minutes ago, that's why it was easier to notice it. But I didn't judge them for it. In fact, I opened my arms and offered them silently a hug. I don't know what's going on but perhaps this could help? My mum used to always hug me when I was distressed, it did usually help me but she.. she said a lot of comforting words that came straight out of her heart. I couldn't do it, I'm not as open as my mum is.

Thankfully they hugged me back, in fact with absolutely no hesistation. I secured them in my arms holding around their smaller frame and let them cry their eyes out as if I was a shoulder they could cry on. My frowning eyes were focused on the door that was behind them, I couldn't think about anything logically. All I had in mind was this urge to make them smile again, to help them get through it all, without knowing the reason behind it. I patted their head a few times, hiding it in my shoulder while their arms were around my neck, hugging it tightly and crying together, but this time not as quietly as before.

I didn't judge them, in fact I didn't do much at all. And yet after a few minutes they broke the hug and looked at me with this gorgeous smile I wanted to see before. This smile that keeps me up at night and each time starts a fire in my heart. Am I becoming too soft for them? Old man told me about that feeling when he met grandma. It was similar to what I felt towards them now. I envied them before but now I see that we have some things in common. They're like a sea of emotions and hobbies I wish to find myself swimming in everyday, even dive in the deepest parts of it if possible. So mysterious and dangerous, I want to be able to seek for answers on their behaviour. I need to know that they're okay.

That realisation was the reason why I let myself slip a small smile, also in response to them lifting corners of those lips that said so many nice things to me, to all of the crusaders or other people I never cared to acknowledge. And now, those specific lips opened up a little to leave only a few quiet words for me.

"Thank you, Jotaro" - was what they whispered this night. I didn't do anything and yet they thanked me for it. Why did it leave a warm feeling in my chest? They were just appreciating the silence that fell between us. "It means a lot" then they added. I smiled up even more after those words, but quickly hid my face under the brim of my hat.

"Don't mention it." I told them while still having my arms around them. Since when was their touch so addictive? It's like I didn't want them to leave my arms. "Do you.. want to talk about it?" was what I said next, not being sure of what's bound to happened next.

All they did was shake their head, I didn't push any further, knowing how I myself didn't appreciate others doing it. Minutes has passed and we lied down on the mattress, it was a cold night after all, that was why we lied down together. I decided to sleep next to them that night. Why? Even I have no idea. The feeling of not being there for them hurt a lot more than one could've imagined. They didn't seem to mind me sleeping next to them so.. I believe it's alright.. for now. As long as I get to be their safe spot in those dark times, I'm sure we'll be fine.

That night I promised to keep them safe, no matter if their problems were huge, or trivial. I refused to believe that I could be no longer next to them to spend similar moments like these. That was another reason why I wanted to keep on fighting. I wanted to help my mum, save those who are dear to me and to have this ability of seeing Y/N next to me, simply having them close around and safe.

I felt their arms sneek around my waist. I smiled under my nose and put my other hand around their frame in hesistation. That feeling was satisfying. And it was mutual, I felt them relax under my hand which resulted in me taking a deep breath and surprisingly finding myself also relaxing in their touch.

That night, was also the night they both finally got a good sleep while being on this journey for about a month now.

so yeah this is it, I hope this small piece brings some comfort to your lives, cus I know things can get tough.. to anyone who needs this: im proud of you and hope youll be doing better soon! i believe in you guys so much :D and thank you for your time!