Today I woke up. My sister is in the hospital. COVID, but the world no longer cares about that. COVID, but I can’t call out of work because my job abandoned their time off for the pandemic as soon as the government stopped requiring it. They’re a healthcare company. They produce catheters for angioscopy and atherectomy procedures. I could have the disease. I sat right across from her during her birthday dinner. I initiated the group hug after. One day later, my mother was calling me telling me she was in an ambulance.
This morning was Monday. I got in the car, the only one we have, and it didn’t start up the first time around. It said charging system malfunction. I thank the god I no longer believe in for letting it start up on the second try. I can’t afford a repair. I’m going to have to check the wires and drive belt myself, and pray it’s not the alternator. I don’t have a tool for that. I’m thousands of dollars in debt, and so is my wife. We’re happy that we can finally afford groceries on a mostly consistent basis. I wish that that mostly was more guaranteed.
Got to work. Confirmed with my boss that the medical device company I work for has indeed abandoned COVID time. If I want to take time off, I’m gonna have to use my vacation. I used up all my sick time for the last crisis. The last time I was sick I didn’t even bother to do that. I just came in. I mucked up all the cathetors with my virus-infected hands. The test said it wasn’t covid, but that was just a couple weeks before my sister came down with it. Again, we saw eachother. Across the table. We hugged. Close enough.
Of course, physical death isn’t enough. Apparently the universe has decided on a campaign of eradication against my soul. The man who I’ve been trying to build a stronger friendship with for the past year messaged me today. It was long enough that the message didn’t fit all at once on the screen. It was the kind of message you always are afraid to get when you see a notification ping.
It wasn’t anything unexpected. This is a situation that’s been ongoing. But he’s done with it. He says he’s not done with me, but his actions say otherwise. This is the first time he’s messaged me since the last message that didn’t fit on a single screen. The one where he called me a hyprocrite.
He wasn’t wrong. And I tried to apologize the right way. Recognize your wrong. Acknowledge you hurt them. Sincerely promise to not repeat. But nothing’s changed in the server he says.
But I’m confused. It’s not the server he called a hypcocrite. He hasn’t said any way the server needs to be different.
Just me.
So I’m pretty sure he’s just saying goodbye to me.
I can’t fight it though. He spent a week in a mental institution at the start of this year. Some days I wish I could do the same, but it would kill my wife. The last husband, the one who’s name she whispers in fear visited them often. I can’t do the same for the fear of becoming a reminder of that man.
I get another message. Dad, and my other sister, they have it too. The pandemic that’s over but also not really. The one everyone’s looking away from and pretending no longer exists. I’m worried because my Dad is diabetic. The same kind of Diabetic as my wife. It put them first in line for the original vaccines, and it puts them first in my mind as I try not to think about how life will be without my Dad. Or her.
She’s the only one I have left. I don’t think she knows the extent of that. How she was the first one to look at me, and not joke about it. The first one to love me honestly and genuinely. With her whole heart. I’m terrified one day I’ll get it from her. A message of several paragraphs. So long it doesn’t fit on the screen all at one time.
I don’t think she knows. I don’t think the cats know. I don’t think my sisters or mom and dad know how I’m hanging by a thread and barely holding on. The only reason I stay is because it would hurt them far more than it would save me. My cats wouldn’t understand why I’m no longer around to sneak them chicken from the one on sale my wife brought home. My wife wouldn’t understand how I could be just the same and as cruel as the man who’s name she whispers in fear. She would think it was her fault. She would call herself the cruel one. The one who was cursed. My sisters wouldn’t understand. “he was doing so well!” they would cry.
I’m doing so well.
Aren’t I?
My mother, I’m not entirely sure. She’s changed lately. For the good and bad. She’s let go of the eyes of others who drew her down. She’s become vibrant and cohesive. But she also seeks for answers in corners where they do not lie. She thinks for others when she should think for herself. She tries to drag and nibble at places where she does not belong. But it is an improvement, I suppose. From who she was before.
My father would be wounded most of all. He’s lost before. A shotgun blast, brains on the wall. Just a block away. He’d talked with him the night before. “He was my friend? Why didn’t he say a word?”
Because it’s not about you. It’s about getting away. I hurt. I don’t want to hurt any more.
I feel like a mite on the world of giants. Wars and plagues and gods. I want to nibble in my corner. Be loved and love others.
But it hurts. It hurts. It hurts.
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This was supposed to be a short rambling and ended up turning into a mini fic lol. I know the tense shifts, I know it's sloppy lol
Anyway, Simon has a sweetheart who gets kidnapped and gets to meet "Ghost" for the first time.
The first time you meet Ghost, it's supposed to be carefully planned and controlled. After all, Simon was so worried about opening that part of himself up to you. To you, he was Simon. Soft, introverted, sweet, desperately trying to break a cycle of generational trauma. You had never met Ghost.
But, of course, nothing in Simon's life can go according to plan, and when you have people that mean something to you, they become weaknesses. So, when you get kidnapped by a Russian military company with the intel that you were important to Task Force-141? Ghost has already burnt down the world once, you're sure as hell that he would do it again for his love. So, when you meet Ghost, it isn't carefully rehersed and planned like Simon wanted. No.
Instead, you're terrified, bound, and gagged on a cold concrete floor wearing little more than your skivvies as tears stream down your face. Then, out of the blue, gunfire and shouting rings through the halls. Stealth be damned, as soon as their cover is blown, you know that Ghost will fight like a rabbit animal. He barges into your cell, tackling a man against the wall with a knife to his throat and a gun at his head.
Those eyes that had looked at you so softly and tenderly were completely unrecognizable when they were this wide and intense, wild with bloodlust. "Where is the girl?" He spits out in fluent Russian before his eyes catch sight of you.
'BANG'
A single bullet through the soldiers' skull, splattering Ghost with even more viscera and gray matter. Ghost doesn't even seem phased as he holsters his pistol and pulls away, letting the body drop with a sickening thud. He walks brazenly up to you, but pauses as he notices the way you frantically back yourself into the corner, trying desperately to stay away from this monster who had surely come to drag you from one hell to the next.
Then, he crouches down and outstretches a gentle hand to you, letting you come to him. He called your name so sweetly, and that was a voice you recognized. You tried to muffle out his name through the rag shoved into your mouth and tied around your head. That earned a low chuckle, a dangerous one that you hadn't heard before. "Not quite, love. Ghost. Now, let's get you home, eh?"
Ghost. The name echoed in your mind, bouncing around as you tried to remember where you had heard it before. Your eyes flicked over to the corpse splayed in the doorway of your cell, making you nearly vomit in your mouth before looking away. Ghost shifted closer, using the knife still in his hand to cut through the rough ropes binding you. "Bloody hell... idiots didn't even use chains, could have escaped right easy, you could of." Ghost muttered, mostly to himself. The words were terrifying to hear.
He reached to untie your gag next, a chuckle rumbling lowly in his chest as you flinch away. He gives you half a second to compose yourself before he unceremoniously rips the gag off of you and tosses it to the side. Red marks are etched into your cheeks where the gag had dug in, and the sight makes Ghost seeth. "Oh, love..." His words are soft, but his tone is enraged, as if those marks alone could start his new crusade.
"LT!" Blue eyes and a neatly groomed Warhawk pop into the door, stepping casually over the corpse as the new face made his way over to you. "This her, LT?" A thick Scottish accent was present, along with a bit of thinly veiled appreciation. "Off limits Johnny, this is her. This is my girl."
Whenever Simon called you his, it was soft and reverent, as if astonished that he could call someone so precious his. But when Ghost said it? It was commanding, possessive, and left no room for argument. You were his. And that thought was almost scary.
Ghost wasted no more time, scooping you up into his arms and making their way quickly through the facility you had only caught glances of while Ghost and Johnny talked in some military jargon you didn't understand.
That's when you noticed it.
Even though Ghost was holding you so tight and close, even though his touches seemed so rough and careless, even though he was splattered with all sorts of blood and viscera, you had none of it on you. Ghost had been so careful with his touches, with how he held you, determined not to stain and taint your delicate skin with the fuel to his fire, the essence of his soul. And that was quite possibly when you realized that 'Simon' and 'Ghost' were merely two sides of the same coin. And they were both yours as much as you were theirs. his.
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I think one of the things I will always love most about Merthur is that I adore loyalty taken to the extreme. I love someone abandoning all their morals and reframing their entire belief system around one person. I love someone willing to do absolutely anything for someone, no matter how horrendous it is. I love someone who would let their love kill them if they wanted to.
I adore loyalty taken to the extreme, and Merthur, specifically from Merlin’s perspective, is exactly that.
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Everytime I think about Obi-Wan and Anakin it’s like- I don’t ship them so much as I think they should be together at all times. I think tcw had a point, actually, and the two of them should just. Always be together. I think Anakin is Obi-Wan’s hope in an increasingly difficult life and I think Obi-Wan is Anakin’s tie to humanity when he most feels like a monster. They are intrinsically combined, from the very first movie where Obi-Wan dies at Vader’s hands with a peaceful expression.
It’s Obi-Wan begging Luke not to see Anakin in Vader while Vader searches Luke to see some sign of Obi-Wan. It’s Obi-Wan calling Anakin another pathetic lifeform to Obi-Wan being unable to process the idea of Anakin being anything but good. It’s Anakin awkwardly (adorably) shaking Obi-Wan’s hand to Anakin awkwardly (adorably) bringing up Obi-Wan during conversations with the woman he wants to seduce.
It’s Obi-Wan knowing how to fix Artoo and Obi-Wan teasing Anakin about Artoo. It’s Anakin’s first thought on losing his lightsaber being “Obi-Wan’s going to be mad at me again” and Anakin laughing when Obi-Wan tells him to drive better.
The prequel trilogy is so fascinating because my favourite parts are always Anakin and Obi-Wan. The parts I think about the most often are those parts with Anakin and Obi-Wan. The relationship between these two drives the entirety of the plot of the prequels, to the point that the literal birth mother of the main characters of the original trilogy is all but forgotten in the third movie.
It’s. Obi-Wan spending years watching over Luke because Luke reminds him of Anakin, never approaching because what if Luke really does turn out to be like Anakin…?
It’s Vader assuming that Obi-Wan taught Luke to fight, because who else could teach a Skywalker?
It’s Obi-Wan accepting all the blame for the people he knew best, the people who were basically his family, all dying.
It’s Vader keeping Obi-Wan’s lightsaber in a parallel to Obi-Wan keeping Anakin’s.
They are just. Mutually Obsessed. Obi-Wan held up Anakin and said “this is my whole personality now” and Anakin responded with “neato, same.” They bicker like an old married couple. Anakin can’t imagine even thinking about leaving Obi-Wan behind. Obi-Wan tells Anakin point-blank that he’s a good Jedi who deserves to be a Master.
I ship them because like. The universe? Does?? They are destined to be by each other, in life and in death. They support and sustain each other. There was probably eepy Force magic stuff that made Anakin into a Force ghost because Obi-Wan wanted him to be one.
How else can I explain it? They were made for each other. Like. Literally. They should never be separated. Look what happened when they did separate in universe. They are a nuclear bomb. They have to stay together or the galaxy gets the worst of it, and that’s just canon, somehow.
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