#I have greys anatomy flashbacks always

[mischiefmaker615]

The Doctor is In

Rating: R

Summary: Let's Play Doctor Dark

''I must say darling, for SHIELD being as secure as they are, the lack of interruption is appreciated. Of course, there wouldn't be a way to find this room regardless without me slipping up my illusion and you are far to precious to risk losing.''

Loki's voice was always hard to pinpoint where exactly he was coming from, and the fact that you couldn't move regardless didn't seem to make things matter anyway. All you've been able to do was hope that your colleges would see beyond Loki's disgust of appearance, somehow find the room he kept hidden in their own damn facility and get you out of this hell hole he himself saw as a sex dungeon.

Your cunt ached just by the mere flashbacks of what you've been through.. how long? Sessions could take hours. Days here in total? His magic kept you healthy and forgetful so.. who knew. All you knew was that regardless of how many times he showed up in the white lab coat, he was not one bit of a doctor any more than one who binge watched Grey's Anatomy. Anatomy.. he did very much know though, yours at least..

Your body tensed by how your muscles ached, knowing you've been in this position far to long yet way to short for him to change it now. You were on.. an operating table of some sort? On your back, arms tied down by your sides. Your legs were placed up and tied on some railing type things? You were pretty sure it was used either for when someone gave birth and/or was getting a female exam done. Regardless, you weren't moving from that spot any time soon, his magic made sure of that.

About now you would cuss or make some crude remark, but the gag he placed over your lips just now- using his own tie around his neck as he eyed you hungrily while taking it off- silenced your words that tried shooting out at him.

''now now darling there's no need to be rude, I thought you'd enjoy our little sessions by now for you to relax a bit more..'' he scolded but didn't seem angered one bit as he ignored your muffled sounds you both knew were cuss words. ''but I suppose then this is the perfect opportunity to bring up something knew I wished to try today, I do so love seeing your little reactions whenever your body is introduced to something.. exotic.'' He chuckled and your body tensed as he joined your side so he look down at you.

By now, all shyness of being nude was out the window since he's seen every inch of you already, but you still appreciated the medical down that clung to your body. Call it a "doctor kink" of his, that was half of his sick little game as he straightened in his white coat and his eyes roamed over your body while he held his hand up.

With a flash of green in his eyes, a black box landed in his hands, causing you to shudder at the horrors of what could be inside. By his grin alone, you knew it was something he would very much enjoy as he sat down beside you on the table, placing the box in his lap before he placed a hand just at your collar bone, the other hand on the lid almost protectfully.

''oh my darling I've been looking forward to this for awhile, for your sake I've merely been taking one step at a time. I know mortals can be rather fragile creatures and I do so wish not to break my precious toy..'' he purred as his finger tips ran down your chest, ghosting over one of your breasts as your body tensed, your arms giving another hard useless tug to your restraints while his hand ran down to dip under the dress and skillfully found your cunt while his eyes never left yours.

''speaking of toys darling, that is exactly what we have here-'' taking the opportunity to your muscles tensing, your pussy clenched around a finger that dipped just the fingertip, making you both suck in a breath, your not exactly intending to be for pleasure as he did as a smile met his lips.

''I do so love watching your eyes, your delicious facial expressions and how your body reacts to how pleasure takes you, I found a way for me to pull experience that while your also getting full attention to your needs.''

They weren't needs bastard, they were yours that was merely being taken out and from you. Of course, it was hard to cuss at him even in your mind as his finger teased your cunt, barely pushing in and out where you forced your body to remain still and not give in to the need to raise your hips.

Finding it better to just show what he was talking about, he used his other hand to open the lid of the box and held up something that made your body shudder, a reaction that didn't go unnoticed by Loki and he rewarded you by pushing his finger in a little deeper this time while he let your eyes take in the sight.

''this my darling will not only pleasure your beautiful cunt but simultaneously pay close attention to the clitoris- wherever I choose to move it of course.'' He explained, almost sounding like a medical professional explaining something as normal as how to take out the trash. Yet with the referral to your clit, he made his point by removing his finger and gently yet barely began rubbing lazy circles against it, causing your body to flinch by the sudden urge of pleasure beginning to spread through your body.

Loki couldn't help but chuckle as he stood, setting the box aside and removed his hand from your intimate area, admiring the little gadget as if it were gold. ''I know you can take it well darling, the dildo end is about the size of both my fingers, something I know you've been accustomed to for awhile now,'' he teased as your body started struggling as he moved around to stand between your legs and moved the dress up a bit to have better access to your cunt.

The flash of his eyes didn't go unnoticed as you felt your body begin to feel hard to move and your struggling ceased enough for him to align the dildo end first with your entrance. ''alright darling, I do need you to take a deep breath and relax for me to make this easier for yourself, the inevitable was the first lesson I've taught you so you know the pain with you force me to force it.'' he told you gently as a reminder and your fists clenched.

As much as you didn't like giving in to his orders, you knew there was nothing you could do until you were rescued and pain in this was not a fun thing to have.. again. So to your stubborn and dismay, you gave a good deep breath and released it. upon your release, your eyes squeezed shut as you felt him slowly push the device all the way into your entrance. You concentrated on breathing, feeling your body adjust to the size and the simple foreplay earlier helped getting in as well.

''good girl darling,- it's also wish for me to point out that both ends of this device not only works the way they are designed to move, but both also vibrate as well.'' He praised gently, a smile clearly showing his excitement while his hand held onto the other end of the device, his thumb on the button while his other hand caressed your knee.

Without giving much a chance to fully take in what he had just said, he clicks the button on and your body jolts by the sudden movement that was in your cunt, Loki's hand pressed to your chest to keep you down- not that it mattered, you weren't able to sit up properly anyway.

The device was a slow pace, much like the pace he usually kept with his fingers. You felt the device moving forward and back on its own and a repetitive motion, the slight ridges adding more sensitivity as it rubbed the right spots as well as vibrated them. Your eyes squeezed shut quickly, wanting your expression to look more in pain to hide the fact that your eye lids would have fluttered closed as the pleasurable feeling spread through your body.

''oh my darling, you're taking it perfectly, exactly how I hoped'' he cooed, staying between your legs as his hand caressed your thigh, his eyes drinking you in as your body struggled to breath properly while your brows raised ad furrowed as butterflies fluttered in your lower stomach.

Damn him- damn it all.. in some fucked up way, this all would be easier if it didn't feel good. But it did.. and denial was never an expression on your face as you bit into the tie that kept your words from leaving your mouth. However, it didn't stop any of the pleasurable moans and sounds as he clicked the button on the device, the action alone shifting the device a bit in your cunt and teased a different angle before you felt the device pump at a faster pace.

Your body shuddered and you barely felt his hand caress your cheek lovingly, playing with a lock of your hair as he sighed in contentment. ''that's it darling, take it, take all of it, all I have to do is leave it, where I get the mere beauty of watching you come undone to something only I could stop..'' he moaned and your body jumped as he clicked a new button on the other end he was holding, pressing it to your clit as the device mimicked a licking motion against you.

It was almost to much, feeling yourself being pumped while at the same time your clit getting pleasured all just made your back arch as best as your body was able to in its restraints. You saw Loki remove and hold up his hand with a grin on his lips, gloating how your body was getting pleasured without him having to hold the device anymore while it did the work for him. you hated him and you hated how your body couldn't show it in this state.

''I could choose to leave if I so wished, leaving you hear helpless at the mercy of this device until I feel like returning. I could even make the settings ghost you, keeping you at that delicious edge but not quite getting what you want if I so wished. Or I could tag team the clit end and my actual tongue where you'd fail to know what was what anymore'' he almost laughed as he slowly moved to your side, a hand wiping a way a single team with his thumb as your orgasm drew near. ''you'd like that wouldn't you my little play thing..'' he cooed before he leaned down and his tongue dragged over your throat and neck, his teeth nipping here and there before sucking your skin and ensure marks.

It was all to much, from getting stuffed, to your clit getting none stop licked to his mouth attacking your neck, while his hand now groped your chest.. the build up drew together before your orgasm hit.

You moaned against the gag as your back arched and your body compulsed, your orgasm hitting you hard as the device kept going. your body twitching as it rode you out and kept going, making you moan and whimper before you opened your eyes when all movement stopped.

Your body was shaking as you took in deep breaths, squirming a little as Loki took his own breath and closed his eyes, looking up as he took in the moment that just took place and his expression held absolutely bliss.

''that was absolutely wonderful darling.. absolutely breath taking..'' he breathed as he opened his eyes to look at you as if he himself just came down from his own orgasm. ''you did so well darling and this is just the beginning..''

Your body stilled as your breath held and body tensed. What..

He strolled back around to move between your legs again, his hand dragging against your body the whole way as his finger tips took in the feeling of your soft skin before his hand moved back between your legs.

''this my dear, has the battery lifespan of three hours..''

CLICK

[kepnerandavery]

Thoughts on Grey's Anatomy 12x11

I always thought that japril should have gotten back together after 13x16 but I realised how wrong I was. I think 12x11 would have been the perfect episode for their reconciliation. As much as I love the first japril the movie, I think most of it was so badly written (the acting however, was top notch).

First of all, showing a couple fighting and breaking up is just lazy writing. It happens all the time in real life. What could have been more interesting would have been to show two people discussing their issues, accepting their faults, apologising for their mistakes, and forgiving each other.

The whole episode has a bitter/negative undertone to it that makes you wonder if the writers understood/liked this relationship at all. I think some people dislike japril because writers kept using them to provide shock value instead of putting thought into their story and developing those characters in a sensible way.

This episode would have been the perfect opportunity to address their communication errors, the trauma of losing Samuel, April's reluctance to compromise on things, and Jackson's abandonment issues. Those revelations would have been great for their individual character developments even if they had ended up getting divorced at the end of that episode.

I would have loved if the entire episode was written in a way that interconnected Jackson and April's history (the flashbacks) with their marriage counselling sessions to show why their marriage should have worked instead of why it should have ended.

Not to mention, it would have made the episode so much more poignant. A couple going their separate ways after losing a child is sad, but it's much sadder if the said couple is not shown as a dysfunctional one, and it's heartbreaking if all the signs in the episodes pointed at why they should have stayed together. And heartbreak is what greys is supposed to be known for.

Of course, the japril fandom was/is loyal, so they kept rooting for them after this episode, but it was never because of the writing. The audience had to read between the lines, fill in the blanks, imagine the unseen moments, and love them for the potential they had. If they had been played by any other pair of actors none of that would have happened.

[darkcrowprincess]

Luke, dying: Did you love me?

Annabeth: Like a—

Percy: Yes.

*Percy and Luke look into each other’s eyes and Percy kisses him gently.*

*I'm just going to go crazy with this! And borrow some inspiration from a show my mom likes called Grey's Anatomy. Also hope you don't mind me changing canon a bit.*

Nico didn't know what happened. At a certain point the whole building shook as if a tiny earthquake was happening. Loud painful screams filled everywhere. It terrified Nico because they sounded like someone familiar to him. They sounded like Percy Jackson.

Of course, before he could investigate Nico had slipped and hit his head from falling debre. He didn't know how long he was asleep. But he felt someone trying to wake him up.

"Nico wake up! Wake up I need your help!"

Nico finally did wake up, and he woke up to the last person he wanted to ever see. Blonde curly hair and silver eyes of one Annabeth Chase angrily starring down at him.

"Get up! I need your help!", the daughter of Athena stated. Not asked, stated, as if it was an already done deal. Nico ignores her and looks around. The room leading to the gods thrones and hearth is in shambles. Pieces of ceiling everywhere. Furniture broken, glass windows shattered. A pillar broken and fallen over is blocking the door way to the throne room.

"NICO! Are you even listening to me?"

"No. Where is Percy? You and Grover were suppose to be with him. What happened?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell you! Percy kicked us both out of the room. Than he started making earthquakes happen!"

Nico's eyes widen at this, both in fear and worry.

"Grover went to get help, I've been stuck by the door trying to move debris. Percy won't listen. He's all alone in there with him."

"With who? What exactly happened?"

Annabeths eyes go sad.

~flashback~

"I'm not giving him a knife so he can kill himself Annabeth!"

"It's part of the Prophecy you have to!"

"Percy it will be alright. I'm your enemy anyway remember?"

"NO!"

When the deed was done it felt like Percy had stabbed himself too. What makes him break and shatter is that he hands the knife. It has to be him.

Percy holding Luke in his arms after stabbing himself, Annabeth kneeling next to them. Blood is staining Percy's arms. Luke's breathing is slowly down. His blue sky eyes look hazy and clouded.

Luke looks up to both of them. His voice asks desperately, "Did you love me?" A bubble of blood comes out of his mouth and stains his lips. It makes Percy start crying, desperate too for every second so Luke can stay longer.

Annabeth starts to say, "I've only seen you as a brother, but I dont-

Before she can finish the room starts shaking. Percy with a dark voice and the ocean in his eyes, "Annabeth stop it!" It scares Annabeth into dead silence.

Than Percy turns back to Luke, "She loves you ok Luke. Even Thalia and the other campers still love you ok. They were angry at what you did, but everyone still loves you. Your mom still loves you."

Luke stares at Percy, as if waiting.

"I love you too, ok Luke. So you can't die. You have so many people who still love you." Percy sobs in between words.

Luke finally smiles, and brings Percy's face close to his. " I love you Percy, I think I always have."

Luke gentle as a feather kisses a shocked Percy's lips. Blood staining his. "I'll try for reincarnation. Either way I'll see you in Elysium ok."

Percy's eyes go round with fear." No no no no, Luke you have to stay with me ok. Stay with me."

"We're soulmates Percy. We'll find each other again. I promise."

Luke's eyes flutter shut. And they don't open again. The light in Percy's eyes go with him. That's when the screaming, and the shaking of the whole building really starts.

~end flashback~

"You just left him in the room!"

"What did you expect me to do?! He almost killed us!"

Nico says nothing, just gives Annabeth a dark look. Than wordlessly grabs her arm and shadow travels into the room Percy is in. What they find is heartbreaking.

Percy leaning against one wall with a dead Luke in his arms. From how Percy has them positioned. It looks like Luke is just sleeping(if it wasn't for the blood and the paleness of death), with Percy leaning his head against Luke's neck.

Nico does not like the look in Percy's eyes. They look lifeless and numb. As if Percy is not all there.

Nico drops Annabeths arm and the both of them head towards Percy. Kneeling in front of him.

"Percy we need to go. The gods cannot find out you destroyed their throne room,"Annabeth says.

Percy doesn't answer. He just looks ahead at nothing. Holding Luke's dead body gently.

Annabeth goes to touch Percy. That's what finally gets a reaction.

"Don't. Touch. Me." Percy says this quietly, but cold. Sad. Darkness in his voice.

Nico drags Annabeth's hand away. Annabeth still doesn't take the hint. "Percy we need to move!"

"Leave me alone I want to stay with Luke."

Annabeth looks at Nico with wide troubled eyes. "Go stand over there. I'll deal with this," Nico tells Annabeth. She agrees. Which is a surprise, but Nico is grateful. Nico kneels closer to Percy but not touching him.

"Percy, I know you want to stay here with him. But you can't." Nico speaks softly and gently.

"Leave me alone." Percy voice replies dull and lifeless.

"Percy that's not Luke anymore."

Percy at that, holds Luke closer and closes his eyes tight. "Shut. Up."

"Percy the minute he died. Is when he stopped being Luke. His soul is probably in the underworld by now. I know you love him," Nico tears up at this, but pushes down his feelings and continues. He is a son of Hades.

"He probably loves you too. And someone who loves you like that would not want to see you do this to yourself. Because that's not Luke, not anymore"

At that Percy finally looks at Nico. There's a little life in his eyes. "You want to hear something crazy? I was never ment to be the hero in the prophecy. My whole job, was to hand Luke, the real hero. The knife to kill himself himself with." Percy starts laughing at this. With tears coming out of his eyes. One of his hands runs through Luke's hair. "My only job was to kill my soulmate at the right moment. Right before he died he was telling me he loved me. He loves me. And now he's dead from me helping him kill himself!" Percy starts sobbing and laughing. "Isn't that ridiculous? Isn't that the most ridiculous piece of crap you ever heard!" Percy than cries into Luke's neck. Nico starts crying too. He gently takes a hold of Percy's arm to hold him. Percy let's go of Luke(finally) and let's Nico hold him. Crying in his arms. Crying so loud it echos in the room. Nico rocks Percy in his arms saying nothing.

Luke's corpse stays leaning by the walls. Still looking like he's just sleeping.

@dark-emperor-ciska I took a lot from this scene in a show my mom loves called greys anatomy. I'm not a fan. But that scene this is based on hit me really hard. it gave me inspiration. If you want a link to said scene let me know. I hope you like this. I don't think it's any good.

[wildlyfreemoon]

watching fire country (up to ep 7) and i have a couple thoughts so far:

i like that it has plot. i know that may sound crazy but i was expecting it to be a bit like chicago me/fire/pd or even like greys anatomy where its like more pulled along by the setting rather than the characters. but all the characters have like theyre own little plotline and thats sick

billy burke is soo hot like how did he just get hotter with age like yummy -- usually bode's character would be my fav bc hes more my physical type (big beefy) but old always beats out beefy for me

i dont rly get body and jake's rivalry type thing. like i get why bode doesnt like jake (aka jake broke riley's heart and then she died) but also like why does jake HATE bode so much. like it feels so unwarrented because he's saying shit like "bode cant change" and bode is always going to be a bad guy. but in the flashbacks to riley's bday we see that they were best friends and they were childhood friends too so i hope that they flesh that out more and we find out what bode did to make jake hate him so much. like it cant just be that riley's dead bc like eve, vince and sharon dont still hold this much of a grudge against bode despite loving riley very much.

in general i dont rly liek jake though. like BOOO CHEATER 🍅🍅🍅 and i think that gabriela is also a little annoying (but i just got up to the part where manny stole the watch so im nervous for them too)

i like sharon. but also nepotism is the only thing keeping this family and the fire department together

[figureinthedistance]

Ive always said that randomly giving a character amnesia is a top 3 plot device for me and potentially the goat. particularly in television. But i was trying to think of times its been done well and its hard. Alexis getting it in ugly betty and stefan getting it in vampire diaries were both pretty bland. Alex's love interest having it in greys anatomy was fun and the plotline that made me like alex but that wasnt a main character getting it so its different. Nancy drew had the very fun episode of all the main characters getting collective supernatural amnesia, which was my fav ep of the show mystery wise, but didnt do much w the human drama of it (except george keeping stuff from nick which was nice). Could go on. And i was like well why do I love it sm if im often so underwhelmed and i realized well its bc of mike!!!

Mike getting amnesia in desperate housewives is the goat amnesia plot it gave us everything it gave us drama romance mystery intrigue comedy. His flashbacks remembering something and beginning to suspect he was a killer but then its actually he witnessed a murder and the killer (not rlly but) attacked him too and thats how he got amnesia. Soooo good. The edie susan stuff was great too. That was amazing. No show has ever come close to that.

[horsetailcurlers2]

watching grey’s anatomy for the first time after only watching private practice: another long and obnoxious stream of my thoughts while watching (season NINE, babey)

if anybody cares: here is season 8, season 7, season 6 (part one) (part two), and season 5

-RIP lexie grey you would’ve loved the GUTS album

-i feel like meredith isn’t really being mean enough to warrant the nickname. the new interns are kind of just wusses

-i love that the filter over the flashbacks makes the scrubs all look black, like they’re all in mourning

-mr feeney brought her a danish :)

-i’m confused about the timeline of residency and fellowship. why didn’t callie have to do a fellowship or anything? she just like quit and then came back as head of ortho

-i feel sad for arizona and i get that her knocking over the vase was supposed to be a dramatic way to show how frustrated she is with walking again but lowkey they should have put those slip resistant feet thingys on their couch if they were gonna put it straight on the hard floor

-“i practically raised them” ??? what is the shepherd sibling birth order?? i always assumed nancy was the oldest

-NEVE CAMPBELL???

-lizzie is so right tbh. didn’t nancy say in season one that derek distanced himself from his family when he left ny? it’s obviously not meredith’s fault, especially bc his family dynamic is very different from the one she grew up with. and ik a lot happened but from his sisters’ perspective it’s probably like he just up and abandoned them (and all his nieces and nephews)

-i usually wouldn’t agree with owen but he’s right. they need to just cut the cord. it’s so interesting me that cristina is usually the person in these situations that’s holding onto things too tight, despite it seeming like it would be the opposite

-i think i like jo. sometimes she vibes very Y/N but tbf it’s 2012

-this whole bankrupting/selling/buying the hospital thing is giving mad men “shut the door, have a seat” but Bad (affectionate) and Confusing

-in season one it was a big scandalous no no that interns were getting involved with attendings but suddenly they can all just casually fraternize willy nilly?

-i wish the girl intern with the short hair had more story. i loved that actress in big love and veronica mars.

-hey what ever happened to the clinic???

-call me old fashioned but i don’t really think that big flash mob dance proposals are safe or advisable to do in ambulance bays

-oof…. arizona, girl….

-i could be wrong but i’m pretty sure this season lines up with the last season of pp. i wonder how soon after is amelia going to come to seattle?

[farfromstrange]

Foreigner's God | m.m

Matt Murdock x avenger!OFC

Chapter thirty-two: Chasing Cars

Previous part XXXI ° series masterlist ° main masterlist

Summary: As Eliza holds on for dear life, she starts to remember more about her past. Not sure if she’s going to make it, she can only succumb to the many flashbacks that are the only thing keeping her mind alive.

Warnings: ANGST, PTSD, flashbacks, dark memories, Hydra, religious imagery, child abuse, general abuse, hints at sexual assault, death, mentions of sterilization

a/n: It’s okay, you can ask for financial compensation. I deserve it. (Happy Christmas Day and to those who are celebrating today, have fun unpacking your gifts!! enjoy time with your loved ones, cherish every minute of it. I love you all so much!) Also, please listen to the Fleurie remix of Chasing Cars. Did I steal this idea from Grey’s Anatomy? Yes. But I only let the song and the episode inspire me. I suggest listening to it. It’ll make this so much more heartbreaking. But I suppose there is a silver lining? I don’t know, you have to read to find out.

She awoke to the sound of nothing. The ground underneath her back was hard, rock-solid, freezing down to her bones. Smoke floated around sterile floor tiles, shrill neon lighting flickering on the ceiling above.

Eliza shielded her eyes with the palm of her hand. The surroundings weren’t as clear to her as the smoke around her. She wasn’t sure where she was or how she ended up there. 

The shot, it hit her. She was shot. She was shot and she fell into Matt’s arms. She died. She was pretty sure she died.

Eliza hastily touched down her torso. No holes, no sticky blood leaking from her shirt. She was wearing a red dress ��� the suit had disappeared. Wide-eyed, wide awake she jumped to her feet. Apparently, there hadn’t been any time to wear shoes either. Some corpses are buried with shoes on if their family wishes so – does that mean you wear shoes in the afterlife too or is everyone barefoot where they end up? It wasn’t the most important question to ponder, but she was confused and scared and not at all prepared for what was about to come.

The thought of dying never scared her before, thinking of death as some sort of peace offering. Though the emptiness before her changed her mind just as fast. Death was cold and lonely. It wasn’t kind, it wasn’t peaceful. The silence was heavy. She felt buried underneath the weight of her sins, the world around her nothing but white light and smoke.

Time was a construct there. Either this was a really bad dream or she was in hell – convinced she’d died, Eliza didn’t consider any other option than the latter.  Hell, Heaven, purgatory, the institutions blurred together. Red was the devil’s color – maybe the dress on her pale skin somehow hinted at where she was. She always suspected she’d eventually end up in hell. Though in her mind, there was fire instead of an endless, empty hallway.

Sterile tiles covered not only the ground but also the walls. Together with the shrill neon lighting, she concluded that she was in a hospital.

“Hello?” her voice echoed back at her. There were no doors, only never-ending tiles. “What the fuck?”

She began to scout the place, walking down the seemingly endless hallway. The doors wouldn’t open, they were screwed shut. Was death really this empty? She half expected to find the Devil himself at the end of the hall, waiting to see her off into an endless loop of torture of her own making. She deserved it. Heaven certainly wouldn’t look like this, people call it paradise for a reason. This wasn’t paradise, this was an abandoned hospital (possibly even a mental hospital) with doors that didn’t work. 

Frustrated, she punched the door. 

Eliza remembered standing against Viktor. She remembered choosing not to kill him, instead leaving him to rot in jail. She remembered the haze she was in when she killed her fellow mutant soldier, the feeling of his blood on her hands. They were clean now, not an injury in sight, though she could still feel his fading heartbeat under her fingers, and the guilt hit her with full force.

She broke her own rules. She killed someone and she didn’t even flinch, she didn’t panic, she just did it and then moved on. She turned into the thing Viktor wanted her to become. He must have planned this, must have planned for that song to trigger her already fragile state of mind. He did this, he turned her into a monster, but he was right – the decision was all hers. Everyone around her got hurt. She was cursed the day she was born. 

“Told you it was a bad idea.” 

She looked up to find her own face staring back at her. Relief washed over her. At least something familiar in the emptiness.

“Am I dead?” Eliza asked.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not yet, at least. But you are dying.”

“I remember being shot. Ivan, he… God, I didn’t see him coming. I was foolish enough to leave him behind.”

“He wanted revenge. He got what he wanted. But that doesn’t really matter now ‘cause he’s dead.”

“What?” She frowned.

“Natasha killed him while you were so busy dying in your lover’s arms.”

Matt. “Oh, no,” Eliza dropped her head in her hands. “That poor- what did I do?”

Her double shrugged, arms dangling in the air. “I told you,” she stated as a matter of fact. “I warned you, you didn’t listen.”

“I know it’s my fault. No need to rub salt into the wound.” She looked around again. “Where are we, anyway? If I’m not dead yet. Is this like the waiting room to the afterlife or something?”

She scoffed, turning into a chuckle. “There is no such thing,” she said.

“Then what is this place?”

“I don’t know. I’m not in control of your mind.”

“No, I’ve almost died many times before, and never, not once, have I seen anything beyond the darkness.”

“Perhaps you’re worse off now.”

“You’re not very helpful.”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know! I don’t even know why you’re here. If you’re not going to help,” she huffed, “Why don’t you just go?”

“No can do,” she said. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. Because I’m you, and I have been chosen to help you through this.”

“Through what?”

“You didn’t think this was just an empty hospital, did you?” 

“Oh, so you do know something.”

“I know that you’re dying, and that’s what I’m trying to prevent. I warned you, you didn’t listen, but you don’t deserve to suffer for doing what you thought was right.”

Eliza threw her head back and groaned. “What do you know?” she barked.

“I‘ve been living in your head since you were born, you just always pushed me away because you were scared of what you might find if you looked further,” she explained. “And you know, since I grew up with you and I’m not a real person, I know exactly what you went through. I saw it. I remember.” The double stepped forward. “Don’t you want to remember too?”

Her breath stuttered, fists clenching at her sides. She wanted to remember. She wanted to see what was behind those doors, but what if she wouldn’t like what was behind them? What if she saw things she couldn’t remember for good reasons? She suddenly wasn’t so sure if she even wanted to know more about the person she used to be. 

“You’re dying,” she told her again. “Is this really how you want to go out?”

She scoffed. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” The double offered her hand. Her eyes softened. “Come with me.”

Hesitantly, she took the offer. 

“Where are we going?” Eliza asked.

She led her down the hallway, in the direction she came from. In the spot where she woke up, they halted. She let go of her hand, pointing toward the silver door to her right. 

“Open it,” she said. 

“What?”

“Just trust me. Open the door.”

Her hand lingered on the handle. What if it wouldn’t open? None of them seemed to work before she ran into the voice in her head. Her pulse raced, a sign that she somehow still must have been alive. She could have sworn her heart stopped on the way to the hospital – was she even at the hospital? Were they operating? Did she get a blood transfusion? The fact that she was still alive surprised her. She had lost a dangerous amount of blood already, surgery would only kill her. 

She chose to trust her better judgment. There was still hope, or else she would have gone straight to hell. So she pushed the handle down, closing her eyes as the door opened.

Eliza opened her eyes to an unknown scenery. The inside of a hospital room, a man holding a baby, his wife surrounded by doctors, and she was flatlining. 

The baby cried violently, the continuous beeping of the heart monitor tuning out everything else, hurting her little newborn ears.

She recognized the woman on the table. Blood pooled out of her nose. Her skin was pale and cold, and her body was lifeless. She reached out to touch her face, and somehow it worked. She stroked the woman’s cheek. 

“Mom?” At the broken sound of her voice, she winced. “God, I’m so sorry.”

Her father only handed the baby off as he fell to the floor. He couldn’t look at his daughter, not like this. The doctors weren’t sure what to do, so the nurse took the baby away, and another leaned down to the crying man. She offered him a sedative, but he declined. He wouldn’t let go of his wife’s hand, even long after the blue sheet covered her body and her face disappeared. He sat there for so long, his legs turned numb. Not once did he leave to see his daughter. 

Eliza supposed she deserved this. He saw his wife inside his daughter. The thing that killed her. The thing that should have died. She wanted to comfort him, but she wasn’t sure how. 

“I don’t want to see this,” she whispered. 

“You already did,” her double said.

Time passed by her. Another door appeared behind them. She took her hand, allowing her to guide her through it. 

Life moved in picture frames, two pictures by the second, month after month of screaming and tears. A funeral, no one there but the man and the baby. There was no family, no one.

He came home with the baby in the car seat to an empty house. The same house she had been in only hours ago. It looked all the same, though, without Guinevere, the house seemed like an empty hole threatening to swallow them. She didn’t understand what happened then, but her father did. She was just a baby and he tried to accept that, but she could see in his eyes how hard he struggled to accept what happened, to accept her. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault she looked like her mother, that she became the constant reminder of what happened before and then after she was born. He only had to look at her and see the dead eyes of his wife disappear behind a blue sheet before the doctors rolled her out of the operating room. 

Behind the next door lay a graveyard. “We were scared for no reason,” her father spoke to the gravestone. Russian, as far as Eliza could tell. “Our little girl is fine. She’s as healthy as a baby could be,” he said. 

Although he was grieving, he took care of the baby as a father should. He fed her, changed her, and rocked her to sleep. Though sometimes he’d cry whilst holding her, and sometimes he couldn’t look at her at all, reminded of the life he’d lost and all the memories that came with it. She was too aware for a child her age.

Up until her first birthday, everything seemed normal. The man was broken over his wife’s death, but even he had managed to fall into a routine good enough for him and the baby. She grew steadily, though her mind progressed rather quickly. Seeing the memories before her eyes for the very first time, Eliza soon realized why – She hadn’t been able to remember for so long because she’d started to push the bad memories down from the day she was born.

Six months later on a sunny day, the garden of a beautiful suburban home. Eliza was one year old then. She sat on the grass, playing with the new toy her father got her for her birthday. A butterfly flew by her. She tried to catch it with her small hands, but it was faster. Suddenly curious about the creature, she got up and ran towards the fence connecting the house to the rather dark one on the other side.

“Don’t go in there,” Eliza breathed out. She stared at her double, then the baby in front of her. “Tell her not to go in there,” she said. “Do something!”

She placed her index finger on her lips – just watch. She couldn’t change the past. It was set in stone.

Her father told her never to go near the fence, and never to disturb the neighbors. He warned her about next door. Her father. There had been a time when she made it her mantra. She was merely twelve months old. She didn’t know any better.

So she climbed through the small opening in the fence, hunting after the butterfly with the beautiful red wings.

It landed on a flower on the ground, seemingly waiting for the girl to follow. She giggled. Butterflies are even more beautiful up close, she noted.

“Babochka.”

Butterfly was her first word. Ironic. Most children say the names of either one of their parents first. Eliza, however, said her first word in the presence of a butterfly, which she only knew how to name because the book her father read every night revolved around a lonely butterfly embarking on a journey to find the true meaning of life.

She only blinked once. The butterfly broke down before her very eyes. His wings spread out, red streaks on the dried grass. The flower he’d sat on crumbled next to it.

She was just a baby.

Eliza felt the grass underneath her feet when she ran up to the man looming above the child.

“Don’t touch her,” she threatened.

A wall seemed to separate her from the situation. She could feel everything, but she wasn’t truly there. It was a memory. Memories can’t be changed. 

The man began to yell at her. Told her to leave, and called her all kinds of names. He was a heartless bastard.

Eliza didn’t expect her younger self to have been so calm. The truth was much darker than she imagined. 

As he tried to pull her up, her eyes rolled into the back of her head. Seconds later, her eyelids fluttered open to the color of burning red. The simplest touch to her shoulder sent electricity through him. His body shot back, hit by the sheer force of whatever left her body in bright rays.

“Alina!” her father called out. “Alina where the hell are you?!”

She had to watch in horror as the man jumped the fence only to come face to face with what his daughter had done. His neighbor lay unconscious in one corner of his garden, blood pooling from his nose, surrounded by rose bushes that scratched his skin.

Little Alina sat on the ground, unbothered, and stroked the broken butterfly’s wings. In her mind, he was still alive. Only his wings were weakened. It twitched between her gentle fingers.

“Oh my,” he breathed. “Alina, what have you done?”

He lied to her when he said he only started considering getting her help when he taught her how to ride a bike and she saved a butterfly’s life. She wasn’t sure if he lied because he chose to forget the memory from when she was a baby or to protect her. Either way, the sight before her shook her to the core.

“Babochka,” she said, clearer now.

The butterfly twitched again. His wings began to flutter. Once squished and on the brink of death, life seemed to come back to him.

Her father knelt next to her. “What did you do?” he whispered again, this time pointing at the butterfly. 

“Babochka.”

“He’s alive.” His brows furrowed. “He was dead, now he’s alive. How- Alina…”

“Dada,” she showed it to him. “Babochka.”

“Come on.” He hoisted her up into his arms. “We need to go home.”

The butterfly spread its wings and began to fly. She happily laughed at the sky. “Babochka!”

This was the first time her powers showed. At the ripe age of twelve months. Eliza was bound to jump the train to disaster. From the day she was born, the ability to do the indescribable has been running through her blood, and that was far more terrifying than what Hydra made her out to be. She was a ticking time bomb, even back then, even without being experimented on.

She was a nightmare come true.

From the day in her neighbor’s basement, her powers only grew. Incidents like that happened more often, the intensity increasing and her control decreasing. Her father kept her hidden away in the house, but even there she started to create chaos. He could no longer contain the power his child carried. He could no longer protect people from his daughter. Every time someone touched her or enraged her in some way – every time she didn’t get her way or she found a reason to punish someone, she lashed out and her powers often lead to injury.

She had it coming; the second Hydra caught onto her powers, she was done for, but she had it coming. 

What hurt the most though was the fact that her father was always one step ahead. 

“I have found people that can help you,” he explained to the five-year-old as he walked them to the car. “We’re going on a little trip and we’re going to fix you, okay? It’s going to be okay, Alina.”

He sold her out. He brought her to the base in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the winter snow. He handed her over to Hydra. They only had to offer him a program that would keep her off his ass and he was willing to hand his little girl over just like that.

Alina screamed when they pulled her through the steel doors, away from the only man she ever trusted. She screamed for them to let her go, screamed for her dad to come to save her, to take her back home, but he only watched. Even as she exploded into red rays of energy and the people around her dropped like flies, he just watched. They injected her with something, right into her neck, and she couldn’t stop it. Whatever poison they gave her, it worked. Her father watched as they pulled her away, doors falling shut and his face disappearing into a black hole behind her very tired eyes.

When she woke up, her father was gone and life as she knew it ended in an instant.

They stamped the number 008 onto her wrist. The clothes they gave her were too big, a pair of shorts and a sweater, both gray as ash. The strange men pushed food through an opening in the closed door. 

Every day around the same time, she supposed, someone in a white coat came in, changed the fluids attached to her veins, and then left again. After about eight of these encounters, she had lost all sense of time and space. There was no daylight, only the small space of a sterile white room, her leg tied to the bed, and drugs being pumped through her system.

With time, she became willing. With time, she grew. It must’ve been not long after her capture that they took her out of confinement, once she was calm and able, and carried her into another room. Weak in the knees, she fell.

“Hello, eight,” she lifted her tired head to face the man in a suit just a couple of inches before her. He smiled as he handed her a cup. “We haven’t met before. Here, sit.” He appointed her a chair right across from him.

She was terrified, so of course, she complied.

“You’re all malnourished. Haven’t they been feeding you?”

They had been, but she puked up everything they gave her. The fluids only helped partially and whatever else they were giving her drained even the last life from her. 

“Your father was a bright man, you know,” the man said. “He knew he couldn’t handle your power, so he led you here, where we can help you discover your full potential. Now, I know you’re scared. It’s okay to be scared, for now. But you don’t have to be. I will take good care of you, my child. I am your father now.”

“Why?” Her voice broke when she asked.

“Because I know what you can do, and I will make sure you go way above that. You’ve got a gift, a great gift. You’re more powerful than you realize. That’s why you’re here. That’s why he brought you here because he knew this program is the only thing that will help you.”

“Help?”

“Yes, help. It’s time we free you from this hell you’re living in, don’t you think? Don’t you want to be in control?” 

She nodded weakly. “Yes.”

“Then let me help you. Can you do that? Can you surrender yourself to me so I can help you?” 

“Y-yes.”

“Good, that’s good.”

“Who are you?” she dared to ask.

He chuckled. “We are Hydra. Now me, that doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that we are Hydra and we are here to help you.” 

She only hesitantly gave in. “Okay,” only because she believed him. “What now?” 

“Now,” he got up. “We’re going to get you some new clothes and then you’re going to meet your new friends.”

“Friends. You help them?”

“Yes, we help them too. We’re trying to, At least. Of course, we can’t help everyone. You’re too young to understand, but let me tell you something: sacrifices are what make us human. They’re necessary. Sometimes you help someone and it doesn’t work. You’re going to get better, but not everyone’s going to turn out the same way. I need you to understand that, accept that.“

Young Eliza pointed down at her wrist. “Eight,” she read out loud. “The others are numbers too?”

He nodded slowly. “They’re just numbers,” he said. “You, on the other hand… you’re special. I know you’re special. I just need you to prove to me that I wasn’t wrong in choosing you.” 

Eliza watched in horror as the words took effect on her.

“I won’t,” she’d always aimed to please. 

“Good.” He finished stirring the tea he prepared for her. “You’ll start your lessons today. If you’re a good student, you will be rewarded. If you’re not, you will be punished. The rules will be explained to you further before you start training. I will be there, every step of the way.“

“What is training?”

“Training is essential to your development. There will be phases in which you’ll be… shaped. It's important for training to work so that you fit in. It’s nothing too bad, just private lessons. Your abilities will be tested with every new lesson. Once You’re through, you’re going to be more powerful than any of us and that’s a gift, but that gift has to be controlled. You’re destined for greater things and I will make sure you get to do what you were made for, what we are going to make of you. You’re my little demon, eight. My child. We will do this together, every step of the way.”

“I will be fine?” she asked.

“You will be just fine,” he said. “Are you ready?”

Eliza shook her head, face pale like a ghost. “Say no,” she begged. “Just say no. Run, fight. Don’t just sit there!”

But she’d been just a child then. She didn’t know any better. She wanted to be loved. She wanted to be wanted, to be seen as more than just dead weight, so she said, “Yes, I’m ready.” Even though she had no idea what she signed herself up for. 

Judging by the chains on every part of her body, she knew even at five years old that she would never be able to go back. Weirdly, she was content with that. Her father gave up on her, so she gave up on herself. She gave up the fight. 

And as Eliza watched herself give into weakness, she cried. She cried for the little girl, too broken and too scared to fight back. She cried at the thought of her father abandoning her, even after everything she watched them go through. She cried at the fact she’d been a menace that couldn’t have been controlled even if he’d tried. But most importantly, she cried because no one could’ve saved her – she simply had nobody that cared enough to get her out. She was all alone.

She pulled the door close, returning to the white hallway. She breathed heavily. Remembering hurt. She wasn’t sure how she could have ever wanted to do that. 

“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. Ah!” 

Eliza slid down the wall, head between her knees. A sharp pain tore through her chest, squeezing her heart. 

Her double stood in front of her, not impressed by her reaction.

“Right now you’re going into cardiac arrest,” she told her. “They revived you and now your heart has stopped again.”

She cried out when another wave of pain hit.

“They just defibrillated you.”

Breathing got harder. 

“And again.”

“I can feel that,” Eliza bit back, “thank you!”

“Hey, I’m just stating the obvious. Death is inching closer and I need you to remember before that happens.”

“Why? What good is it gonna bring me if I’m dead?” She pressed a hand against her chest. “This isn’t going to miraculously save me. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“We need to buy your body time,” she said. “The only way to do that is to keep your brain viable. If your brain dies, you’re dead. If your brain stays awake though, your body might recover. That’s why I’m here.”

She slumped against the wall. “I’m so tired. Can’t we just… stop?”

“I can’t let that happen.”

“Maybe I don’t want to live, have you thought about that?”

“I didn’t ask what you wanted. We’re doing this, whether you like it or not.” She extended her hand again. 

The pain moved into the background. Eliza looked between her double and the several doors ahead of them. They had made quite the progress, but there still seemed to be no end to this torture. If keeping her brain alive meant remembering all the pain she went through, maybe she should just allow herself to pass away.

Though her double wasn’t willing to let that happen. She was far stronger than her, impossibly so. She didn’t stand a chance against herself. It was pathetic.

She took her hand, allowing her to pull her to her feet. 

“You can do this,” she insisted. “You’ve been through so much, this won’t break you. If anything, it will only make you stronger.”

Eliza opened the next door. As much as the exhaustion was starting to run her thin and all she wanted was to give into the darkness, she refused to go down without a fight. 

She was back in the confines of the White Room, though this time they took her to the conference room. Her younger self’s steps slowed down when she saw the stranger sitting at the table, his back turned to her. 

Viktor opened his arms. “There she is!” he said, grinning at the sight of her. His hand found her shoulders, lingering just a little too long. 

“Who’s this?” she questioned. 

“Someone who’s going to help you with your new mission.”

She wasn’t sure how old she was. Twelve, maybe, and the strange man was significantly older than her. She eyed his stiff back. Most people turned at the mere thought of meeting her. This one didn’t even move a muscle. She was curious. 

Viktor ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “I will give you two some time to get familiar,” he said. “We will talk specifics next.”

“Is he one of us?”

“Yes. He’s one of the best.” 

She closed her eyes at his gentle touch.

“No one surpasses you, of course. You will always be Hydra’s number one, and you will always be my star.” 

The girl nodded. Viktor bid his goodbyes, leaving them alone.

She approached the stranger only slowly. “Did they give you a number too?” she asked him.

Upon circling him, she noticed that his left arm was made out of silver metal. A red star had been painted over the artificial bicep. He was almost like her, not entirely human, possibly part machine. He might not have been a mutant, but he knew what it was like to be modified, to be changed. 

His soul shone in conflicting colors. She felt pangs of sympathy for the emotional pain he was in. Beyond the mind control, a broken man was hiding in the shadows. Torn apart by war and lost friends. 

She met his steel-blue eyes. He eyed her, she eyed him back. His lip twitched, though half covered by his long brown hair. 

“You’re a child,” he stated.

Sitting down in front of him, she copied his stance as best as possible. 

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know, how old are you?” she retorted.

She truly didn’t know. There wasn’t exactly the time to count birthdays, considering her life only worked in one direction and that was to succeed during missions and make Hydra look good. She was their only successful experiment, after all. A White Room experiment, to be more precise. Seeing the man before her though made her feel less alone, and weirdly enough, she admired him. 

He chuckled. “They told me about you.”

“What did they say?”

“You’re a talker.”

“And you’re not.”

“Talking is overrated.”

He wasn’t allowed to, most of the time. Viktor had a different approach when it came to his subjects. 

The girl leaned forward, elbows supported on her knees. “What do they call you?” she asked.

His eyes trailed over her face again. He hesitated. “They call me the Winter Soldier,” he answered. “Whatever that means.”

She hummed. “Heard about you.”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t have a name. He likes to call me his little Red Demon though.” She was talking about Viktor. “But I’m also number eight.”

“Soldiers don’t need names. We were made to function. Names are for the weak. They only make for distractions.”

He sounded like a robot.

Eliza watched with sorrowful eyes. Unlike him, she remembered their first meeting. And she saw the effects of Hydra’s torture long after she left when they ran into each other at the SHIELD headquarters before it fell. He shot her. She remembered that. It had been one of those times she nearly died. 

She followed her younger self around the conference table. He couldn’t see her, but she could see him.

“They treated you far worse than they did me,” she said. 

“That’s because Viktor saw you as his pet,” her double said behind her. “He loved you in his own twisted way. He saw your potential. You were the only one who survived his torture, so you became special. Him…” she motioned to the man at the table, “He was just a convenient subject that fell into Hydra’s hands, someone associated with Captain America, and with his arm gone, they saw an opportunity. Your purposes inside Hydra were inherently different. You wrote history, he was just supposed to kill people. You were a secret, a myth, he was their best soldier. You can’t compare these two situations.”

Eliza knelt to touch his thigh. He jolted. “I’m so sorry, Bucky,” she whispered. “I should have gotten you out much sooner.”

Another door appeared behind her. The story ended there. She rose back to her feet. 

“What’s behind the next one?” she dared to ask. 

Her double sighed, “You know I can’t just tell you that. Defeats the whole purpose.”

“I want to know how much more pain I have to suffer.” She turned to look at her. “I remember everything up to this point,” she said. “I saw picture after picture flash by me. I heard voices I never heard before. I met versions of myself I never thought existed. What else can there be, what else can you show me? I need to know.”

“There’s only so much more,” she told her.

“How much more?”

This time, she pushed the handle down for her. The door swung open. 

“Walk through and you’ll know.”

Eliza huffed. “You’re so useless.” 

The light engulfed her. Her feet touched the cold brown of the parquet floor. She was blinded for a second, the spotlight falling right on her face. 

She recognized the white curtains, and the oval windows with the metal frame, and when she turned she caught a glimpse of the barre in the corner. It stood right across from the gigantic mirror stretching along the entire wall.  

Her old ballet teacher stood with her arms crossed behind her back, hiding out in the corner while Tschaikovsky’s The Nutcracker played over the speakers. The tune was the first thing she actively paid attention to. It started slow, then turned into a dramatic, building climax. The melody was enticing, especially to those with a trained ear for opera and/or ballet. 

Eliza, however, associated nothing pure with this song. Her back straightened involuntarily. Discipline, that was what that song meant. Dancing under the strict eyes of her teacher, whose name she couldn’t remember, had been a memorable experience. It stuck with her subconsciously, as did the skill to master every ballet piece to perfection. Once learned, she would never forget it again, almost like riding a bike.

The Six-year-old danced right past her. She was terrible at remembering choreography during the first two sessions, which resulted in many slaps with her teacher’s cane, and sometimes even a stick taped to her back so she wouldn’t hunch or break position. She was the only one in the ballroom. 

She graduated from six years old to ten, mastering every dance thrown her way perfectly. Ballet helps with coordination and builds muscle. It also increases cognitive function and focus and improves memory. All of those skills are often needed in combat. 

Natasha often told her that they taught her how to dance ballet in the Red Room too. For one, the girls were supposed to keep the men entertained – it was the most female thing to do, and they had to fit the patriarchal picture. Though at the same time, the periodical dance lessons also helped improve their fighting and get them ahead in training. 

Since Eliza was the only child to survive the White Room, she spent time alone with her teacher, getting her full attention and her full punishment whenever she did something wrong. She simply stopped making mistakes after the first two punishments, realizing that she had worse coming if she kept disappointing her. So she did her best to be on her best behavior, always. And Viktor enjoyed the little private shows he got. His judgment was the most important. She wanted to please him, to get his approval and his compliments. She danced for him, then she danced for Mueller until she danced for a whole crowd of men. She ignored what she saw happen, ignored the stares and the comments about how gracefully her body moved and how mature she looked for her age. Viktor told her if she did a good job, she would get rewarded. His rewards were what kept her going, what made all of this bearable in the first place. 

Eliza turned her head away. She couldn’t stand the look in his eyes, the gentle touches on the girl’s cheek, her waist, and everywhere else where a person shouldn’t touch another without their consent. He told her how she could improve herself, someone who had never danced ballet before, helped her straighten her back and got her into a new position. She let it happen. After all, he once told her that she was his to command and that she was supposed to do everything for him because he was the only one who would ever care for her. He owned her. If she did what he did, he would reward her nicely. If she didn’t, he had to teach her a lesson or two. If she mouthed off or put her nose into matters that didn’t concern her, she was punished. His love was supposedly the only thing in her life that would persist; he was there when no one else was, he raised her and he made her believe that she was only worth something because of him. Without him, she was useless. She needed him like she needed air to survive. And you shouldn’t speak up to the people you owe your life to.

In hindsight, believing any of this had been foolish. But she was a scared little kid, she grew up under his control. He manipulated her from the day she got there, making her dependent on him. He took her under his wing, nurtured her, and turned her into the girl he wanted her to be. He turned her into the perfect soldier, his doll, a perfect object to show off. He could twist and turn her however he wanted and she followed his every move like a lost puppy. She didn’t know any better. She was all alone. She craved love, safety, and affection, and his twisted version seemed better than none, even if he used her as he saw fit, emotionally and physically, always. 

Eliza gasped audibly when she watched the teenage girl trip during her rendition of Cinderella. Her teacher hit her already bruised back with her cane, yelling for her to get back up. 

Soldiers don’t cry. 

And she got back up and danced until her feet were the same color as her crimson dress. Once the teacher was gone, she broke down again, too weak to walk herself out of the room. She took off her pointy shoes and instantly met with the gruesome sight of her mangled feet. She had danced for too long and she paid the ultimate price. 

Something told Eliza that the next memory was going to be much worse. She headed straight for the door, ready to run, ready to escape, but as she ripped it open, she only ended up in another strange hallway. 

Her chest heaved. She watched in horror as the doctors of the White Room wheeled her body on a gurney toward the operating room. She was tied down with leather straps and dressed in a white gown. She didn’t struggle, too sedated to care. 

“Graduation ceremony,” she muttered. 

Her double was waiting at the door. “Perhaps you don’t need to see this…” she said.

“Don’t need to or don’t want to?” she asked.

“Both.”

The door to the operating room shut in her face. She could see the instruments through the glass in the door, the forceps, the speculum, the scalpel, and whatnot. They injected her with something, though she never fell unconscious. 

Someone said, “Ready to proceed.”

She turned her head away. Her double was right, she didn’t want to see this. She didn’t need to in order to remember what happened. Her stomach twisted, and she felt the pull in her lower stomach, something that was no longer there. Phantom pains, almost. 

Eliza stifled her sobs through her hand, heading back to the door. 

“No distractions,” she remembered. 

“I’m sorry,” her double was just as quiet, no longer the obnoxious know-it-all but rather mourning something she knew all too well. 

They stepped back into the abandoned hospital. She was about to speak, but the excruciating pain returned tenfold, hitting her across the face, and her eyes rolled back into her head. She fell to the floor, clutching her chest, clutching her burning heart. The entry to her lungs was clogged. She couldn’t breathe. Her entire body felt as if it was about to drown any second. 

That wasn’t a good sign.

The world around her started to darken, the darkness calling for her. It reached its claws out, long nails cutting through the air. The reaper stood there in his black robe, holding out his hand. Her hands were covered in blood again and she gasped. 

Hell it is, then. 

She knew she wouldn’t make it into heaven. The reaper seemed determined, she didn’t have much of a choice but to get up and walk toward him. 

Sometimes hoping and trying aren’t enough to cheat death, especially not when it’s imminent. Eliza only delayed the inevitable, but she was done fighting. 

“Nope,” she heard her double exclaim behind her. 

With a slap, the darkness disappeared and she was tossed into another room. This time, the voice in the distance sounded too familiar to have been an old memory.

“Keep doing what you’re doing!” he bellowed. 

“Sir, she’s been down for over thirty minutes,” a female voice said. 

One single line, one single beep, ongoing. Hands squeezed her heart the way she felt it in her chest as she lay open on the operating table. Tubes stuck out of her arms. The epinephrine washed through her veins, attempting to reach her heart, but it somehow wasn’t enough to get the organ beating again. She looked like her mother then, blood coming out of her nose where the ventilator was attached to her airway. Only the blue sheet was missing. 

“Even if we got her back,” she supposed it was the responsible surgeon who said, “The brain can only survive without oxygen for so long. She might already be brain dead.”

“I don’t care!” Nick Fury stood on the other side, basically yelling into the microphone connected to the speakers. “You’re going to do everything in your goddamn might to bring that girl back. You get her heart beating again. You save her. There are too many people depending on her survival, and I’d be damned if I let her die like that. So you try everything, and you don’t give up. You bring her back to me, you got that? That is one of us lying on that table, not just some random patient. She deserves the best of the best, and you’re not doing your best right now. Thirty minutes don’t mean shit, not with her.” 

“Sir,” the woman urged again.

“No, you listen to me! Save Eliza Bennett’s life, whatever it takes,” he said. “That’s an order!” 

Eliza poked her shoulder. It felt odd. 

“Fight,” a voice in her head demanded. 

She wasn’t strong enough to fight death any longer. The reaper had been right there, ready to take her to the afterlife. Anything was better than this continuous loop of torture. 

She wasn’t brain dead yet though, she was still very much present, but the more her body weakened, the more she felt herself slipping away. She didn’t want to fight any longer, she was tired. She wanted to rest, she needed to. Just rest her eyes for a second, forget the rest of the world and simply breathe. Though she knew that as soon as she gave in, she would be dead and there would be no turning back. She hadn’t yet decided if that was something she wanted. She needed more time to figure it out, time she didn’t have. 

Eliza had to make a decision, and it was truly one of the hardest she ever had to make.

Until she found herself in the waiting area and saw the scene she left behind. 

Natasha sat down next to Matt on the uncomfortable plastic chair. He kept hitting his head against the wall. She took his bloodied hand, intertwining their fingers. Her eyes were red from all the crying, and no more tears were left to shed. Matt didn’t look much better. 

His words crushed her. "...I don't want to lose her,” he whimpered, voice hoarse. “I thought I already lost her once, and it was..."

Natasha squeezed his hand. "I understand,” she said. 

The hardest decision suddenly became a very easy one. 

Eliza stormed back into the operating room and screamed into her own ear. “Get your stupid heart beating again, right now,” she said. “We’re pathetic and we don’t deserve the love they give us, so the least we can do is survive this shit show so they don’t have to deal with the grief of losing us on top of everything else too. Do you get that? Fucking fight!” 

The doctor looked up at the sudden change in rhythm on the monitor. “V-fib,” she called out. “Charge to two hundred.”

They set the paddles straight to her heart.

“All clear!”

She felt the shock deep in her bones. Still staring at herself, she ground her teeth. 

“Come on,” she said. “Don’t give up now.”

The dark smoke started to build behind her again, darkness calling for her. This time, she stared the reaper right into his empty, white eyes and denied him.

“Not now! I’m fucking busy.”

“Charge again,” said the doctor. 

They shocked her again. Nothing changed. 

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” Eliza hit the gurney. “Why won’t you wake up?” 

Getting frustrated with herself was even more pathetic than talking to herself, but no one could see her anyway and perhaps her body would somehow listen to her before the reaper would take her brain too, and then there would be nothing left to save. 

She couldn’t leave them like this. They didn’t deserve the burden of losing her.

The next shock burned through her heart muscles. Somehow though, it felt good this time, like she had just been punched awake by a cold bucket of water. 

The doctor exhaled loudly. “We’ve got a rhythm!” she said, almost in disbelief about the situation herself. And Eliza couldn’t blame her. Watching the scene unfold made her believe she really wasn’t going to make it. 

She closed her eyes. When she reopened them, she stood in front of what seemed to be the last viable door in the empty hallway. 

Her double smirked back at her. “My plan worked,” she said. 

“It almost didn’t,” Eliza retorted.

“Yeah, but it did. You’re welcome.”

“Why is there another one?” She motioned for the door. 

“Well, your heart might be beating again, but you’re far from being out of the woods yet.”

“Oh, my…”

“They’re going to finish operating on you and then you have to find a way to wake up somehow or else all of this would have been for nothing.”

“If I don’t die first.”

“I have a feeling that you won’t.”

“So I just gotta remember until my mind is strong enough to wake up, or what?” she asked. 

Her double shrugged. “What else do you want to do?” she said.

“I don’t know, go on vacation?”

She snorted. “Why don’t you go in and find out?” 

Eliza rolled her eyes. As soon as she stepped through the doorway, all of the other doors disappeared. A soft breeze brushed through her hair. The sun kissed her skin to the sound of waves crashing into the shore. Seagulls squawked above her head. The smell of salt lingered in the air. She took a deep breath. 

New York had always felt like home. The weather was milder than in Russia, but at least it snowed sometimes and it reminded her of a time before things went wrong. However, there was nothing she enjoyed more than the occasional visit to the beach. It was often unbearably hot, especially in the States she had been to, but the calming sounds made up for the heat, and the different scents always managed to scratch an itch in her brain. She felt completely at ease at the beach. 

Her double initiated the stroll along the promenade. They walked in silence, feeling the sand between their toes and the oncoming sunburn that proved they were still alive. 

Eliza sniffed the air again. She could get used to this, her little version of paradise. But this wasn’t hers. They didn’t step into a memory. She would orchestrate her afterlife much differently.

“You know,” the other version of her began to speak, “all of these years I wondered if you were ever going to find out. You’ve been at war with yourself and with me for most of your life, and it hurt me to watch you get hurt over and over again,” she said. “When you met Daredevil though, everything changed and for the first time, I had hope. I had hope for both of us, and I tried to guide you in the right direction. I admit, I used a little too much tough love at times, and I might have freaked you out a little, but in the end, I think things worked out fine. I mean, if we ignore the fact that you almost died and might still actually die…”

She snorted. 

“I’m sorry. It’s just… I’m you, and being you is a full-time job. But I realized, you don’t actually need my help or my guidance. You need a voice of reason, yes, but you can finally become your own now that you know who you are. I have realized,” she halted, “that you don’t need me anymore.” 

“What do you mean?” Eliza asked.

“It means that my job here is finally done.”

“So you’re just going to leave?” She raised her eyebrows. “You never even explained to me who you truly are.”

“Because the truth is, I can’t. I can’t explain it to you. Do you know why? Because I don’t exactly have an identity. I’ve been in your head since you were born. I grew up with you. I am you, I’m your voice of reason, your moral compass, and for a while, during your time at Hydra, I was locked in a cage. You never paid attention to me, pushed me away because deep down, you were always a little scared of the truth, so when Hydra returned and you had the opportunity to rethink things…”

“I finally realized that you’ve been in my head all along,” she finished. Rolling her eyes, she added, “Of course. Everything leads back to my inability to deal with my own feelings.”

“No,” her double shook her head, “You’ve just been detached from your true nature for so long, you’ve built brick walls around you. What you’re going through now,” she told her, “is like learning to walk again, but don’t worry, it’s in your blood. You will get into it in no time.”

Eliza lowered her head, chuckling in the direction of the soft beige sand. “You’re quite nice when you’re not insulting me.”

“Aw, thanks.”

“I’m gonna miss your voice in my head, which sounds weird now that I’ve said it, but that doesn’t make it any less true,” she said. “You’ve given me so much guidance in the past few days, I don’t know what I’m gonna do when you’re no longer there.”

“Listen to your gut.”

“My gut is often wrong.”

“You will learn how to figure stuff out along the way. You always do.”

“See, you say that but I don’t really believe you.”

“That’s not something I can change,” she said with a shrug. “You just have to believe in yourself, I guess. That’s the only way you can learn how to trust yourself. And that will make things so much easier.”

Eliza stopped her when she tried to turn away. “What if I don’t make it?” she asked.

“You have to. There is a whole new life waiting for you out there, people who love you, people who are worried sick for you, and it’s not time for you to leave just yet. Me, on the other hand…” she stepped back, freeing herself from the hold she had on her. 

She watched her walk away slowly. In the distance, a woman joined her. She took the young woman into her arms. 

“Mom?” she wondered out loud. 

The two turned to Eliza, the space between them making it harder to make out any specific details, but her gut told her that it was her. 

“You know that this is torture, right?”

She grinned knowingly. “You’re going to be fine,” her double told her. 

“What if I want to stay, huh?” Eliza challenged. She dared to walk toward them. “What if I don’t want to go back? What if…”

The woman was her mother. The closer she came, the clearer her face got. She looked older, with a few more wrinkles on her face, and her perfectly shiny hair started to gray, but it was undoubtedly her. 

She laughed at the sight, her chest blooming with a mixture of sadness and relief. Tears sprung into her eyes. 

“What if I want to go back to my mom?” she said. 

Her double shrugged. “Look at this place! Is this really where you want to stay for the rest of your life?” 

“Maybe, I don’t!”

Guinevere stepped forward. Her white blouse swayed in the wind, the sand catching onto the hem of her baggy jeans. They even had the same taste in clothing. It wasn’t fair. Eliza felt as if everything she had ever wanted was in front of her, yet too far out of reach. Going back into the real world didn’t seem as lucrative as it used to. She could be happy at the beach with her mother by her side, and nothing could hurt her anymore. She could close the last chapter of her book and dive into the epilogue. 

Her mother shook her head, reading her mind solely from looking at her face. “Darling,” she spoke softly, “It’s not time yet.” 

No matter how fast she ran, the distance didn’t shrink. She was still too far away. 

The waves crashed into her ankles. Eliza stopped and sighed. Her attempts were of no use. She was never going to reach her. This wasn’t her paradise. Alina would be laid to rest here, not her. She was a new person, she wasn’t the little girl her father handed off to Hydra anymore, and neither was she Guinevere’s daughter. She gave birth to Alina, but she was long gone. Eliza took the new identity for a reason. She had never felt more detached from her past self than she did at that moment. Finding herself had never been about getting her old life back, it had been about getting closure, about understanding where she came from and who she was, and she knew now. She remembered.

The double wasn’t her, it was Alina, and she had survived only for so long because Eliza didn’t let the truth anywhere near her. Now her job was done and it was time to let her go. It was more of a metaphorical funeral than a real one because the voice in her head had only ever been real to her. 

Eliza was whole again, not because she was someone else but because she learned to accept who she had become. She could finally start a new chapter of her life, if only she managed to survive. Alina would join her mother and when it was time, she would die and return to her old self and her mother and things would be just fine. She just had to keep her hope intact. 

She wiped her tears with her sleeves. “I miss you,” she whimpered. “It’s not fair.”

“You’re right, it’s not fair,” her mother cooed. “And I so wish I could touch you right now to see the kind of remarkable woman you’ve become. But it’s far too soon for you to die. You’re too young, you have so much more left to do. As much as I’d love holding my daughter in my arms again,” she smiled, “It’d be selfish of me to take you away from the people who love you and are still alive.”

“Is this real, at least?”

“If you want it to be.”

“No, I need to know. Is this what I’m going to find once I’m dead? Is this what heaven looks like?”

The beach sounded like the perfect place to rest, her garden of Eden. But she would have also settled for a cabin in the woods or a snow castle. Either way, if she could be with her mother again, death seemed a little less damning. 

Guinevere chuckled again. “Don’t you need to believe in God for heaven to become real?” she said.

Oh, they were so alike. The smart comebacks, the snark, everything reminded her of herself. 

“I wish I could have gotten the chance to grow up with you,” Eliza said. She rubbed her eyes again, trying her hardest to stop the emotions from flowing out. “I always wondered what my mom was like, and I used to tell myself that you would’ve been awful if you’d survived, but I was so wrong… I just wish you would have had more time to be my mom.”

The woman was fighting back tears of her own. “There is not a second that goes by where I don’t wish the same thing,” she said. “That’s why I can’t let you stay. You deserve the time with your loved ones that I didn’t get.”

She had a point. 

“How are you holding up, darling, otherwise?” 

“I met a boy,” she sniffed. “You would have liked him.”

“Is he good to you?”

“The best.”

“Then I already really like him.”

“He’s probably the only reason I can’t stay here. God knows I want to, but you’re right, it’s not time yet,” Eliza said. She peeked over her shoulder to see the door once again wide open for her. 

Guinevere followed her gaze knowingly. “You better use your second chance wisely,” she said. She meant to tease, but her words sounded more serious than jokingly. 

“I’m so confused as to what I’m supposed to do now.” 

“Wake up.”

“How do I do that?”

“There’s a door, find a way out.” 

Hand in hand with her double, Guinevere stepped into the light.

Eliza stared off into the vastness of the ocean. Waking up sounded so easy, but she wasn’t even sure how she got there in the first place, so getting out sounded like a bit of a struggle. 

She chose to revel in the feel of the salty ocean breeze on her skin a little longer, allow the sun to brown her skin, and breathe in the fresh air. She listened to the waves strum their native tune against the dunes. The beach, if void of any humans, is a beautiful and serene place to be. 

Instead of darkness, light haunted her this time. But not the kind of light that had swallowed her double, it was a different kind of light. This light forced her to close her eyes as it became blinding. She finally began to return to her body. 

Opening her eyes was more exhausting than closing them. She had to fight her way out of nothing into the world. Eventually, she could feel her limbs again, and with her limbs came the awareness of the heavy weight on her chest, the drumming of her heart, and the air in her lungs that came just a little harder than before, but the nasal cannulas supplied her with just enough oxygen to make the rise and fall of her lungs worthwhile. 

Her entire body was sore. She was still too dizzy to realize the full extent of her injuries. The weight on her chest didn’t seem to be part of it though. Someone was holding her hands, hair tickling the bare skin around her collarbones. She could smell the traces of blood and sweat close to her face. 

Her mouth opened, the air dry. She licked over the cracked skin of her lips. How long had she been out? She was parched.

Her eyes fluttered open. Thankfully, the light in the room had been simmered down to a soft yellow, and the monitor next to her head wasn’t beeping, only showing the zig-zag lines indicating her heart rate. The ceiling blurred at first, so she blinked again. Even her eyelids seemed to weigh tons. 

Eliza breathed in. The action made enough noise to cause the weight on her chest to shift, then shoot you completely. 

She thought about what she was going to say, even made a plan for how to say it once she woke up. In the end, her mind completely blacked out and all that came out of her mouth was,

“Ugh, I need coffee.” 

Because of course, coffee should be anybody’s number one priority after almost dying. 

[mybumpbirthandbeyond]

Fuerza

I used to write a blog a lot more frequently. In the thick of things, when I was struggling, writing it down always allowed me to reach the feelings I was trying so hard to bury. It’s been 3 months since I wrote my last blog, but I have a funny feeling that it might be a lot longer after this until the next - if at all.

As a mother, you become a master at putting your feelings aside. Everything is focused on your children. In some ways, I’m even worse than that - I literally put everyone possible above me and before me. Even the dog 😂

In this journey, I’ve often set aside my own feelings when women message me. No matter how I’m feeling, or if I’m in a hard place at that point, I always respond and give an answer to their questions (with the exception of very few where I’ve drawn a hard line). I don’t know whether I’m just used to doing that, but I suspect it’s to do with the responsibility I feel to others. Each member of my team both independently and collectively, have told me I owe nothing to anyone. Well I feel the opposite. I’ll not even start on what I owe them, but to the many women who have reached out over the years, I have been in their position, I know how they feel and that is something that unfortunately, unless someone has been through it, is impossible to find. For all the respect, love and highest regard I have for pelvic physios, unless they have experienced this personally, their understanding can only go so far. I wanted and continue to want, to help women in a way I never experienced. Yes there were others who had shared their journey, but they were years down the line. They weren’t at the stage I was when I suffered the most.

The messages I used to get were from women who had just found out about their diastasis. Now, the messages from women who are close to, or have just had surgery (I literally had a message from someone who had surgery just a few hours earlier!) Each one takes me back every time to when I was at that point. Hard to believe it was a year ago in one way, and in another, it’s like a lifetime has passed.

I’ve been taking some weird trips down memory lane recently. After the passing of one of my mentors at the start of my legal career and bumping into my original bosses, I then drove past my community midwife who was responsible for looking after me in both my pregnancies. It hit me how much had happened since I first met her, and since I last saw her. I had flashbacks of all our interactions. Then I drove past the hospital where I was seen on a fortnightly basis for physio at the beginning. It was all a bit much to be honest.

My midwife’s comments will be relatively well known to those who have been following for a while. My bump was ‘weird,’ she could ‘measure me big or small, I just don’t know what’s going on.’ She was not the one who picked up on my separation though, rather it was her replacement while she was on holiday around 36 weeks pregnant in my first pregnancy. When it came to my second pregnancy, she was convinced I would need a C-section and would have to go Consultant led. Thanks to my rockstar physios, I pushed back and well…we all know how that went. I almost gave birth in the car park and the pushing stage lasted 13 minutes. No painkillers - not even paracetamol and I wasn’t even admitted properly on the system by the time I gave birth to my daughter. If there was anyone who was going to prove so-called experts wrong, I guess it was always going to me (and Emily 😅).

In the days that followed, when my midwife came to visit, she brought a student. I kind of felt like a lab rat in some ways. She wanted her student to feel how large and deep my diastasis was because she’d never seen anything like it. Of the 100s of pairs of hands that felt my diastasis, I felt like that patient in Grey’s Anatomy with something really extraordinary and weird but it’s a teaching hospital so let the interns see it. I have no issues with students learning - I’m the biggest advocate for learning. I want to learn everything possible and always want to know why - in many ways, my brain probably operates a lot like my teams’. I am THAT patient. I want to see; I want to know why; I want to know as much as possible. And I’m going think more and have more questions. And when there isn’t an answer, I’m going to be a bit frustrated by that.

I would say over the course of this, I’d be surprised if I didn’t see at least 5 students and then on top of that, any courses I attended as the case study means we’re probably into double figures. But that’s the difference with those who know about diastasis- I wasn’t the lab rat. I wasn’t that patient with something weird (I was, but I was never made to feel like that). Sadly, no matter how well intentioned my midwife, I felt like I was the only person in the world who was that bad. I was the wrong type of unicorn.

My husband always joked I’m a unicorn. He meant it in a good way - according to him (and he’s clearly more than a bit biased) there was no one who wanted to learn and understand the way I did; there was no one who carried on the same way regardless of how hard it got; there was no one that worked so hard regardless of how the outcome wouldn’t change; there was no one who had shared through two pregnancies, two postpartums, pre-op and post-op. I never saw it like that. I was just doing what I felt I had to to make sure I never had any regrets when all was said and done.

My final consult was actually a month and a bit after 1 year post-op, and it still felt like the time came too fast. Ever since I had my surgery everything has happened too fast. The year leading up to surgery was the longest, slowest and hardest of all, and this one has been the fastest, shortest year, but also still pretty damn hard. I looked forward to and dreaded that appointment at the same time. I was dreading the worst hangover post-consult. I’ve mentioned before I get consult hangovers. Overwhelmed; hollow; empty; and low. The high has passed and all your left with is the memories - and even then they become pretty hazy. The build-up does not help. All my consults - physio and surgical - are booked months in advance so you have time to build up to them (and look forward to them in my case), and then before you know it they’re done in what feels like minutes, and that’s it until the next. Except there isn’t a ‘next’ this time.

I kicked myself coming out my appointment. I couldn’t get out of my own way. The part of me that tries to remain stoic and professional to the end. I didn’t say what I wanted to say at the time and it didn’t hit me until I left. Then the facade came down and the tears came. I spent the rest of that day tearing up or full blown crying at certain points when people couldn’t see me. At the airport and on the plane, I closed my eyes so no one would know and just kept wiping them away. By that point I was in a bit of pain from the procedure and wished I could take something that would knock me out completely to numb both pains.

If I’m honest, I felt it blindsided me. One minute I was getting a procedure done; the next I’m picking up my coat. I always knew it was going to happen that way, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. I just wish in the moment I had had more awareness and taken the opportunity when I had it. I had tried to do it in previous consults knowing full well I would be an absolute mess (even if it was just internally) on the day, but I’m still annoyed at myself. It’s like I was trying to pretend it wasn’t happening.

Flying to Dublin to following week felt more than a bit cruel. There was no possible way I could have known that the two visits would end up being just a week apart, and although it was for a weekend break, I almost regretted it. I was in a different part of Dublin, but that didn’t matter. It was impossible not to think of everything that had happened just one week before. My head was all over the place and still is. I wish I could I could turn my brain off. It’s been my life for 5 years so you would think I would be sick of it consuming me, but I think about it all the time and I can’t help it. Even more so the surgery. It’s all I thought about in the lead up, and now it’s all I think about in the denouement.

In my last physio consult, I spoke about dreading the end. I struggled to articulate the reasons why, but I eventually found the words to describe it. Loss. It feels like I’m heading for a loss and my last surgery consult only confirmed that. It felt exactly like a loss. I’ve mentioned before it’s like I’m grieving. I was grieving the postpartum body I never got to have; the postpartum life I never got to have. Now I’m grieving the loss of the consults and my team. You would think I’d be celebrating, but it just isn’t like that for me.

I have my final physio consult in a couple of weeks. To say I’m dreading it is an understatement. My physios responded in my last consult it hopefully won’t feel as bad as I’m anticipating. They don’t see it as ‘see you later, have a nice life.’ They plan to keep in contact. My last one is to be called ‘last’ loosely. Although, they feel it needs an official end to give me some sort of closure. I hate to break it to them, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to have closure. I think I tried to find that last year when I felt completely lost. Despite making the decision to stop counselling because I felt it had taken me as far as it was going to take me, I didn’t reach closure. I’m not at peace with everything. The ending feels like it’s just putting me back to where I landed last year after surgery - lost in a storm of memories, feelings and completely bereft of what happens next.

That’s partly the reason I got my tattoo. It wasn’t the first time I thought of it - anyone that knows me, knows that I put ALOT of thought into any major decision. But once that decision is made, there is no changing my mind. I wanted something other than my scar to remind me of everything I had been through. A physical change to my body that I got to choose - not something that was the only option, not something I had no control over, but something that was very much in my control. ‘Grit’ doesn’t have a great translation, but ‘fuerza’ is pretty apt no matter the translation - ‘force,’ ‘strength.’ I like to think I’ve represented both at points throughout my journey. Both physically and mentally.

5 years. 5 years since this all started. I dreaded the end early on because I knew what I stood to lose. I knew how important my team were becoming to me even back then. It’s maybe my own fault. There was no ‘arm’s length’. We have a lot in common. We’re like minded. All I wanted was to make them proud and do everything possible to not let them down (and me I guess). I was putting them before me just like I did in that sentence. But that’s just an indication of how much they meant and mean to me and I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without them. I would have been, and still would be, gutted to be held at arm’s length. Too much has happened and nothing has really been normal about this whole journey…I’m that weird patient after all 😅

So what happens next? I have absolutely no idea. It’s pretty frightening. There are no milestones left to work towards. There are no points in time I have to get to. The book is closing and I kind of want to go back a few chapters. Thankfully, I don’t want to re-write anything and I have no regrets overall, but it would be nice to go back and slow everything down until I’m ready. Although, I’m not convinced I ever will be…

Maybe my team will forget me over time as one of hundreds of patients for each of them, but I’m going to be an old lady telling my grandchildren about my very own superheroes I assembled that changed my life forever; how they put my broken pieces back together; and how lucky I was to have them, even for a short time❤️

[arrogantsonofabiscuit]

Akzklxkdxjja my heart- nawhhhhh stawp it'll explode >:(

I'm not that funny I sometimes in the depressed mood ajskdj lol

I swear I sometimes wanna thank @strawbearisamu sometimes don’t want to. But I am glad she introduced you to me hehe.

[bookdork1]

okay okay. i really enjoyed all the flashbacks in the finale. im a sucker for iconic scenes set to covers of the iconic s1 and s2 soundtrack and i usually cry any and every time i get a glimpse of derek shepherd. but ultimately it was kind of a let down on what they delivered for the 400th- literally the only people they brought back were japril which i absolutely love but its the 400th! shell out the dough and get on your knees and beg them in order to get sandra oh or sarah ramirez or jessica capshaw or ANY OF A NUMBER OF OTHER BELOVED ACTORS and do a landmark episode right. instead it saw us saying goodbye to schmidt, helm, all the other residents, teddy, hunt, bailey, webber, catherine and apparently nick??? presumably some of these people will be back but also its like, damn that wasn’t much of a celebration...idk this show has been driving me nuts since s11, i literally cant stop watching now i’ve devoted far too much time to watching 18 seasons, and many of seasons 1-11 more than once. i want it to end, i want to see how it ends and i want some decent writing there in the ending. 

[mermaidsirennikita]

What’s your take on people being up in arms about Bridgerton’s treatment of season 2 and by extension Simone Ashley. Do you think fans are on to something or are fans doing too much?

I think a bit of both; and I also think that the way we see promo roll out for season 3 will affect my perception of it. The reality is that s1 promo is difficult to compare to s2, because s1 was not a big returning hit. So s2 will be need to be compared to s3.

Do I think I would've liked to have seen more promo with Simone? Of course. Do I think that this is much, much more complicated than many people realize and that there are multiple entities at work with promo issues? Netflix (somewhat), production (less so), and Simone's team (quite a bit) included? Yes. Do I think people totally glossed over the solo shoots that Simone got because in reality they didn't want to see Simone, they wanted to see Simone AND JB? Yeah.

But I don't think there's some grand evil scheme at hand, I think that there is racism throughout the industry and while Bridgerton's production is no doubt affected by that, I don't know that it's... this elaborate scheme to prevent Simone from doing well or ensure that Kate doesn't ~steal focus~. Tbh, I think a lot of this comes down to the show being run by people who aren't all that talented, and are part of a machine that has always had some very weird relationships with gender, sexuality, race, and colorism. As much as people want to act like Shonda Rhimes being a highly successful Black woman means that her products are this post-racial utopia, that just isn't the case, and you can go back to... Grey's Anatomy, honestly. Shonda's works do often feature interracial couples (yay!) but they often feature interracial couples with at least one white person, often a white woman (see: Jackson and April, Addison and Sam, Addison and Jake, Callie and Arizona, Simon and Daphne). Often, when woman of color are given center stage in a Shondaland production, they are lightskinned--see Olivia Pope, Maggie Pierce, compared to how sidelined Stephanie Edwards on Grey's Anatomy was, to the point that she was publicly humiliated by her boyfriend leaving her for a white woman.... when that white woman was at the altar. Of course, there are exceptions, but this is something Shondaland has been critiqued on for quite a while.

At the same time, I think that a lot of Kathony fans want to pick a struggle and latch on to it hard and make their fandom identity being like... downtrodden. And lied to. Like, do I think that Kate's backstory and inner life should have been further developed? Yes. Do I think that Simone was deliberately lured into the role and bait and switched? Probably not. I wish they hadn't cut the scenes she apparently read from, for sure, but I also don't think it's unusual for scenes to be cut, especially when they're flashback scenes in general. I think other scenes could've been cut instead... But tbh, I don't think Kate flashback scenes would've been very good.

Which is something that I think people need to accept with this show. It's like. Not good. Nobody is making deliberate decisions to fuck shit up, they just kind of don't write well. I don't think the Polin season is suddenly going to uplift Penelope with Good Content. The fact that the summary mentions Colin coming back from his travels with "a new swagger", which is something they already tried to sell in s2 and nobody bought it--they're like. Not great.

And it's not the end of the world. Simone will quite possibly dip after season 4, should they be renewed beyond that. I don't think she's crying into her pillow about this. I'm hoping she's looking for other, eye-catching projects. The reality is that this was a good profile boost for her. I don't think the show had it out for her or JB by not campaigning for them with the Emmys, because there was frankly little to no chance of them being nominated either way.

The reality is that while I do think Simone has not been given the full shine she deserves, I also think that people are mostly just mad that the show didn't give them what they wanted and are railing against that, using Simone to give themselves a righteous cause. Some people genuinely care, of course, and make nuanced and rational arguments, but a lot of it is putting a noble label on fandom wank.

And at this point, I don't think it changes shit. The show is renewed through season 4. Neither of the next seasons will be giving those fans what they want. Simone is not going to have her profile raised in them. Her centerpiece season is done. So idk, if you're an actual fan of her I'd suggest watching her scenes by themselves and otherwise focusing on what comes next for her.

[oliviayamaoka]

The Distraction Continuation (Ghostface / Jed Olsen / Danny Johnson x Reader)

As requested, this is a continuation of the Distraction fic I made. Check out the first fic if you haven’t already. Enjoy! :)

You sighed deeply as you crossed your arms, shutting your eyes in slight annoyance at what was to come. Another trial. You hadn’t been in one for a while but your break was rather short-lived. There were three others that stood by your side. Ace Visconti, David King, and Yui Kimura. You respected them and actually enjoyed their company. Ace was funny, David taught you a couple of things, and Yui was always nice to you, encouraging you.

“Where do you think we’ll go this time?” Yui asked you, nudging your elbow with her own. You instantly lit up. Human interaction was comforting.

“Haven’t been to Hawkins or Glenvale in a bit.” Y/N replied with a slight shrug.

“My bet is the asylum.” Ace interrupted, pointing finger guns with that stupid smirk of his. Yui rolled her eyes, she didn’t seem to like Ace very much. Not since he flirted with her one time, even if it was jokingly.

“We might actually be there if Ace himself says so.” David said as the familiar gust of air surrounded the four of you.

You shut your eyes tightly, getting chills from the cold fog and air. The smell of fire and spring overcame you. Y/N opened their eyes, realizing that Ace’s bet was right. As always. A small laugh escaped your lips, a feeling of enjoyment before all hell could break loose again. 

Your gaze averted to the familiar structure of the Crotus Prenn Asylum. A sound played in your head, the screech of the Nurse. You were always curious about her but never got the chance to even talk to her unlike... no, it was one time. You weren’t gonna go around and try talk to killers like you did with him.

You put your palm to your forehead, cringing at the memory. Not in a bad way but maybe you could’ve done something differently. No, not really. Jed was a psychopath, a murderer. He was charming in a fucked up sort of way. You sighed as you walked towards a generator behind the grey brick walls.

There wasn’t any indication that it was the Pig or Freddy, thankfully. You began to work on the generator. Your thoughts turned to the fear of being hooked, stabbed, and hurt. You shuddered at the thought of it, the feeling of the hook would probably never leave you. Death was forever here, unfortunately. Elodie and Felix’s conversation had given you hope, maybe there was a way out of here.

“Shit.” You mumble as you shielded your eyes from the small explosion. 

Y/N huffed. You felt slightly disappointed in yourself and began again. Your head perked up as you heard stomping. It wasn’t loud enough to be the Oni or Trapper.

You kept a head on the generator as you noticed a dark figure stomping towards you. You needed a moment to process the situation. It was Ghostface? Oh shit, it was him, you thought. Flashbacks of your last encounter played in your head, he was definitely pissed off and you couldn’t blame it at this point.

“Don’t fucking try it.” He muttered in reference to you breaking into a sprint.

You felt panic wash over you as you quickly observed your surroundings. There weren’t any nearby pallets or vaults, it was a random open area near a hill with a chest and hook. Perfect, just perfect. Ghostface was quicker than usual, he grabbed you by the waist aggressively to tackle you down.

Ghostface held a knife to the back of your head once you hit the ground. You grunted as he put down all his weight onto you and assured that you wouldn’t be able to escape. The ground felt so uncomfortable, especially against your face. There was a few moments of you struggling beneath him to escape but it became no use. You stopped struggling after he pressed the blade against your skin.

“Didn’t bring a toolbox this time, Y/N?” He asked mockingly, pressing his gloved finger over the small slit. You winced at the stinging sensation but it was nothing you couldn’t handle.

“You know how to hold a grudge, Jed.” You replied. You were utterly terrified yet you always felt the need to reply to his stupid remarks.

“Indeed I do.” He replied, grabbing you and making you stand up. He held the knife to your back and pressed it slightly.

Ghostface was actually angry. He didn’t seem to mind actually hurting you or pressing the knife into your skin. You gasped at the painful sensation as he looked around, he saw the killer shack. He held a tight grip on your shoulder as he forced you to walk that way.

You instantly knew where he wanted to go. You just hoped the basement wasn’t there. Of course, you had known that this day would eventually come. But, why now? It was such awful timing, especially with the blue mood you had. Once the two of you reached the shack, he shoved you onto the ground aggressively.

“You’re pathetic... talking and talking last time we met. Now, you’re just a shitty excuse for a survivor.” He said to you. You scoffed.

“If it helps, Jed, I’m sorry.” Y/N replied. Your hand reached to the back of your neck where he had cut you. There wasn’t much blood but it still hurt. You stared at your bloodied fingertips as the man got more infuriated.

“You don’t get to call me that. And why the fuck are you apologizing?” He questioned you. His tone was venomous, this terrified you but him killing you was inevitable and well... you wanted to see him, anyways.

“If you didn’t care, you’d have hooked me now. I must’ve really hurt your feelings, huh?” You said, half-jokingly but you were also genuine.

“I don’t care.” He replied to you almost instantly. You knew that was a lie.

“Then why won’t you hook me? You could’ve slashed my back open but instead you pinned me to the ground... weirdo.” You mumbled.

He fell silent for a second. Ghostface was a bit baffled by you. Why weren’t you begging for your life? The version he remembered of you was different, or maybe he killed too many survivors that would beg. Not only that but he planned this out thoroughly. He was practically counting on you to scream and beg for your life. Ghostface had even made an offering for this realm because he researched it extensively, as he did with most of his previous murders.

Despite what he may have thought, Y/N was absolutely terrified. However, there was a strange feeling of attraction to him. Not necessarily a crush just yet but there was also a rivalry in which you felt comfortable talking to him. He felt like a real person. Well, of course he was a real person but you had no trouble making shitty remarks to him.

“I want this to last because you were being a little bitch last time. I’ve been dying to slice you open and make you regret that stupid little stunt you pulled.” He said to you.

You sat up, bringing one knee to your chest casually. There was a feeling of bravery that washed over you like last time. Y/N sighed deeply and looked around the shack. It was a basic shake. No totem, no gen.

“Yeah, sure... then do it.” You said to him.

“You’re not making this any easier.” He replied, more annoyed with you.

“Nothing you do is gonna make me regret what I did. Even if you do kill me and make me suffer, I’m still gonna come back alive. I’ve been puked on, trapped, and even had some weird ass trap put onto my head.” You said, standing up and pointing your finger to his chest.

“But you, Danny, only have a knife. I know the Legion or whatever their names are can use that better than you. You’re just a weirdo with a mask.” Y/N finished.

Ghostface seemed rather stunned, yet offended. Mainly because he couldn’t doubt anything you said. It became known that the Legion studied the human anatomy extensively, more than Danny ever cared to do. His area of expertise was stalking and memorizing a person’s schedule. But still. his ego was always bigger than any logic. The cloaked man grabbed your wrist. He oddly didn’t grab it too tight, he lifted your arm over your head.

“And what does that make you? I’m still better than you to some degree. You’re trapped here because the Entity thinks you deserve it and I get to kill anybody I desire.” He said, the tip of his blade poking your stomach.

“I guess we’re both shitty people.” You shrugged as his grip somewhat loosened. He sighed deeply before throwing you towards the generator.

“I had hoped killing you would be satisfying.” He muttered, bitter that your reaction wasn’t what he imagined. You fixed your shirt slightly and leaned against the generator. A part of slowly began to accept the growing crush you developed on the strange murderer, you didn’t care at this point since you were damned to an eternity of trials. 

“It probably would’ve been if you weren’t so easy to talk to.” You said to him as he snapped his head towards you, confused for a moment. Easy to talk to? He scoffed in response.

“Easy? You’re the fucking weirdo here.” He said, with a bit of a defeated tone.

“You’re no ladykiller, Danny, but... I’m charmed. I guess it’s something killers like you do though.” You said to him.

“I don’t charm or seduce people. I watch them.” He corrected you.

“Explains a lot.” You said, looking at your nails. Ghostface was quick to give into his ego and crossed his arms in a very stubborn manner.

“Actually, I did. As Jed Olsen, anyways. People were so trusting of him and neglected to suspect the new guy in town. It made it easy to watch people and I had a lot of excuses to spend hours doing so.” He said to you.

“Jed sounds nice.” Y/N shrugged.

“Well, Jed isn’t real, babe. He’s a shitty facade of what people like in a person. Made it so much easier for myself.” Ghostface said.

“Okay then,.. what did you do? As a career?” You asked him.

“I was a journalist and wrote for the Roseville Gazette. They made me cover my own killings and I did a good job doing so. Nobody could really understand my work though, no matter how much I tried to when I was Jed.” He said, a proud tone in his voice as he spoke. You were weirded out and cautious but you wanted to try and understand him.

“So, is that why you do it? For art?” You asked him as his head perked.

“That’s exactly why! There’s something very beautiful about the redness unique to somebody pouring out of them, even mixing with others. Not only that but just toying around and seeing how loud one can scream. Each scream is so unique and different. And just like art, you can fix your mistakes if it isn’t done right.” He explained, he seemed more relaxed. 

“Fix? But wouldn’t they be dead?” You asked him, genuinely confused. 

“You have to be an expert craftsman to fix it. A scream is a delicacy, something I choose not to indulge myself in often. Y’know, don’t want anybody hearing what goes on. When I do want to hear the screaming, it’s usually when my target has piqued my interest or mildly annoyed me. It feels rewarding after going through all the effort to memorize their lifestyle.” He said.

“A weird but cool way of looking at it, I suppose.” Y/N said. 

You didn’t really care about morality at this point. Such things as the Entity exist, anyways, You weren’t sure what you did to deserve being stranded here. Even if you did have a weird romantic interest in him, so what? Why would the Entity care? Why would any Gods care? And even then, you seemed to have an interest in his hobby. Blood and killing didn’t faze you anymore.

“You think so?” He asked you. 

“Depends on the person, I guess. I’d only do it to bad people.” You said.

“But, you’d do what I do?” He asked you.

“Yeah...?” You responded. Danny seemed a bit giddy.

“How would you do it?” Ghostface asked, he seemed way too excited to hear about your non-existent methods of killing.

“I don’t know...” Y/N replied, feeling somewhat flustered by how close he was to you. It was a different type of feeling when he wasn’t trying to stab you. 

“If you want, I could show you some pictures and give you tips.” He said.

“And kill who? We’re stuck in this hellhole.” You reminded him.

“What about the other survivors? They can’t all be innocent.” Ghostface said to you. He had some appreciation for you since you listened. It was crazy how much this strange man can switch up.

“No, never. I’m not that crazy.” You said as the loud horn of the exit gates blared. You looked around, really surprised. He seemed just as surprised.

“That long?” He questioned. 

“Guess I’m just that good of a distraction.” You said to him as he silently sighed in frustration but didn’t seem to care. A part of him enjoyed your talk.

“Guess you’re gonna be my one kill.” He said, shifting towards you and pushing you against the wall. You were taken aback by his swift movement.

You squirmed against his body, somewhat sliding downwards so kicking was pretty much useless unless you wanted to completely fall. The two of you grunted quietly as he turned you around, shoving your face against the hard wall. It was uncomfortable but he wasn’t being as rough as he usually was. At this point, you were scared of his knife so you tried pulling his hands away from you in the awkward position. Ghostface tightly pinned one of your arms on your back, you winced as he tugged on your hair.

He leaned inwards, poking his head towards your neck and hair. Ghostface took a moment to memorize your scent and what your hair texture might have felt like. For some strange reason, he seemed to want to learn everything about you. It might have been a bad idea for you to have opened him up about his art.

“Get off of me.” You demanded in a stern voice.

“You’re scaring me, Y/N.” He replied sarcastically. 

You froze up when he slid his hand under your shirt, his fingertips trailing on your back. It wasn’t the motion itself but rather the feeling of his ungloved hand. You felt yourself go into a rather catatonic state, not in fear but you were quick to wonder why he would take his glove off. A thousand thoughts and scenarios played in your mind. His touch was soft but still managed to leave you with chills. 

Ghostface, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying himself. He made notes of how soft your skin felt, his hand curiously wandered upwards. It wasn’t long before his hand wandered to your more sensitive areas. A gasp escaped your mouth as kept you pinned with his knees, his hands groping you a bit more roughly. Your face heated up when he squeezed you, you didn’t seem to struggle either. 

“Fuck...” You whispered.

“If only we had the time.” He mumbled, sticking three of his gloved fingers into your mouth. Your eyes rested as you stared upwards, allowing him to continue touching you. 

“I bet you’re getting all excited over this... if only I could capture the look on your face right now. How does it feel? Having somebody like me have their way?” He asked you. You felt aroused yet ashamed to oblige him.

“It feels good...” You managed to say, his fingers still in your mouth.

You felt the bulge in his crotch grow hard but this wasn’t the time or place. As much as he wanted to fuck you then and there, he needed to have some control over himself. He pulled his hands away and slid his glove back on. You let out a sigh of relief but also a whine. You knew just as much as he did that it just wasn’t the right time. You wiped the saliva from your lips and slowly stood up.

He pulled you backwards by your waist. You felt him rub his knife near your crotch, gliding it teasingly. His other hand wrapped around your neck. You heard him chuckle rather darkly. At this point, you seemed more hot and bothered than he was. Ghostface squeezed your neck a little harder, wanting to get one last sound of of you before he let you go. He didn’t care whether or not the Entity would be displeased or not.

“Guess you’ll have to be a whore some other time.” He said, cutting you on the arm slightly. You pulled your arm away quickly.

“Whatever.” You replied, flustered by his comment. Did that just happen?

“Better go before the Entity kills you itself.” He said to you.

“Right, right... see you around, Danny.” You said before quickly walking away and then running towards the exit gates. 

His head tilted curiously. Ghostface wasn’t sure if he had feelings or not. He admired you for listening to him and asking some questions though. But, now that he knew you’d do things with him willingly, he had some ideas. A wide smile grew behind his mask as he began to fantasize about the photos he would eventually take. 

You would probably come to regret your actions, seeing as his obsession with you would grow. Danny needed to know everything about you and even felt a bit possessive now. It didn’t matter, there was many possibilities within the Fog. Pray that you’ll be ready for your next meeting.

NOTE: Currently writing a full fledged Danny fic with a different plot but have the sequel to the Distraction. Ty for reading!

[rorykillmore]

i have to say the like... conflict and baggage between meredith and her mom is always so well-written and weighted that i find it, like, perfectly believable that mer is still not over it and may never be over it 11 seasons in

[supergirlfansworld]

Supergirl star Chyler Leigh steps behind the camera to direct Tuesday's episode of The CW superhero drama -- and it's not your typical hour of high-flying action. The conclusion of a two-part flashback arc set in 2009 Midvale, which turns back the dial to further explore the dynamics between Kara Danvers (Izabela Vidovic) and her sister, Alex (Olivia Nikkanen), in their younger years, picks up right where things left off. As young Kara experiences kryptonite for the first time, a young Cat Grant or "CJ" here (guest star Eliza Helm), may be the reason Supergirl never gets out of the Phantom Zone.

Directing a different kind of episode for Supergirl in its final season wasn't something Leigh had planned necessarily. "It didn't really strike me until I got on Supergirl that I didn't think that I would ever not do something else in the industry," the 39-year-old actress tells ET. "But watching the whole process and being part of it from the start of the show, just picking up on things and story, having a love for storytelling in general, I feel like I was already always directing."

Ahead of the latest episode, Leigh discusses making her directorial debut, the final season of Supergirl and why it was "special" to finally get closure on Grey's Anatomy in her surprise return.

ET: This week's Supergirl marks your directorial debut. Had you been working up to this moment in your career?

Chyler Leigh: It didn't really strike me until I got on Supergirl that I didn't think that I would ever not do something else in the industry. But watching the whole process and being part of it from the start of the show, just picking up on things and story, having a love for storytelling in general, I feel like I was already always directing. You just learn so much, I think, from really being able to take ownership of the character, but really having to step into a realm that I never imagined I would ever be a part of something like superheroes. I had been talking to the producers, to Greg [Berlanti] and Sarah Schechter, and then Robert [Rovner] and Jessica Queller for a few seasons now, where I was saying, "Hey, this is a great opportunity. I would really love to take a stab at it if I can." And they were like, "Oh my god, absolutely." When they told me that I was going to be able to direct this season, and then Robert and Jessica told me that it was going to be a Midvale episode two-parter, I was just like, "OK, this is awesome."

Are you content with where Alex's story ends?

It's bittersweet. There's obvious reasons for the show to be the final season. But at the same time, I still feel like Alex has so many more stories to tell, but I think that by the end of it, it'll be a pretty good wrap-up without that sense of, "Now this is their life." It's going to be a "to be continued" kind of thing. It's understanding that, OK, they've reached a certain point in their life where it's almost like the audience can hopefully give them permission to imagine them having some time to be happy and it not be dire straits all the time. There's always going to be bad guys. But my hope is to be able to see more of those moments, where they can find a bit of joy amidst the chaos, which they do. But obviously, it would be cool to have more of that. And we have so many of our actors, so many of us, that are finally now really in all these scenes together, which has been so much fun. It's just been great to mix things up here and there, and [explore] different dynamics between everybody. So I feel like it's rounding out really well. The story that we're telling is that you don't have to be a superhero to be super powerful. It's basically giving the people in National City or the people in the world encouragement that they can also be their own heroes. They can also tell their own stories and trying to empower people. That's the goal. And I think we're doing a pretty damn good job of that.

(xx)

[leandra-winchester]

So the ratings have gone down again, and last night I had a few thoughts about that.

OVERALL this season just feels... off. Usually, we get dramatic arcs, but we get quirky and fun stories in between. We got episodes that had a multitude of calls and stories that intertwined. Lately, we always had ONE big story and hardly anything around it. And that can seem a bit boring sometimes. It's just a different setup and tone than the show usually has, and that may be putting some viewers off. 

I hope they can fix this. I would really hate for the show to be tanked due to a few not so ideal creative decisions.

Last ep, for example, would have worked much better for me if we got the whole prologue and then flashback, as they do, but instead of focusing JUST on Michael, the proposal and then heading straight back to the hospital drama, they could have added some stuff going on in the fire station, a smaller call, maybe something that is connected to another patient in the hospital, before they throw us into the main plot. The hospital fire felt way too long and drawn-out to me. David was operating way too long. The whole prayer circle thing was a tad cringe and over-dramatic, more grey's anatomy than 911, vibe-wise. They could have cut a lot of that in favour of some lightness. (This wouldn’t have been much of an issue if it had been one ep like that, but we got too many of those lately)

Also, they seem to focus a lot on the patients/victims lately. And while it's a good thing to give a bit of backstory so we can feel for those cases, they used to excel at that without taking a whole lot of time on those stories. 

People watch because they want to see Bobby, Hen, Buck, Eddie, Athena (and Chimney and Maddie). They welcome one or two additional characters that get some focus, but they want to see their main cast as the main characters. And lately, we never got as much of them as we used to. Or it feels like it, at least.

I’m in no way saying I’m not enjoying the show any more; I do. And I also get and approve of deliberately showing how off things are between the main characters and around them due to Chimney’s absence and the whole unresolved trauma between Eddie and Buck. I just think that, overall, the show changed a bit too drastically, and the much lower ratings reflect that. 

[betterreads99]

Colleen Hoover fans will not be happy with me after this post...

Approximately 99% of BookTok users claim that this is their favourite book ever, and while it is definitely an important one, I still have my qualms about it. 

As always with Colleen’s books, be sure to check trigger warnings if you’re considering reading It Ends with Us. This books revolves heavily around domestic abuse and related themes. 

Spoiler Alert ‼️ Do not keep reading if you have not yet read It Ends with Us.

First of all, I would like to acknowledge how important this book is and how hard it must have been for Colleen Hoover to write it. As we find out from her note at the end of the novel, she based this story and the characters on her own experience growing up with an abusive father. Her mother courageously ended up leaving him to raise her two daughters on her own – something we must commend her on and agree that that is not easy to do. 

As such, I recognize Colleen’s necessity to have Lily leave Ryle in the wake of his physical abuse towards her. Throughout the book, I fell in love with Atlas and was really happy that Lily ended up with him; their story was really sweet and emulated the “you’re the only one for me” trope to a tee. There truly was no one else for the other, especially in Atlas’ case. 

Despite the happy ending, there was another love story unfolding in tandem to the flashbacks that provided us with the insight into Lily and Atlas’ longtime meaningful relationship. We couldn’t help but fall in love with Ryle; he was the perfect book boyfriend, was he not? He was a successful neurosurgeon who changed his whole lifestyle and perspective for Lily, simply because he knew he needed her in his life, and not because she demanded this of him. But then the impossible happens and she finds herself in an abusive relationship, reminded of her past growing up a witness to her father’s abuse of her mother. From this description, it is pretty obvious that she should leave Ryle and never look back... right?

I would never in any circumstance condone any kind of abuse but I think that giving Ryle’s situation a once-over before labelling him an abuser is worthwhile. He is never aware of what happens in the moment and would never hurt Lily on purpose. And this can definitely not be compared to committing the same type of abuse under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Ryle did not ask to kill his brother in a devastating accident, nor did he ask to be traumatized by it for the rest of his life. My issue with how Ryle was painted in It Ends with Us is that we are led to believe that he is a coldhearted abuser who inflicts pain on his loved ones similarly to a drunk would due to contact intoxication. I would argue that Christian Grey is more of an abuser than Ryle is. From the standpoint of condemning any kind of domestic abuse, I completely agree that Lily did the right thing and got her and her daughter out of that situation. But from the standpoint of advocating for mental health, I think Ryle should have received a bit more consideration. He obviously suffers from longstanding mental health issues stemming from childhood trauma – does this make him unworthy of love or a meaningful relationship?

After reading this book, I kept make the comparison to the episode of Grey’s Anatomy where Owen chokes Christina, his girlfriend and eventual wife, during an episode brought upon by his PTSD. No one blinked an eye when she decided to stay with him and encourage him to seek help. 

Once again, I completely agree that Lily needed to get out of that situation for the sake of escaping an abusive relationship which mimicked too closely her own sources of trauma. But I’m pretty sure that if the book were written from Ryle’s POV, we all would have a different opinion. What I’m saying is I guess I wish that Colleen made me hate Ryle more; I’m still not entirely convinced that he deserved to be thrown to the side, denied a more genuine relationship with his wife and child and left to think that he is unworthy of someone’s love because of what he’s been through. I know this is controversial – it’s much harder to leave someone who seems perfect as compared to a belligerent drunk – but I do think it’s worth some thought. 

Either way, we can’t deny Colleen her talent for storytelling and character development. I especially commend her for telling this story, I can only imagine how difficult it was. I hope that women in similar situations can draw strength from this story and feel like they’re capable of doing what’s best for them and their family. 

Rating for It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover: ⭐️ 4/5 ⭐️