#So I have a severe sinus infection right now and you know whats really fun? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sierrabinondo · 4 years

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2020

damn my last tumblr post is the last day of woodland creatures, did i not do a 2019 wrap up?? i feel like i did. oh well lmao

so, arguably the most tumultuous year in modern history (at least, american history- all pandemic and political events considered) is about to come to a close. it was very not fun experiencing a pandemic as millions lost their loved ones to covid. i was part of the 20% of people that became unemployed as a result of the economy taking a huge dump. i would not want to experience this same year again if it meant that every life lost could be saved. with the year i was given, i made the best out of it that i could.

like every other person on this earth (except for where the virus was already spreading), this year started out normal as hell for me. i was hating my job but chugging through each week, with the occasional show to worry about and then planning our band’s 2020 release plans. despite my salaried job, i was barely making enough to put anything away in savings, forthcoming disney trip aside. i really felt like i was putting in all this work at a full time job just to barely stay afloat and it grated at my soul. i don’t dream of labor, and i only take jobs like this because nothing i am passionate about truly makes money and the marketing jobs i would actually care about are never available to me/never come to fruition after submitting myself for consideration.

disney was a huge highlight of my year despite being deathly sick. i keep wondering if i had covid (i never figured it out), but it sure as hell felt like it. i feel like if i did have it i would have passed it on to jeremiah and his family but i didn’t. i could still kinda taste, but not smell because i had the worst sinus infection i ever had in my entire fucking life. like i know i get them a lot but really, holy shit. i really had it bad. it started when we were in the studio the 2nd to last weekend of february on the last studio day. i had to go back to the studio several months later because i was that unsatisfied with how the vocals came out. i didn’t want to fuck up these releases and have my performance be mid so i was willing to pay to have to re-do everything. i assumed if this was like any other sinus infection, it would go away in a week.

lmao.

i had that infection for THREE WHOLE FUCKING WEEKS. i played a show with that monster sinus infection, and went to disney with it. i went two weeks without meds because i really was convinced it would go away on its own. before we left for disney i finally got antibiotics at urgent care and couldn’t drink most of the trip which sucked. but that finally did the job, and the infection waned when we returned from disney. despite being physically weak, in pain (there was one friday my body pains were so horrible that jeremiah contemplated taking me to the hospital), and leaking snot all over my sleeves the entire trip (LIKE IT WAS THAT UNCONTROLLABLE. I HAD NEVER GONE THROUGH THAT MANY PACKS OF TISSUES IN MY LIFE. I WAS LEAKING SO MUCH I HAD TO LOCATE THE BABY CHANGING STATION IN MAGIC KINGDOM. IT WAS LIKE A SECRET STERILIZED TROVE OF HAND SANITIZER, WIPES, TISSUES AND BABY OIL.) i had an amazing time at disney. and it was my first time going with a significant other so it was incredibly fun. it was also a wonderful opportunity to spend time with his family. the only very not fun part was missing our nephew in the main street parade because some bozos fucked up the info they gave my sister-in-law and we were out walking around when his high school band had actually marched earlier than we thought.

it’s funny, because that weekend after we returned was the last weekend of “freedom” everyone had before lockdown. we were weary of covid while in florida but still living it up on vacation. at that time, there had only been 3 cases in orlando. 3!!!! i had plans to go to a party once home but i cancelled only because i still wasn’t completely out of the woods and 100% well again. i felt so bad cancelling because it was for my friend’s party and she never really did parties usually :( and i thought it wouldn’t be a good idea considering i may or may not have had covid.

then... the following week came.

monday we got a weird email from our CEO saying there was going to be salary cuts and that it was essential for the company to survive a downturn. i pouted but my parents consoled me saying it was better than nothing; maybe look for a new job. and then- i got the nothing! a day or two later, i was let go. and i could tell my manager was absolutely not souped to be giving me this call at all. she literally prefaced it like, “this sucks, but-” and gave me the news. and i was utterly devastated, sobbing controllably, because i was just scraping by on this income to begin with. and i had JUST, finally, received health insurance through this job. i was asked to continue working through friday the 20th, which i would be paid for, and then i would have to return my laptop and any other work materials (like printouts and promo stuff) i had possession of.

that day and the days following i had coworkers calling me or emailing me telling me they were so sorry. i was the first to be let go, and they were kind enough to extend words of encouragement to me. clients i worked closely with, a couple of them around my age, assured me that i could use them as a reference. many of my colleagues were my higher-ups, but were very down-to-earth people. one call that stuck out to me was from my colleague sarah.

sarah was candid with me and said, “y’know how i was unemployed for 6 months?” i knew this well though we had only worked together for a year and a half; it was an important part of her path to where she was in her career now and why she chose it. she continued, “those were the best 6 months of my life.”

and i would come to find out that yes, me too being unemployed was the best fucking time of my entire goddamn adult life.

when i posted i was officially unemployed i had an outpouring of support from my friends, and received enough animal crossing commissions to pay one month’s rent. the first day i finally felt peace was when i was sitting on my porch on an abnormally warm march day playing animal crossing following my last day at my company. it was like the universe was giving me a hug and telling me everything was going to be all right.

what would come was a pretty chaotic couple of months. jeremiah, my roommate and i would stay up until 3 am either watching anime or playing video games, subsequently sleeping until 11 am or noon. pair having fun, drinking (mostly me lmao) and lounging about with the scary realization that thousands of people every day were dying of covid and it could be my high-risk parents. i would cry at night and be so fucking scared. my sibling would tell me my family was being reckless, running unnecessary errands, and whenever my dad showed up to drop off food or necessities i would cry because i couldn’t hug him. i’m even getting choked up thinking about it now. and it was a fear that returned during the second spike around the holidays because it is the loss i fear the most.

amidst this really horrible time, i would play games almost every other night online with my friends and it was so much fucking fun because all of us were either unemployed, furloughed or working from home. we’d laugh so goddamn hard our voices were hoarse. one of my favorite memories is playing quiplash with the creatureposting gang and then my big friends from college. and a really fun night in particular was SIIE release night, i popped a bottle of champagne and got absoluely zonked lmao. every few days i would have something to look forward to, some sort of virtual plans with my friends. this would continue until july when my friends were slowly starting to go back to work.

most of my early quarantine days were as follows: wake up, watch anime, work on commissions for most of the day, order extremely good food for delivery, play video games, and then bed. at one point commissions became so overwhelming i started to get slower at churning them out. though this became a daunting project, WOW it really forced me to become a better artist. and this year i got to spend so much more time drawing, which was fantastic.

one thing i DID NOT spend a lot of time on at all? ugh. MUSIC. FUCKING MUSIC. i barely touched my guitar, stopped writing lyrics after july, and barely completed the instrumentals for about 3 songs. the only thing i consistently practiced was singing (because i would literally curl up and die if i didn’t). do you have any idea how much i blabbed to my therapist in 2019 about how much i would get done if i didn’t work full time and could just focus on my creative endeavors? and then life HANDED that shit to me on a silver platter the following year. i really did nothing insane musically with my time. and now i am really kicking myself for it. if i think about it, it was mostly because i was so exhausted from doing AC commissions, and partly because i was really intimidated about the prospect of struggling through songwriting. now i really wish that i had tried.

one thing i started doing this year was streaming. i originally planned to just do it for fun, because i am horrible at video games and i really didn’t expect much out of it. i thought it would be cool if my friends could watch me play animal crossing. and then i unfortunately learned that this 3rd expensive pasttime is actually really, really, really fun. i started to spend half my week streaming and it led me to either getting closer to some online friends i only talked to a lil previously and making new friends. viewers would ask me if i continue to stream after the pandemic was over, and i enthusiastically assured them i would. and i meant it. even with the difficulties of returning to work and the band playing shows again considered, i really wanted to. i don’t get invited to things anymore anyway, so fuck it if that’s what i stand to lose lmao.

when the curve flattened in jersey i decided to become lenient again and start meeting with my bandmates. we spent the year trying to finish some new material and chip away at what work we have to do for the full length (yes, a full length). we had plans to tour this year and it sucks that fell through. we also had plans to do so much more content during the pandemic and we faltered under the stress of... well, existing in a pandemic. we did finally get to drop a new single though, and the difference in hype now vs when we dropped our last work was incredible. i am so thankful we were able to build an audience with nothing new for two years. i still often beat myself up because god every day i look around me, at our peers, and wonder where the fuck we’ve gone wrong to have such a slow build. and even daily just trying to stand out and prove that we have cut our teeth/deserve a chance is so demoralizing. i feel like it’s even worse than before. i literally have to talk to myself out loud, both alone and during interviews lmao, to remind myself that we truly have accomplished so much. and to take in and appreciate the little positive things. because this could all be over in a second. and this won’t be forever. the older we get the more we are risking for this, both time and resources, and it won’t do to let myself get bogged down over my inner competitive voice. but god it’s hard. like even with new music we still didn’t even TOUCH any of the goal numbers we set for ourselves in may. though we did put out less music than we had planned, and we really hope to change that in 2021 forreal.

there was a single we were supposed to put out this year that’s on hold due to some pending assets but goddamn. if we really don’t break some sort of ceiling with this one i don’t know what will. i have the strongest gut feeling about the next single and in my opinion, it’s the best one we’ve had to date. when we play it at shows, the air in the room sometimes shifts. i’m eager to see what the response is and i’m so ready to push it with everything i have.

fuck this is getting so much longer than i planned i have to try to wrap this up lmao.

with our government stimmy money we turned around and got the dog of our dreams. we figured, i’d be home enough to watch him, and it was finally goddamn time. it’s why we moved into a house and not into another apartment. i was so scared meeting the puppy parents, and totally on edge the entire day. we went out to meet the breeder to test my allergies and see how i would react. samoyeds are not 100% perfectly hypoallergenic, but they were often lauded for being so. honestly? i still didn’t feel confident after two hours with the dogs because the pollen out there was bad (one of my WORST allergies) and i had mysterious hives on my arms i couldn’t figure out where they came from. for months jeremiah and my parents had to calm my nerves and remind me i lived with 3 cats before i moved out (i’m more allergic to cats) and that i would be fine. i had to do a lot of work on myself to get out of my own way about being excited about finally owning the dog of my dreams.

this little fucking boy. i couldn’t believe he was real. neither in the pictures i often looked at about 20 times a day on the breeder’s facebook page nor when we went to meet him. and he was truly, truly perfect. our little shithead. when we went to go pick him out, he sat apart from his puppy pile of brothers, sniffing around the room and trying to rip off his ribbon collar. we locked eyes and he fuCKING APPROACHED ME. i could not fathom any other puppy in the room being brawly. this was the one. we could already tell he was a mischevious smartass, because once he untied his ribbon he proceeded to rip off the ribbons of all the other puppies. but he was the cutest, flopping over on his back when you were near to get belly rubs.

ever since we have picked him up he has simultaneously been the biggest joy in our lives and the most source of stress lmao. that first week, and the next couple, werE FUCKING ROUGH. i had a horrible anxiety attack when i couldn’t calm him for bedtime the first saturday he was home and i was loudly sobbing to jeremiah that i couldn’t handle this shit lmao. he was so scared i was having regrets but i am just a fucking anxious wreck and not used to having a DOG!! this is my first dog!!! but while i can remember what life was like before him i cannot imagine going back. the first time he got sick and we took him to the emergency vet i cried so hard. when he is wagging his tail happy to see me and he looks like a fuckin seal because his ears are folded back it is the best feeling. i’m so excited for when he gets older and we’re vaccinated for covid so that we can take him on so many adventures. he is truly the best.

there is so much more i want to say but this is long as shit. this is even painful for me to read lmao. it’s always been for me, a guy with dogshit memory, to remember everything, but so, so much happened. so i’m gonna wrap up the real descriptive stuff with this.

being unemployed allowed me to just experience life. to wake up each day, enjoy the sun in my backyard, have time to try new recipes, go for long walks, GET A DOG, get better at art, get better at singing, spend more time with friends (virtually), bond even harder with my amazing, beautiful boyfriend, create amazing work with my bandmates, improve at video games, connect with people all over the world, and so much more. all my life i let money dictate my every move. i am insanely privileged to have experienced this but when i had to just live within my means off unemployment i did just fine. i once believed i was perpetually indebted to my employer when i was discarded like it was nothing. i can get a job anywhere and be fine. it strengthened my class consciousness and while i have control over my own destiny it is our country that has so royally screwed us of living the lives we should be living. our lives do not revolve around labor. so until we win the fight and get what we deserve, i will be returning to work next month (full time... in commercial real estate.... again), but i will do whatever it takes to replicate the everlasting feeling of joy i felt this year for the rest of my godforsaken life. if that means struggling for 2021 to build up my twitch channel and the band, working 9 hour days and then streaming/writing music for another 4, so be it. i felt from a young age i was not destined to live a normal life and that feeling has stayed with me no matter how much i have tried to play the game of life as i have been told. i finally have the confidence to pave the life i want.

so, if you are here at this very spot because you read everything, thank you. if you are here because you scrolled to see how long this was, here’s the TLDR of my best parts of 2020:

- tapping out cover

- the 2 shows we played lmao, maybe 3 tops

- disneyworld

- ACNH outside on the porch on release day in warm weather

- making banana bread

- learning how to BRINE meats

- watching anime until 3 am, namely the time we watched pokemon journeys until 3 am

-watching so. much. anime.

-watching livestream concerts with my friends (the chon one was a real good time)

-playing jackbox with my creatureposting friends, the volcano saga (if u know u know)

-playing jackbox with my big friends

-the first time we ever had panchos and juanchos

-finally having sushi again after painful cravings and being grumpy

-the first time we had chinese food again after the lockdown began

-hitting the punching bag for the first time in forever (my dad bought me one)

-the first time we had ramen in forever

-surprising joe with cake at his doorstep for his birthday (we thought he would be the only one with a pandemic birthday lmao)

-playing monopoly and wheel of fortune on the switch, surprisingly having fun

-jeremiah’s birthday

-getting PAID for my ART

-writing + recording ONE (1) acoustic demo

-finally finishing the singles, fixing the vocals

-shooting band promos

-unus annus

-meeting samoyeds

-meeting BRAWLY

-streaming except for the times 13 year olds cyberbullied me

-my birthday when my mom got me a terrifying singing birthday candle contraption and my sibling curbstomped the shit out of it (i was literally crying laughing like that kind of noiseless laugh cause you’re laughing that hard)

- getting the stamp of approval from andrew wells and anthony green

-my friends having their first baby!!!

-dying from thanksgiving charceuterie board

-that week i binged ghibli movies on an hbo max trial and did nothing else

-filling the front porch with plants and most of them SURVIVING the fall, possibly winter but we’ll see in 2021 lmao

- (in general) nailing riffs i fucking sing over and over when practicing but prob won’t get down good enough to sing in front of others lmao

-solo inflatable pool hangs

-thursdays with sarah in the fall playing with the puppy

-the release of the first WSA single in two and a half years

-virtual movie night with sarah watching happiest season

-the music video shoots

-brawly experiencing CHRISTMAS

-receiving really thoughtful gifts from jerry and my parents

-deciding i would work towards being a full time streamer to supplement being a musician

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traumatized-motherfuckers · 4 years

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Stress-based sickness, psychosomatic disorders, and the F word. Fibromyalgia.

Read up or listen up @t-mfrs.com (podcast available wherever you stream.)

Waking up, like I didn’t sleep for weeks. Falling asleep after five minutes on my feet. A pounding head. That sense of dread. Sticky sharp pains through in my shoulders and neck. Brain short on energy, missing a few cards from the deck. Waves of nausea and stomach cramps. Chills and sweats, depending on the body amps. Swollen lymph nodes. Muscle weakness poorly bodes. Insatiable hunger but nothing sounds edible - shit, now desire to throw up is incredible. Eyes shriveling, dry, back into my skull. The aches in my legs, pulsing and dull. Foggy thoughts. Racing heart. When will this end, why did this start?

Did I finally catch the ‘rona? Or am I just past my limit for being stressed out again? Well, I just moved, so this time I know that the answer is very likely… stressed.

So who wants to talk about getting sick? Yeah, among this group, the answer might be surprising. A lot of us do.

Why? Not because we love bitching and complaining when we feel less than ideal - spoilers, that’s every day, there’s really nothing left to say about the raging shit storms inside of us after a few years of it. We’re tired of hearing about it, too… just like we’re tired of living it, feeling it, and fearing it.

No, for us, it’s because it feels like there’s always a surprising ailment right around the corner when we least expect it. One that seemingly has no logical basis or reasonable solution. One that no one else understands. One that feels like it’s born of mental illness, somehow, while being very physically present. One that we don’t even bother bringing to doctors anymore, because no one needs to be shamed and shoved out the door again by their flippant disinterest in anything we say after the words, “Yes, I have anxiety.”

Yep. If you haven’t tried to mingle mental health with western medicine before, let me give you a quick disclaimer: unless you’re missing an arm, don’t bother. In my experience, the only thing you’ll get is an eye roll, possibly a prescription bandaid that somehow makes you feel worse, and a bored recommendation to see a psychiatrist - even if you already do.

All of this, of course, has the effect of only making you feel more upset. First, mentally, as you ruminate over the disrespect of essentially being called a liar just because the doctor doesn’t have enough training. Then, physically, as your increased stress and systemic arousal pushes your body into a new level of overdrive.

Oh, was it a mindfuck just to make the doctor appointment, get yourself there, and deal with the social anxiety of a waiting room for 30-120 minutes? I bet it felt great for someone to then invalidate your health concerns, recommend you calm down, and send you out the door without even looking you in the eye. Feeling more upset, now on a highly emotional basis? Enjoy the shame, hypertension, and lost sleep, as if you needed any more of that.

Today, I want to talk about the stress-central area of my health that hasn’t been completely figured out… and the label that I - embarrassingly - just recently learned is highly applicable to my physical condition.

But also, the outrage that I feel over said label, because, well, it explains nothing. In fact, if anything, it probably does all of us a huge disservice after we’re granted this diagnosis by pushing us into the express lane for being written off. It also separates two issues that are poorly explained, rather than combining them into one full picture that might actually yield answers. Oh, and should I mention that I think this is a larger problem of gender bias in the healthcare system? Yeah, why the fuck not. Might as well air all my grievances as a nice lead-in to another upcoming episode; is mental illness diagnosis skewed by gender?

I don’t want to let my pounding head and aching shoulders deter me too much, so let’s just get started.

History of ailments

I’ve talked about this before, but to briefly cover how fucked up this body is… let’s take a trip back to 2013 when my system failed me out of the blue. And by “out of the blue,” I mean that I had chronically overworked myself running on anxiety, obligation, and starvation for 2 years, leading to physiological revolt.

So, looking back, “duh.”

But at the time? This was all-new. It was crisis-inducing and beyond comprehension that I went from a perfectly healthy, physically resilient, surprisingly strong and low maintenance specimen to a chronically pained, systemically ill, digestively impaired, and constantly exhausted sack of wallowing self-hated.

After a lifetime of zero health concerns, I found myself bedridden and obsessed with every weird thing my body was doing to me. Which, as you’ve probably guessed, came hand in hand with the new weird things my brain was doing to me.

You’ve probably heard the “What IS CPTSD?” episode by now, so I’m guessing you’re not a stranger to the details about the common emergence of complex trauma symptoms. Yes, that’s based on a lot of research, but it’s also a throwback to my own experience. I was a long time depression and anxiety lurker, first time complex trauma contributor around age 23, when my brain was suddenly uprooted by a series of new social and therapy-based traumas.

My depression became debilitating negative self-regard and stronger suicidal ideation. Suddenly, my social anxiety became agoraphobia. My new health issues became topics of obsessive and intrusive thoughts… you know, when I wasn’t ruminating about my role in every trauma, my worthlessness as a human, and my recently-unsettled childhood memories. My early twenties were a great time.

And with all the mental strain, came the unresolvable insomnia. Which fed right into the health problems. Which circled back to spark more mental duress. Health anxiety is not a fun way to live.

So, to call my illnesses psychosomatic is completely appropriate. But, also, completely insulting when a western medicine practitioner utters the phrase as if it was a turd slowly coming out the wrong end. And that’s exactly what happened every time I tried to seek help.

To be clear - back in the day I had some very easily detectable physical problems. I understand that doctors have a difficult job when it comes to interpreting the immeasurable inner experiences that their patients detail, but that wasn’t entirely the case here. When your body stops digesting food, well, there’s some evidence to prove that it’s a fact. When a 96oz medical grade laxative used for colonoscopy prep results in zero percent colon cleanse… uh… somebody isn’t doing their duty (pun intended). And boy, did my digestive system just decide that it was DONE doing its only job.

Everything I ate seemed to spark unpleasant physical responses, but moving materials through my guts and extracting nutrients wasn’t one of them. After months of garbage disposal failure, I was basically a walking sewer mixed with a compost pile. I found myself chronically starving, exhausted, puffy, distended, intestinally inflamed, and generally sickly. Your body doesn’t fare so well when it has no sustenance, it turns out.

At the same time, or maybe slightly predating my digestive protests, I started getting ill in weird ways. Things I had never experienced before started popping up, like chronic respiratory tract infections, sinus infections, and gum infections. I was having what seemed like allergic responses to something in my inner or outer environment. I was often covered in hives or my face and stomach were inflating like balloons for no apparent reason. I had near-constant pain in my continually-locked shoulders and neck. My actual skin, itself, hurt, as if I was being stretched to the brink of bursting. My lifelong migraines transformed into something new - disorienting tension migraines that came with horrifying loss-of-vision auras and feverish shakes.

Generally speaking, I was so tired all the time that I could barely get out of bed for more than a few moments before retreating back to my safe place to feel like garbage. My limbs felt like someone had tied weights to them and extracted several major muscle groups. I struggled even showering or washing my face, because both required holding my arms up higher than I was capable of enacting. I was so deliriously tired that I couldn’t see straight, think, or complete basic tasks.

On top of giving up my impressive life trajectory in the aftermath of the physical breakdown - because I was too fucking exhausted to consider the next steps I needed to take for grad school - this is also where I’ve previously mentioned my drive-aphobia coming into play. When you can’t count on your own faculties, you definitely don’t want to be behind the wheel. And suddenly, life gets very restricted.

I gave up my… anything life trajectory at that point. I went from a wildly social and focused student with a fantastic sense of humor about life and stronghold of self-determination to… Hiding indoors. Keeping isolated. Obsessing over my health. Googling the most embarrassing things late at night. Having no answers. Feeling like a crazy person. Hating myself. Fearing that this was the end. Assuming that my future was over. Guilting myself for fucking up my past. Replaying my tragic story of a rapid flight and a crash, after everything I had fought so hard to accomplish. Giving up.

This is riiiiight about where I pull most of my inspiration for talking about living in perpetual “trauma states” from. Being consistently triggered, out of control, and terrified. Having no answers and no one to even ask. Watching mental illness take over my world without the slightest clue of what was happening. And, oh, the perpetual torment of unpredictable physical breakdowns.

Everyday a new surprise. Every moment the opportunity for a shocking change in vitality. Every night a battle of my brain versus my chronic pains versus sleep.

And so it persisted, throughout 2013 and into several later years… despite the fact that I actually came up with an answer for myself that vastly improved a good part of the sickness struggle... but definitely didn’t fix it all.

Finding AN answer

I’m sure I’ve already mentioned this, too… but eventually I found some respite in my health struggles through no help from modern medicine. In fact, I helped myself thanks to familial clues when I decided to exclusion-diet my way into an answer. My grandpa had celiac’s disease long before it was trendy and I decided gluten was a logical place to start. And what do you know? That helped about 60% of my ailments.

So began years of obsessing over figuring out the gluten free life. Which, contrary to popular opinion, fucking sucks. I get that it became a trendy idea at exactly the wrong point in my life, but goddamnit, I hate the question, "Are you ACTUALLY gluten free, or is it by choice?" It is not a dietary walk in the park when essentially every item is contaminated with some form or another of secret sauce and your body is going to flip out at the slightest dusting.

I remember being so distraught over having these drastic dietary considerations to figure out on my own that I would spontaneously break down into tears in all sorts of places - the fridge, the grocery store, restaurants, social contexts when people kindly asked, “how about you choose where to eat this time.” I can’t choose! I can’t eat anything! I would privately bawl to myself. What a fun time that was.

But that was not nearly the end of it.

It turned out, yes, entirely cutting the glutens helped immensely. I also realized that sugar was not my friend. In fact, processed anything was not going to have a great outcome. But then… there was this other weird pattern that I started noticing in my life… sometimes I was pretty healthy and (relatively speaking) happy with the way things were going off-wheat. But sometimes I was just as sickly and digestively screwed when I definitely hadn’t consumed anything questionable. As if other tried and true components of my diet randomly became gluten analogs that upset me just as much.

Plus, there were some ailments that just never seemed to go away. The insomnia was a persistent problem that stretched back to being about 5 years old, but got more severe with time. The aches and pains in my neck and shoulders only worsened, no matter how many tennis balls I rolled on, yoga classes I attended, or muscle relaxers I popped. The exhaustion came and went with connections to my mental health and diet, but not directly related to bready food items. The brain fog didn’t clear up when I had a strictly regimented diet. The tension migraines never fully returned from where they came.

I was still finding myself bedridden and ready to give up on the whole idea of living on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes it was every two weeks, sometimes once a month, sometimes a few months apart. But I never knew why, how long it would last, or how to control the system-wide failures.

And if you want to know how western medicine helped me with any of these continued challenges… it didn’t. I tried to get answers for years before I finally gave up. Every doctor turned me away. Every specialist was critically uninterested. Even the Mayo Clinic neglected to listen to what I said or utilize applicable resources, after I was so sure they could solve the medical mystery of my life.

So. I stopped trying at a certain point. I resolved myself to being health anxious and perpetually confused by myself. I realized that I would never know what any day was going to bring, because my discomforts and continued sicknesses seemed to come and go with the tides.

Eventually, after years of this bullshit, it got a bit better. I buckled down with - you guessed it - strict routines designed to circumvent some of the challenges.

I realized that my diet needed to be incredibly tight, and by that, I mean “boring.” Beyond gluten, I cut out basically everything sugary, carby, and processed. I noticed that without a certain variety of physical exercise on a regimented basis, everything started slipping. I prioritized finding ways to get to sleep at night, even if it meant being rigid and assessed as “dramatic” by less slumber-impaired humans. I gave up any activities that caused neck and shoulder strain, and tried to be better about things like stretching. I also noticed that dealing with my emotions was a gateway to pain and discomfort relief, which was an uphill battle all it’s own. And, you know, eventually I learned about this Complex Trauma thing that explained a HUGE part of early to mid twenties, including a majority of the physical ailments.

But, although I began to live like an above-averagely healthy human again… I’ve still always had a few mysteries about my health.

Sure, over the course of many years I’ve figured out how to live with a semi-predictable body after long periods of never knowing what tomorrow would bring. But, unfortunately, there are still times when my system throws me a curveball. During those unanticipated spans of health failure, I’m left ruminating on a question or three that haven’t ever been answered consistently.

One of the most common inquiries is coming at you next.

Stress or sick?

So, even after all my life changes and careful modifications. All my sacrifices and seemingly over-the-top regimes. I’ve still had an ongoing health obsession that pops up from time to time when my shit starts to go downhill.

The incrementally-observed question that runs through my head on repeat… “Wait, am I communicably sick, or am I just fucking stressed out again?”

I realized a while back - maybe in my mid-late twenties - that holy hell, I sure felt like I was coming down with the flu more often than it was logical. The thing was, my symptoms only ever progressed to the point of feeling like I was still actively fighting off the sickness as it took hold. I would get the temperature dysregulation, the headache, the muscle pain, the foggy feeling, and oh boy, the exhaustion - that generally serve as your first signs of contagious trouble.

I would be too deliriously tired to get up and do anything. If I made myself go to work, it felt like wading through a dream. Half present, half falling asleep at my desk. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Even my head was too heavy for my neck to manage the task.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get incredibly weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

And I would respond in kind. I would retreat to bed, Nyquil and vitamin C showering over me on frequent intervals, gearing up for the systemic war of a lifetime. I would drift in and out of sleep for a day or two, fending off the weird muscle aches and sweat sessions that come with an emerging fever. Interestingly, many of my old food reactivities would rear up during this period. I would get my neti pot and vomit-bags ready for action.

And then… nothing else would happen. Assuming I chilled out and retreated to a state of forfeit when I actually treated myself with kindness and care, everything would work out. After 1-5 days of being back in my bedridden state, determined that significant contagious sickness was headed my way, it would seem to just disappear overnight. Or, clear up by about 70% overnight, to be more realistic.

It took several rounds of this pattern - I couldn’t tell you how many - before I finally realized… heyyo, my body shuts the fuck down when I’m stressed out. Every time I experienced one of these sudden falls from health, it followed (or ran in tandem with) a period of significant stress, anxiety, and/or depression. And if I let myself relax for a week, it would all be okay. If I tried to push through it because ObLiGaTiOnS, I was signing myself up for a prolonged and far more serious health failure. It happened too many times; I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Like I had postulated earlier in my adulthood - my health seemed to be drastically affected by my mental state. Particularly, my interpretations of stress, obligations, and fears.

And I can tell you, my health anxiety quieted down for a while in the aftermath of the acceptance. Call it immersion therapy. When you’ve experienced the same event over and over again, but A never leads to B, and C-alming your shit makes condition A disappear back into the ethers... well, eventually you take it for what it is and just stop panicking so much. I think I got tired of preoccupying myself with the whole dumpster fire at some point and preferred to extinguish the flames by letting them run their course.

This is where I’ve lived for the past many years now. Realizing that if I push myself too hard mentally or physically, or if I let too many stress signals infiltrate my brain… I’m about to get fucked up. My health will slip quickly. I will be reactive to essentially every food on this planet. My body will be puffy, inflamed, and painful. Not to mention, so goddamn tired all the time. But that’s it. It won’t last forever. I’m not going to die. Telling myself the opposite makes it all last a lot longer. Don’t pile stress about your stress-induced sickness onto your existing stress, and you'll be better soon.

And yet, when it’s happening, I also never know for a fact that my stress-based illness is definitely what’s going on. The result is getting trapped in a “will I or won’t I” obsessive spiral of anticipating the worst while reassuring myself that it might be nothing at all. There’s a lot of internal and external conversation about it, as people want to know if you’re sick and you want to be able to warn them that you feel like death… but also have to throw in the caveat, “Iunno, you have to realize that this happens to me all the time and it’s usually nothing, though.”

Of course, this creates the opportunity for my brain to 1) tell me I’m probably fine, quit complaining, pussy, and 2) compare myself to everyone else on the planet, who doesn’t crumble when their brain interprets times are hard. Because, of course, I have to make myself feel mentally ridiculous for feeling physically horrible. Other people are always happy to help in this regard, too. "You sure get sick a lot. I thought you had the flu last month. Wow, it always seems like something is wrong with you." Mhm, I feel the same on all accounts.

And, Fuckers, that’s why I stopped talking about it or looking for answers a long time ago. Instead, I've just relied on the most logical answer and quit worrying. I’ve done enough research on my own, not to mention all my Animal Science schooling, to know how stress responses work. They’re significant. They have the potential to disrupt your entire body through hormonal dysregulation. And they work differently - as far as we can tell - depending on the organism.

So that’s what I’ve leaned on. Acknowledgement that stress really screws with me. It zaps my energy. It fogs up my brain. It makes me overstimulated. It causes weird pains and immune system responses. It churns up my digestive problems. It also makes me feel like I’m starving but nauseous all at once. Over long periods of time, it can lead to infections. It, obviously, ruins my sleep, which reaaaaally doesn’t help with any of it.

That’s that. Pretty complicated but simple. Try not to stress yourself out and god help you, if you do. Chill for a few days and you’ll be alright, probably. No one knows why it happens. Doctors don’t care. Just watch out for yourself, because no one else deals with this shit.

Unless… they totally do.

So, that’s fibromyalgia

I guess this is where I tell you something that a lot of folks have probably already figured out. Sorry if you’ve been yelling at me through your headphones this whole time - chill, I’m getting to it.

There definitely is a term for everything I’ve described. There are millions of other people who experience it. And, yeah, doctors often still don’t believe it’s real… but the numbers and anecdotal evidence don’t lie.

Ever heard of fibromyalgia?

Of course you have. But have you ever really looked into what it meant? Because… I hadn’t.

Annnnd then a listener and I were chatting on Instagram a few weeks ago. And she mentioned... everything I just mentioned. And her diagnosis had been? Fibromyalgia.

Via DM, your fellow Fucker started telling me about being tired all the time, mysterious aches and pains that worsen with stress, IBS symptoms, improper temperature regulation, and over-exertion that leads to required days of recovery. My jaw hit the floor.

You know I hopped online and started doing more research of my own. And all of the information was confirmed and expanded upon in a way that drove my mandible straight into the basement.

Hey, you know how fibromyalgia is synonymous with “widespread pain?” Oh shit, if you dig into it, there is a lot more to learn. Here’s a (maybe, complete?) list of the currently known associated symptoms. Keep in mind, I couldn’t find a single comprehensive resource for this information. This list is compiled of information from the the peer-reviewed article I'm going to read from later, the American College of Rheumatology, the CDC, Healthline, and Medical News Today. And if it sounds like a bit of a "catch all" pile, I think you're right.

Pain and stiffness all over the body

Fatigue and tiredness

Depression and anxiety

Sleep problems

Problems with thinking, memory, and concentration, known as “fibro-fog”

Headaches, including migraines

Tingling or numbness in hands and feet

Pain in the face or jaw

Digestive problems, such as abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome

Tenderness to touch or pressure affecting muscles, sometimes joints or even the skin

Irritable or overactive bladder

Pelvic pain

Trouble focusing or paying attention

Pain or a dull ache in the lower belly

Dry eyes

Sleeping for long periods of time without feeling rested (nonrestorative sleep)

Acid reflux

Restless leg syndrome

Sensitivity to cold or heat

Problems with vision

Nausea

Weight gain

Dizziness

Cold or flu-like symptoms

Skin problems

Chest symptoms

Breathing problems

Insulin resistance

Wait, wait, wait. THAT’S what fibro is? Because, I’m sorry, I have literally never heard any of that detail before… and although it gets so ambiguous that I suspect these ailments are all the conditions that just haven't been explained before by medical science... this list just described my life. All the way down to the tiniest detail of dry eyes, as I now recall chronically dumping drops into mine for those same years in my 20s. What. The. Shit.

Prior to this research, my symptomatic knowledge of fibro was essentially - pain, of the unexplained and incurable variety. No one ever once has mentioned anything else about the condition to me, or allll the ways that it correlated with my years of health trauma. Not my peers, not my doctors, and not even my amazing, well-informed therapist.

So, maybe I’m really late to the game here, but long story short, my mind was blown when I heard that there’s actually a term for this experience which I had forfeited to processing as a “unique way that my body individually destroys me” for all these years. I thought I was just uniquely uncomfortable all the time and stopped burdening others with my experiences.

Maybe that’s why I never had anyone clue me in to the diagnosis - I honestly stopped talking about the cyclical sickness a while back, after recognizing that people didn’t respond favorably to the narrative, “I just get too stressed out to function.” Shutting my mouth and writing off my experiences may have halted my potential for hearing a realistic account of living with fibromyalgia. Oh, how the trauma shame shenanigans never stop royally fucking you.

Of course, based on my own recent education, now I’m wondering if fibromyalgia applies to far more of us in the trauma community. Because if I hadn’t found reliable information on it in all my trauma and inflammatory illness research over the years… how many other people are in the same boat?

And this brings me to my next point. I really hate the term fibromyalgia.

Why I hate the term

There’s actually another explanation for why I never heard about everything that fibromyalgia describes. Uh, you’re going to hate me for this, but I didn’t think it was a “real” diagnosis.

Yep. I’m telling you with moderate guilt that for the longest time, I appraised fibro in the same way that western medicine considers all psychosomatic illnesses - not valid. And I’m unhappy with myself, too. Believe me, I feel like my least favorite kind of person... a hypocrite. But this also points to the systemic issue that undermines so many of our attempts to get help, and that makes me far more unhappy.

You see, a number of years ago, as a budding counselor with a few years of experience, my therapist friend mentioned something about fibro. Specifically, that it was a common label granted to more seriously mentally affected patients… and it wasn’t believed to be a real thing. I wish I could remember more detail on the context, but the basis of the story is, someone that I trusted - someone with many trauma patients - told me that in her experience, no one took fibromyalgia seriously. People with intense mental illnesses regularly presented with unfounded complaints of pain, and this is the term they were assigned as a result.

There was no proof of their physical discomfort. The patients tended to have myriad mental and physical health issues. They tended to be more difficult clients. Professionals had doubts about how serious the complaints were. No evidence, no respect. It was just about that simple.

To give more weight to the story, here’s one quick excerpt that is actually validating to read, from an article titled, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview.

“People with FM often reported dismissive attitudes from others, such as disbelief, stigmatization, lack of acceptance by their relatives, friends, coworkers, and the healthcare system, that consider them as ‘lazy’ or ‘attention seeking’ people, with their symptoms ‘all in their head’. Such dismissiveness can have a substantial negative impact on patients, who are already distressed, and also on the degree of their pain.”

So… similar to the asshole social associates described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

So… similar to the assholes described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

It took the real life account of someone with the diagnosis to show me all the ways that my previous perception was completely incorrect. I suddenly realized how reductive and insulting the false information had been. Annnd all the ways that I could have really helped myself and a few others a lot sooner if I had just investigated the term on my own, rather than lazily falling back on someone else’s casually-expressed opinion.

So, I’m saying… fuck me. 100%. That makes me really upset with myself. But it makes me even more frustrated with the medical field.

And this is why I hate the term fibromyalgia.

It doesn’t actually explain a fucking thing… and it doesn’t seem like anyone is actually trying to.

At this point, there is no known cause for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

At this point, there is no known cause or organic mechanism for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

Millions of humans have detailed the same experiences, but science hasn’t yet come up with a way to explain them, so let’s go ahead and give them a new diagnosis that boils down to “Not sure what’s going on, but they say it’s unpleasant and it sounds a little something like widespread pain. Cool, let’s call it a day. Nah, we don’t need to educate the medical community or the public - we don’t need a single list of all the known comorbidities - because we don’t get it, ourselves. Let’s make sure we put that disclaimer right in the definition, so everyone knows it’s a controversial topic."

And implicit in saying that doctors and scientists don’t understand the term, comes a negative connotation of assumed delusion or attention-seeking complaints.

Essentially, what I’m bitching about is the tendency of researchers and practitioners to shuttle things they can’t directly measure to the back of the relevancy line. Despite all of the anecdotal evidence from fibro sufferers that corroborate the same causes, symptoms, and outcomes… we can’t see what they’re talking about and we don’t have an easy explanation, so we put this in the “fake news” stack of information - AKA psychosomatic illness.

Now, it’s also worth mentioning that fibromyalgia is deeply intertwined with trauma. Something like 2/3rds of fibro patients also have confirmed PTSD symptoms, if not higher. Exact numbers depend on which study you trust. Just know, it is a prevalent, accepted, correlation between trauma and the development of fibromyalgia. And of course, no one has determined the causative or affective relationship between the two at this point in time.

Hell, we all know that a lot of mental and physical health professionals don’t even want to acknowledge trauma at this point - or, do so with a smirk and an eyebrow raise, at best. So tethering the two poorly-comprehended disorders together? Oh boy, it’s a sure-fire way to ensure that no one listens to a word you say after honestly answering their background information questions. Might as well throw down your wallet and walk yourself right out of the office at that point.

The medical field’s lack of trauma education is a big problem. Making “psychosomatic” a dirty word isn’t helping millions of folks out there. Being invalidated by the people who could possibly help you is another mental health crisis waiting to happen. And all of this is infuriating to me, following my own experiences and thinking about other people’s.

Should we take this one outrage step further? Sure.

You know that a vast majority of fibromyalgia sufferers are… women. Sorry, about to get a tad feminist. Is anyone here surprised that primarily female voices tend to be written off by medical professionals? Ha, ha, ha. No, probably not.

For all of human history, the ladies have been getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to medical care. We all know that women were given amazing explanations for their ailments, such as having “hysterics” or "the vapors" not so long ago.

Furthermore, there is research showing that doctors do not take women’s accounts of pain severity seriously, in particular. Even fellow female doctors and nurses are given different treatment by staff when they go to the ER, versus male counterparts. And if you’re a minority or socioeconomically challenged woman? The data says you might as well take two aspirin and see what happens the next morning, because the medical attention research is even worse for those demographics. Huge surprise.

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups one way or another… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?

Yeah, we haven’t.

We’ve been given a term - complete with a wink and a nudge - that no one wants to meaningfully research or prioritize understanding. We’ve received a new phrase that doctors will “generously grant us” when we’re drowning in unexplained symptoms and pain. We’re then labeled with a word that essentially amounts to “disregard and humor” for all our future appointments. On top of it all, we’re carrying the burden of traumatic histories, which immediately qualify us for misunderstood diagnoses that more or less equate “ghosts in their blood” - because, hell, we can’t quantify mental illness, either.

The whole ordeal makes me really upset. The fact that I was inadvertently pulled into this biased disbelief makes me more upset. It also serves as quite a demonstration of how powerful or deleterious knowledge can be after it worms its way into your head involuntarily and becomes your only “go-to” piece of data, true or false.

One seemingly-trustworthy person mentioning a negative opinion of fibromyalgia one time in my past somehow infiltrated my thoughts to the extent that I didn’t have a second thought for 5 years? And we're talking about a goddamn trauma researcher - with, what I consider - an otherwise open and connection-happy mind?

The power of assumed authority and truth in opinion is significant. If I can be swayed in this way, how could less mental health informed medical professionals stand a chance in responding differently? That’s frightening and clarifying… though immensely upsetting.

So, since biomedicine hasn’t bothered to find any great information for us, despite the rapidly increasing rate of fibromyalgia diagnoses in the past two decades - how can we make sense of the information to actually help ourselves?

Let’s talk about that next.

What we can conclude

So it kindof blows finding out that you probably qualify for a new medical term… only to find out that we don’t actually know anything about said term. I say this, because if you’re waiting for me to pop off with some sweet research on fibromyalgia… uh… I haven’t found it yet. But not for lack of trying. So far every article I’ve seen has been pretty basic and uninspired.

Does fibromyalgia correspond with trauma? It does. Does stress mediate and moderate fibromyalgia, PTSD symptoms, GI problems, and depression? It does. Does it take a long time and numerous appointments to receive medical help for fibromyalgia complaints? It does. Does the comorbidity of post-traumatic symptoms make fibro more uncomfortable and challenging to overcome? What do you know - it fucking does.

(Wow. So enlightening. Having two debilitating disorders is less fun than having one. Who’s funding these research studies, anyways?)

The first thing I can conclude is, there’s not that much to conclude. This is to say, no one - that I’ve seen, so far - has revealed anything super shocking or thought-provoking about fibromyalgia.

Really, the most interesting things I learned from my reading are that

1) insulin resistance is another associated disorder, which explains even more of my baffling life

2) sex hormones are leached from your system under stress, which, refer to point number one... explains another huge chunk of my existence, and

3) the recommendations for treating fibro long term are the same recommendations I’ve given for getting your trauma life re-ordered.

You know how I always push for people to find out what’s manageable on their own through trial and error, rather than approaching trauma recovery with preventable fires burning in every area? Hey - someone agrees.

Namely, it's recommended that in order to manage fibromyalgia you establish routines including strictly nutrition-based eating habits, non-threatening forms of consistent exercising, prioritizing tons of sleep, and controlling your environment as much as possible for stressful stimuli. Doctors can also supplement your rehab with antidepressants, because, again, fibromyalgia is related to the same underlying hormonal imbalances as depression - but the larger health issues are managed best by changing your behaviors. Just like I’ve said.

I suppose this is no surprise, since this entire time I’ve unknowingly been talking, in large part, about how I’ve controlled my own fibromyalgia symptoms. I just thought it was mandatory trauma pains I was dampening. But the word is out! There's a separate phrase for it. The doctors and I agree; stop treating yourself like a turd, and maybe you’ll stop feeling like one. Whatdoyouknow. Sometimes there are reasons for the things I notice experientially, even if they aren’t originally informed by medical lingo.

Secondly, looking at what we can conclude at this point about fibro… Well, it justifies my previous hypothesis that stress is the root of my body’s evil. There’s not much to definitively say about fibromyalgia at this point, but we know for a fact that it is agitated and potentially caused by stress.

This perfectly aligns with my observations that a terrible work week mixed with a personally challenging month on top of a physically exhausting cleaning marathon will lead to a systemic breakdown every time. And, conversely, those times when life has actually been pretty chill correspond to periods of bodily health and limited upset - the times when I wonder “was I ever really sick at all?” and start to health gaslight my damn self.

Realizing the link between stress and sickness, of course, also begins to explain the correlation to trauma, and particularly, complex trauma.

Now, let me start by saying that there’s some debate over the downstream effects of PTSD - some researchers swear that it decreases system arousal in the face of later stress, others have collected data reflecting that a nervous system hyper-sensitization takes place. From my own trauma involvement, I’ve seen and heard more cases of the latter; we’re quick to upset and easily pushed into stressed territory. I don’t know many, if any, trauma folks who are non-responsive to disturbing life events... but that sounds more like a deep, dangerous, clinical depression symptom to me.

Personally, once I’ve been chronically stressed for a few weeks or months, then I notice the loss of stress response take over. My limbic system gives up, the HPA axis stops responding, and therefore nothing can rattle me. Perhaps you’ve also had the experience of laughing when your car breaks down, because it’s already been 3 months of disaster around every turn and there’s nothing else you can do for yourself. So, sure, people can reach a point where they legitimately don’t respond to the chaos anymore, but I’m not so sure that’s a consistent norm. I think it’s more likely that you turn off your stress reactions if you’ve been adequately prepped to dissociate for the sake of sanity or your chemical balance is so wack that your danger center has powered down.

I can tell you without a doubt that before the point when my stress threshold has been raised sky-high thanks to repeat exposures and wiring disconnections... I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for basically every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses.

I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses

This nervous system sensitization, as they call it, explains a lot of trauma symptoms. I’ve regularly discussed the hypersensitivity problem it creates, when your brain doesn’t adequately filter out or assess neutral stimuli because it considers basically everything to be a threat. This can also contribute to the ADD and ADHD diagnoses that we receive, when our heads are too busy trying to sort all that data streaming in to direct our thoughts in a steady way. Or, the ways that we’re uniquely thrown immediately into panic mode when we sense a risk. Plus, we’ve probably all had the experience of tiny, secret triggers sneakily upsetting our bodies when the stimulation wasn’t even significant enough to pass through our cognitive recognition centers. These are all caused by the same systemic over-sensitization problem.

In general: yes, we trauma folk are sensitive to our environments - inner and outer. We are easily pushed down survival pathways to fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. We rapidly catastrophize ambiguous information, which can convince our brains and bodies that the worst has already happened. We’re hyperaware and easily overstimulated, often agitated, and regularly on edge.

I maintain, in the face of controversial evidence, that we get stressed out easily. And our bodies react dramatically.

I feel like I should also state that this is especially true, as most of us have read, when we have unresolved emotional strain floating around in our meat jackets. We can be overstimulated and aroused (in a bad way) from the inside, out. Since the majority of us are not skilled in emotional recognition or resolution, we’re often walking around with a lifetime of hard feelings stored in our guts. And there’s been roughly zero doubt in my head about emotional and environmental stress contributing to dissociation, contributing to a vagal nerve shutdown as a big part of the digestive failure that characterizes fibromyalgia, IBS, Crohns, and so many autoimmune disorders.

On top of the unresolved emotional root of stress, this pings another episode that I've previously released. The one about being overly restrictive in your diet and exercise for the sake of appearance perfectionism. If you physically exert yourself too strongly through caloric deprivation or extreme work outs, you can easily stress your body into a survival response. It can't tell the difference between starvation for bikini season and starvation for lack of food. Running your ass off for your upcoming wedding or running your ass off for your upcoming bear attack. Your danger sensing center is sensitive and it overreacts, much like myself.

Now, considering that all these examples of central nervous system sensitization and physiological survival states that go hand in hand with Complex Trauma and Fibromyalgia, so many weird health mysteries are potentially resolved. But, not exactly the pain component. Or, is it.

Again, the authors out of Italy and Brazil who penned, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview, have a potential way to think about that. They state:

“Even if the causes and pathophysiology of FM are not completely known, widespread chronic pain could be explained by a vulnerability due to a perturbation in the central processing of sensory information, named ‘central sensitivity’ or ‘central sensitization’, that amplifies the response of the central nervous system to a peripheral input. Hence, people with FM and/or other central sensitivity syndromes have a lower threshold for interpreting sensory information as noxious. Several factors, such as genetic predisposition, deficiencies in neurotransmitter levels, biochemical changes in the body, endocrine dysfunction, mood states, anxiety, sociocultural environment, psychological trauma and past experiences in general, expectancy beliefs, and catastrophization have been proposed as explanatory mechanisms of patients’ subjective experience of central sensitivity. Current research indicates that abnormal sensory and pain processing is a key factor in the pathophysiology of FM. There is robust evidence that abnormalities in central pain processing, rather than damage or inflammation of peripheral structures, play an important role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain in patients with FM.”

Interesting, huh? I still think inflammatory responses are a big part of the 1000 piece stress puzzle, but I don’t disagree with the idea that our finely-tuned danger detection systems amplify pain and discomfort signals to deafening levels. Putting all the system data together, you can deduce a fairly complete picture of how strain, physical degradation, and pain are all related.

Finally, I have confirmation that being overly stimulated causes everything from my energy drain to my dietary responses, migraines, and autoimmune attacks... all the way down to my temperature sensitivity, random presentation of allergic reactions, and even that occasional sharp pain in my jaw… not to mention all my life-altering functional problems, like being unable to sleep at night, existing with debilitating pain, and living while feeling sedated?

All of my strange health complaints from the past decade have aligned with this new label. And that label corresponds perfectly with my inkling that running on cortisol and overzealous guardsmen have been the major source of my health anxiety sauce. Welp, it’s been validating research for all of my educated guesses, to say the least.

Long story short, there’s not a ton of helpful information about the reasons for developing fibromyalgia or what makes it get worse. But there’s one thing we do know for a fact; stress is the enemy. At least I think it’s comforting to conclude that stress is the root of many of our C-PTSD complaints, as well as depression, anxiety, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, and now… a whole list of common maladies, labeled fibromyalgia.

Whether or not it’s really understood, at least there is a connection between everything. At least there’s something that ties ALL the random, disjointed pieces of torture together. I’m guessing that for many of us, fibromyalgia is similar to complex trauma, again, in that regard.

And, lastly, I can conclude that… I have more questions

More questions than answers

Here’s one last excerpt from the aforementioned article, which is the only one I found that’s worth hearing from.

They state: “FM is labelled, often with a negative connotation, as a ‘functional somatic syndrome’, part of a ‘somatization disorder’, ‘fashionable diagnosis’, ‘idiopathic pain disorder’, ‘non-disease’, ‘psychosomatic syndrome’, dismissing the true suffering of the patients. In the absence of a univocal identified biological cause, subjective reports of symptoms by the patients are often viewed derogatorily and discredited as ‘psychogenic.’”

Like I said, there isn’t a lot of helpful information out there if you’re looking to learn more about this controversial condition. Unfortunately, it has been categorized as a “functional somatic disorder” which essentially means that we don’t have an explanation for the organic basis of the disorder.

Uh, I don’t know what could be more organic than the endogenous hormones in our own bodies creating downstream health effects, but hey, I’m not a biologist anymore, what do I know?

The fact remains - there’s a lot more to understand about the assorted mechanisms that lead from trauma into depression, generalized stress disorder, and physical manifestations of a biochemical system that’s running off-balance. And this is where I have the biggest questions.

First, I have to get this out of the way. I’m wondering about the known gender split in fibro. The numbers are horrendously skewed towards women as the primary sufferers, and that’s not helping the medical legitimacy case. So, what are the chances that men just don’t have fibromyalgia at the same rate as women? Either they don’t get stressed to the same magnitude or their bodies respond completely differently? It’s possible. OR. Is it something else?

It seems to me like this follows another similar mystery - what are the chances that men just don’t suffer from Complex Trauma at the same rate as women? Pretty poor? Probably more of a diagnostic or seeking-help issue? Yeah, I think so, too. Yet, if you look strictly at the numbers, it sure seems like there are more women hearing about C-PTSD than men.

This analogous labeling issue between the genders makes me think of a few explanations…

1) Men don’t seek help for their physical ailments the way that women do, either because they’re less in tune with their bodies or because they’re shamed for not being tough enough if they complain. Just like C-PTSD.

2) Men don’t hear about fibromyalgia, because it is an engendered diagnosis reserved for dramatic women at this point. Just like C-PTSD. They receive other partial diagnoses, like IBS, that are less controversial. This leads me into a whole spiraling rant about several genital-dependent psychological diagnoses that I feel similarly about, but one of them is…

3) Men don’t receive the same level of fibromyalgia labels as women because men don’t often receive Complex-PTSD labels, which would serve as a hint to their doctors, since trauma is a well-known predisposing factor…

This brings me to the next set of questions.

It’s unpopular opinion time, but, frankly, I don’t know that any of these trauma and fibro issues are really that separate.

It seems to me like we’re talking a lot about one particular problem that splinters off into a thousand different outcomes, depending on the circumstances, the biology, and the human in question. Not separate conditions.

First comes the trauma, then comes the presentation of downstream physical and mental symptoms. Presentation, magnitude, and personal recognition of these symptoms varies, just like severity of Complex Trauma does. But under both conditions, our experiences are often so similar - the hard part is that we struggle to describe them and often lean on abstract language which can be used in such diverse ways. We focus on different problems, depending on our own life impacts.

So, maybe we notice and report internal events differently, but it’s hard for me to believe that the two disorders aren’t more than corresponding diagnoses - and are, in fact, one and the same.

I could be very wrong, but I’d sure like to find out.

So, to the small percentage of fibromyalgia sufferers who don’t have trauma… you sure? To the depressed and anxious folks who can’t seem to get a grip on their physical health, but never saw their life as traumatic… want to take another look? To all the traumatized folks with Raynauds, food allergies, hypertension, ADD, aches, and migraines… have you really looked into the full definition of fibromyalgia?

ARE these conditions of trauma and fibromyalgia different? Or is this another complication in identifying unseeable symptoms in a population of folks who never learned to name their mental and physical experiences? Is this an artifact from a group who tends to underestimate and under-report their own experiences in light of unhealthy others’ core beliefs? How prevalent is fibromyalgia, really? Especially in the context of Trauma?

Is it possible that everything boils down to one underlying event - trauma - that produces a whole host of other biological adaptations down the line? Did we create a separate term for it, simply based on a lack of standardization?

Or is this an exclusionary problem?

Have all the various ways we’ve learned to categorize and describe our experiences actually separated one full disorder into two half-disorders; one that encompasses the brain and another that covers the body? Is it our societal misunderstanding of the connection between our perceptions and our meaty husks, forcing us to separate the issues of mental and physical health that would be better understood together, as one?

I’m not sure! But I’m definitely thinking a lot about it.

Partially, from personal bias. I always considered my physical issues to be part of my trauma life, not separate from it - and that explanation made perfect sense to me. Where do these disorders really split? Maybe it’s possible to have Complex PTSD without the physical symptoms, but that's really not what I hear from people. The most of us have at least some periods of physical ailments, even if they're not persistent. To me, it seems like a distinction that should be made within the trauma diagnosis - with or without physical wellness degradation - rather than piling a separate, largely-ineffective diagnosis on the vast majority of us who have some variety of said bodily ailments.

I feel like the real issue isn’t “what is fibromyalgia?” The actual problem is a lack of biological understanding in the Psychology field. And a mirrored failure to understand Psychology in the medical field. Then, throw in a reluctance to study the conglomerate of bio-physiology and mental health issues in the scientific research literature because both experiences are difficult to measure or confirm and the studies would be less elegant.

If more psychologists actually learned system biology and more medical practitioners actually studied abnormal psychology, maybe we wouldn’t have disparate diagnoses that each come with a half-recognition. Maybe we could have one term that encompassed the full experience of trauma. Maybe these professionals could confirm all the details that we don’t understand by working with a more comprehensive approach to how humans work as a whole, rather than organ by organ. Just a fucking thought.

Because, I can tell you, if my therapist friend had the same biological education that I did at the time, I guarantee that she wouldn’t have told me fibromyalgia was a “pseudo diagnosis.” If she had knowledge of the connection between stress hormones and bodily breakdown, plus the trauma physiology that determines our sensitivity to stress - there’s no way she would have been so flippant or insensitive with her words. But under the influence of her counseling peers, the diagnosis became a fallacy.

I think this highlights the danger of the problem at hand. It only took one industry-determined void of knowledge to pass along an unfair opinion that skewed at least my perception for years down the line. And, think about it, how many times has one innocently-baseless comment in the psychology or medical fields probably created a lifetime of bias in an up-and-coming professional?

Maybe this is why we have the self-perpetuating negative connotation of psychosomatic illness in our society that seems to crawl its way towards improvement, while every other disorder makes significant strides. A lack of personal understanding of the biology-psychology connection is easily turned into a respected opinion, and readily transmitted to unknowing people who are eager to learn from their wise mentors. And so, the next generation inherits the same set of half-baked progress-stunting ideas. Over and over and over.

Depressing! And enlightening.

And that’s roughly where I stand today, after days of fibromyalgia research and very few satisfactory answers. Depressed and enlightened.

More or less, asking myself more questions about the legitimacy of our entire mental and physical healthcare system and all the lines we draw in the sand. Confident that trauma leads to increased stress leads to increased brain and body trauma. Somewhat happy to know that I’m actually not the only one who consistently apologizes for feeling like shit and questions if it’s “valid” or not because it seems connected to my brain. But also, pretty pissed off that we’ve been given a word that comes with no explanations and a hellofalot of medical field judgement, as if we needed more of that.

Oh, one more factoid to throw into the end of this conversation. There’s a link between low socioeconomic status and fibromyalgia.

Hey, the same link exists between socioeconomic status and complex trauma. Hey, it’s another predisposing factor for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms’ emergence. Hey, big surprise, if you have a stable and predictable physical and financial environment, you’re less likely to develop the terror-based conditions brought on by earlier trauma.

If you have financial resources, you’re also less likely to be chronically stressed by the demands of life. You’re probably also more likely to receive respectable medical care. Therefore, meaning that you’re both less likely to have enough perturbation to develop over-sensitive nervous system responses and less likely to be dismissed by doctors with a label they don’t believe exists. Plus, probably more likely to have access to mental health care that could prevent the onset of Complex Trauma presentation, and likely fibromyalgia, altogether.

Oh, look, logic explains so many things. Or, fuckit, let’s just choose to believe that poor people are lazy and always want to complain about something, whether it’s in their heads or their bodies. Whatever the rich white men say.

Big issues to think about.

Like I state way too often on this show, it’s the small things in this trauma life that bring you comfort. And monumental societal failures that make you scream. (Okay, I just added that last part today.)

Wrap it

Okay, let me get out of here before I question more beliefs that are way out of my paygrade. Sorry, medical and psychological practitioners. I know that I’m just a critical observer who, like that kid everyone hates in class, perpetually asks too many questions.

At the bottom of all my complaints, I just wish that we could come up with a way to characterize these disorders that actually helped people understand what was happening. If you know how your body is reacting to what stimuli and how the symptoms are all related, that's a lot more powerful than throwing assorted barely-defined titles at them.

If we can't definitively say that fibromyalgia and trauma symptoms are one and the same, fine. Let there be a distinction. But I think it would be preferable to call fibro something more telling and true to the accepted cause. Call it semantics, but something like Stress Affective Syndrome would be more useful than the made-up word of fibromyalgia. Please, anyone feel free to come up with a better phrase, because I just made "Stress Affective Syndrome" up so I could say "I've got SAS." It already fits the bill.

I guess I’m just up in arms that I’ve tried to find answers for my brain and body health all these years, and turned up completely empty handed until random connections have eventually given me the information I’ve needed after a decade of effort. Maybe if I had my complex trauma diagnosis before I had my health complaints, someone would have mentioned fibromyalgia. Maybe, they would have knowingly smirked and sent me to a psychiatrist. Hard to say.

Even if I had gotten that information about fibro, would it have helped separate from the C-PTSD diagnosis? Honestly, probably not. I would have just been harder on myself for suddenly being too weak in the face of stress. And after reading that medical professionals doubt the validity of fibromyalgia, in the first place? Well that would have been a whole other source of disbelief, anger, and negative self-regard. Maybe a whole new crisis, once my inner critic got a chance to hammer away at my head.

I suppose that figuring out the patterns of my strange bodily conditions actually needed to happen organically for this Fucker, because any semi-questioned diagnosis would have just been more fuel for my trauma fire at that point when I so thoroughly despised myself. Confirming to myself, for a fact, that stress fucks me up may have been a prerequisite for accepting that I might be “one of those fibro people.” You know, the ones who lie about their symptoms. Ha.

And, again, this says a lot about the potential damage that poorly-described labels can do to people… just as much as it says about my own reluctance to be considered a weak-minded over-reactor by outsiders.

All of this being said, I’m so grateful for finally finding out exactly what all fibromyalgia actually entails. It took too long, but honestly, the information came at the perfect time. Two days after I got it, I was stress-sick. Ahhh, it's fibro time. How’s that for irony?

As always, I do think there is some empowerment in the basic root understanding that you aren’t the only one who’s dealt with any of this. The mysterious illnesses, the pain, or the lack of care from modern medicine aren’t individual experiences. Hey, you might even be relieved to know that someone else on this planet routinely asks herself, “Do I have cancer for real this time, or am I just overworked again?”

After years of nobody I spoke to having a tale that even mildly resembled my autoimmune breakdown, finding anybody who related to my issues was extremely relieving. Not only was it a common experience, but it meant that I hadn’t somehow brought the discomfort on myself - through mental illness, physical shenanigans, or plain old weakness - the ways that I feared.

Furthermore, it proved that I hadn’t imagined it all. Because believe it or not, you’re surprisingly willing to throw yourself under the bus after all the pain has passed. I’ve spent the past decade telling people, “I think I have the glutens, as I call it... but I don’t really know though, it’s never been explained, sometimes other things bother me, and sometimes it’s really not a big deal, I don't know what it is” as an almost-apology. A disclaimer that I, too, doubt my own memories and conclusions because they weren’t properly validated by who I considered authority figures.

Hearing that other people had digestive disorders and autoimmune disasters in the wake of Complex Trauma, via the book The Body Keeps The Score, shocked me into self-acceptance of my prior experiences. Hearing that all of it can be encapsulated by this term fibromyalgia a few days ago - well, shit. This is a more mainstream occurrence than I ever previously thought.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma feel more applicable than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma are more enlightening than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

Now I know. When I feel a physical breakdown coming on, with the suspected cause being stress… I don’t have to apologize for it. I don’t need to tell people that I just can’t handle the pressure with unfettered shame for my own biochemistry. I can rest assured that what I’m going through is common - far more common than we know - and completely valid. Even if there are people ready to tell you that it's not.

But, to be honest, I still probably won’t tell anyone that it’s called fibromyalgia. I’m not proud to say, I wouldn’t want them to think I’m just being dramatic.

UGH.

#cptsd #healcptsd #actually CPTSD #just cptsd things #traumabrain #Complex Trauma #trauma recovery #complextrauma #complexptsd

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d3-iseefire · 5 years

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The Symphony of Cinderella Chapter 3

Adagio (Chapter 3)

Note: I’m going to add one more chapter as a bonus. It’ll still end with Chapter 6, and then 7 will be an extra scene I thought of that I think will be fun. :D

A week later the phone was still silent.

Bilba frowned at where it lay on the bedspread. It was late, late enough that she should have been asleep hours ago.

Sleep had proven elusive, however, which had led to her current situation, sitting cross legged on her bed, staring at a phone.

She didn’t understand why he hadn’t called. If he’d just wanted to be nice he wouldn’t have left the phone, right? And if he left the phone because he expected something then he’d have called.

Right?

She sighed and flopped back on the thin mattress.

Outside her window, loud footsteps clattered up a set of stairs leading to the second floor. They’d been happening regularly and were a large part of why she’d been unable to get any sleep. Part of her wanted to go investigate what was so popular up there, but the sane part of her understood she was probably better off not knowing.

She thought of her family in a far fancier hotel nearly fifteen minutes away an fought a surge of resentment. It wasn’t anything new, they always stayed in nicer places, leaving her to cheaper hotels in their never-ending quest to “teach her humility.”

She let out a huff and tried to focus on things she was grateful for, such as the ability to breathe through her nose again. The experience was somewhat dampened by the musty smell in the room but she comforted herself with the fact they’d be leaving in Mirkwood in the morning so she’d only have to deal with it for a few more minutes.

She was more than ready to leave Mirkwood behind her. Perhaps she’d think differently had she been able to get out and see any of it but, as it was, all the memories she had from the place involved run down theaters and raging sinus infections.

More footsteps, and Bilba sat up with a grimace. The constant noise was grating, like nails on a chalkboard or a dripping faucet. That was another memory she’d have from this place, and one she’d be more than happy to leave behind.

She picked up the phone again with a scowl and opened the contacts. She pulled up a text box for “Bringer of Aspirin” and stared at it as if she could force answers through sheer will.

She had no idea what his name was or even what he even looked like. She’d been too miserable to look up. All she knew was he’d had a deep voice and had brought her soup.

And left her a phone that he hadn’t used once.

She hesitated, and hovered her fingers over the keypad. She should at least thank him, right? They were leaving Mirkwood tomorrow, so it wasn’t like she had to deal with him if he did end up being weird...so...

Pain lanced through her lip followed by the metallic taste of blood and she realized she’d been chewing on her lower lip so hard she’d managed to bite through.

Another round of footsteps from outside and she glared at the closed curtains. Then she let out a huff and, before she could talk herself out of it, typed a quick message on the screen.

Thanks for the soup and everything. I really appreciate it.

She forced herself to hit send and put the phone down. Her stomach fluttered and she scowled at it. She was being ridiculous. It was late, he probably wouldn’t even see it until—

The phone buzzed.

Bilba jumped and her heart jolted. She picked the phone up, gingerly as if it were a live snake, and pulled up the message.

You’re welcome. I hope it helped.

She waited, but several minutes passed and nothing else came through.

It did, she wrote back finally. I feel less like death warmed over now.

She chewed absently on her lower lip and tried to bat down the feeling that she was now the one bothering him. She wasn’t sure why she was basically inviting him to start a conversation. Hadn’t she just been worrying about him being a weirdo?

Good, the phone buzzed a moment later. Glad to know I helped avert a zombie apocalypse breaking out in Mirkwood.

Bilba laughed in surprise and texted back. If only the people knew how close they came. Lucky for them, they had you to stand in the breach and hold back calamity.

She reread her words and grimaced. Was that over the top and weird? It was probably over the top and weird.

I deserve a medal, he replied.

Bilba snorted. Forget the medal. Ask for something practical, like a pony, or a lifetime supply of hot chocolate.

Instead of a word response this time he simply sent back an emoji of a face crying with laughter, before adding a second text that said, You are absolutely right. What good is a medal? All it does is sit there and look shiny.

I suppose you could use it to fight off burglars, Bilba sent, but it'd be such a waste when you could have just gotten a dog.

So true. There was a pause and then a new text. If you don't mind my asking, how did you like Mirkwood? Aside from the near death, zombie apocalypse thing of course.

Bilba giggled. She scooted backward until she could shove a pillow between her back and headboard and lean back against it. She doubted he wanted to hear her whine about Mirkwood so she sent back, I didn't get to see much of it, but it seems nice. We're heading out tomorrow.

Are you? Where to next?

The Iron Hills, Bilba wrote. She was not looking forward to the trip. Hours upon hours of being trapped in a car with her stepmother, Lotho, Otho and Priscilla. There wasn't near enough room for them all and their belongings so, by the end, they were all guaranteed to be in less than stellar moods. Then Lake-town, and Dale and then we finish in Erebor.

Really? he wrote back. That's an odd route. Wouldn't it make more sense to hit Erebor, Dale and Lake-town and then finish in the Iron Hills?

It would, Bilba agreed. But my stepmother found out about a festival in Erebor to celebrate the prince's birthday and she's determined to be there for it.

Does she know it's a month away?

She does, Bilba answered with a sigh. Somehow her stepmother was intending to make the rest of the tour last a month to ensure they arrived in Erebor at exactly the right time. She didn’t want to know how that was going to work out. She’s got her eyes set on the ball Erebor is throwing to cap the whole thing off.

How'd she manage to get an invitation? came the reply. I'd heard it was pretty exclusive.

Bilba tappe d a finger on her knee but then, deciding he’d probably hear about it anyway, went ahead and sent - The Thain of the Shire is my grandfather and she's been trying to leverage that the entire trip. It’s never workd, but my guess is she won't let that stop her from trying again.

The Thain? he asked. Doesn't that make you a princess?

Bilba rolled her eyes. NO. It's a hereditary title. It meant something once, but now it's pretty much just honorary. He’s really just a figurehead who comes out for parades and such.

He was more or less the Shire’s diplomat/ambassador, in fact, a job that kept him incredibly busy but it certainly wasn’t anything that gave him the power or authority Lobelia liked to pretend he had.

Still, came the reply. That does technically make you royalty, honorary or not.

I suppose if you want to get technical, Bilba sent back grudgingly. Her stepmother insisted on it so often that the mere mention of the title gave her a nervous twitch. It never mattered until this tour when my stepmother started using it to try and get meetings with royal families and invites to balls. She's convinced she can marry my stepsister off to royalty.

She'd be disappointed in the Erebor ball then, came the response. That particular prince is spoken for.

Who knows? Bilba wrote back. Maybe there will be a lord or some such that will take an interest.

Her stepsister was pretty and if she got married off perhaps Lobelia would be taken up with that and leave Bilba alone more. It was a pleasant thought.

What about you? he asked. Looking to land a prince yourself?

Bilba shrugged, even though she knew he couldn't see. Depends on what you're defining as a prince.

Good point, he answered. What do you define as a prince?

Someone kind, Bilba replied without hesitation. Strong, protective. Someone who can make me laugh, maybe. Someone with a big family.

Her eyebrows drew together in a frown as she studied the text she'd just sent. It was far more than she'd meant to reveal, especially to a stranger.

Thing was, though, he didn't feel like a stranger. She had to remind herself that she didn't know his name, or what he looked like. She had to remind herself that she'd heard his voice exactly once and this was the first conversation they'd ever had.

She had to remind herself, because it certainly didn't feel like that. It felt like she was talking to someone she'd known a very long time. It was comfortable, easy. Like she'd simply picked up the phone at the end of the day to talk to a friend.

She’d always wondered what that would feel like.

Why a big family? he asked a few minutes later.

Just seems like it'd be nice, Bilba sent back, unwilling to get any deeper into the mess that was her family. I always thought having a sibling would be fun.

It wasn't until after she'd hit send that she remembered she'd already mentioned her stepsister to him. Fantastic, he'd either think she was crazy now or a jerk who refused to acknowledge her stepsister as a true sibling.

She was just so used to Priscilla introducing her as a “distant relation,” that she forgot people who didn’t know them might look at her strangely if she announced she had no siblings. She didn’t, but it wasn’t what she had ever wanted.

You say that, his response came back, but just wait until your younger brother "borrows" your favorite shirt and returns it with both sleeves ripped off, insisting it was a "stylistic choice."

Bilba laughed, shoulders that had been bunched around her ears relaxing. Sounds wonderful, she couldn't help sending back. Though I'd have probably sat him down and made him sew them back on again.

You're close to what happened, came the reply. Fair enough, though. I suppose it's easy sometimes to miss what you have right in front of you.

Feeling suddenly impulsive, Bilba snapped on the bedside lamp and used the faint light to take a picture of her creepy bathroom. She sent it to him along with Speaking of what's right in front of you, check out what I have to put up with.

There was silence, for long enough that the small smile she had started to waver. Had she gone too far? Maybe he didn't appreciate her changing the direction of the conversation or --

The phone rang.

Bilba jumped so hard she smacked her head against the headboard behind her. She stared at the phone in her hand for a few seconds, and then fumbled to answer it. "Hello?"

"Why do you have a portal to the underworld in your hotel room?" a deep voice demanded.

Bilba giggled and pulled her feet in closer, wrapping her free arm around her knees. "Right? I should have turned the bathroom light on before it got dark."

"I'm not sure it would have helped," he said dryly. "I didn't realize Mirkwood catered to the underworld."

"It would explain the giant spiders," Bilba said sagely. "I saw one the other day and I'm pretty sure it was as big as a small dog."

"Must have been a small one then," he said dryly. "Most of the ones I've seen could be saddled and ridden. I think it's even been suggested to Thranduil that he consider training and selling them as an extra source of income."

Bilba suppressed a shudder. "Well, then I'm doubly glad we're leaving tomorrow. The less chance of seeing a pony sized spider the better."

He chuckled and the sound sent a strange thrill through her. Don't be ridiculous, she scolded herself. She barely knew him. He could still end up being a serial killer.

Footsteps clattered up the stairs yet again and she sighed. "I think the main portal must be on the second floor. People have been coming and going up it all night."

"What motel are you in?" he asked.

"Mirkwood Inn and Suites near the river," she replied without thinking and then instantly kicked herself for her stupidity. She'd just warned herself about the fact she didn't know him and then immediately turned around and told him where she was.

Maybe her stepmother was onto something about her being irresponsible after all.

He let out a hiss. "That's not in the best part of town. I'm surprised your stepmother chose to stay there."

Her stepmother hadn't chosen to stay there, Bilba thought with annoyance. Hr stepmother had chosen to stay at a much nicer hotel on the far side of town where there were no portals to the underworld in the bathroom, and where there were no stairways right outside her window.

Something heavy thudded against her door suddenly and Bilba gasped, tensing as the door rattled in its frame. A slurred voice mumbled something outside her door.

"Are you all right?" her new friend(?) demanded over the phone.

Bilba nodded shakily and then, remembering he couldn't see her, said, "Yeah, I think someone is drunk and thinks this is their room."

"Who are you sharing the room with?"

"No one," Bilba whispered, “it’s just me.”

It had been just her for a very long time.

She pursed her lips as tears threatened. She was not going to start crying on the phone to a total stranger. “I better go, if he hears me talking it’ll just encourage him. Besides, you probably have to get up pretty early for the theater."

"The theater?" he asked.

"Yeah." Bilba pushed the blankets back, trying to ignore the musty smell coming off them, and slid underneath. She curled up on her side with her back to the door and lowered her voice to a whisper. "How early do stagehands have to be there? I'm always there pretty much as soon as the doors open, but I've never beaten you guys."

"Pretty early I'd imagine," he said mildly. "I’ve enjoyed talking to you."

"Me too," Bilba replied with a yawn. She felt strangely relaxed despite all the commotion around her room and thought she might end up getting some sleep after all.

"Thank you again for the soup --" she paused. She'd been about to say his name, only to remember, with some surprise, that she still didn't know it. "I just realized I never asked your name."

"Fili," he said. "At your service."

In her fatigue, Bilba decided he sounded almost flirty and heat flooded her face in response. Don't be ridiculous, she scolded herself. She was not flirting with someone she'd never even officially met. “It’s nice to meet you, Fili,” she said softly. “So to speak.”

"So to speak,” he agreed. “Maybe I'll talk to you later?" he asked, sounding hopeful. Or at least Bilba convinced herself he did. She didn’t think anyone had ever sounded hopeful about speaking to her, but it was a nice thought to have.

"I'd like that," Bilba admitted. "Don't feel bad if I don't respond right away, okay? If my stepmother finds out I'm talking to you she'll freak."

"Overprotective?" Fili asked. "Nothing wrong with that."

"Sure," Bilba whispered. A hollow feeling settled into her gut at the thought of actually having a parent who cared enough to worry that she was speaking to a virtual stranger. "I'll talk to you later, Fili."

She hung up and settled on her side. The bedside lamp was still on, but she had no interest in turning it off.

A second thud sounded against her door, and she tensed and mentally tried to will the drunk to go away. She pulled the blanket up and focused on the far wall, idly counting the number of steps it took different people outside to get up the stairs.

Her body began to relax again, and she started imagining what it would be like in a family with Fili and his unnamed brother. The thought was a pleasant one, and she yawned and settled deeper into the mattress.

It vaguely occurred to her that the stairs and the hall outside her door had fallen quiet. In the pleasant silence, she sighed and drifted off to sleep.

Her final thought before sleep claimed her was that, for the first time in a long time, she was actually looking forward to tomorrow.

Follow on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22263070/chapters/53163472

#Fanfic #Fanfiction #Writing #My Writing #Hobbit #Tolkien #Bilbo #Female Bilbo Baggins #Fili #Genderswap #Modern #AU #Cinderella #Fairy Tale #Romance #angst #Painist #Stagehand

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aroll765 · 4 years

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Covid-19 and Me

Welcome to my blog about Covid-19 and Me. I’m Amanda. and it’s nice of you to stop by. I hope you’re staying safe, well, and AT HOME. Fun fact I love to write so this is looooong blog but I wanted to describe as much as I could to help someone and remember this intense scary time in our World. The last few days have been a whirlwind. I’m honestly still trying to wrap my brain around it, I’ve been extremely calm yet to panic or be in fear, I’ve found my zen place and by some miracle have been able to stay there even when I feel myself slipping ( crazy right? The anxious drama queen is the most calm out of everyone) but others not so much. I would rather you pray or send amazing positive good vibes to my family and friends that are extremely worrie, despite then playing it cool to me, my empath skills can pick up on everything and I know they are not okay, so send those prayers and good positive calming vibes to them cuz I got this. Okay here goes I want to be as detail oriented as possible. So put on some music, grab a cocktail, and read. I’m writing this, as an awesome friend suggested, so I can let you know how getting Covid-19 is for me. What happened, my symptoms, the onset of everything, the process, and hopefully I can ease someone else’s fear, anxiety, or save their life. Even if I help one person, than to me I’ll swallow all my insecurities about sharing my journey and putting everything out their for the world and I know it”ll be worth it. I know I’ll have haters too, but let them hate. We only drive out negativity and hate with love. So, yes I honestly didn’t want to share anything. I know people will judge me. It’s a very private personal matter. I don’t want more people worried about me than need to be or cause more fear, panic, paranoia, or be judged honestly. But again even if this helps only one, then okay it’s worth it to me. This is extremely serious not only in our community, but we here in the United States are the leading number of cases in the world, and I believe we haven’t even seen the impact yet. So yes it’s serious and it needs to be taken as such. STAY HOME! Stay safe. Stay healthy. I did everything as I was supposed to and I still got it but that doesn’t mean you will. Monday I was in my feels and sent my best friends videos on why I loved them, what they mean to me, and just had to express it. It’s like my body and intuition already knew I had it, I just didn’t pick up on it. Weird, maybe, but I am a very emotional sensitive loving person so telling people what they mean to me is really not out of the norm but sending 3-5 minute long videos is. I believe I am so sick so I can help spread awareness and help others take it serious! So one thing you should know is when I get sick, I do it right. I get real sick. I’ve had tummy issues for over a week now, I knew a sinus infection was coming over last weekend, as I rarely get them in my maxillary sinuses, but with the weather changes I thought okay...here we go. Then I had a lingering migraine for days it comes and goes and it’s nothing like my normal ones. It’s on the top of my head and the back of my skull and it comes in waves or a constant pain. But no vision loss, sensitive to sound, just very odd and different but painful. Monday I was feeling yucky and couldn’t get my sinus rinses to go threw, could tell I was swollen, bit of a sore throat but pushed thru. Wednesday awful migraine and extreme sinus pressure. When I get sinus infections they are normally my upper sinuses not the ones in my cheeks, but not this one. I was struggling. Thursday I woke up and knew I was for real sick and something was a bit off. It was sinus infection and probably bronchitis cuz it had moved in my airways but what is this horrid punching pain feeling in my back? My chest was tight. Dry cough. Terrible sore throat. Fever ,I think I lost or broke mine and haven’t bought a new one, cuz I was warm to touch but freezing. Felt achey and overall rough...but I had not slept very much or well. Regardless, I know my body well and I called my Dr. she was available within 30 minutes to have an appointment over the phone! We talked and she said it could be my usual stuff (sinusitis/bronchitis or walking pneumonia) but I also had symptoms of covid-19 so I would need to be screened. My inhaler I was trying to use it but having difficulty because I would start to cough so bad. I couldn’t get a deep enough breath. I do have medicine for a nebulizer but not the machine. A coworker has offered to let me borrow one if I needed it a few weeks ago when we were planning for this, but if I have corona virus I wasn’t leaving my home and risking getting others sick. Plus, if I couldn’t breathe to get the inhaler how would I breathe with the machine. I didn’t want to risk leaving my home really so I didn’t. She recommended I also buy a thingy they put on your finger to monitor your oxygen/heart rate, but warned me I wouldn’t be able to find one. So to look online and invest in one for the future and also a nebulizer and gave me some great advice. I get this about two maybe three times a year so it’s a good investment. She said to try and keep using the inhaler but not push it and called me in medicine (steroid and zpack) and to do the screening for Covid-19. She told me what app to download and so I did and logged in, and did the virtual screening process, it’s kinda like FaceTime! Super easy and you talk to a nurse. We were chatting, I answered questions, she had me walk around my home, did a certain breathing test—-the goal is to get to 30 and I only got to 10, she said I need to put you on hold a minute and I’ll be right back. She was so sweet and kind and I thanked her for working just like I did my Dr. She came back and the dr she was talking to over the phone at the hospital wanted me to come to the hospital. The dr hung up and the nurse said do you want to come or ride it out at home? I was like wait, what? She said the dr wants you to come in because of your breathing she’s marked you as severe case. You can’t walk to your bathroom without getting out of breath, coughing, wheezing so it’s a concern. I said no no I want to stay home and she agreed that was best, and changed me to moderate. She told me she had spoke to someone before me that was much worse that also decided to ride it out at home and this person was much older. I was like okay. Cool. I said ya sure? She said yes I think it’s best I’ve been doing this for weeks and yes you’re not well but if I didn’t have it I would be subjecting myself to more germs while sick, and I’m more comfortable at home and can rest easier. She told me if I got worse or trouble breathing to call back and they would arrange with the ER my arrival, if there wasn’t time and I needed to call 911 I would have to tell them I failed the screening and have Covid-19 symptoms so they could prepare themselves. I said so wait, I have it? She said you have all but one symptom, vomiting. Which I had done with the migraine. So basically yes but they only do screening and tests are limited and sent me a note in the app inbox and told me what to do and self quarantine for 7 days. She said they are there whenever and to call back the virtual screening and talk to a nurse if I needed to. (The 7 days is if you’re in a home with anyone else you HAVE to be in an isolated room and bathroom so no one else can get it) you also need to stay away from pets. I asked her how? I explained my cat is my life and she said well just don’t let the animal eat after you. Ewww I don’t do that anyway. After 7 days you quarantine for the additional 14-21 days. This 7 day thing is very confusing to some. I called back later that night with more questions. That nurse answered my questions and said even if I had come in there was no guarantee I would have been tested. You’re only tested if admitted. Testing is for the medical staff and high risk patients but to call my Dr in the morning, saying I failed the screening I have all but one symptom, and they should give me the test. Okay. So finally drifted off to sleep around 5/6am. It was an awful night. But surpassingly I still had not freaked out, cried, panicked, or had anxiety or anything, I was more worried about my loved ones and how they were handling this. I wake up Friday and I feel even worse. Like a plane and a train have hit me and ran me over. The pain in my back is like bricks are now punching me, someone is laying on the back of my chest, my chest is so tight and I’m getting sharp pains in my back and chest randomly. Mainly left back around shoulder blade and right front chest area, I can’t smell anything, taste is off but occasionally I can taste, I am wheezing no matter what. I’m sneezing. My throat feels like sandpaper fire, it’s just rough. I couldn’t get a deep enough breathe yesterday for my inhaler to get down into my lungs and today was extremely painful I just coughed trying to breathe before doing it. Tried again and coughed so bad I was dizzy. But, positive thoughts positive mind so I try and fake out my parents and called them each and told them I was feeling okay and trying to downplay it, so they could stop worrying. They don’t need to worry cuz I’m fine. I’m totes fine, just the normal crud right. So I change jammies and get ready for work at home. Oh, sitting up is awful!!! I’m nausea and dizzy and wow this is bad. But I can work I got this. But first I call my Dr. I’m getting that test!!! My Dr is working from home today...but they are amazing at the office and she said she would get to the bottom of this and figure out what to do and get back to me. Yes, I thanked her for working. You’ll see this is a pattern. It’s hard to breathe, I’m in so much pain but I’m okay, I can do this I keep telling myself. But I honestly know I’m different than ”normal stuff”. I see the Dr office is calling back, it’s someone else. She starts talking to me and we’re talking and she says Amanda, I’m looking at your chart and you were screened yesterday? I said yes. I failed. She said failed? I said I have all but one symptom. She said I am going to call the on call Dr and call you right back! Don’t put your phone down. I’m like ohhhh I bet they found me a test hahaha sweet. She called back fast. She said you need to get to the ER right now. I said ummm what? No no. I’m riding this out at home. We talked yesterday the screening nurses it’s all worked out. She said no, you have to go right now to the er your symptoms are worse, you’re wheezing and chest is tight, this virus moves fast and you could die. Go now! I said uhhh what!? But are you calling or do I or do I call the screening nurses cuz they said I can’t just show up we have to alert the er, I’m starting to spin, she interrupts me and said there’s no time...it’s fine GO NOW! I’m referring you and we are your PCP Office and they referred you back to us so we are telling you go now, By golly I’ve never put a mask and shoes on so fast and driven to the er that fast in my life. I sent out texts to those who had been chatting with me, And I called my dad. I knew if I heard my mom I was going to breakdown. So I had to call my dad and told him as calmly as I could that I was en route to the er per the dr office telling me I had to go right now because the virus moves fast and he said okay glad you’re going and I’ll tell mom just go and keep us updated. You grabbed your phone charger right? I was like ummm no. Crap but I’m fully charged love you!!! Then my bestie called me as I was pulling in. I shouldn’t have answered but knew she was worried! But that’s when I got a little scared and started crying. She assured me I was in the best hands and it would be okay. But pulling into the hospital parking lot it was so empty, a police vehicle had one of the entrances blocked off, we chatted and I cried and we said I love you. I walked in. That was a difficult walk. I tried to be calm but it was hard to breathe. I just kept thinking this is the longest walk ever! It was surreal to be there. I entered through the ER department, per my drs office telling me to go in there. You’re greeted by a security guard wearing a mask. I said I have covid-19 symptoms and was told to get to the ER now, he said please go in. I said thank you for working! I got a mask when I was in the waiting room of the lobby answering questions and I was the only one in there. A lady was there when I walked in but left and I could tell she was scared and I stayed as far back as I could from absolutely anyone and everyone! I thanked those working! I had to answer many questions and I was so winding I squatted down. I didn’t want to touch or sit down anywhere in case I did have corona virus...but man standing is hard. The nurse was working as quickly as she could. I was nervous and couldn’t think straight. They gave me a mask immediately too and I put it on wrong. A nice male nurse came out to the lobby and fixed it for me and put it on correctly while wearing gloves and a mask. When the nice nurse asking me so many questions wheeled me back in the ER I was scared but she had a good positive energy around here. It helped ease my fear. I’ve never seen or heard the ER so quite and no one around. Their is a section for us potential corona people and my goodness they have it organized and down to nearly perfection, it’s impressive at IU HEALTH BMH!!! It’s also terrifying. But I remained in my zen place. Idk how but I did. So we turned the corner and you see the hallway lined with red carts of equipment outside each room. My group of nurses were waiting for me outside the room. Over the speakers they announce “incoming patient room 38” so they are ready for when you’re wheeled back! I heard this ALL. DAY. I got in the room and they shut the big sliding glass door and curtain and I had to put on a gown. Then a nurse came in fully covered. Face mask, gloves, gown, protective eye wear. I was just thankful it wasn’t a hazmat suit. I would have cried and fully went into a panic attackS He was in the room with me for a long time. Other nurses stood outside, my private window view room, and handed him things through the crack of the door from the cart or ran and got him whatever was needed. This is so nothing was set down or touched by me or anything of the matter, I assume, Even when he was done touching me or near me he’d sanitize the gloves before taking them off and the gown and throw it in the bin before leaving the room. An outside nurse would slide the door open for him to fit thru and he’d slide out and it would be closed again. It’s extremely important they don’t touch anything as they could easily spread it or get it themselves. Everything was done with such precision and teamwork!!! AMAZING! Always nurses in the hall so if someone was in a room with a patient and their team of nurses were helping someone else, they would yell hey anyone in the hall that could hand me____. They had great spirits and were and are superhero’s in my eyes. At one point a janitor was cleaning my window door and he waved to me and I waved back. He gave me thumbs up or down and I did a thumbs up and tried to smile. It was just sweet. You better believe anyone I came in contact with I thanked! They were each taken back by that because it’s their job but I just had to thank them for being our hero’s!!! One nurse I said thank you, she said you already thanked me I checked you in, I said well I just appreciate ya all so much. She said rain or shine it’s what we do, I love what I do so I’m here. It makes me want to cry thinking about. I first got an EKG which was handed to my nurse in the room thru the opening. Another nurse stood in the hallway and recorded all info. After it was over he sanitized it so well and handed it back out to her. Again, he was in the room with me quite some time...To lighten the mood I made him and I plan out if zombies would attack what are game plan would be. But then I’d get coughing and oxygen levels would drop so the fun would be over til I would try to make another joke, because humor was the only way from keeping me from crying, being terrified and panicking. He was laughing himself. I said humor is getting me thru, he said I love your positivity!! You’re so sick and yet you’re a beacon of light. I said no sir, you are. The Dr came in and was amaaaaaaazing! He explained they would be testing for pretty much everything because they want to rule out as much as they can. So hence the ekg, tons of blood work, blood pressure monitored, I was hooked up to machines to monitor my heart I guess, cuz I accidentally took it off and boy did it make a loud annoying sound, iv of fluids, monitored my oxygen ya know all that fun stuff. My nurse got my iv thingy done in 1 poke, that rarely happens so I knew I was in great hands! He took so much blood! I was just like ya going to leave any for me? Again with the jokes. Then I’d have to stop cuz I couldn’t breathe. Dr. Also came in pretty quickly as my nurse was still working and charting things. He was dressed the same. He was awesome as well!!! I said thank you, he said what? I said thank you for doing what you do and helping me. He said I haven’t done anything yet. I said you’re here and you’re a hero thank you. He said wow, well it’s my job and I love it of course. Thank you. He explained that they were testing for everything; heart issues, blood clots, blood tests, flu to make sure it wasn’t any of that since I do have covid-19 symptoms he wanted to rule out that anything else could be going on, especially with my sinus and bronchitis history. The flu is going around as well. He explained that a few weeks ago if you tested positive for the flu you didn’t have covid-19 but NOW people are testing positive for both the flu and covid-19. He said it’s ever changing and he just has to make sure and rule out everything else. I was extremely grateful for his thoroughness and ALLLLLL my questions. He made me feel calm and in good hands in the chaotic scary situation I’m in. He said the virus does move extremely fast and it was so important that I listened to my dr and got here as fast as I did. He asked if I had been around or in contact with anyone who had it or symptoms. I said no and explained I had only been out a few times for groceries, gas, medicine, groceries to survive for a month. I explained everything I did and said I was the most cautious. Hand sanitizer with me, mask, washed hands constantly, stripped and washed clothes in hot water ASAP if I came in from outside, Clorox wipes highly touched surfaces etc. he said “it’s spreading like wildfire” He left and my nurse continued doing his awesome thing. He had been in a similar situation overseas before so I’m like I got the winning nurse suckers! Muhahahaha. He did things like take my temp (only time I removed the mask when he was in there) blood pressure, started iv, administers pain meds and a fever reducer, moves my bed up so I wasn’t wheezing and coughing so much...I feel like a few more things but I kinda lost track. He finally left and I was alone. I had the nurses call button, and a phone right next to me. I literally just was sitting/laying there taking everything in trying to remember how it looked and felt. I saw nurses walk by, some run by, janitors, people pushing machines, others calmly walking, but everyone had a face mask on! Another nurse would be walking by and I’d wave and they’d smile and wave back. You could tell they were trying to make us feel a sense of calmness and peace during this scary time. I witness patients being brought in, not many but I’d hear “incoming patient room 32” and I thought dang it no neighbor for me. I had a room kinda across from me and it was dark. I was kinda hoping for someone else to be there so I wouldn’t feel so alone. My friends who I told I was in the ER were amazing and I was keeping them entertained and them me. I was texting my family updates constantly as well as my besties. I was snap chatting friends. Anything to keep my mind occupied because I knew I would go into a panic attack which would cause even more distress. This big machine came rolling down the hallway. She stopped in front of my gorgeous window view room and I could see her putting on a gown and gloves and preparing and I thought, oh crap what’s that. My oxygen was dropping cuz of my panic. So I went to my zen place. Oxygen back up. She came in and it was an X-RAY machine! Yeah! They bring it to you so I put my mask on before she entered. I mean you do not leave that room! I thanked her for working. Again confusion. She said no problem happy to help I love what I do. See a pattern? Oh I just want to hug these heroes of ours! So she put this thing on my back. Told me to hold still and breathe in deep, that didn’t go well so we had to try again and move me over and she got it that time. She said I’d have results within probably 30 minutes. I thanked her again. She did the same as everyone else. Sanitized the gloves. Took off her gown. Sanitized again. Took off the gloves and someone opened the door for her. Okay, Back to people watching. But it wasn’t very hopping in the hallway. I thought of myself as an animal in the zoo locked behind glass. I feel sorry for them. I started to drift off and then would wake myself up hacking. Dr came and asked if he could stand at the door and had it slightly cracked, he didn’t have protective gear on, only a mask and the glasses, and I said oh of course. He told me that my blood work was great, flu test was negative, my vitals are the best in the er. However he feels I do have sinus infection and bronchitis and X-rays show I have pneumonia on my left lower lung, and my right lung has inflammation, and I have Covid-19, as I have all the symptoms. I just stared at him. (Hear people yelling codes and chaos something about respitory...his face changed and he looked around and said brb) and took off running with a slew of other nurses...idk where they were hiding. Then a second later he was back in my doorway and apologized profusely I said dr no need it’s a crazy intense time! He said where were we yes ok so this is...I cut him off and said doctor you are sure it’s my left lung? My right lung feels like it’s the one with pneumonia cuz it’s hurting and my back left area is hurting and feels like I’m being punched with bricks and everything in my chest front and back feels twisted all up. He explained how and why that is. He explained everything in such great detail and was just phenomenal. I can’t explain it. Then I said wait, so I have Covid-19? I’m just trying to process it all. He said you’re extremely sick. I said it’s how I roll and he just kinda laughed and said you poor thing. He said yes I am diagnosing you as being positive for covid-19 because you have every symptom and pneumonia. However, I’m not admitting you because your vitals are the best in the er, your age, and you are a healthy person. I’m admitting those with cancer, the elderly, and those with respitory illness. The only way to be tested is to be admitted and I just can not admit you when your vitals are the best, he said look your oxygen is back up to 100. But I’m only sending you home under “extreme caution” meaning if you can’t breath or get worse you immediately come back to the ER and we will admit you! You have to stay hydrated, get plenty of rest and stay quarantined for 7 days. I told him how scared I am to go home and ride this out alone when my dr office said the virus moves so quick and I could die. He said I understand and that’s why you’re under extreme caution and if anything changes you are to come back and we admit you. I just can not in good conscience admit you when you’re a healthy, young person who’s vitals are the best in this hospital. Which I understood. I hope I’ve helped describe it in the best way possible from my experience. Now the symptoms and onset: Diarrhea was first for I think 7-10 days until the other symptoms started (I could be wrong on the amount of days) then about 4-5 days before it was sinus problems that kept getting worse and slight throat off and on, then about 3-4 days before it was headaches/migraines but not my normal type. So if you are a chronic migraine suffer it will feel different. 1 day before which would have been Wednesday the migraine was awful and had vomiting with that and continually just didn’t feel well, couldn’t eat. The day they said I probably have Covid-19 and to start as DAY 1, Thursday. Day 1: Thursday morning I woke up feeling awful and sick. I couldn’t breathe out of my nose, migraine but again different like on top of my head and bottom of skull, and would go away and come back, still tummy issues but NO vomiting, my throat hurt and uvula swollen, sharp back pain, chest tightness, dry cough, occasional chest pain, chills, I think I had a fever but not 100% sure, and achey. I knew I was sick, it was sinus infection for sure and felt like bronchitis but also it hurt worse than that. Maybe walking pneumonia? But I don’t remember the back pain being that bad before. Barley slept. Just too much pain and coughing and muscle aches increased, couldn’t get comfortable, everything just hurt. Day 2: Friday morning when I woke up after just a few short hours oh my! I felt like I had been hit by a plane and a train and backed up over too. The chest pain and back pain was almost unbearable. Sore throat was worse, bright red and uvula swollen, it felt like sandpaper on my throat when I was swallowing, I couldn’t smell anything, wheezing even just laying there not doing anything, muscle aches and cramps, I woke up drenched in sweat but was freezing and couldn’t get warm, tummy issues with nausea, couldn’t really taste much, sneezing, dizzy, and just awful feeling. I felt like I couldn’t catch a good breath either. But I was determined to ride it out at home. Then as you know I had to go to the er. After the er the meds and the antibiotics they gave me and fluids I not only felt better I sounded and looked better! (I either am pale or red face when sick and fever and I was going back and forth between the two depending on the time of day) by Friday night I sounded almost normal, no wheezing, and had color back in my face!!! But it took me nearly 4 hours to finish 32 ounces of Gatorade because of my nausea and sore throat. I Barley slept. Rough night indeed. My pain level in the er was about a 7 sometimes 8, last night at times it would go to a 10 but drop back down quickly and I was breathing okay so I stayed home. I will admit I have zero pain tolerance. I’m a baby. Just couldn’t sleep. Was coughing/hacking a lot. Just when your body is all achey and your chest is so tight and hurts and your back feels like bricks are constantly punching you it’s hard to sleep. Day 3: Saturday morning I woke up and got about 5-6 hours of sleep which I was excited about!! I wanted to go back to sleep but I know per my PCP I HAVE to drink 8 ounces of fluid every hour and I’m failing at this. And the er dr said it’s extremely important to stay hydrated so I was not allowing myself to go back to sleep til I got fluids in me. I called my parents to check in and knew mom would help hold me accountable to get liquids, food in me so I could take meds. You’re the best mommy! But oh my. I thought Friday morning was bad. Saturday morning I had everything I did the day before except wheezing! Yay! Well, until I stood up and walk a few steps. Wheezing, heavy breathing and hard to catch my breath. Also...Sooo dizzy. Almost fell over a few times. I have vertigo a lot with my migraines so I’m a pro balancer. Hehehe. And my head is just extreme pain today it’s top and middle of skull and been constant with extreme waves of pressure. But what was so different besides the extreme dizziness was the fatigue! You would think I ran a triathlon. I had to take breaks to get places in my house. Usually I’m zip zapping around in seconds with Bella chasing me. Today she was so confused. She also doesn’t leave my side when I’m sick and she’s been distancing herself so that’s been a lil strange. She still comes and checks on me but it’s not my usual kitty. They say to stay away from your pets so maybe she is picking up on something. Poor Bella boo. Okay sorry got side tracked. Literally no drama picking up a 32 ounce bottle of Gatorade was too heavy for me. Are you kidding? A week ago I was carrying a bag of 6 of them in one hand. Nausea comes and goes but I have no appetite. I don’t want to eat or drink, but I know I have too and I’m forcing myself liquids. I took a 3 hour nap this afternoon and I’m keeping myself elevated with multiple pillows to help with the congestion and coughing. The pain in my back and chest hurts, it’s constant pain and tightness and you can’t feel like you ever get a good deep breath. Day 4: Sunday I got a little bit more sleep (7 hours) and woke up feeling a little better. Not as fatigued. Headache but not migraine. Overnight was rough!!!! Saturday into Sunday I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t get a good breath. I found a video online of an ICU nurse that went viral about the cupping/patting technique. Someone is supposed to cup their hands and pat on your back, it breaks up the mucus. With covid-19 the mucus sticks to your lungs and you can’t breathe etc. my anxiety was like oh no this is why I can’t breathe well and I didn’t want to go to the er as I know they’ll admit me. Space is limited. I can ride this out. I want that for those that truly need it, that have husband and kids, that have a huge house full of people that they can’t isolate from, a Grandma, idk...I just it may sound silly to you but it’s how I feel. I can’t get over the er dr telling me I had the best vitals in the er when everyday you hear others are dying. So I threw myself up against a wall protecting my head and could feel the mucus come up as I was staring to choke a bit and cough! Woah! It works. It hurt extremely bad but it was working so I continued it. It wore me out so I’d take a break and do it again. It worked because I spit up some mucus. I started to realize what was happening...oh no. I’m really sick. I started getting emotional and text my bestie...golly I am extremely grateful for 3/4 am convos with my bestie who has a newborn because I was in a lot of pain, my breathing was hard, and just starting to realize the severity of what’s happening to me. Finally I drifted off to sleep. Again woke up feeling a bit better. My chest didn’t feel as tight, I felt more with it not so in a dream foggy state, but my left arm was a bit swollen hot to touch and had some red splotches. Hmm. What’s that about? Well, My parents, my living angels, dropped off Gatorade, tea, sugar soup, muffins, etc and it was just so amazing to wake up to those texts and that stuff on my front porch. I can’t emphasize enough, although they don’t tell me I KNOW they are having a hard time...they are so scared and feel absolutely helpless. I feel so bad for doing this to them. I was able to pick up the bag of Gatorade! Remember yesterday I couldn’t even lift 1 Gatorade-woah! This is exciting! I walked to the kitchen without having to take a break. Again exciting. But I was still so dizzy and almost fell. Thankfully the stove and cabinets caught me. I was like a pin ball all day slamming into things left and right and bouncing off them. Good lord. And it’s not like vertigo. It’s like you’re walking fine and then boom you’re in a door. Well how’d that happen. Bella found this amusing. She came out of isolation a bit today and hung out with me which was really nice to get some kitty cuddles. My cheeks still red so I’m pretty sure running a fever and still cold constantly. Throat feels a little better. Oh what’s that I’m hungry?! Yesss! One bite and I’m full. Dang. Still can’t taste or smell. And my nose is super stuffy. I drank hot tea which was amazing on my sore throat! And it helps break the mucus up. I did finally take a shower tonight!!!! I realized in the shower since I was standing I still have a broken toe. My poor body, it doesn’t know what to fix! I got completely fatigued during and after. But the steam and hot water felt so nice. I had to take multiple breaks just to finish and walk to my room like 5 steps away. I was spent!!! Also I started noticing later tonight my right side of my back is also in a lot of pain like my left. Yikes. I’m losing track of time. I thought it was like 2 pm and it was 5:30 pm. I thought it was like 9 and it was nearly midnight. I know I need more sleep. I did a little better today getting liquids down! Nausea care back. Had to call the er for some questions, they referred me to the virtual screening nurses, so I think this is going to be a nightly thing...on Thursday my breath test I got to 10. Tonight I got to 6/7 and that’s being generous it was more like a 5/6 But since I feel somewhat okay the nurse consulted with the dr and said I could be transferred to the on call Drs and pay or to call my dr in the morning and discuss with her my arm, as they noticed what I was seeing (swollen and red splotches) and it’s the opposite arm of iv, and also about my breathing. I decided to consult my dr in the am. As I was trying to sleep I got an intense sharp pain in my back on the left that had me in tears. It went away after about a minute. I hope I can work tomorrow but the dr wrote me off for two weeks. The best way to describe this for me, remember I have multiple things not just covid-19, is having a cold, the tummy flu, pneumonia, and mono all at once.

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merrymcfuckyourself · 5 years

Text

Dumb S-Word Headcannons for Ralsei because I’m horny and stupid

(I left out 3 questions and edited 1 just because I just didn’t feel like trying to answer them. With that said, let’s throw away the last scraps of dignity I have to my name.)

🤒: How often do they get sick? What kinds of illnesses do they tend to get most often? Colds, flu, sinus infections, stomach viruses?

Ralsei tends to get sick only slightly more than an average young monster would, so maybe 2 or 3 times a year. A regular chest/head cold is the most common, but he is prone to the flu if it happens to be going around.

🌡: Do they tend to run hot or cold? When they have a fever, is it barely noticeable, or does their temperature skyrocket?

It’s common for his temperature to get pretty high and spike a couple of times, at most getting to 103. at it’s peek.

😷: When they’re sick, do they stay home or go to work/school? If they don’t go to work or school, do they try to rest, or do they just go on with their day like normal? Do they try to avoid getting others sick by taking precautions like a mask or staying away from others in general?

He can be a rather stubborn patient if there’s work to be done, but either way doesn’t put up much of a fight if someone forces him to rest. He normally would insist on isolating himself to prevent the spread of illness, but would still go along with it if his friends insisted on sticking by him (Especially considering Kris knows how much he hates being alone)

🤧: What does their sneeze sound like? (Description, spelling, or both!)

eh...Hah-!HHAshuu-! *(can range in pitch or volume but buildup is almost always involved one way or another)

😩: Do they tend to sneeze just once or twice, or multiple times? Do they have fits frequently or rarely? Does how many times they sneeze depend on the cause?

It’s more common for him to just have fits of 2 or 3 depending on the cause, but if the stars align then he can go into an uncontrollable fit that lasts for about 1 minute.

🌸: Are they allergic to any kind of plants? Flowers, weeds, trees? If yes, how bad are their allergies to those plants?

Ralsei actually loves the flowers of the Lightner World, that being said, some of them and most weeds/trees around Allergy Season more often than not can send him into those minute-long fits as previously mentioned

🕯: Are they allergic to other things? Dust, animals, perfumes, certain fragrances? Anything that might be considered “out of the ordinary” to be allergic to? How bad are those allergies?

Aside from the pollen allergies I mentioned above, there’s nothing else really that severe.

👃: In general, how sensitive is their nose? Can something like a certain flower or smell make them sneeze even if they’re not allergic to it? Do they sneeze a lot on average, or not very much? Does their nose twitch a lot, or barely ever at all?

Something like a feather or even someone else’s hair (usually Kris’) can set him off. This one weakness has been taken advantage of by Susie more than once. Other than that he pretty much never sneezes without a clear cause. Also, more often with allergies, his muzzle will twitch like a bunny rabbit right before sneezing, another thing Susie likes to make fun of him for when it happens.

😭: When they’re sick, do they try to downplay their symptoms, or do they treat every little cold like the plague? Do they whine a lot, or do they complain quietly or even just in their head?

He always stays pretty quiet about his suffering even when he feels miserable, but it’s still easy to tell even if he’s not whining about it.

✨: What would be the best way for someone to induce them? Feathers, rolled-up tissue, or something else? How much stimulation would it take for them to start sneezing? Would inducing produce just one or two sneezes from them, or multiples?

He’s pretty easy to induce with just a few strokes from a feather or tickling him with Kris’s hair (god fucking dammit it hurt my brain to type that but my body was all for it)

💦: How wet are their sneezes? Do they spray barely at all, or are you gonna need an umbrella? Do they try to cover at all, or just let it go? Do they sniffle a lot when they’re sick or allergies are bugging them?

Picture a full spray bottle of Water. That is all I’ll say

🤝: Do they like to be taken care of when they’re not feeling well? Or do they hate it when people fuss over them? If they do, what’s their favorite thing about being taken care of? If not, why don’t they like being taken care of? How bad would they have to be before they’d let anyone take care of them in any capacity?

Ralsei tolerates being taken care of, and silently appreciates someone caring about him enough to take time out of their day and do so.

💊: Do they take their medicine like a grown-up, or do they try to fight it? Do they prefer pills or liquid medicine? Can they be “tricked” by having the medicine mixed with applesauce or with a drink, or would they still not take it even then?

The first couple times it was easy to get him to take it because he wasn’t aware that pretty much all liquid medicine tastes awful. Even now, he’ll either choke it down with little to no fuss, or politely ask if he could just take it in pill form, and failing that, mix it in some apple juice and he’ll never tell the difference.

🍲: What do they like to eat while they’re sick? Do they like soup, or would they prefer something that isn’t “sick person food”? Do they lose their appetite when they’re sick, or are they hungrier than usual?

He loses any appetite for food, pretty much just surviving on water if you let him. Susie’s the only one who basically scared him into eating some cheese and crackers or else she’d hurt him (which was probably just an empty threat but he’s not gonna take that risk)

🍵: Do they like tea when they’re not feeling well? If so, do they like it with honey, lemon, both, with something else, or just plain? Would they accept something else if they couldn’t have tea? If they don’t like tea, is there something they’d rather drink instead? Would they drink tea if their preferred drink wasn’t available?

He may not like food, but he always appreciates a cup of tea on any day.

😔: What are their “tells” when they’re not feeling their best? Do they sleep more or less? Do they become easily irritated, aggressive, snap at little things? Or do they withdraw and become quieter, cry at the drop of a hat, stay in the background? What’s the one surefire way that one of their loved ones would be able to tell that they’re sick?

He goes from perky and good at holding conversations to tired and quiet, not speaking unless spoken to and even then you might have to shout his name once or twice to get his attention.

❄️: Would it be more unusual to see this character sick during the winter or during the summer? Do they typically go down during cold and flu season, or do they usually get summer colds?

He’ll often get sick as soon as the seasons shift or any little (or major) bug is going around. If it’s cold and flu season, he’s typically the first to get sick but the first to fully recover.

🎤: How does their voice change when they’re sick or allergies are bugging them? Does their voice get lower? Scratchy? Raspy? Can you hear any congestion in their voice or do they hide it well? Do they avoid speaking too much because of a sore throat and coughing, or do they try to talk through those things?

His voice pretty much disappears completely by the peek of a bad cold/flu

⚙️: Do they have some kind of ritual that they do when they’re not feeling great that helps? Does it help physically, or does it just make them feel better emotionally?

If he can’t sleep (coughing, congestion, ect), he’ll read a book until he knocks out. Usually happens only an hour or 2 into reading.

😳: Are they embarrassed by their sneezes, or do they just not really care? Do they apologize after sneezing? Do they say “sorry!” or “excuse me!” or anything like that? If they’re embarrassed about it, why?

Susie’s taunting of his sneeze has made him a chronic apologizer, even if she’s not around anywhere.

😥: What would they do if somebody gave them a gift that they’re allergic to? Would they say they’re allergic to it or not? Try to give it back, keep it, or get rid of it later?

He’d insist on keeping the gift and probably hold onto it until someone else forcibly took it from him and threw it away.

📝: Quick! Come up with a scenario for them! It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just something you think would be cute or something you’d like to see with them!

you have made a grave error in giving me this power Soo, my favorite allergy scenario for Ralsei is admittedly one like to give a lot of characters/OTPs I’m obsessed with. Hanging out or going on a date with someone (Kris) in a meadow, but suddenly having a reaction to the flowers around them, but not wanting to leave and ruin their outing until they’re basically a not sohuman Tap and struggling to breathe, making their SO drag their stubborn ass out of there for their own health and safety.

My favorite Sick Fic scenario for him that I’m totally not just conjuring up in my head as I type this would beee...Ral is sick and him and Kris are the only ones in the house, effectively forcing Kris into the role of sole caretaker. They finally convinced the kid to lay down and sleep, and the place he happened to drop was right on Kris’s stomach while laying on the couch. So they’re laying there, pinned to the couch watching TV or something, when without warning, Ralsei sneezes into his sweater, getting that one spot all damp, and immediately falling back asleep, leaving a shocked and silently pissed off Kris.

And that’s it! What, were you expecting a joke or something?

#snz #sneezing kink #sneezkink #sneezingkink #whump #sick whump #whump prompts #allergies #sick fic #i am definitely going to hell for this

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violetsmoak · 6 years

Text

no safety or surprise [1/?]

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18035168/chapters/42616919

( See First Chapter for full Disclaimers & Warnings)

Summary: A haunting broadcast reveals the Joker’s final act and sets off a chain of events that will destroy the world. Terry finds himself collaborating once more with the estranged members of Bruce’s former team. As the end nears, however, he and the other Bats are faced with hard choices about survival—and forgiveness.

Rating: T (may change depending on the amount of graphic/details I decide on)

________________________________________________________________

chapter one: the calm before the storm

Neo-Gotham, Friday, June 13, 2042 9:04 AM

MCGINNIS

Siblings, Terry thinks as he scowls down at the little gremlin on the couch, are highly overrated.

At some point, while he was getting ready for school, Matt snuck into his room and stole his comforter. The twip is now wrapped up like a giant burrito, watching television and pretending he doesn’t see Terry’s irritated expression.

“Don’t you have your own?” he grumbles. “You’re going to get your sick germs all over it.”

“You can just wash it later.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I think it’s cute,” Mom interrupts, stopping the fight in its tracks the way she always does. She doesn’t look up from her phone, thumb flying through a text. “And you used to do the same thing, by the way.”

Terry blinks. “I did not.”

“You did. With mine and your father’s bedspread. That, and homemade soup? Always made you feel better when you were sick.”

Which, okay, Terry can sort of remember that.

There was something safe about being wrapped in blankets that smelled like Dad’s aftershave and having Mom spoil him with food made just for him. A pang of sadness hits him, leeching away from his irritation; Matt was never able to do that. Their parents divorced rather soon after he was born, and Dad wasn’t around Matt much afterward, let alone when he was sick.

Since Warren McGinnis’ death, Terry is the only adult male presence his brother has in his life.

And I’ve done a pretty crap job of that so far.

He’s always so busy, working for Mr. Wayne on and off the books. The criminal element in Gotham makes it practically impossible to maintain connections outside the life.

It’s ironic that Batman is better at being a role-model for Matt than Terry is.

The fight drains out of him, and he gives a put-upon sigh. “Fine. He can have it. But if I get sick, I’m going to hang him over the balcony by his feet." He turns away, but knows Matt is sticking his tongue out at the back of his head; it’s what he’d do at that age. “So, what’s the verdict? Staying? Going?”

Whatever Matt has, their mother seems to be coming down with as well. She’s been debating all morning about whether she intends to go into work or not. Terry’s stuck around, in case she does decide to go, and he has to watch Matt; he can Livestream his classes, she can’t exactly do the same for her job.

“I don’t know,” Mom says, frowning at the screen. “Jarvis and Riley are out today too apparently.”

Terry whistles; he’s happy he hasn’t caught whatever’s going around. It’s still the cold part of June, around the time when the temperatures fluctuate between mild and freeze-your-nuts off. Mom always tells him how when she was a young girl, the weather already started warming up in May, but because of global warming summer doesn’t really arrive until July.

So now, June is the summer flu season.

Point being, I could still catch it. And won’t that be fun.

Because Batman doesn’t get sick days, and Terry knows from experience that having a cold while wearing the cowl is probably the most disgusting feeling ever. And that includes wading through sewage and cleaning rotten food out of the refrigerator.

While Mom continues to debate with herself, he fires off texts to Dana and Max, asking them to cover anything he misses for the first period, in case he’s late. There are about ten seconds before he gets a response from Max.

‘No problem. Is it work? Or work?’

Before he can respond, Dana’s text comes in. ’everything OK w/ mr wayne?’

And he can’t help a smile at that, because he doesn’t have to make up any kind of lie or excuse, because they both know. He’s still getting used to the fact that Dana knows, and that she understands. And wants to help.

It’s more than he ever thought he’d get when he started this whole thing.

‘Wayne OK far as I know,’ Terry texts them both back, mentally crossing his fingers that he isn’t jinxing anything. ‘Mom & Matt not feeling great. Keeping an eye on them a bit.’

‘aw, sux. tell them feel better from me. dnt worry, got u covered! <3’

There’s a minute or so before Max responds.

‘Too bad. Nasty flu this year, huh? Not feeling great either, but test period 2, so…’

Terry’s eyes widen. ‘Wait. What test?’

‘LOL.’

‘Srsly, what test?!?!’

There’s no answer, and Terry frowns down at his phone, trying to decide if Max is messing with him or not. He’s about to double-check with Dana when his mother speaks.

“I think I will stay home,” she decides, rubbing her cheekbones. “My face hurts. I really hope it’s not another sinus infection. That’s all I need on top of everything.”

“Hey, take it easy,” Terry tells her with a comforting smile. “It’s been a while since you had the day off. Besides, the world’s not going to shut down because one astronomer doesn’t come into work.”

“You say that now,” Mom says dryly. “If an asteroid is hurtling toward the earth and it’s my job to spot it, you’re going to feel pretty foolish.”

“Nah, never happen.” He grabs his bag and starts for the door, stopping to press a kiss to the top of his mother’s head. “With Superman out there? And the Justice League? Pretty good job security, I’d say.”

“Lame,” Matt grumbles from his blanket cocoon. “Batman can take them all. He probably has a special rocket to shoot stuff down.”

And, okay, maybe Terry might rethink his stance on siblings, because damn if those words don’t make him grin.

Matt notices and frowns at him. “Why are you smiling at me like a creeper?”

And, there goes that good feeling.

“Trying to decide whether to take a pic and send to your friends and show them how pathetic you are right now. You’re like a human-larva hybrid. It’s gross.”

“Yeah, well—well, you’re adopted!”

That’s his latest insult to everyone when he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Matt!”

“At least I was planned,” Terry retorts.

It takes a moment before the penny drops, and his brother’s overly pale face goes red. “Moooooom!”

“Terry, leave your brother alone, he’s sick,” she sighs, rubbing her eyes.

“What’s his excuse for the rest of the time?”

“Go to school, hon.”

Matt smirks at him, and returns his attention to the television, flipping through cartoons. Terry rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything about favoritism, because it always comes back to how he’s an adult now and should know better than to stoop to the level of a ten-year-old.

I can win a fight against the deadliest member of the Society of Assassins, but not this. Go figure.

“Will Mr. Wayne need you today?” Mom asks as he puts on his jacket. He knows she’s wondering if he’ll be able to come home and relieve her from Matt-duty at some point, which he totally understands.

“We’ll see. I’ll probably drive out to check on him tonight, but I think I can get home after school if you need a break.”

“That would be appreciated.”

“Do you want me to bring you guys anything while I’m out—?”

There is a sudden, sharp drop in pitch throughout the entire house. Terry’s ears pop a little, the same way they do whenever Shriek mutes the sound in the surrounding area, but somehow his hearing simply becomes sharper now.

Before Terry can wonder if it’s a sign the sound-terrorist is back out on the street, the living room is filled with music. A jaunty, haunting carnival tune that instantly has the hair on the back of Terry’s neck raising.

His gaze whips to the television screen, which is flickering between static and a blank screen with the words HA HA HA flashes across it in red.

His mouth goes dry.

________________________________________________________________

WAYNE

Bruce is starting to wonder if a Lazarus Pit might not have been a better idea than the liver transplant. Of the methods for artificially prolonging life, at least with the Pit, he would eventually start to feel like he was recovering.

After the madness subsided, at least.

On days like today—when it’s damp and chilly, and there’s nothing going on in Gotham to keep him glued to the computer screen in the Cave—it’s hard to remember the arguments he’s always made against using the restorative powers of a Lazarus Pit. His body protests with every movement as he eases it through several slowed kata variations. Part of his physical therapy, as suggested by his doctors.

Since his procedure, he feels the exhaustion much more keenly. It’s bone-deep fatigue that seeps into every muscle, emphasizing the way his bones creak and grind against each other, cartilage worn away from age and decades of abuse. It’s the way his energy levels drain so much faster now, to the extent that even his usual ability to will himself into action seems to wane every day.

Not that he really had a choice in the matter. He was in end-stage liver failure, and the nearest Pit is in New Cuba. He’d just been lucky that there was a suitable donor in the hospital at the right time.

‘Luck’ is one word for it. ‘Cruel irony’ might be a better phrase.

Douglas Tan is one of the names he’s going to carry on his conscience for the rest of his life; or, at least on his liver.

Terry still makes jokes about Batman having a piece of a Joker inside him, but then Terry tends to use humor to cover up when he’s worried. Dick always did that, too; and Jason.

Bruce scowls, bothered by the direction of his thoughts, as well as the raggedness to his breath. He isn’t even moving very fast, but it’s taking him every bit of strength to keep at it.

Ace is curled up in his usual spot in the cave, watching Bruce with what seems to be narrowed eyes. As if to say, don’t overdo it or I will knock you over.

The dog is smarter than most people.

Ace is one of the reasons the doctors were willing to leave him to pursue recovery on his own and not under some beady-eyed nurse in the hospital. Money isn’t as much an incentive as it once was, with so many legal and health standards in the way; the older he gets, the less likely people are to trust his ability to make decisions, lawyers or not.

He tolerated a private nurse for about a day while having Terry make other arrangements and manufacturing a piece of paper saying Ace was a certified service dog. He’s not, but Bruce has no doubt the dog would activate the medical alert button at the computer if something were to happen. And Terry has an alarm set up, keyed into the surveillance and motion sensors in the Cave. If anything were to happen, he can be here faster than any ambulance.

Old age has fed into long-buried fears, and it gives him an embarrassing sense of relief knowing there’s someone to look in on him. It has always bothered him, being dependent—being weak.

Some days he’s more accepting of it; some days he wishes he had Kryptonian DNA.

Which is usually the point at which he forces himself to occupy his mind with other things because envying Kal-El can only lead down a dark, frustrating path of self-pity. One he’s determinedly avoided ever since meeting the other man.

After another fifteen minutes of forcing himself to think about nothing but the movement of his limbs, Bruce finally finishes his exercises. Sweat coats his back and his muscles ache with the same burn as if he just spent several hours grappling through the Gotham skyline. Even if it took fewer challenging movements to reach this point, that burn is comforting.

Familiar.

And that’s a word that’s been cropping up more in his thoughts lately. History tends to repeat, after all, but it’s still strange to experience. Terry’s been an excellent example of that.

Like Bruce, the McGinnis boy started out with nothing but a suit and an old man’s voice in his ear. Now, he’s got a network. Friends who he trusts and who will keep his secret. A steadily growing list of allies in the field.

The Police Commissioner. The Justice League.

And a Catwoman too, for Christ sakes.

He wonders what Selina would think about that.

Bruce just hopes the kid won’t make his mistakes. Forty years is a long time to rack up regrets.

At least Dick’s back in contact now.

Sort of.

He showed up the second night that Bruce was recovering from his procedure at the hospital; he’d managed to convince Terry to go out on patrol instead of wasting his time watching an old man sleep.

“Batman doesn’t get a day off.”

Bruce had dozed for a bit, but not deeply; it wasn’t difficult to discern that he wasn’t alone.

One minute the room was empty and in the next, Bruce could feel that familiar presence—the one of a man who had carried the mantles of Robin, Nightwing, and Batman—and somehow lived to tell the tale. Then his estranged son was stepping out of the shadows, glaring down at him, muscles in his jaw working and fists clenching and unclenching.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Bruce had croaked, wishing he had thought to ask for ice chips before the nurse left. “I’m too stubborn to die.”

The silence hanging afterward was filled with everything he couldn’t say yet. For once, Dick didn’t call him on it.

“You’re more stubborn than God,” his boy countered.

(He’ll always be a boy to Bruce, grey hair and eye-patch be damned.)

And yet, Dick sat, arms crossed and spine stiff for the rest of the night. Still angry, but present nonetheless. He stayed until morning rounds without saying anything and then left.

They haven’t seen each other since, but sometimes Bruce can hear feedback on the comms when he’s directing Terry’s patrols. The tinny whisper of signals crossing from the bug he pretends he doesn’t know Dick planted on the underside of his medical ID tag.

It’s not much, but it’s something. The opening of the possibility that at some point, he’ll come around.

Barbara did, after all.

Mostly because of Terry, but afterward Bruce started making the effort. They can have conversations alone now that don’t end with her yelling at him (or punching him, on one or two memorable occasions). Bruce forgot how much he enjoyed her sense of humor and intelligence—how much he enjoyed their friendship—from before they slept together.

(That might be one of his life’s biggest shames. Oh, he has regrets associated with all of the family for one thing or another, but this is the one that still wakes him up at night feeling dirty.)

In a way, it’s easier with Tim, and that’s a bridge Bruce thought had been obliterated long ago.

Granted, he’s leaving Gotham again—the last incident with the Joker army rattled him enough that he put in for a transfer to the Beijing division of Wayne Enterprises—but he stuck around long enough to collaborate with Bruce on a subdermal antitoxin deployment implant against Joker venom.

(None of them want to be caught unawares again.)

It’s in the prototype phase, with only five of the devices in existence; he, Tim and Terry are testing them personally. It’s not exactly something the FDA is going to approve for human testing anytime soon, not with all the new legislation, but with the state of Gotham, it’s unwise to wait on it.

(He sent one to Barbara and one to Dick but doesn’t know if they’ve bothered to activate them. At least they haven’t sent them back.)

If the implant works, Bruce is seriously considering modifying the tech for the Wayne Enterprises medical division. There are a lot of illnesses and viruses out there which require regular dosages of medicine to keep them under control. The difficulty is finding funding and ensuring the board of the directors doesn’t jump on the chance to charge exorbitant amounts of money for the technology. The whole point of the tech is to help anyone who needs it, not just the filthy rich.

Maybe that’s the next project, after CAIN, he muses, grabbing his towel from where he draped it over one of the computer processors.

His global Clean Air Initiative Network is something he’d been working on before stepping back from the company. It was shelved almost immediately by Derek Powers when he took over, but since Bruce has been back, he’s been revisiting a lot of old projects.

Lucius’ boy did most of the technical work on it, and Foxtecha will have joint ownership of the patent when it’s ready for public consumption. Bruce would have asked Tim, but he knows how determined his estranged son is to get out of Gotham. He can read it in the tone of his emails, which have thankfully lost the stilted, formal business tone they’ve had since he returned to the company.

(Bruce mentioned paying a visit in the future, and Tim didn’t say no, so he counts that as a win.)

It’s a little disconcerting how the family is coming together again; disconcerting but welcome.

He’s received a vid call last week from Cassandra expressing concern over his surgery, and then a short, gruff email from Duke all-but ordering him to get better. There’s even a letter from Stephanie—or Eurus, as she goes by these days—smelling of dust and desert sun and incense found only in Nanda Parbat. Her messy, looping scrawl, echoed Dick’s sentiment about Bruce’s stubbornness and alluded to its genetic inheritability.

(That said more than if she had mentioned Damian outright; his youngest son has remained stubbornly silent.)

Bruce lost track of her not long after Damian’s short and brutal stint under the cowl; it had surprised him to find out she ended up in Tibet.

It also relieved him. Because no matter how dark a path his son wandered, at least there would be someone to challenge him. To not obey without question. To give him a link to the life he once had, to being human and alive.

(Bruce very carefully doesn’t think about Jason—doesn’t wonder if things had been different if he wouldn’t have reached out as well. Even after so many years, that wound is still raw.)

The whole thing is a stark difference from the last few times he ended up in the hospital, including when he was dosed on Joker venom several months ago. He didn’t hear anything from them at that point, which makes him think someone really thought he was dying this time and reached out.

Barbara, maybe. Or Dick. However much tension there is between himself and Bruce, he does keep in touch with the others. Hell, it might even have been Terry. The kid doesn’t know the rest of them personally, but he’s gotten adept at navigating the computer in the cave.

And he’s always been curious about his predecessors.

Bruce’s first family.

Or maybe just the first phase of the family.

Bruce shies away from that secret bit of knowledge he has about Terry, and his brother Matt. What he discovered the first time the kid returned to the Cave with bloody gashes that needed stitching up. The files and medical information buried beneath every firewall he could fashion, so the latest Batman can never stumble upon it accidentally.

The most Bruce has allowed himself to acknowledge it is an amendment in his will setting aside trust funds for both boys.

As if triggered by his thoughts, the screen of the Bat-Computer flickers to life. He rolls his shoulders, expecting an alert on some heist or robbery going on in the city; another case to add to the docket for Terry to investigate after school (depending on the severity).

Bruce doesn’t expect the Cave to suddenly fill with a jaunty, haunting carnival tune that makes his entire body seize in recognition. And yet, he already knows what’s coming even before the words HA HA HA coalesce upon the screen.

“Hell-O World! It’s your favorite rascal…”

________________________________________________________________

GORDON

There are times when Barbara misses being a vigilante, if only because there was a lot less paperwork involved. Questionable legality aside, there was always a simplicity to the whole endeavor: track down the bad guy, entrap-and-or-beat said bad guy into submission, and then drop them off at the GCPD.

Now that she’s the one behind the desk, though, she has a lot more appreciation for the work her father did. She wonders how he never developed an aneurysm or stress-related heart condition due to the grief Batman (and the rest of them) caused the department.

She has barely sat down in her office, but there’s an influx of emails flooding her inbox. She scans through the first few—requests from someone in IA sniffing around some of her open cases on the barest hint that she’s allowing Batman to help, reminders about upcoming social functions she would rather skip, two officers that have to be brought up on disciplinary charges—and sighs. It’s just the first two dozen.

Today is going to be a triple espresso kind of day, I can tell, she decides, rolling her shoulders and tilting her neck from side to side.

Another message chimes as it comes in.

Crime Alley and Tricorner are requesting more plainclothes officers in the area, ostensibly to deal with an upswing in crime over the past twenty-four hours.

Barbara frowns at this—it must be significant if those particular precincts are reaching out, they usually hate working with Central. Then again, everyone’s been jumpy about security since the Jokerz almost destroyed Gotham.

They’re still finding bodies from that one. She’s got three of her officers’ families grieving without any closure.

Barbara goes back over incident reports from the last few hours, noting a rise in attacks on the homeless, property damage and extreme road-rage (twenty-six separate incidents of that, which is a new daily extreme for her). From the initial investigations into each of the unrelated events—all in different areas of the city—there doesn’t seem to be any motivating factor or link.

What the hell is going on?

A crime spike isn’t ordinary for June; they usually start around now and then play out over the course of weeks.

Not hours. Have any of our usual players been released from custody lately? There’ve been no outbreaks or escapes that I know of.

If there is someone out there stirring things up, she hopes to God it’s just someone like Walter Shrieve. Arrogant and brilliant offenders she can deal with; they’re always so eager to prove themselves the best, and it always leads to their downfall. It’s the criminally insane ones that keep her up for days on end trying to restore some semblance of sanity to a city that’s never going to get any better. Even worse is a combination of the two.

Uneasy, she fires off a message to her counterparts in New York and Toronto, to see if they’re seeing similar phenomena in their jurisdictions. She hopes this is nothing, but she’s getting a hunch. And her hunches never lead her to anything that could be remotely called good.

“Get me Commissioner Sawyer over at MPD,” she tells the computer. She and Maggie go way back, and the other woman doesn’t pull that intercity rivalry crap when it comes to sharing important information.

“Yeah, the dregs are coming out of the woodwork here, too,” Maggie tells her after they exchange the requisite pleasantries. Her voice is carefully measured in a way that tells Barbara she’s not having a good day, either. “We had a damn flash mob that caused an A-trak derailment this morning. I have no idea how there weren’t more casualties, but…”

“Where’s Superman when you need him, right? I’d heard he was back in play.”

According to Bruce and Terry, anyhow.

“If he is, he must be off-world or something, because I doubt he’d be sitting on his ass at a time like this. What about on your end?”

“Well, we’re not exactly beyond the powers of the GCPD right now,” Barbara replies, a little smugly. “No need to take the Bat-signal out of storage.”

Yet, the unwelcome voice in her head echoes.

“Oh-ho, aren’t we getting confident in our old age?” Maggie sneers, but there’s no real malice to it. “For all our sakes, I hope it stays that way. But I’ve got a hunch...”

“Yeah,” Barbara sighs, her stomach dropping. “Me too.”

It’s not a good sign when both she and her opposite number in Metropolis are on the same wavelength.

As Maggie hangs up, three more incident reports pop up on the side of her screen. Skirmishing at Gotham General—that’s all they need now. If things are just warming up, it’s looking like another long day.

Sam’s not going to like it…

Barbara dials in the number herself this time on her personal line. There’s a trill and the viewscreen pops up to show her husband in his office at the DA, scowling down at a tablet. His expression clears when he sees her.

“Didn’t I just see you this morning?” he jokes. “Or were you that keen to see me again?”

“Always,” Barbara tells him, softer than she speaks to anyone else. “But I’m actually calling to apologize. It’s going to be a day, and I don’t know if I’ll get home for supper.”

“It must be bad since you just got there.”

“Things have been hairy all night,” she admits. “I’ve got incident reports multiplying as we speak. You’d think with the bug going around people would be staying home to recuperate, but it looks like they think it’s an excuse to break the law.”

“Well, it’s Gotham. After all this time, it’s not a surprise.”

“It’s really, really not.”

“I know I’d rather be home in bed,” Sam says, and normally a comment like that would have innuendo behind it. This time it’s all too earnest. He rubs his face tiredly. “I think I’m coming down with it too, to be honest.”

“If you give it to me, you’re sleeping on the couch for the next week,” Barbara informs him automatically. “I can’t afford to miss any work for the next…forever.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, hon. The minute they see you blink in this business, you’re dead in the water.” Sam grimaces and rolls his shoulders, and Barbara experiences a tinge of concern because he does look pale.

“Maybe you should go home,” she suggests. “You can work on your cases at home, can’t you?”

“Unfortunately, no. I’m due in court at ten o’clock.”

“If you’re dead from the flu, do you know how many criminals are going to walk free?” she demands, only a little bit joking.

He chuckles. “Come on, Babs, you know no one’s died of the flu in twenty years.”

Barbara has a witty retort on her tongue, but it stalls when Sam’s image freezes in front of her. It seems at first to be a lag, but then the screen morphs from his office to what looks like a brick wall.

She feels an icy cold slice through her, the same one she always gets when anything is associated with him. It’s the echo of a bullet, tearing through her internal organs and spine, and the hair-raising chill.

Barbara doesn’t really read the words, too focused on the high, cold cackle in the that somehow blocks out every other sound.

________________________________________________________________

DRAKE

For the first time in a long time, Tim is happy.

His house is a gutted mess of boxes and detritus, but unlike in his younger years, it’s not because some supervillain has come crashing in to threaten him. He smiles, a little whimsical, at the date on the holographic calendar, and the word that hovers there: Moving.

In a week, he and Arlene will be in Beijing, and forever free of Gotham City.

They made the decision together in the weeks following the Jokerz attack, after Tim escaped the Cave the last time. He made it clear to Bruce and his new apprentice that it was the last time.

He doesn’t mind continuing to work for Wayne Enterprises—hell, he helped build that company, he takes a certain amount of pride and responsibility for it—but he won’t be doing that from Gotham. There’s too much history here, too much…everything. Apparently living on the outskirts or even in the same state (even on the same continent) isn’t enough for Tim to completely escape the lingering, nightmarish legacy of Batman.

Of Robin.

He wants normal. And after everything he’s been through, he more than deserves it.

“Oh, I’ll be sure to tell your dad, he’ll be happy to hear that,” Arlene says, chatting with their daughter Janet on the vidphone across the kitchen. In the den, the low sounds of the television provide background noise.

“—the level of unrest breaking out in the world’s major cities, has politicians asking, ‘is this another Yellow Vest Movement?’—"

“Honey, Janet says she and Maeve will be coming to help with the move after all.”

“You mean coming to eat pizza and beer,” Tim replies with a smile; they’ve already hired movers.

“Semantics,” he hears his youngest daughter laugh. “Either way we’ll be there.”

“Always happy to see you, kiddo.”

“Now, I’ve got to let you go,” Arlene says. “I have a nine-thirty conference call with Peking U., but I’ll speak to you later on.”

She has a follow-up interview for a position in the Linguistics Department there. It’s a step down from her current professorship at Gotham University, where she was on the tenure track, but when Tim pointed this out, she insisted his mental health was more important than her job prospects.

He tells himself he gave in so easily because after so many years of marriage it’s futile to argue with her. He tries not to acknowledge the total relief that he didn’t have to argue with her about it.

“Yeah, no problem Mom. Talk to you soon.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too!”

The video feed of their daughter winks out.

“Do you need me to get out of your hair?” Tim asks.

“No, I’ll take the call up in the office,” his wife replies and presses a kiss to his temple as she passes. Then she pauses, turns around and grabs the coffee pot to bring with her. “And I’m cutting you off. Any more of this and you’re not sleeping tonight.”

Tim sighs. “It’s like you know me or something.”

“And don’t forget it, mister!”

He listens carefully to the sound of his wife retreating up the stairs and over the landing, and then reaches for the microwave, where he surreptitiously stashed an extra cup earlier that morning.

And swears when he finds it missing; a quick glance to the sink sees it already washed out.

Damn it, she does know me.

But the thought is more fond than irritated.

Arlene is the only sure thing in his life, especially after his trauma. They met through Kate Kane—or rather, because of Kate Kane. The two women attended West Point at the same time, and Arlene acted as a character witness for Kate prior to the dishonorable discharge. Though Arlene graduated from the Academy, she did not spend much time on active duty before she was injured by a roadside bomb and lost her leg. Afterward, while dealing with her own PTSD, she pursued an academic career. She and Kate lost touch, and it wasn’t until the media released news of Kate’s murder that she heard of her again.

Arlene attended the funeral, which is where Tim met her for the first time. Two weeks later, they met in a support group for trauma survivors and started getting coffee together. It took Tim a year to figure out she was flirting with him (which Jason never stopped teasing him about, even when he was on his deathbed). After everything with Stephanie, and then with Jason, Arlene offered a safety none of his other partners ever had.

There’s a high-pitched trill from his cellphone, and he glances down to read the text from Cass.

‘ayt? need yr flight info. to pick u up from airport next wk. :) :) :)’

His sister still prefers to text over talking by phone, even all these years later, which he’s pleased about. So much these days is done with face-to-face screens or even holographic technology; he wasn’t really a people person before, but it’s getting rarer and rarer to have any kind of privacy. Texting—especially across the encrypted server he’s set up—is a relief.

Tim relays the details to her, along with the implied greetings from his wife, and expects that to be it. But then he gets another text.

‘question? 4 work.’

Tim tenses.

Cassandra Cain works as a retired ballerina who opened her own school of dance; it’s highly unlikely the work-related question has anything to do with that. It’s probably for Black Bat.

But he cautiously texts back, ‘As long as it’s just a question.’

He’s had to re-learn to establish boundaries.

‘fair. u worked cybersecurity. ever hear of Morningstar. hacker/agency???’

Tim frowns, thinks back, and shakes his head even though she can’t see it. ‘No. Never dealt with anything like that.’

Ok! 3Q. worth a shot. will c u & arlene on thurs. 520GG!’

‘88MM’

He waits a few minutes, but there are no more messages forthcoming, and then sends out the last message—‘88MM’, before putting his phone away.

Unlike everyone else from his vigilante days, Cass knows how to not push.

And yet…

She rarely asks him about anything that might involve her after-hours work, both out of familial courtesy and because her operation is, at least unofficially, supported by the Chinese government. Legally, there’s not a lot she can involve him in; when she does, it’s only where she has absolutely no other recourse and it involves paperwork and non-disclosure agreements.

Only twice has she asked him something in an off-hand way, which he knew instinctively had to do with Black Bat but pretended not to realise. The last time, his information helped her locate and dismantle a eugenicist breeding program using homeless girls.

Perhaps that’s why he finds himself reaching for his laptop and looking into anything to do with Cass’s mysterious ‘Morningstar’.

The word generates a broad spectrum of results, even when he searches through the Dark Web. Nothing to do with drugs, nothing related to human trafficking or weapons—nothing that wouldn’t immediately stand out to Cass in her own searches. He narrows search parameters, skating through encryptions and IP trails and layers and layers of disturbing data—

Within ten minutes he comes across the exact word in connection with a burgeoning hacktivist group known as DevilNight, but no indications as to what it refers to. It’s odd, considering the group has only existed for a short while and has hardly done anything worthy of attention. It makes no sense that something like this would be on Cass’s radar, especially considering based on his tracking, the group is based in Idaho.

He has just started to peel back the layers of the group’s security when his computer screen freezes. A beat later, words begin to type on his screen, and the blood drains from his cheeks.

H E L L O J U N I O R

Even as the words register, Tim is already shoving himself backward, away from the screen. His hand slaps against the spot in his neck where Joker’s microchip was implanted—the spot where he injected Bruce’s anti-venom deployment system. It’s a reassurance, a reminder, he will be safe—

Horror suffuses him as another message typed out in front of him:

D O N ’T B E A N A U G H T Y B O Y

Bile rises in his throat and Tim feels the world spin. Instantly, he is back in that horrible room, hysterical laughter in his ears and a falsely cheerful melody playing in the background.

He has to fight himself back under control, checking his surroundings, going over simple facts about himself in his head—

Not Junior not Junior not Junior—

My name is Timothy Jackson Drake. Drake-Wayne.

He is still that, even if he never uses the name anymore. He never got around to changing it, never had the courage to.

My parents were Jack and Janet Drake. Mom died when I was a boy, Dad remarried. Dana. But they died—

Kidnapped, poisoned, murdered, went insane—

No, he’s getting off track. Facts, he needs facts about himself, to ground him, to remind him of who he is and not what he has lived through.

I work as a communications director and do contract work for Wayne Enterprises. I have two daughters—Kate and Janet. Kate is a veterinarian; Janet is a stockbroker. She married Maeve last year. Kate is pregnant with our first grandchild. Arlene and I go to Florida every winter…

At long last, he gets himself under control again, can separate himself from the specter of Junior.

He expects the laughter and the inner echoes of carnival music to fade away.

Instead, it becomes louder and more distinct.

Tim stares at his screen in horror as the message vanishes, the words replaced with something even more sinister.

HA HA HA.

No.

Not again.

He can’t do this again.

________________________________________________________________

GRAYSON

Dick only ever feels his age in the mornings.

There’s just something about his body waking up after a long sleep, before his training kicks in to ignore the aches and pains, that can’t fight off the heaviness as fast anymore. Every day it’s more painful putting himself through the usual routine of exercises to keep himself in shape.

Thankfully, he’s still outwardly put-together enough to hide it.

He smiles ruefully at his reflection in the bathroom mirror—more of a grimace, really—and studies the patchwork of old scars and not-so-old bruises across his chest.

He knows he doesn’t look his age. It’s not even due to cosmetic surgery or organ replacements or even the personal holograph projections that have gotten popular in the last decade. Longevity just happens to run in his family; John Grayson’s father was still pulling triple somersaults at eighty and Mary Lloyd’s grandmother lived to be a hundred and thirteen.

The only thing artificial in his body are metal plates and pins that replaced bones fractured beyond natural healing, and the biotech keeping the bullet in his spine from moving. (And the antitoxin implant Bruce sent him; because no feud is worth getting dosed with Joker venom, whether the bastard is dead or not.)

Not bad for fifty-nine, he decides and heads for the kitchen.

There’s a moan from his bedroom, and he pauses briefly as he passes to consider the woman lying in his bed in nothing but his bedsheets. In her sleep, she curls to one side, causing the sheet to slip a little and reveal bruises in the shape of his fingers across her hip. He can feel the matching set on his own back.

Definitely not bad for fifty-nine.

For a moment he debates the merits of returning to bed and continuing where they left off last night, but that would be against one of the unspoken rules they established when they started sleeping together.

The other is that they don’t use real names.

He doesn’t know or want to know hers—after a lifetime of failed relationships and broken hearts he knows better than to get attached. And though he’s aware she knows his—the world knows his name since that fiasco with the wannabe Hush—she never uses it. If she must, she calls him Wing, and it’s a clear reminder that she has no intention of crossing any boundaries to let things become personal.

He has no problem with that; he calls her Black.

He’ll never call her Cat because that’s what Bruce called Selina Kyle. Associating this Catwoman with the original just feels a little too oedipal to Dick.

(Selina never really gave off motherly vibes, but she was the most constant presence of all Bruce’s paramours, so she sort of ended up in that role by association).

The original Catwoman was the only one Bruce could never completely push away—though that might say more about Selina’s stubbornness than the old man trying to keep hold of the people in his life. She decided when they were in a relationship, or out of one, whatever Bruce wanted.

In the end, even that wasn’t enough though. Her heart was never as strong after the incident with the real Hush.

Dick remembers attending the funeral. Bruce didn’t show up at the service or the burial. It was a few years into his self-imposed exile, right after Damian’s departure, and soon after Steph and Cass. He obviously hadn’t wanted to face any of them (maybe couldn’t face them).

But there was a crack in the headstone the next time Dick brought flowers (an imprint of a fist he would know anywhere) and he knows Bruce blamed himself for that too.

Dick heads to the kitchen, grabbing a coffee for himself. He debates for a moment, leaving one out for Black, but if the usual pattern holds, she’ll be jumping out his bedroom window soon without even coming into the kitchen. She’s not exactly one for goodbyes. Instead, he leans on the counter and pulls out his mobile, scrolling through the day's news stories.

Call him old fashioned, but he prefers to read the news than watch the featureless blue talking heads on the television. He spends about a minute skimming a beat piece on the successful launch of Wayne Enterprises' latest environmental initiative. Tim was telling him something about that the other day; it was the most animated and relaxed Dick had seen him since that night with the Jokerz.

“It’s basically like a planetary rebreather,” his estranged brother enthused. “You know how trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen? It’s sort of like that, but on a larger scale. Once it's all set up, any toxins pumped into the atmosphere will get filtered out and converted to oxygen.”

Tim had then gone on a lengthy explanation about the technical details that Dick had no chance of following, but given how enthused he’d seemed, it hadn’t mattered.

He’s going to miss him, now that he’s headed off to Beijing, but Cass is ecstatic. As far as Dick knows, they haven’t seen each other in ten years. It almost makes him want to head over and join the reunion.

Except that would be counterproductive to his current plans.

Dick is in Gotham on the pretense of opening a second athletics course, but really, it’s to keep an eye on things.

He doesn’t trust Bruce not to screw up whatever he’s doing with this new kid, and the boy’s too green to notice the signs of losing himself to Bruce’s mission. When the old man cuts him off—and it’s when, not if, because Bruce will inevitably screw this up—the McGinnis kid is going to need someone to keep his head above water.

Dick’s only been around him a handful of times, but there’s a cockiness and attitude there that reminds him of Jason. That’s concerning enough on its own, but what really makes the hair on the back of Dick’s neck stand up is the sense he has of this kid’s potential to do damage. He’s seen that, before, too, along with the results.

Christ, the kid even looks like Damian. If I didn’t know Bruce so well, I’d think…

He shakes off the thought because it’s too disturbing to contemplate.

The point is, Terry McGinnis needs someone looking out for him, even if he doesn’t realize it. Bruce isn’t going to do it and Barbara has clearly forgotten a hell of a lot of history since she’s allowing the boy to fly around her city risking his life.

So it’s up to Dick.

Again.

I’m way too old to be getting another brother, he thinks darkly, in what once might have been genuine humor but now feels just exhausting. Especially considering his track record with the others.

He doesn’t even know where Duke ended up.

Something flickers on the edge of his eyesight, and he turns to look out the window of his apartment. Across the street, the giant vid-screen advertising the latest energy drink blinks and goes briefly blank. Along with every other screen as far as the eye can see.

Dick narrows his eyes, taking a step forward to study the phenomena, and then freezes as his quiet apartment is invaded by obscenely cheerful music and a laugh he wishes he could forget.

Every screen for miles spells it out, and he knows immediately that things are about to get worse.

________________________________________________________________

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theguineapig3 · 6 years

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Tales Whump Week Day 4: Accident

“Family Planning”

Tales of Symphonia Words: 3708 way longer than i expected; i need to be Stopped™ Characters: Kratos Aurion, Anna Irving, Noishe Pairing: Kratos/Anna

Anna Irving was the kind of person who wasn't afraid of anything. Kratos had known her for years before the first time he ever saw true, unbridled fear in her eyes. He’d always imagined that moment with him stepping in to defend her from whatever had scared her… so he hadn't considered that he would be the one she was afraid of.

Anna has been especially secretive for a few weeks now.

Kratos wasn't worried at first- after all, this wasn't the first time she had been like this. A few years back, she had planned for months to throw him a surprise birthday party, doing her best to keep her plans under wraps. He had figured it out, of course, but was happy to play along. Their unpredictable life, constantly moving from place to place to keep Cruxis off their trail, was stressful and Anna deserved to have her fun when she could. Besides that, Kratos respected her privacy. When she requested time alone, he always allowed it unless there was a reason to suspect her life might be in danger. Many times when visiting cities for supplies, they split up to avoid drawing attention to themselves. If Anna suggested they keep a low profile by separating for a few hours or even days, Kratos usually trusted her intuition. She knew well the dangers they faced and Kratos was grateful for the keen senses she’d developed while living in the human ranch. He hadn't been given a reason to distrust her.

At least, not until now.

Her attitude and stamina seemed to be deteriorating, and the number of times she refused dinner was starting to get suspicious. At night she tossed and turned to the point that he started to lose sleep as well, and his questions about her wellbeing were met with the same chipper “I’m fine!” every time. Noishe had started trailing especially close to her, whining pitifully whenever she left his side. Kratos began to worry, and while he forced himself to give her the space she wanted, eventually she went on a walk with Noishe after lunch one day and only Noishe returned.

Kratos followed a panicked Noishe over Anna’s usual walking route and managed to find her beside a large oak tree, doubled over and half-conscious. He carried her back to their current hideout and put her in bed, looking her over to see what was wrong. She wasn't feverish, but she was dehydrated, so his first reaction was to give her water. Anna was conscious enough to sit up and drink, but even slow sips of water seemed to exacerbate her nausea. Kratos had seen severe gastrointestinal illnesses product similar symptoms, but he wasn't totally sure what to do.

“How long has this been going on?” he asked as he refilled the glass of water. “When was the last time you were able to keep something down?”

Anna was making a point not to look at him. “It comes and goes,” she answered. “I'll be fine. I just need some rest.”

“Without food to give you energy, resting will only do so much. And if you stay dehydrated like this, you’re only going to get worse.”

Anna frowned, glanced over at the glass of water, and looked back at Kratos.

“Can you get me some juice? I still have a bad taste in my mouth from earlier, so the water isn't exactly helping. And maybe a biscuit too- one of those really bland ones.”

Satisfied that Noishe was watching over her, Kratos moved to the cupboard and fished through their supplies for the hardtack they kept on hand in case of emergencies. She hadn't specified what kind of juice, so he chose an orange from the bag of supplies he’d brought in from Palmacosta the day before, hoping the extra vitamins would help her fight whatever infection was.

But, come to think of it… she’d been acting strange for a long time now. Had she been this ill the whole time? Is that why Noishe was being so attentive? If Anna was having trouble keeping food down, it was no wonder she was losing energy. Why hadn't she told him? She never hid when she was feeling sick. The sooner they identified what was wrong, the sooner they could treat it, and they had come to an unspoken understanding that their pride was not as important as their safety in situations like these. The only explanation he could think of was that she was suffering from something that wasn't curable. But that was absurd- she might be uncomfortable and potentially putting herself in danger from outside sources, but she wasn't dying.

Maybe, then, it was just the opposite.

Kratos’ hand slipped on the reamer, and orange juice and seeds sloshed out onto the counter. He grabbed a rag to clean it up, but his mind was elsewhere. He was trying to reason with himself, trying to rule out his sudden, absurd hypothesis. She would've told him about something like that, he was sure of it! He was mostly sure of it. Okay, he wanted to be sure of it. But the thought wouldn't leave his mind. It also didn't help that when he stopped to review their recent, erm, activities, he realized how little care they'd taken to prevent something like this. It had only been a matter of time before an… accident happened.

Trying to dispel thoughts he hadn't yet confirmed, Kratos thought back to the medicine he’d been considering. Herbal tea was something they kept on hand for such occasions as a good cure-all for sinus, throat, and stomach problems. It would help with her nausea, and he was pretty sure it was safe for- oh, here we go again.

At this point, he might as well be blunt and ask. If it wasn't the case, the worst he might get was a slap and a scolding for being rude. But if it was, then they could discuss it. He could find out why she’d been keeping it from him and what she planned to do. Kratos set a kettle of water on the hearth for tea and poured the juice into a cup to take back to Anna. She was sitting up by this point, and hungrily accepted the biscuits and juice despite Kratos’ warnings to eat and drink slowly. He sighed as he watched her and finally steeled himself to speak.

“Anna, may I ask a particularly stupid question?”

She looked up from her half-eaten biscuit and swallowed. “Isn't that usually my job?”

Her sense of humor was coming back. That was a good sign at least.

“Your job right now is resting and feeling better. I was trying to come up with a diagnosis just with the symptoms I've seen, but I…” He cut off his sentence, not wanting to talk in circles any longer. “Anna, are you pregnant?”

He saw her freeze with the cup of juice still pressed to her lips. Noishe let out a punctuated whine, sending her unease. Anna swallowed the rest of the juice and gently handed the cup back to him.

“I'm… feeling tired. I should get some sleep.”

“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, Anna. I just need an answer-”

“Didn't you just say that my job right now is to rest? I have work to do.”

She didn't give him a chance to protest, diving back against her pillow and pulling the blankets over her head. Kratos sighed and pulled himself to his feet, trying to come to terms with the situation.

He knew Anna well enough to know that he’d just received a clear “yes.”

Noishe had curled up next to her on the bed, so Kratos went back to the cupboard and looked over the teas they had on-hand. What was good for nausea again? Ginger? Mint? He pulled each container out and looked them over, but he couldn't force himself to think too hard about them. Not when he had so much weighing on his mind. More than anything, he didn't want her suffering like this. He wanted to make her feel better, had to make her feel better. Maybe he could blend them together? If one of the teas was good on its own, then TWO of them together would be even-

Look at me. I'm so flustered, I’m starting to use Anna’s messed-up logic.

Still, he put a little of both in the infuser. Might as well give it a try, at least.

He left the tea to brew and passed the time watching Anna and Noishe curled up in the bed next to one another. It was obvious that she wasn't asleep; beneath the blankets he could see her giving Noishe a good scratch- just below his right ear, if that familiar twitch of his leg was any indication. It wasn't an uncommon scene; Noishe seemed to love Anna even more than Kratos did, and Anna returned the sentiment. For the first time, Kratos imagined a third member of the group curled up in the middle, a tiny child wrapped up in Anna’s arms and resting against Noishe’s soft fur. What would the child be like? Would it inherit Anna’s beautiful brown eyes and dark hair? Her inner strength and optimism? Her boundless enthusiasm for the world she lived in and the people she loved…?

His heart raced from the vivid images, and he had to stop himself before he got too involved. That was a dangerous road to go down, given that Anna was still trying to hide the situation from him. He hadn't worked out why yet, but he had some ideas. It wasn't that she was afraid he’d leave her- no, Anna wasn't the sharpest, but she wasn't that stupid either. And she couldn't hide it forever, given that it would become visibly obvious within a few months. But if she hadn't told him by now, perhaps she never planned to. Maybe she was searching for someone who could safely terminate the pregnancy and hoped that she could spare her husband the pain and worry by leaving him none the wiser. If that was the case, he needed to support her rather than get too attached to those fantasies.

Another thought occurred to him along those lines- was she afraid he’d try to stop her? It was her body, her decision, and with the Desians still pouring resources into the search for the Angelus exsphere, avoiding the physical toll of a pregnancy and the work involved in childcare might be the best course of action for her own safety. But Kratos couldn't be sure what she was thinking, and what she thought he was thinking was an even greater mystery.

After all that thinking about thinking, he finally realised that the tea had been steeping for at least twenty minutes. He stumbled awkwardly over to the teapot and poured a cup for her. It was strong, but perhaps that was a good thing. All he wanted was for it to help.

“Anna, I know you're not asleep. Sit up; I made you some tea.”

She poked her head out from under the blankets and frowned, but sat up anyway. “I'm feeling a lot better. Maybe having something in my stomach helped after all. I don't need any tea-”

“You only had one glass of juice, so I'm sure you're still dehydrated. Just try to drink the tea, will you?”

Anna’s stuck out her bottom lip in a pout, and once Kratos handed her the cup, she made a show of analyzing the scent.

“What is this?”

“It’s, er, my own personal blend…” Kratos looked away, suddenly embarrassed that he’d thrown it together so haphazardly. “Just try it. It should make things better.”

Anna’s frown grew stern and she handed the cup back to Kratos. “I'm not going to drink this.”

“Please, Anna, don't be so stubborn. If it would help, I could put some honey in it-”

“NO, I’M NOT GOING TO!”

She shoved the cup back at him, not even thinking about the temperature of its contents. It spilled across his arm and chest, and he let out a scream of pain that sent Noishe scrambling to his feet. Anna gasped and reached for him, her voice cracking with a pitiful “oh no, no, no, I'm so sorry, I-” but Kratos had already gotten up to retrieve the shards of the broken cup that now littered the floor. He picked up as many as he could and took them across the room to the kitchen area, and as he did so, he heard Anna get up from bed.

“Hey, don't go anywhere. There are still some sharp pieces on the flo- hey! Anna!”

She was already at the door by the time he turned around, and he could hear her sobbing as she ran out into the mid-afternoon sun. Noishe followed, and Kratos shoved the cup shards aside to run after them. The burns on his arm and torso were minor, and could easily be soothed with some aloe later. His concern now was figuring out just what had made Anna so upset- and what he could do to avoid upsetting her like this again.

“...Anna?” Kratos walked around the side of the structure, an old abandoned bunker built into one of the hillsides north of Palmacosta. It was a great place to hide: cool, comfortable, and invisible from any of the main roads, while still maintaining the semblance of a home. Anna loved it and tried not to loiter around the outside for fear that tipping off any passersby of their location would mean they'd have to abandon the bunker altogether. It took Kratos a few minutes to figure out where she had gone, but he eventually was able to follow the sound of her crying to a large tree near the riverbank. Noishe was pacing around the outside, and Anna was curled up inside a hollow in the trunk. As soon as Noishe saw Kratos approaching, he ran around behind him and pushed him closer.

“Y-yes, Noishe, I see her. I’m going, I'm going, don’t push-”

Kratos’ reassurances were cut off as he tripped over an exposed tree root and fell over, grabbing onto the tree trunk for support. He was leaning over Anna, and saw her eyes widen at the sight of him.

He’d never seen her eyes like that before. They were full of sheer terror, the likes of which she had never shown even in the face of Desian experiments and torture. It made her look so small, so young, so vulnerable, Kratos’ wanted nothing more than to step in and protect her from whatever it was that was causing her such fear. Unfortunately, he realized… it was him.

“Get away from me!” Anna yelled, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “Don't touch me!”

“I’m not… I won’t…” Kratos stepped back and fell to his knees, holding up his hands to show that he had no intention of reaching towards her. “Whatever I've done to scare you, I’m so sorry. Please tell me so I can make it right. I don't want to hurt you- I just want to make things better.”

His posture and words seemed to reassure her, and she relaxed a little. “I…” she stammered through sobs. “...I don't want to ‘make it better.”

“What do you mean? You really want to keep feeling so awful?”

“Yes! I do!”

“Why?”

There was a pause. Anna removed one arm from around her waist in order to wipe away the tears that were flowing faster now. “B-because I… I want to do whatever I can to… protect my baby…”

There. It was the first time she’d confirmed it outright. Somehow, even though he had been certain of it before, this brought Kratos to another level of anxiety.

“Anna, you-”

“Please!” she exclaimed, interrupting him. Her head was bowed so he could no longer see her eyes, but there was still a twinge of fear in her voice. “Please, Kratos, I'll be good! I'll stop being so reckless, I’ll stop getting into fights and putting myself in danger, I’ll get better rest and eat right and all the things you tell me to do, just… please, please, let me keep him.”

Kratos froze. “I don't understand-”

“I’ll study and learn everything I can about being a good mother! I’ll read all the books I need to, even if they're the hard kind with no pictures! I’ll do whatever I can to keep you from worrying- just let me keep him!”

“Anna, you…” Kratos stammered a reply through his shock. “...you sound like a little girl begging for a puppy. This isn't at all like bringing home a stray dog.”

“I know! I know it isn't! But I still-”

“This is not some stray animal. This is your child. That's why I'd never force you to give it up or to make a decision you were unhappy with. Have a little more faith in me, would you?”

Her face shot up to look at him, and he saw the fear in her eyes replaced by a look of shock. “You…”

“You thought I put something in the tea. That’s why you were so scared.” For the first time in countless centuries, Kratos actually had to choke back tears. “How could you think I was capable of doing something like that to you? To anyone?”

“I… I just…”

“No, I shouldn’t have said it like that. With the things I've done in the past, I shouldn't be offended by those sorts of assumptions.”

“It's not like that!” Anna crawled out from her hollow and threw her arms around him. He let out a pained gasp as she touched his chest where he’d been burned, and she pulled back. “I'm so sorry. I panicked, that’s all. But I didn't think you’d hurt me- not really. I just…”

Kratos pulled Anna so that she was sitting in his lap, allowing her to put her arms around his shoulders and lean against the good side of his chest. It felt good to have her close again, to know she was still comfortable being close to him. The idea that he would poison her, poison their child, had hit him too hard, and he didn’t want to be too forward with her until he was sure she was no longer afraid of him.

“...remember about a year ago, when we rescued that little girl from the Desians?” Anna asked as she spoke up again. “I suggested we adopt her more out of guilt that we couldn't save her parents than anything else, but you shut down the idea so fast that I didn't have time to even consider if I really wanted it. I know you were right, that she’d be better off with that family in Izoold, but even so, what you said stuck with me. You said that it wouldn't be right to subject a child to the kind of life we lead, that the dangers we faced on a regular basis were not situations that a child should ever be in. So, a few weeks ago, when I found out I was… oh, gods, Kratos, I was terrified. I was sure you'd convince me not to go through with it.”

“That's why you tried to keep it a secret?” Kratos asked, placing a comforting hand against the back of her head. “No matter how sick you were feeling?”

“Like I said, it comes and goes…” Anna leaned into his touch and closed her eyes. “I thought that, if I could keep it a secret long enough, then I could tell you when I was far enough along that you’d have to let me keep it.”

“I see. That’s what you were thinking.” It was a flawed plan in more ways than one, but Kratos wasn't in the mood to criticize her. He should be reassuring her. “You weren't completely wrong; I did consider whether or not this was a good idea. But it's not up to me. You're the one who has to decide what’s best for you, and it’s my job to support you through that. And if you decide you want to be parents-” He paused, the word suddenly feeling heavy now that he’d said it out loud. “-then it’s also my job to be the best father I can be. It may be asking a lot, but I want you to trust me.”

Anna leaned against the side of his chest, her voice betraying the tears in her eyes. “I never didn't trust you. I knew you would only do what you thought was best for me. I should've had more faith that my feelings would matter to you as much as my safety did. I’m sorry, Kratos.”

She squeezed him in a tight hug, trying not to touch his chest where it had been burned. It wouldn't have mattered to him if she did, though. He just wanted to keep her close.

“I love you so much, Anna.”

She leaned up and kissed his cheek. “I love you too. And Noishe loves you, and-” She glanced over at Noishe for a moment and then took one of Kratos’ hands in hers to place against her stomach. “-and he loves you too.”

Kratos stared for a moment, the sensation new and different. There wasn't a part of Anna’s body that he hadn’t explored by now, but he felt a sudden rush of nervousness like he’d had years before when it was all still new to him.

Even so, all the emotional turmoil couldn't silence the logical part of his brain.

“Anna… you know that’s your liver, right?” Kratos moved their hands down a little. “The baby would be closer to here.”

“Aw, come on.” She made a show of pouting, but there was an amusement to her words that betrayed her relief at the familiar tone in his voice. “I was just trying to be sentimental. You know I'm no good with that sciencey stuff.”

“And besides that, what's with this ‘he’ business? You can't know the baby’s gender-”

“I'm his mother! I can tell!”

“Anna, at this point in development, even the baby doesn't know what it is yet.”

“Oh? You wanna bet?”

The two continued their playful argument, all too happy to return to their usual light-hearted banter. Noishe stayed beside them, his tail wagging in contentment as he settled down to listen and his eyes never straying from the scene.

Everything wasn’t fixed, but it was at least on the right track.

#my fanfiction #taleswhumpweek #Tales of Symphonia #tales of symphonia spoilers #kranna

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snowpatrolfanclubbrazil · 6 years

Photo

By Paul Mcnamee

Chasing Cars was the UK's most widely played song of the Noughties. But after global success, Snow Patrol have been quiet for seven years. Frontman Gary Lightbody was drawn into the 'dirt darkness' by drink and depression but now, he tells Paul McNamee, he's found his way home.

Gary Lightbody's moment came two years ago in a gym in Santa Monica. The Snow Patrol frontman has long had a reputation of indulging his appetites. But even he was going at in on a bigger scale, with a fierce, Valhallan vigour. The band's last tour had finished in late 2012.an then: "I started drinking." he says, "with a gusto that a professional boxer might train for a prize fight. It'd be mostly beer, I was quite a happy drunk. There was a hell of a lot of fun. Until it wasn't.

"I'd get to 2am sitting on my own, have a cry, and then a glass of something [stronger], I didn't have any relationships and I wasn't having sex either.I was very hermetic. Around 2015/2016 I was drinking every day and also I was hating it. I regret doing it even though I knew I was doing it out of compulsion" He was hitting the gym in the mornings to sweat it off. Then came the moment.

"I bent down to touch my toes and everything started spinning. It felt like the floor beneath me was moving. I thoughy it was an earthquake. But I kept going on. I phoned a friend who lived around the corner. I was like, 'Are we having an earthquake?' He said "Something's going on here'.

"I had a bunch of CT scans on my head. My whole head was infected - sinus, ears, eyes, everything. I'd been having styes and stuff on my eyes. Stick a teabag on it. This was the week before I was going to France to see Northen Ireland play in their first tournament i 30 years. I siad to the doctor, 'I'm flying to France in five days'. He's like, "No, you're not. If you fly with the air pressure it's feel like daggers ripping into your head'. I was still thinking maybe I'll be alright. I spoke to a friend, Gabrielle, an acupuncturist, an extraordinary human being. She'd been trying to get me to stop drinking for while..." So he stopped. Or at least, he began to stop. And in flooded the dark realities he'd been masking.

In recent weeks, as he's been working around the release of Wildness, Snow Patrol first album in seven years, Lightbody has started to talk for the first time about the mental health problems which have plagued him for year. ("I didn't talk about anything, nobody knew, the band didn't know.") Last year, after 12 months sober, came another key moment.

"Last summer", he says, "I thought I'd be relieved to get the album done. We'd just finished. But I wasn't. I was devasted. I'd opened a place in my psyche and I didn't know how to shut the door. It was like ark of the covenant was opened [from Raider Of The Lost Ark] and there were melting faces left and right and I didn't know how to shut the thing down. So instead of talking to somebody I tried to shut myself out. Let my own face melt. And the band knew something and they flew from London and arrived at the door and I broke down and told them everything.

I have a depressive personality that has no relationship with reality. I could be having the best time on the surface and yet my depression goes 'You're still a cunt. Don't forget that. I'm dragging you down into the inkand the dirt and the darkness'. I could be playing to 15,000 people and three hours later be in a hotel room cruying on the floor. That's happened a bunch of times. The depression and the success have no relation to each other. It's just part of me. I've learned that rather than running from it, which you can never really do - you can have and turn and face it and look it in the eyes and say I'm not afraid of you any more".

And so he went home. Back to Northen Ireland, to North Down where he was brought up. It's the place he was desperate to leave in 1994, whe he ran to Dundee to star university, to start a band , to start years of chipping away with no success. Then he wrote Run and everything changed.

It's easy, given their time away, to forget just how huge Snow Patrol were for a period from the mid to late Noughties, Nobody, really, was bigger. The song Chasing Cars, from fourth album Eyes Open, was picked up for UA his TV show Grey's Anatomy and propelled them to massive fame. Lightbody moved to Santa Monica around 2009. ("Soon as my feet hit the sand in Santa Monica something just hit and I thought, I want to live here") Recently he claimed he'd moved back to Northern Ireland because the band were getting ready to work again and he needed to be near them. But it feels like the truth is little more complicated.

"You're right. There are quite few reasons. My dad isn't well, my mum isn't coping very well and my niece is going to be 11 in July, I've missed most of her life living in LA.

"And I missed home. It's a time in Northern Ireland as well when it feels like we're at a bit of a crossroads again. I felt a bit of a calling back here. Not that I figure I can help in any way, but I certainly won't feel connected if I'm 5,000 miles away I wanted to reconnect". We're meeting in the Crawfordsburn Inn, the picture post card hotel not far from Gary's shorefront home, overlooking Belfast Lough.

It feels timely. We meet on the 20th anniversay of a concert in Belfast's Waterfront Hall, hosted by U2, that helped deliver a huge Yes vote in the referendum for the Good Friday Agreement. In a nation where defiant, No's had been the lingua franca, a Yes was significant. A political statement and a cleansing.

On that day, John Hume and David Trimble were ushered onstage by Bono , a man with a keen eye for a moment, U2 sang Don't Let me Down. Ash were there too, being young and hopefull. Twenty years on, as Lightbody says, Northern Ireland is at a bit of a crossroads. And he's found his way home. The album, Wildness, is worth the wait. If Snow Patrol had touched on themes of running and movement in the past, Wildness has a leitmotif of finally settling; The word 'home' is laced throught several songs. Two tracks in particular illustrate what Snow Patrol can really do - the anthemic reach of the huge, wondroug openning track Life on Earth ( a track that took Gary five years to complete) and the intimancy of What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?), a piece with just Gary on piano, a heartbreaker written for a friend going through a divorce.

The song Soon marks another significant theme. It deal with Lightbody's father Jack's battle with Alzheimer's . It's a simple builder, full of grace note and sadness. There is a something quietly heroic in it. The video, filmed in Lightbody's apartment, sees him and his fater watching old home movies his dad recorded throught the years. As well as the sadness over what his father is losing, there is an understanding of a farewell to lost youth that the hopefulness of that other country is worth revisiting for both of them. "I love my dad," he says. "I have a lot of respect for him so I wanted to honour him, but at the same time I also have a lot of guilt for being away for most of my adult life. I don't just mean LA, I mean Glasgow, London, or on tour constantly. And there is probably a place in my head where I go when I'm feeling somesick and that is both a place of calm and nostalgia and also a place of guilt and some shame.

"I've felt I've been running away most of the time from myself. So [he pauses]...someof the home references are me feeling disconnected rather than connected...feeling like I'd never really found a home. I never truly felt at home when I was growinh up in Northern Ireland. Then I left and never really felt at home anywhere else. And then I moved back to Northen Ireland and now I do feel at home here, but that has also coincided with me feeling at home inside my own body. Which was the whole problem the whole time. I wasn't comfortable with myself, I didn't like myself. So you have to figure that out before you can feel at home anywhere.

The band's influence and legacy go beyond their own work. They've helped shape the sounds that have become pervasive in post-millennial pop. Lightbody and band member Johnny McDaid have written with, among others, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and One Direction. Snow Patrol took Sheeran on the road in the States in 2011, helping him break through. They remain close. "Between myself and Johnny McDaid, we're written a lot of things for other pop acts, him more than me", he say. "I would say Ed came fully formed from his first album. He'd done the groundwork. All the grafting that you need to do, when you're a young band. He busked his ass off from the age of 15 on the streets of London, sleeping on his mate's couch. He had turned up to gigs and said to promoter, can you give me 15 minutes after the doors open. And promoters say aye. That's how he started. He grafted harder and still does to this day - harder than anyone I know. Sheeran's returning the favour, taking the the band on an American tour autumn.

Refusing to accept Snow Patrol as fountainheads of a sound, Lightbody says they are more like Zelig, "probably bystanders". One got away, though. Mutual friend James Corden introduced Lightbody to Adele.

"It happened to be a birthday of somebody that James and Adele knew...and I sat down with her and she said when are we going to do [a song]. We did two days - Adele, Johnny McDaid and me - the bones of three really amazing fucking songs. But we never got round to finishing it. And then the album came out and obviously we weren't on it."

While his own album has just come out, there is already preassure to get busy on the next. Long time producer, friend and mentor Garret "Jacknife" Lee has been in touch ("he says we need to get cracking on the next one"). For now, ahead of their own arena tour in the winter, Lightbody is learning to cope, listening to podcasts ("StuffyouShouldKnow from HowStuffWorks is my favourite one") and Bon Iver ("I think he's the finest songwriter alive") and working things out.

"Me, now not drinking, I like myself but I'm socially awkward, I'd rather be sitting with bandmates, my family. I'm 41. I know what I want.

And that is?

"Peace I want to make sure that every day of my life I take a moment and realise eveything is calmer. I've learned how to meditate, learned how to do Qigong. Learned a whole load of practices that I do every day. They mitigate the madness. The greatest thing I ever did for my own emotional wellbeing was to talk."

And if we went back 20 years, and said here are the successes, here are the demands it'll make on you mentally, personally, physically - would you have taken it? "I would have taken it for half the successes I can't believe what happened to us. I still can't believe when I look back at it, at everything that is successful that has been good. At everything that is still happening. It is a dream, It's a bloody dream."

#snow patrol #gary lightbody #article #news #interview

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whimsically-ominously-auspice · 4 years

Text

Im playing my online farming game and I hear "come on guys. Let's go. Time to quit playing around. Mom has people waiting -- like the whole world for our results"

Well it's been 7 hours since the last update and about 6 since they got that larger batch going

Chasity: the UV is doing better than i expected, I'm pleasantly surprised but it's also worse than i thought.

So she explains to me that it is easy to kill but it develops very quickly as it ages but its not harder to kill. Like a fine wine it goes down quick.

Chasity: mom you play too Much. So as it ages it does become slower to kill but it's not easier nor harder just longer.

Me: that's weird

Chasity: yep. We had several different people test it. And the results were all the same But it was milliseconds however we are spraying directly onto a a Petri dish, an antiseptic/antiviral/antibacterial that is prescription for lab use only and so in real life out in the air we don't know the actual results as far as in time - at this time. But we are only 12 hours into the testing phase -- first we had to confiscate the correct virus -- which we did about midnight last night but we didn't really want to test it unless there was an interest and to prove the "PRESIDENT" wrong is an interest. At least for us here in this lab. Because we Are scientist and not idiots. And so to find out how about air we have to spray it into a confined room we have here in the lab and it will show how fast it dies airborne or if it remains air borne past the allowable spray. So like is it just sprayed then falls like the one mom had created (on "accident" through George Bush) so its not airborne or does it remain air borne like the COVID and COVID-19. which once again if you have COVID-19 you cannot get COVID, I've tested it here in this lab they do not interact -- mom what do you call it? A one way window?

Me: yeah because i tried to explain the one way pathway but George Bush didn't understand... He doesn't understand that blood flows one direction through the body from left to right he just thinks the blood goes back and forth in the same blood tube. Like a two way street and so he argued with me and so i explained it as a one way and two way window and he was all "the only one getting arrested here is you. I've proved I'm not smart enough to do all this! Twice!! Just to you!" And he leaned over the table And whispered "And all my life to the secret service" he makes it fun to screw him over to make the perfect virus to kill aliens. To get them off our planet. But to keep humans safe!! And so yes one way mirror.

Chasity: oh that is too funny. That is all i wanted to hear you say, that hes dumb. Your memory is perfect!

Me: so how is the humidity going?

Chasity: sucks fast growing and not easy to kill. But! It does die in about 5 whole seconds and not milliseconds like the UV

Me: so people should feel safe to hang their clothes on the line?

Chasity: oh yeah! Exactly! But they should know the virus can spread in the sun and the UV aka sun won't kill them but it should be safe if it's not like apartment living and its in a private location. It would be better watched to dry in the sun with a fan on an extension cord in a barricaded outdoor place and if you hear someone cough while your clothes are outside you should spray Lysol for at least 2 seconds immediately directly onto the clothes. At least that's what I would do, stay outside with them listening for a cough or discreet spray from a hoodlum or terrorist which is the same now a days. While reading a book and catching some rays myself with sunscreen and sunglasses of course -- in the privacy of my own yard which is allowed even in Spain.

Wendy: so what is the safety? I'll answer that myself. Very very bad. The one mom had was very digital and not many were getting sick from just the Corona. This one however is very bad in just the way it makes any one everywhere very sick and the rate it multiplies. Mom waited too long to close the labs but she stopped one that was 10 times worse and presumed to kill within hours if not just a few days. Like 3 or 4 immediate death. This one now isn't designed to kill, its like mom's. But this one she stopped on Tuesday was like COVID But for every one. It was true Hell. Luckily JuJu pissed her off and she ordered it closed. Otherwise my dad would be dead and probably millions if not billions. They had the orders up,boxed and ready to ship, they just wanted to test on a human first -- my dad.

Long story short. JuJu was the test dummy..

Wendy: yeah! And he died in 4 short hours! My dad wouldn't even had time to get home and would died in his car on the road and it would looked like a generic car accident! So yeah fuck JuJu. I'll kick his ass.

Me: sounds like you did

Wendy: no that was you! Once you posted he committed suicide he knew it was a cover up Because you were just going to have him murdered so he just drank it on his own. That's what i saw.

Me: he hates women so much he committed suicide so that i couldn't have the honor of killing him. Well he only proved women are always right which has Always been my fight with him. Well we won in the end! Hoorah!

Wendy: like 17 people committed suicide that night!

Chasity: Mostly by poisons. They didn't wanna go to jail And wanted control over their own death.

Me: over all death. That's why we always tried to stop them but that was dam sneaky on JuJu

Chasity: he said it was an antidote mom so we didn't know what to do

Me: don't listen to the lab people. I said there is no cure.

Chasity: but for the Corona because we knew there was a new variant for the President of the United State's request because he's mad he is going to die of COVID. I told y'all we needed a human!

Me: well just kill any thing the Corona Variant 2 is mild

Chasity: just a wet cough. But dad got it worse than you so we we're kinda scared.

Me: well i got it at Allsups and I'm nearly over it. As long as i take cough medicine. And fever. Its less than the modern day cold and flu. Corona is literally a joy to have over regular sinus infections and bronchitis. Shit i been sick from that crap they've let loose on their labs. For months sick. This is a wonder virus. So nice to have compared to 2013 and 2014. There was no emergency anything but the cold medicine aisle was wiped out all kinds. People were sick and dying! This? I'm all sleep for awhile, cough take medicine and that's it.

Chasity: yeah well dad had it really bad i thought he was going to die

Me: but he was working out exercise and working and

Chasity: doing cardio and all. See dad? You should stay with mom. She would take care of you. Stay in bed and have chicken soup, a few push ups and repetitive weights and back to bed. You don't have to reply but I hope you're listening.

Brian: shit she takes care of me like I'm a beast! Don't touch me! Breathe over there! We will lay back to back so you know I'm here but no breathy stuff. You want sex? Die first So i don't catch what you got then come back to life after. She is funny tho. I don't mind her so much. That last time i was sick and she was with me i was all "i feel great let me go running!" Then i went back and begged her to never let me do that again!

Chasity: you wanted to die huh?

Brian: she put me in a cool bath and I fell asleep. And I woke up and she was adding hot water. Which made me sleep more. But she left me in there alone while I was asleep! She said I was too tall to drown unless she tried to kill me so she just stopped any one but the little girls from going in. But she covered me with a towel so they couldn't see my junk in the front. And i thought it was a blanket and I was all "oh she's so sweet to bring me a blankie. What the fuck! It's wet who did this to me?! Oh that water is hot. Ouch. Good thing I'm asleep that ain't me. I always turn my own water on. No girl would bathe me. Just ask JuJu Bee. Im too ugly but then again she tells,him she calls him that because bees only sting once and Then they die and she's been stung and she's just waiting for him to die and JuJu because there's no Jesus for what he's done and over all jujuBe candy is good for nothing with no nutrient value and he should shut his face or she's gonna kick it in. What a chick. Hand me that wet towel back I'm getting cold" and you know she told me "it's hot you can't tell the difference of the temperature and the towel is in your lap you never handed it out. But some things you see in your dreams are real. Your body just doesn't know it." And I seriously woke up and I shrieked "are you trying to burn me like in that book with the grandma? You're trying to burn my balls off?!?" And I heard all this laughter but I saw her face looking directly at me not at all amused but slightly sad and I got really scared "why are you such a nightmare?!?!" I seriously shrieked and i thought she would cry but she started to laugh and she got up from the edge of the tub and suddenly a rubber ducky started to float in the tub and I grabbed her arm and said "no babe look!! Did you turn into a duck?!?! No I'm grabbing your arm what am I thinking?!" And she looked down into my eyes real deep like she does and she says "you're real beautiful don't you know?" And i let go of her arm "go on go pee. But what is that laughing you have a tape recorder or something?" She said she wished because it wasn't funny then but she knew she would laugh later. Finally she told on them two, Annabelle and Declan because she adjusted the towel and I was getting ready to throw it out but she shrieked then "no!! You need it to cover up for the kids!" And I said "well where are they?" And she moved her head slightly to the left and motioned me to shh. So i pretended to be a sea monster with a pink towel over my waist and scared the dickens out of them both. Declan looked at me in horror and said I was no fun! Me! Me! Of all people. After i was nearly pissing in my tub talking in my sleep. Shit. I knew i said some bad stuff but all i could think was that it was about sex and murder. Luckily the words that came out were sober compared to what was in my head which was drunk with power.

Chasity: so you're seriously thinking it won't be so bad then? To live with mom then with me?

Brian: I mean well..yeah now JuJu is dead and so is a lot of other people it might be a possibility.

Chasity: because dad this is really important to me So don't mislead me.

Brian: well she's not So bad... She's just a lot of work!

Me: you are a lot of work. You want to treat me like a baby and do everything

Brian: No like you're a doll! But you talk back! Sheesh! A lot too I might add! That makes the work double because then i got to think!

Me: well you don't seem to listen too badly.

Brian: Oh wow! What a compliment! That is a compliment isn't it?!

Me: yeah

Wendy: im Peter Pan's wife do you remember me? Dad you need to grow up and get a wife. Quit being a bachelor. The look isn't good on you. Or on mom. Do you hear?

Brian: yeah i hear. I am listening.

Wendy: okay good. In conclusion of the virus growth we will get back to you tomorrow, general public. And dad we hope you grow over night just as Much. Mom's been typing just over an hour and no major changes to report but now we need to get the room ready and we will have that report tomorrow. Dad thanks for the talk. We always enjoy the Tales of the Man Dressed in a Pink Towel in the Bathtub.

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breeeliss · 7 years

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[Miraculous Ladybug]: It’s All Hype!

i feel like i’m severely going to regret taking this much on but fuck it, YOLO, im dead inside :))))

in honor of Ladynoir July i’m going to desperately try and do one multi-chapter for every week of the month! so that means this first week i’m going to be using Days 1-7 to make a multi-chapter, and so on and so forth until the month is over. we........will see how that goes lol

but in the meantime enjoy the first story!

[Day 2: Banter]

Link to Archive of Our Own: [AO3]

Title: It’s All Hype! Pairings: Ladynoir (Ladybug x Chat Noir), Adrienette (Adrien x Marinette) Summary: Alya accidentally gets the Internet in a frenzy after announcing that Ladybug and Chat Noir are dating, but the two heroes are adamant about correcting the error and making sure the world knows that they’re just friends. So Alya proposes a staged public break up to set everything right.

In hindsight, she really underestimated how utterly freaking difficult that would be.

Day 1: Patience

“Ah, my lovely Lady, bless our good fortune that I may be able to accompany you home on such a cold Autumn’s night. Perchance the stars may be able to lead us back to your marble palace before dawn.”

Ladybug threw her head back and cackled. “You’re such an idiot, what are you even saying?”

Chat Noir scoffed. “Such a sharp tongue, my Lady. Whatever would your father say? Although, I suppose I could lock this secret away between the two of us should you permit me to seal it with a friendly kiss.”

Ladybug stuck her tongue out. “I’ll seal it with my foot up your nose if you’d like.”

“So not only does that sound impossible, but that sounds like a sinus infection waiting to happen,” he replied. “Do you know where your feet have been? I could catch a disease.”

“The depths of your dramatics are truly unfathomable,” Ladybug deadpanned.

“You know, my best friend tells me the same thing,” Chat Noir wondered. “I was thinking of getting involved in acting. I played a detective once. I was pretty good.”

“You should play a knight or something,” Ladybug suggested. “You know, really play up the whole needless chivalry and romantic waxing that you’re so good at. I mean, you’re getting practice for it right now.”

Chat Noir turned his head so that he could stare at Ladybug whose thighs he was holding as he carried her piggyback across the Parisian rooftops. “I’m helping you get home and you’re complaining? What do you want from me, woman?”

“It’s just a sprained ankle! I could’ve limped home just fine. Or just swung back home without putting pressure on it.”

“Nonsense, my Lady! ‘Tis my job as your valiant prince to return you safely to your kingdom should you fall ill!”

“Fine, you goof, whatever makes you feel better, I guess,” Ladybug smirked, hugging her arms tighter around his neck. “Although you should add valiant prince to your repertoire. Start making a list for when you go to auditions.”

“Ooooh, will you be my manager please?”

“Am I getting a wage?”

“Of course, you’ll receive my utmost respect, admiration, and loyalty.”

“I get that anyway, but I’ll accept your payment.”

They both just finished up with two weeks of brutal exams at school, and Chat Noir had practically begged for the two of them to spend a day together that weekend in celebration. It had been a while since she spent time with Chat Noir that didn’t involve patrolling the city or dealing with akumas, and she thought it would be fun to see if she could spend the whole day with him. They’d been walking around the city, getting coffee together downtown, and having footraces on the rooftops before Ladybug had slipped on a chimney and twisted her ankle. It was nothing that some ice and a day’s rest wouldn’t fix but Chat Noir practically had a conniption about it and insisted that he help her at least part of the way home. They were at least a mile away from the bakery and her foot was throbbing a little, so she decided to let it go. Besides, if she was being honest with herself, she really didn’t want to cut the day short sooner than they had to.

Ladybug pressed her cheek against Chat’s and smiled when he leaned into it. “We should do this more often,” she said. “Sometimes, we feel like coworkers.”

“Coworkers?” Chat Noir laughed.

“Yeah, you know! Those people who only see each other during working hours, maybe hang out during their lunch breaks a couple of days during the week, and then never see each other again until the next work day.”

Chat Noir squeezed Ladybug’s wrist. “I’m pretty sure that most coworkers don’t know how many freckles are on their other coworker’s cheeks.”

“You don’t know that either.”

“Do so! Forty-two. I counted that time we were trapped in an alley for an hour.”

“Oh yeah,” Ladybug grinned. “I think that was the time I realized you had little blue flecks in your eyes.”

“See? Not coworkers. Coworkers don’t have the patience required to learn about the people who work with them. You and I are different.”

“I guess that’s true,” Ladybug agreed. “If I have the patience to sit through all one hundred and fifteen of your puns, that must be something special.”

“A hundred and fifteen?”

“I too am a very good counter.”

Chat Noir gripped her tighter as he crouched down and made a wide jump over an alleyway before turning to the left to head down a busier avenue. “So basically what you’re telling me is that you’re giving me permission to remain in charge of scheduling our friendship dates.”

“I’ll give you permission so long as you don’t get carried away with them.”

“You have no faith in me, my Lady. I know better than to do anything outlandish.”

“Free next Saturday then?” Ladybug asked. She pointed ahead of her. “You can leave me four blocks down. It’ll leave me close enough to my house.”

“Roger that!” he replied. “And I’m extremely free next Saturday. Wanna meet at the Louvre and walk around the palace a bit? We can take pics.”

She giggled and pressed closer to him when a cold wind blew against them. “I’ll try to show up all fresh-faced for you.”

Chat Noir started slowing down as they got closer to the point where Ladybug asked him to drop her off, but she didn’t have the heart to point out that he was trying to prolong their time together. Instead, she let him take his time and carefully let her down onto the roof while she awkwardly leaned heavily on her other foot.

“Are you sure you’re going to be ok? You could stay on my back and I can keep my eyes closed while I take you home.”

“Then you’re going to get hurt too,” Ladybug teased. “Don’t worry, it really is only a few blocks away. I’ll be okay, I promise.”

“Alright,” Chat Noir smiled. “Make sure you ice it and wrap it up with something. And keep it elevated.”

“I will.” Ladybug cupped his caw and leaned up to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for being so chivalrous and taking this poor little princess home.”

Chat Noir chuckled and placed a kiss on the backs of her knuckles. “It’s no trouble, you know that. But get some rest. If an akuma pops up tomorrow, I don’t know how well I’ll handle on my own.”

Ladybug twirled her hair. “Ah, what would you do without me?”

Chat Noir laughed and started backing up so that he could backtrack home. “Not much, you know that.” He jutted his thumb behind him. “Gotta get home, but I’ll see you later okay?”

Ladybug waved to him and stayed on the roof until Chat Noir was completely out of sight. She did her best to keep off her foot and swing on her yoyo as she looped around her neighborhood for a bit to make sure no one saw her sneak back home. She meandered for about five minutes before she landed on the roof of the bakery and slipped back into her bedroom.

Marinette detransformed when she landed on her bed and carefully climbed down from her loft so that she could grab her cellphone from her desk. She checked the four missed calls from Alya while she opened the latch to her room and asked her mom for some ice for the ankle, saying that she twisted coming down from her bed. If it was this late at night, she figured that whatever Alya was calling her about had to have been important so she called her back while she lifted her foot onto the desk to keep it elevated like Chat Noir had told her.

“ Marinette!!” Alya screamed on the second ring. “ Answer your damn phone!! ”

“I was downstairs doing something, geez,” Marinette frowned. “I’m here now. What’s up?”

“ Okay, don’t freak out, but do freak out, because you would not believe the pics that I took today while Chat Noir and Ladybug were out.”

Marinette rolled her eyes fondly. “Oh yeah, I heard about that. I saw them running around when I went for a walk today.”

“ It was ridiculously cool, I’ve never seen them just hang out all day like that. But that’s not even the best part .”

“Let me guess. It’s gonna get you a crap ton of followers and you’re going to be hailed as an investigative genius.”

“ Ugh, you know me so well girlie .”

Marinette laughed, but turned her head towards the latch when she heard her mother calling her down so that she could wrap an icepack to her ankle. “Hey, is it okay if you tell me about it tomorrow? I’ve gotta deal with something right now, but I’m all ears in the morning. I promise.”

“ Everything okay?”

Marinette winced. “I may….have possible twisted my ankle coming down the stairs to my bed?”

“ You’re a disaster,” Alya chuckled over the phone. “ Alright. Well, I’ll post the pics really late tonight so you’ll probably see them in the morning. But still call me, okay?”

“I will I promise. Night, Alya!”

Just as she expected, Marinette’s ankle was hardly anything at all and she woke up the next morning with her ankle feeling a little tender, but definitely well enough to walk on. Lucky for her. She wasn’t sure if her parents were going to let her live down the embarrassment of a self-inflicted injury that was the result of climbing down from a bed she’d been sleeping in for sixteen years.

She’d tried staying up the night before to wait for Alya’s blog to update, but knowing Alya she stayed up until three in the morning and didn’t update it until long after Marinette had fallen asleep. Marinette sat in front of her computer and pulled up her bookmarks, bracing herself for whatever silly photograph that Alya had decided to blow up today so that she could pretend to be excited about it when Alya called.

But the moment Marinette loaded the first page of the blog, she cursed loudly and yanked on her pigtails.

The first post — pinned to the top so that absolutely nobody would miss it — was a photoset of Chat Noir carrying Ladybug home last night, of Ladybug kissing Chat Noir on the cheek, and Chat Noir placing a kiss on the backs of her knuckles while the two of them had equally wide smiles on her face. Marinette didn’t really need to see the headline on the post to know what was going on, but it was kind of hard to miss ‘LADYNOIR CONFIRMED!!!!!’ in big block letters across the screen right underneath the pictures. She scrolled down to the short text that followed the pictures and sighed in frustration.

Hello my fellow Ladybloggers!

No your eyes are not deceiving you. Our patience has finally paid off and I can finally update you with some pretty monumental developments in the relationship between our two favorite superheroes. Now you can take a look at these pics and decide for yourselves, but if you ask me, that right up there is nothing short of L.O.V.E. Think these cute kids are dating? Maybe setting up for something more serious? Tell me in the comments and bask in the shipping feels! :D

XOXO Alya <3

“Alya, I’m going to kill you,” Marinette muttered. The comments were an absolute nightmare. Everyone was fixating on these photos that Alya must have grabbed on her camera phone when she was out last night. The theories were absolutely ridiculous. There were a couple of people gushing over their close friendship and partnership, and Marinette appreciated that at the very least. But the vast majority of commenters were all fixated on just one thing:

Ladybug and Chat Noir were very obviously in love and dating.

With a sick feeling in her stomach, Marinette checked Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and checked all of the Ladybug and Chat Noir tags. Sure enough, the photos were trending, and it had only been about nine hours since Alya had posted the photos. All the pictures were getting liked, retweeted, reblogged, and shared on literally every social media website that Marinette could find, and she was convinced that if the whole city of Paris hadn’t seen these pictures, they were going to before Marinette even had a chance to finish breakfast. Freaking Alya. Marinette was two seconds away from showing up to her doorstep and throttling her.

Marinette waited until Tikki finished up her cookie breakfast before transforming and swinging out a couple of blocks away until she was sitting on top of a flower shop. She pulled out her compact and made a call to Chat Noir, hoping that his kwami would be able to tell that she was trying to get through to him even if he wasn’t transformed. Luckily, he answered on her third call, looking like he was out of breath and running while he was talking.

“ Please tell me you saw the Ladyblog this morning.”

“How could I not?” Ladybug frowned. “It’s all over freaking Twitter too. She only posted them last night how is this even possible?”

“ I mean, if I’m being honest, with the way that Alya girl and all of her followers talk about the two of us, I’m surprised it’s not on the damn news.”

Ladybug groaned. “God this is a mess. What are we going to do about this, people are never going to leave us alone about this.”

“ I have no idea but this is super not cool,” Chat Noir insisted. “ Where are you? Can we meet? I sort of want to put this fire out as soon as possible if that’s all the same to you .”

“Trust me, we’re totally on the same page,” Ladybug grumbled. “I’m pretty sure we stopped by her house last Christmas when we had to deal with that Santa Claus akuma. Do you remember the address?”

“ Pretty sure. It’s a Sunday, she’ll probably be home. Wanna stop by for a quick visit?”

“Sounds good to me. Loop around to the Notre Dame and I’ll meet you there.”

It didn’t take them very long to head on over to Alya’s house, all the while ignoring all the teenagers who were pointing to them from the street and yelling about how cute a couple they made. They both landed on Alya’s balcony and saw her sitting on the couch of her living room alone and updating her blog. Chat Noir reached forward and knocked insistently on the glass door until Alya looked up and smiled brightly at the two heroes. She practically threw her computer off her lap and scrambled to the doors to unlock them and come out to her balcony to meet them. “Holy shit!” she screamed out as she bounced outside, pulling a coat on along the way. “What are you guys doing here? Did you see the piece I did on you guys?”

“Yeah,” Ladybug muttered. “About that….we need to talk.”

Chat Noir scratched the back of his head. “You. uh….wouldn’t mind taking that down, would you? You see, this is all actually just a huge misunderstanding.”

“Misunderstanding?” Alya echoed. “Was that not the two of you being all kissy and touchy last night?”

“I-I mean it was!” Ladybug amended. “But it’s not like that, honest.”

“We’re not dating,” Chat Noir laughed nervously. “Seriously. That’s just how the two of us are, you know?”

Alya crossed her arms and smirked. “Ah, I get it. You’re just really close . Right. Gotcha.”

“Why are you saying it like it’s a lie?” Ladybug frowned.

“I don’t mean anything by it, I swear,” Alya laughed. “Forget I said anything. I mean, I’m happy to take things down but it kind of already went viral. I can’t really control anyone who puts up mirrors of it on other websites. I mean, Lord, have you seen Reddit lately? That’s all anyone’s talking about today.”

“It’s only been nine hours!” Ladybug exclaimed.

“You really underestimate how much this city ships you two,” Alya snorted.

Ladybug rolled her eyes. “Perfect. Give it like two days and we’re going to be a meme.”

“We’re likely going to be a reaction image at best, my Lady,” Chat Noir assured her.

“Chat, you’re so not helping.”

Alya cleared her throat. “Hey, uh. You mind if I ask a question?”

“About what?” Chat Noir asked.

“Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve made theories about you two,” Alya pointed out. “Granted this one blew up like crazy and I totally didn’t see it coming, but Ladynoir has trended on the Ladyblog like four times in the past. I obviously don’t mean to make you guys uncomfortable, but I didn’t think this sort of thing would bother you.”

Ladybug big her lip and shared a gaze with Chat Noir. “Well….things might have….changed recently.”

“Changed?”

“It’s just that it’s particularly awkward this time around,” Chat Noir explained. “Trust us, we’re totally happy to let fans do their guessing and support us whatever way is appropriate. But this time it’s just toeing a really weird line for a couple of reasons.”

“Well, what’s the reason?” Alya asked. “If you want me to change the wording of the post I can try to do that.”

Ladybug rubbed her arm and sighed. “Well….the two of us are dating.”

Alya blinked a few times before her eyes widened. “Wait a minute you two are dating each other!?”

“No, no! Not each other!” Chat Noir amended quickly. “We’re both dating two different people is what we mean. She has a boyfriend and I have a girlfriend.”

Alya’s mouth formed into a small ‘o.’ “I….am seeing the issue.”

“Don’t get us wrong it’s not like our partners know who we are, but it’s still just really awkward for the two of us, that’s all,” Ladybug explained. “It’d put our minds at ease if you could just take them down and stay on the safe side.”

“Shit,” Alya sighed. “I’m so sorry. I mean, like I said, I have no problems taking the pictures down and correcting the post but it’s really too late for that. People already latched onto this and there are going to be rumors about all of this spreading around to other blogs no matter what I say.”

“I hate the Internet,” Chat Noir sighed.

“Well, is there anything else we can do? You’re the social media expert!”

Alya drummed her fingers against her pursed lips as she paced around the balcony. “Well, there’s one thing we could do. But it’s a little complicated and it’s going to take some effort from the two of you.”

“Well what is it?” Ladybug urged.

Alya shrugged. “Well, how else do you counter a celebrity hook up? Follow it up with a celebrity break up.”

Chat Noir shook his head. “Hold on a second, you want us to break up?”

“That’s right,” Alya grinned. “Well, a fake break up technically. Since apparently you two aren’t dating which, oh my God, I’m still really freaking out about that because are you sure? Like totally positive?”

Ladybug glared. “No, actually, some days I wake up and I conveniently forget my boyfriend. Tends to happen quite a bit.”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Alya amended. “Totally platonic, nothing going on, I screwed up and jumped to conclusions. I have learned my lesson.”

“I mean, that would work,” Chat Noir reasoned. “The fake break up, I mean. Might be a bit abrupt but hey! Let everyone else theorize about that.”

“Ugh, alright. I guess that’s our best option at the moment,” Ladybug said.

“It shouldn’t be too complicated,” Alya promised. “If I could get it on video and post it on the blog as solid proof, that’d be our best bet. All the rumors drop, you two are strictly friends and partners, and everything ends happily.”

Chat Noir raised his hand. “Uh, slight problem. Public break-ups are not one of my areas of expertise.”

“Oh don’t you two even sweat that part. Consider me your unofficial publicist,” Alya winked. “If it’s a fake break up you’re looking for I can orchestrate one no problem! Besides, consider this an apology for getting you two into this mess in the first place. I insist.”

Ladybug smiled. “I appreciate that. Although, if you don’t mind my asking, exactly what did you have in mind in terms of a break up?”

Alya clasped her hands under her chin and smiled innocently at the two of them. “Oh my darling heroes of Paris, I’m so glad you asked.”

#miraculous ladybug #ladynoirjuly2k17 #ladynoir #adrinette #adrienette #ladybug #chat noir #marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #ladynoir fanfiction #miraculous ladybug fanfiction #my writing #its all hype

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