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fangirleaconmigo · 1 year

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Is it too Late (Can we Start Again) Geraskier. 3600 words. Mature. Hurt/Comfort. Geralt taking care of Jaskier and his burns. Gift fic for @masterlokisev159 for the @witcherficwriters Winter Gift Exchange.

Also on ao3

Jaskier had never been a martyr.

After the unpleasant business with Rience, he had planned to take a break from being the Sandpiper until his hands healed. After Yen had left and he’d gotten out of jail, he had gone home.

A young elf had tracked him down at home when he hadn’t shown up to the tavern the first night. Jaskier looked into her eyes and gave his apologies. He showed her his angry, blistered hands.

“I’m so sorry, dear, but I can’t play the lute with burned hands, and I can’t sing a capella for these philistines. The proprietor won’t allow it.”

Surely, someone else could do it for a couple of weeks. That was all it would take to heal up enough to play. He was only human after all, and he wasn’t the only one helping smuggle the elves out. Someone else could play and then sneak them onto the ferry.

But that same night, they closed the ferry to tourists and visitors. Jaskier didn’t know it.

With the ferry closed to visitors, the performer the elves had gotten to take his place was not allowed onto the boat. Jaskier was home for a night of rest when the stranded elves decided to try to swim.

The next morning, Jaskier was walking along the water, headed to his favorite bakery, when he came upon the scene of an elf’s body being fished out of the river.

He ran to the tavern and found a survivor. After listening to the whole story, Jaskier understood his predicament. Under the new rules, he would be the only performer qualified for admittance onto the boat. He was the only one here who could help.

Before things had gotten too bad, he'd bought a place across the water, so he was considered a resident. He was a resident with a gig that warranted his travel back and forth nightly. There was also the matter of his fame, which afforded him a certain amount of protection.

It could only be him.

Jaskier marched directly to a healer and coated his hands in an adhesive that felt like the flames of hell. That had worked his first night back, but the second night, it started peeling.

So, the healer devised a special pair of thin gloves that were thicker than adhesives, but more supple than cloth. It helped for a night, but then his burns began to weep.

But he kept playing. What else could he do?

His friend, Sam, noticed. “Why don’t you take a break?” he asked.

Jaskier laughed a little too loudly, just before downing his tenth shot of whiskey of the night. “I’m a whore for attention, my sweet friend, I’d waste away without a night of the stuff.” He threw his arms wide and stumbled towards the stage. “I just can’t live without the applause, dear Sam.”

If Jaskier had known more about infection, he would have known to be worried when the fever hit.

--------

Geralt of Rivia threw open the door of the tavern. The first sensations to hit him were those of the crowd. Ale. Sweat. Lust.

The second sensation to hit him was his body’s reaction to hearing that voice again. It was sweet and sour. It made him feel joy, followed quickly by shame and guilt. He closed the door quickly and slunk against the wall, looking for a place to watch.

At least he’d made it in time. Jaskier was still upright. Still singing.

He knew his friend must hate him. If Geralt had spoken to him right away after he’d lost his temper, if he had set things right, it wouldn’t be like this. But Geralt had left without a word. It was what he did.

He shouldn’t be there now, he knew that too. But he had to be. Jaskier needed him. He might not want him. But he needed him.

He examined his friend from the cover of a shadowy corner. Jaskier wasn’t prowling the tavern like he normally did. He was perched on a stool. His voice was breathier. His hair was longer. He wore a long leather coat now, and a hat.

The most important bits were the same, though. Those were his eyes. That was his voice. This was the man who Geralt now understood that he loved, though it was far too late to do anything about that. But he could still make himself useful. He could still help.

As Jaskier sang, the crowd hung on every note. Being a witcher, with all the sensory inputs that entailed, was an overwhelming thing when sitting in Jaskier’s audience.

Jaskier always broke open deep wells of longing in his audience. But whether people were feeling those things for memories long past, or for the man in front of them, Geralt never knew. He could never separate it out.

Despite himself, Geralt felt something like territorial anger. He let it subside.

There was no time for his childishness, because the third sensation that swept over him was panic.

Underneath the mass of things to see, smell, taste, and hear in a crowded tavern, lurked an evil, wicked scent too faint for anyone else to detect. It was like vinegar and something rotten.

It was an infection that had spread and turned into something else.

Unlike the audience, Geralt could see the truth of the matter. Jaskier’s eyes weren’t sparkling. They were glassy. His skin wasn’t glowing. That was sweat. The heat radiating from his skin wasn’t the heat of excitement. It was the clamminess of illness. Jaskier held a long note, and finally, looked straight at Geralt.

The bard’s eyes widened in shock. A string twanged and broke. Silence fell. There was an awkward, pregnant pause. Then, Jaskier’s eyes rolled slowly back in his head, and he pitched forward.

His body fell hard from the stool, like an unbalanced sack of bricks. His head would have hit the corner of the table as he fell, but by the time he reached it, he was already in Geralt’s arms.

-------

The first time Jaskier awoke, it was like a nightmare. The world was hazy. His tongue felt fat in his mouth. He could not hold onto reality. It slipped out of focus. It faded from his grasp.

Was he dead? Dying?

As a poet, Jaskier thought often about life and death. The moment of death, he supposed, cut through a lot of shit. The thought that occupied your mind the moment you believed it was all over was the thing you should have lived for. The people who were there by your bed were the ones who lived for you.

And there, in his moment of death, or near death, what he saw surprised him, though it shouldn’t have.

Lurking in the tiny dark room was a gleam of white hair. A glint of feline eyes. He did not know if Geralt was really there or if he only imagined him. But he thought of Geralt, only of Geralt, and he whimpered.

Darkness came for him again, but the inky black could not take everything from him. There was another presence in the pitch black. It was his Witcher sitting by his side. It was the man he thought did not care for him. But he was there, so maybe he did.

Then, there was the cold.

Jaskier was being poked and prodded. Voices floated above his body, arguing with one another.

One voice was low and rumbly and, yes, it was Geralt. His Geralt.

Jaskier’s consciousness slowly flickered to life. He was naked and cold. So cold. It was the kind of deep cold that ached in your bones. It was the kind of stabbing cold that made you want to sell your own grandmother for a shred of warmth. He felt several blankets atop him, but they didn’t seem to help.

“We need a fire.” Geralt sounded angry, but he was hiding it well.

The other man in the room demurred. “They’re rationing our wood and tinder now. We’re all freezing.”

“But he’s sick!” Geralt roared, all of his restraint gone. “He’s in shock!”

The man squeaked in fear and scampered away, slamming the door behind him.

Geralt cursed as many curses as he could summon, calling upon all the languages of the elder races and humanoids put together. He strung them together like a symphony. Jaskier didn’t even know that Geralt knew so many dwarven curses. Then, Geralt plopped down at Jaskier’s side and buried his face in his hands.

His hands. Jaskier’s eyes fluttered open for heartbeat, catching a glimpse of them.

They were just as thick as before. Just as gnarled. His hair hung over them in a curtain. His broad shoulders hunched, pinched in grief.

And then he whispered.

“I frightened the man away. I’m sorry, Jaskier. I keep fucking it all up. But I’m here. I don’t know what I’m good for. But I’m here.”

Jaskier shivered. His teeth made a clattering noise. Geralt’s face whipped up and his hand darted to Jaskier’s neck, groping for his pulse.

“Are you awake? Jaskier? Are you there?”

“Cold.” Jaskier croaked. “Cold.”

Geralt disappeared for a second. It was only an instant, but Jaskier felt like the whole sun had been plucked from the sky.

Then there was a cup being tipped to his lips.

“Just sip. Slowly.”

He obeyed. He took a few sips.

“Cold,” he insisted.

Jaskier wrenched his eyelids open again. Geralt’s face was etched deeply with worry. The last time Jaskier had seen him, he’d been angry. Shouting. But now he looked old and tired.

Jaskier had thought that the next time he saw Geralt, he would shout at him.

In his fantasies he would be dressed to the hilt. Sometimes he pictured himself in black, with kohl around his eyes, and hair sweeping his forehead. Sometimes he pictured himself in maroon. It set off his eyes. But no matter what he wore, it would be tailored. It would show off his newly honed athleticism. He would be performing, or at least he would have fans nearby, one of whom would interrupt their conversation asking for a kiss.

Jaskier would grant it of course.

Then he would continue his righteous, angry rant.

He hadn’t planned on being too angry, of course. He couldn’t seem pathetic or out of control. He had settled on expressing a cool, casual anger. He would express himself in verse, and be clever. Geralt, in this fantasy, would say that he had been right. In fact, Jaskier would be so eloquent that Geralt would have no other choice.

You are right Jaskier, I should have never abandoned you.

You are right Jaskier, you do not make my life worse, you make it better.

I love you Jaskier, and I’m no longer afraid to say it.

He would kneel, and Jaskier would decide whether he forgave him or not.

In all of his fantasies, Jaskier forgave Geralt, of course. He pictured walking away from Geralt once, denying him, and he’d almost thrown up.

But now there Geralt was, worry and kindness written on his face. Love bathing in his eyes. It was not the kind of face you shouted at, not if you had a heart beating in your chest. And further, there Jaskier was. No finery. No admirers. Sick. Stinking. Weak. And as for his eloquence, all he could say was...

“Cold.”

Geralt cleared his throat and his eyes darted around the room. He spoke haltingly, unable to finish a single sentence. “I could warm you. But… the best way to do that is… It’s indecent.”

Jaskier allowed his head to roll over, until his eyes locked with Geralt. “Do it,” he croaked.

Jaskier’s eyelids dragged closed again, but he managed to hang onto his consciousness by a sliver. Geralt undressed in the dark, fabric sliding over skin, falling to the ground. He removed each of his rings. They clattered on the nightstand. Then he removed the ties in his hair, and lastly, his medallion.

“Are you alright?” Geralt asked.

Jaskier’s heart was pounding.

“Maybe this was a bad idea. We have to keep your heart rate steady.”

“Do it,” hissed Jaskier, a tear sliding from one of his eyes.

Geralt’s hands were on him again. Geralt’s lips were pressed to the corner of his eye, blotting out the tear. Then, Geralt climbed into bed with him.

Geralt was a mountain of a man. The bed creaked under him. But he was so gentle. He arranged himself around Jaskier, draping his limbs over him tenderly. Geralt touched him like he was the most precious thing in the world, and would tear if handled carelessly. Geralt pulled the blanket over the two of them, and a refuge of heat formed around them.

Jaskier was in Geralt’s arms, just as he had always dreamed.

“Am I dead?” he croaked.

Geralt kissed his temple. “I thought you were for a minute. You scared the shit out of me. I thought I’d really lost you.”

It was the first time Jaskier had ever heard real fear in Geralt’s voice.

“This is real? This is actually real?”

Jaskier had been experiencing odd visions just before he’d collapsed. What if this was one of them?

“It’s real, Jaskier.”

“Oh, fuck yes.” Jaskier burrowed into his arms, luxuriating in every press of skin. That was Geralt’s chest. His arms. His hips. His scent. His breath. His heartbeat. He rubbed against him like a contented house cat.

Geralt huffed in flattered amusement at Jaskier’s joyous reaction.

When Jaskier had fantasized about being in Geralt’s arms, and he had fantasized about it many times, he figured he would be wildly aroused. But now, he was very ill and all he felt was comfort and love.

Darkness took him again.

He awoke later to the sound of Geralt whispering. “I am sorry, Jaskier. It’s easier to say it when you’re out. I’m a coward, I know. But I’m sorry.”

“Ha, ha,” Jaskier huffed. “‘M ‘wake. Heard you. You’re sorry.”

Geralt smiled softly, obviously relieved to see him awake again.

Jaskier was pressed to Geralt’s chest now, and a pool of drool was formed around his chin.

“‘M sorry too.”

“What are you sorry about?”

“‘been singing that butcher song about you for months like a rotten cunt. And after everything I’ve done to erase the butcher thing, I just...I wasn’t thinking, you know. I was only feeling. And...well...I regret it, my friend. The moment I saw you, it hit me like a stone what I was doing. You aren’t a butcher. You don’t deserve that. I’m sorry.” His voice failed from exhaustion and grief.

They sat for a heavy moment in the silence of their regrets. When Geralt answered, his voice was light but careful. “It’s alright.”

“But it’s not alright.”

“It is.”

“It isn’t. You’ll forgive me, but I will not forgive myself. I could have called you anything.”

It was quiet again. Geralt was the first to speak again. “Your friend Sam--”

“You know Sam?”

“He’s the one who came to find me. Told me you were ill. Said you wouldn’t listen to him.”

“Oh, darling Sam. I owe him one. What did he say?”

“He told me how you got your injuries. Jaskier,” Geralt’s voice choked and he was forced to pause and breathe. “Jaskier,” he continued, “I am going to find Rience and I am going to kill him.”

Geralt said it like it was a simple fact, and Jaskier believed him. But the simple mention of Rience’s name caused him to flinch.

“I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Alright.” Geralt kissed his shoulder.

It was odd how natural it felt. How Geralt had just started kissing him and they were both treating it like it was a normal thing for him to do. They were silent again for several long moments.

“Thank you for coming, Geralt. I didn’t think--”

“I know, Jaskier. I know what you thought, because I know what I said. And I regret that. None of it was true. I wish I could take it back. I do care. And I am here.”

Jaskier lifted his head with difficulty and looked into Geralt’s eyes. “I thought this would be more difficult.”

“What?”

Jaskier smiled, lopsided and wry. “Getting you to apologize. I had it all planned out.”He tried to gesture in his normal manner, but only managed a sad little pirouette of one finger. “If I had only known. All I had to do was get disgustingly ill, look and smell deeply revolting, and you would come running to my aid. You saved my life Geralt. You are my hero yet again.”

Geralt blushed. He never took compliments well. Next, Jaskier knew, Geralt would change the subject. And he did.

“You had it planned out?”

“Obviously. First, I was going to accidentally run into you on a night in which I looked elegant and sophisticated, entirely by accident. I was going to speak my mind eloquently and compel you to see things my way.”

“You don’t have to convince me I was an ass. I know I was.” Geralt smirked and softly dragged his thumb across Jaskier’s forehead, pushing back the hair that had fallen into his eyes. “And I don’t want elegance and sophistication. I want you.”

“Hey. Rude. I’m plenty elegant,” said Jaskier, wiping the crust of drool from his chin with the back of his hand. His hands were still bandaged but felt remarkably improved. Geralt must have employed a magical healer. Jaskier didn’t want to know how much that had set him back.

Geralt chuckled to himself for a moment, but then he cradled Jaskier’s hand and grew serious. “What you’re doing here, Jaskier, for the elves. Helping.”

It was silent again, as Geralt wrestled with his words. Jaskier managed to stay silent.

“That’s what I—” He inhaled and exhaled. He examined Jaskier’s bandages with too much intensity. Then with much effort, he finished his sentence. “That is what I love most about you.”

“Are you saying that Geralt of Rivia is more impressed by kindness than by fashion? I should have known you’d be so boring.”

Geralt hummed in the affirmative. He pulled Jaskier in tighter. He squeezed him until it became laborious to breathe, but Jaskier would sooner faint than tell him to loosen his grip. The Witcher pressed his lips to Jaskier’s ear and began to whisper. Jaskier knew it was easier for him like that, when he could not look into his eyes.

“Can we start again?” Geralt’s voice sounded thick and shaky. “Is it too late?”

Is it too late?

The words echoed like a warning. Like an ill omen. Like a horror story.

Jaskier swallowed hard, pushing away all realities where that was true.

“Oh, Geralt,” he said with an air of superiority, pushing his hair from his face. “Too late is for people who are sensible enough to know when to quit.”

Jaskier pulled away, just enough to see Geralt’s face. He propped himself up on an elbow, his face so close to Geralt that he could see every tiny movement of his expressions. The corners of Geralt’s mouth twitched hopefully.

“Too late, my dear witcher,” Jaskier continued, tracing a bandaged finger along Geralt’s jaw and looking fondly into his eyes, “is for people who have no love left to fight for. It is for people who are cold and dead and in the ground.”

He kissed Geralt’s nose, and watched his Witcher’s face relax. A real smile spread on it, pushing away years and chasing away exhaustion.

“We, my dear man,” Jaskier continued, his chest warmed and his tongue loosened by the sight of hope on his beloved’s face, “are alive and foolish. And as it happens, I love you too.”

“You do?”

“I do. And love is the molten life blood of second chances. So yes, darling Witcher. Yes, my love. Let us start again.”

Geralt laughed and very nearly sobbed. “Fucking poet.”

“Your poet.”

Jaskier cradled Geralt’s face and leaned in. Geralt surged to meet his dry cracked lips, pressing into them, kissing them as though they were the most succulent delicacies in all of creation.

That was what they did that first night.

They touched one another. They showed one another love in ways that did not require words. They kissed and grasped and moaned in the dark.

Jaskier was still weak, so Geralt handled him like bone china, trailing petal soft kisses along his ribs and his neck and his thighs. He looked at him with wonder and only consented to make love to him when Jaskier begged for it, assuring him that he would not break.

Geralt even managed to do that gently, slipping in and out of him with quiet moans, ensuring that he did not put any stress on Jaskier’s hands. It verged upon teasing and Jaskier begged and pleaded and shoved his body back onto Geralt until they both released, giddy and trembling.

That was the shape of the new beginning that dawned in the lives of two old friends that night. Their courage was born in the shadow of terror but it ended in tender caresses traced along new and old scars alike. Their courage reveled in a familiar embrace. It found new ways of touching. It lost count of kisses. It gave a witcher and a bard their second chance in a small back room of an old tavern. And in the midst of war and loss, it brought them hope, and that was the thing that they needed most of all.

#the witcher #geraskier #geralt of rivia #jaskier #descarada writes #descarada writes geraskier #my fic on ao3

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drysdaleknieslee · 3 months

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Strawberry Scone - Part 1

Here is the official part one of our Will x Isabella series. Sorry it took so long but Spring Break is giving me free time to catch up on things. I hope you find this cute and anyone in the Filipino community, if I misspelled anything or didn't accurately depict something from your culture, PLEASE let me know!

WARNINGS: mention death of a parent, funerals, hospital and cursing (one time), and bad ex-boyfriends

Wills POV

It has been two weeks since I last saw Isabella. I was thinking about her a completely normal amount. Not like I went by the café she worked at after practice to see if she was there and memorize her schedule…

I sound like a creep. Gabe confirmed it when I spilled my guts to him in the library.

“Why don’t you just, I don’t know, talk to her like a normal human being and stop making me a two-way communicator?”

He was right but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Every time I thought about her, I got hot. She wasn’t even near me, and I got nervous just from the thought of her. And I thought of those scones she brought the last time…

We have a game tomorrow so she might be there, and I think I vaguely remember Gabe saying she worked on Wednesdays…

“I’ll see her tomorrow.” I didn’t sound convincing in the slightest and Gabe knew this as he let out a chuckle.

“Sure, you will…I’ll come with you to see your head pop off.” I throw my pencil at him which he dodges easily. “What do you plan to say to her exactly?”

Saying it in my head wouldn’t sound good out loud and Gabe knew it. Realistically I wanted to get closer to her in a non “I think your hot and you make me anxious which has never happened” way. “I want to get closer to her. Be friends first at least and hopefully…ask her on a date.”

“Not bad, but sadly you’re not her type.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I didn’t mean to sound as defensive as I did but I didn’t exactly care. Especially since Gabe has been friends with her since they were kids so either he’s joking or being completely serious. Gabe is protective of Isabella, and we’ve been friends since juniors. I’d like to think he’d trust my feelings for Isabella so if he’s serious I’d be worried.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, my guy. You’re my best bud. I honestly have no problem with you dating her. Go for it,” he says scribbling on his notebook absentmindedly, “she’s been through a bad relationship in the past with a few guys who took her niceness for granted.”

I softened a bit at what Gabe had said. Gabe really did care for Isabella and that’s one of the things I admire about Gabe. He cares about the people close to him. And hearing those guys took advantage of Isabella for her being too nice or naïve made my blood boil.

“Don’t ever tell her I told you this.” He looks around the library to make sure no one overhears. Thankfully it was mostly empty, and everyone was too wrapped up in their own work. The librarian was even nose deep in her own book to care.

“Her dad got sick after they moved here. She missed a bit of school because she and her family were trying to acquire citizenship and her mom began working doubles at the local nursing home.” He paused to make sure I was still listening, and I motioned him to continue. I didn’t want to miss a thing.

“Well, the sickness got worse. She would make desserts with her grandma and take them to him in the hospital to make him feel better. Well, one day, she went with her mom and grandma not knowing…” He didn’t need to say anything.

“We were about eight at that time. I remember the funeral. Since then, she still bakes as a way of coping. She developed and actual love for it overtime but it took a long time before she was ok again. It’s also become her love language.”

I can’t even imagine going through that at a young age. Two years after moving to a new country and losing a parent is something no one ever thinks to experience. Especially a child. And learning that cooking is her love language…

“What’s her favorite dessert?”

He looks at me confused and ponders for a second. “Mamon or Puto. Why, you can’t cook.”

“I can try!” I said a little too loudly earning a few glances from nearby students and a scowl from the librarian before delivering a forceful, ‘SHHHH!’

“Why ask all of a sudden?” he says in a whisper.

“You said food was her love language, right? Sounds like he gives a lot to people but doesn’t receive anything back. I want to change that.”

A rise of shock came on Gabe’s face, like he’d never heard someone suggest that for Isabella before outside of family members. Maybe not even himself. He puts a smirk on his face before nodding slightly. “In my opinion Mamon is gonna be the easiest for you as you can’t cook,” I kick him under the table and he winces, “but even if it’s bad it’ll be the thought that counts for her.”

After the leaving the library me and Gabe headed back to the dorm, and I managed to find the easiest recipe I could for Mamon. Of course, we didn’t have half the ingredients, so Gabe door dashed them, and he called reinforcements. Isabella’s mom. That would be less obvious.

“Hi Ms. Flores…. I’m doing fine…. yes, I’m eating a lot, Bella makes sure of that…. I need help making Mamon…...just because…. yes, yours will always be better…”

Gabe’s relationship with Isabella’s family was truly something. Judging from the audio she talks to him how my mom talks to me. A very nurturing tone. Gabe was Isabella’s only friend when she came to the U.S., so her family basically adopted him as their unofficial son.

Gabe recited the tips from Ms. Flores as I try not to make the batter overly dry or wet. We didn’t have a mixer, so I had to stir it by hand. Gabe of course was reciting everything to me and “couldn’t multitask.” I lowkey hope these turn out dense enough I can throw it at the side of his head.

By now most of the progress is done and the Mamon’s are in the oven and the urge to not stare at them makes me anxious.

“Do you think she’ll like them? How much sugar did her mom say use? What if I mismeasured? She said teaspoon or table-?”

“Will. Please, shut the fuck up. It’s the thought that counts with Bella. They could be the most disgusting things on the planet and she’ll still appreciate you doing this. Especially since it’s a Filipino food.”

Silence falls over the kitchen but my mind is still racing with questions. But I only ask one.

“What’s her family like?”

Gabe lets out a light chuckle as he stares at the oven. “The nicest people on the face of this planet.”

The Day After at the Café

My hands are shaking as I hold this try of Mamon’s as I try not to drop all of them and I’m a nervous wreck. I don’t even get this nervous before games. Gabe said she was opening the shop today so I wanted to get there early enough before we headed to our game today. As I walk towards the café, I see it’s lights on and a floppy high ponytail in the back in the kitchen preparing for the morning rush.

I take in one last breath of cold air before walking in and hearing the jingle of the bell above my head.

“Welcome in! Just a sec-“Her eyes locked on mine and I muster a small smile which she returns. “Good morning.” Is all I’m able to get out as I prepare the rest of my words in my head.

“Good morning.” She giggled. I love that sound. “Don’t you and Gabe have a game today?” She eyes the tray in my hand and tilts her head slightly and furrows her brows.

“Oh, yeah, we do. I just wanted to…drop these off for you…” The back of my neck is burning.

I place the tray down on the counter and uncover some…questionably shaped Mamon’s. They looked like half decent biscuits. Nowhere near the picture I got on the website and probably don’t taste as good. She picked up the best looking one out of the batch and bit into it hesitantly. Then her face lit up along with a bit of rosiness on the edge of her nose.

“These are Mamon’s…” she whispered mainly to herself. I let out a breath I’d been holding sense this morning.

“How did you learn how to make these? I’m assuming Gabe told you this is one of my favorite desserts.”

“He did. He helped me make them. Along with some help from your mom…”

“You called my mom?” she said alarmed now.

“No! Gabe did, she gave him the instructions and tips and he said them back to me.” I rub the back of my neck in embarrassment. Please don’t think I’m creepy…

“Gabe said making others food was your love language and I figured I could…reciprocate it I guess.”

For a second, he face went from confusion to surprise and finally what looked like…oh no she was crying.

“I didn’t mean to make you cry!” I say looking for tissues.

“It’s ok! Don’t apologize. I love these thank you. Although some may be…misshapen, no one’s done this for me before so…really, thank you.”

She gave me that soft smile that would make the saddest of souls rethink life. My phone buzzing distracted me for a second but not before I asked her one last thing before I left…

“Well? How did we do?”

I turned to Gabe as we sat on the bus with a grin. “I got her number. And a strawberry scone.”

#will x isabella #will smith hockey #will smith x reader #boston college

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five-rivers · 2 years

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Ancestral 9

“So. Aconite?” asked Danny during a lull in the stream of treatments and tests. “Isn’t that wolfsbane?”

"Yes," said the doctor, looking rather nervously at Matthew.

At least, Danny thought she was looking at Matthew. His vision was still kind of blurry, a reasonable side-effect of having poison splashed into them. She could have been looking at the family in general, all of whom were squeezed into the room. Apparently, as long as they stayed out of the way of the doctors, it was best for security purposes to have them all together.

“Both the tests on what was recovered from you and what was recovered from the cup indicate that the wine was dosed with massive amounts of aconite, and your symptoms match. It’s a very, hm, traditional poison, so treatment is well known. We’re monitoring both your blood pressure and your heart rate, and you’ve been given an activated charcoal treatment and atropine.” She paused. “You seem to be recovering, although your heart rate is still much lower than we’d like. I’m actually surprised you’re still conscious…”

“That’s normal for Danny, now,” said Jack. “Well, maybe not this low, but his heartbeat is pretty slow all the time, now.”

“It isn’t in his medical records,” said the doctor.

“Had him checked back in the US. I guess it never made it here.”

“We had other concerns at the time, Jack,” said Maddie from where she was sitting in a chair next to Danny’s bed.

Oh, yeah, Danny had the impression he was missing a metric ton of significant looks.

“Well,” said Danny, “I feel… not great, but okay? Like, my skin is still pretty numb, kind of like when you get an anesthetic from the dentist.”

There were, however, significant looks that Danny wasn’t missing. Apparently, he wasn’t seeing the ghosts with his physical eyes, but with something else, because they stood out sharply from their blurry surroundings. Right now, they were looking at him like Jazz did, when he said he wasn’t hurt after a fight.

Really, he was fine. Spooked, but fine.

(In some ways, it was sort of a relief to know that he was human enough to be affected by poison. Being half dead had a tendency to make you hyper aware of your own mortality and dubious of it at the same time.)

“But, back to it being wolfsbane. Why wolfsbane? You’d have found that if that was why everyone else… I mean, they don’t think you’re a werewolf or something, do they? Is that a thing?”

Matthew sighed. “No, I’m not a werewolf.” Another sigh. “Unfortunately. I’d love to only have to worry about wolfsbane and silver”

“No, that’s not what’s going on,” said Maddie.

“So what is going on? I think I deserve to know, having been almost killed and all. Are you going to try again with the coronation? And- And has anyone found Vivian yet?” He tried to send an apologetic expression Vivian’s way, for using her as a conversation pivot.

“Doctor Hys,” said Matthew. “This discussion is about to touch on both family matters and those of state, so if you can continue your monitoring else where…?”

“Of course, your highness. May God and the ancestors bless you.” Danny saw the door, briefly, as a rectangle of slightly dimmer light, and then the doctor closed it behind herself, and the family was alone.

“The Assembly is discussing regency,” said Joanna.

“Which they really should have since the beginning,” added Eugene.

Danny wasn’t so sure of that. He wasn’t clear on all the details, but regents had fewer powers than a sitting monarch. They couldn’t change throne policies - like the one about approval of foreign businesses, Danny realized - or appoint new Secretaries - which would leave the Speaker hearing spy reports. Great-Grandma Rose had been Alfred’s King’s Secretary.

Other countries would probably have a conniption about the conflict of interest.

“It makes more sense than declaring one of us king or queen without the trials,” agreed Joanna. “They were set on it, but now they think the poisoning is a… bad omen.” There was a guilty sort of satisfaction in her tone.

Maddie scoffed. “Can you not?” she asked. “Here, with my son seriously injured, can we discuss this like rational human beings who live in this century?”

“If we were dealing with rational human beings,” said Irene, “we would. But a person willing to commit so many murders isn’t rational. Nor are… humans in general.”

“Mom,” said George.

“I want to know about Vivian as well,” said Jazz. “There has to be something about where she went.”

“The investigation there is ongoing,” said Matthew. “For the rest of Danny’s questions… To start at the beginning, you wouldn’t know this, but in the very distant past, there was a legend that members of the royal family with the favor of the spirits and the ancestors were immune to wolfsbane poisoning. So, of course, any member of the royal family who was successfully poisoned didn’t have their favor.” His blurry form made a shrugging motion. “It’s been discredited nearly that long - there were herbalists back then who were occasionally able to use belladona to counter some of the effects of aconite poisoning - but that particular method of assassination has become traditional for signaling certain grievances.”

“Did Lord Kyppe have those grievances?” asked Iris, darkly.

“He’s maintaining that he had no idea. Which, considering his position, is very nearly as bad,” said Matthew. “Even if he turns out to be innocent, the traditionalist faction will be out for his blood.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Jack. “Forget them! Maddie and I are out for his blood!”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” said Matthew, dryly. “And, then… You are right that we’d be able to tell if- if everyone else died of aconite poisoning. It decays quickly, but not that quickly.” He shook his head. “We–”

He was interrupted by a phone ringtone, a high-pitched electronic version of the Avlynyse national anthem.

“Hello?” answered Sophia tremulously. There was some shifting as she moved through the room. “Alright,” she said, voice already cracked and tearful. “I’m sitting down.” There was a beat, and then Sophia made a high, keening sound.

“Mom? What- What’s wrong?”

Another phone started to ring (still with the national anthem, but a slightly more traditional version), and Matthew swore. “What?” he snapped. “Oh, God. Are you sure it’s her? Yes. Yes. We’ll make the announcement… shortly.” Matthew took a deep breath and closed his phone with a snap. “They found Vivian’s body.”

There was quiet. Danny was sure everyone had already at least suspected that Vivian was dead. Having it confirmed was something different.

“Oh,” said Leo, weakly. “Oh. Do they… do they know how…?”

“You don’t want to–” started Matthew.

“She’s my sister.”

Matthew exhaled slowly. “She was beaten to death. They stole her Key and the Lesser Seal.” He inhaled again, loud enough to be heard. “We’re going to need to make a public statement. And–” His phone tweedled. “And the Assembly wants to have a special session to hash out a regency decision, and–” another tweedle, “and, ancestors.” More tweedles. “It’s going to be never ending. My family is dying, and–” He fell silent.

“Matthew?” asked Irene from the same general area Sophia was in. Were they hugging? Maybe? “What’s wrong?”

“Investigation just found that someone replaced the contents of Grandma’s capsule pills with nitroglycerin,” said Matthew, tersely. “Matches with her symptoms… heart stopped, but not the other signs of anaphylaxis, darn it.”

“That’s… three different causes of death, isn’t it?” asked Jazz, thinly. “Four different methods, if you count the wolfsbane. That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” said Matthew. “It could be six, for all I– Nevermind that. We need to get back to Kyr Argyn, for the special session, and ‘figure out what the future will look like.’”

“We who?” asked George.

“Adults,” said Matthew. “Anyone eligible for regency.”

“Not me, then,” said Eugene.

“You, too,” said Matthew. “Just because some idiots in the newspapers called you a bastard a few times doesn’t mean you aren’t perfectly legitimate, legally speaking.”

“Wait, what do you mean I’m legitimate? I thought–”

“You can’t expect me to leave Danny,” interrupted Maddie. “He was just poisoned.”

“Legally, everyone currently in the country–”

“I can stay, Mads,” said Jack. “Me’n Jazz’ll hold down the fort with Danny here.”

“We really do need you to come,” said Matthew.

“Fine,” said Maddie. “Danny, I–”

“It’s okay, Mom. I’ll be fine. I am fine.”

Maddie patted his hand. “We’ll have to disagree on that. Jazz, if you notice anything unusual, let your father and the doctors know right away. And– Who from security will be staying with them?”

Matthew rattled off a list of names that Danny instantly forgot.

“Right,” said Maddie. “Let them know, too. Danny, just… try to be safe.”

Well. Ouch. Danny would have everyone know that he always tried to be safe. And careful. And a lot of other things.

It took a few most of a half an hour for everyone to move out. Apparently they had to coordinate with the security team, get everything lined up beforehand, etcetera.

“I think,” said Danny, “that I’m in shock. Emotionally speaking.”

“That makes all of us,” said Jazz.

Jazz couldn't give him the kit until they were alone and Jack had dozed off.

"Security took me back to the house to get some of your clothes and things. You're going to have to help me, though. I don't know what's best for poisoning."

Neither did Danny, really. Surprisingly, poison, contact or otherwise, wasn't something he had to deal with all that often. Except for blood blossoms… and whatever was in Vlad’s stupid knockout gas, and those spiders that one time… did Spectra’s weird ghost mosquitoes count as poison?

Next chance they got, Team Phantom would have to look into poison remedies.

“Energy tablet for now,” said Danny. “Then, um. The little jar of eyewash.” The eyewash was a dilute solution of ectoplasm and salt, usually used for eye injuries, or the irritation that he sometimes got from his eyes deciding to be flashlights, but it could help. It’d be nice to be able to focus his eyes again.

Jazz passed over the tablets almost immediately. The eyewash, however…

Danny sniffed at the jar. “This isn’t the eyewash.” It was, in fact, the blood blossom cream. After a few additional natural portal related journeys, Danny had found that while just being near blood blossoms in ghost form was agony, touching them in human form gave him a nasty, itching rash. And hives. And… And there was a thought there, but it wouldn’t come loose.

“It’s the only jar you have,” said Jazz.

Danny frowned. “Oh,” he said. “I might have… Not brought the eyewash, I guess.”

“Why?”

“It’s liquid. You’re not supposed to bring liquids on planes.”

“We had a private charter flight.”

“I didn’t know that when I packed.” He handed the cream back to her and chewed on the energy tablet. Ecto-dejecto and weird dehydrated orange juice powder. Yum.

Not.

“I brought something else as well,” said Jazz, pulling something small and square from her purse and unfolding it.

Danny squinted. “Jazz,” he said, his whisper dripping with as much disappointment as he could squeeze in, “is that a ouija board?”

“I thought it could help with, you know.” She leaned in, and if the only witness wasn’t dead asleep, she would have definitely given them away. “With communicating with your invisible friends.”

“Can we not say things that make me sound crazy?” asked Danny. “And I know you can’t be serious. Ouija boards are trademarked by Hasbro. Nothing trademarked by Hasbro can possibly be spiritual.”

“I don’t mean like that,” said Jazz. “I mean, regardless of what it’s supposed to be used for, it’s still got the alphabet on it. If the ghosts here can’t write anything out, they can at least point and you can read what they’re saying.”

Good idea, except… “I can barely see, Jazz. Everything is little blobs of color.”

“Okay,” said Jazz, “but you can still see well enough to point where they’re pointing, right?”

“Well… yeah. I can see them pretty well, actually.”

“Great,” said Jazz. “Then, I’ll read off what you’re pointing at, okay?”

Danny looked up at Gwensyvyr, who shrugged, then nodded. “Okay, yeah.”

“Then let’s start with Vivian–”

“She’s not here.”

“What?”

“She went with Aunt Sophia and Lewis and Leo.”

“Oh. Well. That makes sense. Who’s here, then?”

“Uh,” said Danny. “A whole bunch of people. And Gwensyvyr.”

Silence.

“As in, the founder–” started Jazz.

“Of Avlynys Gwensyvyr?” they finished together.

“Yeah, that Gwensyvyr,” said Danny.

“Okay. Um. Nice to meet you…?” Jazz paused for a long moment. “This is really weird. Did you see who tried to poison Matthew?”

Danny followed Gwensyvyr’s finger.

“Hm,” said Jazz. “That’s a yes. Do you know their name?”

Gwensyvyr shifted.

“No. So. That’s too bad. Anyone else here know their name?”.

Matthew’s would-be poisoner, as it turned out, was a young, red-headed man with a press badge that said his name was Wallace Hadryn. Right before the ceremony, he’d had a quick interview with the Cupbearer, and dropped two pills into the cup while distracting the Cupbearer ‘masterfully’ in the words of one of the ghosts.

The pills had been red. All but invisible against the dark wine. They’d dissolved slowly, and the Cupbearer’s high-tech tests and traditional sip hadn’t affected him.

“At least,” said Jazz, “not at the time. I wonder if he might start feeling some symptoms anyway.”

Before that, none of the ghosts had been particularly paying attention to the young man, so they didn’t know who he’d talked to before, if anyone.

As for who had killed the others… The ghosts had no real idea. They’d been repelled from the area, and had only seen ‘suspicious figures’ at a distance. If that.

That was bad. It was very bad that whoever did this knew the ghosts were there and could get rid of them. Or that whoever had killed them had coincidentally stumbled on something that could banish ghosts. Even if they were weak ghosts.

Gwensyvyr had suspicions, though.

There have always been those who seek to tear power from this land and all kinds of people leave ghosts, Gwensyvyr had picked out, letter by letter. I fear this is a plan long brewed. We have been growing weaker for some time, even before your grandfather’s death. Cut off from allies. Many of my kin have only woken for this latest tragedy, and will sleep again, perhaps forever, and some sleep still. No hope for the future.

At least, that's what Danny and Jazz had eventually puzzled out. Wonderful their ancestor might be, it was clear she'd never practiced the art of spelling. In any language.

“You think the ones doing this are ghosts?” asked Danny.

Perhaps. Or they are guided by ghosts. Look to the death of your grandfather, of your grandmother. Look at those who preach progress and stability, but only think of paper gold. She bared her teeth. Look at their corporations and businesses. These worms in the Assembly. I call especially for you to look on Julius Skippa. His father brought in that vile construction business.

“But why would they do it?” asked Jazz. “Apart from the usual mundane reasons, I mean. It seems like all they’d have to do is wait.”

There are sacred things our family has long been charged with, older than this kingdom. Things that have been desecrated and not restored. Things that I may not speak of. Your grandfather was the last to attempt the trials. Vyvyan was preparing for them.

“They would have noticed something,” said Danny. “Or the trials would have fixed some of it.”

Gwensyvyr nodded and pointed at yes. I think, too, that the monsters wish to return. To take more than what they have taken already. Thus the seal. Thus the key. Would that I were stronger! I would tear them to shreds if they tried.

“But Matthew wasn’t going to do the trials,” said Jazz. “Not right away, at least, and with everything else, it would have been easy to distract him from ever taking them.”

But Mathyw denied them. On the phone, and later, in the halls of Kyr Argyn. And I am not certain sure that we face only one enemy.

A ghost phased through the wall and made gestures at Gwensyvyr, who nodded.

Keep safe, little syvyrys. The title - applied to both him and Jazz - made Danny blink, then flush. His numbness must be getting better, for him to feel that. With you here, there is hope for the future after all. Then Gwensyvyr took a step back from the board and made a closing motion with her hand.

Jazz hastily closed and put away the ouija board. Just in time. Matthew had returned.

“Jazz, Danny, how are you?”

“Fine,” said Danny.

“As well as can be expected,” said Jazz.

Matthew smiled tightly. “Jack,” he said. “Maddie wants to talk to you. Jack!” He nudged Jack’s shoulder.

“Whazzat?”

“Maddie wants to talk to you.”

“Alright, then,” said Jack. “Will you–”

“I’ll watch the kids, yes.”

“Okay! Stay safe, kids!”

“That was fast,” commented Jazz.

“It didn’t seem that way,” said Matthew. “You two didn’t realize there were monitored security cameras in here, did you?”

Danny’s heart leapt into his throat. From the way Jazz froze, he suspected hers had done the same.

It made sense that there would be, of course. In retrospect, security wouldn’t have left them alone like this otherwise, but that meant…

“How long,” asked Matthew, voice trembling with some emotion Danny couldn’t place, “have you been a syvyr?”

#danny phantom #ectoberhaunt22 #ectoberhaunt 2022 day 24: past and future #ancestral fic #ectoberhaunt 2022 #day 24

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rogueshadeaux · 7 months

Text

Chapter Twenty-Five — Fallout

It took me way too long to find my voice — I felt more disconnected from my body now than when I was freezing over. “When does it get easier?” I asked, voice croaky and barely there. “When do you stop feeling guilty over it?”

5,555 words [teehee] | 20 min read time | TRIGGER WARNINGS: violence, described spiraling, death, racism, illness

Brent pulled the sleeve of his sweater over the wrapping on his elbow as the phlebotomist, I’d discovered they’re called, filed away his blood samples in this tube holder, each one marked.

“Stress to them that I need the results as soon as they can get them,” Dr. Sims was talking off to the side with some technician. “The full report, in email.”

The tech muttered some agreement, clearly awestruck at who he was talking to, and was gone with the vials the moment they were handed off.

“So what’s a…microray?” Brent asked.

“Microarray,” Dr. Sims corrected. He was dressed differently today; business casual, collar of his dress shirt caught on the neckline of the wool sweater. “It’ll break down the sequencing of each individual chromosome and tell us if there’s any genetic malformations in your DNA,”

“And why would we need to know that?” Brent glanced over at Dad, who was sitting in the now-baren windowsill seats and looking out the window. Everything Dad and Brent had in this room was packed up, ready to go as soon as I got medicine from the in-hospital pharmacy.

Dad sighed hard, staring at the sky like it had all the answers for a moment longer before turning in place to face us. “There’s something I need to explain to you both,”

And then he began to tell us more about how Mom got sick.

She didn’t heal immediately after having us, but the doctors brushed it off; a Conduit has to be in decent shape to heal and she simply wasn’t. She lost a lot of blood in the abruption, and the blood transfusion had to be from someone without the Conduit gene as the enzymes are dangerous to normal people, so she may have been beyond drained out. That’s what they thought, at least. “They told us to give it a week,” Dad said, “That we’d probably see progress by then.”

They didn’t. Instead, Mom was discharged, and then back in the hospital nearly two days later for MRSA.

The Doctors contributed the infection to her weakened system, and brushed it off then as well. “When someone’s pregnant, their immune system is ass,” Dad tried to joke, with no real humor in his voice. “So they reset the healing clock on us. Told us to wait two weeks. Raising two newborns on my own when she was hospitalized was horrible, by the way,”

Two weeks came and went and her scar wasn’t gone. Her and Dad brought it up to her obstetrician, and they simply said to wait till her six week check-up. The amount of time it takes for someone normal to heal. “They did that again and again, a lot. Just told us to be patient and do it the human way,” Dad shook his head.

She began to bruise. She started getting bloody noses again. She had accidentally sliced a knuckle to the bone in a dishwashing accident and had to get stitches, which stuck around instead of dissolving almost immediately. “Healing was the first thing to disappear, and then her powers got weaker.”

Brent looked at me, fear in his eyes. “So does…does that mean Jean’s…”

“We aren’t sure yet.” Dr. Sims said. “That’s what the microarray is for. I was still in school when Fetch died — what was happening to her was what made me go in the first place. But that means we never found out what made her sick, and we’ve gotta rule out that it isn’t something genetic.”

“But didn’t you guys say it might be Augustine’s tar?” Brent asked.

“It might be,” Dad responded. “Which is where the second part of this conversation comes in.”

What the hell did that mean?

Dad took his jacket from his lap and chucked it on to the little backpack he had, hands going to his knees in its place. “Remember that holiday vacation I promised?”

What the hell did that mean? “Yeah?” I asked, glancing over at Brent with a cocked eyebrow. Was this like how people take out their dogs for the day before putting them down? Was I getting a ‘Best Day Ever’ before kicking the bucket? At least Brent seemed to be feeling the canine excitement; he was suddenly sitting perched at the end of my bed like he was waiting for Dad to ask him if he wanted to go for a walk.

Dad smiled slightly — though it looked more like a grimace. “Have either of you ever wanted to visit New Marais?”

Brent immediately cringed, and I couldn’t blame him. New Marais was…bad. Bad enough that Theresa’s mom basically fled from there after her dad was killed. I’m pretty sure it was the world capital for place most likely to get stabbed at. There were literal robbers poised at bridges, shooting the tires of cars on the highway to make them crash so they could pilfer everything from the vehicle. The only people that’d thrive in New Marais were criminals, extortionists, and other sorts of bloodsuckers. It wasn’t a pretty place, hadn’t been in literal decades; after the flood and the fascists, it had no allure. Unless you liked French colonial structures and being assaulted.

Even the architecture couldn’t convince Brent; he looked at me, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. “Why, uh…” I drew off. “Why New Marais?”

Dad wasn’t surprised at our apprehension — in fact, he seemed to agree with it. “There’s someone there that can help us out. Knows a bit about tar powers — but we have to be there to get answers. He’s outside of the city center, from what I understand, but it’s…”

“New Marais,” Brent said distastefully.

Dad nodded. “New Marais.”

“That’s still Louisiana,” I said, “That’s gotta be a couple hour flight, right?”

Dad grimaced. “Actually, it’ll be a…three day drive…”

“I’m not allowed to fly.” Dr. Sims said from his place, yet again, by the sink. “Not in planes, at least. I don’t plan on flying that far with my powers, either.”

“You’re coming with us?” Brent asked, an undertone of astonishment in his voice.

Dr. Sims nodded. “What’s happening to your sister is something I plan to see through. I didn’t get to…to help Fetch in time. I’m going to do it this time. It’s what she’d want.”

The way he talked, you’d think he and Mom were age-old friends. How well did they know each other?

The doctor came up with prescriptions, pain medicine and antibiotics and something else I couldn’t pronounce, giving directions I knew I’d forget the moment I left this room. Dad knew this too, saying, “I’ll put alarms on my phone — oh,” he reached down to the backpack, fiddling with the thing and pulling something out. “Put them on yours too.”

He tossed my phone towards my broken arm, forgetting I couldn’t exactly reach out and catch it with it held against my chest in the sling.

Dr. Sims slipped out at some point on promises that he’d be right back — and he was. Almost within three minutes. He was a bit winded, looking past Brent and I as he helped me figure out how to put on my jacket to look straight at Dad, saying, “We’ve got an issue,”

Dad’s face immediately got steely hard, and he stood, shoulders squared. “What’s up?”

“Not that kind of—” Dr. Sims cut off, “Well, it could be. Protest.”

Dad growled. “How the hell do they know we’re here?”

“Someone probably slipped something to the media,” Dr. Sims crossed the room in a second and was at the window, looking down at the parking lot a few floors below. “Might have seen you. Looks like they’re congesting the main entrance though, so we can probably slip out back. Problem is, none of us can get to the parking garage without them seeing,”

“It’s just a few protestors,” Brent shrugged. “We can get past them.”

“It’s…” Dr. Sims trailed off. “It’s more than a few.”

“One of us could go move the truck—” Dad started.

“They’ll just chase us down.”

“Is there a roof entrance?” Brent asked. “Maybe we can leave a different way, come back for the truck?”

Dad looked at him like he was an idiot. “I’m not letting your sister climb a hundred feet in the air when she can’t make the landing.”

I managed to balance the jacket on my shoulders, saying, “We should just go. Brent’s right, we’ve walked past them dozens of times before. There’s probably cops monitoring, we should be fine.”

Dad looked like he wanted to do anything, literally anything, except that. “If they get violent, Jean…” he warned.

Oh, God. Don’t tell me he’s turning into this sort of parent. “I can still defend myself, Dad.” I insisted. He wasn’t going to start keeping me in bubble wrap, right?

Dr. Sims actually came to my rescue. “We’ll all be there, she should be fine.”

“We can even escort her,” Brent added, amused. “Like some c-list celebrity.”

Dad bit at his cheek, unsure — but also entirely out of options. “Fine, okay,” He said. “We’ll move quick. Eugene, think you can guard Jean while she gets in the truck? I’ll cover Brent.”

Well, at least I wasn’t the only one he was being overprotective of. “Sure,” Dr. Sims said.

They found a formation when we stood in the elevators, just in case some people made it into the lobby of the hospital; Brent and Dr. Sims stood in front of me, flanking each side for space while Dad stayed behind me. A full cover of large, powerful bodyguards to make up for the fact that I was now weak. It felt so demeaning. I was some weak spot in the family now, a risk that they’d have to mind at all times.

As the elevator doors opened up into a hallway, I could hear them, a dozen voices, maybe even bordering on a hundred, all chanting angrily — although I couldn’t make out what. Brent cast an unsure look over his shoulder, asking, “Maybe we should stay a while?”

Dad’s face was steeled. “There’s no point.” he said plainly, a sudden shift from his hesitancy before. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

Still, as we passed an electronic map in the hall, Dad’s hand came out and drained it of all imagery, matching Dr. Sims in power.

The lobby was huge and fancy and white, with some big fountain fixture in the middle, its white noise barely doing anything to silence the voices. The windows, though, were big enough to show how many people there were. There were at least a hundred, all being forced to the sides by police so that the actual entrance to the hospital would be clear for patients and visitors, with three separate news vans recording the tension. “Fucking hell,” Dad muttered behind me.

“At least there’s cops?” I offered, not entirely sure that was a good thing. Rarely was.

“Stay looking forward, stay walking, don’t engage,” Dad listed off behind me. “You hear me, Brent? Don’t engage—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” Brent muttered, going a bit red.

The foyer of the hospital had a line of police whose eyes I avoided; just gotta stay in step and keep moving forward. Easy enough.

All of that assurance disappeared when we stepped outside to what was moments away from becoming an angry mob. But what I wasn’t prepared for was to be confronted with images of me; a grainy picture of me trying to get the huge concrete rock to not hit the helicopter, my Linus Pauling yearbook picture. The signs were all littered with words, accusations: Shot out of the sky on the ones with the footage, a sign with just the number 137 on it, the 7 written on a sticky note. An update on the death count.

Me. They were protesting me.

And as we stepped further into the light, the protestors zeroed in on me, and the general yelling became targeted insults that somehow melted into white noise and also stood out to me all at once. “Dirty Bio-terrorist!” one person yelled.

“There’s over fifteen thousand unemployed, I hope you’re happy!”

“You killed my brother!”

“We’re homeless now!”

“Someone oughta hold your head underwater!”

I didn’t realize I was frozen in place until Dad’s arm wrapped around me, and he began to roughly steer me through the slight divot in the crowd Dr. Sims and Brent’s bodies had made. “C’mon, Jean,” he muttered, voice as stiff as could be.

There was no getting through the crowd here; the flow of the protestors followed us like what I imagine wolves hunting elk did. But was it fair to paint them as the predators when they were the real victims here? If the Big Bad Wolf was on trial for the murder of those pigs, could you blame other swine for wanting to swallow him whole?

And that wasn’t an exaggeration; the crowd seemed to push closer in until they were claustrophobically close, until the heat of their insults warmed my skin. There was a shout, louder than the rest, and suddenly Brent was slamming himself into my side, arm steeled and shield up and I stumbled and yelled in pain. Something crashed against it with a musical ping, and a rather large decorative rock from the piles in the medians fell between his feet.

“The fuck, dude?” Brent shouted, swiping the rock up from his feet. He looked about ready to chuck it back, trying to get a good eye on whoever threw it.

“Things are getting out of hand,” Dr. Sims warned.

Dad tucked me closer into his side and walked faster, repeating under his breath again and again, “Stay looking forward, keep walking,” as if he was moments away from also going after people.

Brent stayed posted on my other side with his shield up all the way until we got to the entrance of the parking garage, people filtering around the entrance that was currently occupied by a few cars trying to either find parking or pay for it. Only protestors, though — all of those cops that had congregated the entrance? They were nowhere to be seen. The one running interference now was Dr. Sims, who stepped to the side, pushed us all into the stairwell, and then lifted his hands, blue light beginning to swirl around them.

“Eugene, what the hell are you doing?” Dad asked, pushing me up a step.

“Buying us some time. Go!” He demanded. “I’ll catch up.”

He waved those arms, and the air in front of him began to turn blue and solidify. Parts of it went silver like Brent, other parts stayed blue, and it began to take on a humanoid form when Dad pushed me again, forcing me up the stairwell.

Brent was in the lead, taking two at a time and looking back to watch me struggle to climb. God, the cut in my side was throbbing with each rough breath. Dad stayed behind me chanting encouraging reassurances, like “You’ve got this, Jeanie,” and “Last flight of stairs, c’mon.”

Thank god — I didn’t think I could go much farther.

Dad rushed us to his truck, opening the back door on the drivers’ side and forcing us both in there. “Brent, cover your sister for me. I’ll get us out of here,”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Dr. Sims?” Brent asked, crawling in awkwardly after me.

“He’ll catch up,” he reassured us.

Wasn’t sure how someone was supposed to catch up to a moving vehicle, but okay.

Brent’s shield was gone, but both arms were steeled now, covering my head and neck as he practically forced me to duck into his lap. I couldn’t see anything that was going on besides the shifts in light, but God, I could hear those protestors, louder than before and seemingly arguing with something. Did Dr. Sims…start a fight?

I peeked up from Brent’s lap just as the light shifted to see the protestors trying to fight their way into the parking garage against…eight tall, armored, blushed-blue winged angels.

“What the fuck?” I whispered, watching these angels levitate a mere ten inches off of the ground, refusing to part for the protestors — and cars — trying to come in.

“Get ready,” Dad warned us. Brent forced my head back down.

Dad honked the horn twice and there was a sudden collection of shouts from the protestors before Dad revved the engine and peeled out of there, throwing the truck so roughly right that I left Brent’s lap and nearly flew into the floorboard. There were more shouts, insults and curse words thrown our way that were drowned out by the truck’s roar and distance as Dad sped out of the area.

I stayed down for three minutes before Dad sighed hard and called back, “You’re good now, Jeanie.”

I could barely move. Those people, nearly a hundred people, came to the hospital to protest because I was there. Because of what I did.

“You okay?” Brent asked me.

I just stayed staring at the rock on the floorboard, the one aimed for me. How could I be okay?

We were well on the highway and nearly to the connection bridge that crossed to the other side of the Sound when the truck suddenly lurched as something slammed into the truck bed. Dad cursed as we both yelped, swerving in his lane so hard that the people beside us honked furiously as Brent and I spun around to see what happened.

Dr. Sims was in the bed face down, the groan audible from where we were despite the ambiance of rolling down the highway at 65 miles an hour.

“What the fuck was that?” Dad demanded, head whipping back to look at us and looking straight just as quickly as he moved to the right lane, slowing down.

“It’s uh,” Brent cocked his head. “It’s Dr. Sims? But he isn’t looking too good…”

He wasn’t looking anything. He hadn’t moved, face plastered in the lateral grooving of the truck bed.

Dad moved over until he was on the shoulder of the highway, putting the car in park and hopping out to check on Dr. Sims. “You good, Eugene?” he asked.

“Had to…couldn’t find you. Made an angel…fly me around. Out,” I could hear him groan through the window. “You’d think…I’d know how to land by now,”

“Well if your powers gave out, you couldn’t exactly stop it.” Dad shook his head. “C’mon, get in the truck,”

This was met by a loud groan that lasted for at least thirty seconds before Dr. Sims even tried to move a muscle.

Dr. Sims was now comfortably in the passenger's side seat of Dad’s truck, thanking him like a man parched when Dad sacrificed his phone for draining. “Does that not break it?” Brent asked.

Dad shook his head, glancing at us in the rearview mirror as Dr. Sims recovered. “Nah. Kinda just makes it short circuit for a while, but it’ll work again soon.”

Dr. Sims leaned his head back on the headrest, gasping out at the relief of the drain. “Thanks Del,”

“Sure. At least you have good aim,”

We were returning to Salmon Bay, but only for a moment; we were going to pack, maybe eat, and then start the thirty-nine hour drive to Louisiana. A multi-state trip that Dr. Sims and Dad began trying to plan as soon as Dad’s phone turned back on. “So it’s only a ten mile difference if we go right at Salt Lake City and take the highway to Denver,” Dr. Sims hummed. “Cuts through Wyoming,”

“We could make it a road trip?” Brent offered. “Yellowstone – could go to a Broncos game—”

“We’re…crunched for time, bud,” Dad said, casting a quick glance at me in his rearview mirror.

Right — I was the ticking time bomb now, the arsenal no one wanted around ‘cause it’d ruin days and maybe lives. I was holding the cool rock in my hand now that was aimed for my head, if what Brent chattered off at some point was true. I couldn’t even blame whoever threw it, not if they were impacted by what I did.

I was the cause of their discontent. They weren’t there to picket Dad or Dr. Sims, or Conduits in general with its two biggest leaders in the same place — but me. Not only for the deaths — people were screaming about losing their homes, their jobs. I may have killed one hundred and thirty-four — no, one hundred and thirty-seven, now — but I ruined the lives of so many more.

How many people were homeless now? How many people would have to scramble to live, to make money?

Salmon Bay wasn’t hurt, at least. That’s really all I could cling on to, was that they seemed relatively untouched. The Longhouse was roped off, and there were spots in the concrete that had been ripped up, but the wood chips and body were all wiped away.

Betty’s baby blue Beetle was in the house’s driveway, and it seemed the moment we turned down the street she was already racing out of the house, at Dad’s driver’s side in an instant and nearly yanking me out of the truck. “Oh, Regina!” She cooed, missing how I winced in pain as she gripped me tight around the abdomen. “You’re alright!”

Dad caught the grimace, gently peeling Betty off of me like you would a bandaid off of a toddler. “Okay, give her some room,” he chuckled under his breath.

Betty stepped back, shifting her hands to my shoulders and looking me over. She glanced over my shoulder at Dad with that look, that pathetically sad one that people reserved for children’s graves and oil-slick ducklings before wiping it clear off of her face and saying, “You need to eat! Come on, I made lunch.”

There was no convincing Betty I wasn’t hungry; she actually hovered near me until I took a bite of the grilled chicken she made before finally sauntering off, satisfied. The house was different; there was a new side table shoved in beside the couch, a television on the floor next to a propped-up mounting system. The kitchen had been entirely unpacked and had a bunch of unopened bulk cleaning supplies on the counters.

“Your family was meant to be the stars of the Potlatch,” Betty chimed in at some point. “A Potlatch is to share fortune among the tribe, and that’s what we planned to do for you all so that moving in would be more comfortable. Furniture, linens, the like — there were so many in the reservation that found something in good quality to donate. While you were…” She drew off, hesitating before going with, “In the hospital, I called in some favors and had everything moved in. In fact, I want to show you your room when you’re done!”

“We’re practically all moved in, now,” Dad added. “‘Course there’s probably a bunch of little things we’re forgetting, but for now, this is gonna be home.”

Yet another big change.

“Speaking of moving, though.” Dad added, taking a moment to chew on his food before continuing, “I found something when I was going through your stuff, Brent.”

Brent froze, fork midway to his mouth, and the blush from the cold outside almost immediately left his face as he paled. “Oh, really?” He tried to play cool.

Dad snorted, not ignorant to what he was doing. “Relax, you’re not in trouble. Not big trouble, anyways. But c’mon, man, why did you think having weed in a lawyer's house was a good idea? You know how deep of shit you would have gotten into if I found it before all of this?”

Brent blinked. “You’re…not mad?”

Dad barked out a laugh. “You really think I wasn’t smoking weed at your age? But Brent, son — it’s legal. You couldn’t wait till you were eighteen?”

Brent was still absolutely baffled at how this conversation was going, and I’m sure if we could hear the cogs in his brain, they’d be grinding so hard against each other that the sound would make us all cringe. “I’m…sorry?” he asked, not sure where he was supposed to go with this.

Dad shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter much, now. You have a higher metabolism, so getting high off of…regular stuff won’t be easy. That does not mean to try anything harder.” He stressed. “But if you plan on using dab pens, get ready to have to pull that fucker for a good eight minutes—”

“Delsin!” Betty chastised, Dr. Sims stifling a laugh from the couch.

Once they wound down and Dad mumbled his apologies, I spoke up, asking, “When do we leave?”

Dad hummed, thinking. “Tonight, probably. Less traffic, less people. We can all take turns too, since you two have your permit — well, you probably can’t Jean, but you could,” he directed towards Brent. “Eugene and I are gonna finish deciding which route we’re taking, and we’ll go after everyone packs.” He looked over his shoulder at Dr. Sims. “You’re sure you have everything you need?”

Dr. Sims shrugged. “For the most part. My laptops are still in your truck, and my go bag has enough supplies for a week without access to, say, washers or something. I don’t need much more.”

“I think I’m done,” I said, standing and abandoning the meal that was barely dug into. “I’m gonna go down to my room, start packing.”

“Oh! Let me show you where everything is—” Betty began, but I shook my head.

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I can find it all. Kinda wanna lay down, too.”

Betty hesitated mid-step, shooting a look over to Dad, who seemed just as concerned. “You sure, Jeanie?” he asked.

I hated how they all were looking at me. “Yeah, Dad. I’m sure,” I said as lightly as I could, trying not to let my annoyance come through.

Dad slowly nodded, eyes not leaving mine. He was trying to analyze my poker face for something. “Alright. I’ll come check on you after we finalize a plan,”

Check on me. Like I couldn’t be left alone for too long without fear that I’d drop dead. “Yeah, sure,” I muttered, already turning around and heading down the hall. I ran away from their concern as quickly as I could, disappearing down into the basement and closing the door behind me, a small barrier between us all.

Betty really had put work into making the room feel less like squatting underneath a bridge and like an actual room; the mattress was now on one of those beds with storage cabinets underneath, my art chest sitting at its foot on the ground. There was a short, whitish dresser on one wall and a desk on the other, which I walked towards while pulling the rock from the protest out of my pocket, setting it on top of a bunch of random unopened school supplies.

Right! On top of everything, I was still in high school. Because things couldn’t get worse.

Well, no, they could. I knew exactly how they could, and how I could avoid it — but I didn’t. Why should I? I plopped down on the bed, threw off my arm sling, wrapped myself up in that woven blanket with Salmon in the middle and pulled out my phone.

Was it responsibility, curiosity, or just self-loathing that led me to wanting to look up more about the flood in Seattle? Probably all three. I needed to see what I did, how it impacted everyone because…didn’t I have a duty of care here? Didn’t I have a responsibility to care?

It would have been so much easier if I didn’t.

There was some footage from the fight from that helicopter, and that was really the only place I found anyone in my defense; the reporter, cameraman and pilot all lived, thank God, and it seemed like there were people in agreement that that was my initial plan. That’s where it ended, though.

There was a tag specifically for the tsunami everywhere, littered with people asking for donations to online fundraisers and if anyone knew which amnesty hotels still had rooms available. I hadn’t considered there would still be people missing too, unaccounted for in the chaos of recovery; .pdfs with faces and names and case numbers all littered the tag with family and friends begging them to come home. And the vitriol.

Another Rowe, ruining lives, one said.

There was a picture of my mom with a 289 above her, the image beside it of me at that art expo I won last year, side by side with the judges and Dad, 134 over it. The entire thing was titled apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

There were already politicians using what happened as their campaign fodder, speaking of how Conduits cannot be trusted to keep civilization safe if they’re able to live in it. “One Conduit has a bad day, and the body count is in the hundreds. A juvenile Conduit just killed over a hundred people in Seattle, injured thousands, and disrupted the lives of over seven hundred thousand people. This is a child who goes to school with your children, who doesn’t have control over their powers yet — what are we supposed to do when the next Conduit with absolutely no control over their abilities messes up? How can we trust we’re safe when these people don’t even seem to have control over themselves?”

Gotta get a new car because Tiger Lily flooded my brand new Mazda, one complained.

It’s gonna take more than identification, another tweeted. Pocahontas was stuck on a reservation and still managed to attack a big city. Biterrorists need to be carted off to some island.

He didn’t even spell Bio-terrorist right.

I could barely find the energy to get angry at the racism — how could I when the next post would be one for a funeral, or a wake, or just begging for someone, anyone, to tell the poster if their family member was alive?

And God, the obituaries. There was something bleak and horrifying about seeing one for a child that knocked the wind out of me so hard I began to hyperventilate to get it back. This was worse than the seven year old at COLE. There were dozens of children, old people and middle aged ones and people my age, barely adults. So many people died.

Waves began roaring in my ears as my breathing picked up, and while I was still looking straight at my phone screen, none of it made sense anymore. The words looked like nothing more than scribbles a child would do. That a child should be doing, not being lowered six feet into the ground or cremated or…

Oh, God, I couldn’t breathe.

I drew my legs into my chest and squeezed my eyes shut until they felt welded together, struggling to get in enough oxygen to feel like it was reaching my lungs. Fuck. A hundred and thirty seven people. All of this, all of this, was my fault. If I didn’t get caught by that Akuran, none of this would have happened. No one would be dead, our lives wouldn’t have been upended, maybe I’d even be able to heal without worrying why it was wrong — because if I didn’t know I was Conduit, I wouldn’t even feel like anything was wrong! My cast pressing into my chest wouldn’t feel like the squeeze of an anvil threatening to crush me whole. None of this would be happening, but it was, and it was my fault. My fault. My—

The bed moved, and someone settled in behind me, hands wrapping around the wrist dug into my hair and forcing it down to my chest, crossing it and grabbing my other arm the same way. I was gently leaned back, straightened from my curled form and pulled into a chest, and could barely hear Dad through the tinnitus in my ears. “You’re having a panic attack, Jean. I need you to breathe,” he commanded softly. “Use your stomach, not your chest.”

I tried to follow his instructions but it seemed to take two minutes just to get a neuron in my brain to spark hard enough to adjust how I breathed. Dad stayed there holding me, enveloping my little form, keeping me from doing anything else but concentrate on breathing.

My ears stopped ringing but began to sound like they were stuffed full of cotton balls, everything far away. Even as Dad’s soothing voice broke through my harsh hiccups, it felt like I was listening to him from underwater. His arms slackened their hold on mine, one leaving to pick up my phone as he whispered, “Oh, Jean,” before closing out the picture of a 10 year old’s obituary.

He shifted to my side, pulling me in so my ear was just over his heart. “I’m not sure,” he sighed. “It hasn’t gotten better for me.”

#infamous erosion #infamous second son #infamous #delsin rowe #Fetch Walker #sucker punch productions #eugene sims #who's busy being on the verge of passing out #We love him for it tho #YOU KNOW WHAT'S FUNNY #I WROTE THIS CHAPTER BEFORE MUSKS X BULLSHIT SO IDEK IF TWITTER WOULD BE AROUND IN 2037 #pretend it was bought out by Yahoo and abandoned or smthn idk

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that-ghosts-art · 1 year

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The Other Way Chapter 14: The Portal

Chapter 1 - Last Chapter - AO3 Link

To those who are reading my fanfic I hope the wait was worth it ;3

~~~

The fading light filtered down through the thick layer of leaves. How long had they been out here, Dipper wondered, searching the forest for the way home.

It had been at least a few hours since Alcor had brought them to the forest surrounding Gravity Falls in search of the portal, and now here they sat infuriatingly close. Unfortunately there were also a bunch of heavily armed, multiverse hating cultists in the way that wanted to destroy his and Mabel’s home dimension, and probably them as well if what Alcor said was anything to go by.

If there was one thing Dipper was taking away from his little interdimensional ‘adventure,’ it was that there were cultists quite literally everywhere here.

The three humans were waiting in a small clearing while Alcor went ahead to get a feel for the situation, with Wren keeping an eye on the twins.

Dipper glared up at the dusken light from his spot sprawled out on the grass, letting out an annoyed huff. “If I never have to deal with another cult, it’ll be too soon,” he grumbled quietly, mindful of the headache that had stubbornly remained after his last attack. It was like the dull thumping of a heart, beating in time with the unknown force that resented his dual presence in this dimension. An ever present reminder of the time limit hanging over their heads.

Looking up from cleaning her strange looking gun Wren raised an eyebrow at the sulking pre-teen. “Another? How many cults have you two met?”

“This’ll be my second and bro-bro’s third since getting here,” Mabel said, before looking thoughtfully at nothing in particular, nothing that Dipper could see at least. “Though I guess all up it’d be third and fourth if we include that memory erasing one from back home,” she added, shrugging and looking up at the demon hunter with that characteristic Mabel smile, if a bit smaller than it usually was back home.

“Damn, that’s a lot of cults for four days.”

“Three actually, and that’s including today,” Dipper corrected, slowly sitting up.

“Crazy to think it’s only been three days, with everything that’s happened it feels like it’s been ages since we got here,” Mabel mused, and Dipper silently agreed.

Since first falling in that hidden portal and appearing in that alley they had been captured, saved by Alcor, played an, in hindsight, rather ridiculous amount of DDnMD, temporarily believed Alcor murdered a family and stole their home only to then discover that actually he was an alternate Dipper, leading to him, the original human Dipper to run off and get captured again, saved by Alcor again, learnt about Alcor’s past, and finally ended up in the Gravity Falls woods where they met Wren and located the portal home. Just one more obstacle to get past and this would all be over.

There was a small feeling that could only be described as a ‘blip’ and the trio looked up to see that Alcor had returned, face scrunched up in thought and feet decidedly off the ground.

Putting her weapon down Wren got up and approached the demon. “What’s the status Alcor? Will I be needing to help out?”

“Probably,” he admitted, absentmindedly rubbing the back of his neck. “There's only nine cultists total, three guarding the perimeter, two by the portal itself and three more going over what looked like data they had collected.”

“But?” Mabel prompted from her spot on one of the larger rocks in the area, fiddling with the hem of her skirt.

Alcor sighed, running a hand through his hair. “While normally I’d be able to handle these guys easily on my own, I need to focus and put my energy into making sure that the portal’s safe and will actually take you two where you need to go.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Dipper grumbled, scratching the back of his left hand as he layed back down. He’d found that lying down made the throbbing in his head easier to deal with.

“How do you know about these weirdos anyway?” Mabel asked.

“An older faction of them summoned me a couple hundred years ago in the hopes I would open a portal for them,” he answered, beginning to pace back and forth in a manner Dipper recognised as being not too dissimilar to his own habit. “Honestly I’m surprised they even still exist,” Alcor added, almost as an afterthought.

“So, did you?” Wren asked, eyebrow raised and arms crossed. “Open a portal for them?”

Alcor stopped mid - step? Dipper wasn’t sure if it counted as such given his feet remained hovering above the ground - and gave Wren a deadpan look. “If I couldn’t open a portal now for two kids I actually want to help what makes you think I could, or even would, for a bunch of nut jobs that think they’re capable of destroying other universes?”

She shrugged, quietly mumbling “fair point,” before returning to cleaning her gun.

“Hey, wait,” Dipper said, sitting up again, ignoring the dull protest from his head at the sudden movement. “If they already have access to the portal, you don’t think they already-“ Breathing suddenly became very difficult, panic filling his lungs with each attempt. Surely these people would not have the ability to do any damage to his and Mabel’s home, but paranoid ‘what if’s’ consumed Dipper’s thoughts like a virus.

Alcor was already shaking his head though, feet landing on the ground. “Oh no no no! I highly doubt they have the means to destroy an entire universe,” he interrupted, kneeling down and making abortive hand motions. “Maybe give a couple solar systems some strife but no actual danger. From what I saw it looked like they were probably still testing the portal out, seeing what they can do with it,” he added with what Dipper assumed Alcor thought was a comforting smile, but it was difficult to tell with his shark-like teeth.

“You think so?” Dipper asked, uncertain but wanting desperately to believe it.

“Of course!” Alcor said, standing up again.

“I mean, you say that but we don’t actually know how long they’ve had access to that thing,” Wren interjected, mostly focused on the last part of her gun that had yet to be cleaned.

Alcor glared at her, crossing his arms. “Hey! I’m trying to be reassuring here! And besides, last I checked they were all still mortals without universe destroying powers.”

“Yeah!” Mabel said with a chuckle. “They probably don’t even know how to go through the portal,” she snickered.

“Oh definitely not.”

The two started laughing, much to Dipper’s frustration.

“Okay that’s great and all,” he said, “but do you think we could maybe get back to figuring out what our plan is? It’s not like we can just wander out there with all those cultists around.”

“Right, yes, plan. You guys have any ideas?” Alcor asked, sobering up, hand moving up to rub his chin.

“Maybe I can go ahead,” Wren offered. “Distract them while you three get to the portal and do whatever it is you need to do,” she said, waving in Alcor’s direction.

“No, as good a fighter as you are, I don’t think you can take on nine destruction happy cultists all at once.”

“Try me!”

As the two bickered about the general usefulness of a single stun gun against nine cultists, all with significantly more deadly weaponry, Dipper realised focusing on what they were saying had suddenly become more difficult than it should have been. He ignored the feeling of pins and needles that had appeared in his left hand as he tried to focus through the headache on what Alcor was saying.

“I guess I could go ahead and deal with them all beforehand but-“

Alcor paused, probably in thought, but for half a second it looked as if he might have flinched. Dipper knew Alcor had said that his presence there would not have an affect on him, but perhaps-

Mabel’s gasp interrupted Dipper’s train of thought - it was probably nothing anyway -, and when he looked over to see what was wrong was met with her terrified face staring down at him.

“Dipper your hand!” she cried out and they all looked at it, only to find the tips of his fingers steadily fading away. Dully Dipper heard the frantic and panicked exclamations of the others, but all he could focus on was the pounding in his head as he stared in terrified silence at his vanishing hand.

With that realisation his headache decided now would be a good time to remind him why they could not take things slowly as the dull throbbing abruptly became a sharp pain that spread through his head and down his arm to the hand that was now barely there.

A quiet “oh,” was the only reaction Dipper could manage before he felt his vision fade.

Soon the only thing he was cognisant of was a ripping sensation, like the individual atoms in his arm were fighting to leave his body. His head felt as if it was being split in two, or perhaps merged into one? Afterall there were already two of him there. As it was, whatever thoughts he might have had were drowned out by the burning, the pulling, and the crushing feelings overcoming his every sensation.

When the feelings resided to a more bearable level Dipper saw Mabel, Alcor, and Wren hovering over him, fear, concern and panic clear on all their faces.

“That, was definitely worse than the last one,” Dipper croaked.

“Screw this, we need to go, now,” Alcor said, eyes dark and shoulders tense. “Wren we’ll go with your plan you go ahead to distract the cultists I’ll get these two to the portal and make sure they can pass through it safely. Let’s get moving people!”

As Mabel helped him up Dipper was dimly aware of Wren running ahead and Alcor gently ushering them forward. All Dipper could focus on though, was his left hand, and the pain emanating from it. Well, where his left hand had been.

What had vanished leading up to the attack had not returned with its passing. It had only gotten worse.

~~~

Mabel, Dipper, and Alcor moved as silently and as carefully as they could towards the clearing that gradually came into view. Wren had already run ahead to distract the cultists, and Mabel could just see her in between the trees.

“It’ll come back, right?” Mabel heard her brother whisper, still staring at the slowly fading stump where his left hand had been not that long ago. It looked, Mabel thought, like someone was trying to erase him, and she could already see other small spots and pockets where Dipper was starting to fade away, tiny dust-like specks falling away from him. She felt the hole in her stomach fall deeper with each smudged spot she saw.

Alcor’s crouched form stopped as he looked over his shoulder at the two of them, his eyes screaming worry and fear, and not a small amount of tiredness. As Mabel looked at Alcor, her alternate brother, she wondered how true his claim was that he would be fine. Had he always looked that exhausted? Not to mention that odd little moment he had immediately before Dipper’s last attack.

“Of course!” he whispered with a soft smile. “I’m like, ninety nine percent certain it’ll all be okay.”

“But, not a hundred?”

Alcor’s smile became softer still, as he cautiously placed a hand on Dipper’s shoulder. “I’m sure that once you’re both back in your own dimension everything with right itself and it’ll be fine, there’s no reason for things to not fix themself as soon as you’re home,” he said, looking at Mabel as well. She appreciated the effort to comfort them both, and gave him a small smile of her own.

“Now,” he continued, “please stay quiet, we’re almost there, and we need to be ready to run as soon as Wren start’s distracting these guys.”

Mabel nodded her head, a look of steely determination falling on her face, and she could see out the corner of her eye Dipper doing the same.

The trio stopped just shy of entering the clearing itself, staying just out of sight. Mabel could see five cultists from their hiding spot, but knew the other four must have been somewhere nearby. They hardly mattered though, because across the clearing, barely any distance at all, all things considered, the shimmering light from the portal was winking at her.

They were so close, after all this time finally seeing their ticket home was a welcome sight.

The large guns were significantly less welcoming.

They waited in nervous silence for Wren to make her move. Fortunately they did not have to sit there long, as less than a minute later she burst through the trees on the opposite side of the clearing, screaming and firing her weapon at the cultists, bursts of sparkling blue light knocking down three of them before the rest could react. The last of the nine cultists appeared as they all started firing at Wren, the tallest of the group barking orders at the others to get her.

In that moment of confusion Alcor started making his way to the portal, Dipper and Mabel following closely behind, staying quiet as they moved swiftly across the clearing. Before they could make it halfway though, Mabel heard a pained gasp behind her, turning just in time to see her brother collapse once more, almost his entire left arm already gone from view.

Panic flooded her system and froze her in place. “Dipper!” she called out, getting Alcor’s attention. He was by Dipper’s side in the blink of an eye, carefully picking him up and making his way to the portal.

Mabel forced her body to unfreeze - Dipper would be okay, as soon as they went through that portal it would all be okay, it had to be okay, he had to be okay - and followed behind at a slower pace, her legs shaking far too much to go any faster without falling over herself.

She could hear the blood pumping through her ears, the sound rising and she pushed forward, eyes darting quickly between their last hope and what little of her brother Mabel could see from behind Alcor. ‘Everything will be okay, everything will be alright, everything will be fine’ she thought to herself, a mantra she refused to let wander to the terrifying ‘what if’s’ that lurked on the edge of her mind.

Ahead of her she saw Alcor reach the portal, gently placing Dipper down before bringing all his attention to their only hope of returning home.

The sight helped Mabel to push past those stupid doubts and began to move faster as her legs began to feel more solid and less like her special brand of Mabel Pasta™ (like regular pasta but with more glitter and rainbow coloured yarn) when a rough hand grabbed her right arm.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” the cultist grumbled, their grip tightening.

Mabel’s eyes widened, her throat closing up, and sweat beading down her face. As the looming cultist yanked her closer to them, a knife glinting in their other hand, Mabel’s mind went blank, instinctive fear freezing her in place.

This could not be happening, she was supposed to go to the portal and stay by her brothers side and go home and this was not the plan this was not the plan what was she supposed to do she didn’t have her grappling hook as it was back home she didn’t have anything she could use to fight back she-

“MABEL!” That was Dipper’s voice, he must have woken up from his attack and she tried to force herself to focus on him but all Mabel’s panicked mind let her fixate on was the large hand holding her arm, and the shimmering knife that got closer and closer with each frantic heartbeat.

Suddenly an angry scream drew the cultists attention away from Mabel, the hypnotising knife pulling away it time for her to see Wren running up to them. Before Mabel - or it would seem the cultist - could realise what was happening, Wren punched them in the face, startling them enough to let go, Mabel stumbling to the ground in awe.

“Hands off!” Wren yelled as the two began fighting.

Alcor appeared at her side, his wings curling up protectively around her as he picked Mabel up and brought her over to Dipper and the portal.

“Are you okay?!” Alcor and Dipper asked in unison, bringing a smile to Mabel’s lips.

“Y-yeah I’m good,” she stuttered. “Let’s get this thing going!”

“Right!” Alcor said, concerned eyes lingering on her for a moment before returning his attention to the portal.

His hands moved over it methodically, his fingers twitching as if playing the harp, small wisps of blue flame dancing around them. A frown began to form on his face the longer he worked, his eyebrows coming together and nose scrunching up.

Mabel could see Dipper open his mouth, she imagined to ask what was wrong, but before he could a startled shout from Wren grabbed all their attention.

“Look out!”

Running their way was another cultist and surely, surely, there were not that many left.

Yelping Mabel jumped out of their path, seeing Alcor grab Dipper and jump out the way himself just in time for the cultist to skid through the portal, their angry cry cut short.

“Is that going to be a problem?!” Dipper shrieked, the three of them staring wide eyed at the portal.

“No, you won’t have to worry about them,” Alcor said, letting go of Dipper’s shoulders.

“Cause it’s connected to a different dimension now?” Mabel asked.

“Ehhhhhhh.”

“R-right?”

Alcor averted his gaze, scratching the back of his head as he seemed to look anywhere but the two of them. “Uhhh, yeah yeah totally!” he said, moving back to his previous position in front of the portal, hands starting to work again. “And definitely not because this thing currently has the same internal structure of a blackhole and ripped their fragile fleshy body into a million exponentially smaller pieces,” he muttered and wait what? That could not be right. Looking at the odd expression on Alcor’s face, Mabel figured it was probably for the best if she pretended she did not just hear that.

“What was that?” Dipper asked.

“Nothing!” Alcor said with a wonky smile. “Time to make sure this thing will, safely, get you guys back to your dimension.”

~~~

It had not taken too long for Wren to dispatch the rest of the cultists after that. Alcor watched out of the corner of his eye as she tied up the last one before wandering over to the three of them huddled around the portal.

It was wider now, almost circular in shape, with a near hypnotic swirl of rainbow colours slowly spinning around its edge.

“Are you sure that’s safe now?” Wren asked, eyeing the portal with distrust.

“Oh definitely,” Alcor said, sticking his arm through it as if to prove so before pulling it back out.

“I realise given my powers that probably didn’t actually prove anything but I promise it’s perfectly safe now,” he added, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head with the same arm.

Mabel could not help but laugh at his sincere awkwardness. To think Alcor being an alternate Dipper had been a surprise when they first found out. She couldn’t help but let out a little laugh at the absurdity of that.

“So this is really happening? Can we really go home now?” she asked, the hope that filled her heart making her small smile grow ever larger.

“Is this actually it?” Dipper added, a cautious hope of his own seeping into his voice.

Alcor merely smiled and stepped aside, moving his arms as if presenting the portal to the both of them. “You guys ready to leave this dimension and finally go home?” he asked with a dramatic flourish.

“Yes!” the twins cheered in unison, making the two adults laugh.

“Good luck you two,” Wren said. “I still don’t a hundred percent understand what exactly is going on with all this but I’m glad I could help out. Here’s hoping Alcor isn’t lying about you getting better when you go through that thing.”

“Hey! I would never!” Alcor protested, much to everyone else's amusement.

“Thank you, both of you,” Dipper said, looking up at Alcor, tired and tentatively optimistic eyes meeting human ones, before sharing a small smile.

“Yeah! We couldn’t have done this without your help,” Mabel added, her smile the brightest it had been since this whole ordeal had started.

Alcor let out a small chuckle. “Well I’m happy to have helped, and all things considered it was nice meeting you guys,” he said, ruffling Mabel's hair.

“You too!”

“I guess you weren’t that bad, in the end,” Dipper mumbled with a smile.

At that they all laughed, enjoying the moment.

The twins stood before the portal and gave each other a smile.

“Ready?” Dipper asked.

“As I’ll ever be!”

With one final wave goodbye, Dipper and Mabel stepped through the portal.

~~~

Bright sunlight shone overhead, its light sprinkled over the forest floor through thick leaves, the subtle glow from the thin sliver of torn reality mixing with it. The portal rippled, suddenly growing wider as two small forms stumbled through, collapsing next to each other.

Mabel instantly jumped up, looking at her familiar surroundings, the same trees and rocks she had seen just days before. The deep pit that had previously settled in her stomach dissolving instantly with the growing sense of recognition, her true smile finally returning.

Dipper watched as his arm and hand rapidly returned, flexing his fingers as they re-materialised. He looked up at his sister who’s smile said it all.

“We’re finally home,” Dipper said, the realisation truly setting in as he spoke.

The two began rushing in the direction they remembered the Mystery Shack to be in, neither able to stop the smiles from pulling at their cheeks, not that they would have cared too. As their home away from home came into view, they knew it really was all going to be alright.

~~~

A/N OH MY GOD I FINALLY FINISHED!!!! After almost THREE YEARS I can FINALLY say I've finished the Other Way :D Thank you everyone who decided to give my little fic a read and an especially big thank you to all of you who commented I love each and every one of you SO MUCH!! I can't promise I'll write anything after this cause if I've learnt one thing from my experience writing this it's that I do not have the patients to be an author haha, but who knows maybe in three years from now I'll appear out of the void and share something new ^-^ (but probably nothing with more than one chapter, at least for now, I've learnt my lesson haha)

Thank you all so much seriously if it weren't for all of you this thing would not exist and despite it's flaws and a chronic lack of proper editing or proofreading I'm really proud of what I achieved, so I truly cannot thank you all enough ^-^

#transcendence au #reverse transdimensional au arc #gravity falls #dipper pines #mabel pines #alcor #fanfic #the other way #IT'S FINALLY FINISHED #Oh god I just looked at the post for the previous chapter and I joked about the next chapter taking 8 months #oh foolish me for thinking that was a long time #meanwhile 3 years later xD #If you're new the rest of the chapters are on AO3 under thatdisastrousfangirl #and on my now abandoned writing blog thatdisastrousfangirl-writes #both of which I have linked above :3

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taocc-clara · 5 months

Note

”Oh, uhh…sure, I guess?-

I’m as human as you are, as if you couldn’t guess that by now. My life was pretty normal, I played a concerning amount of DND with my friends.”

He laughs sadly to himself.

”Showed up here a little while ago with some friends of mine. We lived in the capital of Lull at the time. I was the only one who completely remembered our lives before this, but it was fine, our lives were…to be frank, everything we wanted before all this. I had a woman I loved, a job I loved…Yeah. Of course, She ruined all that. I knew her creator, too…he didn’t mean to make a monster, we didn’t know how the whole emotion-magic thing worked back then. I should’ve been there to help him, I should’ve been there to help my fiancée and her sister…Yeah. I lost them all. My knack for remembering things means I’m probably the only one who knows the details of what all happened, or the life we lived. I dunno where my friends even are, so I started up the trains to try and find them, or at least to…help…anyone at all. Maybe it’d make up for how I’d failed, and…well, it has always been my duty to serve people for the greater good…

…Oh, rats, I rambled. Sorry.”

no i-its fine

I never had friends, or really anyone who liked me, I was always neglected, I started to think I didn't need other people to rely on, I didn't need anybody to like me

It hurt me so badly.......I didn't really realize that until recently

Thats the reason I acted that way, I thought if nobody knew who I really was then everything would be okay.....I've had any idea implanted in my head ripped out and smashed on the floor over and over again

...........

I was wrong about alot of things when I ended up here

I don't know how to feel about them, let alone express them to someone

#crackerasks #clarasblade

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wreywrites · 8 months

Text

Tiger Shark

Part 4: The Anchor

Chapter 22

We spend what has become a normal day for us. Last week, Finnick found an old book of fairy tales and his new favorite activity is reading them with verve. He does voices, sound effects, the whole hook and sinker, and I draw. We eat last night’s noodles, then Finnick dozes off on the couch while I read about a man who spends his whole life hunting one whale.

Beck calls midafternoon to invite everyone for supper and marbles. I leave Finnick sleeping on the couch to answer the phone, drink a glass of water, write Dad a note telling him to wake us up if we aren’t awake when he gets home, and grab a blanket. I curl up on the half of the couch Finnick isn’t using.

It isn’t long before I wake up again. I’ve never been much of a napper, so I go back to where I left off in the book. I read the same paragraph four times before deciding it isn’t working. I can hear them again. I am so tired of hearing them. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping for the best, but like so many times before, I am disappointed, surrounded by screams and slices, wide-eyed faces staring through me, the soft thump of a body-less head hitting the ground.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Finnick is holding my hands and saying something.

I blink, slowly, making myself focus, willing myself to snap out of it. It works a little.

“Annie.”

“Hi,” I say.

He doesn’t say anything back, just looks at me. I can’t read him.

“I told Beck we’d be there for supper.” The words are sluggish. They almost sound like a question, but I can’t drag myself back to reality quite enough to behave like a normal human.

“Okay. Are you sure…?”

I nod. “I have to keep doing normal things. I have to keep moving forward. Otherwise… otherwise I’ll drown, and I refuse to drown.”

He gives me the tiniest of smiles. “Are you wearing that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just wondering if we were changing before supper, or if you wanted to go now and see if Beck made any appetizers.”

“Ooh, he does make good crab cakes. And I’m comfortable enough with you all to show up in this.”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

Supper and games with friends always helps. At least, it helps while it’s happening, but the boisterous laughter only serves as a stark contrast to the silence that comes when we call it a night and I go home and go to bed. Faces swim in front of me. Sounds that aren’t there echo down the hall. I get up. I can’t live like this.

Finnick rolls over when I open the door. Relief floods his face. “I would kill to sleep through the night again.”

I crawl into bed. “No need for that. Just tell me a story.” I curl up against him and close my eyes. I don’t even hear him start to talk.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

We snuck up on each other, all right. But now that we’re here, I don’t know what to do. Part of me still feels guilty, but I can’t dwell on that. I can’t drown in that pit again. Part of me is happy. This is great. I have the undivided attention of a man who is, in fairness, flighty and shallow, but who I know cares very deeply about the people he loves. And part of me is terrified. I have never forgotten President Snow’s threat about all the people in Four who must care about me. And I’d have to be stupid to think he doesn’t have a similar threat hanging over Finnick. The Capitol killed his parents, after all, which must make the list of people left to threaten him with substantially shorter. I’ve got a whole list—Dad, Coral and Jade, Mako’s parents, my fishing crew, Beck, Mags, Finnick—but who is on Finnick’s list? Mags, probably Beck as well, and now me. Because there’s no way these nice houses aren’t bugged. We aren’t even doing anything, but even if all the Capitol has to go off of is the sheer amount of time we spend together, I’m on the list of people whose deaths will be quietly arranged to keep Finnick Odair in line.

Logically, I care, but most of the time, the thought is far from my mind because, at least superficially, on sunny afternoons, I am happy. We lobster dive with Mags and Beck. We read, we lay on the beach, we weave, we tie knots, Finnick bakes and I draw. At night, he talks until I fall asleep, and in the morning, I hold him until he wakes up.

And I think I am getting better, until the phone rings one day and it is Casca saying he and Marius will be visiting next week in preparation for this year’s Hunger Games. Marius needs to make sure we all have clothes we can wear in the Capitol for our perfunctory appearances, or if we have the “honor” of being mentors, and Casca probably just wants to say hi to Mags in person. I was not prepared for this. Somehow, I had forgotten that you never finish the Hunger Games, you just start playing by different rules. I don’t know how long I can play. The idea of going back to the Capitol, of being in the place that caused me so much pain… I can’t help but think about how much worse I will get while there. But saying no isn’t an option.

So Marius comes, digs around in my closet, organizes outfits, leaves several new dresses, and says he’ll tell the Preps hello. I thank him, then sit on the floor of the closet. How am I supposed to go back?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The reaping creeps closer. I have been informed that I will not be a mentor this year because of my “unreliable mental health.” Which seems like a fair assessment. Finnick is quite sure that he will, once again, be a mentor. I don’t argue.

When the day arrives, Casca comes from the Capitol bearing gifts: a new shirt for Finnick (oh the irony), a shawl for Mags, a dress for me. The Capitol certainly keeps us looking better than everyone else in the district.

I have to sit on the stage with the other victors. It’s weird, being up here, looking at everyone else, when, for a significant chunk of my life, I was down there looking up, hoping it wasn’t my name. Now it’s already been my name, and I am sitting here waiting to see who will try to follow in my footsteps. Except I drift right before they call the names, and it’s a good thing Finnick and I said our goodbyes this morning, because the next thing I remember is Beck helping me sit down at my kitchen table and pouring me a glass of lemonade.

“I know you don’t remember a thing, but you were marvelous.”

I stare at him. “How…?”

He shrugs. “You kinda slumped a little bit and stared out over everyone, and when we all stood to leave the stage, you followed along, but you weren’t there. We could see it in your eyes. So I brought you home.”

“Thanks.”

Beck nods. “You’re welcome. Our train leaves tomorrow morning.”

When I don’t respond, he clarifies. “All the victors have to go to the Capitol for the Games. No exceptions.”

“Oh.”

“We tried to get you out of it, but… well, it didn’t work. But I have appointed myself your caretaker, and none of the victors whose opinions mean anything will hold it against you if you can’t handle it. Every single one of us came out… different. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I have a full-blown meltdown on the train. At least, that’s what Beck tells me later, when I wake up in the Victor Center, where the non-mentor victors live.

“It was one of the few times in my life I’ve actually been glad to have Manta around. You were on the fight,” he smiles, drumming his fingers on the table. Keep this up and they might let you stay home.

I don’t have the energy to respond. I just want to go home and never set foot in the Capitol again.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

We go to the Parade of Tributes that evening, then a banquet afterwards for all the victors. It is a loud affair, with lots of laughing, but I can see through the guise. Everyone, or at least almost everyone, feels the way I do. We are all tired and disgusted and on our best behavior to protect those we love.

I remember something Finnick said the day before the reaping. We were eating breakfast and, without preamble, he said, “Before I leave… Don’t judge me too harshly. They killed my parents, and I’m not going to let that happen to anyone else I care about.”

I wonder how many of these people have had family members killed, how many pushed back one too many times, how many said no the first time the Capitol sold them to the highest bidder. How many have blood on their hands that isn’t from inside the arena? Most importantly, how long will it be until I do as well? How long will the Capitol give me to get over what they’re still calling victor’s remorse?

Beck and I stay until a handful of other victors have left, then make our exit.

“You never want to be the first one to leave at your age. When you get to be old like me, it’s more excusable, but they expect you younger ones to enjoy the parties.”

“I’m not sure how to do that.”

“Believe it or not, it gets easier. You make friends. And it’s better to be there than…” he trails off. There is a strange look in his eyes. It occurs to me that I don’t know Beck that well, just that he won the Twenty-Second Hunger Games, Finnick and Mags both like him, and he’s always been nothing but good to me. He has no family that I know of, which makes me wonder how many times he said no.

“You know they have to, right?” Beck says. “I just… don’t want it changing how you look at Finnick. He needs you as much as you need him.”

I nod. Knowing about it doesn’t make me feel any better.

“You only narrowly avoided it yourself.”

Good for me. But in the back of my mind I’m wondering… how many times would I have said no?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

The days pass in a haze of Capitol citizens wanting to meet me, take pictures with me, tell me how much they loved my interview shoes or victory dress. Our building is apparently a money-making tool for the Capitol. Something like “Your victors are right in here, and you can meet them, but you have to pay to open the door.” Most of them I don’t care about, but on the fourth day of this miserable, zoo-like existence, I am sitting with Beck and Beau from District Ten, who won the first Quarter Quell. I am starting to see what Beck means about making friends. The victors who don’t have adoring fans with them are sitting in little groups, generally of similarly-aged people, chatting and eating. It’s a surprisingly friendly environment. I am looking for the people closest to my age, trying to decide if I should go make friends, when I hear a shout across the atrium.

“Annie!”

I don’t immediately recognize the voice, but the following call of “Cassia, slow down!” clues me in. I look toward the shouts and see Megary Fallon practically leaping out of the way of a small child who looks to be the very definition of an unstoppable force. I can’t help but smile as Cassia dodges around a man from Seven who Beck introduced me to and whose name I’ve forgotten, who is talking to a pair of older victors from Two. And then she reaches me.

Cassia wears the biggest smile I’ve ever seen and a beautiful recreation of the dress I wore for my Victory Banquet. She hugs me without hesitation.

Beau chuckles and he and Beck move a few seating areas over as Titus Vickers catches up to Cassia.

“Sweetheart, you can’t just run off like that.”

“But we’re not on the street! We’re inside, and I know Annie, and Megary, and Augustus, and-”

“Cassia, we’ll have this talk later.”

She has the good sense to hang her head a little before returning her attention to me. “I’m sorry you were sick. I wanted to see you on your tour.”

I’m not sorry I was sick. I almost wish I was still sick, but I’m not about to tell her that. “Oh me too! I was looking forward to eating more carrot cake with you. But I had some very good doctors and I’m better now.” Lies. Well, not about the carrot cake. I could go for some of that.

“I’m glad,” Cassia says. “And I’m glad I get to see you today.”

“I’m glad I get to see you too. And I love your dress!”

Cassia beams. “Thanks. It was my birthday present, and I wanted to wear it today to show you. Do you have a new dress for the party this year?”

I nod. “It’s the same color as the old one though.”

“That’s okay, you look very pretty in that color. And this way we’ll still match!” She is bouncing up and down, barely containing her excitement.

“So you’ll be at the party to eat carrot cake with me?”

“Of course! Won’t we Dad?”

Titus nods. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world. Though I’m not feeling good about my odds for picking the winner this year. I’ve done four in a row and my luck’s got to run out eventually.”

“Well you can’t win them all.” I want to tell him how shallow and uncaring this is. He gambles with lives, but never his own. I doubt I could even explain it to him though. There is too much of a divide between the Capitol and the districts, too much about being a tribute and a victor that I could never explain because it has to be experienced. Titus Vickers and the rest of the sponsors and gamblers are the only people who ever actually win the Hunger Games. It must be nice to not have to face any consequences, to sleep through the night without thinking of the lives you’ve taken.

“Any guesses? I don’t suppose you know Four’s tributes this year?”

I shake my head. “Sorry. I used to live on the same street as the girl, but we didn’t really know each other. Her parents are both fishmongers, so she’s probably pretty handy with a knife. I couldn’t really tell you though.”

We chat about fish markets for a while; apparently Titus is investing in the shrimp trade and wants the inside details, which I am happy to give. This is something I can talk about all day, confidently, fearlessly. But all too soon, Titus says he must get Cassia home for her piano lessons. He shakes my hand, thanks me for the advice. Cassia gives me another hug and makes me promise to save room to eat carrot cake with her at the Victory Banquet.

They are barely out the door when I find myself with more company.

“So Cassia likes you too?” Megary Fallon drops onto the couch opposite me. “She sent me my little toy to knock down the ruins. I owe her so much.”

Next to me, Augustus Braun sits with a smile. “I don’t think she had any part in getting Titus to sponsor me, but it’s so nice to see a real fan every year.”

Megary laughs. “A much-needed break from all the people trying to sleep with you, I’m sure. What was it last year, ten? A dozen?”

“An even thirteen.”

I am staring, first at one, then the other, as they go back and forth. Did they mean to sit here?

Augustus answers the question for me. “So Annie, I hear you’re drawing now. And I regret to inform you that it’s only a matter of time before people are begging you for nude portraits.”

I stare at him.

“Though, you’ve got Finnick. I imagine he’s already asked. Wait!” Megary’s eyes light up. “You haven’t already drawn him, have you?”

That snaps me into action. “What? No! No, I’m terrible at people. I just do animals.”

“What is man but a featherless chicken?” Augustus says, staring philosophically into the distance.

Megary rolls her eyes. “I think you mean hairless monkey, but okay, oh cavalier one.”

“Where is your mentor? I need to have words with her about your attitude.”

“Probably trying to train the poor kids we got this year. Not a chance, either of them. How about yours?”

“Oh, you know Gloss, always the heartbreaker. I’m sure he’s on a date.”

“I meant your tributes, not your mentor. It’s a good thing you’re pretty—you don’t have much else going for you.”

“Rest assured, the next time I see Raela, I am telling her how rude you have been today.” Augustus looks back at me with a friendly smile. “But enough about us, tell us about yourself.”

My confusion must show, because Megary speaks before I have the chance. “When you’re a new victor, everyone else already has friends. So this idiot and I keep each other company and we’re willing to adopt you.”

“Oh.”

“Unless you don’t want us, which is understandable, given my delightful colleague’s aggression,” Augustus says cheerfully.

“No, I… I could use some friends. Unfortunately, I had to leave mine at home.”

They both grow sober and Megary says, “I wouldn’t complain about that. It’s nice to have normal friends. People who haven’t killed other people. As much as I like my victor friends, I like my regular friends at home too.”

Augustus nods. “They keep me going.”

“Isn’t it hard to talk to them?” I ask. I hope it isn’t just me with this problem.

“Very,” Augustus says. “Almost impossible sometimes. But… I can’t have a normal life. I’m a victor, and the Capitol loves me. My friends, on the other hand, can. They can get married, have kids, have a normal job, walk down the street without people staring. It’s nice to know that that still exists, even if I can’t have it.”

I feel like a weight has been lifted from my chest. “I thought it was just me.”

Megary laughs. “Which part?”

“All of it. Not that Four really goes crazy about seeing our victors in the fish market or anything-”

Augustus chuckles. “Odair he is.”

Megary giggles in response.

“-but people still look at me differently. And I remember enough other Games to know if I have kids they’re going to get reaped. And getting married just feels like asking for trouble…”

They nod.

Megary says quietly, “Even if I wasn’t worried about my hypothetical kids, I wouldn’t get married. They’re holding enough over me already, I don’t need a husband in the mix. And I can’t imagine what it would be like for my husband while I’m doing a stint in the Capitol and…” she trails off.

Augustus nods. “They told me I can’t get married until they decide I’m old enough.”

“What does that even mean?” Megary raises an eyebrow.

“The same way Gloss can’t get married until they give him permission. It would ruin his reputation, and even in the Capitol there are a few people with qualms about sleeping with a married man.”

“Have you had this talk with him?”

“Yeah,” Augustus nods. “It was the first talk we had when we got back home after I won. He sat me down and told me what to expect, and he may not be a genius, but he’s been right so far.”

My silence must be starting to be suspicious, because Megary turns to me. “Did you get this talk? Was I the only one who didn’t?”

I shake my head. “I did not.”

“So Finnick, who knows the system better than anyone, didn’t think to warn you about what you’d get to do for the next five or ten years? I know he’s a little… Guess I’m not sure what the word is, but I didn’t think he-” Megary stops. “Why are you here?”

“Because I won last year?”

“Yeah, I know, but you’re here, not in the Tribute Center. You’re not a mentor. And everyone gets to be a mentor their first year.”

I don’t answer right away. Augustus is looking at me, puzzling it out, but he doesn’t reach a conclusion quickly enough for Megary.

“Who’s Finnick sleeping with to keep you tucked out of the way?”

I blink. That was… abrupt.

Before I can respond though, Augustus comes to the rescue. “Whoever Finnick is sleeping with, it’s a him problem. You weren’t sick, were you? Whatever happened in your interview, it’s still happening.”

I nod.

“Even they draw the line somewhere. ‘Mentally unstable’ is your ‘get out of prostitution’ pass. And they can’t have you being a mentor because it could go very, very badly.” Augustus is looking closely at me. “You’ve got a pass.”

Half a smile crosses Megary’s face. “I wish I’d thought of going crazy.”

“You think I enjoy living like this?” I hiss. “I can’t sleep at night, and if it’s too quiet I have flashbacks to the arena to the point where I’m dead to the world, sometimes for hours, and-”

“I know,” Megary says. “I’m not saying I envy your mental state, I just wouldn’t mind having a good excuse to not get sold and passed around every year until they decide I’m too old and ugly.”

“Oh don’t worry about it, you’ll never be too ugly for me,” Augustus winks at her.

She snorts. “Don’t say that too loud or they’ll add you to my list.”

“And threaten you with what? The Capitol’s not gonna kill me. I’m too pretty for that.”

“They won’t, but I might.” Augustus and I both jump at the voice behind us.

Megary laughs. “How was your day?”

I don’t know what emotion I feel when Gloss sits down next to me, but it isn’t entirely good.

“Fine, fine. Got a sponsor, if nothing else.” He begins inspecting his fingernails.

“Is that allowed?” Augustus seems genuinely curious. At first I’m disgusted by his cavalier attitude, but then I realize that if he has to sleep with these people anyway, he might as well get something out of it.

“It’s not not allowed.”

“Never took you for a loop-holer,” Augustus says. “You, on the other hand,” he turns to Megary.

She is smiling a wily grin already. “My dear Augustus, how do you think I got that medicine?”

“It seems like cheating. No, not like cheating, like betting on your own tribute.”

“I’m not a mentor this year,” Gloss digs out whatever was underneath his fingernail and flicks it away, “So it’s fine. I’m sure she’ll just present it as her idea, and we’ll all move on none the wiser.”

Augustus raises an eyebrow. “Awfully confident of you.”

“You that good?” Megary gives Gloss a once over.

Gloss rolls his eyes. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“You’ve never offered.”

“Took a bit of a confidence blow last year.” Gloss leans back, stretches, and puts an arm over the back of the couch and around my shoulders. “Turns out there are some who can resist my charm.”

I give him a sideways glance, eyebrows raised.

He winks back. “Offer stands.”

“I can’t believe you’re still hung up on me. What if I’ve moved on?”

“There is a recorded interview in which you said that I am, and I quote, ‘the most beautiful man alive.’”

“Actually if you play the interview back you will find that I did not say that—it was Mako.” It takes a great deal of concentration not to get hung up on this. “But he may have been quoting me…”

Megary laughs. “I think I need to find me a victor to marry. I like the banter. And really, what are they gonna do? Kill him?”

“Don’t ask. There’s always something. Besides,” Augustus looks pointedly around the atrium, “your options are me, a bunch of old men, and some drunks.”

“Finnick Odair.”

Gloss is wheezing with laughter. “Good luck with that! He’s not one to settle down any time ever, and if he did, she’d have to be something else. Or maybe Mags’s granddaughter who he promised Mags on her deathbed he would take care of.”

I snort. “If Mags had grandkids, I could see that happening.”

“He’d probably take her name too. Finnick Flanagan,” Gloss laughs again. “Now that’s all I want out of life. Everything else that happens will always be a disappointment.”

****

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

NEXT CHAPTER

Tag List:

@avoxrising @snow-dragon-rider @anakins-ride-or-die

#wrey writes #the hunger games #thg: tiger shark #annie cresta #finnick odair #dissociation #ptsd #yes all the victors are friends no you can't make me believe otherwise

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nrrrdgrrrl2002 · 1 year

Text

Of Mutants And Monsters

A (sort of) casrai short story

“So who’s this mystery monster we have to find?” Mikey asked through the comm. “if we knew, it wouldn’t be a mystery” Casey heard raph say through his earpiece.

“Well do we know anything about them to go off of?” Casey asked as he jumped over New York rooftops. He coughed a bit as he started to feel a tad sick.

“Are you ok Casey?” April asked with clear worry. “I’m fine. You don’t have to worry everytime I cough a little april” Casey responded.

“Considering you nearly died one of the first times you used the shrinking suit, I don’t blame her” raph chimed in.

“Anyway. To answer Casey’s question, some witness testimony has stated they saw a creature in the shadows with quote “gold snake eyes”” Donnie stated.

“At least it’s something to look for” Casey muttered as he looked down. All he saw were normal people walking around.

He always wanted to visit the big city. He remembers being a kid and seeing all the superheroes that were from New York. He always thought he’d get into an “accident” that’d give him powers and he’d be a real life superhero.

Guess he wasn’t fully wrong….

He heard something. Was that hissing? Maybe it was from his comm.

“Did you guys hear that?” Casey asked the team. “Hear what?” Mikey asked. “The hissing” Casey responded.

“No?” Everyone else responded. Casey looked around. Seeing if there was anything around him causing the sound.

He suddenly felt his comm being yanked out of his ear. “What the-“ he exclaimed as he quickly turned around. He heard hissing again.

He then heard a window on the roof open and close. “Hmm” he went through the window and jumped down to the floor of the warehouse inside.

He winced a bit from the fall but wasn’t injured. He rubbed his sore wrist as he looked around.

“Hiya” Casey jumped when he heard a girls voice say that. He turned around in a defensive pose and saw a girl casually sit on a crate.

Her dark green hair was tied into a ponytail. Her golden brown eyes were looking at him. She had a calm smile on her face as her head was cocked slightly.

“Uhhh… hi miss?” Casey said with a lot of confusion. She wasn’t freaked out? Wait, who was she anyway?

The girl smirked at him. “Nice to finally meet you, Casey” she said in a flirty tone.

Casey’s eyes widened. “How did you-“ he tried to say. She chuckled. “You and your friends aren’t as sneaky as you think” she said.

“Who are you?!” Casey growled, trying to show this girl that he was a threat. “A bit late to try intimidation, Dontcha think?” She taunted.

Casey decided to change his strategy. He crossed his arms and smirked back. “Who says I have to try?” He said, trying to play her game.

“You have a cute smile” she said, keeping her composure but blushing slightly. Casey looked down as he blushed.

He tried to regain his composure and even growled a bit, it didn’t work at all. The girl got into his face, still smiling.

Casey looked all over the place. Keep it cool keep it cool keep it cool…

Her normal human eyes shifted to gold snake eyes with a blink. Casey’s irises became slits as he realized.

“My names Karai” she said as she jumped down, now having to look up to see Casey.

“You’re the monster we’re lookin for!” Casey yelled. “Harsh” she said, still smirking. “I prefer mutant” she stated.

“You… you need to come with me” he told her, trying to grab her. “I’d love to” she said, dodging his attempt.

“But…” she started as she grabbed his collar, pulling him closer to her eye level with a surprising amount of strength.

“I like my freedom. Maybe you can enjoy it with me one day.” She told him. Casey glared at her.

“I know you want to” she whispered in his ear. “You don’t know anything about me” he grumbled, baring his teeth.

“I know a lot more than you think” she said as her skin became paper white and scaley.

“Like this” she finished as she used a newly formed tail to press a button on Casey’s belt.

“Hey wait!-“ Casey yelped as he grew back to his “normal” height. Karai became a full snake monster and slid away as Casey slammed his head on a metal pillar on the roof.

“OW!” He yelled as he rubbed his head, on his knee as the place was too small to stand up in. He saw Karai slithering away. “Oh hell no!” He said as he grabbed her.

He held her like a toy as he lifted her up to his eye level. “You’re not getting away that easy!” He told her as he sneered.

Karai didn’t respond. Possibly not able to in her full snake form. She instead bit his hand with her sharp fangs.

Casey dropped her without thinking as pain shot into his hand. “Ow ow OWW!” He yelled as he grabbed his hand, feeling throbbing pain.

Karai slid away as he was distracted. Casey tried to look around to find her, but she was gone.

Casey saw that the bite mark was starting to swell. “Did you HAVE to go for between the thumb and index?!” He grumbled to himself.”

#tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2012 karai #tmnt 2012 casey jones #of mutants and monsters #tmnt 2012 casrai

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kyufessions · 1 year

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How much can I really eat until I manifest actual issues and have to go through surgeries just so I can do normal things? 😭😭 it’s already hard out here for us chubby babes, but to promote living the same lifestyle is so much more harmful.. I don’t know why people are so blind to it :( (not hate I just don’t understand why people promote obesity)

i’m not sure if im understanding what ur trying to get at, so correct me if im wrong because i am most definitely half asleep from working a long work day.

but just because people discuss being fat and loving themselves the way they are, does not mean they are promoting obesity in the slightest. just because someone is fat doesn’t mean they’re unhealthy whatsoever. and that’s what people don’t understand and/or refuse to acknowledge that hard fact.

for example, i have been fat my entire life due to my genetics aka something out of my control. i then learned i have PCOS, something, once again, out of my control when it comes to weight gain. all of my personal health issues have to do with my brain condition, mental illness, and my heart. none of my health conditions have anything to do with my weight.

a fat person talking about how much they love themselves is not promoting obesity. a fat person showing skin is not promoting obesity. a fat person talking about what they ate for lunch is not promoting obesity. a fat person simply existing in their beautiful skin that the universe created for them in their one life to live is not promoting obesity. why should someone spend their amount of time given to them on earth worrying about something their doctor isn’t concerned about?

my viewing is this: we all are given one life to live. whether u believe in reincarnation or not, i still believe we have at least this life to live. and we deserve to live it to the fullest. we deserve to live it not giving a single fuck about how others view us as long as we’re doing what we want happily with loved ones who throughly support us through thick and thin. regardless of size, nationality, ethnicity, age, sexuality, religion, etc. we deserve to experience utter happiness in the life we were brought into. and anyone who tries to bring others down for ANY of those listed above needs to reevaluate how they wanna live their life. because if you want to spend your ONE LIFE bringing others down like that and not educating yourself when google is free, that’s very sad.

as for wanting surgeries and such and wanting to feel ‘normal’, there is no normal. because yourself is the ‘normal’. if that makes sense. i used to feel that way too to be honest, wanting to be skinny. lose a bunch of weight. get surgery just so i can fit into a certain view frame that certain people wanted for me. but i stopped thinking that way a while ago because in reality, i’d rather have people in my life love and cherish me for my authentic self rather than anything different. id rather be loved as a fat person. because people who are in my life who authentically cherish me as a human being, they don’t care about my size. and i came to realize that. i just wish i had been able to tell myself that sooner because it would’ve saved me a ton of heartache and self deprecation.

please remember you are loved for who you are, both inside and out. and if someone doesn’t they don’t deserve you in the slightest.

#. kyufessions inbox

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jnixz · 2 years

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Ford cruller for ask game

For this Character ask game 💚🤍🖤

—————-

Ford Cruller

one aspect about them i love

He is just A Lot

Unhinged funny old man, the comedy with this man kills me. He is absolutely sassy and weird and yet somehow also grounded, this man intrigues me so much.

An absolute Oxymoron of a man, who has somehow combined the dichtonomy or being eccentric and also it being normal as hell. Like this man can do x amount of fairly normal and lowkey jobs but also know a lot about them that it feels like he has had that job for a lifetime and witness many strange this on the job-- and yet he has a 20 of them that you question how the heck did he get this much experience. An then he gets an actual spy job and he gets to all these at the same time

then you remember, oh yeah he is also psychic, and also had psychic adventures

my dude what i would give to have an anthology of his adventures.

Oh and the second game absolutely made him so much more human and I love that

also my man, his voice-acting is A+

one aspect i wish more people understood about them

idk man i think we pretty much understand this guy is complicated. Personally wish he had more action in the second game but it is understandable because a) old and b) recently just had his mind pulled back together again and put into action.

Yeah he was able to fight Maligula down a bit but like yo dude you should also maybe get another follow up check-up. I don’t think Lucy is the only one that needs monitoring my dude. We know psyche is still bit cracked and it will never going to be the same, but at the very least talk about the trauma my dude (honestly if obdlc ideas weren’t compelling I’d be making more mind levels for ford-- like I’d be worried for him if I didn’t see the fact that he is able to hold it together and acknowledge the mess enough to just fucking chill for a bit)

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have about this character

He had already had his teleporting proficiency during the gulch days but it vastly improved after the Deluge when his psyche shattered. He couldn’t travel too far with too many people back then (they couldn’t get to Grulovia that way...) else he get very exhausted and probably pass out to strain. At most was very useful in his fight against Maligula.

but with the raise of the organization, he had to make use of his abilities even more to ensure peoples’ safety. It’s also very helpful when the Pelican isn’t around yet and when transportation is limited. Very convenient and nice challenge to improving that power’s capacity.

Granted, this didn’t help his mental health at all, and even somewhat helped in the confusion of the situation with the unraveling of his psyche and his emerging fragments.

With the fragments, his proficiency is enough that he can literally be at two(or more) places at the same time with the combined use of projection + teleportation. Indeed, we can even see it from the first game, when you pull out the bacon while being near one of the fragments at camp.

But yeah with separated mental facilities at unknown amount of times, this does not help with getting sleep or a full night’s rest at all.

I got another one about precognition/premonition but that’ll be on the other post I prepared. I can have so much worldbuilding canons about this man. Just ask, it is an intriguing thinking challenge for me

one character i love seeing them interact with

Being my fav, I cannot stop myself from thinking of interactions with any other character ever. *shakes you at more psychic interactions*

Though would aquato fam interactions would be intriguing if it was able to read anything that could possibly be very dramatic (read: aka I’m a whimp and while I do wish for apologies, I would love to see more lighthearted bonding because I cannot handle drama most of the time)

Would also love to see him interact with other psychonauts employees, juniors, campers, and basically any other character possible.

one character i wish they would interact with/interact with more

As always would love to see psychic 7 interactions. Can’t get enough. There really should be more. I should probably write down my ideas on them and share it some time but that’ll be the days. For now it’s all pinging around my headspace.

Other than that Camp counselor interactions! Scott C comics were hilarious and I am curious for more of that dynamic (especially curious for Morry, since we haven’t gotten a comic interaction between them and just had that finale bit in the first game). Would also love post-pn2 interactions

Would also love what it’d be like with Hollis and Truman are like. I mean Truman got a picture of him in his office and Hollis gets her haircut from him and I think that is like, intriguing little snippets that yeah he interacted with these people before, we just never see it.

one (or more) headcanon(s) i have that involve them and one other character

I think Helmut asks him for dating tips or like ideas where to take Bob on dates and stuff. Ford-Vision gives me the vibes that he is one of the people Helmut remembers being supportive when he gets nervous on something. (recalls literally Ford being the first to support his performance on an empty theatre, meanwhile, Bob gets his support from Lucy)

Somehow Ford cooks more normally than Compton, granted both of their end products look equally ridiculous on their own right. Ford mostly knows how to grill, cook family foods and whatever else he picks up on jobs that he gets to learn that there is a lot more fanciful and competitive cooking from Compton.

Ford, Cassie and Otto are the most book nerds in the group. Compton also likes reading a lot but these three in particular could spend all day talking about something from a book. Of course there is the intellectual kind, but there is just a casual talk on more fictional genres. Otto tends to be less interested in these and leaves Ford and Cassie to those kind of stuff. One interesting tidbit on these two is that they are both a fan of the horror genre.

#asks #ask #anon #ask game #gwb character ask game #psychonauts #psychonauts 2 #psychonauts 2 spoilers #ford cruller #headcanon #character ask game

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garset-grocery · 2 years

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Alright you scallywags, listen the fuck up. I’m about to explain to you why fall is my favourite fucking season on the face of this earth. I massively Vibe with this season.

First of all, it’s the best weather you could ever possibly have, at least where I live. It’s not hot as balls like summer, and it’s not cold as hell like winter. Don’t get me wrong, all the seasons have their perks (except spring, fuck mud season) but fall weather is simply divine. I LOVE wearing multiple layers (for fashion, obviously) without sweating like a pig, while also not having to cover myself head to toe in snow gear just so I don’t die when I go out for lunch. Absolutely fantastic.

Second, I have SO much to say about the Vibe itself. This is a bit specific, but I have this weird thing where I feel more conscious of my surroundings when I’m outside in autumn? Idk, maybe it’s the knowledge that this season and its beautiful sights are fleeting, maybe it’s just the fresh air, but I feel like I take in more detail about my environment when the wind has a chill bite to it and the leaves are pretty colours. I’d compare it to mindfulness.

Third, A E S T H E T I C. This is a dead horse that’s been beaten so much it’s practically dust at this point, but I am a SLUT for the autumn aesthetic. I mean come on, what’s there not to love? You’ve got the aforementioned pretty trees, orange everything, and of course, the spooky. My entire personal aesthetic is based completely off of the fall/Halloween experience. The crunch of a dead leaf underfoot. The swirling storm of fiery colour when the cool wind kicks up a cloud of leaves. The feeling of temporary, of cyclical decay, the last death rattle. The final stages of decomposition before the long dark, when all the land slips into dreamless sleep. The preparation, the stockpiling, the harvest. The stubborn hope burning in all things that says if all goes well, I will wake up. I will see the sun and the colours of life again.

But I’m a spooky bitch, so of course my absolute favourite part is Halloween. I mean seriously. It’s HALLOWEEN. It’s the one time of year where it’s socially acceptable and ENCOURAGED to revel in all things dark and morbid and creepy. Any other time of year, if I walked around in a black hooded robe and goat skull mask in the shadowy undergrowth of a city park, I’d probably get the cops called on me. But during October? Normal human behaviour, probably doing a photoshoot or something. I just love, LOVE the fact that we have an entire holiday dedicated to spooky ghosts and werewolves and vampires and murderers and giant fucking spiders everywhere. And the fact that it hasn’t been TOTALLY commercialized like other holidays is a really nice bonus for me. There’s no month-long reruns of tired Halloween carols on the radio, no Halloween advertisements telling you to buy all of this year’s Halloween merchandise (ok maybe a little bit of that but it’s tolerable) and there’s overall only a marginal amount of Halloween oversaturation in the media during the weeks leading up to it (at least as far as I’m aware, I don’t have cable TV). The most that big companies are willing to do to dip their fingers in the spooky money pot is some horror movie reruns on TV and some themed candy bars. Other than that (and the entirety of Spirit Halloween, being an outlier) corporations don’t really want to do more with Halloween because it’s by definition a dark, scary holiday with roots in dark, scary folklore, which I imagine is difficult to tap into while also keeping your company image squeaky-clean and stakeholder friendly. And that’s where I think the beauty of Halloween really shines.

See, I might be totally wrong about this, but in my experience, Halloween is very much a Folk Holiday. Yes, it’s extremely widespread and mainstream, but what I’m getting at is that it’s not as forced on us as something like Christmas. It’s still mostly in the hands of the public to decide whether they want to celebrate it or not. And, my god, they DO. Like I said earlier, it’s one of the few times where people are openly invited to explore the darker corners of the human experience. Not only that, but to have fun with it. It’s FUN to go to a haunted house. It’s FUN to dress up as shadowy revenants of death and try to scare the shit out of each other. Hell, it’s basically the only time of year that you can hype your friends up to go try and summon a demon in a graveyard or something without looking like a total psycho. It’s very much all around a fun thing to celebrate fear and the things which cause it, instead of just avoiding them altogether. You can also express yourself really freely, either dressing up as something you or other people find creepy, OR dressing up as something you love and have an interest in. It’s basically the international Cosplay Day. And there’s free candy. Incredible.

So yeah, that’s about it I think. Just thought I’d dump this on y’all since nobody else will listen to me ramble about Halloween for hours. Related: I need to know the cheapest place I can get a lot of chicken wings. For Halloween reasons.

#autumn #fall aesthetic #rant #Halloween #spooky #fall #longest post I’ve made so far tbh #this literally took me a week to write over my lunch breaks

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topknotstrunk · 10 months

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Review Everything 32 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Please note, this review briefly touches on simulated child abuse, and shows images of simulated animal abuse as well as discussing that topic with some depth. Please proceed with caution.

Hoo, boy. What to say about this movie. Let’s start with the neutral to good stuff.

This is a weird send off for this team. It’s the last Guardians of the Galaxy movie, which in and of itself I’m happy with. I think 3 movies plus some bonus screen time in other movies and shows was the perfect amount needed to complete these character’s arks. It was cool seeing Mantis come into her own as a fighter, teen jock Groot was fun, and I am SO EXTREMELY HAPPY that they didn’t have Quill and Gamora get together. The fight scenes were done with better than usual polish, it was nice to see long shots in the action scenes instead of the often defaulted to in Marvel formula of hit, cut, hit, cut, hit cut.

I also really enjoyed Gamora’s characterization here. She went from, “I don’t get why some version of me would love you piss the fuck off.” To, “I get it, but also, again, that wasn’t me so I’m gonna go do my own thing now.” I like that she’s her own person and not a story loophole for Marvel to get out of killing a character in a way that wasn’t supposed to be reversible. Keeping her her own character who’s not romantically interested in Quill makes her feel like her own person, and keeps the weight of the original Gamora being gone in tact.

Now on to the not so good to bad stuff.

Not So Good:

Having Mantis just out of nowhere, with no prior hints, be like, “Yeah I’m leaving.” Drax I get because he’s had this whole “used to be a Dad” thing going from the get go, but Mantis? She was thriving! And having Quill stop running is good-ish but like. He’s my least favorite character on this team, so when, at the end of the movie, they’re like, “Peter Quill will return.” I’m like. On Earth? Just chilling with his Grandpa? Doing normal Human stuff? As is, not a thing I’d bother to spend my time on. Not a thing I watch Marvel movies for.

Outside of the rest of what I’m going to write about the stuff with Rocket and his first set of friends, it was VERY weird to have the final movie in your trilogy have one of the core friends just gone for the majority of it. Not having rocket to interact with the rest of the team for their final movie together. I guess it works, cause like, it sets up that the Guardians team is kinda modular. As long as a few of the core folks are around they can make the team work. Saying that this was “always Rocket’s story” though? I don’t agree. The thing that works about this series is all of them playing off each other. As much as the movies frame Quill as the “main character” it just doesn’t feel like that when you watch these movies, at least to me.

The Bad:

Animal abuse is bad. Child abuse is bad. A movie where you child code anthropomorphic animals and then abuse them? Doesn’t make for a “bad” movie necessarily, but a hard to watch one. Honestly, if I had known how brutal and disturbing some of these scenes with Fllor , Teefs, Lylla , and Rocket were going to be I don’t know that I would have watched this movie. I cried though a lot of the half of the movie that’s Rocket’s backstory, and felt physically ill a few times. I’m greaful that they didn’t show us much of the actual surgeries, but I am sad that I’m gonna have to use Does The Dog Die from how on with Marvel Movies.

Let’s touch on Fllor as an example. She is the most heavily modified of the batch Rocket belongs to.

She has either part of her face missing or modifed, she’s had antentas attached to the top of her head, what looks like a second set of eyes, and robotic spider legs added on.

Now, here’s the thing. I “get” why Rocket was changed the way he was. Teefs and Lylla too. If you want a creature to navigate the world as a person when it’s an animal you need to change its body. It would be unrealistic for Teefs to move easily around a busy city that’s not under water as a walrus. So you give him wheels. The movie is so dark in those scenes that it’s hard to tell if he’s attached permanently to his wheel chair seat or not, but, like it as little as I do, that’s a choice that makes a sick kind of sense. Same thing for Lila, otters have short stubby arms that would make reaching things a struggle and they don’t have hands so adding some on, I get it.

But why the fuck does Fllor look like Fllor look like Jigsaw tried to make a spider cyborg? Is it for climbing, which we don’t really see her do? Rabits are already fast as fuck, so it can’t be for speed. They’re perfectly mobile and agile, so not for the same reasons that Teefs has for having wheels. And the thing over her face?

I think whoever designed her decided that the “upgrades” done to Lylla, Teefs, and Rockets weren’t... Gross? Upsetting? Gothic? Enough, so they took the cutest animal they could think of that we do real world animal testing on and made them look as fucked up as Disney would let them get away with.

Like, AFAIK Fllor isn’t in the comics. The closest thing we’ve got is Blackjack O’hare. And sure, he’s got cybernetic additions but they’re not needlessly gross or upsetting ones like Fllor has.

Floor was made up for the movie. Sot they had total freedom to do with her design whatever they wanted. And what they wanted was upsetting. So, ya know, I got upset.

They upped the gross factor for “Teefs”, Wal in the comics, and Lylla too but. I don’t know it’s just not the same as with Floor.

On top of being horribly modified animals, because this is a flashback and the characters are young, they’re also children. Children we get to see shoved around, screamed at, and shot. Alongside rapid, painful body changes, decapitation, gas lighting, and on screen immolation of other animals in similar situations. And this is all before we watch many animal-people die on screen as their entire planet is rased to the ground and crowds of children being trapped in cages in the cargo hold of a ship like they’re goods, not people. The movie just keeps piling on the longer it goes.We’re even treated to a nice, long, juicy close up of The High Evolutionary face after Rocket has torn it off. Normally body horror in movies really doesn’t bother me, but after all the awful animal stuff I just about barfed when his face popped up on screen. And there’s no real catharsis for any of this shit, which you would expect from the end of a series. You don’t need to go this far to convince us that these characters were honorably abused. Between everyone in America understanding that animals are abused in real life, and Neblula saying that it was worse than what Thanos did to her, that would have been enough. We don’t need to see them get abused on screen multiple times. It feels like torture porn, it feels unnecessary. I also really don’t get why Fllor, Teefs, and Lylla all had to die. Like, was it to help Rocket move on? The could have been dumped somewhere by their careless creator to come back later, and have a moment of reuniting and them owning their lives, instead of all getting murdered and then helping Rocket with a few kind words in the space between life and The Endless Sky.

And listen, I get it. The movie was impactful. So if shock value was the main thing they were going for here they got it. It was just a big let down to me personally, after the masterpiece that was Vol.2, and coming from the Found Family TM part of the MCU. Animal abuse isn’t fun, child abuse is worse, but it feels like the movie fell short by showing us all this graphic content and then not doing anything about it. Rocket looses half his friends at the end of the movie because they go off and do other things, they shot and killed his first set of friends instead of exploring what cool stories they might have to tell in the MCU, and then the movie kind of just peters out with them standing around in a room and talking, then going their separate ways. Will Rocket make a good leader? No idea, his history doesn’t suggest so. Taking care of Groot and being a good team member does not a leader make. Will we see more of Rocket? What will that look like? It feels so incomplete, like a 4th movie was being set up for only for it to not happen.

And the movie was so difficult to watch that I doubt I’ll ever watch it again.

What an unfortunate send off for many of these characters.

Really, why was I made to sit through all of that. What did I get out of it? Or Rocket? Or his friends?

In Summary: What a weird and gross way to end one of my favorite Marvel things. Good for Drax and Gamora, Mantis and Quill who knows, and Rocket I hope we see more of in the future. It’s too bad that Marvel now has gone over my personal threshold for disturbing content and I’ll have to be careful about that after 15 years of it not being an issue. There was some pretty great stuff in the not animal abuse parts of the movie, and I wish Rocket had been there for more if it.

4/10

#review everything - movies #review everything #marvel #guardians of the galaxy vol. 3 #guardians of the galaxy #movies #fandom #disney #review #spoilers #cw animal abuse #cw child abuse #cw #content warning #text #gifs #not queued

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moemoemammon · 3 years

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Following that "least favorite" request could we get their reactions to being to told that they're their favorite, but to not tell the other brothers so their feelings don't get hurt? Maybe because they relate to them the most or just get along really well. Thanks!

You're My Favorite! But Don't Tell the Others-

(Feat. GN!MC and the Demon Bros)

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Lucifer

There are no words to explain the overwhelming satisfaction ion Lucifer’s face after you tell him that. Of course, it’s only natural that he would be your favorite, all things considered.

The Avatar of Pride won’t ever forget this moment. He carefully considers your words and agrees not to tell anyone, as much as he’d love to bring it up, because he knows more than anyone what kind of chaos would ensue should the others (especially Mammon) find out.

But they can tell something’s up when the eldest has been heard humming all day. He moves about the house with even more grace than usual, and hasn’t scowled even once.

But the REAL shocker was when Mammon tried hiding a bill right as Lucifer walked in... and the eldest let him off with a warning. A WARNING! The brothers thought the Devildom must’ve frozen over, but you and he knew different.

“MC, I would like you to accompany me to Le Pluvier this afternoon, once you've finished your studies. I've already made reservations, so be sure to get ready on time. I've made sure to consider the things you might like to eat, so I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself. Don't be late." "...I'm grinning? I don't know what you're talking about."

Mammon

The gigantic grin on Mammon’s face is so bright, it could rival the sun. You’ve seriously made his day. No, his year. Actually, he’s pretty sure he could ride this high for the next millennia! There’s nothing in this world that could dampen his spirits right now!

He feels like he just won big at the casino! Of course he’s your favorite! He WAS your first demon, and now he’s gone and claimed his rightful spot as your number one! Good luck trying to keep him from saying anything. Mammon’s gonna throw it around in everyone’s faces for as long as he can milk it.

And you thought he was clingy before, just wait till you see how he treats you after hearing that. Despite always calling you his ‘servant’ or his ‘human’, you’d think your roles were reversed. Mammon spoils you every chance he gets, buying you clothes and trinkets, filling the spaces in your room with the things he knows you like, monopolizing you completely until nearly everything you own is a gift from him.

Your words also help soothe that jealousy of his a little. Only a little, though. It’s easier to watch you talk to other demons when he knows he’ll always be your first man.

“Didja really have to stay after class that long? I know you were talkin' to that demon that lent you a book, but you outta ask ME for stuff! Tch... you're lucky I'm in a good mood today! But I guess I don't have to worry about some low level demon like that, seein' as I'm your favorite!"

Levi

Wait wait wait....Come again? Did you seriously just say what he think you said..? That had to be a mistake! Some kind of...uh..verbal typo! Because there’s absolutely, positively, NO WAY in all of the nine layers that he could be your favorite demon. And yet you still insist that you’re telling the truth, and Levi feels like he’s died and gone to heaven.

Red faced and stammering up a storm, Levi looks like he might die. Is it really okay for a shut-in otaku to feel this giddy? Seriously, he hasn’t felt like this since he got his hands on a signed copy of a Ruri Hana audio drama! No no, this definitely beats that!

You’ve managed to inflate his nearly nonexistent ego, and now he feels like there’s nothing he can’t do! Maybe he could even go to Majolish right now?? THAT’S how good he’s feeling!

Almost as bad as Mammon in keeping it a secret. He doesn’t tell anyone right away, but they’re suspicious when they notice how much time he’s spending out of his room. And then when he and Mammon get in another petty argument, he drops the bomb that he’s your favorite demon in the entire Devildom, and you can guess how things go from there.

“Uuuoooo...!!!!! I've decided..! Since I've got a serious stat buff, I'm going to open a booth at the next convention coming up..! I'll sell my Ruri-chan fan art and spread her influence all over the Devildom! I'd never have the guts to do it normally, but I feel like I could do anything right now! Y-you'll go too, won't you MC?"

Satan

You nearly made this man spit tea all over his book, and now he’s coughing and spluttering and trying to figure out what could’ve prompted what he’s taking as a confession. You.. do realize what you’re saying, don’t you? And you know the kind of effect your words have on him?

Satan isn’t the type that wears his heart on his sleeve, so you have to look for his subtle expressions to tell how he’s feeling. But there’s nothing subtle about the redness of his ears and how he’s begging you not to look at him right now. For the sake of his sanity, give him a minute to recoup.

When he does recover, he agrees to keep it a secret for obvious reasons. And it’s hard to tell that he’s in a good mood, other than the fact that he hasn’t tried to pull any pranks on Lucifer lately. But Asmo sees all, and literally hounds him into spilling the tea.

He tells him a lie of course, but now the other brothers are noticing just how happy he is. Satan's smiling way too much today, isn't he? And he didn't even get mad when Beel got whipped cream on his jacket! Well, not THAT mad, anyway.

"Haaah... everyone's been harassing me all day, claiming I'm smiling a lot. I'm sure I look the same as I always do, but I'll admit that I've been happy ever since you told me that this morning. Wait.. you did think I've been grinning too, do you? I have??"

Asmo

Asmo always jokes about being your favorite and announces it as if the two of you are married, but when you actually confirm that his longing for you isn’t one sided, he ends up smearing lip balm across his cheek in shock. Did you... really say that just now? He knew it all along, but hearing it like that is just...!

Ooooh, he’s so happy he can hardly contain himself! Asmo throws his arms around you, peppering your face in kisses until you feel sticky from lip balm, wipes your face clean, then marks it up all over again. Good luck getting rid of him, because he might never let go.

Immediately posts it to Devilgram. Did you really think he’d let such a momentous occasion go unannounced? You must not have been paying attention to the kind of person he is! Asmo would put you on a pedestal in front of the world like a precious jewel if he were able, but this’ll have to do. He won’t hide his love at all!

Of course, the others don’t take too kindly to it, not that he cares. He never leaves your side, pampers you like crazy, and has even attempted to get you to move into his room. Lucifer put an immediate stop to that, though. Boo...

“I just can't get enough of you, MC! Just being near you gets me so excited that I can hardly stand it! You'll take responsibility for what you're doing to me, won't you? And in exchange, I'll take my time showing you just how much I love you. After all, you're my favorite, too!"

Beel

Beel never has a problem with choking while he eats, and it comes as naturally as breathing. Unfortunately neither of that applies right now, since you just made him choke on a meatball sub.

He usually takes your words with quiet acceptance, but this might be the most emotion you've ever witness from the stoic demon. His eyes are wider than that time that laid on an entire gingerbread mansion, sparkling up with such deep emotion you wouldn't be surprised if he cried. Instead he softens up and immediately embraces you.

...And doesn't let go. Sandwich long forgotten, he's been carrying you around all day, and ignoring any questions or protests from his brothers. Also insists on feeding you throughout the day. The food tastes better when he can enjoy it with you, so why not just bring you everywhere?

When he isn't carrying you, he's following you around subconsciously, either close up against you like a protective wall, or just far enough that you're within his line of sight. As far as not telling anyone, he... tells Belphie immediately. It was an accident though, since there's not much he keeps from his twin.

"MC, I won a meal ticket for Godevil Chocolatier. Let's get something for dessert today. Ah, you can get as much as you want, too. I really want to see what things you choose. They might become my favorites."

Belphie

There's nothing in this world that can wake Belphegor from his sleep, unless he allows it. No loud noises, no amount of shaking or smacking, and not even dragging him around the house. But the moment you whisper that he's your favorite demon, the Avatar of Sloth is wide awake.

Hey, you're not just saying weird things to get a reaction, are you? Because if so, this is a new level of cruel. Yet you confirm that you mean it and swear him into secrecy, and Belphie tries his best not to show how happy he is. A smile keeps creeping up on his face that he struggles to force down. It's annoying...

As funny as it’d be to tell everyone the news, he's good at keeping secrets. Instead, you've noticed that he's been sleeping a little less that before. When he does take one of his hundreds of naps, he finds some way to be closer to you. He's even been seen sleepwalking to your exact location somehow-

It's hard for him to believe that you're not teasing, though. How could HE be your favorite demon here? Belphie doesn't do anything special to win you over, yet after everything he put you through, you like him enough to deep him your favorite?

"You're weird, MC. I mean... me? I won't deny that I'm really happy though, but I guess I'm in disbelief. You should spoil me even more until I believe you. Lend me your lap for a few hours, okay?" "...I wonder what Lucifer would think if I told him, heheh."

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thegeminisage · 3 years

Text

one of many reasons castiel spent the first year of knowing dean trying not to strangle him: dean's weird little winchester-only dialect

i’m fucking obsessed with this right now, so buckle in for a meta. a cool fun (horrible) thing about dean's dialogue is that a good 90% of what comes out of his mouth is:

a pop culture reference ("you're just gonna take some divine bong hit, and shazam, you're roma downey?")

references to real life phenomenon ("i don't wanna wake up missing a kidney in a bathtub full of ice" "try new mexico, i hear he’s on a tortilla")

these also often take the form of nicknames, and dean has a tendency to give people nicknames in general or call them something besides their given name, whether it’s affectionate or rude ("easy there, van damme" "so i’m girl interrupted" furthermore castiel = cas, ezekiel = zeke, etc, see also frequent use of "chucklehead" "asshat" and on the nicer/endearments end "buddy" "pal" "sunshine" etc)

an idiom ("a snowball's chance" "if it smells like a duck...")

slang ("drinking the koolaid" "jonesing for some hooch" not to mention the literal endless amount of words dean uses to refer to killing - gank, waste, juice, ice, etc)

a metaphor ("power up your batteries" "fly me back to my page on the calendar")

a euphemism ("cloud seeding" "i'd have given you an hour alone with her first")

sarcasm (his habit of replying "peachy" or "super" when asked how he is)

wordplay (see: the entire "vampirate" and "werepire" debacles)

completely nonsensical (guessing what happened to a magical artifact: "it was dug up by tomb raiders? it was seized by the king of the dead by warlords?")

said at lightning speed - if you pay attention, dean actually talks a LOT, usually a mile a minute (this makes me feel a way when you recall him being nonverbal for a year at age 4 but that’s another post)

slang IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (casual usage of “guano,” etc)

a lie, a deflection, a joke, etc

or worse, something dean’s NOT saying, deliberately, because he’s one of the most repressed people on earth

the end result of all this being:

dean winchester is utterly infuckingcomprehensible.

think about this. there's an ENTIRE SECTION on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE PAGE of the spn wiki devoted to JUST explaining dean's pop culture references, because the average viewer won't have seen everything he's talking about either. they have a whole page for this called “hunter’s lingo,” but honestly, it’s not all hunters, just sam and dean’s fucking batshit communication style. even i don't understand dean half the time. SAM gets it, sam speaks it back to dean a lot in the early seasons, but that's because sam and dean are 1. practically two halves of the same person 2. FREAKS. every time we get an episode that involves outsider POV is devoted to them going "what the fuck is WRONG with them?"

enter castiel. technically speaking, the show implies that angels are omnilingual. castiel should understand every language known to man, but knowing the meaning of words doesn't help him understand the following:

pop culture references

references to real life phenomenon

nicknames

idioms

slang

metaphors

euphemisms

sarcasm

wordplay

you get the idea.

listen to me. look me in the eyes. castiel cannot understand a single fucking word that comes out of dean's mouth. my guy laid a hand on dean winchester in hell and immediately fell in love with him and has no fucking idea what he's talking about ever. because not only is dean winchester's way of speaking CLINICALLY insane, and sometimes incomprehensible even to other human beings who are not sam, castiel is an angel, and someone prone to taking things even more literally than other angels do

go back and watch and watch seasons 4-5 especially. the reason cas does so much squinting and head tilting is because every time dean opens his mouth castiel has to open up his mental "dean winchester dictionary" and translate entire paragraphs on the fly, because again, dean never shuts up!

what makes this extra hilarious to me is this gem:

this line is from 5.13. at this point cas has known dean for AN ENTIRE YEAR AND A HALF. what you see here is my guy SNAPPING. cas made an EFFORT in this scene. he asked who glenn close was. he's telling dean that he can't understand him. he is doing his level best to have a normal conversation with this guy he has a crush on and for the life of him he cannot do it (equal but opposite energy to cas blowing up the gas station and motel room in 4.01, tbh)

yes, cas can understand dean's tone. he can use context clues, and he usually gets the general idea. and when cas DOES understand dean's jokes, he laughs at them. the first time we ever see him smile is during their 4.07 heart-to-heart when dean says "it was a witch, not the tet offensive." since cas has knowledge of human history, he knows what the tet offensive is; he got the joke, and he laughed.

but as far as actual dialogue goes, he consistently struggles to keep up. even after metatron gives castiel the pop culture knowledge in season 9, cas struggles to put it to put it to proper use (dean: "you wanna just walk right into the death star?" cas: "what does a fictional battle station have to do with this?"). whenever he asks dean to clarify it's always when he’s most annoyed, like most of the time he knows it would be futile but he's too annoyed to care. (dean: "i don't know who's on first, what's on second!" cas: "what IS second???") i’m pretty sure he spends seasons 4-6 wanting to shake dean by the shoulders and ask him why he is LIKE THIS.

it takes cas - who, again, is omnilingual - YEARS to begin to acclimate to dean’s speech and start speaking that language back to him. it's season 8 before we start really hearing him use slang, season 9 before he begins to understand wordplay, season 10 before he starts using pop culture references (to other angels, who immediately fail to understand him, which disappoints him immensely), and season 11 before he really gets into metaphors. i don't remember what season he started using "yeah" instead of "yes" but i do know it took a really damn long time.

and honestly, i don't think cas truly got the hang of it until at least season 11-12. that's something like 7 or 8 YEARS. it’s more than half the time they’ve known each other at the point of the series finale.

so what's true romance, fellas? it's falling completely and totally in love with the most inexplicable person you will ever meet in your whole 4.5 billion year life, even though you have yet to understand a single thing he's ever said to you. thank you for coming to my ted talk

[spn masterpost]

#destiel #dean winchester #castiel #deancas #supernatural #liz's meta #liz makes stuff #liz's spn stuff #i have a whole other thing about how cas will code switch when he's around angels vs humans but this post is already way too long #seriously debated waiting and posting this in the morning because i want people to reblog it but fuck it! 2am meta.#season 5 cas: completely in love: i have no idea what the fuck you're saying to me. i love you. i'm going to kill you. why are you like thi

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